Next

6. Coffee. I used to be against coffee. Then, I started drinking it. Then, I realized how much I love it. I especially love that the woman who arrives to the office first in the mornings will tell me when the coffee's ready and sometimes will even ask me for my mug so she can serve me a cup. So, I guess I'm thankful for coffee and anyone who facilitates its arrival to me.

7. I'm thankful for perspective. I just about closed my facebook yesterday. I thought grateful messages of joy and love jibberjabber made me want to gag. What is truly vomit-licious is facebook politics. I throw-up in my mouth a little just thinking about it.

Here's my question. When did the USA become a nation of extremists? I've only been gone for seven (7?!) years and all of a sudden you're either a far-right tea-party religious extremist or a far-left moral-hating socialist. Or at least that's what my reliable news source tells me. Thanks again, fb.

Excuse me? I missed something somewhere. If one thing defines Americans, it is a love for our country. Why has this essence of our patriotism been forgotten?

I say I am thankful for perspective because I have had the opportunity to understand myself, my country, my faith from many perspectives; living out of the country being one of the greatest opportunities afforded me. I have heard what others think of us, good and bad. I have reflected on my role as a citizen and representative of my country while abroad. I have lived in two systems, while both democratic, both very different. I can recognize, though not always agree nor completely understand, the point of view of each side.

I firmly believe that there are few, if any, Americans who do not believe in working for the greater good both through and outside of the government. I firmly believe that "the greater good" does not have one definition or one way of being achieved. I firmly believe that people need to take names and labels out of things and discuss issues. Tolerance does not mean we need to agree; it means we need to dialogue and defend each other's right to an opinion.

Number 7 got long. You're thankful today that I'm done writing.

I need this.

Everyone's loving the thankful days of November. It's like the antithesis of Lent when everyone gives up facebook. Nope. In November, we blow everyone's feeds up with what we love and are grateful for.

Why then, does it make me want to gag each time I read them? I came to this realization today as I read the fifty-billionth thankful post (I'm that cool on the ol' fb). I'm like the grinch who stole Thanksgiving. Except for the fact that Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday both in the US and in Mexico.

It occurred on me that I might just need to get on board. Not because everyone is doing it, but because I need an attitude check. There has to be something wrong with a person who gets gaggy about thankfulness. There also has to be something wrong with a person who loves to write but hasn't done it since August.

So, it won't be on facebook, and I can't guarantee you it will happen daily. What I will challenge myself to do is give you 30 things for which I am thankful and don't make me want to gag. I can't promise you won't want to gag; that will depend on your own reflexes and tolerances.

Without further adieu, I give you the first five.

1. I am thankful for my job. To clarify, I do not always like my job. I am often overwhelmed and consistently feeling as though I am biting off more than I could ever possibly chew. But then I see kids like the kids I saw today in 6th grade speaking with such confidence and I know that whatever dent, however tiny and insignificant, that I will make, will be worth it.

2. I am thankful for my child. To clarify, I do not always like my child. I'm fairly certain she does not always like me. But, we need each other. She makes me realize how impatient and impossible I am through her own impatience and impossibility. We end up in tears together at least once a week, but it always ends by hugging it out and a big kiss. That makes it worth it.

3. I am thankful for my diet. To clarify, I do not like my diet. It has taken from me all that is holy and delicious- Coca-cola, bread and candy being the main three. It has also taken away over 3 kilos in 2 weeks. For those of you who think in pounds and kilos is gibberish, that's almost 7. Seven pounds. I don't need or want them back and I am happy they are gone and taking friends with them.

4. I am thankful for my husband. To clarify, I do not always like my husband. As with my child, I am certain that he does not always like me. He likes me least when I have not slept well. To his benefit, I don't like me much those days either. He works his booty off. He loves his daughter like crazy. And we  are both aware and inspired by the fact that we have made a commitment to each other for life.

5. I am thankful for my cleaning lady. It costs me less than 20 bucks a week and it means I never have to scrub my toilets or showers. To clarify, I am not against or above cleaning my own home. Sometimes I do it. But, guess what? I'm okay with not doing it. It doesn't make me less of a mom, less of a wife, less of a homemaker. It makes me a realist. And I'm okay with that.

More again soon. I hope you didn't gag.

Starting Over

There are just a lot of moments in my life lately that I wish there was a "Start Over" button.

Have you had a two-year-old before? I swear to you that I now understand why people have a second child before the first child turns two, because once you have a two-year-old, the whole game changes.

If two is any foreshadow for 15, Lord, help me. I'm probably not going to make it.

I know my child isn't anything out of the ordinary and I should be jumping for joy, praising the heavens and thanking all those lucky stars for having a healthy, smart, spunky and beautiful little girl. I should. But, you know what? Sometimes I can't even muster up the strength to be thankful for surviving til bedtime.

Maybe I thought that patience came as part of the deal for going through childbirth? Apparently I forgot to pick that one up when we checked out of the hospital.

Maybe I thought disciplining my own child would be like disciplining other people's children? Let me tell you, I rock at disciplining other people's kids. They are not cute. They are not mine. Mine? I suck. I can't keep a straight face unless I'm so pissed or so at the end of my rope that hurling myself out the window seems like vacation.

Then, she comes over, gives me a pat on the back and says, "I'm proud of you, Mommy. You did a peepee in the potty. Marshmallow?" And other than wanting to punch my own self in the face for being so impatient and psycho, I also want to die because she's just so stinking cute.

Lord, please don't stop giving me those "Start Over" moments. This crazy mama sure needs them.

A balloon

Today we had our first pet.

Today AV's little world came crashing down around her, as well.

It was a puppy. A balloon puppy, but a puppy nonetheless. This little puppy came to us by way of her auntie who got him from a clown on her bus ride home from work. That isn't actually a joke at all. It is completely normal, if not expected, to encounter one or more clowns on a bus trip. They attempt to liven the journey with some jokes and pull your heartstrings and your wallet zippers to offer one or more coins for their humor. And sometimes, you just end up with a tiny blue balloon puppy as a consolation prize for your trip on public transportation.

Ana was stoked. The puppy got a name. I never quite caught or deciphered what the name was, but the wow-wow balloon puppy was instantly a part of her world. He ate lunch with us. He came to get a haircut with us. There was slight panic when he became covered with tiny pieces of hair that stuck instantly and permanently thanks to laws of static electricity. He had ice cream with us and helped us hang up the laundry.

It was decided that he would take a bath with AV, too. I noticed as we headed upstairs that puppy's tail was lacking the spunk it had had when I met him a few hours earlier. And then, it happened. Halfway through the bath, all covered in soap, so much joy in her little two-year-old heart.

Puppy became a worm.

Tears. Screams. A sadness so sad that I really tried not to laugh. Really I did, kind of.

A balloon! A balloon! A balloon! A balloon! The poor child screamed.

We had to talk about how the worm, I mean the puppy, was now going to be garbage. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be disappointed. Maybe someday, some way, another balloon puppy will join our family.

And as quickly as it came, our first pet left our family. Daddy never even had the chance to meet it. I'm pretty sure we're going to stick to non-living pets, thank you very much.

A New Respect

I have a renewed and profound respect for my husband.

Why you might ask? It's not because of the long hours he works. It's not because of his love for his family. It's not because of how he finds a way to balance work and home.

No. It's none of those things.

He cuts the grass.

Our backpatch has newly planted grass. It is growing quite nicely. So nicely, in fact, that it required a bit of sheering. Now, our backpatch is not worthy of a lawn mower. I think a lawn mower might actually be like a quarter of the size of the entire yard. It's not even really worthy of a weed eater (though I'm starting to rethink this). We use scissors. Okay, that's maybe a little bit of a lie, but it sounds so much better. And grass clippers technically are a type of (very big and pretty sharp) scissors.

I took it upon myself to cut the backpatch today. This has been a manly husbandly job in our casa up until today, and as things are shaping up, I think it shall continue to be.

First, it's actually a lot harder than it looks.

Second, you can't get it even. No matter how hard you try, there are sections that are taller than others. When you try to fix it, it then becomes shorter than all the other area around it thus leading you to continue cutting, assessing, re-cutting, raking, re-assessing, cutting, and on and on and on.

Third, I think my forearms are going to fall off at the elbow. You are seriously lucky that I mustered enough energy to actually write this post because I can feel the pain in my arms as I type. Here's to hoping that AV learns to take off her own clothes, change her own diaper, open the fridge and make her own food and grows tall enough to turn on the water and wash her own hair all in the next 2 hours. I'm relatively certain that by four o'clock I won't be able to lift my arms.

On another, much less painful, gardening note, my garden is growing. My Garden Is Growing! I'm considering radish farming as my next entrepreneurial endeavor because those babies popped up so fast in perfect rows and are growing like champs. Nothing like a few sprouts to motivate this amateur gardener. The carrots are starting to look like carrots, the tomatoes are sprouting and the peas are going to need poles soon so they can grow onward and upward.

I can't say the same for the school garden we planted with our fifth graders. One of the maintenance guys took a look at it with my partner the other day and confirmed that our "sprouts" weren't the fruits of any of the seeds we planted but, in fact, grass that blew in and took root in our planter. So, needless to say, I'm working on spring break. We planted new seeds and will be heading to school next week to replant the garden. But, how psyched will the kids be when they come back from vacation and have sprouts all over their planter. Let's just hope they don't notice that they're not the same plants.

Here's to Hoping

I have planted a garden.

This from the girl who, after I stopped getting paid five cents a bag to pick the "little yellow flowers" growing in my parents' backyard, despised just about everything garden related. I can pin it down to a few reasons. I think I was always on weed duty. No one wants to pick weeds. I also know that the dinner menu at the Hickey house from the day the first lettuce is ripe (Does lettuce get ripe? See. I'm a newbie.) to the day the last squash is picked (usually the size of a human arm because it somehow got lost under the leaves for 3 days too long) is salad. That was a long sentence, but the point is the fat child in me doesn't like the memory of constant salad consumption. I'm pretty certain I always got the one bug that didn't rinse away, too.

Those reasons, to me, are enough to be understandably put off by gardening. But, then I had a baby. And then I bought a house. Something about having a baby and having a house ignited the necessity for a garden. Must have plants to eat.

Last August when my Mom "The Green Thumb" came to visit, we went on a special outing to get plants. She chose hardy plants that would be the most likely to survive (aka I might have to try to kill them) and some herbs. Easy enough? Well, today, I can tell you that all of those plants are dead. Everything except for a little pine tree that I planted 4 years ago. Although, Ramon was happy to point out to me that it's probably still alive because (exact words translated) "they live even if you don't water them in six months." Ouch.

When we decided that the grass in our back patch needed to be changed, I excitedly suggested that we make a place for the garden. He looked at me, looked at the planters either empty or home to a dead plant, and looked back at me. "We" decided that the whole back patch would be grass for now. Oh yeah, I call it a back patch because I don't think it can quite be classified as a yard if it only takes about 3 steps to get from one end to the other.

I may not have a place in the patch for the garden, but I do have 6 plastic planters of various sizes. Having something other than dead plants in them was motivation enough for me to try again. That and a packet of seeds costs like a buck. We went to home depot (hard h sound from the back of the throat and please pronounce the t at the end) and AV chose peas, Ramon chose cherry tomatoes, and I chose radishes, carrots, parsley and basil.

I have no idea if I planted them correctly because the packet told me how to plant them by using centimeters of depth and distance apart from each plant and centimeters still are pretty much gibberish and not a real measurement in my book.

The good news is I remembered to water them today. The other good news is that I have them in the front so I have to walk by them at least twice a day which is conducive to watering, as well. The other other good news is that we got water finally over the weekend, so there's actually water with which to water them.

I planted approximately one dollar worth of seeds. If I get at least one dollar worth of vegetables out of the project, I'll call that a rousing success.

Here's to hoping.

Sometimes it's just still the 3rd world.

I may drive a nice car.

I may make a decent (which is a very relative term) amount of money.

I may have a Master's degree.

My husband may have just been promoted.

We may have a new home.

...But, sometimes, some days, it just really kicks me in the face, to put it nicely, that I'm living in the third world.

How many of you have ever had to think about how and when the water gets into your pipes? How the water gets from the magic water world somewhere deep down under the Earth's surface into the shower and the toilets?

I'm willing to bet that not many.

Here in the C-wow (We'll call it C-wow since I'm also willing to bet it would take you about fifteen minutes to figure out how to pronounce Cuautlancingo, the name of the city where I live.) water is supposed to come in on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. We have a 5,000 liter cistern built under our driveway/front yard. 5,000 liters sounds like a serious amount of water, and it is. Topping it off every other day also sounds reasonable, if not more than enough. I would agree with you up until the little factoid that I failed to mention. The water is not always opened on the days when it's supposed to be. In fact, the last time I heard water falling was over a week ago and it only lasted for about 45 minutes. Before that, it had been over a month.

Now, since we've already paid the year's worth of water, a whopping 75 bucks (we got a discount for paying early. Cha-ching), I had the 1st world expectation that water would abound and everything would run like clockwork. 6 years in Mexico and I just can't seem to learn that things don't work the same way. The government offices which are half painted one color and half painted another, are open from 8:30-4:30. There is one person who can solve the problem. I called on Tuesday at 4:15 and got transferred, I mean hung up on. I called again at 4:16 and dialed the extension for the management and got the extension for the warehouse. I called again at 4:17 and the one person who could solve the problem wasn't in the office. But, I was assured that the message would be communicated and a solution would be found.

I have learned enough to doubt that response. On Wednesday, I rushed home after work, choked down lunch, grabbed AV and tried to get to the office before 4:30. I miraculously got there at 4:29. The one person who could solve the problem left at 4:28. Another message was taken. This time in a ratty, ripped up notebook where they wrote my name (and by my name I mean Ramon's name because after trying to spell and say my names for the last 6 years, I've opted to just use names that can be comprehended with ease), my (Ramon's) phone number and our address with a very detailed explanation. "No water, Solve." I left with the promise that the one person would get in contact with us first thing.

Today is Thursday. No water came in. The person didn't call. And Ana has learned what a washcloth bath and a bath in a bucket are. I have used the water from warming up the bucket bath to rinse off my dishes and we are considering the possibility of letting "yellow mellow," if you know what I mean. I am adamantly anti-mellow.

While this sucks as much as it does, I remind myself that I've lived a privileged life. I've never wondered where the water in the pipes comes from and when it might stop coming. Until 6 years ago, I opened the faucet and drank the water that came out. There are many (probably a majority of this planet's population) that have doubts about when and how they will get clean water, if clean water is, in fact, a plausible reality. Challenges call for creativity and open-mindedness, who would have thought that AV would get such a kick out of the washcloth and bucket baths?

My point? When you turn on your faucet tonight and water comes out, take a second to say thank you.