We Were In the Papers

We were in the papers!

Logroño scene of our fifteen minutes (actually, less) of fame

When we travelled to the north of Spain for our holidays last summer, a reporter approached us and asked us if we were from around there and I said no. So she said so you’re here on vacation? And I said yes.

And she got quite excited and asked us for an interview. Then she said we could read the article a few days later in her newspaper.

So I looked it up a couple days ago and the article was there. But we can’t read it! Because it’s a Premium article only available to paid subscribers! The article was about tourism and said, After lockdown the tourists are back!

We bumped into the reporter while she was roaming around the central square approaching every group of people she saw.

She was very friendly. But also very brisk and in a hurry. I guess she was required to interview X number of tourists for her article.

I checked out her blog and she has to write a new article every day and of course, research it every day as well. So I guess she has to stay very busy and on the move a lot in order to churn out an article every day.

Seems like the reporter would have been enjoying a very spiced-up and varied but stressful life. Every day she has to go to X Place (a different place every day), obtain X number of interviews with a certain collective and get all the info that she needs for her article. Then she needs to go to her office or home and churn out a 1000-word article on the subject every day.

You can read this article here. Well at least you can see the title photo, although we don’t appear in that photo. ☹ But you won’t be able to read the actual article unless you subscribe.

Unfortunately I don’t believe the reporter, África Azcona, will ever discover this modest blog post or ever know how chuffed we are to have bumped into her.

You can read the reporter’s personal blog here. I remember she was dressed in a bright green tweed coat or at least that was my impression. Muy cool.

Do you often appear in the papers? You’re probably a politician then lol, but still I’d love to know about it. Feel free to leave me comments down below.

And if you’d like to read something a bit more heavy duty than a newspaper article, for example, a scary thriller novel, do check up on mine here: Thrillers by Moi.

If you enjoyed this post (I really hope you do!), maybe you will also like:

The Barcelona That Tourists Never See

Caves of Nerja

Bye Bye Birds!

Castile Soap and Coconut Milk for Hair

Influencers’ Morning Routine vs. MY Morning Routine

Jan9

If you watch YouTube videos, you might have discovered that it’s all the rage these days to uncover popular Influencers’ morning routines.
I understand that. I watch all the morning routine videos YouTube throws at me, because I’m curious to find out what successful people do every day in order to be successful.
So here is a comparison of my morning routine versus popular influencers’ morning routines:

Influencer’s Unrealistic Morning Routine*:

*(Based upon an amalgam of real YouTubers’ real videos)

When I first wake up I try to spend a couple hours without looking at my phone. (Says the influencer.)

I disconnect and just devote the first hours of the day to myself and have some quiet me time. I then drink a big glass of water, do some yoga, run 50 miles and have a cup of coffee.

Then it’s time for my shower, where I use all natural homemade products that I made myself.

After my shower I enjoy an all-natural breakfast with homemade bread and all homemade foods. Check out my videos with recipes for homemade rye bread, homemade spelt bread and gluten-free corn bread. I make them every day! (Winsome smile.)

Then I spend some time journaling. I find it helps me to put myself together and I recommend everyone practise journaling as a part of their daily lives.

I practise meditation — I trained with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself in my last trip to the Himalayas.

Then I take about an hour to read the Bible and pray.

After that I do my hair and my makeup and get dressed.

Only after I finish all that do I get into my car and drive to my job as CEO of a major international banking corporation.

Now, this is me when I try to follow that Unrealistic Influencer’s Morning Routine:

MY Morning Routine:

I get up, spend about half an hour trying to resist the urge to see if anyone has sent me an exciting whatsapp inviting me on a trip to Africa and then in the end I can’t resist any longer, and I spend about an hour on the phone checking all my groups and all my emails.

And then since I’m lazy and don’t feel like getting out of bed yet, I lounge around some more and read up on all the news.

After that I have a big glass of water and a big glass of diatomaceous earth. I take half a teaspoon of diatomaceous earth (make sure it’s “food grade”, I take it because it’s supposed to make your hair grow) stirred into a glass of water.

Then I spend a long time preparing the cat’s supplements. Then I have juice and supplements as well.

After that it’s time for yoga where I put on a podcast and listen to the podcast while I do yoga.

After the yoga routine I find the podcast so fascinating that I then need to listen to another one. Then another one. And finally another one. So then I just spend the rest of the morning listening to podcasts and do nothing else.

Then I realize it is now lunchtime and I haven’t eaten breakfast yet.

So I go to have breakfast, which might include store-bought items like sliced sandwich bread from a plastic package (as opposed to fresh baked baguettes which is what most people eat here in Europe, but I’m too lazy to get dressed and run down to the bakery), supermarket brand jam and UHT milk.

I eat breakfast while I spend the whole afternoon watching YouTube videos. By the time I finish breakfast it’s dinner time.

And I haven’t even practised meditation yet.

So I sit in meditation, fall asleep and sleep until the next morning. Where I do all these same things all over again.

One day I’ll get that popular and successful influencer’s morning routine down pat!

If you’d like something to read during your evening routine before you go to bed, I’d like to suggest you check out my thrillers. You can check them out here: Thrillers by Moi.

So what does your morning routine look like? Do you do what the influencers do? Do leave me some comments down below. I LURRRVE to receive (positive, non-spammy) comments.

If you enjoyed this post (I really hope you do!), maybe you will also like:

The New Mask-Filled World to Come

Malaga’s English Cemetery

The Orange Trees

The Blueberry Fiend

Daily Supplements

Dec12

Everyone is always talking about the superfoods and daily supplements they take. I imagine the ones that work best for you would depend on what you are like, what health problems you suffer from, what health problems you’re more likely to develop and therefore would like to target the most, your age, etc.

I’m constantly changing around the daily supplements I take. But these are the ones I’m using as of this writing.

I discovered hydrolysed collagen from a video during lockdown so I started taking it. I also read some hysterical reports of people warding off COVID with massive amounts of vitamin C. So I started taking that too.

Eventually, when the panic died down, I realized I was taking just too much vitamin C! So I switched from the heavy duty brand I’d conjured up from Amazon to a more reasonable tube from the supermarket (Mercadona brand actually, if you’re here in Spain and you happen to be interested).

I’ve found it really helps me to take vitamin C. Since I started taking it I don’t get hungry as often and I have more energy. So I have no intention of giving this up!

I like to take the vitamin C with some fruit juice. I don’t really know if it makes any difference but I figure vitamin C is an acid so I s’pose it can’t hurt to take it with some acidic food like fruit juice.

I also take a multi-vitamin with the juice. Truth is I haven’t really noticed any effect from taking these multi-vitamins, but I figure it can’t hurt.

(I’ve since stopped taking these, because I didn’t feel any different from taking them. But I read a report on the news that multi-vitamins help to prevent Alzheimer’s. And my son still takes them.)

I like to put chia in my morning drink but I usually forget. So now you know, if you remember, throw a spoonful of chia seeds in your morning drink. And remember that chia seeds need to either be ground up or soaked in your drink for a few minutes for it to take effect.

After my second son, “Lucrecio”, was born all my hair fell out. Well, not all of it. But it seemed that way. But the worst thing was that it never grew back!

So I started a vigorous hair-growing campaign a few months ago and started bombarding my hair with every kind of daily supplement you can imagine. I upped my natural hair care routine and you can read all about it here.

But of course, I couldn’t improve my hair routine without taking hair vitamins. So I started doing that too.

I began by taking Phytophanère. You can get that at some pharmacies. They are little brown pills with a smooth coating and they taste just so delish, like chocolate candy. I think they’re mainly a vitamin B complex.

I didn’t notice a huge increase in the thickness of my hair but I did seem to get some moderately extra baby hairs. What did happen was that my nails started growing a lot stronger and faster.

I then switched to biotin, 5000 micrograms of biotin and 500 mg of niacin. That did make a difference!

My hair started falling out a lot less. I can’t really tell if a lot more has grown out because I only started taking these vitamins 8 months ago, so if more hair has grown out it’s not really long enough to notice yet. But I think it’s a tad bit thicker on top. Maybe?

And finally I also throw in some omega 3 capsules and a spoonful of brewer’s yeast in the morning drink. Don’t really know if it’s doing anything, but omega 3 is always good for ya, isn’t it?

Since writing this post a few months ago, I’ve since switched to a multiple-B complex. I got it on Amazon. It contains the complete range of all B vitamins, folic acid and a couple other stuff thrown in as well. This makes a huge difference in my life! I now have a lot more energy. Almost as much as a normal person hehe.

I’ve also started taking Lutein, after my ex sister-in-law praised the wonders of lutein to me. She’s selling herbal and vitamin supplements now since losing her job during Covid.

Incidentally, she started selling these vitamins when she found that she was suffering from “long covid”. That is, side effects that just wouldn’t go away.

A neighbour recommended vitamin supplements. She took them, and all her covid symptoms went away!

So now she sells these supplements herself.

So I looked lutein up on the internet. Turns out some sort of study somewhere — I didn’t take note so I can’t cite it — seems to show that people who took lutein after a certain amount of time were 100% free of degenerative eye diseases such as macular degeneration.

On the other hand, the control group, who didn’t take lutein, by the end of the study about 1% had developed some degenerative eye illness.

Degenerative eye diseases are fortunately not very common. Even if you do nothing at all, the chances are great that you will never develop such an illness anyway.

But it never hurts to give your probabilities a little push in the direction that you want, right, heehee?

So I started taking lutein as well, about 10 mg per day.

You can also get lutein from tomatoes. I don’t eat a lot of tomatoes, I’m not particularly fond of tomatoes (or anything acidic, I’ve always been known as the acid girl because I’m so acidic naturally I turn silver black within just a few minutes) and I don’t prepare pasta with tomato sauce nearly as often as I should. So I figure maybe I could be low on lutein.

And finally, because my cat is allergic to pollen, I started taking pollen too.

So, you say. If your cat is allergic to pollen, why do YOU take the pollen? Are you and your cat one and the same?

Well, since affirmations appear to be all the rage these days, we can all go around chanting — and I encourage you to do this every day:

“I and my cat (or dog, if you have a dog) are ONE! I and my cat (or dog) are ONE!”

If you do this every day you will probably start to find that slowly, day by day, you and your cat (or dog) will probably start to merge together into one single being.

Many people swear by this fix. Do try it out.

Well, as I was saying, since my cat is allergic to pollen, I started taking pollen every day.

The reason is because I started giving pollen to my cat, and then I tried it out and I loved the stuff!

(Dunno if it’s helping my cat, some days he appears to be free of allergies and other days he still wheezes. I don’t know if the pollen is doing anything or it’s just simply that some days there is less pollen in the air.)

So now I add half a spoonful of pollen to my morning smoothie every day.

And that basically is what I take every day.

I also try to sneak in some veggies into my diet, a little bit of yoghurt. You know, the usual kinda stuff that your mother was always preaching to you about.

And while you’re on this post, do check out some of my thrillers. You can read all about them here: Thrillers by Moi.

So, do you take supplements? Have you noticed any effect from them? Don’t hesitate to leave me a comment about this down below. I LURRRVE to receive (positive and non-spammy) comments.

If you enjoyed this post (I really hope you do!), maybe you will also like:

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Cricket Adventures

Dec20

Warning: Contains highly gruesome and squeal-inducing, large-sized photos of INSECTS with triangular, insect-shaped heads and ANTENNAE. Please abstain from reading if you are at all squeamish or suffer from insect phobia.

We caught a CRICKET in the bedroom!

First time I’ve ever seen a cricket here in Spain. I HEAR them quite often. But they’re always hidden away somewhere, I’ve never actually SEEN one before.

I did see one when I went to South Africa and I went bonkers. Because in Canada they are GREEN and in South Africa they are BLACK.

This is the one I saw in South Africa. As you can see it looks like the Spanish one but the Spanish one is even bigger!

These hot weather crickets look so scary because they are BLACK. In Canada they look green and innocent, cute even. Well sort of. As cute as an INSECT can ever look, anyway.

Green bugs are not scary. BLACK bugs are scary!

Well more than black it’s dark brown here. But it’s BIG!

We let it out the living-room window, hope it doesn’t hop in again.

Our poor cat had been going crazy all night trying to hunt down the cricket haha. He couldn’t catch it, cats can’t catch things that JUMP.

Finally he went out on his own personal high-rise apartment window catio trying to source another cricket to hunt.

Well we’d been listening to that tiresome cricket CRICKING away every night for ages, but it always sounded like it was outside not inside. I wonder when and how it got in.

It used to make the HUGEST biggest racket. I wonder how many decibels a cricket can produce.

And now it was the first night in ages that we enjoyed absolute, complete, sublime SILENCE haha.

So I decided to do a tad bit of research and I discovered why crickets are BLACK in South Africa, dark brown in Spain and green in Canada. Apparently they are different species of crickets, it’s not the temperature that determines their colour.

So the black crickets are black because they are the African black cricket. European crickets are brown or dark brown and the green ones in Canada are another species altogether.

By the by the cricket started CRICKING away again, this time it sounded further away. I’m glad it found a new home to accommodate itself in, hopefully not too close to our windows hehe.

At least the good thing about it cricking is that it means it’s a male cricket, so it wouldn’t have left any eggs.

Our poor cat who couldn’t hunt down any crickets. They sure would’ve made a tasty meal for him.

If you’d prefer to look at a book instead of at insects, why not check out my chilling thriller novels? You can have a look at them over here in Thrillers by Moi.

If you enjoyed this post (I really hope you do!), maybe you will also like:

The New Mask-Filled World to Come (Already anticipating the world that would await us while still in lockdown this spring)

Life in Confinement in Spain

DIY Catio or Sun Window / Sun Balcony for Cats (Where a cat can safely hunt crickets in a high-rise apartment)

Pizza Makin’ (Because we still spend a lot of time at home cooking (or at least we should))

The New Mask-Filled World to Come

May10

Do you think from now on we will always have to wear masks? New generations will consider putting on a mask before going out as essential as putting on shoes or trousers to go out.

Young kids would be unable to even conceive of a time when people could still go out without masks.

Well who knows, it could happen. Millenia ago people didn’t wear trousers. They just wore a tiny piece of loincloth. But life on earth has developed and today no one would think of going outside without their trousers on.

Generations of the future will design masks with all different shapes and colours. There will be designer masks with paintings by Picasso and Velazquez as well as paintings by contemporary famous artists on them.

There will be a new type of business. Alongside graphic designers who dedicate their businesses to designing only book covers, posters or publicity flyers there will be artists who only paint pictures for masks.

There will be masks with sequins. Decorated nose and mouth masks that form a set with decorated eye masks, for people to wear to balls where you have to wear a mask to cover your eyes.

There will be new types of hijabs that at the same time serve to prevent the spread of viruses.

The lipstick industry will be threatened.

But people love lipsticks and red mouths. So I’m sure industry leaders, or even just everyday women — because we loooveee our lipsticks and lip glosses so much — will strive to invent a way to continue using lipstick even though we have masks on.

So maybe they will come up with some sort of clear masks that prevent the spread of viruses but at the same time allow your lips to be seen. So then you will still need lipstick.

They will need to invent new formulas so your lipstick doesn’t rub off on the mask.

Ingenious designers and engineers will contrive new ways to eat and drink outdoors or at restaurants and cafés, so you can eat and drink outside without catching the virus.

And if you’d like to check out some new book covers (or just grab some more reading material) have a look over my thrillers.

So how are you getting on with your masks? What do you think of the new mask-filled world to come? Leave me a comment below. I lurrrve to receive (positive, non-spammy) comments.

If you enjoyed this post (I really hope you do!), maybe you will also like:

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Conversation with My Son

Jun17

Ermenegildo: Should I shave my sideburns?

Me: If you want, most men shave them.

Ermenegildo: But if I start to shave them they will grow out stronger and stronger all the time, and the more I shave them the more I will have to shave them.

Me: Then don’t shave them.

Ermenegildo: But they are very noticeable.

Me: Then shave them.

Ermenegildo: But if I start to shave them they will grow out stronger and stronger all the time, and the more I shave them the more I will have to shave them.

Me: Then don’t shave them.

Ermenegildo: But they are very noticeable.

Me: Then shave them.

Ermenegildo: But if I start to shave them they will grow out stronger and stronger all the time, and the more I shave them the more I will have to shave them.

Paleo Paleo Boom Boom Boom

May2

I just found a diet by chance that lots of people are raving about. In theory it sounds like a nice, interesting diet, that has a lot of health benefits. But in practice it’s full of foods that I hate and you can’t eat the foods that I love.

It’s called the Paleo diet and its premise is that people should eat like cavemen did because we evolved to eat what cavemen ate.

So cavemen ate mostly meat, roots and fruits and berries. And that is what is in the diet. You can eat any veggies and fruits, nuts and seeds. You can eat olive oil and butter and coconut oil. So far so good, I like all these!

But you’re supposed to fill yourself up with meat all day long. And you can’t eat cakes or pies or burritos or bread or oatmeal. I HATE meat (except maybe chicken wings).

They say that cereals and grains have lots of toxins and people were never meant to eat them. Cavemen didn’t eat them. People didn’t have flour until they started growing crops.

People who follow the paleo diet report lots of health improvements like greater flexibility and mobility, their pains are gone, if they had illnesses especially chronic ones these illnesses are much better or gone, they have no digestive ails……

The thing that surprises me the most, though, are the photos of paleo children. They all look so radiant and healthy. Vegetarian children, on the other hand, tend to look rickety.

Well I’d read that children need to eat lots of protein because they are building themselves and they build themselves with amino acids. But adults? Unless you’re a weight lifter or something……

And what about all the nitrates from eating too much meat? And what about all that uric acid that forms kidney stones? Don’t paleo eaters have those problems?

Well I dunno. I read the interviews with some of the longest lived people in the world. A 114 year old Scottish grandma said she owes her great health to never having remarried (after she was divorced or widowed, can’t remember which) at an early age, and to eating oatmeal every day of her life. And a 114 year old man in the US said he ate a banana a day all his life. On the other hand, a 114 year old Italian lady attributes her great health to never having married and eating 2 eggs every day. She also eats pasta every day because all Italians eat pasta every day. (Well all Italians that I know, anyways, so no one accuses me of stereotyping!)

A 114 year old granny here in Spain attributed her longevity to eating only foods that she loved and never listening to what scientists said you should or shouldn’t eat. Her favourite food was crispy fried bacon and she admitted to eating a plateful every day. The employees at her nursing home confirmed it. They said every day they prepared a plate of crispy fried bacon for her, which she enjoyed with relish.

(Okay, I know it sounds like they were all 114 years old. The truth is I don’t quite remember their exact ages. But they were all around 114 (maybe 113, 115……).)

Anyways, if you think about it, cavemen were all short and muscular. But after agriculture and learning to make bread, people became tall and willowy and skinny.

Also, humans making the evolutionary leap to growing crops and making flour is what has permitted all the evolutionary development that we have enjoyed since then. It’s quite clear that as long as cavemen were spending their whole lives chasing buffalo around all over the place, they could never develop anything like civilisation, the arts or written language.

Cereals and grains are the basis, as far as I’m aware, of just about every society on earth. Even if a culture doesn’t eat much wheat, they do eat SOMETHING that is a cereal or grain: millet, rice, corn or maize.

So I don’t think something that is eaten every day by people all over the world, and has been eaten by people all over the world since prehistoric times, could be that bad for you, could it? If cereals and grains were that toxic, you would think that humanity would have been extinguished long ago.

I think it’s quite clear that the paleo diet is something that could only have been invented in the United States and it will probably never become a big hit in Spain. Because BERRIES feature prominently in that diet. And guess what? Berries don’t grow in Spain!

You probably didn’t know that. And I lament it a lot. Because berries are my favourite food!

But it’s too hot for berries to grow in Spain. Only up in the north, where the weather is similar to North America or France or other northern European countries, they have berries. But in the rest of the country it’s citrus fruits and citrus fruits and more citrus fruits. And olives, of course. You can’t believe how much Spaniards LOOOVEEE their oranges and lemons!!

And strangely enough I don’t love oranges or lemons very much. My theory is that you acquire your taste for food at an early age, you’re not born with it. And you acquire a taste for the food that you eat the most at that age. So in Spain everyone eats oranges all the time, because it’s what there is. Here berries are imported (at exorbitant prices) from northern countries – and no one likes them!

Anyways, an interesting theory, that of the Paleo diet. But I really don’t think I’m very much up to it. I just can’t STAND the sensation of a fillet or thick chunk of beef. Ugh! Gives me the shivers and the creeps when I imagine chewing away on one of those.

Besides which there is nothing tastier in the whole wide world than a good chunk of freshly baked bread, soft and spongy on the inside and crispy and aromatic on the outside. Mmmhh!

What about you? Do you follow or believe in any special diet? Please don’t hesitate to leave me comments. I LURRVE to receive (positive, non-spammy) comments!

If you enjoyed this post (I really hope you do!), maybe you will also like:

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Happy Giant Cockroach Hunting!

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Bye Bye Birds!

Happy Giant Cockroach Hunting!

Aug1

Here in deep southern Spain we’ve got some humungous gigantic cockroaches. Now, I’m not talking about the cute, adorable little garden variety type, you know, the kind that freaks out restaurant owners and sanitation control authorities.

No, I mean we’ve got ENORMOUS, TREMENDOUS, HUMUNGOUS cockroaches. The kind that only lives in hot places. The kind that even flies, in some lands (fortunately not in Spain!).

And it also just so happens that I’ve got MAJOR GIANT COCKROACH PHOBIA too.

And how major is major?

Well, let’s just say that I will NOT EVER go to see a therapist for this, because I’ve heard that the way they make you get over your phobias is by making you FACE them, little by little.

And there’s NO WAY that I will EVER face a giant cockroach. Not even in photos! (Which is why I will not be including a photograph of a giant cockroach with this post. Sorry, guys, you’ll just have to imagine what one might look like.) (You can take a photo of the most terrifying movie monster that you can think of, and perhaps that will give you an idea.)

So, you might be wondering, what do I do when one of these ogres manages to squeeze into our humble, normally giant-cockroach-free, one-bedroom-with-a-walk-in-closet-as-the-second-bedroom apartment in da inna big city?

Well, I do NOT go chasing it around with a shoe. Or with a spray can of cockroach killer (which doesn’t work anyways). I will not go chasing it around anywhere. Chances are, I will just disappear from the room where it happens to be.

Which doesn’t do much to get rid of it, however.

Usually, I send my son to go spying on it, and demand that he report the gigantic cockroach’s activities to me every five seconds or so, so that, you know, let’s say it gets it into its enormous head that it wants to, say, live in my shoe. Well, then I will know to avoid that shoe for the next month or so, in case it’s still there.

The other night there was a giant cockroach in our kitchen. My son described its wanderings as it meandered happily about the high windows of our tall kitchen, the ones that are right underneath the ceiling and, fortunately, far away from me!

Now, it just so happens that we have a hole in our kitchen wall, a small hole. I don’t know why it’s there, it was there when we got the apartment and I never filled it up, seeing as I need a handyman’s manual just to change a lightbulb, well, let’s just say that filling up holes in walls has never been my forte.

So, we have a hole in the wall. Perhaps the former owners thought it made a great chimney when they were cooking or something. At any rate, I never found much use for it, except maybe to catch a glimpse of the sky and therefore figure out what kind of weather we were having, since the windows themselves are glazed, so I can’t see out of them (and the neighbours can’t see in, either!).

Well, the other night, we were very, very fortunate, because the giant cockroach decided to waltz through the hole in the wall.

However, the relief didn’t last long, like maybe all of two seconds. Because apparently this specimen suffered from vertigo. It got one look of what was on the other side of the hole, and jumped back into our apartment.

I then therefore took up a pole, a very handy pole that I just happen to have lying around specifically for the purpose of pushing giant cockroaches out of windows with, and I pushed the giant cockroach out through the hole again.

However, that mean son of a…… (I won’t say the word here), I mean, that bugger, is sure one mean survivor. I actually saw him CLINGING ON to the edge of the hole as if his life depended on it (or perhaps it was a she, who knows, they all look the same to me), with gritted teeth and that determined look on its face that said to me: I’m going to survive no matter what and I MEAN BUSINESS!

Well, fortunately for me, I’m equally determined to live without giant cockroaches. Even if only to save my sanity. So, my son let out this bloodcurdling shriek which told me that the giant cockroach was COMING BACK IN! And I really pushed and rammed and shoved at it big time, like it was a mac truck or something. And the creepy little…… I mean gigantic…… bugger finally took a nose dive off of the hole and down to the pavement below.

I’m sure it survived its free fall, however, and probably just scuttled off underneath a car. These things could probably fall off of the Empire State Building and still come out looking as fresh as if they had just walked off of a merry-go-round.

But at least once again we can enjoy a giant-cockroach-free home.

And for anyone else out there who might possibly be unfortunate enough to be living in a land rife with giant cockroaches, and who also suffers from giant cockroach phobia like me, I do have this tip for you, which sometimes actually works for me:

In order to kill giant cockroaches effectively, painlessly (painlessly for YOU, that is, probably not so much for the cockroach), without ever having to get your hands dirty or come within more than five metres of that horrifying being, you can use…… ta-da: SPLASH COLOGNE.

Just get a very large, cheap bottle, the no-name kind will do nicely. The only thing that matters is that it contain alcohol, be squeezable (so no glass bottles there) and that you have a large quantity of it. I just aim the bottle at the cockroach and douse it with cologne. And THAT’S IT!

This, however, only works when the roach happens to be someplace that you don’t mind if it gets covered with cologne. So if it happens to be sniffing on your favourite books, for example, or lounging away on that pile of notes that are absolutely essential for you to pass your exams, it won’t work.

However, the corner of the room (as long as you don’t have a rug) is a perfectly good location to spritz that entity with cologne. After it has agonized itself to death, you can just sweep it up and dump it into the toilet. Your hands never have to even come near that thing that looks just as ghastly and horrifying to me in death as it does in life.

Yes, I won’t even come near a dead giant cockroach lying on the sidewalk. Something about it coming back to life and wanting vengeance, maybe?

Well, just thought this animal was a bit more visually pleasing than a giant cockroach.

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Sierra Nevada Revisited

Blog about Blogs and Blogging

Feb29

The other day I was reading a few blogs. All the bloggers put up a new post every 2 or 3 days complete with photos. I don’t know how they do it. And in addition they all have time to put up links and comments about other blogs that they have read as well. How in the world do they ever have time to write so many posts, make so many photos and read so many blogs? In addition to working and taking care of families?

I wish I were able to post every 2 or 3 days. But to do that I’d have to dedicate every free minute to blogging. I don’t know how they do it! My congrats go out to them!

Maybe I just don’t have a very exciting life to go on about. For example, this could be a post about if I go out:

Today I went shopping with a friend. I went shopping with her because I wanted to spend some time with my friend, I mean, after all we are friends and people like being with their friends, right? But she spent the whole afternoon shopping. Now that is all fine and great but I hate shopping. Where is the fun in stalking from store to store the whole day long just looking at clothes? If you HAD to stalk from one thing to another the whole day long wouldn’t you prefer to go and look at cute and furry little animals or something instead?

Something like this, for example:

Ooops, wrong pic!

End of blog post.

So you can see not a very exciting blog post. And this is when I actually DO something and actually have something to say! A typical day, when I DON’T have anything to say, would probably go something like this:

Today I had to run to catch the bus in order not to arrive late at work. But then again, EVERY DAY I have to run to catch the bus in order not to arrive late at work. I worked the shift I was supposed to do, then I went home. When I got home my always hungry son started pestering me for food as usual so I had to whip something into the oven. Then since I was so tired I went to bed.

End of blog post.

I was reading some posts by people who comment a lot on the things that they buy. Boy they sure do buy a lot of things! I thought people who bought so many things were just an urban legend.

Well here is my blog post review of our latest acquisitions in our household:

Well a few weeks ago I went to the hyper-market (something similar here in Europe to a Wal-Mart in the States) and I bought some new pillow covers and bedsheets, because the old ones were full of holes.

Now bedsheets and pillowcases are not the most essential items in the world, but I guess they’re pretty important, because who wants to sleep with holes underneath their feet when they can sleep on new sheets?

So now I will proceed to review these sheets. I got them in some pretty exciting and vibrant colours, blue and fuchsia. I must admit, I am quite crazy about my new fuchsia-tinted pillow cover. It does actually kind of make me feel rather regal to be sleeping on a neon-coloured pillow and even more so when this pillow no longer has holes in it.

I’m afraid this item can’t really compare to a face cream, an eyeshadow palette with 120 shadows in it, some hair serums or something (anything) from Shiseido or Givenchy, however. Sigh!

Well I think in future posts I may start a series reviewing music and books that I like instead.

The latest book that I bought: Dans un Gant de Fer (or In An Iron Glove, if you prefer to read a translation into English, which I think is available on Amazon) by Claire Martin.

Use an iron fist within a soft velvet glove to raise your children. Harsh and cruel life of children in rural Québec a century ago, when the driving (sorry have to interrupt this interesting item with a quick and important news flash: More than ONE HUNDRED people have read the Privacy Policy! Breaking news!)(Oh, I didn’t even know that there was a Privacy Policy. Well, basically it states that if you write to me I will NOT use your e-mail to send you spam (got better things to do, like cook dinner for always hungry kids, if you’ve got kids you will know what I mean. And now back to the main item) slogan in the hidebound, repressive Catholic environment for child-rearing was: casse-leur les membres pour sauver leurs âmes. Break their limbs and you will save their souls!

Because used to be that it was considered very good practice to beat children at school in Canada.

By the time I went to school they didn’t follow that policy anymore (at least!). But they still believed in toughening Canadian kids up, because I guess they figured, if we were going to have to live in that sub-arctic clime all our lives, they might as well get us inured to it at an early age.

So they made us stand outside all the time. I mean, here in Spain, when it gets just a little chillier than usual, or there is a tiny drizzle with 4 scattered raindrops, they usher the kids urgently into the school.

So that really contrasts with Canada where they made us stay outside all the time (when we weren’t in class, I mean) even if it was 40 below or there was a blizzard! They sent one poor teacher out, always the same one, who always stood at the door and looked like she was about to die, dressed in layers and layers of fur! And she was dying with all that fur on. So what about the kids, who don’t wear fur coats?

(Not that I believe in fur coats, of course. I am as always

and

(All right, so the effect might have been a little bit more dramatic if I had used a pic of a cute and fluffy little baby animal, I guess, but I don’t happen to have any such photos. Unless you count the photos of my babies, that is. They’re sorta cute. And when they had baby hair, I guess you could say they were fluffy too.)

However the only thing that did for me was make me flee for warmer climes, like Spain. Because the thought of spending a whole lifetime in Siberia was just too depressing!

I also got The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende, but I already read it before, just that I left the book in Canada. It doesn’t matter if you read it in English or Spanish, the English translation is magnificent and superb and you are not missing any of the Spanish original if you read it in English. However it’s very long so if you have already read it before (like me) you might not make it through a second read. Especially if you have a job, always hungry and always sick kids, 2 blogs and a website.

What more can I blog about? Well I don’t have an eyeshadow palette with 120 colours, but I did get the original 88-colour palette that they sell at Coastal Scents, except in the Spanish version.

So I suppose one day I might take out that 88-colour palette and make a review of it. If I ever use it.

Because after I got the palette I got the job, and at this job I don’t wear make-up. The reason is because I don’t work with real people at the job, I work with virtual people on a webcam. And webcams really make you look weird.

The day I wore make-up I looked like a porcelain mannequin on the webcam. I looked like, when I started to talk, if you were looking at me on the webcam, you probably would’ve jumped out of your skin, because you probably thought I was a store mannequin. That is how I looked on the webcam the day I wore make-up. When I don’t wear make-up I look like a person. So I don’t wear make-up.

I can’t explain it. Webcams just make you look weird. They give you strange stains on the skin that you don’t really have in real life. They make everything look black and white and grey, no colours. They make me look like I am wearing very bright lipstick and I don’t wear lipstick. I don’t know, they just change everything from the way they look in real life, the colours, the shapes and sizes.

See you soooon!!……