Tag Archive | life

The Blueberry Fiend

In the rest of the world I do believe it is blueberry season right about now.

Back in Canada I was the Blueberry Fiend, I used to gobble a ton of blueberries every day during the season and we’d freeze batches of them for the long, cold winter. We always had blueberries on hand, fresh ones, or frozen. We lived in the country, so we also went to gather them. They were the most luscious, juicy, delicious things…… and enormous too, in Canada the blueberries are humongous!

But now I haven’t seen a single fresh blueberry for the past six years or so, since we moved here to southern Spain from Barcelona.

In Barcelona you could still get blueberries – at exorbitant prices – at the exotic market La Boquería on the Ramblas (oh phooey, it didn’t occur to me to take a photo of it when we returned to Barcelona for a visit last year!), where they would sell you a teentsy tiny little basket of very small sized fresh fruit, which you would then guzzle whole in one sitting, for perhaps 4€. Preposterous! But at least you got a chance to taste blueberries again.

Now, these are the blueberries that I get:

Once upon a time I was able to find one of my favourite brands, a French one, Bonne Maman, which was truly luscious. But these are just as tasty, and I always always always have a jar on hand. I eat them with everything: with yoghurt, with pancakes, with waffles, croissants……

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Our Visit to Hare Krishna

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Our Visit to Hare Krishna

Sep12

Now, I’m not too crazy about religions of any sort, and I’ve got tons of friends who are friends of sundry and diverse sects, and each one considers his or her religion and god the one and true religion and god in the world. So it’s not a theme that attracts me all that much. But one day I saw a report on the news (not that I ever watch the news, must’ve been zapping that day) and it was about a girl who had grown up on a Hare Krishna commune here in Spain.

She explained that when she grew up, she moved out, got a job, rented an apartment, tried to live a normal life and do the usual thing, but she couldn’t. She found spirituality sorely lacking in the society that surrounded her, and young people her age only lived for the next alcohol orgy or the next drug-induced high, or for a roll in the hay with the first guy that they could pick up at the disco. How depressing and meaningless, no? That didn’t seem like real living to her!

She missed the warmth and friendliness of the members of her Hare Krishna community. She missed the daily prayers and chanting and most of all, she missed dressing up the Hindu gods in the morning.

She explained that every morning they dressed the statues of the gods and adorned them with different sets of jewellery. It was the highlight of her day to be surprised by the ever-new and creative manners in which the gods could be bedecked each morning. (I guess it’s a bit like a little girl dressing up her dolls, but with some religious nuances thrown in there.) So she left her apartment in the city and returned to the commune.

I thought that sounded really neat, and the truth is, I also agreed that there was a sore and noticeable lack of spirituality in general in the world that surrounded us. So I discovered that we were fortunate enough to enjoy a Hare Krishna commune right here in my own city. There aren’t too many in Spain, so I considered that a real lucky finding.

One rainy afternoon I packed the kids up and we set off in search of this elusive community. I knew which neighbourhood it was in, but not the address, since it wasn’t listed. Once we arrived in that neighbourhood, I found it harder than I expected to hunt down the commune. I had imagined that everyone in the district must know where it was, since this group is quite vocal in other cities. However, in my city, it just happened that they maintained a low profile, almost hiding away, as it was. In the end we located the commune out in the middle of a field, which on that particular afternoon was filled with mud, since it had been raining the whole day.

We went in for the Sunday chanting ceremony, which is open to the general public and which, I suppose, is intended to show lay people what they are like and what they do, in case someone is interested in joining them. True to Spanish custom, however, the ceremony actually began only about two or three hours after the time announced on their website. So we sat around in an empty hall just getting bored and twiddling our thumbs for a long time.

At last, people finally started arriving. I don’t know whether it was the weather, and everyone was feeling under the clouds, or if it was the damp and chill, but seemed that no one had much energy. People drifted about looking bored (like us). A few instruments, mostly drums and guitars, were spirited out. The statues of the gods (which, on that dreary afternoon, even they appeared out of sorts and drably arrayed) were lit up and the ceremony began.

There was some half-hearted singing, of chants I had never heard before and which I didn’t find particularly beautiful – so no lovely, ecstatic, melodic intonations by George Harrison over there – and then people formed a circle and twirled around a little bit. There didn’t seem to be very much sense to it, however, actually. No one went into bliss and no one received a divine revelation. No one even seemed to be enjoying it very much. Maybe they were just hungry, or cold?

After the chanting and twirling someone regaled us with a fairly lengthy, boring sermon. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I am not too interested in religious themes, so I didn’t find the sermon particularly transcendental or life-changing. A few members, with long, depressing expressions on their faces, asked some questions full of angst about their life challenges, but no one seemed to receive a satisfactory reply since in general the answers seemed to consist of a plethora of platitudes like: “I’m sorry but I can’t help you there, only you know what is the right decision to make.” “If you trust in Krishna he will light the way for you.”

At last the best moment arrived: the food! And if truth be told, the food was indeed delicious. There was spicy dhal soup and yellow rice, some Indian flatbreads with butter and a few vegetarian dishes, followed by sweet lassi. All right, the truth is, we didn’t go there for the food. I, at least, had personally hoped to discover that delight and ecstasy that the girl had described in the news report. But, well, if we couldn’t revel in spiritual delights, at least we got the opportunity to enjoy some more earthly delicacies!

All in all, I would have to say that the people are certainly very friendly and hospitable. But if you are hungering for some spiritual fulfilment, I, at least, didn’t find that this group in particular filled my plate very much in that respect. I suppose, like they say, in the end you must still search for your spirituality and spiritual meaning within, rather than without in the things of this world.

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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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How Much Do YOU Value Your Friends?

Jul21

I was really down today because of…… friends! Not the inseparable kind, or the ones that are always there when you need them.

Today, I was really feeling down because of friends who don’t value friendship a whole great deal.

I don’t know about you, but for me, a friendship is sacred. I think a friendship is, well should be, as important in life as family, more important even than a job, or your hobbies. I mean, after all, a friend is a PERSON. A job or a hobby are just things. And if you ever lose your job, well, you can always find another one.

But a friend? If you lose your friend, sure, you can go out and get another one.

But it won’t be the SAME friend. It won’t be that same person that you shared so many memories with, and had so many good times and laughed together with for so many years.

I’m finding that three things REALLY get in the way of a friendship: religion, politics and money. No surprise there, I guess.

Now, fortunately, I don’t tend to air my political views (if I even have any haha! I am really the queen of a-political thought! Most of the time I don’t even know who is ruling the country at any given moment……) a whole lot and therefore never have disputes with friends on that issue.

But now, religion, that’s a whole different bag of jumping jacks (or however that expression goes, after all after 15+ years living in a non-English-speaking country, I just can’t quite put my finger on the proper expression anymore).

Now, by religion, I don’t mean only the usual, established, traditional, centuries-old schools of philosophical and mystical thought generally referred to as religion such as Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, etc., to name a few. For me, religion is anything that a person is fanatical about. It might be your diet, a sect, a guru or even a fashion trend or brand name, for that matter.

I have two friends who consider their “religion” above anything else in the world. More important than friendship, more important than family, more important than their sentimental partner. Even more important than love.

One of them is a radical vegetarian. By radical, I mean that not only are she and her family very strict vegetarians, but also that in order to be her friend, you must also be a strict vegetarian. You cannot eat meat in her presence or feed meat to your children in front of her children.

Of course, being vegetarian is more than just food or diet. It’s a way of life. Therefore, her children can’t eat with other children if they are eating meat. They cannot attend fun events if other children will be eating meat there. She will travel half-way across the country in order to acquire certain exotic, hard-to-get vegetarian items, instead of for example spending that time going out with her family, or doing something to improve her mind or her character or even, for that matter, just relaxing around the poolside after a long, hard day of work.

No, after a long, hard day of work, she will happily get into her car and drive several hours across the countryside in order to go to a certain health food shop where she has heard that certain exotic vegetarian items can be found.

Now, I do admit, living in Spain is like living in Beeflandia and vegetarians here are about as scarce as blue fleas (a Spanish expression). But, well, personally, if I can’t find a certain vegetarian item within a certain radius of my home (let’s say, four blocks, for example), well, I prefer to just do without and find a substitute instead.

Now, I am not against vegetarianism, and I’m certainly not anti-vegetarian. Not by a long shot, I actually support it. However, I prefer to spend my time improving myself (and I can assure you there’s a lot to improve haha!), doing exercise or playing with my kids, rather than driving across the country in a car.

And of course, it’s hard to be friends with someone who is a radical vegetarian. It is very easy to offend such a person: if you feed your kids meat in front of hers, if you eat meat in her presence, if you don’t recycle (or you forget to do so sometimes and just toss your tin can into the general garbage bag), if your showers are too long (tsk tsk tsk, wasting water there! but come on, girls, I’ve got waist-long hair, if you have ever had waist-long hair, you must know what a pain it is to get all that gunk like shampoo and conditioner through all of it and out of it, and it’s not something that you can accomplish with just one little bucket of water……).

For that matter, if you don’t get up at the crack of dawn (you know, the early bird catches the worm and all that stuff) or go to bed when the birds do, if you prefer to read at night (like me) rather than have a heart-to-heart with your pillow at that hour, if you want to participate in an event where meat-eaters will be present, if you…… Well, you get the message. Very easy to take offense.

I have another friend who is a radical follower of a sect. Now, I totally respect her religious beliefs and preferences. However, she is often sending me religious propaganda, literally besieging me with it. She says it is “good for my soul”, and I need it. She says I can follow whatever religious beliefs I want (or none, if I prefer), but that I know deep down inside that her religion is “calling me”.

I finally got sick of that one day and tried to very tactfully suggest to her that, well, not everyone has the time or the interest to read her fifty million religious sermons that she sends to me all the time.

Of course, the predictable result: she felt offended. She’s one of those people who will smile charmingly at you as they throw spiked arrows, so she didn’t down and out get all huffed up and scream insults or whatever at me.

No, she just smiled and suggested that, well, if I had so little time and interest in her interests, perhaps she wouldn’t have the time or the interest to pay attention to my interests and any news that I might have to share about my life, either.

Well, it’s not like I spend my life beating her on the head exactly with news about my life, or battering her continuously with banter about my interests. But, well, supposedly we’re friends, and friends do every once in a while like to tell their friends about what’s going on in their lives. Don’t you think?

I’m quite a private and reserved person, I don’t like to talk about my life a lot. (And you can see this most clearly from the very sparse and much too widely-spaced contributions that I’ve been, ahem, ah, sort of contributing to this blog lately. Oops……) But occasionally, I do like to send her a little “tweet” about my latest.

And of course, since she is my friend, I do expect her to read it and at least show a slight interest in it. I don’t bombard her with religious messages. I don’t bombard her with any sort of message, for that matter.

But when I do send her a message, I kind of expect her to notice it.

Well, so much for fanatical friends. Now, I want to gripe about a different kind of friendship breaker: the big M word…… Yes, MONEY!

I lent 15€ to a friend about a month ago, so she could buy herself a bikini. (Not that she needed it, she already owns about 50, but then again, it’s a free country and everyone can buy what they like…… although preferably with their OWN money!)

Now, I’m not in a hurry for her to pay me back, although it WOULD be nice if she would pay me back SOME TIME!

However, the thing is, ever since I lent her the money, she has been avoiding me like the plague. There’s no way I can get to see her anymore. She won’t go to the beach with me anymore, she won’t go out for a coffee, she won’t get together with me to walk around…… And all because, I suppose, she hasn’t got the money to pay me back. (Or doesn’t want to pay me back.)

Does she really think a friendship is worth less than 15€ to her, or to me?

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Bringing Your Dreams to Life

Jul14

Well, as a follow-up to the last post, I thought I’d go a little bit into some more practical aspects, what we can actually DO to put our dreams into action. Because, well, ah, yes, it’s all very nice and good – you might be thinking – the idea of putting our dreams into action and living them instead of dreaming them. But…… HOW??

Most of us have NO idea what to do to make our dreams a reality. So I thought I’d share some ideas here and, of course, I welcome any ideas that anyone else may have on this subject too, and I’d be happy if you’d share them with us in the comments at the end of this post.

I guess the first thing we must do, if we want to make our dreams a reality, is to KNOW WHAT THEY ARE to begin with! If we don’t know what we dream of doing, having or being, how are we going to fulfil those dreams?

I am very lucky, I have always known what I wanted all my life, and the only thing that I was always lacking was TIME to dedicate and devote to my dreams, because I had to earn a living for myself from an early age (yes life can be tough!). But even if you’ve never given it much thought, you can still discover what it is that you really want. Let’s say you won the lottery right now. What would you do?

Would you travel around the world? Give up your job? Would you buy a new home? What would you do?

Perhaps you would open a new company, go back to school or study a new career. Or maybe you’d go out and get those babies and start that family that you’ve always dreamt about having.

So, now that you know WHAT it is that you want, I imagine that you would need some sort of plan as to how to go about getting it.

If it’s a new home or a trip around the world that you’re hankering for, then perhaps you could check out the possibility of saving up for it, starting right now. Go out less for dinner or don’t order that pizza, and save up the money for your dream. Get a second job. Sell newspapers. Walk dogs.

You don’t need to buy a new dress or new shoes every season. I only have one pair of shoes for the winter and one for the summer. Well, all right, I live in a warm place anyways and if I’m really stuck I can just go out and get some dollar store flip flops. I imagine that those of you who live in England, Ireland or Alaska probably don’t enjoy that luxury, but I guess you know what I mean, right? Quite simply put, if you don’t need it, then don’t get it. Put up the money instead, use it for your trip to Jamaica. What would you rather have, anyways? A trip to Jamaica or a new pair of pumps?

If, on the other hand, your dream involves doing something, then start right now jotting down ways that you can do it. Draught up a plan, get to work brainstorming. Do you want to go back to school, but you’re missing some credits or a high school certificate? Is there any way that you can get what you are missing? Most countries offer high school classes for adults.

And right from the start, get mentalized to the idea that we have to arm ourselves with lots of patience. Most dreams take a lot of work and time. It takes time to get a high school certificate. It takes time to get into a university. Whatever it is, it takes time. But if you really want it, you can wait. If you wait a year now, perhaps in five years you will be doing what you love to do. But if you can’t wait out that year, you will probably still be working at the same boring old job five years from now.

With a good plan, belief in your dream and the desire to fulfil that dream, of course, patience and the will to not back down from your dream no matter what, you can attain it. You can achieve your dream, fulfil your lifelong wish.

I don’t very often recommend other websites, but this is one that I have always found quite helpful: http://www.learnmindpower.com.

And for those of you who read Spanish or German, I thoroughly recommend a little book called “Nothing Is Impossible” (“Todo es posible”) by Peter Kummer. It is a real little gem, I find it absolutely amazing. For a long time it wasn’t available in English, but I believe that recently it has been translated. I’m pretty sure that if you follow the advice on the above website and in this little book, it won’t be long before you, too, are fulfilling and living your dreams.

In subsequent posts (probably two years from now! but anyways, as I said before in my previous post, since I’m so busy working on fulfilling my dreams, I just don’t have time to blog!), if I’m up to it, I will put up some details about what I’m doing, so that you can see on a practical level how to put these wonderful ideas into action, by showing you what I myself am doing, and how it is working out. However, I’m not much of a person for going on about “works in progress”, so you might have to wait a while before you can read about these things……

Dreams

Jun22

Well so it’s obviously been a while since I posted anything here. I was always real inconstant at keeping a diary anyways, and I suppose a blog is not all that much different.

We have been quite busy these past few months but I suppose, like most people, just living a fairly ordinary and mundane, routinary life like most people do. The kids have gone to school every day, I’ve been going to work…… In other words, a very normal life.

I am often surprised when I look at people, just surviving from day to day, and I wonder, what happened to their passion? Where did their dreams and their spark go? What did they dream of doing or being when they were teenagers, and what happened to all those dreams?

Your dreams can be of any sort, there are as many dreams out there as there are things to be and do out there. Did you dream of sky diving when you were young? Or maybe you wanted to travel around the world. Or have your own house with a garden that you could tend and cultivate.

Maybe you’ve always wanted to visit Jamaica.

Whatever it is that you’ve always dreamt of doing, why aren’t you doing it, or working towards it? Why don’t you start saving up for that holiday in Jamaica, or that house with a garden?

Why don’t you get onto the internet and google “sky diving” and see if there is someone who occasionally offers sky diving trips for complete beginners in your area? We all have to begin somewhere, after all.

My children don’t have any dreams. They are small, they live life from day to day. The only thing they want to do is play with their Nintendo. A good day is when they get to spend most of it playing on their Nintendo. A bad day is when they have to go to school, or someplace else which takes them away from their Nintendo.

I often wonder how children can live like that. Isn’t there something that they wish to do in the future? Don’t they have dreams?

But I suppose dreams are something that comes up in our lives when we reach an age where we are aware that we HAVE a future at all to begin with, usually when we reach our teenage years.

In reality, I suppose the best way to live life is like my kids do, spending every minute of your day just doing what you most love to do, just as they are happiest when they get to spend the whole day playing on the Nintendo. I don’t know what they will be when they grow up, and I do agree that some discipline is necessary in life. However, no one forces them to play on their Nintendo, they do it just because they love it.

What is it that you do just because you love it? That no one has to force you to do?

Of course, maybe we can’t make a living at whatever it is that we love to do. Maybe we love to sew, or play golf, but you don’t see yourself as a golf champion earning your bread from playing golf. Well, that’s okay. You can still play golf. You can spend all your spare time playing golf. Or you can save up and open your own golf course or a golf-related company of your own.

You could become a golf teacher or a caddy, or get a job on a golf course that allows its employees to use its facilities for free.

Of course, in every life we have to eat and fill out our income tax forms (yes, fellows, it’s that time of the year again!). But when we aren’t involved in these necessary evils (well, all right, eating isn’t evil, actually I LOOOVE eating very much!!), we can be doing what we love to do.

So, getting back to the question I was asking myself at the beginning of this post, I do wonder, how do people manage to get ahead every day, if they are not doing what they love to do, what they have always dreamt of doing, at some point in their lives? If you want to be a film-maker, you can make videos on the weekend, as a now-famous Spanish film director used to do (I don’t remember his name, however I can assure you it was not the archi-reputable Almodovar, however the film director in question is also well known).

Where can your joie de vivre come from, if you aren’t trying to fulfil a dream, doing something that you love, at some moment? I really don’t know what can fuel people on to continue living, when they are not doing what they love to do or working towards a dream. Where do they find the incentive to keep going? How can they possibly survive? We all know that there is more to life than just paying the bills and putting food on the table.

Maybe what you enjoy most is blogging and sharing your points of view and your life with the rest of the world. If that is the case, I would love it if you would like to carry out a blog exchange with me. Just click on this link to read more about exchanging blogs with me. (Or more accurately, exchanging blog avatars.)

So, what was all this all about, anyways, you might be wondering?

Well, for a while now I’ve been working at a job that I’m not too fond of, and I’ve been wondering, what is the point of this anyways? Why do we work at jobs that we don’t like? In my case, of course, I’m a single mother and I have to pay the bills and feed my kids some way or another, and in these times of crisis, well, it’s not like we have too much choice as to what we can do to pay these bills and feed our kids, do we?

However, paying bills and feeding kids doesn’t give us LIFE. It keeps you alive but it isn’t LIVING.

I have always wondered how people could go on without SOMETHING to propel them forward, something to look forward to, something that they have always wanted to do, and CAN do.

But you can only live on dreams for so long. At some point in your life, it’s time to bring them into reality.

And that is the point where I am right now. Which, however, leaves me with very little time for blogging. Argh!

So, I don’t know when I will post again, but you can rest assured, at least, that if I don’t post for a while, it will be because I am finally at last starting to LIVE my dreams (and therefore I’m too busy living my dreams to write blog posts!), instead of just DREAMING them!

Of course, I will, however, let you know every once in a while, with a new post here, about how I’m doing and how it is all going. It may be a while, but then, as they say, the fun lies in the journey.

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!!……

Sierra Nevada Revisited

Feb12

Signs that you live in a tropical clime:

When in order to prepare for an excursion to a ski resort tomorrow the following events occur:

when no matter how hard you look you just CAN’T find any scarves, gloves, hats or mittens, even when you can swear that you kept a special drawer in your apartment JUST to keep strange garments like scarves, gloves, hats and mittens, but when you look in that drawer the only thing you find is an enormous square black cap with a large golden tassel that your son wore for his graduation, ie. his graduation from kindergarten, not his graduation from university, and also 2 Santa Claus caps (probably got them at some party)

when your son needs to take a crash course to learn how to put on the gloves that his grandfather bought him specially for his trip to the snow, because he just CAN’T figure out how to get one finger inside each glove finger, the reason being that he has never worn gloves before in his life
when your kids have to wear rubber rain boots to go to the snow, because they have nothing else to wear

When we first moved here from Barcelona we did decide to keep the winter gear because we said, you never know when it will come in handy. Who knows maybe one year you will do just exactly what we’re going to do tomorrow and take an excursion to a ski resort.

Or maybe one year you just might decide to go on your Christmas vacations to New York City or England or Canada. But of course we never went skiing, and we never went to NYC, England or Canada on our winter holidays.

So the winter gear started disappearing, and getting stuffed further and further back, or moved out of the way. And in the end it all disappeared forever.

Well as you can see, last month we returned to Sierra Nevada.

For those members of the expedition who were expecting to see snow for the very first time in their lives (ie. my youngest son) the trip was quite clearly a disappointment.

For the rest of us (or rather, for me, who absolutely HATES the cold, the wind, the frost or anything that you won’t find in the tropics!), it was quite a splendorous revelation and a very relaxing outing.

Because we didn’t find any snow.

Except, of course, the artificial variety, absolutely vital in a touristic ski resort that depends solely and entirely on the presence of snow.

So now, here we have yet another sign that we live comfortably ensconced in a tropical clime, here on the south coast of Spain. As we crossed over the mountains that separate our particular Shangri-La from the cold wild north, my sons exclaimed:

“How come there are no leaves on the trees, Mami?”

Because, of course, on the Costa del Sol, trees merrily conserve their leaves all year round, and these leaves remain green.

Green forever.

So that pretty much summed up the point in going to the bother of travelling to Sierra Nevada. Because we certainly didn’t do it for the snow.

As you can see, the mountaintops were as bare, as they say here, as a bald man’s pate.

I had been feeling quite distressed because, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we had been unable to dig up any winter gear. I was expecting to endow the African vendors up on the mountains with a small fortune investing in hats, scarves and mitts from them.

Instead, the only thing I purchased was a set of sunglasses. Very fortuitous, as it just so happened that I had forgotten mine at home. However, the friendly African merchant was on the verge of setting up an ice cream stand, so so much for that.

Now, we really don’t know what in the world this was! But it looked so forlorn there, as well as useless, my son tried to hang it up but it kept falling down again. So we gave up on it.

Truth is, Pradollano is actually quite a lovely, quaint and Swiss-like village. Its only problem is that (from my point of view, of course) it’s too cold! Most of the time, that is.

Although perhaps not this year.

In order to find a little bit of the powdery white stuff, we had to journey up to the ski slopes, where artificial snow machines kept the ground nicely padded.

And my kids could finally throw a few snowballs.

Down in the village, we roasted ourselves in the sun a bit. We engaged in my favourite activity, people-watching, and observed that most were wearing T-shirts rather than anoraks.

And we also noticed that any little vestige of snow that happy skiers proudly brought down with them from the slopes, promptly formed puddles on the ground without any further ado.

Now, do these flowers in bloom look like something you would expect to see at the beginning of January at a ski resort, or what?

So, I fear that, unlike in our previous journey to the mountains of Sierra Nevada a few years back, my youngest son was unable to learn the delicate art of forming snow angels. He had no experience of slipping and sliding on wet and icy mounds or trying to learn to get his “snow feet” under him.

I guess all these experiences will just have to wait till another year.

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

Sierra Nevada, Granada

Costa del Sol: Torremolinos

La Línea de la Concepción

The Barcelona That Tourists, Well, Some Tourists DO See

Kings’ Day Parades

Jan26

Well a little time has passed since Kings’ Day and its very particular Kings’ Day parades. But then again, quite a bit more than a little time has passed as well since I last posted, I think. So, better late than never I guess.

Well, first, a little bit of history, because I imagine that in the greater part of the world you do not celebrate Kings’ Day, do you?

Kings’ Day is actually what in many places is referred to as the “Twelfth Day of Christmas”, as in: “On the Twelfth Day of Christmas my true love gave to me……..” (I don’t know what her true love gave to her). It is also known as Epiphany and in some religious circles, Christmas is actually celebrated on this day, and not on Dec. 25. The reason why there are twelve days is, I suppose, because that was how long it took the Three Kings of Orient to cross the immense desert and travel to Bethlehem, hence the name Kings’ Day.

The Three Kings brought gifts for the baby, so now do they also bring gifts for every little Spanish girl and boy.

Kings’ Day is a very festive occasion, perhaps a Spanish equivalent, I suppose, to Thanksgiving, seeing as Thanksgiving doesn’t exist in Spain. Families gather together and have a great meal with lots of fun and laughter. Of course sharing in the “roscón de Reyes”, a lovely cake which unfortunately it didn’t occur to me to make a photo of, is fundamental in this family meal.

Well, supposedly the Three Kings arrive in Spain on the eve of Kings’ Day, also known as Twelfth Night, as in Shakespeare’s play. I guess traditionally they might have arrived by camel, but nowadays they make use of every modern gadget such as arriving by boat, airplane and helicopter, bearing gifts to all.

On this very important Twelfth Night, or the eve of Kings’ Day, there are grand parades everywhere. All at night, of course. Sort of like the Rose Parade, but in the dark of the night.

As the floats pass on by, the people who are riding on the floats toss out candies and caramels to the crowd, and all the children (and some adults too) scramble to fill their baggies with as many of these caramels as possible. We used to do that too, but we hate candies and caramels and never eat them. I used to hang them up behind the kitchen door, thinking maybe one day I could put them to good use, until one day I discovered them all melted into one big sloshy sugary mess. That’s Malaga summers for you!

You can tell that this is Malaga, home of Holy Week processions. Even in an event geared to children, the religious floats have a place for themselves.

From these photos, it might look like it’s a relaxed and comfortable, spacious sort of atmosphere. A few spectators present, of course, as might be expected in a parade. But for the most part, nice and easy, right? Well look again:

Sierra Nevada, Granada

Jan2

Well now that it’s cold, dark, and the constant presence of school makes organizing long journeys a chore, seems like a good moment to reminisce on old times from the past, and some wonderful trips that we took back then.

So one fine winter’s day a few years ago, we decided to hop onto a bus (a bus because as I’ve mentioned in other posts such as this one about the Chillar River, I’m not lucky enough to own a car) and zoom off to Sierra Nevada.

Now, Sierra Nevada is a good 4 hours’ bus drive away from us, at least. So we do have to start off very early in the morning, I do say.

My son had been bugging me for ages and ages to see the snow, so at last I gave in. I myself, seeing as I hail from Canada, couldn’t care less if I never ever beheld a snowflake again in my life. But, you know, kids are kids and my son does NOT hail from Canada. So he had to go and see the snow.

Well, leaving this lush and well-nurtured south coast of Spain was a bit like leaving Shangri-La. As we crossed over the mountain line which shelters the coast from the mean icy winds of the north, the landscape changed most drastically. At first, you immediately noticed that the trees were sporting all different colours: golds, browns, flaming orange. In Malaga trees are green the whole year round.

Then you would notice that the ground is bare: there’s no grass! The ground is all frozen!

When you get out of the bus in Granada, where you change over into the Sierra Nevada line, the biting wind really catches you off guard. The high in Granada in the dead of winter is lower than the lowest temperature you could experience in Malaga.

My son, of course, loved it. He loves anything new.

Now, if you are fortunate enough to own a car, getting to Sierra Nevada is relatively a breeze. You just have to make sure that you have chains or some other sort of tires adapted to the snow, and take off on the highway.

But if you have to thumb your way over on a bus, like we did, well the easiest way to get to Sierra Nevada from the sheltered warmth of Malaga is by taking a bus on the regular Granada-Malaga line, and then catching another one to Sierra Nevada in the bus station at Granada. There are frequent vehicles on both routes, however.

Or you can do what we are planning to do this year, and sign up to an organized tour where a direct bus straight from the coast to Sierra Nevada is included in the package.

You can notice as you (or rather your bus) climbs up the altitudes: the air gets thin and frosty, the going gets rougher. If it’s a bad day, a regular snowstorm might even halt your progress. However, if you go when it’s bright and sunny, the temperatures might not reflect the grand and radiant sunshine, but you will have a smooth ride with no snow or ice on the road.

Sierra Nevada is a booming touristy resort in the middle of the mountains. The entire mountain range reaches up to almost 3500 m., but the resort itself, called Pradollano, is only about 2500 m. high. When you are up there, you can see all the wild mountaintops nearby, all empty and deserted and sheer and frozen, with nothing on them at all. Woe be it unto you if you should ever find yourself lost and stranded on one of those barren slopes.

I found it hard to believe that you could be so well taken care of and provided for if you remained within the resort of Pradollano, but take just one false step out of the area, and all of a sudden you could be fighting for your life in the midst of endless stretches of snow and snow and yet more snow.

So truly, this is one place where you must remain on the beaten track.

But not to worry. Even on the beaten track here, there are tons of things to do and see.

So my son and I threw snowballs. We climbed around and tried to construct a snowman (without much success, I might add). I pointed out how to make snow angels to my son, who had, of course, never seen one before. But he found it delightful to make a few. And this when as you can imagine he himself is no angel by far!

We also decided to hitch a ride up a ski lift to one of the popular slopes. It’s a great way to get a panoramic view of the whole resort and a glimpse of mountaintops hidden from the view of the resort below. You can also get to do a little tobogganing there.

Well, can you believe that when we arrived there, we had no winter gear at all. Nothing. Of course, considering that we live in Shangri-La, where cold-weather trappings are completely useless and would only occupy precious space in your wardrobe or drawer……

Fortunately, street vendors are keenly aware of the lack of preparation of Spaniards in general for weather that you must bundle up for, and you can find them everywhere, peddling off hats and scarves and warm fuzzy mitts.

Of course there is nothing like a mug of hot chocolate and a platter of steaming fries after a day in the snow. When you go to Sierra Nevada, the food is horrible and over-priced, but with all that cold, you do really yearn for something warm. So the best thing to do: bring your own sandwich, bagged lunch or tupperware, but save a little change for that steamy mug of chocolate, or rather Cola-Cao.

Although I might add that the temperatures, the day that we went, were actually quite balmy for a ski resort, seeing as they were a few degrees above freezing. Canada, where you won’t see the thermometers slip up even a tentative half millimetre over the freezing mark between October and April, this definitely was not!

So this year we will be taking it easy and hopping onto a pre-organized bus tour. My youngest son is coming along too, this time. He has never seen the snow. I might add that unlike his older brother, he has never bugged me to see the snow either. Just a different character.

Of course, perhaps the explanation stems from the fact that he was born in the stormy throes of winter and raised in freezing Barcelona (well freezing in the winter, anyways), whereas the oldest is a late spring lamb from the south. So I guess maybe the youngest already endured all the cold he could ever want to endure growing up in the cold climes of Barcelona, while the oldest enjoyed the heat of southern Spain during his first months of life.

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

Marbella, Land of the Jet Set?

Chillar River, Río Chillar

Costa del Sol – Torremolinos

Foray Into Black and White