Gab’s Life

A special thanks to blogsome for having me the last few weeks.  There are some things I really like about Blogsome: the categories, ease of writing posts, number of template options.  But, I am a creature of habit and miss my home over at Blogger. 

So, that’s where I’ll be.  For now.  Until Blogger irritates me again until I can no longer take it.

Thanks for visiting.

Ok, here we are again discussing my "muchacha" and the interesting moments I have because a complete stranger lives with me and cleans my house.

Our apartment has a sit in kitchen and a separate dining room.  I am more of a kitchen type person (read: too lazy to get out the placemats).  If we eat in the kitchen as opposed to the dining room, the maid stays in the kitchen with us.  I have told her she doesn’t need to, but apparently she wants to and I don’t have the heart to tell her to leave. 

But, she just stands there and watches us eat.  I feel like I can’t relax or have normal conversations with my kids even though she doesn’t speak English.  I’ve gotten to the point of getting out the placemats when Guapo is home, but when he’s not I feel too bad not eating in the kitchen.  I think maybe she’s lonely. I don’t know.  But it still bugs me!

Ok, that was my vent.  To assuage my guilt for venting online about a very nice girl, I will share a funny muchacha moment from Small Town.  In Small Town I had a maid that came 3 mornings a week and she was a delightful lady that I got along with well.

One day I came home and the house reeked of bug spray.  This lady was really good at finding ants nests (ewww, huge ants, I get the shivers just thinking about them) and she was kind enough to take care of the problem for me.  So, anyway, I go into the house and the smell is overwhelming.  I was thinking I had better get Juan Carlos out of the house before he dies.  So I ask her if she found a nest and she replies, "No, you were out of Lysol."  So I say, "We were out of Lysol AND you found some bugs?" "No, you were just out of Lysol and the bathroom smelled (home of the kitty littler box), so I used the bug spray instead." 

I never did figure out her thought process there.  "Hmmm, lets douse the place with a poisonous spray so we can’t smell the cat box."  Luckily the cats (and the kids) survived the massive fumigation.

(Hey, I posted this over at my Blogger site too.  Could somebody who hasn’t switched to beta see if you can leave a normal comment (not signing in as "other")?  Thanks.  I’m still torn between which one to go with.  I am missing the little pictures (even No Cool Story’s "O So Happy" Scary Girl).)

Here’s a little somthing funny.  This is the business card of the bus driver from Juan Carlos’s little school:

I would be worried, but lots of families from the US Embassy send their kids there, and I know the Embassy has checked this guy out.

And a question: how are all my friends over at Blogger doing? Has it gotten any better?  I really miss seeing peoples’ pictures next to their comments and I am thinking about going back, but only if things have improved.  Are there the same kind of problems with comments?  Thanks for your imput.

My best-online-friend-forever, No Cool Story, (don’t let her low-position on my links sidebar fool you, I just can’t figure out how to get those suckers to line up in alpha order.  ABC Momma, Heather? Can I get some help here?) has tagged me to do this fun little meme.  I was so surprised she tagged me since I’ve ditched out on the last few memes that have come my way.  Thanks for still having faith in me BOFF!

What do you like most about where you live?

Well that’s a tough one since we’ve only been here a month.  I love big cities and all the movement and life that goes along with living in one.  One thing I have noticed about Big City Mexico is that for being such a huge city, people are really friendly.  They smile easily in the streets and in the stores.  I couldn’t say that about the other big cities we’ve lived in: Washington D.C. and Caracas, Venezuela.

And, they have Krispy Kremes here!!

Is there something strange about where you live?

Sure.  People drive like maniacs (seeing a car driving in reverse down the middle of the road doesn’t phase anyone here). The traffic is horrible and at times totally random.  City zoning/planning is non-existent.  They don’t have chocolate chips (Nestle Tollhouse is missing out on some serious Mexican revenue.  Most gringos I know bring back suitcases filled with chocolate chips).  People just expect to be mugged.

What’s one of your all time favorite albums and why?

Tough one.  I’m one of those geeky parents whose taste in music hasn’t progressed since I got married.  So, I’ll have to pick from over 10 years ago.  I loved Pearl Jam’s "10" and U2’s "Auchtung Baby".  Why? Just fun songs to sing along with.

Did you have a passion for something as a kid that you still have now? (If not - what is one of your passions now?),

Hmmmm. I still love school even though I’m not a student.  I think I could be an eternal student and be happy as a clam.  I have always been athletic and still am (well, not right now because of the little one; all energy is used running to the bathroom and heaving).

What do you like most about having a blog?

I love having a blog because I don’t have the best memory and I blog about things I wouldn’t necessarily put in a journal.  Especially funny little things about my kids.  I love my life and my family and want to remember all the funny/interesting/unique/trying moments!

I’ve seen this meme quite a few times out there, but if you haven’t done it and want to, consider yourself tagged by me!

Here’s a picture of our new BBQ grill:

And here’s some of Margarita’s (8 yrs old) and Julio’s (5 yrs old) handiwork that we found in it yesterday:

Yep, that would be Juan Carlos’ "kiki", baby, pillow and everything he holds near and dear.

A little scary!

Hello from Big City.  Thanks for finding me and commenting.  It was so nice to have comments after the evil Beta experience.  So to answer a few questions: Blogsome so far is ok, I don’t like how the comments are set up, they don’t seem as user-friendly to me (I miss seeing your pictures), but everything else is pretty easy (at least the basic stuff). I can’t figure out how to do spell-check so forgive my errors.  I am not a good speller (ABC Momma, can you help me out here?). 

Guapo doesn’t actually work in the Pants building.

And, my apologies to those Bloggers who haven’t changed to Beta and don’t allow anonymous comments, I can’t comment on your blogs (UTmommy, TXmommy).  I am still reading them .

Paulette was nice enough to ask about how I’m doing in the pregnancy department so here’s the update:  I am almost 15 weeks along.  I am feeling better in that I don’t hate all food and things related to eating, but I am still getting sick.  But, at least we are headed in the right direction.

Today I went to the doctor for the first time in Big City.  The doctor is a nice woman from India who was recommended as someone who isn’t in love with C-sections like most doctors are here.  After 3 normal births, I don’t want to go through the recovery involved with a C-section.  The appointment was pretty normal except for the fact that the urine samples are collected in the same containers they use for individual servings of Jello or flan.  Strange.  Mexicans love their jello.  Just ask No Cool Story.

So that’s it in the pregnancy front.  Oh, I almost forgot, the baby was very wiggly.  She had a hard time keeping the little heart rate do-dad machine  on the heartbeat.  Margarita was wiggly.  Could it be another girl???

Yay, you made it over here.  I feel like I’ve invited people over to a messy house since this site is not how I want it yet, but I was getting so sick of Blogger that I had to make a change. 

Anyway, here’s something I thought you’d enjoy.   This is one of the major landmarks in Big City.  It is called "El Pantalon", or roughly translated, "The Pants". (It’s really singular, "the pant", but you get the idea)

My kids love it and it provides endless opportunities for jokes.

Guapo’s most recent joke, "Yeah, I work in the crotch."

First off, thanks to all of you who commented about the sleepover issue, I really appreciated all of your input. We still haven’t come to a firm decision on what our family policy is going to be, but when we do, I’ll let you know. And now, onto today’s topic. A major part of ex-pat life is the opportunity to have domestic help. I have had lots of experience over the last five years with the different forms available: live-in, daily, 3X a week. When I moved to Venezuela one of my first impressions of ex-pat women was not a favorable one in regard to maids. I found that at playgroups and social events, they spent a majority of their time talking about the problems they were having with their help at the time. This disgusted me. So much that after a few months of being there, I said, "enough with the maid thing" and I didn’t have one for 7 months. But, all the bathrooms and the tile floors get annoying and not having anyone to help with the kids because all of your friends have maids and family is out of the question, we went back to having someone. And now, I find I talk quite a bit about our maid situation. So, I apologize to you if you think that in writing about this topic I sound like a spoiled brat. I know I am lucky to have someone else to clean the house and help babysit my kids. But, there are some funny stories that go along with having a complete stranger from another culture living in your home. Bloggable stories. With all that being said, I will embark on a new series called, "Muchcha Moments." A "muchacha" is what Mexicans (and Venezuelans) call their maids. I hate the term and usually when I talk to someone about our maid I will say, "the woman (or girl) who works in our house," because I can’t bring myself to say, "muchacha". But, I figure since I didn’t come up with the term, and everyone uses it, and "Muchacha Moment" sounds much better than "A Curious Thing the Woman Who Works in My House Did," that it’ll be ok. So for today’s Muchacha Moment I will share something that happened this weekend after our maid had left (she has Saturday and Sunday off). We could not for the life of us find Guapo’s tennis racket. ANYWHERE. So, I checked out the maid’s closet. No tennis racket, thank goodness we finally found it partially hidden in the boys’ closet, but somehow a can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup and a can of Spagetios (both rare commodities here in Mexico) got moved from here, the canned food shelf in the pantry:

To here, her closet (along with a bottle of hot sauce that I don’t care about at all):

Just so you know, I told her she is welcome to eat whatever she wants. That goes along with having a live-in, but hoarding the food so no one else gets to it???

I was flabbergasted.

Hi everyone.  Welcome to my new little experiment over here at Blogsome.  I am just a little fed up with Blogger at the moment and thought I’d try this out.  Obviously, it is a work in progress as I have done nothing to the site except for sign up for it.  I mean, the dogs are cute and all, but I don’t know if they’ll stay.

Anywho.  I’m just wondering what other mom’s opinions are on sleepovers.  I feel like in this day and age, it’s kind of scary to send your kid off somewhere for more than 12 hours.  Most of the trouble I got into when I was younger was when I was "sleeping" over at a friend’s house.  But, I don’t want my kids to be the freaks that can’t do them either.  Do you say yes to some and continually decline offers from their friends you don’t know as well, or that your not quite sure about the parents?

Please discuss.

Remember my post on Crocs? I mentioned that you could bake your Crocs down to size in the oven. So, this is what I found in the freezer on Saturday (sidenote: check out my Ben and Jerry’s! They have Chunky Monkey here. The joys of Big City life are endless):

Here it is a little closer:

My kids figured since heat = shrinkage (this is where I expect NCS to come up with a clever Seinfeld quote) cool temps must bring about growth.

Crazy kids! Got to love ‘em.