Delete, Delete, Delete

Sometime while I was in Uruguay I got addicted to playing The Sims Social on Facebook.  Before that, it was Gardens of Time.  Before that, I played Plants V. Zombies on my phone.  This trend can be traced back in an almost unbroken stream that includes Snood and Collapse pretty much alllll through Centenary until we got the Wii, and on back through Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein, Rooms of Doom, and about a million other DOS games that I could play for HOURS on end without stopping. I think I played Klondike so much during my year off between high school and college that it's amazing everything didn't appear to float before my eyes on a green felt background.

Most of the time I don't feel like all that time I wasted really put too much of a dent in my life. I haven't developed any weird deformities at least, and I have to edit my resume down to one page instead of up.

But holy crap, it's sort of time for the madness to stop.

Today I deleted The Sims off my Facebook account, and the sure sign that it was definitely time to blow that sucker up: I felt a little pang of physical pain when I clicked "delete." Because the games on Facebook are designed to be more addictive than crack cocaine and reality television combined, my addled brain actually thought for just one moment, "I'm erasing all my hard work!!"

Bitch, please.

Unlike solitaire and Wolfenstein, which you could play in an infinite loop and never asked anything of you, the new games are exactly like what I imagine your corner pusher is like. A little flashier, a little more street wise, and WAY more withholding. You can't play The Sims or Bejeweled or what-have-you on an infinite loop until your brain melts and you feel better and then go about your life again. Instead, they give you a little taste, (Here, have 15 "energy" or "coins" or whatever) and when that runs out, in order to even make the game minimally functional, you have to either,

a) wait around for the game to "recharge"
b) pay actual legal tender for fake, non-legit "gold" or "bux"
c) beg your friends like a pathetic asshole for more "life juice" to get your fix or parts to build your spaceship, etc.

AWFUL.

If I wanted to play games and feel bad about it, I'd go to one of the three arcades left in the United States and beg unsupervised teenagers for quarters.

Anyway, I have a wedding to plan and a novel to write and like, anything else on earth to do. I'm not gonna lie; I miss it already. I had finally saved up enough "Simoleons" in-game to buy a grand piano for my Sim, which took me about a week of hardcore unemployed time-wasting.  And the fact that I even dedicated more than 25 seconds thinking about that--more time than I've spent practicing my ukulele, for sure--is why it totally had to end.

The Audio/Biblio Club

I'm currently reading Anna Karenina. So.... If I don't write a book review now, it may be a while. Plus, I just realized I haven't written one since September. Like, as in, September.

For some reason I didn't read nearly as many books in Uruguay as I did in Panama. I'm going to blame NaNoWriMo. It's hard to read and write and hike Machu Picchu at the same time.

Also, there are two audio books on here. First let me say that even I am a little baffled by my recent trend of listening to audio books. But because I'm too lazy to cancel my Audible account, I keep ending up with credits and I have to use them on something. It's not that I necessarily have anything audio books per se, it's just that I'm the opposite of most people who like them.  Most audiobook listeners chose audiobooks because they don't have time to just sit around and read. On the contrary, I have nothing BUT time, so I have to invent tasks to do while I listen to an audiobook. Like crocheting a blanket, for example. And spinning my own yarn out of cat hair. Things haven't gotten that extreme yet, but I have about ten audiobooks in my queue, so look out.

Your next birthday gift could be very impressive. And maybe a little itchy.

God, No!: Signs You Might Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales
By Penn Jillette
(Audio Book)

There are really two parts to this book that are woven together sort of willynilly. Part one is covered under the, "Signs You Might Already Be an Atheist" portion of the title, and part two falls under, "Other Magical Tales." The two parts really have to be rated separately and will appeal to you differently depending on what you're in the mood for.

If you know anything about Jillette's argument style from the show Bullshit on Showtime, you probably know what you're getting into concerning his arguments about religion. As an Atheist, it's nice to hear someone say out loud (or on paper, I suppose, if you have the book version) that it is absolutely possible for atheists to have morals, principles, and a general philosophy of human decency. The sections of the book that are written about Atheism are by far the strongest and most interesting sections. Jillette is not only interested in Atheism, he suggests that the only useful form of Atheism is one that is unflinching and unapologetic.  I'm not as compelling as he is, or I would also have a show on Showtime, but suffice to say that his arguments made me feel awesome about saying, "I DON'T KNOW."

If you're mainly interested in boobs and magic tricks skip all of the philosophy and head to the more memoir-y sections of the book, which are replete with just that.  Did you know that Teller, the other half of "Penn and Teller" is actually a normal-sized person? He just looks small because Penn is like 6'9" tall? Yeah. The more you know. I'm less interested in these parts of the book because I really don't care what un-named hot models he dated, but I supposed it's good that the book it not one long tirade on Atheism, since there are enough of those.

Actually, I take it back, there are not enough of those.

The Hotel New Hampshire
By John Irving

Oh John Irving.  Master of taking random shit, slapping it on the page, and somehow making a book out of it.

I got the urge to read this book because somehow I learned that it was about a family who lived in a hotel with a bear. That's only a small fraction of it. Of course there's a bear.  Of course there's a football player. Of course there's a circus. And someone named Freud and someone named Egg.

This is not my favorite of the many John Irving books I have read, but it certainly deserves credit for engulfing you in the world of the Berry family, for whom it would be unusual if something usual happened. I got mad at the book about half way through for reasons I won't say. I don't want to spoil anything, but it wasn't a case of bad writing or boring plot that moved this book from the "like" column to the "not so much" column. Let's just say I didn't agree with Irving's narrative decisions.

I don't really know what to say. You don't read a John Irving novel to get from point A to point B. You read it to see how "normal" life is actually very strange and vice/versa. I just... Ugh. Why John?

The Invisible Mountain
By Carolina De Robertis

This novel was recommended to me by my friend Natalie at the Embassy in Montevideo when we arrived there. Uruguay has a rich literary history and bookstores on seemingly every corner, but it's almost impossible to find translations of any native Uruguayan books.  This one solves that problem because--TA DA!!--it's originally written in English.  De Robertis was born to Uruguayan parents in England and now lives, I believe, in the US. Fun!

This book is fantastic, and if you don't believe me, ask O Magazine, where it was number nine on the list of terrific reads for 2009. Would Oprah lead you astray? Would she?

This is the story of three generations of Uruguayan women in one family, in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, through the Peron era and revolution. It's one of those wonderful novels that combines history, mythology, a little bit of magical realism, vibrant story-telling, and great characters all in one package. Plus, you learn things without even trying. Did you know that Uruguay had a military dictatorship? Neither did I.

Town House
By Tish Cohen

I paid 99 cents for this book and thus my review might be a little higher than it would be if I had paid $9.99, if that makes sense. For 99 cents, this book was hilarious and fun to read. For $9.99, I might have wanted a little more out of it, maybe. It's the perfect beach book.  Too bad it's December.

Town House is about Jack Madigan, the agoraphobic son of deceased rock star Baz Madigan.  He lives in the titular town house with his teenage son and their deformed male cat, Mrs. Brady. He is tormented by three people: his ex-wife's marvelous new boyfriend, the realtor who is attempting to sell his town house out from under him, and a nine-year old girl who may or may not be climbing in through a whole in his wall. Oh, the high comedic value of anxiety disorders. It can't be helped.

I laughed out loud while reading this book multiple times. I almost wish they would make a movie out of it, but only if they could promise not to lose the irony oozing from the narrator's voice.

Blood, Bones and Butter
By Gabrielle Hamilton
(Audio Book)

Oh, foodie memoir. You are moderately charming, but you're mostly getting kind of old.

Anyway, here's the deal, go read the first chapter of this book right now. The first chapter is so charming and well written, so surprising and interesting, that it makes up for the fact that the rest of the book is kind of... whatever. The first chapter of this book could have been a short story in the New Yorker or The Best Non-Required Reading. I listened to it twice.

Alright, enough gushing. The funny thing about the rest of this book is that a lot of times when I hear or read things that food people write, I agree with them totally and completely, and I'm a little horrified by how pretentious they sound. Because that means I sound pretentious too. This book is like that.  Hamilton has had a really interesting life and I completely agree with everything she says about everything (YAY FEMINISM!), but after the first chapter this book still made me feel a little UGH. Is it because it seems sort of hip in the bad sense of the word? And almost impossible that so many of us (who is "us"? Middle class white people?) could suddenly have these feelings about food at the same time? I don't know.

Just go read the first chapter.

Win!

I verified my novel last night--more than 24 hours ahead of the midnight, November 30 deadline--at 50,608 words.

I almost don't want to talk about this experience because I don't want to jinx it.

Think of the one productive thing that you've always wished you could do but have always been too busy, lazy, or intimidated to do it. Now let's say that someone applies just the right amount of pressure, while removing all of the mental obstacles. There's no reason to say no.

Right now, the novel I wrote is not a masterpiece, by any means.  Two of the main tenets of NaNoWriMo are "No Plot, No Problem," and "Write First, Ask Questions Later" meaning, basically, that it's an exercise in getting lots of words down on paper, not in being your harshest critic. Over-thinking every word is one of the number one things that holds new authors back. You can't afford to get mired in a cesspool of self-criticism when you've got to write 1,667 words every day, which is the second great thing about the whole experience.

Having a visible daily goal, with a monster end-goal in sight (and a group of hundreds of thousands of other people trying for the same goal) makes an enormous difference. Even with all these incentives, it's incredibly difficult to set aside such a huge hunk of time that could be spent doing just about anything else, but it's really rewarding to look at your word count for the day and see that you've written not just one thousand, but three thousand words.

So... what to do with my novel? It needs so much work before it could ever be anything like something someone would want to read. (And I haven't even written the end yet.) But, cheesy as it may sound, I feel like now I'm better equipped to get it there.  And there are more ideas stewing in my head for something else. I'm so glad I did this. Period.

Orange Ginger Cranberry Sauce

Is it a little excessive to make an entire Thanksgiving dinner for just two people? Probably.

Well, actually, yes.  Because there's no way on earth we can eat an entire ten pound turkey. But no one can stop us from trying because this is America.

Anyway. I am ECSTATIC to be back around my sharp knives and cutting board and shiny red mixer and millions of beautiful hand-me-down pots and pans and I have already started the madness.  Yesterday I made fudge.  Today I made the brine for the turkey (I used the recipe from PW). A pumpkin pie is currently in the oven. And I invented my own cranberry sauce recipe because I couldn't find exactly what I wanted online. All cranberry sauces are basically really simple, but this one turned out pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

Orange Ginger Cranberry Sauce

1 bag fresh cranberries
Zest and juice of 2 large oranges (separate)
3 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Wash cranberries and inspect for stems and squishy berries. Discard anything icky.

In a large sauce pan, briefly heat olive oil over medium heat. Add ginger and orange zest and cook until they begin to sizzle.  You don't want them to heat too dramatically or start to change color at all, just to get nice and hot.

When ginger and zest are hot, add the juice of two oranges and stir in the sugar, brown sugar and honey. Allow to dissolve slightly.

Add cranberries and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  When the mixture boils reduce heat to medium and continue to stir it until the cranberries start to pop and become soft.

Add cinnamon and cloves. Simmer for five minutes or until the sauce thickens, stirring occasionally. Give it a taste and make sure it's not too tart; add sugar or spices as necessary.

Allow to cool completely. I dare you not to eat this on a turkey sandwich. I dare you.

Mexican Mail Fraud

We fly back to the States tomorrow. I can't believe that our time here has gone so fast (and that Tim's fellowship is over--he's like, a normal person now! Pfft.)

This is the view today. It's NOVEMBER.

Reasons I do not want to leave Uruguay yet:

1. It is summer in Uruguay
2. I totally dig all of our friends here
3. Waking up to this amazing view from my living room, every single day
4. The steak: seriously, there is no beef like this beef.  This beef sings songs in your mouth. This beef woos your brain. And there is no "well done" here.  There is only "jugoso" and "a punto": i.e. "rare" and "less rare." Ohhhhhhh... I can't leave!!
5. Anyway... Cheap movie tickets
6. My electric kettle: it changed my life.
7. Lack of awful bullshit rhetoric-machine on the television 24/7
8. There are bookstores on every corner. Even if they're not in English, I don't care.

Reasons I'm looking forward to going back to DC:

1. Access to my full wardrobe
2. Mexican Food (are you ready, Jana?)
3. Access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu streaming (which you can't get outside the US without a VPN)
4. Access to my cellphone: I've heard my parents' voices like, twice in the past three months. Also, I need to uh, plan my wedding.
5. Wedding dress shopping
6. We might be getting a cat! A cat!!

Ok for real, I'm not looking forward to going back to DC at all. I can basically live without most of the stuff in the States that I don't have here, except the Mexican food and the people I miss. And my sharp kitchen knives. I really miss my sharp kitchen knives.  And I basically never want to hear another word about American politics ever again.  Just vote, people.

Most of all, winter in DC sucks. SUCKS, I tell you. I was super-miserable the first month here in Uruguay but now that I've adjusted I soooo don't want to leave yet.  Just give me another month or two, ok? And maybe mail me some tacos and enchiladas.

Time Travel for Amateurs

I'm reeeeeally supposed to be getting caught up on my novel after spending three days sitting on the beach and eating steaks, but I had to share this because it's too incredible.  Look at these two pictures and then take a look at this article that Tim sent me today from Montevideo's newspaper, El Pais.  

In case you don't speak Spanish (welcome to the sad, pathetic club) the general gist is that 40 years ago today, about 100 yards from my house, there was a terrible helicopter accident that killed 8 people and injured 40 others while a crowd of thousands watched.  This morning in Pocitos (we are right on the edge of the neighborhoods of Pocitos and Buceo) there was a memorial for the victims of the event--both those who died and those who were traumatized by it.

This from the illustrious Google Translate: "That day, as part of the 154 anniversary of the Navy, test on the capabilities of helicopters in rescue work was scheduled. The event generated great expectations. About 20,000 people attended."

First, I just think this old photograph is amazing. That's where I live. From where I'm sitting right now, I can see where the photographer who took this picture was standing!

Photo credit: El Pais

Second, I'm totally one of those people who walks around freaked out by the idea that there are skeletons inside of all of our bodies.  So along the same note, I'm totally, insanely fascinated thinking about what took place on the ground we walk all over every day.  In Uruguay it's an especially fascinating exercise.  For better or worse, even the mall sits on the site of the prison where thousands of political prisoners were held and tortured during Uruguay's military dictatorship. You have to walk through the prison gates in order to get in. And, "The former prison administration building now houses a McDonald’s and a Don Pepperone restaurant with patio seating." There is an admitted element of the grotesque to all of this, but it is impossibe not to find it interesting, and important--I think--not to forget.

I was admittedly a little bored by Uruguay when we first got here and it's my own fault for being that way.  This is not a place that flashes its history around on its sleeve and makes a tourist attraction out of everything. However, once you begin to learn the history of the place, you understand why and you can't help but appreciate how much people here value their day to day lives. It's kind of nice that Uruguay doesn't pretend to be reducible to just one souvenir image: the Eiffel tower, the White House, the Hollywood sign.

Uruguay is a small country. It's incredible to think how an event like the one in the photo above would have affected people and what they might have thought, especially taking place as it did during a time when Uruguayans were "disappearing"because of their political beliefs.

This is why I love to travel. I love to see the beautiful and absurd and sometimes horribly sad things that happen in the world and how other people deal with them. Seeing a picture like this makes me wonder how many people who were there that day--standing on the beach I look at every day--I've passed in the street, and if they look at my building and think about how it wasn't here once. It's like traveling in time as well as space.

Idle Hands

Humble beginnings, on the floor of the sunroom in the first apartment.

When I first arrived in Uruguay it was still late winter here (in August! Inconceivable!).  It was cold and gray and dreary and I realized about three days in that it was stupid of me not to have brought some sort of knitting project.  The whole point of knitting, as far as I'm concerned, is to keep you warm while you space out and watch TV.  And I'm totally incapable of watching TV without doing something else at the same time.

Within about two weeks I couldn't stand it anymore and I started to look for Uruguayan yarn stores. It turns out there was one only a couple of blocks from our first apartment.

My grand ambition was to obtain some some of Uruguay's incredible locally-produced yarn and make some sort of gorgeous, luxurious... thing.  But what they prefer to do in the yarn stores here is produce the gorgeous things themselves, and sell them--already knitted.  Then they sell expensive bamboo yarn and cheap acrylic yarn on the side. Please note the bright, insane, synthetic colors of this blanket.

"Cathedral" edging

For a while now I've wanted a granny square blanket, because they're so deliciously silly and fun. This turned out to be the perfect project on one hand because crocheting a granny square allowed me to keep my brain busy with lots of different colors, and only required me to buy one needle instead of two (This is the worst. logic. ever. As knitting needles come in pairs).  It was not so perfect because crocheting a granny square blanket means that you essentially make a hundred million little coasters, which you then combine together at the end.  I started this project because I was cold and wanted a blanket.  The only way to be warmed by it during the long process would be to put them all in a big pile and then burrow under them.

Anyway, the pattern I used was this Summer Garden Granny Square, which is not a normal, plain jane granny. It was also sort of interesting because, did I mention, I haven't crocheted a damn thing since I was 8 years old? Even then I'm not sure what I did could be properly called "crochet."

However, through the patient tutelage of the internet (hurrah internet!!) and a decent amount of frogging and re-crocheting, the thing is finally done!

It is now spring in Uruguay and essentially too warm for a blanket, but it's sort of pretty.  I'm trying to decide what to do with it now.  It's not really the granny square blanket I always dreamed of... any takers? Should I donate it? Is anyone pregnant?

Donezo.

10 Kilometers of.. Well ok.

Somewhere in the last couple of weeks Tim convinced me to run a 10K with him.

This is something people in Montevideo do all the time.  Tim ran in the Reebok 10K two days before we left for Peru, giving me nightmares about sprained ankles and shredded tendons; but he came back from it all sweaty and proud of himself (and wearing the ugliest neon yellow shirt I have ever seen).  I'm not really sure why I said yes to doing running in the "We Run Montevideo" Nike 10K, since it's something I want to do never, but Tim paid my entrance fee for me and I couldn't back out. 

So. What is there to say about it? In that snobby, obnoxious way that I have, I sort of feel like these are the kind of activities yuppies participate in (I'm not talking about you, Elsa!). I can't help it. I don't really understand why you would pay to exercise when you could just go out in the country and hike around for free.

Then again, after having participated--with 9,000 other runners--I can also see that having a common goal with a lot of other people is (even if the goal is sort of ephemeral) kind of incredible. I would never want to hike with 9,000 people.  This is just a whole different animal.

Uruguayos are way into this.  There were people of all different sizes, ages and abilities running (and rolling, and propelling themselves forward on crutches!).  And along the route, which took us along the Rambla, which hugs the rio, and then through the city, where people were lined up, cheering and drinking their yerba mate, banging pots and pans, and generally being very encouraging.  "Vamos! Vamos! Mas rapido!"

At one point along the route there was even a group of Uruguayan Candombe drummers, which is the first time I've had the chance to see them since I've been in the country. So insanely cool.

Anyway, because I am remarkably lazy, I/we hadn't trained much for the race. Once again we made it as far as day one, week two of Couch to 5K (where's my medal for that?).  But it really didn't matter all that much; we did fine.  My official time was something like an hour and 25 minutes, which you can check out here (and Tim's too) if you're so inclined. Not surprisingly, there weren't a lot of other "Smiths" or "Carpenters"in the race.

I'm not sure I'll ever do that again, but I'm not sure I won't. It was definitely satisfying and fulfilling to cross the finish line, and for an hour and half worth of activity, that's not something you can say about watching television or wandering around Best Buy. (But you can say about naps and drinking margaritas: two more things for which I have neither received, but for which I deserve, a medal.)

NaNoWriMo

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? Well, until two days ago, neither did I. At least not in any way that had any affect on my life.  Then I read someone's facebook status and found out that NaNoWriMo (as it's less formally called) is celebrated by pushing yourself to write an entire novel in one month.

And for some reason I decided to participate.

The rules are pretty simple (hot from the NaNoWriMo website):

• Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
• Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).
• Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
• Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
• Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
• Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

However, nowhere in the rules does it say that the novel has to be any good.  The point is output rather than quality.

So.  That's that.  I'm on day three.  I'll be posting my progress on the blog, here, or on the link at the top of this blog.  I make no claims that it's any good at all. But since I have to write something like 1,667 words a day, I'm going to pretend that this will keep me accountable.

Please do not ask why I picked "literary fiction" as my genre of choice. I really, really, should have gone with "zombie apocalypse averted by magical Amazons on unicorns."

Next year.

Pictures of People in Front of Real Things That Look Like Backdrops

I've spent an unacceptable amount of time thinking about what to write about our trip to Peru.

We've been back over two weeks and I've sort of just been holding it and chewing on it in my brain like a piece of gum.  There's no way on earth I could ever fit all of our Peru trip into one blog post, and even though I wish I could have posted about it every day that we were gone, the fact that I couldn't access the internet easily was one of the best things about the whole trip.

The fact of the matter is that the trip to Peru, even with all of the hiccups and bad parts, was the best trip I've ever taken in my life.

Before we left I was pretty much not very happy about life in general. I'm pretty good at being unemployed because I'm the kind of person who never gets bored.  But I'm also the kind of person who needs a comfortable home to not-be-bored-in and for our first month in Uruguay I hated our apartment with a violent screaming passion. It started to wreak havoc on my self-esteem.  I felt like I wasn't accomplishing much, I felt stagnant, and I felt penned-in.

We've been planning for, thinking about, worrying over, getting in turns excited by and then disappointed by this Peru trip for so fucking goddamn long that finally putting our feet down in Cusco was like walking on the moon. And that wasn't even the most important part of the trip.

Our first day in Cusco both Tim and I slept pretty much the whole day.  This isn't really how you would think we'd react to something we'd been anticipating for so long, but we'd been traveling for over 24 hours, we hadn't eaten well, and we went from sea level to over 11,000 ft in altitude.  I had a migraine, of course.

However, as soon as we recovered, and within about twenty minutes of walking into the city, Tim and I both felt not only like we wanted to live there, but like we already lived there. I've never felt anything like that about a place in my life. Cusco has all kinds of faults and uncomfortable truths about it, but it also just felt like home. We both wondered, immediately, if there was a consulate, or any way Tim could get a job there (there's not).

Anyway, we spent the first four days or so walking all over the city, eating and getting lost, taking pictures and running out of breath.  We took a bunch of tours and politely declined our travel company's suggestion that we go white water rafting since it was freezing cold and, well, we can do that anywhere.

On the 9th (I think), we started up the Inka Trail.  Our guides came and picked us up at 6:30 in the morning and we drove for about an hour to pick up the rest of our group and have breakfast, and then drove for another 30 minutes or so to KM82 to start the trail.

Day 1: The easiest day of hiking, except for the rain and the fact that we didn't have enough porters, so we all had to carry more gear. Because of the missing porters we didn't end up eating lunch until probably 2:30 in the afternoon, which is difficult to manage when you haven't eaten since 7:30 and you're hiking with a big pack. Still, I was sort of relieved by the spontaneity of it because it meant that not every group has the same cookie-cutter experience. And we were too awed by everything to worry about pain or hunger.

At the top of Dead Woman's Pass

Day 2: The hardest day of hiking. Tim got really sick the night before and we had to hire a porter to carry his bag (and I got lucky that he took some of my gear too). The hike on this day is nothing but straight up for about five hours, up to almost 14,000 ft, with no stopping for lunch or to look at ruins. Then when you reach "Dead Woman's Pass" you hike down steep stone stairs for about two hours down to camp at about 11,500 ft. Tim looked like a ghost all day he was so sick.

Some of the ruins on Day 3

Day 3: This is the longest day of hiking: ten hours, but you stop and look at a number of ruins, and have a nice leisurely lunch break. You have to cross two passes this day, but end up lower than you started, at about 9,000 ft.  On this day you hike on the most incredible Inka road, where the stones are lined up perfectly like teeth, and the mountains are unspeakably gorgeous. It doesn't even matter that you've hiked for ten hours.

Day 4: Machu Picchu. We got up at 3:45 in the morning for breakfast and to gather up our things. There are no porters on this day so you have to carry everything yourself (which we had been expecting to do all along, but was a big surprise for those who had hired porters expecting them for the full four days).  It's about a 2-hour hike from camp into Machu Picchu. This was by far my favorite part of the hike. It was too misty to really see the sun rise, but it was incredible to watch the mist lift off of Machu Picchu.  There really aren't words to describe the feeling of accomplishment, or to describe the feeling of resentment you feel for the people who take the train, who have energy and smell nice and slept in beds and take up too much space after you worked so damn hard to get there.

For about 45 glorious minutes you get to look at Machu Picchu with hardly any people in it. And it's just breathtaking.  And then the trains start rolling in, and with them come literally 2000 people and it's almost impossible to walk from one place to the next and you kind of start feeling a little greedy and hating humanity a little bit.


But here's the thing, even with no Machu Picchu, I needed that hike SO BAD.  I needed so badly to do something hard, and painful, and dirty, and occasionally a little bit awful (the toilets y'all, OMG) and because of that awfulness actually pretty funny, and to meet some great new people, and to really just scoop my whole brain clean.  Every single minute of the trail, even the bad ones, was fun. It sounds terrible and hard, and none of us got to shower for four days and the entire time, at every single meal, someone talked about diarrhea, and Tim told me afterwards that on the morning of the second day he woke up and his feet were swollen so badly he almost couldn't get his shoes on and neither of us knows why... 

BUT: I also saw some of the most beautiful, mysterious and impressive things I've ever seen in my entire life, we played Uno every night with the tiniest deck of Uno cards I've ever seen, I ate the best trout I've ever had, I slept soundly and woke up refreshed even though we were getting up at 5:45 every morning (if you know me, you know this is insanity), Tim drank tea!


The day before we got on the plane to fly to Peru we had a moment where we were both so convinced something would go wrong, and almost convinced that we wouldn't even be able to enjoy ourselves, that we wished that it was already over. This should indicate the fever pitch of insanity we'd both reached before we even left.  But this sense of anxiety completely dissolved up on the trail, never to return.

The number one question people in Cusco ask when they hear that you hiked the trail is, "would you tell someone else to do the trail, or take the train?" or, "are you glad you did it, or do you wish you'd taken the train?"  The answer is that I would absolutely do it again and I don't even want to talk about the train. I know that a couple of hundred people do it every day and I'm supposed to be jaded and think it's touristy and somehow not "genuine," but all that muscle pain was certainly real and that was the best, coolest thing I've ever done. Period.

Pachamama

You may be wondering why no information on Machu Picchu has been forthcoming. 

On our return flight from Peru, Tim and I had a layover in Chilé. What began as a seven-hour layover turned into a 32-hour layover when a cloud of volcanic ash passed over the Andes and shut down both the Montevideo and Buenos Aires airports.  We got a free night's stay in the Santiago Crowne Plaza hotel, but we arrived in Montevideo a day late, or, at approximately the same time that Tim's parents arrived here from Buenos Aires. This set off a whole chain reaction of behind-ness.

We (Tim and his parents and I) have all been gallivanting around Montevideo all week and today we're leaving for "the Riviera of South America," i.e., Punta del Este. This is my way of saying that our trip to Peru DID happen and there ARE pictures to prove it (see?), but we're doing all kinds of things right now that make it a little hard to fully sit down and properly address it.  I can only really write about something when I'm not doing anything. Earnest Hemingway would be ashamed.

Don't worry, be happy.

I know it's very premature for an update about our trip but we have had a less-than-auspicious beginning and I can only hope this means everything will be flawless from here on out.

As we were getting ready to call our cab to go to the airport I got on line to check in for the flight and discovered that, in fact, for the past year, there's been no record of Tim's flight. I've only been receiving updates about MY flight, but I hadn't noticed. So twenty minutes before we're supposed to go out the door it appears that Tim has no flight. Long story short, in the midst of our major panic attack we finally got in touch with Orbitz, who we will NEVER use again and discovered it was "no problem." There was some glitch in their system that made Tim's ticket invisible to human eyes or something.

Then in security I forgot I stuffed the pocket knife my dad and stepmom gave me for Christmas into my hiking boot and it was confiscated... But it was in Tim's bag so HE got stopped and HE had no idea why. Poor Tim, let us heap our burdens on him, shall we? Jesus.

Anyway, we're set to board. And we have determined and decreed that nothing else can go wrong. Peru!! Trip of a lifetime!!

PERU

Tim and I are leaving for Peru today. I'm all keyed up from planning for years and years and OMG our flight is at 6:00. I feel like my arms are about to fall off my body. Why is THAT the way I'm reacting to this? I have no idea. But I'm so excited and freaked out.

WHOA HORSEY.

Upper Crust Problems

Last week I learned something about myself that I couldn't have known, but that Tim predicted: I do not like having a cleaning woman.  One of those weaselly little details I left out when I talked about this huge, ridiculous apartment is that--included in the price of the rent--are two days per week of maid service.  On Wednesdays and Fridays for three hours, a very nice woman comes and cleans the entire apartment.

As someone who proudly grew up in a single-wide trailer, I'm going to go ahead and say definitively that this is more of a culture shock than anything else I have experienced in Uruguay.

On one level, what the maid (cleaning lady?) does while she's here is really no big deal. She takes out the trash, vacuums and mops all the floors, she washes all the towels and changes the sheets, she cleans the counter-tops in the kitchen and bathrooms.  But there's another level of cleaning that drives me absolutely batshit insane.

I will acknowledge that being poor, an only child, and a child of divorce has made me neurotically and un-Buddhist-ly particular about my stuff, but I also think our maid may be crossing some sort of line. For instance, the maid not only straightens the items on the bathroom countertop when she cleans it (understandable), she straightens the items in the bathroom drawers (DON'T TOUCH THEM, LADY). She not only makes the bed (ok fine), she reorganizes all of the shit on Tim's and my bedside tables, (again, paws OFF). Same with the kitchen counters and the kitchen cupboards.

If I'm eating lunch when she shows up, she'll pick up my dirty lunch dishes as soon as I'm not looking. I'm not broken! I can pick them up myself! (My mother is probably scoffing at this. However, there is simply a huge difference between the way a stranger picks up your lunch dishes and the way you lovingly leave them laying around until your mom does it so she still feels needed [just kidding, Mother]. This lady is not my mom. And I'm not paying her to be.)

On a far weirder note, on her first visit she moved our handsoap into the shower and locked the closet where the towels are kept, taking the key with her, meaning that we ran out of towels and couldn't get to the clean ones. So I moved the soap back to the sink (thinking that was a subtle way to indicate that that was where we wanted it) and asked her not to lock the towel closet.  On her second visit, she took all but one of the handsoaps in the entire apartment--we have FOUR bathrooms--and she still locked the towel closet. In short, having a maid (at least, having this maid) feels more like having a very invasive old aunt impose her will on you because she knows what's best. It feels, mostly, like you have attempted the experiment of adulthood and failed, and now need someone to pick up everything after you.

The truth is, I have very few responsibilities here. No one really holds me accountable for anything. I have no job, no school, just a few credit card bills.  I mostly just have to bathe myself, take care of the apartment, and try to remain socially acceptable.  In Panama, mopping the floor was actually sort of fun for me because it was the hardest thing I had to do. All play and no work also makes Jack a dull boy. And having a maid has removed my last actual responsibility. Not only that, but the few things I do clean, she re-cleans, and re-arranges. I'm sure she feels that it's her job and she's helping, but mostly I feel like she's repeatedly slapping me with a ruler.

It's a shithead thing to complain about. And there's no WAY we're going to fire her because she needs the work and I need an attitude adjustment, I'm sure. But it's weird how much I dread having her come and clean and how totally uncomfortable she makes me.  It's like how birds will reject their chicks if someone handles them and then puts them back in the nest.  My toothpaste and my cornflakes are my chicks and this lady keeps getting all handsy with them. She can't help it because, well, that's what we're paying her to do. But sweet jesus, it drives me crazy.

Dry

I'm not sure why I haven't chosen to write about this before. It's a sob story I find myself having to rehash and revisit with surprising frequency, but never in full. It only ever comes up in the kind of situations when you find you would never want to explain the whole situation.

I frequently write about things that I do, but I very rarely write about things that I am. What I am is someone who has a monster sitting on my shoulders. My migraines are not just something that show up every once in a while, they are a disease. Every disease has a unique personality, like beasts in a menagerie. Migraine is a creature, a black, hairy, hulking golem that sits, literally, on your shoulder and waits for any misstep.

There are all kinds of ways to make all kinds of diseases rancorous and spiteful against you. Arthritis hates the common movement of your joints. Epilepsy sometimes hates the flickering lights of movies and clubs. Heartburn and diabetes hate to see you let down your guard about what and when you eat.

Migraine is incredibly touchy, and almost completely unpredictable. It's triggers change and keep snowballing over time. And it's unbiased in its hatred. It becomes angry if you get too much or not enough sleep, if you are dehydrated, if the air is too humid or too dry, too hot or too cold, if the light is too bright or the sound too loud. It lashes out if you have too much caffeine, MSG, or aspartame. If you have been on an airplane. If you're stressed out. If it's been too long since you've eaten or if you eat too much. If your hormones are off balance. If you sit in one position for too long. If you exercise too hard. If you stand up too fast. If you smell natural gas. If you cry.

And perhaps predictably, the evil little bastard becomes completely enraged when I drink.

I, and many, many other people like me, spend thousands of dollars a year trying to soothe and tame this disease. Once every couple of months I commute about an hour out to my neurologist's office to tell her how things are going and see what's working and what we can try, and to get refills on the five or six prescriptions I have to keep things in line. Though I am fortunate to live near one of the only clinics specializing in migraines in the entire United States, I'm not always happy with how my visit goes, because basically, there's still not a lot that people know about migraines. It's a disease of the nervous system and most of the available drugs were actually designed for other uses. The usual advice is, in general, be vigilant. Watch everything your body does vigilantly.

And the thing I find it most difficult to be vigilant about is not drinking.

The problem is, I love drinking. I love it passionately.

As I said, the things that set the creature snapping and snarling change and evolve over time. I've never been able to drink red wine. Many people can't. And it's no sacrifice. It's not the sacrifice. But I would, if given the chance, be the sort of person who had a couple of gin and tonics every other night with dinner. I had been waiting to get a big enough apartment to start brewing my own cider. Mimosas and good bloody marys make brunch brunch. Tequila is... there aren't even words for what tequila is. It's beautiful.

But beyond the fact that a rum and coke without rum is just... coke: alcohol is social. And to not drink on principle is fine and noble, but to not drink out of physical coercion, because of this alien presence in my brain, is utter and complete misery. I don't always want to drink. But when I do want to drink, I am left not just sober in the physical sense, but sobered in that I'm constantly reminded that my body is somehow broken.

I don't want to tell people, "I don't drink." Because it's not true. But I also don't want to tell people, "I can't drink," because it begs the inevitable question, why? I have had people ask if I'm pregnant, and been tempted to tell them "yes," because it's much more pleasant than explaining: "I have a demon in my brain."

Worse are the times when I say, "I can't drink," but the temptation to do so is overwhelming.

About a year and a half ago I began to notice that beer, which has always made me sniffle after two or three, had begun to give me violent allergic reactions. Now, when I drink beer, my sinuses shut down and I become incredibly dehydrated, which leads to, of course, a migraine. Allergy pills have no effect, but the fact that I can't breath is very convincing for other people who weren't sure what I meant when I said, "I'm allergic to beer."

It's true that I can drink clear liquor occasionally, if it's mixed, and if it's proceeded and followed by copious amounts of water and food. Anything else but the smallest glass of white wine is out of the question. It's like playing roulette: if I chose to play and land on black, that's all she wrote. For anyone who has ever experienced the pain of a migraine, you know that you would do almost anything to avoid it.

I feel like an orchid. I always thought of myself as rather hale and hardy, but instead it turns out that my body is much more capricious than I imagined.

There are far worse diseases that I could have, with far worse side effects, and I have no desire for sympathy. In general, I try to live my life as though it were only me that occupies my body, and not myself and also this foreign usurper. But I find myself making a lot of excuses for it, needing to explain some aspect of my behavior, most days, because of its presence. More than anything, I am simply tired of explaining and asking to be excused from life.

Some days I imagine going on a glorious and dramatic raging bender: sitting in a sauna, getting piss drunk, staying up for 48 hours, eating all the chow mein I can, crying, screaming, and bungee jumping, drinking nothing but diet Mountain Dew--doing all of the things my migraine hates and bringing on the worst headache in the history of the world, causing an epic battle, until one of us comes out dead. It would be the ultimate struggle, with either victory--a life free from headaches and this constant vigilance, or defeat--pain and darkness forever.

Most days I don't know if it would be worth it, but every time someone offers me a drink I am tempted to find out.

Fishbowl

Right now there's a dude doing some sort of crazy Tai Bo outside in the park. I can see him.

I can see lots of things.

Because we moved into our new apartment.

And my camera doesn't have a wide enough lens to encapsulate how enormous the windows are. Among the other things I can see through my enormous fish bubble are:

• The Ocean
• The Naval Museum across the street
• A skate park
• The stupid ugly building where I used to live, way, waayyyy off in the distance
• The yacht club
• A swimming pool (I don't know how to get access to it yet)
• The bus depot
• This amazing hamburger stand: Hamburgueseria el Condor.

Hamburgueseria el Condor makes nothing but hamburgers, hotdogs and chorizo sandwiches. They don't even serve fries. And their hamburgers, as if trying to solve the age-old question, "why is it called a hamburger?" are made with a beef patty, a slice of cheese, and a big ol' slice of ham. Of course. (Because everything here has ham on it.)

In addition, you can put mushrooms, olives, chimichurri, spicy peppers, garlic sauce or just about anything else on it. You can! You really can!

I digress.  What's important is that we finally moved.  We really only spent a little over a month in the other place, but living somewhere you don't like can change your whole outlook on life.  This new apartment, however, is mega overkill. One might say it is extreme.

In addition to our amazing, excessive, insane view of the Montevideo skyline, and our white furniture and our flatscreen TV (recall that the last TV was shaped like a dishwasher and bolted to our bedroom ceiling), this place also has three bedrooms and four bathrooms. Once again I ask, what is one supposed to do with four bathrooms (and four bidets)?

Saturday, our first day in the new place, we did five loads of laundry. The lavendaria we'd had to take our clothes to before--where you drop off your clothes and then they return them to you washed and folded--had taken to losing our socks. I have a very limited supply of socks here. We boycotted them and hadn't done laundry in weeks. (The glamorous life of a diplomat!) So while the washer here only hold about 8 shirts, it is still a gift straight from the gods. THE GODS I TELL YOU.

Kitchen! Real kitchen! With. a. dishwasher.

Some things still take a little getting used to. All the controls on the appliances are foreign and take a little trial and error. For instance I think the dryer might be asking me how many hundreds of times I want it to spin my clothes around. But I don't know.

And the refrigerator has a space-age control panel we haven't figured out yet. It beeps angrily if you keep the door open very long. And there's a button with a palm tree and a button that says "I Care." Please let me know if you have any idea what they mean. I do care. A little.

Also, it is very easy to get lost. I'm convinced that one of us is going to try to walk into the back bedroom and end up in the labyrinth from House of Leaves. Or at least discover a fifth bathroom or another kitchen. And how awesome would THAT be?

Parilla (grill) on the back patio, washer and dryer to the right.

Anyway, I supposed it seems a little weird that I'm happier now having the flu and being in a nice apartment than I was being perfectly healthy and living in a crappy one. I'm a nester. I nest. I need my living space to be bright and sunny and not smell like sewage

I'm probably going to miss the sound of our neighbor vomitting in the middle of night.

Or probably not.

Our bedroom... has California closets.

Popular Reading

I have officially made it 50% of the way through my grandmother's novel! (Which I thought was 1000 pages, but which is actually 1500 pages.) I think that means that I have earned the right to review the other books I've read in Uruguay. I thought maybe I'd want to stop somewhere in the middle of this behemoth reading project and read something else, but I really don't. It's such a good book. Just very long.  It's too bad that the books I'm about to review seems to have been read by nearly everyone, since I can't review anything else for a while.

To Kill a Mockingbird
By Harper Lee

Confession: this was assigned in high school (of course, obviously) and I have no idea if I read it or not. YES, I SWEAR I AM AN AMERICAN. I had one of those English teachers (God bless him) who assigned both the book and the movie of everything. I remembered that it had a rabid dog, and a guy named Boo Radley, and that Atticus Finch was a sexy lawyer (that can't be right), and something happened that had to do with African Americans. Which is not really good enough.

So I read it again. Or maybe for the first time. I don't know. But here's what I do know: it's a goddamn good book. Why do we waste these books on prepubescent people? Most teenagers don't give a dog fart about books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies, which I pretty much want to read every year of my life. Instead of making them read these books when they'd rather be reading Twilight (and let's face it, at least they're reading something) we should put the best books on the highest shelves and say, "Nuh uh. No way. Those are a secret." Build up a little mystery and intrigue so that someday they'll be in a bookstore, see a copy, and just DIE to start reading it, instead of thinking, "oh, that's that book my stupid teacher made me read."


This is obviously not really a review because everyone already mostly knows about To Kill a Mockingbird. But if you "read" it in high school and don't really remember reading it, it actually is as good as everyone says it is and you wouldn't be wasting your time to read it again. Particularly because, reading as an adult, Scout is charming in ways I wouldn't have appreciated as a teenager.

I would recommend this book to: Anyone who hasn't read it, obvi, and anyone who pretends like they've read it, but can't legitimately remember the plot. You might be on Jeopardy someday.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By Rebecca Skloot

Between this, The Help, and To Kill a Mockingbird, I've had just about as many books as I can handle about the awful treatment of black people in this country. At least for a couple of months. The book tells the story of what happened when a doctor took a cell culture from a woman without her knowledge and it became one of the most, if not the most, important cell culture in medical history. It also tells the story of her family, who had no idea that an entire industry had arisen from their mother's cells.

The story has thousands of facets that make it intriguing: the historical implications of the mistreatment of black bodies, the story of the family itself living in poverty in rural Virginia, the science-fiction-like quality of the cells and their infinite replication, the (moral and religious?) questions about who owns our bodies and what responsibility do we have to science? This all probably sound very heavy and a little daunting, but Skloot is a talented story-telling and manages to take a story that has information coming from all angles and weave it into a coherent narrative. More than that, she really makes you care about the characters.

You know this is not your standard science book because, well, there's a good chance it will make you cry. I did. Hard.

I would recommend this book to: Jessica D. and people who like non-fiction books that have a plot.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
By Amy Chua
(Audio Book)

This book could not be further from my scope of interest. It's a memoir by a woman who raised her two daughters, in America, according to strict "Chinese Mother" principles, and all of the resulting successes and failures both hilarious and terrifying. In strictly embracing Chinese parenting, she inherently critiques "Western Parents" who are both hovering and laissez-faire.

When the book was published a storm of controversy stirred around Chua because, in the book, her behavior seems, admittedly, a little crazy. She doesn't allow her daughters to have playdates or sleep-overs with friends, she makes them practice long hours, every day on their musical instruments, and in one in much-discussed incident in the book, she hotly rejects a birthday card from her daughter for not being good enough.

I wouldn't have wanted to live with her growing up. But here's what's interesting, unlike some crazy, nightmarish, overbearing parents, Chua is completely self-aware. I read an interview in TIME magazine (please do not quote me on this) where Chua stated that she intended the book to be funny and self-deprecating, and was shocked by the scandal it caused. Perhaps being armed with this foreknowledge changed my attitude toward the book.

Also, I "read" the audio edition, something I normally can't stand but was convinced to do by Vanity Fair's "Writers Reading" podcast, which featured a sample of Chua reading a sample of the work.  In her own voice, it's easy to tell that Chua may be driven, but she's not a tyrant, and that she is interested, above all, in the well-being of her children, even when it means recognizing the faults in her strategy--which is something few people are willing to do.

Perhaps it's a bad sign for the quality of the writing that hearing the author's voice made her intentions so much clearer. Or maybe since I don't have children, I'm less invested in her craziness and more open to whatever she's got to say. One way or another, the book was intriguing and HIGHLY entertaining. Even if her method had some faults, Chua poses many valid  and necessary arguments about the way we in the "West" relate to our children--even if you don't have one, you were one at some point.

I would recommend this book to: Any of my friends with children (Trina in particular), people who enjoy "crazy" behavior, and anyone who plays an instrument but is having a hard time getting motivated to practice. You will feel AWFUL for not practicing after reading this book.

Buenos Buenos

El Ateneo Bookstore

Q: Which South American country is a pirate's favorite place to make port?

A: Arrrrrrgentina.

Ohhhhhmahgah, I'm so funny.

But seriously. So we went to Buenos Aires this weekend and it was definitely the most fun thing that we've done since coming down here. In part because getting to Buenos Aires means taking a ferry boat called a Buque Bus which is both like and unlike every form of transportation I've ever taken before.

The ferries I've taken in the states (between Anacortes and the San Juan islands in Washington state, for instance) are always a little gusty and fairly soggy. The Buque bus is a legit way to travel... not just to get somewhere, but to travel. It's a three hour trip (a three hour tour?) and it goes between two countries, so you pass through customs on your way in and the boarding areas have duty-free shops and plush leather couches. The boat itself is divided into tourist class and first class, and really only differ a little. Both have large cushy seats, a full cafe, big windows overlooking the ocean, TVs that play a combination of American TV and ads for Argentinian fashion shows, and one or two noisy children. Neither has assigned seating so it's first come first served. First class has hostesses (Waitresses? Stewardesses?) in first class will bring you you order and pick up your tray, and there are slightly larger, but slightly less comfortable seats.

I've basically decided that I want to travel everywhere by boat from now on. It's way more laid back an comfortable than air travel and you never have to turn your iPod off or remove your shoes involuntarily.

The stage of El Ateneo Bookstore.

Now, frankly, we had no idea what we were going to do in Argentina until we got there. When we finally arrived, lightening struck my brain, as Smee says, and I remembered that one of the coolest bookstores in the world is located in Buenos Aires. This is why is pays to troll around on a lot of nerdy blogs.  A quick google search revealed that said bookstore was not only, yes, in BA, but also a mere four blocks away from our hotel. (By the way, if you're ever going to Argentina, this hotel was great--amazing location, good free breakfast and a canopy bed!)

I have three favorite bookstores: The Boulder Bookstore, which I love fiercely and maniacally and literally spend hours in--like a crazy hobo--every time I go home; Books Plus, inside The MLK Memorial Library in DC, where everything is $1-$2; and Capitol Hill Books, which is like a hobbit hole full of books and the owner, a former Naval Officer, puts ironic signs on the books and will yell at you if you say something stupid.

Now... El Ateneo, which occupies a former theater, could easily be added to this list... IF... oh if, I spoke Spanish.

Still and all, as you can see from these pictures, it's basically one of the most amazing places you could possibly put a bookstore. We went back three times. And we ate lunch at the café on the stage. Their selection of English books is sad, sad, sad (J.D. Robb much?). But I bought copies of The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving and The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. (NB, I'm not saying that foreign bookstores should be required to carry English-language books, only that, if they choose to do so, they should pick a few books that don't have the author's name in raised neon letters on the cover.)

Recoleta Cemetery.

Our hotel and El Ateneo are in a neighborhood called Recoleta, an area that's somewhat similar to St. Germain in Paris, only with aristocrats and artists rather than students and artists. The area is a hotbed of museums, cafes and street fairs, with a huge, incredible cemetery at its heart.

Recoleta cemetery is like the cemeteries of New Orleans turned up to 11. In addition to the above-ground crypts, it's not unusual to peek through the glass door of the huge tombs and see underground vaults with old wooden coffins stacked up on shelves beneath the floor.

Yes, that's a child-size coffin.

Some of the tombs are perfectly maintained, full of flowers and potted plants, free of dust; their coffins are covered with clean lace cloths and the glass doors are locked with heavy padlocks. But others are disheveled; the coffins are stacked and broken, everything is covered with cobwebs, the glass and the stones are broken. It just serves to reinforce what an odd species we are. How we care about bones, which, really are just bones, enough to build these elaborate houses for them... but we also don't care that much.

This is the cemetery where Evita Peron is buried, by the way. Just another box of famous bones.