cluster design

triple tiny tragedy (reconstructed)

2011-05-09T16:52:00.000-07:00

fafa the fish died yet again. now that coco is three-and-a-half, i believe she could handle the truth and learn an important life lesson. after all, i was about the same age when my pet turtle died, one of those little ones that are smaller than a soap bar, and we buried it the pot of a huge interior plant (we lived in an apartment at the time). that prepared me somewhat for the subsequent deaths of future pets: michael jackson, janet jackson and madonna the fish (mildly tragic), natasha the poodle (somewhat tragic), zico the airdale terrier (terribly tragic), uma the great dane (heartbreakingly tragic), coco lee the poodle (untragic, due to old age) and now, the fafas (slightly tragic).

the point is we would have told her, had it not been for the sudden absence of her preschool class pet guinea pigs, tom and jerry. once the pride and joy of room 1, they eventually became a burden for the teacher, who grew tired of carrying their big cage to and from her house on weekends (and, i have now learned, was unable to care for them during the summer). i thought this issue had been resolved by a weekend custody calendar she started for the furry fellas. so imagine my surprise when i saw item #371 on the school's fundraising silent auction catalogue: adopt tom and jerry guinea pigs, starting bid $20, value priceless.

when she asked me about it, i explained to the curious coconut that they had found a better home. why? weren't they happy in room 1, where pudgy little fingers would lovingly pet (i.e. push, pull & poke) and feed (i.e. shove pieces of fruit and veggies down their throats) them? yes, WHY? why were they taken away with only a few weeks left until summer vacation?

this changed coco's entire preschool ecology and we weren't about to do the same at home. so we welcome fafa number three, a smaller and shyer version of fafa number two, and hopefully healthier than fafa number one.

new broad in town

2011-01-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

come winter 2012/2013 there'll be a new building in downtown LA: the broad art foundation(left image), a museum of contemporary art designed by new york architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro. the broad will be blatantly flirting with frank gehry's walt disney concert hall and arata isozaki's museum of contemporary art (moca), hoping to arouse attention and add urban tension to the bland grand avenue hilltop. you can read more about it here: new york times architecture review.

as contemporary as this extravagant design may seem, the porous skin enveloping the building is actually something that can be found in older modern buildings around the world. take the nearby the american cement building (right image), designed in 1960, with its permeable precast concrete exterior. although i personally prefer the unpretentious simplicity of modern architecture, maybe what this town really needs is a lady who's a tramp.

the return of the bucket

2011-01-05T17:55:00.000-08:00

this holiday, a small christmas miracle happened at our home. the bucket that we "lost" at the park last summer came back to us. it appeared underneath our tree on christmas morning, bearing a delightful book, our california, in spanish. apparently during its half year absence, it developed eyes and tentacles and morphed into an octopus (flex, the octopus, to be exact). i wonder if santa, realizing that we don't have a chimney, squeezed the octopod through our door's mail slot and instructed it to wriggle its way to the tree and take a bite out of the dreidel-shaped sugar cookie coco decorated and left out with a cup of milk.

the real mystery is how santa deciphered the hieroglyphic letter coco left in our mailbox to be sent to the north pole, in which she specifically asked for a bucket and a book, no more, no less.

curious george saves the day!

2010-12-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

holidays are complex. simply going on an family outing during this season can be challenging. especially when you have a somewhat large three-generational group of people with different needs, tastes and ideas of fun. splitting up can be a practical solution, but sometimes sticking together is the only option.

such a situation arose this past thanksgiving, which panzón, coco and i spent in san francisco at my sister's, with her husband and toddler, her in-laws and our parents. what were we to do that saturday, when the turkey had been eaten hot, surrounded by yummy trimmings, and cold the next day, between mini baguettes? we had to get out and do something. but what? and then i remembered: curious george saves the day at the contemporary jewish museum! something for the museum-lovers, the architecture enthusiasts, the young children, and of course for all curious george admirers, which most of us already were.

the building, an architectural gem designed by polish-born daniel libeskind, is a reuse project in which a contemporary program is adapted to the historic pacific gas & electric power substation, built in 1907. libeskind also designed the jewish museum berlin, a striking work of architecture of larger scale and force.

so what was curious george doing in such a place? it turns out his creators, margret and h.a. rey, a married couple of german jews, had quite an interesting story of love and adventure and narrow escape from nazi-torn europe in 1940.

that saturday, we all walked out of the museum inspired and pleasantly surprised that we had found something we all had enjoyed together. and that's how curious george saved the day!

trick or treating cancer

2010-10-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

halloween is the time of year we not only face our fears, but open our doors to monsters, demons and ghouls and offer them something sweet, hoping to make them go away. october is also breast cancer month. cancer is truly terrifying. unlike trick-or-treaters, it doesn't go back home, take off its mask and eat candy until its tummy hurts. it silently slips into our bodies and makes itself at home, helping itself to whatever it can get its greedy hands on, making us sick. well, life played a little trick on me this month and gave me my own cancer scare. very clever indeed, life!

i knew it would come knocking on my door sooner or later, ever since we lost my maternal grandmother to breast cancer when i was eight years old (it's known to skip a generation, you see), but now? can't it see the belly-shaped no vacancy sign? my body is already occupied by a beautiful and wanted guest. there is absolutely no room for a deathly parasite. or is there? after a session of my specialized surgeon softly kneading my breast, maybe. after no coffee, (almost) no chocolate and vitamin E, maybe. after an ultrasound, maybe. after a needle poking me seven times and waiting for three days for the biopsy result, apparently not.

so bring it on, halloween. i was already scared shitless this month, so send me all of your witches and zombies and goblins. i will welcome them with open arms and lots and lots of chocolate.

where's my belly?

2010-10-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

i'm four months into my second pregnancy, but my belly has not yet popped. meanwhile, my calendar looks like it's going to burst at the seams, at least for my relaxed standards. my days are filling up with preschool, playdates, ballet lessons (coco rocks in her black tutu), my etsy shop, volunteering for cicLAvia (which is this sunday, by the way!), and planning coco's third birthday party. oh, and i signed up to be room parent at the preschool, completely overlooking the fact that my due date is a couple of weeks before the school's biggest fundraising event. you know you've got pregnancy brain when you keep forgetting you're pregnant!

anyway, the other morning, coco and i were distributing some cicLAvia posters around our area and came upon a brand new yoga studio. unfortunately, they did not have a bulletin board, but before i could even open my mouth to say "thanks anyway", the male receptionist over-enthusiastically said, "wow! are those real? *pause* fruit loops?". i followed his stare to the fruit loop necklace snugly nestled between my breasts. i blushed and answered, "yes, yes they are". clearly, other parts of my body are popping.

leçon de ballet

2010-09-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

coco is taking her first ballet lesson this afternoon. we got her a pair of these hideous intestine-pink ballet slippers, which look absolutely adorable on chubby little feet, but abstained from the tutu because her future in ballet is uncertain at this point.

the thing is, the class is technically for girls over three, but they made an exception for coco, since her birthday is only a month away. however, if the teacher thinks she's not ready for such sophistication, she'll be kicked out of the class. i can just imagine the teacher doing a grand battement on coco's petit derrière, sending her flying gracefully out of the studio.

i know coco is completely capable of doing whatever it is the teacher instructs, the real question is whether she'll understand these instructions in english. or will they be in french? my advice to coco: do as the tutus do and just try to make it through, and next class, you'll have a tutu, too.

cute carnivores

2010-09-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

coco (aka motoneta) was enjoying a lovely afternoon with tita and tata, watching the beautifully photographed and narrated documentary, the march of the penguins. everyone was enjoying the film, including our very own penguin, a silly inflatable toy, who was so enthralled by his fellow penguins in the wild that he didn't blink once.

suddenly, out of nowhere (well, the gelid waters of the antarctic), jumped a seal and gobbled up a penguin, just like that. coco's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in shock. WHAT?!?! did that seal just eat that penguin? WHY? why would a cute seal eat a cute penguin? tita was equally shocked when this scene violently took over the screen and comforted her granddaughter, while tata fumbled with the remote to change the channel.

coco is big on explanations and asked her grandparents for one immediately. in fact, she talked about this when we got back from our own violent movie, during dinner, before bed and even the next morning. she just couldn't wrap her head around the fact that an animal would do that to another animal and kept repeating, "i love all animals" and "seals are nice anyway", trying to keep loving seals in spite of their killer instincts.

and so, one of earth's most primal truths was revealed to coco: animals eat other animals to survive. we do it, too.

spare change

2010-09-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

panzón, motoneta and i are in our car at a toll booth with a big bridge in front of us and a long line of cars behind us. we're so used to paying for everything with plastic that it doesn't occur to us to take extra cash on our road trip. "do you accept cards?", i sweetly ask the attendant. "cash only", she responds robotically. panzón frantically empties out my wallet and his pockets, while the attendant waits surprisingly patiently, a blank expression on her face.

four dollars is not a lot of money, but it sure feels like it when you've only got two one-dollar bills and a bunch of small denomination coins. of course, we come up nine cents short. so i ask the attendant, "what if we don't have enough to pay?". well, it turns out that the camera takes a picture of your license plate and a ticket, along with the bill for four dollars, comes to your home in the mail in a tidy envelope.

but i, the driver, refuse to get a ticket, especially for four measly dollars, so i hold up a finger to the attendant. search and you will find, my friends. yes, i actually find a shiny little dime, tucked into the dark and crusty limbo that is the side of the seat. i nervously try pinching it, but it's just beyond my grasp. nevertheless, with some guidance from panzón, my skinny fingers are able to slide the coin to freedom with ease.

ha! no ticket and we still have a penny left!

pink medicine

2010-09-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

my little motoneta has an ear infection, her second this year, and has to take a pink medicine that looks like pepto bismol, but reminds me of kenny. kenny is our dog, a beagle originally from the mojave desert, but currently exiled in mexico.

this dog is the most stubborn being i have ever encountered. i sometimes call him dogini because of his amazing talent as an escape artist. during his first with us, gates had to be extended upwards, walls had to grow, complicated latches had to be installed, and still he managed to escape, until we realized he could not be contained and gave up. and, of course, once the challenge was gone, he stopped escaping.

one time, kenny got sick, so we took him to the vet. apparently, he had a shocking number of uncommon parasites and bacteria (consistent with his behavior in the backyard) in his system and had to take some pink tablets. we stuck one in a hot dog, just like the vet suggested, and kenny devoured the whole thing. then he simply spit the tablet out. you can't trick a trickster, now can you? so, we forced his snout open, shoved the damn thing in his mouth and flushed it down his throat with water. to our amazement and horror, he regurgitated the tablet.

back to the vet's office we went with the dog and the tablets, begging for professional help. he gave us a condescending sneer as he snapped his latex gloves on. ignoring our warning, he brought out a slice of ham, wrapped it around a tablet and attempted the he'll-wolf-the-whole-thing-down method. the triumphant look on his face turned into disbelief as he watched dogini's regurgitating act. he had never seen anything quite like it. yes, he should be in a circus, i thought.

kenny was sitting on the cold metallic table, looking droopy as ever, as the vet calmly began the shove-it-down-his-throat procedure. the vet was firmly holding the dog's snout shut and was explaining how simple this was when done correctly, when his patient started to shake his head violently, spewing pink liquid all over the place, soiling his impeccable white coat and spraying his eyeglasses.

panzón and i couldn't help but laugh as the vet wiped his glasses with a tissue and suggested another, less messy, type of treatment: shots.

belly does not equal baby

2010-08-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

so motoneta (formerly known as coco) and i were at the park the other morning, when a very long stroller came through the gate and caught our four eyes. triplets! i explained to my little motoneta that those three babies had all been inside their mom's belly together and came out into this world one right after the other. it blows my mind, but she seemed unfazed.

anyway, she continued playing in the sand and i continued looking at her playing in the sand, when she asked me, "how many babies does that señora have in her belly?". i followed her gaze and found a very large woman walking towards us. she did not look pregnant, but obese, and i had a feeling she spoke spanish. i quickly responded, "um, i don't think she has any babies in her belly". but, of course, this answer was not enough for the extremely inquisitive motoneta, who further investigated by asking, right when the woman had taken a seat on the bench in front of us, "then why is her belly so fat?".

in that moment i looked down at the sand, wishing i could dig our way out of the pickle we were in just like fantastic mr. fox (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq2I7xs0Dtc).

motoneta

2010-08-18T09:12:00.001-07:00

coco has stopped being coco for a while now. ever since we went to barcelona in may, she's insisted on being called motoneta, which refers to a small motorcycle or moped. she was amazed by these little vehicles zooming past us on passeig de gràcia or parked in clumps everywhere. i think she saw funny faces on each one, kind of like jack black's motorcycle on that new friends yo gabba gabba episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE3JRjcbcX8&feature=related).

so, it was really no surprise that when i asked her this morning about her upcoming birthday party theme, she quickly replied "¡motonetas!". i'm just glad her answer to the halloween costume question was "¡un cocodrilo!".

back to school mexican 80's style

2010-08-12T11:01:00.001-07:00

panzón and i were reminiscing the other night about what back to school meant for us growing up in mexico. we travelled back in time to the stuffy and crowded second floor of a librería gonvil, where our mothers took us to buy los útiles escolares. behind the glass counter were a number of female attendants apathetically ready to take on each family's long list of school supplies. sluggishly, they would remove two black bic ballpoint pens from one drawer, two blue from another, two red from another and one green for yet another (i remember teachers being scandalized by those modern all-in-one multi-color pens and banning them from the classroom, even though they were so practical!). we would have to get different kinds of pencils too, like the B and the HB and sometimes even the 2H. and one of those horrid light brown erasers that looked like the soles of the canadá brand shoes most of the kids wore to school. our notebooks would come with lines, grids or blank, but all looked the same on the outside, the scribe logo in red and a mustardy gold.

it seemed to take these women forever to complete each order. one pair of blunt roma scissors, one round plastic pencil sharpener, one ruler to make margins, an assortment of modeling clay bars (like oily play-doh that never dried, and was really hard at first, but then super sticky), one pritt glue stick, one roll of plastic to cover books and notebooks... meanwhile, the place was getting packed, the line stretching down the stairs to the first floor, where the books were waiting patiently.

finally, when your pile of supplies was complete, the attendant would write each and every item on a little piece of paper and take the merchandise away from the counter (and *gasp* the client!). she handed you the little paper to take downstairs and give it to the older woman at the caja, which refers to the cash register, but was literally a glass box with a small opening for transactions, where she would add everything up and tell you (well, your mom) the total to pay. she would then give you a receipt, which you would take to the entrega de mercancía section, where your merchandise (that mountain of shiny supplies you had parted with so abruptly upstairs) would come down through a hole in the ceiling in a christmas paper-wrapped box with a rope attached, a makeshift elevator of sorts, and into the arms of another attendant who would almost always screw up the packages and give you the wrong one, which is why it was vital to always check inside.

all of this, only to lose, in the case of my darling panzón, half of it on the first day of school.

don't look down

2010-08-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

my sister was seven, so i was probably three. we were playing outside of our high-rise apartment building in guadalajara, mexico. the twin towers stood out in the once flat city, looming over the country club golf course. we lived in the "poor" tower, which was identical to the "rich" tower, minus its high profile residents. anyway, there was a three story difference between the two free-standing buildings, which was basically a wall that only came up about a foot on the higher side. there was a row of short dying bushes with gaps revealing a little path between the plants and the precipice. and that's where we were.

this is what i remember. some parts might be real and some other parts might be dreams. there might have been a third child there. and there was possibly a rock roughly the size of a brick on the narrow path behind the bushes. my sister tripped and fell over the short wall. down, down, down, three stories. i was scared to look down, but did. i think a guard was nearby and ran towards her. she was lying on the ground. i don't know if it was my own initiative or if the guard shouted at me, but i went to look for my parents.

i ran through the lobby into one of the two elevators, which i had never been on by myself. i could barely reach the button with the six on it, which was our floor. did i jump or did i stand on tippy-toes, stretching my arm and my finger upwards? i remember the smell of the elevator and the feeling of the spring behind the button pushing my finger back and the circle that lit up around it. our door was on the right. did i knock, did i ring the bell, was it open? i ran across the apartment to their room. i found them. then i draw a blank. sometimes i wonder if i did anything at all.

my sister was lucky. she was a gymnast and followed her instincts as she fell head first towards the pavement by flipping in the air and landing on her feet. she broke so many leg bones and a number of vertebrae that my parents feared she might never walk again. but the doctors did such an excellent job that she recovered completely and we seldom remember that this ever happened. yet this event was one of the defining moments of my childhood. i had been brave and capable of helping in an emergency. in short, i had been a hero.

pop!

2010-07-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

this is coco's first preschool art creation, a work of striking contrast, displayed on our refrigerator, which doubles as a gallery for temporary exhibitions.

panzón calls it paul, after the famous german octopus that recently foresaw spain's victory in the world cup.

i like to call it pop, which is the catalan word for our eight-tentacled marine friend that i personally enjoy a la gallega, but also in reverence for our dearest father of pop art, andy warhol. after all, it is andy's magnetic bust that holds the art in place. oh, the symbolism!

coco just calls it ¡un pulpo!. so, we proudly present to you ¡un pulpo!, 2010, mixed media (including some edible media). admission, as always, is free, and may or may not include a cold drink.

chewed gum

2010-07-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

this one time, when i was around eleven (i might have been older), my parents and i went out to dinner with a doctor who had come from out of town. i hardly knew him at the time, but my parents were delighted to see him and to be able to invite him to a nice italian restaurant.

i being my usual self and was under very good behavior, when my mom turned to me with piercing eyes and asked me, "why did you put your gum there?". i had no idea what she was talking about, so i followed her pointing finger to find a piece of chewed gum placed on the booth divider. "um, that's not mine", i said quietly. my mom and i were looking at each other in a silent duel, when we heard a loud voice saying rather casually, "oh, that gum is mine. i put it there". we both turned in astonishment and were met with the smiling face of the doctor, who would become a close family friend.

the bucket

2010-07-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

coco's sand toys include: two buckets, one shovel, one rake and a set of rainbow stacking cups. we have managed to keep the cup set complete, which is pretty impressive, considering we share our toys with the other kids at the playground, which is an unspoken rule at our park. in the past week, our modest toy collection has been targeted twice by parents infected with a very unsettling, yet common virus: greed.

the first incident happened when i was gathering up our toys to leave the playground. our blue bucket (see image above) was missing, so i scanned the playground and found it in the sand amidst other plastic toys. i approached the middle-aged father sitting nearby and politely pointed out mine saying, "excuse me, i think that's my bucket", to which he replied, without even glancing at the aforementioned toys, "it's not. this is all our stuff". i said, "oh, okay" and walked away, even though i knew for a fact that it was coco's. i'm not spineless, i just figured it's not worth arguing about a bucket that costs a dollar.

just this morning, i witnessed a similar occurrence. coco and i were walking back to the playground after filling her remaining (pink) bucket with water, when i heard a mom asking her toddler, "isn't that your shovel?". she then walked over to the bench where our things were, grabbed the plastic toy and inspected it carefully. unsatisfied with her findings, she threw it on the ground. this woman is very attractive, drives a luxury suv and has a giant diamond ring. why does she care so much about a plastic shovel? i wonder what i would have done had she taken it.

it saddens me a little to think that i'm going to have to sharpie coco's name on her toys to avoid future confrontations with greedy parents and not possessive toddlers.

naïveté

2010-06-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

coco's back and she's more potty trained than ever! ready for summer and (hopefully) ready for preschool, which is only a month away.

meanwhile, i'm filling out forms that make me realize two things: 1. that my hands start aching after two minutes of writing with a pen, and 2. that things might happen while coco is at school. i'm not talking about her being lost in translation or getting her feelings hurt by another kid. those are little things that i expect to happen. i'm talking about big things like THE BIG ONE. it freaks me out that i have to prepare an earthquake bag with an extra set of clothing and a meaningful item from home and pay $10 for an emergency kit containing food and other supplies.

this reminds me of the time panzón and i went to get my second or third ultrasound when i was pregnant. we were so excited to find out the sex of our baby that it hit us like a ton of bricks when the technician said quite indifferently, "the fetus shows no signs of malformation". and then, very causally, "so, do you want to know the sex?". holy crap. there could have been something wrong with the baby. that, it suddenly dawned on me, is why when asked what sex mothers want their unborn child to be, they answer with a (now-i-don't-think-it's-so-)corny, "i don't care, as long as it's healthy".

i guess i'm just naïve sometimes. which will probably come in handy when coco decides she wants to give scuba diving a shot or turns seventeen and wants to go to france for a semester. i'm just thankful that other people (people in schools and hospitals) give these things more thought.

el sarcófago

2010-06-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

this is our car. oh, how it glistens under the california sun! see how it takes flight like a magnificent bird! it can also, if you have good arranging skills, fit a large amount of ikea furniture in the back. did i mention it has a sun roof? it's such an awesome car that i've even learned to live with its maroon interior, which is leather, by the way.

however, lately there had been sightings of oil on our driveway. i immediately pointed out the spots, which had been growing larger and larger, to panzón. i also pointed out several bird droppings that decorated the hood. he checked the oil and said that everything looked ok. everything, except the poop, of course, which he didn't clean. but neither did i, so i couldn't really complain.

anyway, weeks went by and alas! the car *almost* broke down yesterday. in all probability the transmission was to blame and repairing it would cost more than the car itself! el sarcófago is priceless. we couldn't possibly afford more than that!

this morning i was already thinking about ways to survive temporarily without our only car: panzón rides his new foldable bike to work anyway, coco's new school and the park are both at walking distances and trader joe's is only a couple of blocks away, as is whole foods... when panzón called to tell me it was not the transmission after all! from my somewhat limited understanding of the subject of mechanics, it was something a lot cheaper. who cares what it was!

after this scare, i vow to keep el sarco poop-free, even if it means doing more than pointing it out to panzón, like handing him a bucket and a sponge, and maybe even getting my t-shirt a little wet for motivational purposes only.

hair

2010-06-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

this may be obvious for people who have known me since childhood, but i'm going to set the record straight for all of the newcomers: coco has my hair. my light brown, curly, unruly, truly adorable hair. i somehow lost it along the way. puberty? bleaching? pregnancy? negligence? it's a mystery.

i think i sensed the change and tried to do something about it sometime around my tenth birthday because i spent the $100 i got from a family member and spent it all on a brush. one mason pearson hair brush. ñaña, my childhood friend, swore by it and she had nice hair. plus, it came from england. i probably used it twice. i never brushed again. seriously, i don't even own a brush.

come to think of it, my hair has only looked good in three stages of my life: 1. early childhood, when it looked exactly like coco's; 2. late adolescence, when i was a hair model and got my hair colored (platinum blond) and cut (boy short) every month, in front of an eager-to-learn group of hairstyling students; 3. that planchado express era during my early twenties, when i got my long hair straightened for only 40 mexican pesos at least once a week.

other than that my hair has been either just okay or an absolute disaster, as was the case in barcelona, where i did not get a decent cut in two years. these days my hair gets the same treatment as my teeth, except for the brushing: once a year in mexico.

our park's a dump

2010-04-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

(no photo for this post on account of nudity)

coco and i were at the park the other morning, just enjoying the sunny day and making a castle with damp sand, when something caught my eye. it was the bare bottom of a kid hovering over a mound of sand. it appeared as though he was practicing the ancient art of taking a crap in the great outdoors, right there next to the plastic playground slide.

i looked over at a nearby bench where three nannies were sitting, chatting away, unaware of the unsanitary occurrence i was witnessing. coco was too busy packing sand into a bucket to notice and the kid had stopped straining after producing nothing, so i decided to give the woman responsible for the kid a chance to react. but when no such reaction came and the boy's penis loomed in front of my face, i had no choice but to shout, "¡este niño se bajó los calzones! ¿quién viene con él?", which was a huge mistake because coco, who speaks spanish almost exclusively, immediately stopped what she was doing, turned around and proceeded to stare at the kid's genitals in amazement.

the whole thing obviously had a lasting impression on coco, who brought it up at dinnertime as the highlight of her day.

leaving barcelona

2010-03-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

we gave back the key to our miniscule loft on the morning of the second day of the year 2008. we wanted to stay until the very end, just like when we had arrived almost two years earlier when, wanting to move in as soon as possible, we had slept on towels and sheets because our mattress hadn't been delivered yet.

we celebrated new year's eve with a couple of benjamines, personal-sized bottles of cava (the spanish equivalent of champagne) and twelve wishing grapes each. we could barely hear the crowds of drunken people just a couple of blocks away, muffled by the thick walls of our old building into a quiet rumbling sound. the next day the streets were dead silent and the thick rug of broken glass that covers las ramblas every noche vieja was swept up and taken away by an army of small BCNeta! trucks as if nothing had happened.

the woman from the rental agency appeared at our soon-to-be ex-address at ten sharp and rang the alarmingly loud intercom. the space looked just as we had found it: empty, except for a ladder that we had lovingly added and two-month-old coco, fast asleep on her little raft, floating peacefully into oblivion. apparently, the lady was in a hurry and matter-of-factly rushed us out, slamming the door and ushering us out of the building into the now bustling street.

we wanted to take one last walk around before squeezing into our previously packed car and driving an hour or so to reus, where we would hibernate for a month, waiting for coco to be old enough for traveling overseas. it's very unsettling to feel so vulnerable in your own neighborhood, to have to pee and not be able to do so in your own bathroom. and i had to pee. so, we went to the only place that we knew we could count on near plaça catalunya, even though i always complained about it, el corte inglés, the famous spanish department store.

it was crowded, as always, and we waited while the sluggish elevators opened their doors to spit people out and gobble them up again repeatedly until it was finally our turn to be squashed with strangers. upstairs there was a very long line for the restroom, and by the time i was done, coco needed to be fed and changed. so we took the elevator again, which took infinitely longer than the first time, to the diaper changing station located on the children's level. there was also a lactation room, so i figured i should pump for coco's next feeding while we were there.

when we finally managed to step outside the five-level store, several hours had elapsed, it was getting dark outside and it had started raining heavily. after helplessly waiting for the rain to cease, we made a run for it, feeling horribly irresponsible for not having a rain cover for the stroller and trying our best not to fall on the slippery pavement.

we were drenched when we got to the car. we were so tired and so sad that it was actually quite comical. we drove slowly in the dark with the car's yellow lights illuminating the raindrops that the windshield wipers immediately swished away. coco was asleep and we drove in silence. then, two little bright white dots appeared in front of us. they kept growing and growing until we realized that a car was coming toward us on the slow lane of a four lane highway. i was so scared that i didn't even scream, i just thought this is it. cars kept passing us on the left, leaving no room for our red golf, but panzón managed to change lanes at the very last second and we made it.

yes, leaving barcelona was hard.

adiós, chupi

2010-03-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

the other night right before bedtime, i mentioned to coco that her pacifier, which she calls chupi, was getting kind of gross and that we would have to throw it out soon. the next morning, she continued the conversation by asking, "we are going to buy a new one, right?", to which i had no answer. panzón got me off the hook by diverting her attention and later that day, after some thought, i told her that we would not be getting a new one.

i told her the truth, that she's too old to be using a pacifier and that it could be harmful for her mouth in the long run. she yelled out, "¡mama no!", and went running to her crib. i imagined a toddler protest scene: coco with the pacifier in her mouth, stomping her foot and holding on to her crib with all of her might. but she actually took the chupi out, kissed it several times and said goodbye. she then, to my utter amazement, threw it in the trash can. i almost cried.

pedro

2010-02-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

panzón makes his morning commute by kick scooter and bus, unless it rains, in which case coco and i take him in the sarcophagus, which is our beloved (and only) car. on a bright and sunny summer morning last year, as panzón arrived at work, he noticed two tree-trimmers and their tree-trimming truck right outside his building. he stopped, cautiously stepped off of his two-wheeled vehicle, folded it and waited for permission to pass from the street-level-tree-trimmer, who blew his whistle. the tree-level-tree-trimmer must have not heard the whistle over his chainsaw because while panzón was making a dash for the door below, after receiving a hand signal to do so, a cross section of the tree trunk whistled past his ear and hit him on the shoulder, barely missing his head, and knocking him to the ground.

at that moment, the tree-trimmers began to argue in spanish about whose fault it had been with a lot of pendejo-calling and finger-pointing. they, of course, tried to blame panzón, who surprised them by being mexican, but didn't get very far. by the time the tree-level-tree-trimmer had descended, and panzón had stopped seeing estrellitas (little stars), the street-level-tree-trimmer, who had a name tag that said pedro, offered him an ambulance. panzón refused the offer, figuring that if a tylenol at a hospital can cost up to fifty dollars, ambulance rides must be in the thousands. a co-worker took him to the hospital, where his cuts and abrasions were treated.

about a week later, as panzón was leaving for work, he opened the front door and saw pedro walking up our street towards our home. i thought maybe he had been fired and was seeking some sort of revenge. or maybe he felt terribly about what had happened and wanted to apologize. most of all, i speculated about how he had gotten our address. when they made eye contact, pedro got a puzzled look on his face and said, "hey, it's you! what are you doing here?". to which panzón responded perplexedly, "i live here. what are you doing here?". he was trimming a tree across the street.

the grand godparents

2010-02-18T13:11:00.000-08:00

this weekend is ov's baptism and panzón and i are going to be his godparents, or as panzón announced proudly at the baptismal crash course we had to take in order to accept this honor, his grandparents. instead of elbowing him frantically like i did, the elderly lady giving the course was kind enough to agree with him, saying that both roles had a similar effect on a child's life, with one important difference: religion. after that, i sat very still through the rest of the course and kept drawing blanks when she asked simple questions about the sacraments, baptism and being a godparent.

i've gone to a couple of catholic schools in my life and have been submerged in baptismal waters three times, each in a different country. i didn't realize that this was considered sacrilege (i had always thought that i had been extra-blessed) until i tried to get my papers in order to get permission to get married in the church. the mexican priest who interviewed my parents and i was skeptical when i told him that i had been baptized in l.a., had my first communion in san diego and my confirmation in bogotá, colombia. my confirmation papers said i had been baptized in colombia, too. very sketchy indeed.

needless to say, i am not very religious, although i do find much spiritual value in certain symbolic traditions, like marriage (i felt illuminated inside santo domingo church in oaxaca, bursting with beethoven's ode to joy) and baptism (we haven't baptized coco yet, but that's another story). as for being ov's godmother, i can honestly say that mother will be the active ingredient with a touch of god here and there. i think panzón is going to stick with being grand.

tiny tragedy

2010-02-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

yesterday was valentine's day and the sun came out in southern california to warm our damp hearts after a stormy month. we opened the blinds to let the sun pour into our living room and then left, enjoying a morning out at a sunday farmers market. panzón had to work, so coco and i spent the afternoon at my parents', watching the winter olympics, video-chatting with my sister, her husband and baby ov (who now crawls, by the way) and making a messy valentine card, which included gobs of glue and glitter, for panzón.

by the time we all got back home, which was past coco's bedtime, fafa the fish had ceased to exist. luckily, coco went straight to bed and didn't see him entangled in his fake plant, pale and motionless. he had been our pet for only two weeks and now he was being flushed down the toilet. i called my parents, who just happen to live close to the aquarium where we got the original fafa, and asked them to pick up a successor in the morning, while i took coco to the park.

panzón washed the fish bowl and put it back in its place, fake plant and all. this morning, coco was so busy getting dressed, eating breakfast and brushing her teeth, that she didn't realize her beloved fish was missing in his bowl. we had a great time at the park and when we got home, a slightly darker fafa was there to greet us.

here's to fafa the first. apparently the sun shone just a little too brightly for him.

piano

2010-02-08T13:21:00.000-08:00

even though my musical instrument is the violin (see the violin), i have always had a deep admiration for the piano. maybe because my sister played it on sleepy afternoons, making it my siesta soundtrack, or because i listened to too much tori amos during my adolescence (i still love her first three albums, but have not even bothered with her last four) and listen to a lot of nina simone. i never acted on this feeling because i thought pianos were unoriginal and because, even though my hands are anatomically perfect for the instrument, i secretly feared my fingers would not be strong enough. also, i didn't have the passion.

how did i know i didn't have the passion? because i have seen the passion. okay, so i've seen it mostly in movies. in the young murderess of vier minuten (http://tr.im/NuDK), in the stuttering scatterbrain of shine (http://tr.im/NuE5), in the cowardly hero of the pianist (http://tr.im/NuEn), in the sexually repressed piano teacher in la pianiste (http://tr.im/NuEF), in the mute mother of the piano (http://tr.im/NuEM), and last but not least, in the playful child genius in amadeus (tee hee hee!).

sometimes i wonder maybe coco will have the passion. i have caught her sliding her finger yearningly over the tusks of elephants in pictures, producing a charming melody by jingling a set of house keys, stepping on her grandfather's feet as though they were pedals. will my piano fantasy lead me to repeat history in the form of a red piano for her third birthday? it is a toy, after all.

something's fishy

2010-02-02T16:57:00.001-08:00

meet fafa, coco's first pet. we got him and his bowl (panzón and i took a minimalist approach to the interior design) on saturday at a local mom and pop aquarium shop. i think the rainbow fish by swiss writer/illustrator marcus pfister was influential in her decision to get a blue betta instead of a goldfish, like elmo's dorothy and pinocchio's cleo. also, they're overrated.

when we asked her what she wanted to name him, she said "coco". i told her to choose another name, since that's her occasional nickname (and official blog name). she couldn't think of anything else, so we named him fafa in honor of a little stuffed octopus we lost months ago at blockbuster. she still remembers him and i always tell her that he's happy watching movies like finding nemo (http://tr.im/MCdM) and the life aquatic with steve zissou (http://tr.im/MCe2) while eating tubs of popcorn.

meanwhile, the real fafa gets his entertainment from watching us while eating his daily dose of three tiny pellets.

fruity and loopy

2010-01-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

before christmas, our fruit was homeless. mangos, bananas, pears and kiwis would roll around aimlessly on our counter top before wobbly settling on the drab skin-colored tile surface. fruit is supposed to brighten up a kitchen, but ours was far from looking like a still life, it was just still there.

my mom, who has always been keen on having a bounty of fruit on the kitchen counter (i think she equates a kitchen without a fruit bowl to a woman without lipstick), found this scenario a bit depressing. she also found the perfect solution just in time for the holidays: the fruit loop fruit bowl, handmade with a single piece of chromed steel wire, designed by anglo-swiss duo dan black and martin blum (http://www.black-blum.com). it was a christmas miracle for the displaced fruit!

i wonder if my mom will ever get me to wear lipstick on an regular basis.

la fonda

2010-01-27T16:38:00.000-08:00

coco, panzón and i were recently in guadalajara, mexico, where we visited the children's museum, el trompo mágico (http://tr.im/LVN5), which means "the magic spinning top". we were surprised to see that it was not at all crowded for a saturday and coco fully enjoyed her experience at maroma (summersault), the pavilion dedicated to younger children. she filled her shopping cart with realistic mock fruit and then checked out at the market, carefully placed faux freshly laid eggs in their cartons at the farm, gave medical exams and vaccines to newborn dolls at the clinic, and cooked and served plastic food at the restaurant or fonda.

maroma is filled with the delightful drawings of cecilia rébora (http://crebora.blogspot.com/), a brilliant local children's illustrator. i especially liked the fonda's backdrop, a collage-like mural in which a turtle wearing a bow tie is enjoying his dinner. i immediately recognized the background photo as being one of my favorite restaurants in guadalajara (it's actually in the town of zapopan, which was swallowed by the city): la fonda de doña gabina escolástica.

a fonda, by definition, is a humble establishment that offers regional food at economical prices. fondas are usually managed by women (doña means lady), as opposed to street food stands, which are typically run by men. doña gabina escolástica's fonda is located near the basílica de zapopan, home of the famous virgen de zapopan, a small wooden statue whose romería is one of the most important pilgrimages in mexico. the fonda's decoration is simple, yet inviting: colorful papel picado (perforated paper), bright printed tablecloths, posters from mexico's golden age of film and lucha libre (mexican wrestling) paraphernalia.

although this fonda is famous for its pozole, which is a flavorful and very satisfying soup, the menu is full of delicious antojitos. my all-time favorite is the tostada de manitas de cerdo, which is pickled pigs feet on a refried bean-smeared tostada covered with shredded cabbage and tomato sauce. it comes in a deboned presentation upon request, but i personally prefer to gnaw on each of the tiny bones and leave them in a neat little pile on my plate.

the violin

2009-12-21T15:18:00.001-08:00

on my eighth birthday i was extremely disappointed to find, amidst an ocean of wrapping paper, a violin. the good thing is that my parents, who gave me the instrument, were not disappointed to later find that i was a complete failure at playing it. at least i tried. three times.

i come from a somewhat musical family (i say somewhat because there is no confirmed evidence of musicality on my father's side). my maternal great-grandfather was an accomplished trumpet player, who taught herb alpert (who i always thought was herp albert, until i recently *five seconds ago* googled him) and played on gone with the wind and woody woodpecker. my mom has a beautiful voice and actually recorded a boleros tape as a gift to my dad back in the nineties. my sister and i were bored out of our minds in the studio, although it was cool watching our mother sing her heart out with a trío from tijuana. as a result, those six songs were imbedded in my brain forever. my sister also sings very well and will do so at any given moment, if there is musical accompaniment present, be it a complete mariachi or a karaoke machine. her most memorable performance, for me, was at panzón and my wedding in oaxaca, when she sang a couple of rancheras with the mariachi at two a.m. oh, and she also plays the piano.

so, with that musical background, i should have been a semi-talented violin player at the very least. what happened? it is a known fact that you must begin playing the violin before the age of seven, if you are to master this extremely difficult instrument. even if i had been excited about getting a violin instead of, say, a toy for my eighth birthday, it would have probably been too late anyway. still, i tried. i can only recall two things about my first batch of violin lessons, which began immediately after receiving it: 1. how the instrument painfully dug into my skinny collarbone; 2. how enjoyable it was to apply rosin to the horsehair of the bow.

after that, there was a three year long cease-play period, which ended when i was about thirteen. i really made an effort during the second bundle of lessons, which culminated in a retirement home recital with my fellow students, most of whom were seven years old and/or asian. i practiced my solo for weeks, a simple yet dignified piece from the pages of suzuki violin school, volume 2 or 3. my big moment came and i stepped on stage. it was actually going well when, all of a sudden, right in the middle of my performance, my mind went completely blank. i looked out into the audience and saw a room full of old people shaking their heads in disapproval. i truthfully cannot remember exactly what i did next, but i probably butchered the rest of the piece after a long, humiliating pause, and, with an either very red or very pale face, walked off the stage.

we moved back to guadalajara soon after that, where i attempted to play the violin for the third time. my mom drove me to class a couple of days a week after my daily nap (yes, i napped through high school and still do when the chance presents itself), dry-eyed and dazed. my teacher was an aged austrian man who had a fascist teaching technique, due to the fact that most of his students were young men training to be mariachis. i think he was fond of me because he would occasionally tell me an unrecognizable joke, revealed as such only by a fleeting, stiff smile. the lessons tapered off as my mom realized that the chemistry between teacher and student and violin was simply non existent.

maybe i'll take up the violin again when i'm eighty. i'm pretty sure vibrato won't be an issue then.

the cockroach and the tick (a love story)

2009-12-09T14:28:00.001-08:00

panzón and i went to peru for our honeymoon because we did not want to relax on a beach somewhere. that's just not us. we wanted to do something adventurous like staying in the amazon rainforest and going to machu picchu, which we did by train because we thought the three day hike from cuzco was too much. and that's not us, either.

we spent the first two days in lima, where we visited the historic center of the city, went to a great museum (http://www.museolarco.org), ate unbelievable ceviche(http://www.larosanautica.com), enjoyed a delicious meal in an archeological site, (http://www.resthuacapucllana.com) and drank inca kola, the national soft drink, which is as yellow as the colonial buildings in the plaza de armas. the view of the sunset over the pacific ocean was breathtaking from the rooftop pool of our hotel (http://www.miraflorespark.com), but even more astonishing was the blinding milky substance with which the building was enveloped every morning, a dense fog called garúa.

from lima we took a plane to puerto maldonado and then a windowless bus to the madre de dios river and then a small boat to our eco-lodge (http://www.inkaterra.com/en/reserva-amazonica), located in the tambopata natural reserve, which is in the amazon basin. we spent four days there, amidst all kinds of wonderful wildlife (like an over-sized snail, swinging spider monkeys, the occasional toucan and the capybara, a.k.a. the largest rodent in the world), wearing black rubber boots that got stuck in the mud during our excursions. we were lulled to sleep by the sounds of the rainforest, but were awakened on our last night by an offbeat sound, the sound of a leak in the roof of our cabaña, of giant drops of water splashing into an open duffle bag filled with dirty laundry. although the smell of the rainforest is fresh after rainfall, our soggy, muddy clothes had a more rancid scent.

it's quite a change to go from the warm and humid lowlands of the amazon basin to the chilly heights of andean cuzco, so we arrived at our 16th-century-monastery-converted-into-hotel (http://www.monasterio.orient-express.com) in a daze. while sipping a welcoming coca leaf tea in the lobby, we were quite embarrassed about the foul odor emanating from our luggage.

the next day, we boarded the machu picchu-bound train before dawn and watched the sun come up as we zigzagged our way out of the valley (this sounds faster than it actually is, which is painfully

s l o w). the spectacular trip through the sacred valley, passing the colorful villages tucked in the foothills of the andes, following the urubamba river ended at the aguas calientes train station, where we took an exhilaratingly bumpy bus ride on a narrow road to the ancient citadel of the inca empire.

machu picchu is an awe-inspiring place to say the least. the heavy rocks that make up the architecture (temples, housing and terraces alike) are shaped and placed with utmost precision and uncanny delicacy. the energy there is unbelievable and it made me feel very big and very small at the same time.

we had been walking around for hours and i was getting kind of tired, so i decided to sit down for a bit. it was during this short resting period that a nearby llama got irritated at a tourist for taking its picture and charged towards me, the innocent bystander with partially sunburnt calves (namely, the part between my cropped pants' legs and socks). i had heard that llamas spit when annoyed, so i quickly left the scene, just like the perpetrator had seconds before.

a romantic inca bath awaited us back at the hotel that evening, complete with rose petals, bubbles, chocolates and champagne. as i undressed, i noticed a respectably sized mole on my left side and thought, huh, wasn't that on the other side? had one of my moles shifted from my right side to my left? i asked panzón to help solve the mystery, which he did with a pair of tweezers by extracting a tick. it was in fact a mole, a tiny parasitical mole burrowing through my skin to feed on my blood. the little sucker probably attached itself to me during the short break i took in machu picchu, right before the llama incident, probably right at the moment when that insensitive tourist's camera's flash went off.

we weren't going to let this spoil our evening, so we slipped into the no-longer-so-warm, yet fragrant waters of our honeymoon bath. we were clinking our champagne glasses together and popping a truffle in each others' mouths, when out of the corner of my eye i saw something, slightly more elongated than the chocolate melting in my mouth, but pretty much of the same size and color, move across the open doorway. we got out of the tub to investigate. there it was, a huge cockroach scurrying underneath our hotel room door towards the hallway. it had apparently hitched a ride with us all the way from the rainforest in our reeking duffel bag and was now on its way to mortify us, by making a public appearance. panzón, shoe in hand and wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, valiantly stepped out of the room and returned with the SMACK!ed and CRUNCH!ed cockroach corpse.

and so it was that the andean tick and the amazonian cockroach went on their final journey together, individually wrapped in shrouds of tissue paper, flushed down the toilet of a high-end hotel.

three toddler toys

2009-12-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

so, christmas is near, and i just wanted to share these three awesome toys that coco loves. who knows? maybe santa reads this blog!

1. sirch sibis max (http://www.sirch.de) ride-on vehicle: german engineering for toddlers. coco got this as a gift from our friends/co-workers from the architecture studio where panzón and i worked in barcelona (http://www.tonetsunyer.com) when she was born. we put it inside of a suitcase and stuffed it with clothes when we moved here three months later. it's been parked in our living room, making a great decoration piece, for two years and coco's finally playing with it, giving ofe the frog a well-deserved rest and taking her for an occasional ride in the bottom compartment, of course.

2. plan toys balancing cactus (http://www.plantoys.com): this colorful and non-prickly cactus reminds us of mexico, which is why we affectionately call it "el nopal". it helps coco develop different skills, while being eco-friendly and looking beautiful in its many configurations. it also sits proudly on a shelf in our living room.

3. bilibo (http://www.bilibo.com): "what is it?", everyone asked at coco's birthday party, as she unwrapped it. actually, the only downfall to this toy is wrapping it, which i did clumsily with paper and an oversized bow. anyway, no one really knows what it is, except probably for its swiss designer, but kids know what it's for - anything, really. like stacking, spinning, storing, siting, sliding... oh, and it looks sculptural, too!

two years ago, pt. 3

2009-11-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

i woke up to see panzón in scrubs and a funny, shower-cap-looking hat, smiling uncontrollably and taking way too many pictures. looking back at those pictures, i realize that i, too, was wearing such a cap. the power nap energized me and, once the midwives came into the room, we were ready to go. i obviously had no idea what i was doing, but after a while, i understood that contractions are waves that you have to catch and ride out by pushing steadily.

there were about two hours of pushing and pausing and pushing, all of it captured on video by panzón, who was also there to hold my hand. while i pushed with all of my might from the inside, a midwife was using her hands and arms to push from the outside. coco was probably pushing too, with her little coconut head, because i felt a tremendous and slightly painful pressure right at the time when it PLOP!ed out. and then there she was: red, with a tiny scrunched-up face and a head full of hair.

she was placed on my breast immediately, which was beautiful, but also overwhelming. now what?, i asked myself, scared, excited, exhausted. i had been concentrating so much on giving birth, that i hadn't thought much about sustaining life.

two years ago, pt. 2

2009-11-17T13:10:00.000-08:00

morning came and i was still not dilating in the dilating room. to get things going, a nurse applied prostaglandin gel in the form of a long, white shoelace that went in in in, against the current that was steadily flowing out. pretty soon, the contractions started (panzón and my mom took turns keeping me company and timing the waves of pain that came over me) and by noon, i was ready for the epidural. i was taken to the delivery room (alone!) and was told that the anesthesiologist would be with me in fifteen minutes. ok, i thought, totally doable, just a handful of contractions.

so there i was, alone and half-naked in a room filled with medical equipment, the most daunting machine of all staring me in the face. i could hear it mocking me with its ticking and its tocking. fifteen minutes went slowly by, then another fifteen excruciating minutes, and yet another. it seemed like the clock kept getting bigger and rounder and louder, the black numbers burning into my white pain. in between contractions, i was like a frog sticking out its tongue to catch a passing fly, or nurse.

when i finally caught one, she explained that another woman needed the injection first, to which the socialist in me replied "yes, i understand". after all, i was in a public hospital, receiving free healthcare, and if someone else needed it more, i would wait calmly. and i did. kind of. i ignored the clock and squeezed my pillow until the surprisingly young anesthesiologist came in, instructed me to lie on my side and stay still, which was nearly impossible during a contraction, and applied the injection.

oh, sweet numbness! i felt like i was floating on a fluffy, white cloud and fell into a deep sleep.

two years ago, pt. 1

2009-11-11T14:37:00.000-08:00

two years ago, i awoke suddenly with the feeling that i had peed in my pajama pants, which are a pair of fuzzy, lime green drawstring sweatpants. that feeling took me back in time to a place in my life filled with the smell of apple juice and graham crackers, when i was a little over two years old and had the occasional potty accident. just like i did then, i felt embarrassed and confused and wet. i got out of bed in the two-in-the-morning darkness and clumsily found my way to the bathroom. then, sitting on the toilet, it dawned on me: my water had broken. the time had come (two weeks early?!). OH MY GOD.

i woke panzón up, by calling out from the bathroom, and told him what had happened. i was expecting him to freak out, yet he calmly asked me what color my waters were, so i parted my legs and squinted into the toilet bowl, but could not make anything out, since i was not wearing my glasses. he brought them to me, informed me that pinkish was good and instructed me to take a nice, relaxing shower while he called my mom, who was staying half a block away from where we lived. after hanging up, he thoughtfully packed my bag, helped me out of the shower and had me stand sideways in my underwear to take the last picture of my belly.

i was pretty uncomfortable and anxious, feeling the amniotic fluid drip drip dripping out of me, so when my mom arrived, we immediately left to the hospital, even though we knew we could wait until the contractions started. we walked to the car, which was parked in a public parking structure a couple of blocks away, past a bar overflowing with english hooligans from that night's football match, and over tiny rivulets of drunken urine that converged in the drains of our pedestrian street.

after a quick check-in/check-up at the hospital, we were informed that there were no signs of cervix dilation or effacement. they would have sent me back home, but let me spend the rest of the night in a dilating room, since it was so late. my mom went back to her hotel in a taxi and panzón stayed with me in the room that i shared with a south american woman, who snored very loudly during those last hours of the night and whose contractions started at dawn and rose with the sun. the snores behind the dividing curtain were replaced by "¡ay, mamá!" and "¡ay, mamita!" and "¡AY, AY, AY, AY, AAAAYYYYY!".

meanwhile, i was painless, but ¡AY!ing on the inside.

elephant in the room/car/boat

2009-10-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

the stone on my engagement ring is lime green, which happens to be my favorite color. it's a peridot, probably from afghanistan, on a vintage setting, probably from the sixties. panzón and i bought it online and it came one november morning on a big brown truck, as we were leaving for disneyland with my parents. my dad, who has a sixth sense for delivery trucks, caught a glimpse of it and tracked it down, first by car, then by foot. we watched as he persuaded the man in the brown uniform, with matching socks, to give him the parcel by showing him the address on his drivers license. my dad got back in the car and triumphantly handed the cardboard box over to panzón, who opened it and, after rummaging through the packaging popcorn, extracted a small ring box. i covered my eyes as the three of them oohed and aahed.

once the ring was safely in its box in panzón's pocket, we stopped talking about it and it became the elephant in the room, or rather, the car. panzón smuggled the lime green elephant into disneyland, where it almost made its debut on the dumbo ride, which would have been so fitting, except that i made the mistake of saying that i thought that movie was sad. as the day went on, my initial excitement turned into anxiousness, then irritation, and finally into indifference.

later that afternoon, when i had already forgotten about the whole thing, i felt a nervous hand searching for my finger in the quiet, pitch dark of the pirates of the caribbean ride, between the blue bayou restaurant and the first drop, before all of the yo-ho-ho-ing. the ring felt heavy on my finger, but heavier still was the frustration of not being able to see it. i was so preoccupied with this that i completely forgot about the drop and suddenly felt the rush of weightlessness. the elephant fell off the boat and was replaced by laughing and hugging and kissing.

here's a lime green elephant that you can actually ride from danish company, bObles: http://tr.im/DmrH

quinceañera

2009-10-23T13:18:00.001-07:00

i've only been to a quinceañera once in my life. it was not mine and i was not fifteen. i was probably around seventeen when my lifelong and then inseparable friend, ev, invited me to his cousin's party.

i met ev at the cute little french school in guadalajara (in mexico, not spain) when we were around three-and-a-half years old. he had extremely straight, shiny, dark hair, which he later dyed royal blue in high school, and very squeezable cheeks, which he still has, under his beard. he loved dinosaurs and slimy goblins and had a birthday party at guadalajara's first mcdonald's, which was so avant-garde at the time.

after many years apart, we reconnected in los angeles, when he came to visit with his family. we were delighted to discover that we were both avid listeners of the smashing pumpkins and other similar bands. we were moving back to mexico and ev, with plenty of encouragement from my parents, convinced me to go to his high school. soon after that, i myself turned fifteen, for which my parents gave me a very special gift: a pair of silver eight-hole doctor martens.

so here we are, around seventeen and at a quinceañera, dancing exaggeratedly like we've always enjoyed, mouths halfway open, arms flying everywhere. ev tells me in a serious tone that we have to talk. oh my god. the talk. this is going to ruin our friendship. he's totally going to tell me that he likes me. wow, it really took him a while to realize it, but it was bound to happen. now i'm going to have to tell him that we're just friends, but it'll never be the same again. i ineffectively try to avoid the talk and it eventually makes its way to my ears, but wait! what just came out of ev's mouth? did he just say that he's bisexual? i love it! i give him a big hug and tell him how great that is.

how embarrassingly enormous was my ego? huge. and how horribly wrong was my gaydar? very. ev is now a super talented artist in the gay art scene (http://ivanlozano.net).

you say tomato

2009-10-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

the best halloween costume i have ever had is, by far, the custom-made tomato costume i wore when i was nine years old, and again when i was ten and living in another city in another country. i tried wearing it after that, because i am a firm believer of extending the useful life of things, but, sadly, i could not fit into it anymore.

my thin limbs were made red by leggings and a turtleneck, and my midsection was completely covered by a red bubble, giving me warmth, while providing me with much appreciated room to expand my stomach, privacy to scratch my bellybutton, if necessary, and storage space. the hat was the finishing touch, soft and lampshade-like with a green stem sticking out at the top, also doubling as an emergency treat bag.

now that i think about it, this would have been the perfect costume for me when i was pregnant, two years ago, had we celebrated halloween. it's super comfortable, the red accentuates maternal glow, and you can secretly stash all of the candy you can get your hands on, while giving a healthy impression to others, especially kids. the only drawback: running into naughty nurses, desirable devils, foxy french maids and feeling, well, like a big about-to-burst blob.

trencadís

2009-10-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

every week i add a new recipe to my limited repertoire, as an attempt to expose coco to new flavors and ingredients, especially vegetables other than peas, tomatoes, corn, and the occasional carrot. last week, i made this zucchini lasagna (http://tr.im/BQ3O), which, of course, coco didn't even touch. can't blame me for trying.

when i make lasagna of any sort, i usually miscalculate the noodles, even though i use the super easy non-boil kind. foodies, say what you will, but cooking anything more elaborate than a quesadilla around a toddler is a feat. i just say, good thing these lasagnas aren't buildings.

in this occasion, i had to use my creativity to make up for missing sheets by summoning the pasta-shattering powers of antoni gaudí. with my yucatecan salt and pepper shakers looking on, i put together this masterpiece, that was later covered up by a sticky ricotta and cream cheese mixture and, by absorbing moisture from other ingredients, expanded in my toaster-oven, hiding its cracks forever.

by the way, coco didn't touch it because it had zucchini and because she didn't believe the white stuff was cheese, but it really did turn out delicious.

on & off

2009-10-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

the weekend came and left, as did my sister and adorable baby nephew, and coco's cold. i was not quite sure how coco was going to react to their visit, even though there was definitely some mental preparation going on before their arrival, which included a framed photograph of said nephew in coco's room, right next to the paddington bear chata brought her from london. it's challenging to explain that tía chata is my sister, and therefore her aunt, when coco herself has no siblings to speak of.

the reason i worry about these things is mostly because on previous visits with family and friends, since she was an infant, coco would scream when she was held, and sometimes even touched, by someone other than myself, panzón or my parents. this would me to stress out because, for one, her screaming would pierce my brain via both of my ears, and because even though adults understand that babies are fickle, i just know that it made tiny cracks in the hearts of family members.

now that toddlerhood has given coco more independence and confidence in herself, and that she doesn't have to be held at all, she gives us one loud, juicy kiss on each cheek and a big hug, which, to my amazement, was the greeting tía chata received when she walked through the door. coco melted when she saw her baby cousin and immediately gave him his long-anticipated nickname, ov, which is pronounced OFF.

during their visit, she would gently pat his head, sweetly kiss his chubby cheeks, and lightly touch his nose with the tip of her finger. she wanted him to sit close to her, so that they could enjoy a book together. the cold situation had me a bit uneasy, but the tenderness that oozed from coco and ov being together was just irresistible.

incidentally, coco has started referring to herself by her real name, which she pronounces ON.

why bingo, anyway?

2009-10-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

my mom and i planned a baby shower for my older, and only, sister, who we very lovingly call chata, which means short nose. this is a pretty common nickname in spanish-speaking countries. she calls mesnot face sometimes, which is infinitely worse, so it evens out. anyway, she was expecting her first baby, a boy, who is now almost four months and absolutely adorable, and for whom i still have not made up a nickname. i'm hoping something will occur to me during their visit this weekend, something that does not involve noses or snot. coincidentally, coco has just come down with a cold and a small, yet constant, amount of snot is trickling down from her nose.

anyway, we wanted to have games at her shower and looked desperately online for a modern bingo game, only to find hideous, outdated versions that did not go with our event, which turned out beautifully, by the way. so, i decided to make the game myself, using photoshop. it was a huge hit! a couple of guests went so far as to say that i should sell it. i was flattered, but didn't really take it seriously until i found that i had some extra time on my hands, in the form of small gaps during the day (coco's nap time, video-watching time and alone playtime), and that motherhood had transformed me into a more productive person (see procrastination post).

i started slowly, reading about home-based craft businesses, learning the basics of illustrator, finding suppliers and thinking about a format that would save time and money, while reducing waste. i developed the cluster design concept, which made sense to me, since every game is in itself a cluster of images. i made these illustrations, bought the necessary supplies and equipment, and, although it happened little by little, before i knew it, i had the first cluster design bingo in my hands. i opened my etsy shop and, as a way to promote it, opened a facebook page, twitter account and, finally, started my blog.

i have enjoyed every moment of the process, which has been a much needed creative outlet and a source of great personal motivation, and am exited about the journey that lies ahead. i can also thank bingo for my blog, which allows me to deconstruct my personal cluster and share it with others.

mary lou

2009-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

my athletic performance throughout my life has been mediocre at best. it all started during toddlerhood, when my mother took me to swimming lessons at a dark, warm and humid place that smelled of chlorine and the promise of a chocolate chip cookie. i was outraged to find that my instructor was a male, who wore speedos, and demanded someone else if i was expected to attend subsequent classes.

when i was about three years old, i tried gymnastics. my sister excelled at the sport, won several medals and was obsessed with nadia comaneci. we watched the nadia movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087774) like a million times. we each had the 1984 olympics american leotard and pretended to be gymnasts at home. she was always nadia, of course, and i was mary lou retton because my hair was short like hers, my sister explained. i didn't even know who she was. anyway, at the gym, my underwear would bunch up and peek through the leg line. plus, every time i attempted doing a forward roll, i would pee a little, creating a dark circle that would be clearly visible when i tried to do side splits.

later on, i tried ballet. although wearing tights under the leotard was a great improvement in my opinion, i still detested the color pink, especially powder pink, and was quite disappointed to learn, after the first class, that i would not be using a tutu on a regular basis.

then, after failing miserably at tennis, there was swimming, again. i overcame some obstacles, like changing in the locker room and diving into cold water and wearing a swim hat and showering in the locker room after class. i was doing okay, until i was signed up for a swim meet by my instructor and mom, who thought it would be a good thing, at the time. the day of the swim meet came, my parents and sister were there, along with the parents and siblings of what seemed to be a hundred competitors. i swam and swam, while loud speakers announced winners. i kept swimming and swimming, while the pool slowly emptied out. i had swum my last lap, when i realized i was one of three swimmers left. yes, i came in 98th place.

i pretty much gave up on all sports after that. years later, i discovered yoga and have been practicing, on and off, for a number of years. my mom is happy that i finally found a physical activity that i enjoy, but wishes she would have known about it when i was a child. oh well, better late than never.

mixing the colors

2009-10-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

coco and i started going to this crazy mommy and me class that is a hodgepodge of cultures, where at least six languages are spoken. the teacher tries desperately to get everyone's attention by shouting in english, while moms chat away in hindi or spanish, or encourage their children in russian or japanese, or scold their kids in farsi or hebrew. it is total chaos, yet coco loved it from the start.

there is a table set up for craft-making, which is always a messy affair. aesthetics are not a top priority for toddlers, who prefer to use every color within reach, usually resulting in a mishmash of hues. coco invariably ends up with paint on her shirt, although today it found its way to her socks and even her shoelaces. her artwork is proudly displayed on our refrigerator, right next to andy warhol and, ironically, the famous less is more statement by mies van der rohe.

circle time takes the form of an amoeba, specked with pom poms, hand puppets and bubbles. ridiculous dance moves are made, chubby fingers are accidentally stepped on, songs are exaggeratedly sung with accompanying hand gestures, and translations are simultaneously whispered, as coco exclusively understands spanish at the moment.

during snack time the moms tend to regroup, a picnic table per ethnic background, it seems. we're the exception, choosing to sit at a remote table with our friends, who got us into this mess in the first place, for which we are ever so grateful.

potty time!

2009-10-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

the other afternoon, my parents, coco and i were sitting in the living room having cookies and coffee with/or milk, when coco suddenly announced "¡pipi, caca!" and tugged at her diaper. my mom, whom i had asked previously for guidance during the daunting period of potty training, asked coco if she wanted her to take her to the bathroom. coco, who calls my mom tita, sternly said "tita no". so, my dad, also known as tata, certain that she would give him a negative, offered. to his great surprise, she answered "tata sí". we all looked at each other in shock. coco had never wanted to go to the bathroom, not even with me. tata panicked and tried desperately to get tita or me to take her, but he was the chosen one, so now he had to go.

before coco, my dad had never changed a baby's diaper, ever. much like myself, he didn't know the first thing about potty training, since my mom did all of the dirty work with my sister and i. nonetheless, he took coco into the bathroom by the hand, lowered her pants, removed her diaper and had her sit on her potty. he encouraged her to go and waited a couple of minutes. even though it turned out to be fruitless, or pipi/caca-less, i was so proud of her for trying and grateful that my dad followed through and showed me how it's done!

never on sunday

2009-09-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

panzón and i rented an unfurnished loft on barcelona's famous carrer dels tallers, an extremely busy semi-pedestrian street filled with record stores, tattoo and piercing parlors and trendy shops. it took little to furnish our tiny place, but for some reason or another, we ended up going to ikea many times. one of these times was on a sunday. i don't know what possessed us, since everyone knows that everything is closed on sundays in barcelona, except los pakis, which are small (usually) pakistani-owned shops that are packed from floor to ceiling with the bare necessities (toilet paper and beer, among other things).

emerging from the underground metro into the sun, we immediately realized that we were in a sketchy neighborhood, when the people at the local bar, with a beer-sponsored sign that read frankfurt, sitting on matching plastic chairs, gave us a you-don't-belong-here look. we kept walking, past low-income housing blocks, across a high-speed road with no crosswalk, through a construction site, and along the desolate streets of an industrial area. we walked for hours in the unbearable heat of an oppressing sun, not a soul in sight. we were obviously lost and very thirsty.

right when we were about to call a ridiculously overpriced taxi to come pick us up, we caught a glimpse the blue and yellow building, an oasis in that concrete desert. at last, we were saved! we would be able to drink water, devour a crispy onion-topped hot dog (or two), revel in the air conditioning, even rest on a pöang chair! we walked weakly toward our swedish haven and were overjoyed to hear muzak coming from some outdoor speakers. we were just about to step through the gleaming glass doors, when *gasp!*, they didn't automatically open. we thought something must be wrong with the doors and tried again. nothing.

so it was true, absolutely everything is closed on sundays.

¡olé!

2009-09-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

when i was about six months pregnant, my mom, panzón and i took a trip to madrid. i was feeling great and even more energetic than i did before pregnancy. the three of us went sightseeing and visited the big three museums: museo del prado (http://www.museodelprado.es), museo thyssen-bornemisza (http://www.museothyssen.org), recently romodelled by spanish architect rafael moneo, and museo reina sofía (http://www.museoreinasofia.es), with its new extension by french architect jean nouvel.

panzón had some work to do, so my mom and i took a day trip to segovia by train, which only took about half an hour on the ave, which literally means bird, but cleverly stands for alta velocidad española or spain's bullet train. the city is small and quaint, making it easy to visit in one day. before leaving, we enjoyed a meal of cochinillo, which is a baby pig, at el mesón de cándido, right behind/beneath the city's tremendous aqueduct. cochinillo is segovia's specialty dish and we didn't want to miss out on this delicacy, which is roasted to perfection, crunchy on the outside and oh! so tender, that it is cut with a plate instead of a knife (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZmiH5FCz98).

i must have overindulged because that evening, back in madrid, i suffered from horrible heart burn. it was so bad, that i was thinking about canceling our reservation for a flamenco show later that night. luckily, after a couple of anti-acids and a short nap, i was as good as new, and we headed out. i can't remember the name of the tablao, but it was definitely not corral de la morería, which is a world famous show that was booked solid that week. anyway, the moment the flamenco artists started to soulfully sing and dance by quickly clapping their hands and stomping their feet, something inside me, namely coco, suddenly and tremendously moved. i had felt her before, in the form of a poke here and there, but never like this. it was as if there was a miniature flamenco dancer trapped inside of me. panzón and my mom took turns feeling my wobbly belly, their hands moving rhythmically with each blow.

i hope to take coco back to her country of birth to rediscover its unbelievable food and deep music and rich culture with her.

not in the mudra

2009-09-22T18:07:00.000-07:00

shortly after moving back from spain, i tried out a local yoga studio, anxious to start practicing again and enthusiastic about contributing to a small business in the community.

it had been about three months since my last class in barcelona, which had been exactly one week before childbirth, as i had been going weekly to an amazing iyengar yoga class that was, coincidentally, directly behind our building. i could look out the window of our tiny loft and see, across rooftops, antennas and clotheslines, students in their little pouffy shorts, that reminded me of diaper covers, obediently moving their bodies from pose to pose. in class, i would hang upside down on the ropes, feeling like a bat with a belly full of butterflies, before resting on ten perfectly folded blankets and two precisely placed bolsters.

strange sounds were coming out onto the sidewalk from deep inside the studio, as panzón dropped me off. i walked inside and waited for them to stop, but when, after several minutes, they didn't, i peered behind the curtain, into the vibrating darkness. gradually before my eyes, a feminine figure appeared, moving intensely over some sort of box. the deep sounds came to a progressive halt, as she noted my presence. the crystal hanging between her eyebrows trembled as she calmly put away her instrument, which she explained was a traditional wooden portable harmonium brought all the way from india, but not by her, as she hadn't "made it there yet". her sedated speech agitated me, so i waited quietly for class to begin, which was about twenty minutes later.

the class was total crap, the instructor kept contortion-ing herself into complex positions in front of the mirror, not even checking to see if her three students were doing them correctly or hurting themselves. during relaxation, she talked on and on about floating up into the sky without losing our hold on the earth, blah blah blah. i was just glad it was almost over. ah-oh-mmmmmmm. namaste.

i jumped up and was quickly rolling my mat, when suddenly, my female yoga-mate shared that she had gone into a deep meditative state during relaxation and that she had felt the presence of her deceased brother-in-law in the room. apparently, he had put a hand on her and whispered that everything would be alright. i was right in the middle of rolling my eyes, when i heard my male yoga-mate starting to cry. he said that his wife had passed away recently and that she had made an apparition as well. the three of them shared a group hug and cried and held hands. i stared at them in disbelief, then felt uncomfortable and stared at the wall, which was painted blue with white clouds. i desperately wanted to leave, but knew the doors were locked for security reasons, and didn't want to interrupt their moment.

finally, there was a loud bang on the door and the instructor went to open it. i followed her in a hurry and was surprised to see panzón standing there. he had been worried, since i had taken longer than expected, and had gone looking for me, only to find locked doors and blacked out windows. he had been there for a while and was quite distressed. the yoga instructor looked at us like we were both neurotic freaks, let us out, and went back to her little séance.

i never went back.

backfired

2009-09-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

going to barcelona was babushka's idea. i would basically go anywhere and didn't even know what barcelona was about, even though i wanted to study architecture after high school. let's just say that babushka was the more intellectual of the two and was keen on getting the most out of her time abroad. we made an agreement, she would direct daytime activities and i would be in charge of nighttime excursions. my brilliant idea, to reduce accommodation costs, was to stay at a hostel every other night and go clubbing on non-hostel nights. in order to achieve this, we packed light, so light that i didn't even take my glasses because the case took up too much space.

we took a night train from nice, complete with sketchy characters, took turns sleeping/guarding, and arrived at barcelona in the morning. walking up the steps from the underground train station, the first thing i saw was antoni gaudí's casa batlló (http://www.casabatllo.es) on passeig de gràcia. it came as a complete surprise to me, as i had not done any research on barcelona, and i was instantly captivated by the city. we spent the day sightseeing and that night, slept on one of the thirty or so, miraculously bug-free, bunk beds that made up the female section of the grimy pensión colón, near las ramblas.

the next evening, we had a nice dinner at a restaurant and, during dessert, took turns visiting the restroom, from which we emerged transformed, eager to dance the night away. my informal daytime investigation led us to the backfire, a benevolent club that opened its doors without asking for i.d.'s and let us store our small backpacks behind the bar, on which a masked couple in black leather thongs and six-inch platform shoes were dancing. by dawn, we were up there with them, having the time of our lives. when the club closed, we claimed our sacs, changed into our regular clothes again, and started another full day of sightseeing. we rested frequently on benches and ate many popsicles to keep our energy levels up. i actually fell asleep with my chin poised on a soda cup at the mcdonald's right outside gaudí's sagrada familia (http://www.sagradafamilia.org).

towards the end of our five day trip, during which i never removed my contacts, not even for sleeping, one of my eyes became red and teary. i eventually had to throw the lenses out to let my eye rest, which was inconvenient, as i can't really see well beyond my nose. at the train station, babushka placed me and our things near a vending machine and told me to wait there, while she got our tickets. i decided to get something from the machine, and had to press my face against the glass to see what it offered and squint to see what letter/number combination to key in. when babushka came back and saw what i was munching, she remarked, "i thought you hated maltesers".
i had intended to buy a kit kat bar.

in the bathroom

2009-09-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

privacy practically ceases to exist in motherhood, especially during toddlerhood. i have learned to live with this and don't think twice about using the toilet in front of coco, which is extremely potty-educational, or bathing with the door wide open.

the real challenge is keeping her entertained and out of mischief for the duration of a shower. sometimes her natural curiosity is enough, though being scrutinized makes me feel somewhat awkward, but most of the time i have to be resourceful. i do a lot of disco-bathing lately, letting her practice with the light switch, while standing on a step stool placed against the wall. filling her potty (http://tr.im/z0f4) with bath toys (http://tr.im/z0eu & http://tr.im/z0eh) is also a great source of amusement and keeps her busy long enough to actually wash my hair! at least she's using her potty constructively, right?

vienna

2009-09-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

three months before giving birth, panzón and i decided to travel to prague and vienna. i had just gotten my spanish resident card and was thrilled to use it for the first time, so i deliberately left my passport at home. at the airport in prague, an immigration officer quickly glanced at our papers and let us through, a triumph for this proud resident of the european union.

after a couple of days in prague, we took a train to vienna. i noticed, as an impeccably uniformed man approached our seats and held out his hand, that the czech officials looked shabbier than their austrian counterparts. i confidently handed him my card and was slightly annoyed when he asked for my passport, until i heard the words only valid with passport. i instinctively lied that i had lost it in prague. he took our documents and gravely warned "i'll be back" (http://tr.im/yUFl). i didn't know if i should laugh or cry. i did a little of both.

when the train made its last stop, the terminator came back and let us off the hook, recommending that we immediately go to our embassy. i could not fathom wasting a perfectly lovely viennese day at the mexican embassy, so i disregarded his advice and convinced panzón, who knew better than to argue with a pregnant woman, to go sightseeing.

after leaving our things at the hotel, which was a university dorm catering to tourists during summer break, we ate wiener schnitzels, which have nothing to do with hot dogs, bought a block of hazelnut manner wafer cookies and walked around. i fantasized about skipping arm-in-arm with wolfie (http://tr.im/yUIZ), giggling away in a breast-bursting dress and feathered hat. tee hee hee!

panzón snapped me out of it by handing me the phone, having already dialed the embassy. i told the ambassador about loosing my passport in prague, knowing perfectly well that it was safely stowed in barcelona. i thought, and suggested, that he could give me some kind of note, like a bathroom pass at school, that would allow me to return to spain and that would be that. impossible! he wanted details, so we spent the rainy afternoon in his office.

ambassador: was it stolen? if it was, you have to report the robbery.

me: oh, no. it was accidentally left at the hotel.

ambassador: what hotel? address and telephone, please.

me: um, can we google it? *we googled*

ambassador: i'll call. if they find it, i'll have it mailed to my office and you won't be able to leave the country until then.

me: but our flight is tomorrow! what if they don't find it?

ambASSador: they will, if what you say is true. *gulp*

he personally called the hotel in prague. no signs of my passport. i would have to get a new, emergency passport. so, the next day, after reporting the "robbery" at the police station and rushing to get my picture taken, where i was told not to smile, which made me laugh uncontrollably, i got my austrian-issued mexican passport.
we barely made our flight.

wah-hah-kah

2009-09-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

panzón and i got married in oaxaca, which is the capital of the state of oaxaca in mexico.

we first travelled there with our fellow architecture students and a couple of teachers on a private bus from guadalajara, armed with snacks, (hidden) beer and excitement. by the time we got there, eighteen hours later, we all looked (and probably smelled) terrible and a streak of fluorescent orange vomit decorated the side of the bus.

we quickly recovered after eating tlayudas, which are actually like really big tostadas, even though some people refer to them as mexican pizzas, under the giant laurel trees of oaxaca's main square (it's heart!), el zócalo. we walked around the city's colonial center and visited the 16th century convent-turned-hotel camino real (http://tr.im/yHy1), where i had a vision: this is where i am getting married to him *turned around and looked at panzón, who was oblivious to my vision*.

that night, we all went to la casa del mezcal, a true cantina, where you can taste different kinds of mezcal (worm or worm-less), which is similar to tequila. we ordered round after round of caballitos (shot glasses), each sip preceded by a ¡salud! and followed by a bite of orange or lime. five rounds later, i proudly declared myself reina del mezcal, or "mezcal queen", when i realized i was the only female left. my glory was crushed, as our friend kbuz, short for "caboose", walked in and mercilessly took my title by ordering six caballitos for herself. we crawled out of that cantina, at the innocent hour of nine o'clock, like arañas fumigadas, which literally translates to "fumigated spiders".

that night, we all sang wah-hah-kah. it turns out that the bus decoration was but a sign of what was to come.

mouse ears

2009-09-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

i don't know the exact number of times i've been to disneyland in my life (too many to count with fingers and possibly even toes), but i'll write about the last four.

on the fourth to last time, i went with almovi and his wife, muntsa, who was pregnant with their first child. we each got a mouseketeer hat: almovi's said mies (as in mies van der rohe, german master of modern architecture), muntsa's said zyanya (their baby's name), and mine said panzón (my boyfriend at the time, my childhood friend/crush, my future husband). we got our picture taken with mickey mouse: eight mouse ears and one big belly. this memorable photograph would later haunt me, as a friend of almovi's commented, with childlike cruelty, that i didn't need a mouseketeer hat because i could have just painted my own ears, that stick out a little, black. grrrrrr.

anyway, on my third to last visit to disneyland, panzón and i got engaged. i'll leave this story for later, but i'll just say that it happened in the darkest moment of pirates of the carribbean, right before the first drop.

the second to last time i went to the happiest place on earth was last year. it was coco's first time, two months away from her first birthday, and it was not very happy at all. panzón, coco and i met with almovi and mutsa (pregnant with their third child) and their two beautiful daughters. coincidentally, the first ride we went on was pirates of the carribbean. i guess i had forgotten about the darkness, the drops, the bony pirates and the loud BOOM!s, but as soon as we got on the boat, i knew it was a mistake. coco cried during the entire ride. and on every ride after that. i feared a lifelong disneyland-trauma.

my last visit to disneyland was on tuesday. this time, panzón, coco and i went with loquillo. for coco's second time, two months away from her second birthday, we decided to avoid pirates all together and went directly to it's small world. to my relief, she absolutely loved it! she kept saying todos, referring to all of the children of the world singing together. we got her her own mickey ears, which she wore happily during the parade. the photos we took would later remind my mother of my own toddlerhood, when i would wear my mouseketeer hat as an everyday accessory in guadalajara, and panzón's mother and grandmother would call me ratoncita, meaning "little mouse".

igualada

2009-09-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

around the time coco was conceived, panzón and i, quite ironically visited the igualada cemetery (http://tr.im/xVye) with our close friend, who everyone knows by loquillo, which means "smallish crazy man", a pretty accurate description. the cemetery was designed by catalan architects enric miralles (http://www.mirallestagliabue.com) and carme pinós (http://cpinos.com), who were married at the time. i had used this quarry-turned-cemetery as a reference for my thesis, that was about the reuse of abandoned industrial sites, but had not bothered to look it up before our visit, which is probably why it surprised me on many levels.

we got in our 1985 red two-door volkswagen golf, inserted the cassette that was connected to my ipod into the radio and began our short road trip away from barcelona. loquillo and i exasperated panzón, as always, by having multiple conversations at the same time, some of them pointless, some of them leftovers from another day, some of them mere parentheses.

after getting lost a couple of times in the cemetery's industrial surroundings, we finally crossed the enclosing gate, which was a victim of oxidation, and were greeted by a handful of delicate blossoming trees, scattered on a clearing. the complete lack of signs and people made us feel like we were entering a forgotten place and our descent towards the main space, enclosed by tomb-lined walls, but open to the sky, humbled us and reminded us of our own earthliness. just then, we saw the presence of the living: horrid benches and cheap trash cans and tacky plastic flowers, and we were reminded that is place is not forgotten.

maybe our visit wasn't ironic at all, maybe we unknowingly took home a lonely soul awaiting rebirth.

gemz

2009-09-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

it seemed that, upon my arrival to mexico, i confused people, who, not seeing a bow or earrings, quickly assumed i was a boy. my short curly hair certainly didn't help. neither did my disgust for the color pink, nor my reluctance to wear dresses (this reduced the possibility of showing my underwear, which i believed was one of the biggest mistakes one could make. i must admit, however, that i did enjoy the repetitive display of men's underwear on torso-less, leg-less mannequins at department stores. and the stockings, one pointy-toed leg after another, all reaching for the sky).

it irritated me that these strangers didn't look further for hints of my subtle femininity. like my pink gem-studded moccasins (each shiny gem a different color), which were the only pink exception i allowed because of their comfort and uniqueness (after they were worn out and outgrown, i received a second, seemingly identical pair, which turned out to be, in my opinion, an inferior, gem-shedding replica). they could have seen that my outfit had beautiful, shimmery seashells on it, which everyone knows that boys never wear.

i would later become accustomed to the frustrating reactions of people to my appearance and would eventually thrive on them during my teenage years, when i wore my hair even shorter, my shoes even shinier, and my gems (glued) on my face.

two lines

2009-09-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

the night after we confirmed, by peeing on a stick, coco's existence and imminent arrival, we went out to dinner for our anniversary, during which, over fondue (www.gadesfondues.com), we had one of many what-are-we-going-to-do conversations. well!, we agreed, first we need to find out if it's true, if the pregnancy test is right, right?

so, the next morning, i called the doctor's office and asked to make an appointment. "what for?", asked the receptionist, dryly. "i need to know if i'm really pregnant", i responded, voice and hands trembling. "what makes you think you're pregnant?", asked the receptionist, irritatedly. "the pregnancy test i bought at the pharmacy was positive", i explained, eyes welling up. "well then, you're pregnant, aren't you? what do you want to see the doctor for?", she said matter-of-factly, slapping me with her spanish (from spain) tone. "um...", i said, looking around, trying to find the words that were cruelly hiding from me at the moment. i panicked and hung up.

wow. home pregnancy tests are that accurate.

procrastination

2009-09-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

motherhood changes you. there's no way around it. it changes your body forever because, even if you lose the weight afterwards, the pregnancy fairy always leaves something under your pillow. bigger feet, for example, or, in my case, a tiny shift of the tailbone. i'm also pretty sure my bellybutton moved, though i can't precisely tell in which direction. most of my senses are sharper now, making danger-detection easier. unfortunately, my eyesight didn't benefit at all from maternity.

motherhood also affects the brain. priorities are reprioritized and attitudes towards life (or at least towards giving life) are carefully reconsidered. procrastination is reduced to a minimum because there is certainly no room for laziness in motherhood. you have to act now and you have to plan ahead. always.

these are things that i didn't do on a regular basis before. i have found great empowerment in ridding myself of the sticky slime that is procrastination. and now that napping, a pastime that had given me great joy for years, has become (almost) extinct, i have made a huge discovery: i have enough motivation and time and newfound structure to actually do something productive with my creativity. bingo!

couscous

2009-08-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

the other night we saw a movie called la graine et le mulet (http://tr.im/xAYD), which is titled the secret of the grain in the u.s., but should actually be named fish couscous. i really enjoyed this franco-arabic film, even though a couple of scenes were too close, too loud and too long, but realistic nonetheless. it reminded me of my love for couscous, which i developed at age seventeen upon my first encounter with the grain in the south of france.
i was lucky enough to spend my next-to-last semester of high school at a boarding school in sophia antipolis, which is basically le petit silicon valley français. i remember the first time i ate at the cafeteria i had a personal sized bottle of red wine to go with my meal, which would also be my last, and an invitation to the program director's office. when i innocently explained that i just wanted to get some local color, he kindly suggested i get it elsewhere.
it was at that same cafeteria, where most of the food was mediocre at best, where i tasted couscous. most of my female peers abhorred it, preferring instead to eat tuna salad, for which they each brought canned tuna and mixed it with three side salads. for me, the couscous, in its chunky vegetable sauce, was the culinary highlight of the week.
i have not dared try to recreate the dish, for fear of spoiling this very special taste memory, but i do make couscous in the form of a ridiculously simple side dish. so, to celebrate the goodness of the grain, i will share with you a recipe that martha stewart shared with me (and the millions who buy her everyday food magazine). voilà the recipe for chickpea couscous:http://tr.im/xAUF!

bubble friend

2009-08-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

panzón, coco and i were recently in san francisco visiting my sister, her husband and their adorable baby boy. during our visit, we met up with our childhood friend, who i affectionately call ñaña, at the california academy of sciences (http://www.calacademy.org/). talking to ñaña on the bubbly green roof of the building, designed by italian architect renzo piano (http://rpbw.r.ui-pro.com/), i felt like we were in one of our childhood make believe worlds and was half expecting spot a grazing my little pony, or two.
at the little french school in guadalajara (mexico, not spain), ñaña and i were instant best friends, immediately becoming uña y mugre, which literally means "fingernail and dirt". we both spoke english and held a firm belief that no one else at the school, except for our sisters of course, could understand us. so, with our english and our imagination, we created a big and soapy, yet delicate, bubble around ourselves, where we had fabulous carrot-juice-in-a-thermos-top tea parties and took really long bubble baths that made our fingers wrinkly. we happily floated together.
ñaña has detailed memories of it all. my memory, like san francisco, is foggy, but, over a thai soup, she patiently reminded me about things that i had forgotten. for example, her eating my unwanted hard-boiled eggs and the time she choked on a piece of food and turned blue and the time i threw a marble at a boy's head.
even though i can't remember exactly what we played, i do remember how we played. peacefully. there was no such thing as a power struggle. we understood each other and always agreed on something. one of the things we agreed on, and this i do remember, was that we would be friends until we were one hundred years old. or was it one hundred and one?

moloko

2009-08-27T13:56:00.001-07:00

the moment i looked at this vandalized city sculpture in reus (small city, south of barcelona, where famous architect antoni gaudí was born), i identified myself with it. with her. i was breastfeeding at the time, and let me tell you, it's tough. sure, it's healthy, natural and beautiful, but exhausting and, at times, even excruciating. that is something i was not expecting while i was expecting, during which a lot of my energy, and a little bit of fear, were focused on childbirth.

for the first few days, it was a cup of tea, lovely and sweet. as the hours progressed and the feeding continued, a slight discomfort turned into shut-your-eyes-and-squeeze-someone's-arm-pain that eventually became unbearable pain. after all, a tip of me was being sucked ferociously by a tiny, yet very hungry person.

what did i do? i pumped my way through three months of breastfeeding in a bottle. i did it every three hours, whether at home, in the car, at the museum (in the restroom, of course) or on an airplane. it was physically draining, which is why, when my coco became as plump as a cherub, i gradually stopped my supply. apparently, if i had originally sweated it out for two to four more weeks, everything would have gone back to cup-of-tea mode. unfortunately, i learned this after pumping my heart out.

three-and-a-half years old/ago

2009-08-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

panzón and i met when we were three-and-a-half years old. i can't say that i remember the exact moment when we met. after all, a lot was going on in my life.
we had just moved to guadalajara (in mexico, not spain) and were living in a hotel, a tall mirror-paned hotel, mind you. my sister and i had red lunch boxes that were packed every morning by the restaurant staff. we went to a cute little french school, for which we wore cute little uniforms that looked somewhat alpine, kind of like gretl von trapp's outfit. coincidentally, the sound of music was very much a part of my life then, as we owned the videocassette and my sister insisted on playing it repeatedly during this time. years later, when i watched the movie again, i was shocked to learn that it was a story about the holocaust, not just about some singing kids wearing funny clothes.
i would have never admitted this at the time, although i probably did by turning bright red every time someone asked, but i secretly liked two of my classmates. one had freckles, the other was skinny. one was very outgoing, the other was shy. i was skinny and shy, too. we had something else in common: older sisters who liked magic, dress-up and feeding the neighboring cows at school. such was this fascination with dress-up, that they once dressed us up as bride and groom, except that i was the groom. three-and-a-half years ago, we found ourselves dressed up as bride and groom again, except that this time, panzón was the groom.

frozen egg

2009-08-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

once in a while, when i don't know what to give coco for lunch, i'll remember about eggs. yes, there are always eggs in our refrigerator, which has, on its door, nineteen little inverted domes to place them in. every time i take an egg, i think about why the designer put nineteen spots instead of twelve or eighteen, since eggs are usually sold by the dozen or even half-dozen, if you buy the organic, free-range, omega-3 kind.
the reason we have eggs is because panzón and i don't really like them. i, who adore pigs feet, escargots and beef togue (in that order), have always found eggs a bit repulsive. during my childhood, i dreaded discovering a tinfoil-wrapped hard-boiled egg in my lunch, its smell penetrating my lunch box and the rest of its edible contents. fortunately, my best friend would quickly take the egg, carefully peel it and gobble it up, for which i am eternally grateful.
all of my life i was a self-declared egg-hater, until i went to mérida, where something changed me forever, a something called huevos motuleños. panzón's sister got married last year at the beautiful hacienda temozón (http://tr.im/xoVM), where presidents bush and calderón had met a few days earlier to discuss... whatever. on the first day, i gathered up my courage and, following my father-in-law's lead, i ordered this famous local dish, that is basically two fried eggs on a tostada with salsa, beans, queso fresco, ham, and peas. i felt the flavors bursting in my mouth: the oozing of the egg (in a good way), the the crunching of the tostada, the POP!ing of the peas. at that moment, i had a revelation.
today, when i took two eggs from the refrigerator to make a couple of scrambled egg sandwiches for lunch, i thought about all of these things. i was actually imagining the deliciously gooey huevos motuleños while cracking the second egg open and found myself waiting for it to slip out of its shell into the bowl. it wasn't until after it plopped out, that i realized it was frozen.

argentina recos

2009-08-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

a friend of mine is going to buenos aires and asked me for tips. i actually visited argentina as a child, having family there. i might have been ten years old.

this is what i remember:
1. it's very, very, very far. even farther than france. my my first sony walkman lasted about 1/4 of the flight.
2. it's hot there during the winter. our winter, anyway.
3. people go to bed very late, eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of wine.
4. the empanadas are really good.
5. my mom gave away my my first sony walkman during our trip.
i obviously cannot recommend the best restaurants, bars or sights in buenos aires, but i will recommend the following:
1. hopscotch by julio cortázar (http://tr.im/xoVz), one of my favorite books to date.
2. the soul of tango, greatest hits by astor piazzolla (http://tr.im/xoVC)
3. comfort y música para volar by soda stereo (http://tr.im/xoVH), legendary argentinian rock band. i actually met the drummer by chance at an airport. we were sitting next to each other, waiting for our flight, and casually started talking. he told me he had been in a band for years. i asked politely what band and when he told me, i almost fainted.
4. the empanadas really are good. i would eat as many as possible.

"it's a BINGO!"

2009-08-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

my intention was to wait a little longer before speaking of bingo, but i cannot resist, not after what i have just witnessed. panzón, who, by the way, is not at all big-bellied, just has an adorable slightly protruding round abdomen, and i left coco in the care of her loving grandparents and went to a movie.

picking a good movie is essential when you visit the movie theatre maybe once a month. we would have seen district 9, except that it was too big a risk, given the fact that i'm not exactly a sci-fi connaisseuse (i have not even seen star wars). anyway, we both effortlessly agreed on quentin tarantino's inglourious basterds (http://tr.im/xoVv), having loved pulp fiction and both kill bills.

the highlight of the movie, for me personally, was when my favorite character, colonel hans landa, who speaks in french, german, english and italian (brilliant!) in the film, shouts "it's a bingo!". let me just say that it is a glourious time in the history of bingo and i am as proud as ever to be a part of it. *eyes welling up*

you may visit my shop now.

new frog on the block

2009-08-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

coco rediscovered one of last year's christmas gifts, a melissa & doug frog pull toy (http://tr.im/xoVu) she likes to call ofe (short for ofelia). yesterday, i walked into our bathroom and found ofe sitting on coco's step stool wearing sunglasses. this afternoon, we took her for a walk around the block because she needed exercise. she would have taken a nice bath afterward, had i not intervened with soapy hands. how do you explain to a toddler that her favorite amphibian can't take a little dip?

surprise! it's a coconut!

2009-08-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

my 21-month-old daughter, who refers to herself as coco, which is spanish for coconut, was born by the sea in barcelona. coco came to us as a total surprise, one that i suspected early on, but that was confirmed on the morning before our first wedding anniversary.

at that point, i truly was not surprised, since i had been feeling different for the past weeks. how different? well more tired than usual, meaning that i fell asleep anywhere at any given moment.

for example, my husband, who i lovingly call panzón, which means "big-bellied" in spanish, and i went to paris for the weekend with some friends. we went to visit le corbusier's lovely villa la roche (http://tr.im/xoVc), where i actually took a short siesta on corbu's chaise longue.

i was also extremely sound-sensitive, which was a problem when later that month we decided to go see les falles in valencia (http://tr.im/xoVd ). i shuddered every time someone threw a petardo or small firecracker, which was about every five seconds. i almost had a nervous breakdown during the mascletà (http://tr.im/xoVi), a very loud display of explosives that lasts several minutes and leaves you shaking.

about 9 months and many adventures later we met coco, who's head did resemble a tiny coconut with dark hair.

why i was born

2009-08-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

i, unlike my own child, was planned. the idea of me came to my mother while at a park in mexico city, like a ball coming from out of nowhere and hitting you in the face with a SMACK!. she watched as a couple of children, who were barefooted and covered in dirt, but happy nonetheless, played together. they called each other carnal, which literally translates to "of the flesh". they were brothers. my mother turned to her own child and saw her playing by herself, longing for a childhood companion. and just like that, i popped into her head.

i am starting to think about having a second child, but there has not been a SMACK! moment. it has been creeping up on me for months, like a vine, slowly twisting itself around my mind...

i am a cluster, we are a cluster

2009-08-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

this is my first post.

i am michele and this is my blog about me and cluster design (my online shop that sells bingo, which i design and (hand)make). i will share with you the things that make me a cluster of ideas, people, places, things and feelings. you are a cluster, too. and together, we are a cluster. welcome!