curious george saves the day!

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.