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.

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).

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.

mary lou

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.

vienna

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.

couscous

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!

three-and-a-half years old/ago

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.

"it's a BINGO!"

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*

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