A Day (Off) in the Life of RiverGirl
I love those stupid emails that people send around sometimes that say: what are you wearing?, what did you have for breakfast today?, what are you reading? etc. I love the details that make up other people’s lives. So along those lines I thought that it might be fun to write about how I spent my day. It’s really long, but so was my day. Here’s the blow-by-blow of my Sunday off:
- 12:01 am – The new day finds me on the couch in the middle of the movie “Cuba Libre” which is too saccharin-y for me, and Gael Garcia Bernal kills himself in it so how good could it possibly be? The bottle of Zinfandel is half gone. The husband is tired from having just lost a squash tournament, I told him “not to suck” but he didn’t listen.
- 1:12 am – We drag our tired selves upstairs, brush teeth, rinse the day off in the shower, get into bed, discuss sex, decide we’re too sleepy. I read about 2 paragraphs of “Who Cooked the Last Supper” and decide I don’t care what the answer is. When I turn out the light hubby is already snoring.
- 6:33 am – Wake up thinking about how to do the code for one of my local client’s web sites (yes it is you!), visit the facilites, brush the teeth, feed 8 of my 9 cats (only Ciega is missing).
- 6:45 am – Realize my throat is sore, go back downstairs and gargle salt water (gross, thanks for teaching me something so GROSS, MOM!, I only wish it DID NOT WORK!).
- 6:50 am – Husband is still asleep, seems to be enjoying his dream, at least from what I can see. I pick up Dan Cederholm’s “Web Standards Solutions”, the next section is on how to do a multistate (normal, hover, selected) navigation bar with no javascript, with only one image per button (normally you use 3 images per button) and using valid CSS and XHTML. Bravo, so now I know who I’m going to guinea-pig that one on. Dan has even made it work in IE 5.crap, the bane of my existence piece-of-junk browser.
- 7:26 am – Decide I “need” to add a “Books I Am Reading” section to the sidebar of my blog. Hubby is lying on the laptop power-cable, have to move him without waking him. Turn on machine only to discover it wasn’t shut all the way down yesterday and because the laptop version of WinXP Home is not what it should be, the memory is hosed. So I reboot.
- 7:33 am – Finally get machine booted, logged in, Firefox browser launched and get myself logged into my blog. Begin to add some new elements to the side bar. This, of course, takes a lot longer than the 10 minutes I figured it would.
- 8:13 am – Get a text message from my kid, who is at a Creative Writing workshop on the other side of the country. It says “dont txt me, im going to a meeting”. So I proceed to not txt her.
- 8:19 am – Get distracted when I go to add a link to my Amazon Wishlist to my blog. Spend most of an hour messing with my Amazon Affiliate account and looking up books I want to read.
- 9:41 am – Decide it’s time to check my Bloglines account, and see who is saying what this morning. As a result I find another book I want to read, though it’s not actually out yet; it’s Cameron Moll’s “Mobile Web Design” (he’s a GOD). I also read a bunch of entries in the Mexico “Way” blog. And I spend a few minutes ruminating on how everyone around here has been talking and writing about Hurricane Wilma, which hit a year ago this weekend. And how, for some reason I just don’t care, I’m more interested in what they are all doing now.
- 10:13 am – I spend some time drooling over the snazzy WordPress set up of the Yucatan Living blog. I try to figure out how to make my blog display excerpts on the home page, decide I would likely have to slog through the WordPress Codex, which I hate doing, even though it’s very good. And then I decide it’s all stupid anyway since I really should upgrade to the newest version of WordPress before I worry over how to do some new look and feel. Somewhere along in here hubby wakes up and wants to take the computer away and read my last blog entry, which he hasn’t seen yet. One of the neighbors is trying to start a car with a fuel problem, it catches then dies, 100 times in a row, the neighbor doesn’t learn, keeps trying for 40 minutes.
- 10:46 am – Get another text message from the kid saying “my first workshop is Slam Poetry”. I write back and tell her it sounds dangerous, she says “no its fun”. Yeah, it also sounds fun, whatever it is. By this time hubby is fully awake, talking about getting up and messing with one of the cars. I convince him he’d rather get lucky. But then he gets distracted and starts playing with one of the cats. Maybe he wasn’t very convinced.
- 11:17 am – My bro-in-law calls and hubby talks to him for a while. He ends up turning on the other computer and checking his email, so we’re both screwing around on the internet.
- 12:10 pm – Hubby finally gets lucky. I have a fantasy about putting up a sexual diary on the web. It might make more money than the rest of what I’m doing. But I decide it would mean I’d have to spend too much time thinking about sex and I might get bored with that (really). Besides that there’s that whole moral issue, you know, what would Mom think.
- 12:30 pm – We decide to go see the 2 pm showing of “Las Torres Gemelas” (Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center”) at the new Paseo Cancun mall. Then we get distracted when I ask hubby about an immigration question someone recently posted on the CancunCare Forum. He gets out the “law” and starts reading about the difference between FM2’s and FM3’s and explains a bunch of crap to me which I write down while thinking I should file for Mexican citizenship and stop thinking about stupid Mexican Immigration laws.
- 12:50 pm – We shower and then I head downstairs to nuke some tamales I bought last night from my favorite street vendor (next to Soriana). The microwave misbehaves and wants to give me 9 minutes, I finally convince it I want 2. And I make a yogurt smoothie with strawberries and soy milk and apples, it is yum.
- 1:35 pm – We head out in the rain and go the back way to the mall. We get our tix and figure out we are 10 minutes too early and get bored waiting. We chew gum. We talk about how new the theater is and whether we should stick our gum to the bottom of the seats when we are done with it.
- 2:10 pm – The stupid previews begin, including one for that new Ben Stiller movie in the museum with all the museum displays coming to life at night. I decide I’m going to like it even though it could easily be too idiotic for words. Then the movie begins and I get nostalgic and start missing all things “American”. And I remember that day, that morning, and how I knew it was Osama Bin Laden when I saw the second plane hit the tower. And I feel so sad for all the people who had to live through the aftermath of that, with the city covered in the dust, the dust and the bone fragments. And I remember the person I knew who died in that tragedy and how sweet he was, and how smart. I put my gum, stuck inside the wrapper, in the drink holder.
- 3:50 pm – The movie ends with us thinking it was too long and corny and not as sad as it should have been. And by the end I am sick and tired of looking at Nic Cage’s mouth. And I didn’t really learn anything new about that day, which bugs me. But I love seeing NYC, and it makes me miss living in the States. We decide to wander around the new mall and quickly find ourselves shopping.
- 4:25 pm – We buy some junk in the Voit shop, everything is 30% off prices which were already low. I get a new pair of running shorts. And hubby gets a new glove for playing squash, he says that part of why he sucked so bad last night was that his gloves are all ripped. Of course dear.
- 4:45 pm – We wander into one of those Italian furniture places and start testing couches. Do Italians like hard furniture that’s not comfortable or what? We get pretty serious about a couple of couches (one of them is actually comfortable) and debate the need for the couch to have pillows which are not attached so we can easily throw them on the floor as needed. We also debate the need for a bomb-proof material that 9 cats cannot possibly destroy.
- 5:22 pm – We accidentally wander into a buffet restaurant called Sirloin Stockade. We both realize we are starving and decide to stay even though the place a zoo, with people everywhere and not the most diverse or healthy food choices I’ve ever seen. We decide the place must be a Texan buffet chain. It feels American, particularly Texan. Everyone eating there is fat. Well, most of Cancun is fat anyway. We eat, and eat, and the food is not fresh and the service is GREAT, but the food (did I say this?) is NOT FRESH!!! And we fill out the little survey card and tell them how NOT FRESH the food is, and how good the service is.
- 6:51 pm – We find the car in the lot, I had forgotten which car we brought and was completely whacked. We head home and are back in minutes. Hubby is late for work so he gets ready to leave.
- 7:25 pm – Hubby leaves to go man the stupid Las Americas booth for his real estate job, which is selling condos at Residencial La Playa on the northside of Cancun. I say it’s stupid because, while that crappy mall IS full of people, most of them cannot plunk down the money it would take to buy a condo on the beach, so he doesn’t get the hottest leads from being there. Before he’s out of the house I start the movie “Dot the i” which I just like and have now watched like 8 times.
- 8:24 pm – In my movie Barnaby says: “Carmen, I paid a lot for decent wine glasses. Please use them.” And then Carmen pours her wine out of the coffee mug she was drinking it from and into one of his wine glasses. Then she throws the glass on the floor, breaking it, and storms out. She goes straight to Kit’s (played by Gael Garcia, JJ’s novio-del-mes) apartment and screws his brains out. Good move Carmen.
- 8:27 pm – Mute my movie because the neighbors are fighting, sounds like someone cheated and someone else found out, movie is more interesting, unmute it.
- 9:02 pm – “Dot the i” ends, I consider just rewinding it (it’s a VHS tape) and starting it over. The credits roll with the “Fun Loving Criminals” track of the same name. I love that band.
Goateed indeed, smart like John Steed
I’ll steal your girlie and I’ll steal your weed
I got so much flavor that I’ll always leave you chewin’
I got so many styles you’ll be thinking I’m from the U.N. - 9:09 pm – I watch the credits twice just to hear the song again, then rewind the film. I switch to broadcast tv and it’s a Harry Potter movie (the 2nd one I think) and it’s dubbed, so they sound really stupid. It’s the part where Harry and that pimply red-head steal the pimply red-head’s parent’s car and drive it to the school, since they missed the secret train. They crash into the man-eating tree and whine a lot.
- 9:23 pm – I do start the movie again. It’s comforting somehow. I’m not watching it, just listening and working on this blog entry which is getting almost as long as my day. The phone rings and it’s some guy named Apolo (or does that have two Ls?) and my Spanish falters and we have this weird hybrid conversation in two languages where I can understand the phone number he gives me in Spanish but need him to speak English when he asks me a weird question. We both giggle at how funny it is.
- 10:07 pm – Barnaby says it again in my movie, and again she goes off and starts kissing JJ’s boyfriend. I hear the gate squeaking, so do the cats, hubby is home and will feed whoever greets him at the door.
- 10:49 pm – My movie ends, again, hubby tells me that “Amores Perros” is better, but I don’t see the connection except that JJ’s beau is in both movies. He’s proud of himself when he can name the Fun Lovin’ Criminals and I try to sing along to the song but get it wrong, as usual.
- 11:17 pm – Hubby announces that we have termites eating the cedar cabinet in the downstairs bathroom. I suspected this. He wants to deal with this now. I am in no mood to face a termite nest. Mañana, mañana. I’m hungry again, but I decide to drink a bunch of water and then brush my teeth and go to bed. Tomorrow I better get a lot of work done, my day off is SO over!
- 11:51 pm – I decide I can’t edit this blog entry any longer, I have to post it (long though it is). And I decide that I have to go to the gym tomorrow and work off this lazy day of Tex-Mex and tamales. Hubby has put on a movie called “Fidel” which we never finished watching, and which ALSO has JJ’s boyfriend Gael in it, he’s playing Che. I won’t make it to the end of this movie today either. I wonder who cooked the last supper?
