Archive for June, 2008

Trailer Trash At Last

June 22, 2008 - 9:11 pm 2 Comments

Well, this is it.  Not exactly a van down by the river, but camping in our front yard is pretty close.  We are fixing a few things in our house, which has been on the market for two years and has not sold.  Every potential buyer loved it but wanted a bigger closet in the master bedroom, so we are giving it to them! 

In the meantime, we have moved into our camper.  In our driveway. 

There are a few advantages to living in the camper.  You can hear the birds sing early in the Midwestern morning when you have to crawl out into the just-before-sunrise darkness to relieve yourself.  The boys have the advantage of just pointing their unit in any direction swinging from the trailer’s door, but I have to actually walk 20 feet to the front door of the house to find the nearest bathroom.

Early birds chirping.  Put that in the plus column.  Walking for relief, not such a plus.

The cat still sleeps in the house – so he does not wake us up in the middle of the night with its latest regurgitated catch.  I can still remember that time when I got up and placed my fingers on something warm and gooey on our bedspread.  It turned out to be a vomited mouse – its teeth, little nose with whiskers and tail still clearly visible.

So, the second plus; No midnight cat puke.

Surprisingly, Tom and I feel we get our best sleep in the little camper bed.  Not sure what it is, maybe it’s the coziness of the tiny area, or the cheap mattress that came with the thing, or all the old blankets we use, the absolute darkness, or the fact that we are forced to snuggle due to space constraints.

Trailer trash bonus number three;  Good night’s sleep.

I like to think of our living arrangements as an old Spanish Hacienda with its typical open air courtyard between the sleeping wing and the main living areas of the property.  I will be planting a few flowers in our courtyard tomorrow.  Everything in the house is an unlivable dusty mess, but there are still some things I can control.

There is supposed to be a big storm tomorrow.  Hopefully it will have a lot of thunder, lightning, and rain.  Maybe we’ll get hail.  I love Midwestern summer storms.  There really isn’t anything like it.  The lightning is so fierce, it turns night into day.  When it pours, you can hardly hear yourself speak in the trailer.  It is so loud in there, it feels like the end of the world is near.  I hope we don’t lose power – that would not be good!

Posted in Social/Political Musings |

Garage Sales and OCD

June 14, 2008 - 8:35 am 3 Comments

Again, you get into your 40’s and start realizing that many things you took for granted are just peculiar behaviors you picked up along the way.  If and when recognized, I used to blame oddities on cultural differences, comparing and contrasting my Latina heritage to American ways.  This made me feel justified, and provided an excuse not to change.  I am no longer sure that this is the case, increasingly getting the feeling that medication might just do the trick.

Take, for instance, disposable items.  I cannot seem to only use things once.  I really did not see anything wrong with this until recently.  My mother used to find new uses for many things growing up.  Aluminum foil; the little trays that hold ground beef; disposable cups, plates and silverware; all kinds of boxes; clothing; sheets; wrapping paper; pieces of wood…  throwing anything out was severely frowned upon — a sign of a poor imagination. 

After college I moved to suburban Chicago, where my Argentinian uncles used to visit me once a year.  A great city indeed, with museums, great beaches, fabulous shopping, an incredible variety of restaurants – a tourist’s dream.  Not for Juan Carlos and Ruben.  Their favorite activity was going to garage sales.  That’s right — we found our kicks sifting through other peoples’ “junk”!  

A garage sale, also called a “yard sale”, “rummage sale”, “tag sale”, “attic sale”, “moving sale”, or “junk sale”, is an informal, irregularly scheduled event for the sale of used goods by private individuals, in which “block sales” are allowed, so that sellers are not required to obtain business licenses or collect sales tax. (from Wikipedia)

I would add that garage sales are uniquely American.  Everyone understands what this term means in our country, but travel around the world and you really have to spend some time defining it.  I have not been able to find much research on this phenomenon: how it originated, how it has evolved over the years, and how it reflects American society.  

I do not know if Americans can understand the extreme fascination that garage sales hold to us Latin people.  For a culture that is used to holding on to everything, the thought of not only getting rid of it all at the same time but also advertising so strangers can come to your home and give you money for your junk is unthinkable.  

So many things come into play here.  Perhaps the most prescient being the fact that opportunistic crimes are a way of life in our countries.  So, to add insult to injury, someone might steal your discards, or worse, stake out your house and rob you later.  We live always on the lookout for these behaviors.  It’s not the exception — you get used to it and incorporate it into daily life.

Second, the “que diran” is very pronounced in our culture.  “Que diran” is a very old expression that means, literally translated, “What will they say”.  This is yet another fact of life that is always on the back of our minds.  Appearances are very important in Latin culture, which creates a lot of confusion and is the main reason our “telenovelas”, short soap operas, are so popular, from Mexico all the way south to Argentina, as a reflection of all the trouble messing with the truth creates.

Ruben and Juan Carlos did not stop at garage sales.  Another thing we do not have in Latin countries are alleys.  Our homes have the garage, or car ports, in the front.  Alleys are a novelty. When we were done exploring sales, we would drive around suburban alleys looking for more stuff.  This time — free.  I remember their amazement at all the things that were thrown out. From furniture to small electronics, they would have taken it all if I had a bigger car!

Then came the best part.  They would set up shop in my own garage and start fixing everything.  Ruben would restore any old chair or frame into a work of art.  A $1 bathroom mat would become upholstery and a little sodering would fix the mixer.

I kept visiting garage sales after they left.  I later discovered estate sales.  These were even better.  Usually a whole life was on display here, and I found it hard to leave without buying something, making up stories about how the little bowl in my possession may have brought happiness to the deceased.  

Estate sales also give you the opportunity to explore strangers’ homes and examine how they lived, what they wore, and what appeared important them.  I particularly loved looking at their books and magazines.  The best estate sales belonged to dead people that were pack rats like me.  I couldn’t help thinking what a great sale they would have when I pass, with all the endless amount of crap stored up in all those boxes…

I don’t go to garage sales anymore.  I have replaced that with open houses.  The kids and I love nothing more than to stop at other peoples’ houses on Sunday afternoons.  We do this, of course, when daddy is out of town.  He does not partake of many of our forms of entertainment.

I am trying to break the habit of keeping everything, especially items that can be hazardous to your health.  I have been made aware of the fact that you should not reuse ziploc bags or straws.  No matter how much you wash them, apparently they can make you sick.  I still have a very hard time throwing out the kid’s leftover cereal milk, or any food they leave on their plate.  Chocolate boxes, old t-shirts, old toys, kid books, any books, especially books — everything has a story, a memory…

My habits have been found to strain a marriage, especially coming home from vacation.  I pack my suitcase with every bit of leftover food and hope my hubby does not notice.  He already thinks a lot of these quirks are a little obsessive.  The Department of Homeland Security agrees with him and has made my life more difficult.  One of the agents stopped me and found the port wine cheese I was smuggling in my carry on.  I tried to argue that it was under 3 ounces, to no avail.  No matter how much I pleaded, apparently it posed some great danger to our well-being…

Posted in OCD & Pet Peeves |

The President We Deserve

June 8, 2008 - 3:40 pm 6 Comments

You get into your 40’s and being liked by your fellow man lacks luster.  So here it goes.  I love Barack Obama.  What’s there not to like?  The man is handsome, well-spoken, loves his wife, has two beautiful little girls, is self-made, has a great compelling life story, and no matter what surfaces about him, he handles himself with such grace and impeccable oratory skills that we want to believe.  We need to believe. 

We can have it all.  Why shouldn’t we?  Barack Obama tells us we should be able to have it all.  Most of us, we are repeatedly told, are hard working Americans with excellent judgment who have struggled all our lives and cannot seem to get ahead.  The American Dream is snatched from our grip by conniving corporations who oppress us; rich people who look down on us; a boss who exploits us; a government who spends our hard earned money in unnecessary wars and tax breaks to the rich. 

Please, Barack, make it all go away now.

As we are lifted into Nirvana by the passionate eloquence and ultra-cool demeanor of our President-in-waiting, we cannot wait to cash in on all the new rights that are coming our way.  Healthcare insurance, which is amendment 11 on our Bill of Rights, will finally be provided and paid for by the government.  They say there are 50 million Americans without healthcare insurance today – I wonder how many of these 50 million have a car, a flat-panel T.V, a cell phone, an iPod and the latest version of Grand Theft Auto.  You see, I believe that if we have a choice between what we “must” have and what we really need/should have, we will choose the former.

The federal government can and must take care of our inalienable rights.  It’s in the constitution, isn’t it? The government, meaning, people who can afford it.  Those 1% who carry 99% of our constituents.  So go ahead, roll back those “tax cuts for the rich” – how else can we afford universal healthcare, extended unemployment benefits, checks in the mail for us and our children, subsidized housing, etc. etc, etc.

But please make sure that while the rich are paying more money, they also continue to create good high paying jobs for the rest of us.  Tax any investment capital heavily, offer no relief in capital improvement expenditures, make sure we penalize businesses small and large for trying to find cheaper labor overseas, close any foreign markets that may buy our products and eliminate any and all loopholes that will stimulate business growth, because that may also make the rich richer – and that’s no good. 

This election is indeed historic, but for more reasons than the obvious ones noticeable by all.  Our country is at a crossroad between personal responsibility and the “feel good” mentality we have been slipping into for decades.

You do not incur credit card debt if you cannot afford it; you do not have children until you are ready to take care of them; you do not buy a house beyond your means just because someone is willing to give you a big loan; you do not spend more than you make; you do not expect the government to bail you out of your bad decisions.

I do not blame all who have fallen onto hard times.  But I do feel that we have bought a bill of goods that is unsustainable.  Advertising everywhere for the latest “must haves” and access to easy credit make us all hostage to a way of life that will eventually catch up to us.  And then we call for “Change”, “Yes We Can”, “Hope”, and the endless litany of pretty words that lift us.  The last thing we need right now is a good spanking from the leaders who prey on our need for more stuff for less effort.

That, indeed, would be change. 

President Barack Obama is where we have been headed since, I believe, we threw our bras out the window, among other things.  It is certainly a defining moment in our country’s history.  We deserve nothing less than an inspiring leader who has a promise for each of us!  Yes, we can have it all.  And I want it NOW!

Posted in Social/Political Musings |

Geraldine by any other name….

June 5, 2008 - 2:35 pm 2 Comments

I found an old name list long ago with my name circled on it.  Of the hundreds of possibilities, my Latin mother chose Geraldine.  She liked the name.  The only other Geraldine she knew was Geraldine Chaplin.  Trips to Bountiful and Ferraros were not yet in the picture.

Latin people put a lot of thought into naming their children.  The most common being Maria and Jesus.  Most of us have more than one name and at least two last names.  I have a friend named Graciela Milagros Johanna Costas Oliveras.  We are usually named after a few aunts and/or uncles, and we carry our father’s family name and retain our mother’s family name following it.

Despite our machismo mentality, it is common for women to keep their maiden name, and some women actually use a preposition – de – if they choose to add their husbands’ family name to their own.  Hence Martha Ferrera would become Martha Ferrera de Fortunato.  De, meaning belonging to in the olden days…

My mami was different.  Her rebellious nature made her throw convention out the window, when choosing my phonetically challenging first and only name.  My friends had more options – they could go for any one of their names as teenagers.  Mami ensured that I would only have one choice — no middle prenom to turn to.

So, Geraldine Dondis I became.  Never to be spelled or pronounced correctly in my humble Puerto Rican surroundings.  Sounds of chiming bells followed by turning heads and giggles throughout childhood.  “Ge-ral-din… don.. dis… din… don… dis…”

I got used to Geraldine and eventually even came to be fond of it.  I was the only Geraldine I ever met.  There was never any wasted verbiage trying to clarify whether it was Maria from the farm, or Maria who stole Tita’s boyfriend, or Maria la bisca.

My girlfriends would come to my front gate, always locked — it’s Puerto Rico after all — and yell, Geeeeeraaaaldeeeen!  We do have doorbells, but they are rarely used.  

I no longer use Geraldine.  Oddly enough, when I moved to St. Louis at 17, and finally was in a culture that had some knowledge of its spelling and pronunciation, I was forced to change my name to Geri.  

They say middle school can be rough on kids.  That is nothing compared to finding yourself in the middle of the Midwest, and the second choice private university for half of New York’s Jewish community.  Being a precocious Newyorican did not help much either.  Going by Geraldine was the cherry on top, pretty much handing every newly introduced east coast 18-year old the next line of the stand up.  

For weeks I thought Americans were kind of strange, for as soon as they heard my name they would break into flamboyant arm movements and their voices would go up a few octaves.  Funny people.  The language barrier did not help.  My English was classroom learned, with no reference whatsoever to slang or idiomatic expressions.

Trying to make the best out of these situations, I smiled politely and went on with my business. I learned about America mostly from dubbed Spanish T.V.  We got some shows like Sesame Street, Family Feud, Zoom, and Starsky and Hutch.  We did not ever get to meet the real Geraldine!  Apparently every kid my age loved Flip Wilson — who was busy ruining my name while I was growing up trying to get used to it!

Enter Geri.  Nobody can spell it, and half the time they think I am a he, but the days of shrieking young gringos are far behind me.

Posted in Assimilating Latina |