September 2nd, 2007
When we were in Mexico we kept vigil over a mama hummingbird’s two baby chicks. Neil’s boss said, “maybe it’s about time you get a kid.” Many baby boomers & older generations question why my generation is postponing major milestones & why some people take longer to graduate, marry & start lifetime careers.
Are we just lazy ambitionless louts? No. Since life expectancies are elongating (with a possible reversal in years to come due to obesity in America) the 30s are the new 20s. People are able to work longer, have children later and generally be of good health farther into life. Therefore, it is not until their 30s that some people decided to get a real job, start having children and generally “settling down.” This trend has many people from past generations, at least my parents, very perplexed. Neil’s father advised him, very concerned, the other day that “making money is not a sin.”
My parents have been equally perturbed that I don’t “just apply to law school…already.” To see our “26-year-old going for a life expectancy of at least 90, and active until at least 75″ point of view, you must understand that we are simply stretching out our unindebted, no-responsibilities, adventure part of life instead of our mortgage paying, kid rearing, career juggling part of life.
If you are going to potentially have 5-10 extra years of life, why not spend those traveling the world… when you are young? Why not designate a proportionally lager slice of life’s pie to character development, variety & freedom?
Instead of seeing this approach as lazy, or childish I see it as farsighted life planning indicative of careful analysis. If I’ve statistically got more time, I will choose carefully which period of life to drag out. I’d rather take travel, internships & adventure than motor-home tours & Medicaid.
Posted in Marriage | 5 Comments »
July 31st, 2007
Here is a picture of my new eyebrow plucking mirror. Isn’t it lovely? Frida provides great motivation to get rid of those out-of-line offenders.
Yes, I do have a special mirror dedicated expressly to the purpose of eyebrow plucking. As you can see from the following photo, I am not a girl who is particularly particular about personal hygiene. However, plucking is one of my few personal grooming obsessions.
I’m not sure when this habit launched itself into full-blown obsession status, but it was definitely after high school. I had some BAD brows in high school. I will spend up to a good 25 minutes daily on my plucking ritual. One of the first thing I notice about a person is their brows. I spend a large percentage of my people-watching time critiquing brows.
Two of my biggest brow-breakthroughs happened on my mission. The first one occured when I was still in the MTC. I wrote my friend Amy and told her that I was SO busy I didn’t even have time to pluck. She wrote back very alarmed, “GET UP EARLIER!” Which really reinforced the pivotal importance of a properly plucked brow. I went through the inevitable, overpluck stage on my mission as well. After some furious plucking, all I had left were two hideous half-moons. I was walking down the street with my companion one day & I spotted it. THE PERFECT BROW. It was a picture in a Spanish magazine. I immediately cut it out & started my regrowth period, newly inspired.
I recently came across a brilliant article called Highbrow Eyebrow Fashion, where I got the quote for the title of this entry. It goes on to say “Eyebrows tell a story of cultures, eras and politics. For example, in Iran “un-groomed” is a sign of virginity. The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sported a unibrow. It became her signature, an expression of independence and feminist strength.” Clearly my strength lies in another area, namely having clearly defined brows. As much as I adore the art of Frida, the unibrow just ain’t my style.
Posted in Interests, My hair | 2 Comments »
July 28th, 2007
I usually hate it when my husband takes random ugly pictures of me, which he is oft prone to do. But, this one is quite telling of how I currently feel. I have an AWESOME confluence of maladies including sore troat, high fever and Montezuma’s revenge.
I consider my biggest mistake of the week, as a vegetarian in Mexico, to be eating random chicken dishes in the “campo” with Mexicans. They must have stomachs of steel, because the effects have been crippling to me.
Cursed meat. Cursed!
Posted in Mexico, Vegetarianism | 1 Comment »
July 9th, 2007
Mexico is fabulous, don’t get me wrong. If I could, I would stay indefinitely. However, there is one thing that I will not miss when I return home. The white price. You see, for every item here there are two prices. There is the (albeit flexible) Mexican price that is reasonable and cheap. And, there is the price for people like me. Tall, thick accented-whities who have “I HAVE A LOT OF MONEY. PLEASE RIP ME OFF” written on their foreheads. You hear one price for the first guy & when you ask 20 seconds later the price has doubled or tripled. In Thailand things are even less subtle. The prices are stated publicly and are listed one for natives, and another higher price for “falangs” or foreigners.
I just got back from a trip to a border town between Guatemala & Mexico, La Mesilla. Not sure what it is about border towns, but they seem to be magnets for cheap souvenirs & the generally nasty.
I went with a friend who regularly visits the border to buy clothing to re-sell to clients. She convinced me it was the land of quality apparel at amazing prices. I went with lots of hope & money with the intentions of buying some uniforms for the girls I’m in charge of at church.
Turns out it is just the land of thin non-absorbent towels with large tigers, plastic Chinese ballerina fountains & horrendous skirts with bad flower prints, for the most part. The majority of the wares, tacky as they were, did not seem very cheap. She later told me that every vendor offered her the “white price” because I was with her, looming in the backround of the transactions with dollar signs for eyes. When she insisted that the prices where twice what they had offered the week before, they simply shrugged and nodded towards me as they said, “things change, prices change.” With my caucasianess, I brought a big white curse for her bargaining that week.
I don’t mind paying for things like weird souvenirs this way. After all, there is no Mexican price for them since Mexicans don’t buy chili magnets that say “Cancun” on them, tie-dyed T-shirts with kokopelli dancing across the front or nesting dolls made out of painted orange peels. But, for food in the market, local transportation and event admissions I would like to pay the price, not the white price.
Posted in Interests, Mexico, Travel | 3 Comments »
July 1st, 2007
Before we took our Mexico City break, Neil & I discovered a new form of meatless meat. It came in a can and looked so equally scary to raw meat that it convinced us it would also tasted like meat. It turned out to be a salty disaster & also gave me food poisoning. As it turns out, even all vegetable “meats” can go bad. Caution is recommended when dealing with tofu derivatives… especially when they look like this.
Posted in Food, Mexico, Vegetarianism | 1 Comment »
June 28th, 2007
Hello my adoring fans (ie Pamy, Amy & Mom). I am in Mexico City with Neil. A little 6-month anniversary trip. Can’t believe it’s gone so quick. We’re tromping around to art museums & buying weird street junk. We’re trying to soak up culture but, yesterday, I’ll admit, we did break down & go to Starbucks for a bagel. It’s been quite fun. I got deathly ill right before we came which is why (other than laziness) I haven’t posted. More to come soon…
Posted in Marriage, Mexico, Wedding | No Comments »
June 19th, 2007
I learned an important lesson this weekend. If you have a great idea… keep quiet! For our ward Father’s Day party the women were making Chinese food. I thought, “hey we should make customized fortune cookies that say ‘Feliz dia del Padre’ (Happy Father’s Day) inside.” I mentioned it to the planning group & suddenly I was in charge of making 100 home-made fortune cookies.
Little did I know that you can only make 3 at a time & each batch takes about 10 min. to cook. And, about every other batch is a total failure. So… to make a long story short: Neil & I spent upwards of 7 hours over the oven on Saturday painstakingly bending flaming hot discs into fortune cookies. By the end of the whole ordeal we only had about 1/2 the needed cookies & some of them were pretty scrappy. Turns out they are a lot harder to make than the look!
Neil went out to buy some reenforcement cookies & came back with a huge sack of wierd Oreo-esque wonders.
We were so tired that we left the activity early (Mexican activities last a MINIMUM of 3 hours) & didn’t even get to reap the rewards of seeing the papas enjoying their cookies.
Last week I almost signed myself up to teach a group of teens a flag routine, bringing back the glory days of captain of the flag team! I think from now on I’ll preface every comment in a planning meeting with, “I don’t know how to do this... but, wouldn’t it be fantastic if….”
Posted in Food, Mexico, Religion | 1 Comment »
June 16th, 2007
Thanks to your visits these boots will soon be mine. And, I am the most popular!
Keep on comin’ back. I’ll continue to update the blog. Long live the internet!
Posted in Blogging | 2 Comments »
June 15th, 2007
The rumors are true. Neil and I have joined the neighborhood gym. It is just down the block from us & as far as we can tell we are it’s only patrons. Aside from the teen with cut-off sleeves & an expertly crafted gel-mania faux hawk who is pretty much there around the clock. All of the equipment is a motley mishmash of home-made stations. Soddered benches, craftily tied knots & ingenious pulleys. There are many posters of 80s body builders on the walls & an entire shelf of statuettes of out-of-this world ripped men in bronze. The whole thing is really quite incredible.
We figured we’d just spare you the before & after photos and go straight to the anticipated end-results. At this point, Neil is seriously considering a run at Mr. Universe next year.
Posted in Interests, Marriage, Mexico | 1 Comment »
June 14th, 2007
Few can imagine the absolute luxury of an actual dish fairy. We can. You come into your apartment dreading the sink full of nasty pitchers, plates and platters that await you… only to find them sparkling clean on the drying wrack. I’m pretty sure our dish fairy has a name. It’s Magdalena. She is the housekeeper of the compound we live on. We pay her to do our laundry. Like all fairies she is quite elusive. We have never actually seen her do the dishes, but she has a key to our apartment, which points the finger of suspicion towards her. She also never mentions anything about it. She must just walk into the apartment & be disgusted by the squalor of it all & get to work de-griming our kitchen.
To us she is not only a fairy, she is an angel of cleanliness & mercy.
Posted in Marriage, Mexico | 4 Comments »
