simple girl

I was heartsick this week. I thought that's what I wanted, a good wallow. But I think what I really needed was exactly what I got tonight.

A salsa class had been planned (how I love the passive voice for avoiding responsibility...) for our living room (hardwood floors and no furniture = perfect dance salon) and I would've felt bad canceling, since we all know the show must go on. So on it went. Between heartache and stomachache, I tried to sit it out, but the clave and drums just wouldn't let me. It's a little known fact of modern medicine that Colombian bacteria can be mollified, at least for a time, with some good hip twisting and dipping.

Afterwards people stayed and stayed. We cooked, people left and brought things back, and there was laughing and silly talk and music. I felt slightly apart yet completely at home. Being surrounded by friends, the kind you don't have to explain things to, was exactly what I needed. Life has a funny way of giving you just that, at the very moment you give yourself up to it.

And the ultimate cure lived in a nice banana cake, baked up spur of the moment, half stuck in the pan, covered semi-convincingly with an even nicer rum glaze.

everybody was job hunting

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
But they fought with expert timing

Almost everyone I know is looking for a job right now. If you know of anything that fits one of these bills, feel free to add a comment. All are Spanish speakers.

• Human rights activist wants to work in Portland, Oregon. Possibly labor organizing.
• Redhead with social enterprise background, master's in International Aid seeks job in Washington DC
• Her boyfriend is looking for a political science post at a decent university.
• History major and English teacher with activist and social services background seeks job anywhere, world. Prefers Colombia or cities in US with mild climates.
• Redhead (almost) with master's (almost!) in urban policy seeks job in the South. Something exciting, please god. No more desk jobs! Open to organizing positions that don't involve door stalking.
• Mailliw A. Retsamkcub, esquire, being of extremely certain mind and very dextrous hand-eye coordination due to years of training on home electronics equipment, and the broad experience that one gets bagging groceries at Publix, does hereby affirm that he never wants a job that requires him to a) show up, b) be nice to people, and c) show up. If one of my two readers has such a position, please be so kind as to forget about it; he won't show up for it.

Bex's tips on jobhunting:

Tip #1: People like to know what hair color you have when you are applying for jobs. Try adding a flavorful description to your job objective. Something like this: "Nonprofit executive with extensive experience in delivery of social services and consulting for nonprofit efficiency seek position that will allow her to utilize her brilliant streaked blond and grey hair for maximum effectiveness."

See how that works?

stay

For Better or for Worse

G.G. always read the comics first; I guess that's where I got the habit. I used to race her to the paper in the mornings, trying to get first crack at the funny pages. Usually I'd end up grudgingly sharing the half I'd already finished when she came downstairs, just a few minutes behind. If she got them first I'd have to go upstairs to ask for them, and sometimes wait until she'd finished. I realized reading them today as I do every morning (online) that I don't know which was her favorite. I read years later that people who read the funnies first live longer than people who read the obits first.

When Slim and I went up to Charlotte this summer we spent most of our time sitting and reading quietly in her room, G.G. with the comics folded in front of her, drifting in and out of sleep, waking up long enough to give orders, then drifting off again. When she felt like talking, she'd whisper "his name is Josh, isn't it? I do want to get it right." Finding out he was from Michigan, she reminisced about the time the whole family (all 8 kids) accompanied Grandpa George to a conference on Mackinaw Island. We didn't talk much, and she apologized more than once for being poor company, but it was enough for me. We'd never been big ones for talking, and most of the time we spent together we were both wrapped up in a book, curled up in parallel armchairs in the family room.

Momma

G.G., I'm glad for every quiet minute we had together, and even some of the more irritated ones, the ones I'm sure I'll look back on when I have obnoxious teenagers of my own. My parents may contest this, but it feels like I took more of my teenage angst out on my grandmother than on my parents. G.G., thanks for putting up with us, and for letting us put up with you for as long as we did. See you in the funny pages.

Grey Days

"I love the rain the most when it stops..." -- Joe Purdy

I wish the rain would stop. Or start. I hate Bogota's occasional grey ways. They always seem to coincide with greyness in our lives. My grandma is ill, tired and old. I wish she weren't any of these things. I wish I'd known her as a young woman, that we'd been nurses together in the war, or bridge partners, or middle-aged housewives feeling too young to have such broods. How cruel is it that the people who often matter the most to us, our parents, our grandparents, are so much older and die sooner? I just wish it weren't that way. GG lived with us when I was a teenager, and when her manic depression mirrored my teenage ups and downs, the house was a bundle of jangling nerves and slamming doors. Sure wish I'd appreciated her more then. We did have some good quiet times together, both of us curled up in armchairs, reading in silence, or watching Wheel of Fortune and each trying to guess the word first. Guess I owe her a lot -- my love of words and books, ability to sit quietly and be happiest that way, and probably also my aversion to smoking (from her falling asleep reading and smoking and burning little holes in her favorite chair).