It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (So Far)

10 thoughts for today

+1: My dog is really wonderful. No really, she is. I’ve just spent the night recovering from a week and a half spent house and dog sitting for my friend. I say recovering because her dog, while adorable, weighs roughly as much as I do and is a menace to society. Case in point: I left a box of oatmeal flakes on the top of the refrigerator (like a real refrigerator, not one of those tiny dorm ones) and when I came back from my 5 minute shower they were gone. Not just the flakes themselves but also the bag and box they came in. Where they went is anyone’s guess, but 36 hours of explosive diarrhea points to the dog’s stomach.

+2: After acquiring a laser pointer, I was able to spend most of my free time simultaneously running the dog around the apartment and catching up with my friends. I talked to a few friends I haven’t seen in ages and made plans to talk with some more. On top of that, at least three of my favorite people have moved or are moving to Cincinnati for a little while. I love the new friends I’ve made here, but as Mr. Emerson said, "It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."

+3: Last night around 3 am I woke up with an inexplicable craving for pb&j. It was the first thing I ate when I got home from work tonight and it tasted like pure comfort.

+4: Speaking of comfy things, Alison recently reintroduced me to the miracles of hot water bottles. Mine does wonders for heating up my feet in bed and is pretty good for snuggling when no living soul is available (I don’t cuddle with ghosts). It’s definitely going to have a place in...

+5: My new blog “Practical Magic," which I started after spending a night in Molly’s house organizing my bookmarked sites. See, I worry about forgetting all those little things that I’ve read or that people have told me or that I’ve discovered that make life easier. Like brushing your teeth in the shower. I was all about it for a year or so, but for some reason I forgot about it and stopped doing it. So now I have a blog for me with a name borrowed from an Alice Hoffman book that I’ve never read but liked this part from it:

"There are some things, after all, that I know for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."

+6: Another thing I did at Molly’s was read through all of Fit For a Femme’s blog. I’m feeling a bit at a crossroads in the haircut/clothes/genderish department and so I thought I’d do some exploring on the femmey side of the continuum. In related news, I bought a pair of snakeskin print pants.

+7: So while I may not have my style in order, I think I’ll still be eligible to receive my adult card this year. I have a 401k, signed up for stock options yesterday, and am doing my very own taxes this weekend. Being a grown up is almost too glamorous to handle.

+8: On the other hand, I spent the entire day at work giggling over an accidental penis joke.
Customer: Excuse me, do you know where the Whole Foods in Mason is?
Me: Yeah, it’s right on Mason-Montgomery
Customer: So just take 71 up there? What’s it by?
Me: Oh, it’s right next to the big Dick’s.
Me: Er...
Customer: (no change in expression)
Me: Heheheheheeee

+9: I also spent 2 hours tonight catching up on my favorite show, Switched at Birth. If you haven’t seen it yet, I don’t know what you’re doing. You should probably take 4 minutes right now to watch one of the actors sing Enrique Iglesias’s “Hero” so that you have a better idea of what you’re missing.

+10: Look at my motherlovin’ avocado plant!

Yǔ

Emily wanted a t-shirt with the Chinese character for rain on it. I've been in an art-making mood and I like mailing her things, so I made her one. I think it turned out pret-ty naiiiice and the colors even go with my blog. Yeehaw!

On Culture and Offensive Language

If you've been to Spain or read anything I've had to say about it, you know that the Spanish have a special relationship with ham. In any predominantly Christian culture, taking the Lord's name is vain is not nice, but what happens when you have a Catholic country that is obsessed with pig products? I'll tell you what happens, you get a place where "Jesus Christ!" and "and a ham!" are equally offensive exclamations. When you look at how people insult each other, you see a lot about their values.

In Harry Potter, there's a scene where Ron calls Harry a loser and storms out. In the subtitles, he calls him inútil which is Spanish for "unhelpful." Just a few days ago, someone asked one of my teachers how to say "loser" in Spanish. She said there really isn't any translation, not because they don't have a word, but because winning and losing aren't important concepts in Spain (except when it comes to soccer). Calling a Spaniard a loser wouldn't make any sense to them; they'd just ask, "What did I lose?"

In America*, we're a capitalist society. Winning means success and losing means failure, laziness, and undesirability. Spain's socialist system means that helpfulness is more important than personal achievement.

Spain's socialism is visible on public transportation. While you have to swipe your ticket to enter the metro, the trams are set up so that it's up to you to validate your ticket once you're on board. In three months, I've never seen anyone come around to enforce the 50 Euro fine in place for unvalidated tickets, yet every single person who gets on the tram makes sure they pay for their ride. Half the signs at every stop encourage passengers to look out for the common good, saying "Valida tu título. Todos queremos un buen servicio," "Validate your ticket, we all want good service."

The other half of the signs have a more Big Brother feel.

"Validate your ticket, we're all watching you." Pros and cons to every system, right?

It seems like something that's culturally ingrained, but then I see people jump the turnstile to get on the metro. When I think about it, though, it's mostly at night and they're almost always drunk teenagers and young foreign tourists. People here take their three different recycling bags up to 10 blocks to put it into the right bins. 1st graders take themselves to school on the metro. Barcelona is a city without dog parks because dogs are trained so they don't need a leash. Responsibility is taken seriously so that life is easier for everyone.

In unrelated idiomatic expressions, if someone asks you on a date and you turn then down, you "give them the pumpkin."

*I know Harry Potter is a British book and movie, but if the number of advertisements I saw in the UK are any indication, competition is alive and well there too. That's nor to say that people in Spain don't compete or aren't driven, but it seems that after years of Franquimo, the culture is more willing to value diversity (meaning there's not one universally accepted continuum of success and failure) whether it's in the political structure of the autonomous communities and languages, rights for minority groups, or respect for jobs that are not as high-powered but necessary for the city to function.