What's with the Animal Waste?

No, I'm not writing an opinion piece on the apparent custom here of letting your dog relieve himself anywhere he'd like and then leaving it to the mercy of the soles of others to side-step (though that does play a pivotal role in my story). It’s just that excrement seems to be playing the starring role, and I don't know why.

While I was cleaning the cat box this afternoon, I found that there was a hole in the bottom of the box. What a pleasant surprise. This meant, of course, that all the urine that this box was supposedly housing for the past few days had been leaking out all over our floor. Upon realizing what was going on (the pee on my hand helped make it a whole sensory experience), I somehow managed to drop my cell phone right into the center of the pee puddle.

I was at a loss as to how you're supposed to wash piss off your phone (how do you even wash a cell phone without ruining it? I don’t think it’s a common problem- cat pee smell on a phone. I’ve never seen that in the FAQ section) so I sprayed kitchen cleaner on a rag and tried to scrub it clean. Unfortunately, I think the cleaner may have had ammonia in it though. Doh! Need I say more?

Later while changing Bella's diaper I kept smelling a foul, stinky boy smell. At first I thought it was me (remnants of the cat box debacle), but I couldn't find the source. I went on a smelling quest, sniffing every single thing in sight, but I couldn't find anything. After walking into nearly every room in the house, then retracing my steps without any luck, I finally settled down, defeated, on the living room rug, (the one I'm always trying to protect from Gaia). I glanced down at my shoes and, in that moment, I realized that those dogs had not taken mercy on my sole.

Needless to say, tomorrow's a cleaning day.

The Bunches do Spain

Two weeks ago my dad and step-mom, Joyce came to visit me in Spain for the very first time. It was also their first encounter with their granddaughter, Arabella.


One of the main reasons I want to move back to The US is because I can get so frustratingly lonely here and miss my friends and family MADLY. I was in heaven while my parents were here. We wandered around the city and into some of the parks and gardens (my dad is an avid gardener), ate paella, saw some of the beautiful architecture, ate tapas, took a three day trip to Granada to see the Alhambra, ate some more... I think that's what we spent most of our time and money doing - eating. It's easy to do here, especially with the menu del dia. You just can't beat three courses for under 10€.


There were also the awkward moments with the in-laws, trying to translate and getting completely lost or just downright fed up and exhausted. Alex has more ability in that area, yet less awareness. He quickly finds himself wrapped up in conversation while the other party waits, hopelessly, for some sort of insight into what the hell is being said. In the end, it all worked out just fine with a bit of patience and some mad interpretation skills on the part of both sides.


All in all we had an amazing two weeks and I was sad to see them go. Though it sounds silly, the thing I miss most about having them here is getting up and sitting around in our pajamas while we chatted over coffee and oohed and aaahed over Arabella. It was easy and so natural and it felt like home.

Can I be a blogger too?

It seems as though the entire world either reads or writes blogs. I rarely do either, but because I am living so far away from my family and my closest friends in the world I thought, "What the hell. I'll give it a try."

For those of you who have lost track of what's going on in my life, here's a quick recap:

Five years ago I left Monterey, California to travel around Europe for a year. I ended up in Valencia, Spain with a terrible bladder infection, a wicked cold and the intention of staying for four months and miraculously learning perfect Spanish.

Well, suffice it to say, I realized that it takes a bit longer than four months to learn Spanish that's even tolerable to the native speakers let alone "perfect". Five years later, I'm still making agonizingly pitiful mistakes at least once a day (sometimes once per sentence, which would increase that figure by... well, let's not even go there). On the bright side, I'm never without an amusing story to tell.

Anyway, I digress. After a year of living like a college student again; sharing apartments with other foreigners, going out nearly every night and trying to survive off of the 15-20 hour week English teacher's salary, my life again changed. I started dating my exceptionally gorgeous future husband (who was also living like a college student, yet in his very own bachelor's pad). We hooked up in Madrid during spring break (You see, I wasn't exaggerating when I said we were living like college kids), and moved in together about a month later. Shortly after, I began the slow, painful process of turning his flat into a presentable couple’s home.

One year later, after the failed attempt as a real estate agent left Alex feeling rather empty and both of us motivated to try something new, we bought our very own café/cocktail bar, The Bohemian Café. Now, how many times have you heard someone say, "My dream is to one day own a café in... (insert wildly exotic location here)? I too, was one of those people. I think it's a popular dream because it sounds so picture perfect when you're not doing it. I had NO IDEA the work that goes into running your own business, especially when your job is to serve others, which I hate, by the way. For the first four months we worked from 8:00 am to midnight every day except Sunday. It was pure hell. The café had been called "The Chaplin" before we took it over and it already had its own clientele - old people. We were trying to change its image, but not without resistance. The university professors, always in a hurry and rarely without criticism, never missed the morning rush, the precise moment to find us running around like chickens with our heads cut off. That period of time was probably the most difficult in the past five years. We hardly had any free time. Our downtime was for sleeping and lying around, zombie-like and zoning out on the TV. We survived off of kebabs, drank too much beer and lived like slobs. Thank god that is over now!

On the following Valentine’s Day, almost a year later, Alex proposed to me right there in our café. He got down on one knee and proposed three times (once in Spanish, once in English, and once more because, like a dope, I gave him the wrong hand). We were married on September 29th, 2007 in El Huerto de Santa María. It rocked. I was so lucky to have my mom and brother and some of my closest friends there as guests. We are still planning on having a ceremony/raging party in The States someday in the future. Who knows when though.

Two months ago we were blessed with the cutest, sweetest, coolest baby ever - Arabella Lucía. She is a dream. Alex calls her "Cru Cru" I call her "Sweet Girl". Our lives are consumed with her at the moment, but we can't complain. She is highly entertaining to watch and not a very difficult baby. We are extremely lucky. I love being a mom. I feel like it is what I was always meant to do.

Well folks, that's about the gist of it. I wasn't planning on writing such an epic novel, but now that everyone's all caught up, I plan on making my future blogs much shorter, yet just as enjoyable. Stay tuned...