Chaos

My morning descended rapidly into chaos after the boys left on the school bus -- it's a good thing the oldest had unloaded the dishwasher.

First, I had to call my housekeeper (in Spanish) to tell her that the key would be at a neighbor's house because I would not be home.  Our conversation was cut off midstream, but we had covered all the important information, so I promptly made another call.

I had planned to go to work at a women's shelter with a friend and needed to see what time we were leaving.  No answer.

Which was a good thing because the doorbell was ringing.  I couldn't answer that right away, however, because the three-year-old was on the potty, yelling cheerily about his activities, and his calls had reached a fever pitch.

I dashed upstairs to make sure nothing untoward was happening.  False alarm, and I was sent packing by the three-year-old, who continued to holler out a blow-by-blow of his performance in the bathroom.

So then I opened the door.  It was the man who washed my car that morning; he was bringing me my change, returning a coffee cup, and wanted to chat (in Spanish) about the fact that next week he could use some rubbing compound on our car.

Great, but I had to run because the phone was ringing again.  Good-bye Manuel, thank you, dash to the phone.

It was my housekeeper again -- ever polite, she had called back simply to apologize for the break in the previous call and, inquiring politely and in an effort to help me with my Spanish, asked where I was going.

I thought about how to explain:  I'm going to a shelter for women and their families who are trying to break out of the sex trade.  We make beaded lanyards to sell to raise money both for the women and for the shelter.  They also learn trades like sewing, baking, etc.

I settled in Spanish for:  I'm going to San Jose with a friend.

She wasn't satisfied, and pressed for more details.  My Spanish was not up to the task.  I'm not sure what she understood me to say, but she helpfully provided the word "prostitute" when I stumbled, and along with me dredging up the word for "to help," she said she understood.  I'm not sure what she thinks we were doing this morning, but she approved.

I had to cut that call short because my three-year-old's cheerful yelling had taken on a plaintive tone, and he joined me where I was on the phone, minus several key articles of clothing, and with a suspiciously wet sock.

He had finished all that was necessary, and had apparently done some unnecessary things as well (hence the wet sock).  I didn't work too hard to untangle all the details; sometimes a mother just doesn't want to know.

So, a pair of dry socks and some clean clothes placed on the appropriate appendages and we were on our way.

Except for the crunching, grinding sound that met my ears when I tried to back out of the driveway.

It was a wheelbarrow; or what was left of one.  The groundskeeper for our condominio had parked it squarely behind my car and wandered off to have coffee.  The wheels still work, but he'll need a sledgehammer to make it usable again.

And it was only 8 a.m.

I think I'd just like to go back to bed.

The Haunting of my Garbage

I frightened him sometimes when I’d open the metal door to put my trash in the trash bin.  When we lived in Jakarta, I don’t remember that a trash truck ever came by, but all my trash somehow disappeared.  The moldy leftovers that had been forgotten for too long in my refrigerator, the fruit peelings, empty milk cartons, and the thousands of other things that were just so much detritus to be ejected from my home.  It all disappeared.

One of the biggest takers seemed to be a young boy, probably about eight years old.  I saw him several times; maybe he was just the least experienced.  Maybe in a few years, he’ll slip silently up and silently away and whoever it is who lives in my house now will never know he exists; never know he’s the one taking her stale bread and coffee grounds.

The first time I opened the metal door on my side of the 8 foot concrete wall, I found him, scrabbling around in the debris.  He looked up at me with wide, brown, startled eyes, his face smudged, his blue shirt filthy and torn, before scuttling away backwards, like a crab.  For my part, I stood in startled silence, the new trash bag dangling from my hand, my own eyes wide with surprise.

“Come back!”  I wanted to say.  “Come back, what do you need?  I have it, I’ll give it to you!”  But I spoke no Indonesian, and he was gone.

After that, I was embarrassed about the things I threw away.  They were still trash to me; I didn’t want them, but I was embarrassed to set them out for him to find as treasures, squashed between the JC Penney catalog and the scrambled eggs my son hadn’t wanted for dinner.

I saw him often; he was always startled, frightened, quick to disappear.  My Indonesian didn’t improve quickly enough for me to call to him; the best I could offer was a quick and encouraging smile.  No one else knew of our encounters; had the day guard seen him, he would have chased the boy away.  I spoke of him to no one; I wondered how I could help him.

And then I was required to get on a plane to go to America to have a baby.  And after that I was required to stay in America when all family members were evacuated from the Embassy.  And I never helped him, and I never spoke to him, and he has haunted me ever since.

Is he still finding treasures in the trash of the wealthy US Embassy employees who live in that house on Brawijaya street?  Does he have a home?  A family?  Does he live on the street?  What does he eat – or do I know and I am embarrassed to admit it?

And why was it so hard for me to think of a way to help him?  Couldn’t I have come to the trash, every time prepared with… a bag of clean clothes, some money, something to eat that wasn’t already garbage?

My son is eight now, about the age of the boy in Jakarta.  And I look in his smiling grey eyes and remember the startled brown ones from so long ago.  And I imagine what it would take for me to send my boy out to dig through someone else’s trash for his supper.

And then I imagine what it would take to make sure nobody’s sons or daughters would have to dig through the trash for their supper.

What would it take?

**Written in honor of Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty**

What Happens When Smoke Alarms Go Off in Embassy Housing

San Jose, COSTA RICA -- I hate to cook; let me just be frank.  Eating:  yes.  I love it.  Cooking:  I'd rather listen to children scream.  Of course, when I cook, I do get to listen to children scream.  Maybe that's why I hate it so much.

So I have this theory about cooking:  the hotter the temperature, the faster the thing will cook, and the sooner I'll be done (and the sooner the children will stop screaming).  So I cook everything on my stovetop on heat level "10":  eggs, meat, rice, delicate soups and sauces.  Under my iron fist it all chars beautifully.  And quickly.

Of course, it always burns.  Whatever 'it' is, it always burns.  This week it was pork chops.  And this is what happens when you burn pork chops on the stove in U.S. Embassy housing in Costa Rica.

First, the smoke detector goes off.  Actually, several smoke detectors go off because the Embassy puts them in Every Room.  Not a bad thing, I'm sure.  Unless it's a false alarm.

Second, I shut off the smoke detectors by dragging a chair underneath them, detaching them from the ceiling, removing the battery.... you get the picture.  Several times I do this.  You'll notice that I haven't yet turned off the stove.  Heavens no!  I've got to get that pork chop cooked!  (My housekeeper is smarter than I.  She turns off the stove.)

Third, I hear another alarm upstairs.  I dash upstairs,past my wide-eyed toddler, punch in the code, and cancel the house-wide security system alarm.

Fourth, the phone rings, so I dash back down past my still-wide-eyed toddler to answer it.  It is the guard at the front gate, who fires rapid and very concerned Spanish at me.  With a blank look, I hand the phone to my housekeeper and I learn the Spanish word for smoke:  humo.  I am to hear this word several times in the next few minutes.

Fifth, the doorbell rings.  It is a guard from the Embassy who fires rapid and very concerned Spanish at me.  With a blank look, I step aside and let my housekeeper explain.  Again I learn the Spanish word for smoke:  humo.  They both refrain from using the Spanish word for idiot, which I later look up on my own:  idiota.

Sixth, the phone rings again.  It is the guard at the front gate.  Again.  Who fires rapid and very concerned Spanish at me.  With a blank look, I hand the phone to my housekeeper, and I learn that the guard is a really nice guy.  My housekeeper translates into slower Spanish for me, and I understand:  he was just calling to say that if I ever have a problem, he's just a phone call away.

This does not change the fact that I feel like an idiota, the pork chops are burned to a crisp, and my house is full ofhumo.

The children come home, see what's for supper, and start screaming.  But I make them eat it anyway:  I worked hard to prepare that charcoal, and by gum they're going to enjoy it, humo and all.

Thanksgiving -- Ex-pat style!

Twenty-eight people at our house, including, among others:  nine kids, one teenager, five Irish, one Brit, one Ecuadorian, 7 Embassy officers, three Peace Corps workers, two Costa Ricans, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Also present: a $40 turkey, a $50 ham (um, these were normal-sized, in case you were wondering.  Makes your shopping bill look quite lovely, doesn't it?!), 3 boxes of Stove Top stuffing, one loaf of homemade bread, 8 bottles of wine, and -- literally -- a bushel of corn on the cob.  

I told the Thanksgiving story using felt board and some felt figures I bought years ago and it was a huge hit -- especially for the kids, but even for some adults, especially the non-Americans.  You can't imagine how fun it is to have non-Americans over for Thanksgiving.  If you've never done it, I highly recommend it for next year!  No other country in the world has a celebration anything close to American Thanksgiving, and being able to explain this part of our history and culture to "foreigners" is the best way I've found to make friends out of total strangers.

Oh, and we had plastic plates, silverware, and cups, thank you very much!!  Clean up was a breeze.  And why was this important?

Because the next morning we left on a trip to a volcano -- "The" volcano in Costa Rican parlance.  There are several volcanoes here, of course, but only ONE is erupting (and has been since 1967 or so):  Arenal.  As a group, the Embassy got a FABULOUS deal on rooms at The Springs Resort and Spa (www.thespringscostarica.net), and we spent two incredible days and nights being pampered, eating amazing food, swimming in thermal water, and waiting for the clouds to clear so we could see the volcano.

We didn't really ever get a good view of the volcano -- although I'm told that under ideal conditions you can even see lava rolling down the sides! -- but we're going back in January, so we'll try again!

More to come later; now I have to unpack!

Ugh.

This Too Shall Pass. I Hope.

Mom, are you SURE there's a volcano here?

Poas Volcano -- the largest caldera in the world, according to the literature from the national park (check it out and let me know if it's true!).  This is what we saw when we visited a few weeks ago.  We could hear the volcano, hissing and spitting; we could smell the volcano; we could feel the volcano -- that's not all fog below Benjamin; a good bit of it is warm steam.  But we couldn't see the volcano.  I'm taking it on faith that we were actually in the right place.

But, the kids had a good run around (Don't get too close to the edge, dear!) and there was a great gift shop waiting for us at trail's end -- the kids got M&M's; I got a painting -- so a good time was had by all.  And now we have an excuse to go back!

(P.S.  Apparently I haven't figured out how to post a picture inside a text box.  Hmmm.  If you want to see a perplexed and steamy Benjamin, just head to http://kellyarmstrong.pnn.com/8583-home-sweet-home .)

Tatooine is in My Bedroom

Surprise

The Sun is Down!

With these cheery words, my three-year-old snuggled up to me in bed this morning.  "No it's not," I said sleepily as I tucked him in under the blankets next to me.

"Yes, it is, it's down!" He repeats, mashing his nose against my face and giving me a sloppy kiss.

"No, it's not down, it's up.  It's morning," I groan back, suspecting that it may not, really, be decently morning yet.

At which point he throws his arm over my neck, whispers sincerely, "Oh, I wuv you, Mommy."  Then he bounds up, flips on the light switch over my bed -- including the halogen spotlights directly over head that shoot light like a physical force into my brain.  "Now the sun is up!"  He shouts and runs gleefully out of the room.

I look at my watch.  5:55 a.m. on a Saturday.

Why can't kids be cute at a decent hour?

Halloween Curmudgeon

OK, I just don't like Halloween; I am to Halloween what Scrooge is to Christmas; except I make him look enthusiastic about his holiday.  And in my defense, I can honestly say that I never really liked it.  Well, OK, as a kid the candy part was great, but I didn't like the rigamarole you had to go through to get it -- dressing up in a dorky costume to go and beg at the doors of strangers was not something my shy and retiring nature ever really yearned to do.

My kids have no such inhibitions.  We don't like scary -- no one in my family likes scary -- but ALL the kids love dressing up and begging and, of course, candy.

So every year I vow we are not going to go to the Embassy Halloween party, and every year we end up going.  Well, for one thing, all the kids there speak English and, my kids love that aspect of it ("UN Translator" is not a future job for any kid in my house).  And for another thing, the different offices pass out great candy -- chocolates, Starburst, SweetTarts.  I always confiscate the SweeTarts immediately.  They're one of my favorites, you can't get them overseas, and my rationale is that the kids won't appreciate them properly anyway.  I do.

So we went to the Embassy party last night, I baked cupcakes -- chocolate, wheat-free, with orange icing.  I was really proud of my creativity until I saw the decorations on some of the other cupcakes, hand-drawn icing spiderwebs, "Boo!" and the like.  It turns out I'm actually a decorating schlump.  I also made sandwiches for the potluck, remembered to pack separate food for my no-wheat-no-milk eaters, and had everything packed up and ready to go well before departure time.

And then I remembered:  costumes.  We have no costumes!  We're leaving this house in 45 minutes and we have NO kids' costumes anywhere in sight.

Thank goodness for the Internet.  Five minutes later I'd researched and scribbled down several ideas that we could create in less than half an hour, including "raining cats and dogs," a cardboard box, and a bag of blue jelly beans (I have blue balloons) and offered these options as the kids were getting off the bus.  I needn't have bothered.  The oldest dug out a child-sized military uniform I thought I had given away, the middle one found his pirate hat and a light saber, and the youngest wanted to go as Thomas Train -- so he wore his Thomas t-shirt.  Hey presto, in 5 minutes I had a soldier, a pirate, and a train, and I was left standing in the hall with my head spinning.  Who needs moms?

And, as always, we had a fabulous time:  SweeTarts were had by mom, bad chocolate was had by kids, and my soldier and a visiting Hermione Granger duelled all over the patio outside the consular section.  I think my soldier got the worst of it:  Hermione worked an expelliarmus charm on his boots which flew off in different directions and Hermione's cohort (a pink fairy, if I recall correctly) made off with his machine gun.  The pirate raced to the rescue and kept tripping over his light saber.  The little one pitched in by running eagerly behind the rest of the troop repeating the distress call he'd heard the soldier give:  "May Gay!  May Gay!" he shouted into a tiny sword he was using as a walkie talkie.

My husband and I sat on a bench, made sure no one ran into traffic, and ate a fairly peaceful supper of sandwiches and carrot sticks while a tribe of tiny Indians, vampires, fairy princesses and one Dora the Explorer crawled around our feet and we visited with their parents. Our kids gorged themselves on chocolate on the way home, and we all tumbled into bed and exhausted, hyper, sticky mess.

You know, in the face of that kind of fun, even Scrooge has to give in: Maybe next year I'll trick or treat for my own SweeTarts.

"I Need a Towel for the Worms"

“I need a towel for the worms.”

These are words designed to terrify the mother of any 3-year-old.  Along with “I fed the fish some crackers.”

We didn’t even want a fish.  In fact, we (read:  I) planned actively to never get a fish.  Ever.  I mean, what do you do with them when you move to a new continent?  Cats were hard enough.  But fish?  My husband assured me we could use the magical “fish transporter”: drop them into the white porcelain bowl here in Europe, pull the handle, and they magically reappear in Central America.  But I wasn’t buying it.

So why do we have a fish?  Because I don’t speak Spanish.  My housekeeper, on learning that it was the middle one’s birthday a couple of months ago, promptly told me she’d like to get him a gift.  I thought she was talking about some sort of floating toy for the bathtub.  No, what she had in mind was a fighting fish.  We named it Sparkles.  And after 2 months in a tiny fishbowl, my husband was finally able to get a small aquarium for it.  The fishbowl was out of reach of the kids.  The aquarium, on a low table, is now the most popular spot in our house.

Yesterday, while I was unpacking boxes, my three-year-old found me and triumphantly announced that he had fed the fish!  On closer inspection, I learned that he had fed the fish three wasabi-coated rice crackers.  Not ideal fish food.  I swear Sparkles looked at me pleadingly; wouldn’t you if your lungs had suddenly been filled with wasabi powder?

As I fished out the crackers, the two of us hashed out the idea that he should NEVER put anything in the fish tank.

So, he hasn’t.  Yet.  But this morning while I was putting on my make-up, he came in, pulled a towel off the rack, and announced that he needed a towel for the worms.  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was scared anyway.  I had reason to be.  He had found the jar of mosquito larvae fish food, opened it, and poured it, not in the fish tank, but all over the floor.  So now my floor is covered with dead mosquito larvae.  Yum.

That magical fish transporter is starting to look very attractive.  Just say the word, and I’ll send Sparkles to you for a nice, long visit!

Exploding Laundry Soap

You just know it’s going to one of those weeks when your laundry soap explodes.

Yesterday marked the beginning of what promises to be very much one of those weeks.

Since I have three small boys (= mucho mucho dirt) and laundry stain treatment in a spray bottle costs about $5 per bottle, I asked my husband to pick up a jar of pre-treatment gel the last time he was at the store.  Which he did.

But, what we both thought was gel, was actually an evil, caustic powder which can be mixed with water to pre-treat stains.

Since, however, this powder doesn’t actually dissolve in water and it’s so caustic it eats the skin off my fingers, I needed a better solution than mixing it in a cup and scrubbing it into the innumerable stains my children's clothing contracts.

My housekeeper Marisela came up with the (I thought) brilliant idea of mixing some with water in an empty spray bottle.  She did, and we congratulated ourselves on our cleverness.  I went off to blog and she sat down with a well-deserved cup of coffee.

About 5 minutes later, a bomb exploded in my laundry room.

This evil powder apparently fizzes slightly (OK, a lot) when you put it in water.  So much pressure had built up in the spray bottle that it exploded, showering all the walls in the laundry room with soapy water, and spraying 10 feet out the open door to coat my newly painted walls in the kitchen (more on that painting bit later).  It covered walls, ceiling, clean laundry, floor, dirty laundry, ironing….  Hoo boy!

So, I guess it’s back to the drawing board.  Maybe at this point, $5 for a bottle of properly mixed spray doesn’t sound so bad after all.  At least it would be safe.

Maybe I can use this other stuff on the resident rooster.  Here chickie, chickie, chick!

Pasta: A Very Bad Idea

Friday I had a brilliant idea:  The boys had picked out a pesto recipe in a kids’ cookbook that they wanted to make.  So I thought, why not make the pasta too?

I’ll tell you why not:  it’s a bad idea.

I had this vision of the four of us sitting cheerfully at the kitchen table, cranking the handle of my pasta maker, laughing delightedly as the perfect strands of pasta poured from the machine.

 You know it didn’t happen like that.

First, we had to run a piece of dough through the machine to remove the bugs and debris that had accumulated while the thing sat in our cabinet.  And then persuade the little one not to eat that piece of dough.  Meanwhile, the rest of the dough sat in a misshapen lump on the table, soaking up water from the air (atmospheric humidity in Costa Rica during a rain storm:  2,000%), and getting stickier and stickier.  Which, of course, no one noticed until the machine was completely gummed up.

Six tries and four cups of flour later, we had a sheet of dough we could feed through the cutters.  It came out looking like a birds’ nest.  Back to the flour bin.  I could have just dumped the whole bin of flour on the table.  It certainly looked like I had.  There was flour on me, on the table, on the walls, on the floor, ground into the carpet, coating the pasta – and it was still too sticky.

Fifteen minutes and one test sheet of pasta into the process, the oldest stormed off in a huff because it wasn’t working, I was waving floury hands and screaming at the little one who was eating all my dough, and we hadn’t even told the middle one what we were doing.

By now, it was personal.  I was going to make that pasta.  No matter what.  So, the little one sat at the table and ate raw pasta dough while I grimly fed lump after lump into the machine.  In an hour and a half, I managed to make about 6 ounces of pasta.  The recipe said it made 8 ounces, but the little one kept eating it.

Per instructions, I laid it out on a clean dish towel to dry, and set about making the pesto.  By this time, no one was interested in cooking, least of all me.  But we were going to EAT that pasta.  No matter what.  So I chopped and blended while the little one banged happily on the table with a spoon.

Except he wasn’t banging on the table.  He was banging on the pasta, I learned much too late.  My lovely, semi-adequate strands of pasta which I had laid out on the table had been pounded into an undifferentiated glutinous mass.  I dumped it in the boiling water anyway and we ate it, lumps and all.  It wasn’t too bad.

I’ve got a pasta machine for sale.  Dirt cheap.  Guaranteed to provide fun family together time.

I’ll even pay shipping.

Grace

My neighbor Rocio is the most grandmotherly grandmother I’ve ever met.  No, she doesn’t wear an apron and bake cookies – her maid wears the apron and bakes the cookies:  Rocio is very upper class Costa Rican.

What I mean is: I’ve never seen a grandmother who loves her grandchildren in quite the same way that Rocio does.  She’s told me a couple of times that the rule she’s hashed out with her children is this:  at Rocio’s house, what Rocio says for the grandkids goes.  Absolutely.  At her children’s homes, she’ll accede to their rules and keep her mouth shut, even if she has to leave in the middle of a dinner party (which she has done before!) to honor her part of the bargain.

Frankly, I thought this was going a bit overboard, and then she told me this story:

A couple of years ago, one of her sons and his wife were going through a difficult separation.  Their pre-teen daughter was extremely upset and depressed about the whole thing and came to spend some time with Rocio.

“It was lunchtime, so I made her lunch,” Rocio said.  “She didn’t want it.  So I made her something new.  She didn’t want it.  Five times I made her lunch, and still she didn’t want it.  So I said, ‘OK.’”

By this point, Puritan Me is thinking:  “I would have told that young lady exactly what she was eating for lunch.  The end!!”  But Rocio wasn’t done.

“So I brought her a glass of something to drink.  She looked me in the eye, and dropped the glass right on the floor.  So I brought her another glass.