Vada, she may have your genetic strand, but we have a shared vocabulary of body language and a love of my red shoes. I challenge your sharing of gene HCL1 on chromosome 19 to elicit as much charm as her spellbinding tale of footwear.
What you do not see in this photo is the people to the left hanging out in the water with their children in floats. This same water. A shade of toxic green. Under the freeway.
I would like to be writing how far we have come along unpacking and remodeling the house and that I have loads of pictures to show you, but then my nerves would be less frazzled because I would be living in an aesthetically pleasing environment that was both clean and organized and who, really, would prefer that option over a garage full of boxes, paint cans lining interior room floors, and old toilets and appliances in their backyard? Our new sofa turned into 2 new toilets, a dishwasher, an electrician - his services, not his person - a master bedroom that still has carpet, and a trillion trips to the local hardware store. BUT, we are all alive, we haven't failed out of school (yet), and Kahlo has mastered eating in front of the television set because we are excellent parenting examples like that. Allow us to babysit and your 18 month old will too know how to get cereal out of the pantry on their own and eat breakfast from a box. We take cash or check.
It is hot. I can feel sweat running its fingers along my collarbone and choking my throat from within. I need a jarritos, some musica mexicana, and our fan.
We might be a little bitter. 
Today was the first day of basketball camp. There was trouble going to sleep last night. There was nervous anticipation of whether he would prove himself the next pro player to a high school gym of boys ranging in age from 8 to 13. There was a dream of actually learning to slam dunk by the end of the week. There was a call less than thirty minutes before camp started this morning to inform that there would be no camp. Period. A face fell.
I noticed that I don't contribute stories or pictures of our two older children. I find myself protecting them even in ways they do not need to be protected, mostly because of their private other-family lives.
It has been 11,953 days since my last public confession. I have breast implants. They were a valentine’s gift a decade ago. Seriously. A valentine’s gift. Unsolicited. And the plastic surgeon actually performed the surgery knowing it was something I never requested. The confession part is what a spineless obedient sham I was to not just say no.
I worry about everything, and by everything I mean if there is merely a slight remote possibility that something could occur that would make my life one eighth of a degree worse, I focus on it until said remote possibility passes, assuming it could ever pass, and then I focus on what other possibilities could occur that might incur that very same horrible result. It is tiring. After my implant surgery, I read that there is this very rare occurrence where the skin between the breasts can un-attach from the chest causing a tent effect between the breasts. I focused on this for days and was positive I felt some pulling in that very spot. I unwrapped my ace bandage and gauze just to stick a sock between my swollen new boobs in hopes counter pressure would prevent me from developing a uni-boob. I think I might be the only person on Earth who has ever done this. It was especially fun explaining to the plastic surgeon why there was a sock between my boobs under the bandages I was supposed to never remove when I went in for my post-surgical follow-up visit. I think he actually said, “Seriously?” and then muttered the aforementioned comment about me being the only person on Earth... But you know what? I have TWO boobs now. He cannot be certain I would have otherwise.
Ever since I quit my job to stay home with our baby, losing extra family income and my health insurance, I have been convinced one of my implants is going to rupture for no other reason than I would not be able to afford to fix it and would die. I will have to stuff that same sock into one side of my bra since toilet paper would be wasteful, I will develop gangrene and a high fever and delusions, and my wife will want nothing to do with me as she is very clearly a breast woman and has been all of her life. I might add that during the surgery I suffered some significant nerve damage to my right nipple. A decade later, if anything slightly brushes up against that nipple, I still have this tuning fork effect of nerve pain that vibrates deeper and deeper until there is this odd feeling that something very cold is dripping inside of me. This dripping feeling is fun paired with my fear that something will rupture and then drip inside of me.
So, this morning, our baby wakes up at
Just so you know, I am the same way about my teeth. They are all original, but I am always worried about one breaking or chipping now that I do not have dental insurance. I blame this book as I never worried about it before reading about a character named Giles. I found the book vile and unintelligent and I sold it to Half-Price Books as soon as I finished reading it - just to note this is not a book recommendation.
Two years ago last month, I traveled alone to Honduras. In the corner of my mind, I had been planning this trip since I returned from Costa Rica that same summer with my best friend, but Vada and I had developed into an us and were planning our wedding soon after my return. I remember lolling around Vada’s house on Alexander Street for days begging her to come with me. Self-induced torture followed over whether I should just cancel my trip because I didn’t want to spend time away from her, but Vada assured me that I should go. Her concerns seemed more about my safety – diving with sharks and shunning populated resorts, or, say, the horror of my being in the ocean without floaties. I prefer to experience the culture where I travel and escape unnecessary means. The hammock on the porch of my cabana was my favorite place to sleep. I ate dinner outside every single night. I dove with reef sharks and nurse sharks and puffer fish and schools of blue tang in the bays that surrounded my cabana in Roatan, I fulfilled my childhood dream of snorkeling with whale sharks during a trip to the island of Utila, and I made good friends with the locals, even traveling to the island of Guanaja with a local family who were visiting their extended family. And again, Guanaja. I cannot adequately express… I heard it changed soon after I left – unspoiled land now home to a few resorts. The Guanaja I remember is where I had to climb a ladder to reach my second-level accommodations and hope a goat didn’t knock the ladder over before I made the return trip down, where I ate meals prepared by an old woman who told me she had met one other “gringa” before but that I would be the first for her grandchildren, where we went out to the only bar on the island – a bar where you actually checked your machetti and other weaponry at the door and retrieved said items on an honor system when you left, where I developed my craving for a pop called Link, where I became hooked on watching Spanish soap operas in a diner with no air conditioning while not understanding a word they spoke... Vada still comments how thick the air is in our house at times and I know it is my reluctance to turn on the air conditioner because of those memory associations.
