My snowy little village, Pobes, taken from my parent´s living room

Smoke

I´m smoking my (hopefully) last cigarette of the night. I'm smoking way too much since I arrived in Spain. I used to be a hard and convinced smoker for thirteen years. I liked it, and I never felt I had to apologized for it, as long as it wasn´t bothering anyone else. Then I got pregnant and I quit cold turkey. It was bothering someone else. I didn´t smoke for a year and a half, until I came back to Spain on my own with my toddler and the stress of coming back home for Christmas, surrounded by smokers, made me start again, like a teenager. I would take out the trash to get a chance to have a quick smoke. One week later I became, again, a public smoker. I never smoke at home, in Chicago, and I need less than a box a month over there. Here, I´m going through, at least, ten cigarettes a day. I guess I´m a geographical smoker now. Silly. I´m waiting for that next positive pregnancy test to quit. I know, I should quit way before that, but with the added stress I would never get pregnant. What a caveat.

Obama

With husband and baby taking a nap, I get a chance to write a little bit, and reflect on a funny phenomenon I´m observing. Curiously enough I haven´t written about Obama yet, although I live in Chicago, where he is unavoidable. But since I am in Spain, I have observed that everyone has something to say about the guy. The first question I get from people I meet is "How was it to be there?". Although I didn´t goto the rally, apparently watching it from Lincoln Square on live TV is more that enough for them. Everyone is betting on the date he may be shot. Everyone has a line for him. Yesterday we were in a restaurant, and given how loud Spaniards are (and that includes me) we could hear our neighbours say: "He has such a good body", "He is so intelligent", "He plays basketball so well", "He could have such a great future", "Clinton wasn´t bad, but he is so much better..."
It was an interesting anniversary (seven years) lunch, because there was a power outage for one hour. A very interesting gastronomical experience. In one of my favourite restaurants, Arkupe, in Vitoria. Great food and service. I have to go, my father is complaining because I´m not doing anything productive...

Christmas trees

I put up a Christmas apple tree at my parents backyard this morning. I know it sounds exotic, but we do it every year. We have a regular one inside, but we like this little tradition. I managedto convinced my father to let me do it (it involves some wire cut and paste) and he even lent me his knife after a little hesitation. I had the invaluable help of my mom´s gardener. He is not her gardener, just the guy who takes care of it when there is somethingto be done. And he is hot. Not in a Desperate Housewives way, he is more the rural neo-hippie type. Blonde, blue eyed, long hair, and he leftthe city when he was 19 to build a house in the woods and set up his own landscaping business. It sounds good. He is being coming here for years, but I still feel uneasy around him. Maybe because of this teenage fantasy of mine. I always thought I would end up with a countryside guy, taking care of my parent´s land. Actually, I was in love for a few yers with my candidate, we even had a bet about our kids. He was sure I would be the mother of his. I said no. I won. I haven´t seen him in ages, andI know nothing about him. It didn´t work out, we never dated actually, but we always liked each other. It´s the midlife crisis again, or the fact that I´m back home? Home is a little village in the mountains (and a village in Spain can very well mean 100 people, which is the case). But it´s quite interesting. The first night the firefighters had to come to my neighbour´s house because the chimney had caught fire... Life in the woods. With a Christmas apple tree.

Of ghost terminals and other little things

Actually, it wasn´t quite a whole terminal, just a part of the shiny new T4 at Madrid´s airport, Barajas. It was section M. I had never heard of it, but our flight to Bilbao was leaving from there. It was so lonely that I asked the security guard if I was in the proper place, wondering if they were shooting a horror movie. But they weren´t, it was just an empty terminal. More than 60 gates, and only two flights scheduled for the whole morning. Little L and I were starving, after an 8 hour (I have to say remarkably uneventful) flight from Chicago, but at first we couldn´t find any open restaurants or cafeterias. That doesn´t happen in Spain. It´s full of them. I was also upset because in the other part of the terminal they have this nice playground for kids, with proper changing tables, bathtubs, ball pools, cribs... That´s where we usually leave from, but if I wanted to go there this time I had to go through security again, twice, and I didn´t even think about it with the baby, the car seat, the stroller...
As I was convinced that I would have a crappy morning, I found a place where we could eat, with a very friendly waitress. Understandable, considering I was the first patron in the morning, and this was 9 am. We had breakfast there, and we spent a good couple of hours with her. We exchanged stories, and laughed about the fact that a brand new, spotless great part of an airport goes totally unused. It´s funny how sometimes you make¨"circumstantial friends", people you meet randomly, and with whom you connect and share a tiny portion of your life, which was the case. L had a blast running around the empty space, which, as you can imagine, was huge. And I reconciled myself with the world, after leaving Chicago pretty mad with a couple of the Iberia employees at the airport, only to find, unexpectedly, the friendliest staff at Madrid. For a long time I didn´t like Barajas, and Heathrow was my favourite airport in the world. But that´s quickly changing. At the end, it´s good to be back home.

Tonsils

I'm sick. I thought it was the flu, or my imagination, but I went to the doctor today and I have tonsillitis, better known in my country as amigdalitis or anginas. Sweet. Especially six days from getting on a plane with little L for nine long hours. The doc gave me antibiotics, which sounds clever. I had a close and intense relationship with my tonsils a while ago. I had tonsillitis every couple of weeks when I was seventeen, to the point that I became resistant to some antibiotics. But I decided to keep them, so I wouldn't get worse things, like laryngitis. And they came to greet me back, after more than ten years without being reminded about them. Again, sweet.