¡Mierda!

Literally. I mean, poop all over my living room. You don't realize how much you love someone until you clean their shit out of your white carpet floor. And everywhere else, for that matter. How can someone so small produce so much waste? Then you wonder about global warming... My son is partly responsible! Poor thing, it wasn't his fault. He isn't potty trained yet, and my first thought was that he took off his diaper and did it on purpose. But I was wrong, it was just that the amount of poop he produced was so unbelievably huge the diaper couldn't hold it. I gave him a quick bath, and he kept thanking me. No wonder...
Well, considering he is 31 months old, it took a long time to have the first stinky accident, with it's accompanying funny story.

The maid

After a long long time, I went to the movies on Tuesday. It was totally out of the blue, my friend S called in the middle of the afternoon, and after hesitating for an hour (I'm becoming a home bug), I decided to go. It was good to see some friends and meet some new people. It was a pretty cold, snowy/rainy night, your typical Chicago winter weather... We went to the Music Box Theater. I had never been there before, but I would highly recommend it. It is a beautiful, old fashion place in Southport. Their usual fare is independent/foreign, with a The Sound of Music sing-along here and there. We watched The maid, a Chilean movie that got good reviews at Sundance. It tells us about Raquel, the maid/nanny who has worked with a family for 23 years, and the different relationships the family members and her have developed through the years. Although she acts as if they are her family, they are not. That's one of the biggest achievements of the movie, the fact that it is perfectly able to convey to us that thick glass of separation, in which the family treats her well but always drawing a line, always intending a "but...". Catalina Saavedra's performance is remarkable. Without so much of a dialogue, she is able to perfectly depict Raquel's feelings, specially that glimpse of craziness/stubbornness we can see when they hire other women to help her, so exaggerated that it becomes humorous. But we can also see her insistence on locking the other maids out as a metaphor of her way of keeping them off her territory. She wants to keep being "their" maid, and that means no one else should be able to claim her place inside the house, linked to that family, to which she has devoted her freedom. Only when someone who values her freedom more than this form of 21st century endowment, does Raquel open her heart.
It is definitely a character movie full of open questions. Why does she hate Camila, the oldest daughter? Does she finally sleep with Lucy's uncle? Where is she running at the end? And more than anything, why does she devote her life to this family who will never appreciate her efforts? It is also a cruel depiction of the Chilean upper middle class, la burguesía. In a way it reminds of Luciana Martel's films, it's like a Christian clean version of La ciénaga. In any case, it's worth seeing.
I always forget that there was a time when I went to the movies at least twice a week, when I bought and read film magazines, and when I knew what directors were going to be up to for the next two years. That was long gone. I don't have the time or money to do all that. But I will try to get back in shape. Maybe this blog will eventually evolve into a cultural one... Don't even get me started in books.

TVE

Since little L has decided that he prefers to speak English, and since we want to watch the King's address to the nation on Christmas Eve, and the Reyes Magos parade (or cabalgata in Spanish) on January the 5th, I upgraded our cable so we can watch Spanish national Television, or Televisión Española. I'm so excited about it that I haven't stopped watching the thing for three days, even though it wouldn't be my channel of preference were I in Spain. But it's the only one I can get here, and that makes it precious. There are not many things that make me feel so at home. Maybe a couple of magazines, like Hola (the Spanish People) or some foods, like Cola Cao or espárragos en lata. And I was very lucky that I was able to catch two very interesting interviews, done by Juan Ramón Lucas, with two gentleman I really admire: Joaquín Sabina, my favorite singer-songwriter, and the author of the song which title I stole for the one of this blog, and José Saramago, a portuguese writer so well known that he won the nobel Prize of Literature in 1998. I have seen both in person, Sabina in a concert almost ten years ago in Vitoria, in the Teatro Principal, and Saramago in a weeklong narrative workshop at Santander's well known summer university, UIMP, with a very good friend, and a long lost venezuelan lover. Itruly enjoyed both experiences, and learned from their wisdom. If you can watch their interviews, do it. If not, you can listen to any of Sabina's songs, or read any of Saramago's books, and you will for sure learn something new. My favorites: Y sin embargo, of course. And El evangelio según Jesucristo. Enjoy.