Recently the iPad has been a source of inspiration for my photoshop creativity. Since it functions so well as a photoframe, it seemed only natural to use it as a frame for frame breaking. I also must admit to being astonished that I seem to be the first person to see its pristine reflective glass as a place to put an ice skater. It seems so natural to me. Here are my first two attempts at iPad photoshoppery.
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Parking in nearby beach tourist town, Laredo, is really a nightmare in July and August, especially for those of us that go there year round. But never is the parking problem worse than on the last Friday of August, when Laredo hosts their famous Batalla de Flores (Flower Battle), a parade of floats with 100% real flowers. So this year we came up with a parking strategy.
I’ve been walking a lot lately, so we decided that I would drive the car to Laredo in the morning, park it as close to the downtown parade site as possible, and then walk back home. I took Nora with me since she isn’t any extra work on walks (when bribed with cookies), but she is a handful to care for around the house. Then, at 17:00, we set out walking to Laredo. Immediately the sky began to look ominous, and about halfway there, it began to rain. We managed to find a little shelter and soon the rain slowed and then stopped. We got there late for the initial lap (for the judges to see the floats), but we caught the entire second lap (for the awards to be given) and a little of the third lap (for the awards to be paraded, literally, around the town).
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As I mentioned a month ago, there was some very mild concern about Nora’s slow development in both speaking and walking, and an appointment was made to see a specialist. Well, we just got back from the specialist today, on her seventeen-month birthday. We were initially surprised that our appointment was in the Rehabilitation Department of the Valdecilla hospital in Santander. “We don’t need rehabilitation; we need habilitation“, I quipped. After some reflection, however, it makes sense that experts in the task of learning to walk and speak would probably best serve the people in a center for injured adults that need to relearn those skills.
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On Saturday morning, my wife got a call from her boss, who had just sold his motorcycle, and, as part of the sale, had acquired way more barnacles than he could consume, so he offered us some. Barnacles are a special delicacy in Spain, particularly in northern Spain and Galicia. At Christmas time, barnacle prices can reach 99 €/kg ($65/lb)! The best, most expensive ones come from the Cantabrian sea on the northern coast of Spain. On Saturday we were given 1.5 kilograms of the good, expensive barnacles, so on Sunday we had a feast.
I had never eaten or cooked barnacles, so everything was new and fascinating to me. Here’s what I learned…
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Last Friday, August 6, my wife and I headed down to Extremadura to see our daughter, Nora, who had been down there the entire previous week with her grandparents and great-grandfather. It was a little disappointing not to be able to present her to our friends down there, as most of them had already seen her earlier in the week. She clearly recognized us (whew!), but was pretty unenthusiastic about it. We were immediately merged into her ordered hierarchy of people she likes to be with:
She spends a good portion of her time in her great-grandfather’s house prohibiting him from touching things. If he puts his hand on a chair or table or toy or glass, even if the object is across the room from her, she will race over (still holding someone’s hand) shouting, “No no no no no!!” and remove his hand from the object in his home that he had the nerve to touch. It’s actually pretty cute, and I think she understands that it’s a bit of a game. He certainly does.
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Taking full advantage of our temporary childlessness, my wife, sister-in-law and I had an exhausting weekend. After sending Nora on her way, we grabbed our swim suits and our always-prepared-this-time-of-year beach bag and drove the five minutes to Laredo’s beach. We parked right at the midpoint of the five kilometer (3.1 mile) crescent-shaped beach and walked to the main town center on one of the beach, where we found a restaurant to have lunch.
After lunch, the desire for siesta was strong, but we had to walk back to the car to get our beach towels, and the sky had clouded over, much to the chagrin of my companions. I suggested we take off our shoes and walk back in the surf, so we did. But when we reached the midpoint where the car was parked, we were enjoying the walk so much that we continued all the way to the tip, where we stopped for a coffee at the bar there. Heading back, the same thing happened, and we continued all the way back to the other end. On the third time passing the midpoint, we did stop to go home, though. That’s a total of 15 km (9.3 miles), most of it in a foot of water.
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I’m pretty sure that I will never understand clothing fashion. It seems to be a futile conundrum of combining the desire to be like everyone else with the desire to be unique. But then I don’t get a lot of social customs. Every once in a while, however, a new style comes along that makes me think, “Wow, you are going to be so embarrassed in ten years to look back at photos of yourself wearing that!” In the last five summers in Spain, there has been an explosion in the popularity of capri pants, called “pirate pants” here, that I have successfully avoided. C’mon, people! Having trousers that stop at your calves is a ridiculous idea.
It was about one year ago, last August, that my wife showed me some new trousers she had bought. They seemed to me to be the most ridiculous thing ever, and I was unable to stop from laughing at the idea that someone would wear them. I’m not sure if I hurt her feelings or what, but she ended up giving them to her sister. The only way I could think to describe them is with the term “Aladdin pants”. Some googling, in preparation for this post, has revealed that they are actually called that! Perhaps the correct term is harem pants? Much to my chagrin, they are huge this summer.
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Nora was exceedingly well behaved this morning. When she woke up at 6:47 AM with a mild cry, I got up and explained to her that, due to the slight tilt of the Earth’s rotational axis in relation to its orbital plane, we have a season, summer, in which the sun comes up very early and sets very late, and that just because the sun was already up and that Mommy had just left for work, it was, in fact, according to the definitions set forth in the household rulebook, still officially Night Time and that she should go back to sleep. She and I both went back to bed until 9:00 AM.
I carried her downstairs, put on her shoes – good traction is very important at this stage of her ambulatory development – and left her in the living room to play with some toys while I went to the kitchen to prepare her morning bottle and orange juice. Before the 45 seconds on the microwave were up, she had crawled into the kitchen with me. Soon I had her breakfast ready and we returned to the sofa for alimentary administration.
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Today I took Nora to the pediatrician to learn the results of a blood test she had recently. Her mild anemia has been rectified by the iron supplements we’ve been giving her. I mentioned to the doctor that we’re mildly concerned about Nora’s language development. Her only word is “no”. No mamá, papá, mommy, daddy, bread, water, pan or agua. It’s also totally unclear to me whether or not she understands anything at all that we say. Confirmation bias makes it easy to remember the times she gets a command or question correct and all too easy to forget when she has some random response. The doctor asked if we thought Nora’s hearing was okay, and I said there’s no doubt that her hearing is great. Whenever there’s the faintest bit of distant music, Nora’s gettin’ jiggy wit’ it. The doctor said that Nora’s situation is a little unusual by this age, but that being in a bilingual household is known to retard initial language development. In the philosophy of “better safe than sorry”, she’s referred us to a specialist that is somehow going to “evaluate” her at some not-yet-made appointment in the near future. I’m almost more curious to see the means of evaluation than to get the result.
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We began World Cup final Sunday evening by heading to nearby Laredo, where we’d heard there might be a big screen set up on the beach. We were certain that we couldn’t take a 15.5 month old child to an enclosed space with Spanish fans because she’d die of fright from all the screams. We discovered that the beach screen was only a rumor, and the real big screen was in the old town hall square. We took one look at how packed the square was with people and turned around and headed back towards Colindres, but not before spotting a group of old ladies wearing red-yellow-red striped headbands singing A Por Ellos.
Once back in our home town, we chose our favorite soccer-viewing bar, El Vapor (The Steam), which is only about two hundred meters from our house. The twin brother of our friend with the restaurant in Laredo was already seated at a prime table, and he informed us that he was leaving before the game began and promised us his table. We would spend the game outside on the sidewalk looking into the bar through the glass to a projected screen. And it was a good thing we were outside, because, well, let’s just say that inside the bar, it lived up to its name.
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