WebJournal - The blog will set you free

WebJournal - The blog will set you free
News of no interest whatsoever except to very close and patient friends and family members and maybe people with no life

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Gaining some perspective

Just while I was whining about the demise of my iBook and despairing about M.A.'s leaving, the phone rang. My coworker answered it. Her mother had just died. Talk about a reality check.

I've been listening to the presidential debate. Bush is not as dimwitted as he sounds but he is one scary dude. And Kerry did much better than I thought he would. This is a profound a review as I can deliver today. I am still not in the most cheerful of moods although M.A. did call from the aiport. Nice but not as good as the long face-to-face conversations I have gotten used to.

10:40 PM

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Fuck! Who jinxed me?

Tekserve just called. My iBook hard drive is dead. No charge to replace it as it's under warranty but data recovery will be 500 bucks. Damn. Damn. Damn. The data on it it's certainly not worth $500 but that does not mean I want to lose it. Damn. Damn. Damn.

3:40 PM

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As for today...

Life sucks big time.
M.A. is leaving town this afternoon. No idea when he might be coming back. Yay. Life is getting better and better.

Re. this blog, I have tons of backlogged posts and I will probably start publishing them this weekend, if my iMac does not crash. In the meantime send me jokes, but only really funny ones. I need them.

11:19 AM

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Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Thursday

Dinner at Delta Green with M.A.'s parents. After hearing so much about them I was really interested in meeting them. We had a very pleasant dinner and on first impression I liked them both.

Friday

Both M.A. and I took the day off. I am really starting to enjoy this.
We went to Chinatown in the morning to buy watches for M.A.'s friends. Right when we were in the middle of a shady transaction, Fabian called to see if we wanted to have lunch. We already had plans with M.A' s parents so we asked him to join us, took the subway up to Central Park (yup, the subway!) and met all of them for lunch at the Boathouse.

For dinner we stayed at home trying to watch Cold Mountain. We both hated it and after trying hard for a few minutes we switched to a silly funny movie.

Saturday

Up early to meet M.A.'s parents for the 3-hour boat tour of Manhattan. At the beginning I thought I would never make it. I kept checking my watch and was getting pretty antsy but then I started enjoying the pace and the wind and the sun. I also enjoyed M.A.'s father's comments. He seems to know a lot about a lot of things so his comments are quite interesting and informative.
Then the four of us had lunch at Chelsea Piers, just by the boats. A beautiful place.
For dinner we met M.A.'s brother and a bunch of hs friends at Shuka in the East Village.

Sunday

Today was Maria's birthday celebration at the Bohemian Hall beer garden in Queens. M.A. left in the evening to have dinner with his brother, I stayed on and then went to Maria's favorite pub in Astoria, the place she calls Cheers ("where everybody knows your name"). She is an adorable girl but when she has a few too many she is even better. She gets all cozy and sweet.

Monday
Day off again. Fabian drove us to East Hampton and we went for a dip in the Ocean. A great way to bid goodbye to the summer. We had a drink at a little place outdoors but we were surrounded by bees. I am not sure whether M.A. or I hate them the most so we choose to have lunch indoors.

Tonight I slept on the couch so I could keep talking to M.A. until we fell asleep. That's exactly what we did. I am left wondering whether we will run out of topics some day.

Tuesday
Today's the day I told my mother about my separation. After the initial shock she reacted surprisingly well.
It' rained heavily all day.
We had dinner with M.A.'s parents at the Greek tapas place. They are leaving tomorrow.

Wednesday
I woke up on the couch having dreamt of a huge snake on a tree that was trying to bite me. Finally it did, but I caught its head and pushed hard underneath it, pushed until a little ball, much like a man's Adam's apple, popped out and the snake died. I never remember a dream but I remembered this one vividly.

3:23 PM

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Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Life goes on

I started working on those leftovers beers on Monday evening and yesterday we did a little Opal, a little Divine, like the good ol' times. M.A.'s parents are arriving in town today and I wanted to go out at least once before he gets abducted by the family.

As for my separation, I read a very interesting article yesterday. Certainly "the most selfish thing you can do for yourself is to forgive other people" and "When I talk about forgiveness, I mean letting go, not excusing the other person or reconciling with them or condoning the behavior, ... Just letting go of your own suffering." Nice to know I'm right ... again.

2:14 PM

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Monday, September 20, 2004

It's over

Here's the deal. After 26 years together, my husband and I are done. No turning back possible. And the details aren't pretty. The separation had been in the making for a while and although in the end I was the one who made the decision there wasn't much else I could do. Had I stayed in the relationship any longer I would have crossed the line into masochism and total lack of self respect. As of now, I might have crossed that line anyways.
My moods are swinging back and forth, from feelings of relief and excitement about the future to real pain that seems to come in waves.
This is one of those situations that only happen to other people until it happens to you. I married for life but life had other plans. This is not to say I have any regrets about the decision, because I don't. I know it was the right one, but it still hurts.
First and foremost, there's a strong feeling of defeat. I truly believed we would make it. I believed we had something most people didn't have. I believed we loved each other. Now I have to admit it was a major failure and that we are now just another statistic.
Then there's the pain of letting go of the future I thought we had. All the projects. Of course, the future is nothing but fantasies until it materializes but letting go of the fantasies takes a little effort. We were going to grow old together. It was a fact. Unless one of us died.
And finally the most hurtful feeling of all is this nagging sensation that maybe I never knew him, maybe it was wrong from the start, maybe I have pushed unconditional love to an irrational extreme but then again, by definition, unconditional love knows no boundaries.
I am in a place now where I am questioning my ability to judge people. I am not sure I want to change though. This is who I am and I have a clear tendency to see the best in everybody. Then again, maybe I am not seeing the best in people, maybe it's not that I am an optimist, maybe it's not just being naive. Maybe I am plain stupid. Maybe it's time to wake up, get rid of the Pollyanna syndrome and see the world for the ugly thing most people seem to think it is.

I can't help being me and somehow I am less devastated than I thought I would be. I do see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Actually, it doesn't even feel like a tunnel at all. It feels more like a wave I've got to ride. Feel whatever I am feeling. Cry if I feel like it. Laugh if I want to. And move on. More and more I am realizing that I've been blessed with a capacity for happiness that nothing seems to be able to shake. I see no redeeming value in pain so as soon as I reach a certain degree of suffering my mind shuts it off and I start appreciating everything that is beautiful and joyful around me. There's always plenty.

Today the weather is spectacular, for example. A beautiful fall day, sunny and crisp, a perfect background for a great city. I have the fridge full of leftover beers and food from Saturday's party. I have a couple of great bottles of wine, courtesy of M.A. Worst comes to worst I'll go get one hell of a massage.

Time to regroup.

When it rains it pours

My iBook is dead. It died on Friday night, just in time to leave me with no iTunes for the party. I'll have to call Tekserve and blog during the day.

5:26 PM

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Thursday, September 16, 2004

Shitty day

A truly, purely, shitty day.
Enjoy.

10:26 PM

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M.A.'s birthday

Had dinner with him tonight at Mediterraneo's.

The official celebration will be Saturday, with a party at home.

The home front

Quite a few things have been happening lately but I am not yet ready to blog about it. Now you can let your imagination go wild.

1:52 AM

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Tuesday, September 14, 2004

I'm back!

Today was another great day at the beach but I am too tired to blog about it.

I am now home. In my bed. With my TV. My bathroom. That's the good part. The bad part is that everything is a mess, as I left it in the middle of the night a week ago. The inflatable bed where M.A. slept when we came back from Laguna is still in the middle of the room. I know have added an open suitcase by the kitchen and scattered wet clothes all around. When I tried to open the bathroom cabinet a whole shelf collapsed strewing its content all over the place. Another shelf is one inch from going the same way. Maybe I should sleep.

1:00 AM

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Sunday, September 12, 2004

Holed up again

After a day at the beach, we had lunch again at Uvva's where we proceeded to get into a heated argument. Recently we seem to be getting into one heated argument after the other. It's actually kind of funny because we go about our day happily, perfectly synchronized, so much so that sometimes I think we should take turns talking because we tend to say the same thing at the same time or he will say out loud the same exact words that were on my mind before I even have time to open my mouth, and I do the same to him, as if reading each others minds. But now, in the middle of all this harmony, we somehow find ourselves debating something, getting really caught up in whatever it is, then forgetting about the subject of contention, zooming in on the fact the we are in disagreement, starting to get personal (a sure way to start a fight), heating up and ending up in an all out argument. Fortunately we don't stay mad, although today the bastard really got me upset. In any case, I've decided these are nothing but growing pains. Eventually, if they don't get better, I'll have to kill him. It will be such a pity, what with his being totally OK most of the time ...

In any case, the beach was great today, pretty crowded and with totally different people from the kind that inhabit the hotel. Gone were the fatsos (dammit!) and in were the gorgeous girls in the tiny bikinis. All sluts with a bad case of halitosis, if you don't mind my saying. We stayed at the beach, in the water, until after 7 PM, when the sun had gone completely down, the water was dark and warm and there was almost nobody around, except for some dogs and their owners. Absolutely gorgeous.

On our way back to the hotel we bought some food at a Subway and called it a night. There is not much I can say about Puerto Rico by night, that's for sure. The strange thing is I don't seem to mind either.

Tomorrow it's back to NYC time. In a way, I am looking forward to it. I always miss NY.

10:28 PM

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Inefficiency at its best

A warning to the inexperienced: don't expect speedy services in Puerto Rico. Actually, don't expect service at all.

The Net:

On Friday evening the hotel's Internet connection went down. I had been on line in the morning so I knew it was not me (in the sense that it could not be me just because I have a Mac and not Windows). We were already in the process of trying to get some info about flying to Culebra from not less than seven concierges at the Hotel, so M.A. went down to the front desk and explained the computer situation too. We were told "technicians" would be dispatched. Eventually we got tired of waiting for the "technicians" to solve another "situation" so we called the front desk to cancel our cry for help. The guy downstairs wanted to provide me with the phone number of the cable company. I declined. I could not bear to imagine a conversation with a help tech. Two minutes after our cancellation the "technicians" showed up. Burly men with stupid looks and lots of gold rings, as per the local fashion. From two feet away one of them looked at the cable sticking out of my iBook and going into the modem and decided his job was done. He had verified everything was plugged correctly. He then handed me a bit of paper with a couple of handwritten phone numbers so I could call the cable company. Fucking unbelievable.

Bars and restaurants:

Waiters and waitresses handle about one table at a time and get very confused it you, like, interrupt their leisurely stroll back to the kitchen to add a glass of water to your order. Should you ask what a certain dish is made of, they will stare back at you with a blank look on their face.

Transportation:

Yesterday we had a feverishly active day spent mostly in our room and waiting for a bus. In the morning we had decided to do some cultural tourism and go visit a couple of forts in downtown San Juan in a 200 degrees weather. The getting to the Old San Juan was not bad but the coming back was a nightmare, We had to wait for about an hour at the bus terminal, listening to the locals cuss about corruption and lousy government while the bus drivers lounged around. Eventually there were 4 (as in FOUR!) or our busses parked at the terminal and one of the drivers decided maybe it was time to hop on one of them and drive his exhausting half hour route. By the time we were back at the hotel we were weary and drenched. All I needed was the regular phone call to my mother - that left me as usual fighting back tears - and I was done in for the day. Well, almost. A couple of beers at the pool tend to work miracles.

Movies ond demand:

In the evening we holed up in the room. Called in for food and watched movies on demand. Make that "tried to watch movies on demand" . The demand part was not working and M.A. had yet again to call the front desk. We got a technician. He came and checked the cables and plugs. He told us everything was OK. M.A. explained how not OK it was so the guy called a girl on the radio and asked her to check on her side. Ta da. After some mamacitas, mi amol and other terms of endearment the girl turn some fucking knob and we got our movie (I-Robot, by the way, we loved it!).

Somehow we managed to sleep siesta and to sleep all through 10 AM this morning. We have still to see Puerto Rico by night. This is so unlikely. Age is creeping up on us at breaknecking speed.

Time for the beach. We are leaving tomorrow. Who will make coffee and buy croissants in the morning next week? Damn!

10:41 AM

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Friday, September 10, 2004

My iBook is in Puerto Rico with me

And the hotel has high speed Internet access. All that's missing is the will to blog.

Tuesday

After some nerve wracking wait for the van to take us to the airport we finally managed to board our flight to NY. We landed at about midnight and after careful thought decided it was not worth it for M.A. to go home, unpack, pack again and come pick me up for our 7 AM flight to Puerto Rico. So we hit a bar instead, slept about an hour and a half and left NYC under the rain. Completely unreal.

We flew JetBlue - great seats, plenty of legroom, wireless Internet access at the terminal, minidisplay with TV and several movies at each seat. They will see a lot of me if they keep up with that kind of service.

Wednesday

The Hotel is great. We got an upgrade to an Ocean view room, on a 4th floor. We are practically over the water. About 10seconds after arriving we were at the pool. The one with the bar, obviously.

Side note: one very neat thing about the guests at this hotel is that 99% of the chicks are grossly overweight. Extremely liberating.

We spent the whole day at the pool. Lunch in the water. Siesta time. Jacuzzi. I have yet to try the sea water pool. M.A. has, while I was snoring away.

In the evening we went to El Viejo San Juan and although it was very very quiet, we did find a great restaurant, the Parrot Club. The food was wonderful and our waiter was very helpful - he even give the the recipe to the vodka concoction he had chosen for me.

We were back to the hotel room early enough to hang out on our terrace and enjoy the view for a while.

Thursday

If you ask the concierge at the hotel there is nowhere we can go without taking a cab, renting a car or hiring a private army. I asked which beaches were walking distance and the answer was none. They discouraged us to take the bus. So we took the bus. And had a ball. An 82-years-old lady (she told us her name was Marta Rodil) was ranting at the bus stop. She was hilarious. Her audience were a couple of African-Americans from NY. She took the bus with us and we had an earful of everything that sis wrong with Puerto Rico now. The drugs, rap, sex. The bums coming back from NY. We would have missed the experience had we listen to the concierge.

The concierge was wrong about the the beaches too. Just a few stops away we found a beautiful long deserted stretch of sand. The water was fantastic. We walked it up and down. Eventually we came upon a group of girls pulling down the pants of a nice looking black guy, with the few people at the beach watching on. Very entertaining.

We even had lunch at the beach. Our server was a girl from Cordoba (Argentina). Here's the picture from our table. Don't hate us. We are good people ... maybe.

In the evening we had dinner at an Argentinean restaurant with M.A.'s friend, Luis. Very nice guy and quite cute. We went bowling with him afterwards. I'll skip the details of a very humiliating experience. Lets just say I was caught unprepared. I had a skirt on, a top that kept riding up and I can't remember when was last time I played bowling, if ever.

Friday

We are considering taking a small plane to Culebra, maybe tomorrow because it's already too late to do it today.

Plans as of now: pass on the computer to M.A. so he can check his mail (my baby! I am trusting him with MY BABY!), walk to yesterday's beach, swim, walk, swim (we don't even carry towels, making it virtually impossible to ever lay out in the sun), stop and drink, swim, walk, stop and eat, walk back to the hotel, go to the pool, then to the gym, shower and then go out clubbing. Sounds perfect to me.

11:05 AM

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Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Leaving Laguna

The first part of the trip is over. I had no time nor desire to blog. The beach was great, the weather perfect. The boys are still asleep but in a short while they will we up we'll have breakfast, go to the pool, pack and wait for our van to pick us up at noon.

Yesterday we had dinner at home with Connie and David and a couple of neighbors. The guy's business is urns that look like leather-bound book. In Italian leather, mind you. The conversation got a little morbid, with details on worms and research on burials and cremations and market shares. Not that it really bothers you when you are nursing your 10th mojito.

The day was spent at the beach and the pool. The back of my legs are now a lovely shade of crimson. And I am so pissed that I always come last in lousy swim races at the pool. Damn.Sunday I did not leave the house at all. The weather was too hot for me and then one of those moods of mine hit me. I did not get up and going fast enough, lost momentum, was too late for the beach because I had to be back at the house for brunch with Bea, and so forth. Ended up staying in my room, with the blinds closed and the ceiling fan on, reading "Lovely Bones". It's a great book, though I have to stop now and then to weep out the emotions.

OK, one of the guys is up. The day has officially started.
I am wondering whether to take my iBook to Puerto Rico.

8:00 AM

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Friday, September 03, 2004

Can't stop laughing

I was supposed to be sleeping but I am about to wet the bed. You have to read the whole thing, don't stop at the first page.

Oh, please! I need adult diapers for this!

1:31 AM

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Thursday, September 02, 2004

Four more years

You've got to be kidding! I am listen to George W. Bush at the RNC live right now. An amazing hodgepodge of platitudes delivered with the effectiveness of a Valium.
I miss you, Billy.

Holiday!

I should be packing but am too tired. As soon as I can talk to Sergio I'll suspend consciousness untill tomorrow. I'll just have to wake up early and do everything tomorrow morning before going to work.
I simply cannot wait.

10:30 PM

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Catch a wink

I'll get an hour or two. Should suffice.

6:31 AM

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Still up

And quite a while to go.

4:20 AM

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Pulling an all-nighter

Tonight my bed will miss me.
No sweat, I'll sleep Friday on the plane.
Be back in a while.

12:27 AM

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Wednesday, September 01, 2004

It's all about priorities

Pedicure. Check.
Eyebrow shaping. Check.
Shoes to repair. Check.
Highlights. Check.
A couple of apple martinis at Opal. Check.
Work. Half done.

For once in my life, a picture of me I like: