14 Days of Peloton: Day 6

I have decided that because I hate the pilates class so much, I will take it before my workouts to motivate me to be better at things. After all, it is only ten minutes long. How bad can that be?

I realize that categorizing things in time limits is not always helpful. Getting waterboarded for ten minutes is probably terrible. Better than twenty minutes, for sure, but also much worse than zero minutes. I am nearly a week into doing these workouts and I realize that my inner thighs hurt and walking is difficult.

But on the plus side, my shoulder pain which is pretty much omnipresent hasn't been bothering me at all, and I attribute this to actually using my arms for things! Even if it's not using the weights, which I don't do in any of the classes, because it seems impossible and I am certain Hannah's weights are not weights at all but props, because no human can physically lift five pounds in the fashion she recommends for any extended period of time.

I have also started to rank the classes in order of which ones are better to take on which days, the days being categorized as:

1. I Don't Want To Do This But I Should

2. I Really Don't Want To Do This But I Am In A Hell Of My Own Making

3. I Hate Everything About This And I Hope I Die Before The TV Boots Up

I think that perhaps today is the day I miss another class, but we have exactly 25 minutes before I need to get ready for dinner, which means I have exactly enough time for a 10 minute Pilates class and a 15 minute barre class.

I categorize my experience as #3 but the TV boots up and I do the workouts, and then I proceed to drink two martinis at dinner, continuing my journey as a paragon of health.

14 Days of Peloton: Day 4 (because I missed one)

Two days in and I've already failed my own challenge. There is absolutely no good reason for it. I had all day to do it. I just kept saying, "I'll do it later," and then later was 5pm, I was hungry, and wanted tacos. I knew once I ate them, there was no going back. 

I eat the tacos, and the tacos are delicious. I rationalize that I will just do extra stuff tomorrow. I drink a second margarita while telling myself I am practicing self-care by letting my body rest. After a third margarita, I am certain I am a health whisperer, and my body will get itself in shape if I just let it take its natural course.

In the cold light of morning, my lies are revealed to me (except the part about the tacos, which were delicious). I have posed myself a challenge because letting my body take its natural course means it will consume donuts ONLY and I want it to consume donuts SOMETIMES and also have muscles that will carry my skeleton around.

I decide to do two classes to make up for my error, but I do not want to do two barre classes back to back. Hannah has told me that her Intro to Pilates class is a good way to open the hips or wake up the lungs or deliver eggs to the glutes, I am not sure, I was not listening. But I did hear the words 'Intro to Pilates,' so I fire up the video.

One minute in, and I like it. Hip rolls! I need these. My hips always hurt.

Three minutes in, and I don't like it. Everything hurts. Why do I have to move my legs? Why are there seven more minutes?

Five minutes in, Hannah keeps telling me to keep a space between my waist and the floor. I do not think she realizes that I am here because there IS no space between my waist and the floor. Only donuts.

Seven minutes in, I hope I die.

Intro to Pilates ends and Hannah says I can take her other pilates class which are harder, and I am sure this is some sort of joke, because no one can do more than what I have just done in ten minutes.

Except I have to, because I said I would do an extra class today. My butt hurts and I have a headache because I am hungry and haven't eaten enough lunch (my stint as a health guru was clearly fleeting), but I have said I would Do The Thing, so the thing must be done.

I take a 20 minute barre class and I have chosen wisely, because the thing has me ROLLING with laughter. Dammit, Hannah, I am trying to hate you for hurting my butt with pilates and you are not making it easy!

I want to write more about my time with this class, because it was excellent, but I am also dying, and so I pat myself on the back for a job well done, but it is a metaphorical pat, because my arms don't work anymore.

14 Days of Peloton: Day 2

 I have the notion that I must do class today, but when or where is yet to be determined. After a series of truly horrendous errands that involved GOING PLACES and DOING THINGS, I am considering not doing a barre workout. My second Corona whispers to me, "Doing things is for chumps, and you are a champion."

I am inclined to listen to my beer, but then Hannah texts me and says she has a live barre class happening in twenty minutes. She is much more persuasive than my beer, probably because in the hierarchy of things that are persuasive, boobs are above beer. I go to look for my workout shorts so that I may attend barre not in jean shorts.

WHERE ARE MY SHORTS AND WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS MISSING.

This will be the title of my memoirs, because I have only one singular pair of workout shorts. This has been true for many years now, and I have done little to rectify the situation. In fact, when I realized I needed another pair of workout shorts, I just stopped working out, as to prevent having to find more. But workouts are my life now, at least for two weeks, and therefore my workout shorts have a responsibility that they are CONSTANTLY SHIRKING by always being missing. 

I realize that they are not missing but merely placed safely in the drawer they should always be in. This is why I was confused, because I never put things away, and it is absurd that they would be somewhere they ought. I do not puzzle through this because I have found them and that makes me happy that at least some inanimate object is doing its job today (I'm looking at you, GPS that wouldn't take me to the right place earlier). 

Dan has recently returned from the dentist and declines my invitation to assault our bodies with isometric movements. I tell him that he will miss Hannah saying funny things and also wearing a sports bra, but he is oddly unswayed by boobs, and this is the curse of marrying a level-headed man. 

This is a 20 minute barre class, and that suits me fine, because I am an hour into happy hour and doing things has been a real study in continuous failure today. A few minutes in and I am thrilled that I am taking this class, because Hannah is funny and keeps saying 'squish your peach', which is such a delightful collection of words and sounds that I am giggling except my abs are dying so this is all very excellent/terrible. Then she refers to tucking your pelvis as 'moving your front magic' and I just fucking lose it, because that is the best way anyone has ever described a pelvic area. 

I will be referring to vaginas as front magic from now on. This also implies the presence of back magic, and strays close to implying that either you need to cast a spell to get in or it will cast a spell on your way out, and I am good with both.

I promise Hannah that I will take videos of me working out, which is a challenge, because I am not very coordinated in my workouts, and adding a camera to this is novel.

But nevertheless, I persisted. Day 2 done. Fitness update: still not ripped like Xena.

14 Days of Peloton Barre: Day 1

I have resolved to do fourteen days of Peloton barre, because I don't really do anything, and this seems like a good way to hang out with Hannah without her actually being there. 

The original plan was 14 days of fitness. After talking to Rama, I added 14 days of also doing whatever else I want, which includes eating donuts, because fitness should not be about getting skinny, it should be about luxuriating in my dumb body that rarely wants to do anything but eat donuts.

I feel good about this plan, and decide to execute. 

I think that I will do twenty minutes of barre, because that is a Good Workout, but I also want to go to the store to buy a particularly excellent pair of shoes I saw, and will not have enough time to do that if I do twenty minutes of barre. So I opt to do the ten minute Intro to Barre class. This is good because as I start the class, I remember that I had made a plan two weeks ago to do the classes in increasing difficulty, and then work backwards, back when I had thought I was going to start the program and then kept saying, "Maybe tomorrow," until the shame of disappointing myself became too much to bare and I finally said, "FINE I WILL DO IT."

Dan agrees to do barre with me and I am elated. He is a strong and capable athlete, but I am a solid small box of balance, and am thrilled to be better at something for once. I am very proud of my balance, because it was honed completely by accident and through boredom at a Courtyard Marriot front desk hotel job in Spokane where they did not have any internet, and I did not have a smart phone. I would try to sneak read, but my manager was strict, and wanted my eyes up in case an errant guest wandered across the lobby and became livid when no one looked at them. So instead, I would stand on one foot, and then the other, and then my toes, and eventually I had more balance than someone with a complete lack of coordination or athletic ability has a right to.

Dan and I enter our ten minutes of barre, thinking it will be a light workout. This is not the case, because Hannah is a slave driver in spandex and her graceful body full of functional muscles moves her effortlessly through the moves, and she is able to dance at the same time. She tells me to find the beat. I do not find the beat. I lift my legs up in complete un-rhythm. She is a fluid dancer, I am a Rock-Em Sock-Em Robot but doing barre.

Halfway through, my butt hurts. She tells me that this is just an intro and it is 'just a taste,' much in the way the first guy who got me stoned said, "This isn't even that much weed," as I wandered aimlessly in a field wondering if I would ever remember what feeling normal felt like again. I am fluttering my dumb legs filled with concrete and I am upset that there is a future in which I have to do this but for twice the amount of time.

The class ends and I lay back in child's pose with Dan. "If you breathe out of your butthole, it feels good," I tell him. He asks what that means, which I find absurd. Doesn't everyone know how to do this? "You know, like when you sit back, and then you breathe in, but you imagine your butthole is breathing out?" He stares at me, but ever the sport, he lays back in child's pose and tries it.

"It feels good, right?"

"I feel like I'm in prison," he says.

Day one, complete.

Day 1: Portland to Redding

In addition to all the other reasons we decided to go on this trip, there was one more, which is that I love to travel, but Dan and I also have been discussing having a baby, and society has told me those two things do not go hand in hand. 

Unable to accept such stupid restrictions, I told Dan years ago that I was excited to have his baby, because that would mean I was also moving to Latin America for three years. When he asked why, I said because America is some insane mishmash of people who love babies but never agree that you are raising them correctly, and people who think you are the devil for deciding to procreate while the world is burning.

Naturally, to those people I always say the same thing, which is if the world is devolving into a post-apocalyptic hellscape of roaming tribes of killers, it is in my best interest to breed some new tribe members before things get too rowdy, and of course such an answer pleases neither the people who love babies and can't imagine them growing up to be war criminals, or people who don't love babies, and can't imagine them growing up into people like them. 

In Latin America, though, people are happy that you have decided to have a family in kind of a general way. 

And cheese is half-price!

Instead of impregnating me and leaving Dan vulnerable to what are sure to be more excellent ideas fueled by shifting hormones, we compromised on going on an extended trip before I got pregnant, but with the idea that we would investigate if there were any American places that we liked better for raising a family. 

Things that will influence our decision:

1. Proximity to friends and family

2. General coolness

3. Attitudes toward having a baby

4. Attitudes toward people owning a moody dog made of garbage who is basically a teenager that will punish you for forgetting to cuddle her the appropriate amount in the morning and will take her revenge by barking at things she previously never barked at because she knows it upsets you and then will act like she has no idea what you're talking about later when you try to talk it out and slams the door to her room shut and says she hates you and you say you hate her but cry into your whiskey glass anyway cuz you don't really hate her and also a nice dash of salinity really brings out the flavors

5. Price of cheese

With that in mind, we take off from Oregon, in search of greener, cheesier pastures.

And my trusty road pony.

Nothing happens on our drive in Oregon because nothing ever happens in Oregon. We drive down I-5 and it is sunny and looks like summer, and we consider perhaps we have made a mistake in leaving because this is clearly not December. But when I roll the window down to feel the warm sun, I am buffeted by cold air and the scent of dead dreams, so I know it is not summer and also we have made the right choice.

We settle in to the open road, snug inside our car where the pandemic can't catch us. 

I think.

I am distracted by trying to decide which place I like less, Oregon or California, and so I completely miss the Welcome to California sign. Because of this, I am not convinced that there is a Welcome to California, and probably they have a sign that says Ugh I Guess You Can Come to California. With no evidence to the contrary, I sit back and enjoy the countryside, which is all California has going for it.

Also the raisins.

Our first destination is Redding, a place I have never been. I see a mountain and ask Dan if it is Mount Shasta, and he is driving so he says probably. I am now in the distressing situation where there is An Important Thing that has not been properly identified in my immediate vicinity, so I consult multiple maps to find out if it is Mount Shasta.

My lack of ability to read maps quickly becomes an issue. I do what any good explorer would do and point to the mountain and say, "That is Mount Shasta."

And now it is.

We arrive in Redding after eight hours. I had heard that Redding was a cute little town in Northern California, and was interested in seeing it because it was a potential place we could live.

I immediately reject Redding because it is clearly full of insane people, or people who can't read, or both. In the face of every news and science report ever, they are operating like those men in WWII who were fighting in small places and never heard the war was over, but the exact opposite of that, because they are going about their lives as if there is not a major global event happening, and sitting in restaurants like actual psychopaths. I tell Dan we are not safe because everyone in Redding is a murderer, and not in the cool way.

We hole up in our hotel room for the evening. I decide a good plan is to drink and watch Bob's Burgers and forget that we are in California. My plan is complicated by the fact that I have a very judgmental dog who will side-eye you if you drink because she was an alcoholic as a puppy and now thinks she's better than everyone else because she doesn't drink. 

"Soda?"

"I hate you."

Dan leaves only once to get some terrible and overpriced food, which of course it is terrible and overpriced, because this is California, and the whole state is basically an entitled hot chick who shows up to a date and thinks that is all she needs to do and you are so lucky that she's there and she is not required to provide any personality or worth because look how pretty.

I do not enjoy California.

Redding Livability:

Proximity to friends and family: 3/5 

It's kind of close, but not so close that I'm willing to overlook the entire population being illiterate.

General coolness: 0/5 
NOT COOL GUYS

Attitudes toward having a baby: 0/5 
Probably very bad because they are happy to murder adults so babies are probably also on the murder list

Attitudes toward people owning a moody dog made of garbage: 5/5 
They seem to be happy to tolerate garbage behavior so I think Likely would be quite at home

Price of cheese: N/A 
I did not purchase any cheese in this cesspool

Final score: 8/25 

That is a very bad score. We are not living in Redding.

Choosing Austin

People are always asking me, Roxanne, why did you decide to move to Austin for six weeks, and I am glad they are always asking that, because I have an answer.

For everything.

The decision to live in Austin for six weeks hinged on the amazing house we found while daydreaming of living in sunnier places. See, Dan and I both have a quality where we like the sunshine and feel deprived of vitamin D when it is gone, a unique quality, and one I am sure is shared by no one else. We deliberated on what we would do when there was an inevitable resurgence Winter COVID, which we knew would somehow be worse than its more whimsical cousin, Summer COVID, even though Summer COVID is the more murdery of the pair. Worse because at least with Summer COVID, the sun is out, and you can go outside, and for about ten minutes a day you can imagine that the world isn't burning, and worse because even in the best of times, I succumb hard to the winter blues, doing absolutely nothing to prevent them and in fact inviting in the dearth of vitamin D which then manifests as intense anxiety and depression, welcoming it into my home every year like a shitty parent who comes to stay for the holidays and makes terrible suggestions about how you should run your life, like maybe you should just give up doing anything forever because you're bad at all things, and look how pale you are, garbage child, have you considered no one ever seeing your face again, because it would be preferable to having to see your face.

And Dan likes the sun because in the winter he gets kind of tired sometimes. 

So we figured living in a sunny place during winter might be an equally good idea for both of us, but we were yet to be sold on it. We looked on a map of sunny places, and pointed to all the people who we knew who lived in those sunny places, and Austin is home to two of my very good friends from high school and their very good partners, so it seemed like a good place to start daydreaming. 

We then looked at AirBnB, and almost immediately found an incredible house in the neighborhood we wanted to live in. Better yet, all in it would be less than our rent and monthly expenses on a home, so we would actually be saving money, a concept foreign to me (why would I save money when we are all going to die, most likely every winter?) but Dan has pointed out that I have spent many winters not dying and it is starting to sink in. We think about what a beautiful world it would be to not think we are going to die this winter, and we click the shiny red Reserve button on the house, which belongs to a musician/tech guy named Blaine.

Probably this guy.

Since at this point our rental was six months away, Blaine called us personally to discuss our stay. He first of all wanted to make sure we were "cool," because it was actually just his house that he lived in all the time, and all of his stuff was there, and we would be touching it. I was concerned about passing the "cool" check, because I usually do not pass the cool check, but Dan usually does, and that is why you get married, so one of you can pass the cool check.

We asked Blaine if he thought COVID would interrupt our winter plans to stay in his house, and he assured us we would have no trouble with our rental because he not only lived in his house, he also lived in a van and had no problems taking his van-house to a small swath of land in the desert he also owned and camping on it for the duration of our stay. 

I was not sure I was comfortable staying in the house of such a lavish person who owned two homes while we were about to have zero, but Dan pointed out that a van is not a home, so Blaine really only had one home. I countered that home is where the heart is, so if his heart is in the van then it is his home and also that is why trucks transporting organs are temporarily homes. Dan patted me on the head and left the room, which I have determined in our relationship means I have won the argument and is not in any way a method he's devised of comforting himself about his marriage choices.

I celebrated our very fine decision to stay in Blaine's very nice home probably by getting drunk, and we went about our lives, which involved alternately being concerned about catching COVID and who would be the last president elected before the Republic fell and America turned into a wasteland made of disparate roving bands of killers, which will be an approved career choice in the New America, or in Dan's case, who the new president would be. 

But as we neared our departure, we started saying things like, "There's no way he would cancel, right?" and "He made it like very obvious that we would have no problems staying there, didn't he?" and "Roxanne, if you are worried about the AirBnB you should talk to Blaine and stop following me around asking me about it." So I decided totally on my own to reach out to Blaine and just make sure everything was fine, which it probably was, because this is something you learn in therapy when you're an anxious person, that things are probably fine, and you're probably stressing out for no reason.

That therapy account on Instagram would never lie to me.

I quickly realized that Instagram lied to me and that things are not fine and that I was absolutely right to be afraid of things going wrong, because they very much did. COVID Problems, or CPs as I shall refer to them once and then never again, struck Blaine in a medium fashion that did not ruin his life, but did prevent him from renting his home to us. Dan ended up winning the argument about how many homes Blaine had, because Blaine did not want to live in his second home (aka his van) while his fiancee found a new job, which was understandable, and also the opposite of what he had said before.

But we live in unprecedented times, and Dan says that calls for unprecedented not-calling-people-assholes-when-they're-just-trying-to-get-by, and also Blaine seemed like a really nice guy who was doing his best, so I forgave Blaine. But now we are three weeks away from leaving and have nowhere to live. This is fine though because our lives encompass having nowhere to live as a rule, so I can't be mad that we continue to have nowhere to live. Even so, I returned to the fertile grounds of AirBnB, where nice Austin homes are surely still a dime a dozen as they were six months ago.

I learn quickly that Austin seems to use AirBnB in the way it was meant to be used (they are notorious originalists) in that people actually just rent their whole house to you and then go away while you're using it. So much of the inventory is just a person's house, and there are few houses that are straight rentals, unless you are a fabulously wealthy person who is willing to spend $12,000 a night on an artist's compound, which I assume is a misnomer because any artists I know are spending that $12,000 on paying back student loans, or acid. 

So if you have $12,000 a night, you can live in a compound, and if you don't have $12,000 a night, you can live in someone else's house, but that is a more difficult proposition than six months ago because there is some sort of global pandemic, and slowly people have begun realizing that it is not going away quickly and therefore they need to live in their homes themselves.

"Looks real nice in there."

Pickings are therefore slim, much slimmer than six months prior. We find mostly houses far out of our price range, or with no yard, and having promised Likely a yard, I am unwilling to disappoint her and suffer whatever revenge she devises, because she is a spiteful animal. 

We find a house that says it has five bedrooms and two bathrooms, which seems impossible and highly suspicious, because I have never seen a house with five bedrooms and two bathrooms before. But it looks nice, so we go to the reviews. Our process for booking AirBnBs has always been to rely heavily on reviews, where I make sure to comb them for someone who has written 'The beds changed my life' and then I book that place. This process has never steered us wrong. 

However, this place had only three reviews to illuminate our future by, and they said:

Great location and nice space -boy who describes himself as a Student, Adventurist, and Friend

Great place, close to Lamar and South Congress -man who describes himself as a world changing father of 2

Nice place -woman who doesn't describe herself at all, I assume because all the good tag-lines have already been taken by the first two guys

The suspicion deepened. And with no reviews about the quality of beds to go by, we were...concerned. But we threw caution to the wind and booked it, because we may be excited about being homeless, but we were much less excited about living inside of our car like some sort of tauntaun-sheltering-us-from-the-elements scenario.

"That'll be $12,000."

Our only hope was that everything went right this time. With my Instagram quote firmly plastered on my brain, I was sure it would.

Interlude: Thoughts about Reindeer

Dan and I are in Pagosa Springs, CO, and it is covered in snow and Christmas lights, because apparently Colorado is the only place that observes Christmas as it is meant to be observed, which is to say all the way until January 6th.

As I have recently learned, the 12 Days of Christmas (a concept made popular by a song where a woman terrorizes her one true love by sending him increasingly horrifying gifts including geese which are the national bird of hell and then finally culminates her break with sanity by sending twelve men to leap into her one true love's home after twelve days of him trying to figure out if he has to pay taxes on the five golden rings) actually start ON Christmas. Then they go all the way to January 6th, the Epiphany, where the three kings showed up and showered Jesus with gifts.

Catholics know what I'm talking about.

So Pagosa Springs is still in the Christmas spirit, which means I am still thinking Christmas thoughts, and such thoughts are as follows:

Santa's reindeer were female. Male reindeer shed their antlers in the winter, and female reindeer do not. Also, there are too many feminine names for them to not be female. Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen are about as feminine as you get, and no one will convince me that back when they were coming up with Santa stories that they were comfortable with the idea of males and females working industriously alongside one another.

Which means that Rudolph wasn't an outcast because he was bad at stuff, he was an outcast because he was the only male reindeer. Which follows that his 'red nose' was probably actually his raging reindeer erection, and none of the other reindeer wanted to play with him because he didn't have a waistband to tuck it into so he could pretend it wasn't there.

Breaking Up With Portland...Again.

Anyone who has met me for longer than five minutes knows that I do not like Portland. But it's not Portland's fault. It is mine. I cannot seem to be able to enjoy living in a city that is a literal garbage can, run by garbage people.

A personal failing, but one that I own.

Portland's saving grace has always been that once winter hits and the small cache of vitamin D we have hoarded so preciously over the five sunny days of summer starts to drain from our body turning into what I have termed The Dark Abyss of Despair From Which I Will Probably Never Return, at least there are bars to go to so you can drink until it is springtime and the crocuses show their little purple faces in the sun and you can remember that there are things worth living for. It is the natural order of things, like bears hibernating, if the bears were hibernating together in close quarters and also drunk.

Every year I look forward to the winter drinking season, which is different from the summer drinking season, because I am wearing a sweater now. 

BUT NOT THIS YEAR.

I would like to say if anyone hasn't noticed, we are in a global pandemic, but it does seem quite likely that Florida and Idaho and South Dakota et. al. have really not. 

Our lease expired in December. Our main hobby of taking in the rich culture of the bar scene and exploring new gastronomical heights (i.e. getting drunk and eating food) is gone. Life is bad.

It is at times like these I look to my ancestors for answers. Now that I am married to Dan, I look to his ancestors too. And our ancestors both agree, when the going gets tough, leave all your belongings behind and go find a new place to live.

Unlike our ancestors, we are doing it by choice. Social progress!

Experienced and excellent explorers that we are, we know the value of an early start, and I capture the final sunrise in Portland before we set out.

So majestic.

I breathe in the air, which smells like air and not like street people camps on fire for once. I tell Dan I am ready to go.

He points to our entirely trashed apartment that is still not clean, our bags that are not loaded in the car, and the 23498 things that we have yet to do before we are ready to actually leave.

Two hours later, we are ready to depart. 

"BUT I LIKE LIVING IN GARBAGE."

I tell Likely to say her goodbyes to her natural habitat and she gives me a baleful glare. I ignore her feelings as per usual. We pile up in the car, and hit the road. 

Homeless, happy, slightly unhinged, laden with hand sanitizer, masks, and a healthy disdain for people, we head straight into the heart of COVID country.

Spain Day 7: Jerez

I stumble out of sleep after having very normal dreams of space wars and Timothy Olyphant being a space sheriff and just being Too Old For This Shit, but I have to convince him that space needs him and his mustache to save all the worlds. Unfortunately, the sun shines in before I can get him to agree, so I have no idea if all the space worlds are saved, and instead have to wake up to a beautiful Jerez morning. Dan is typing away, blithely unaware that I have failed in my mission, and asks if I want to go to breakfast.

Obviously the answer is yes. If I can't save all the worlds, I can eat ham.

We get our hams, of which there are many, and notice that there is a distinct surplus of Very British People in our hotel. They are very old and very British, and have a lot of opinions about how good the tea is at the Hotel Soho Boutique (the answer: not very). I am too much lacking sherry and too much disturbed by the plight of the space world to sympathize with them, so I ask Dan to navigate the buffet for me today, and also make sure I don't have to talk to anyone the whole morning. As the master of buffering the world for me, he makes sure there is tea in my cup (bonus review from a non-English Person: it is just fine) and no one looks at me. Bless him, and anyone waffling over whether you should marry a man, if he actively prevents people from talking to you, he is the one. Don't fight it. Marry him, and then gradually sway him into stabbing people in the face for you, so you can visit him in jail in a romantic Americana version of Romeo and Juliet and write a book about it and cash in super hard and live the American dream of exploiting all of your innermost emotions for fame.

After breakfast, we decide doing things is for plebeians and go to the pool. 

The day is hot, and I go to get in the water, but the pool is cold, and so I stand there waiting for some signal from the universe that I should punish myself further with water. Dan says to just jump in, and for the life of me I wish I could remember what I said in reply, because it was so inane, so utterly stupid, that Dan, the king of ridiculously terrible puns, tells me, "That was awful," and I hang my head in shame because he is so very right. He recommends (re: tells me with no room for opposition) that I do a few laps to work off the sheer idiocy of whatever response I came up with so we do not have to marinate in it. I ask what it would be like if I didn't do that and he says, "Three laps. You owe the universe," and I cannot disagree.

I make it a game and we call it the Dunce Pool now and decide whoever says something stupid has to get in the water and swim some laps, which means I now live in the pool, which is unfortunate because I am neither an amphibious creature nor good at swimming in any form, so my laps look like I am a dog with no legs trying to retrieve a beach ball, only there is no beach ball, only sadness.

After I have done what I assume is at least 324908 laps and Dan maintains is maybe half of one at best, I decide staying by the pool is for plebeians and suggest we move on to walking around Jerez.

We've dubbed today Exploration Day, where we will make reservations for all the things that we were too lazy to figure out how to make reservations for before. Though our hotel has their own spa that we've yet to explore, I am interested in the fact that Jerez boasts an Arabic bath house. For the low low price of money, they will let you sit in giant mirror pools and look at tiled ceilings and give you tea and massage your body. All of this seems amazing to me, so we set off on a walk to find the place and tell them to let us do these things.

We find the place and I am supposed to check out the baths but instead I just get nervous and make an appointment because they are Arab baths, and anything that seems like it was torn from the pages of a history book makes me stutter like a 12-year-old boy about to talk to a girl for the first time, like please I would like this and I don't know how to properly communicate the pure and romantic nature of my yearning without the boner getting in the way. We make an appointment to come back on Friday and I tell Dan that we should look at the sights that are around, and that there is a very famous church that people go to called Iglesia de San Miguel and it is somewhere nearby the baths. As we leave we see the giant church, and I point to it and with all the wisdom of a person who knows churches I say "That's that church thing," and we wander over and stare at it in awe, because it is lovely, and we also stare in disgust, because there are pigeons flying around and we know what those pigeons get up to at midday now.

Basically a pigeon brothel.

I take many pictures of the beautiful church facade, and ask Dan if he would like to go inside. He says yes and we go inside, where a very bored man says, "5 euro para billette" and we turn right back around and head outside, because we are not Catholic enough to pay cash for our religious experiences. 

Unless it's in the form of a smart pantsuit.

We go back to admiring the church in a very free fashion, and Dan asks if I would like to stand on the selfie spot, and I tell him I'm not falling for that again because I know what that means now, and he says no, the actual selfie spot, and points to this:

"Stand on my face if you are bad at everything." 

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS. Someone, somewhere, felt the need to help people figure out where to stand to take pictures at this monument. Because operating a camera already wasn't easy enough ("Can you take a picture of us? You just click here..." Yes, lady, I operate your camera the way all cameras are operated THANK YOU GO STAND BY YOUR FAT CHILD AND ENJOY THIS MEMORY), somehow they needed to make it easier by creating a standard metric for all the photos of the church. 

"Do I point the camera at my feet or...?"

I question the selfie point so vehemently that Dan drags me away, sans selfie, to continue exploring the city.

I tell him this is also the day I'd like to return to the place we visited the last time we were in Jerez (not the churro shop) that has lived on in my memory. It was a beautiful park full of jacaranda trees that was so purple I was certain it was a lie, and a gazebo that seemed ripped from the pages of a novel, where you can stand and stare at a castle that has stood for thousands of years, and the heat presses on your skin like the touch of a lover and you feel like the air is getting pretty handsy and maybe it should calm the hell down and let you stare at your purple trees on your own for a minute and it can think about what its done.

Keep your touches to yourself, air.

We enjoy the promenade for a while and then decide to press on to see more sights that we've done no planning on seeing. After a minute, we come upon something we haven't seen before.

What the shit is this.

I look at the map because I am as thrilled to see another church as Dan is not, and I see that we are standing at the steps of the Iglesia de San Miguel.

GODDAMMIT. 

I immediately rescind my swearing in the presence of God's house and realize I just haven't really bothered to read maps (or signs, or menus) for the duration of this trip. The Iglesia de San Miguel stands in front of us, and the other Iglesia de San Miguel is actually Iglesia de San Salvador, even though THEY LOOK LIKE THEY'RE IN THE SAME SPOT ON THE MAP. 

I decide that churches are dumb and I don't want to see any more.

We return to the hotel and get ready for dinner (i.e. pass out until it is dark) and when we have readied ourselves we head over to Restaurante Albores, which we have heard is quite good in Jerez. 

So fancy.

They recommend that we eat prawns and I am enamored of this idea because I always love the idea of breaking open seafood creatures and eating their insides but I am generally quite bad at it, as anyone who has seen me try to open a crab can attest, because what are you supposed to do, just break them open and eat their insides?!

Dan tries to instruct me on the art of eating a prawn, and shows me how to take them apart and suck the head out. I am about as good at it as I am at swimming.

WHY IS NOTHING COMING OUT

He says if I'm having trouble to just suck harder and I tell him I refuse to cast my pearls before swine and we continue on with the dinner. I find it to be as delicious as things we have eaten for half the price, but every other restaurant didn't have THIS THING:

LOOK AT WHAT MAN CAN ACHIEVE

This is a small little button that you press and an ENTIRE NAPKIN COMES OUT.

IT IS FOR CLEANING THINGS

This napkin smells like a summer's day where you fall in love instead of the weird lemon death smell that precedes entering hell that American towelettes have and I am completely enamored with it. Dan tells me to stop getting weird about the napkin because it is making the other guests uncomfortable so I stop rubbing it on my face and making cooing noises and we pay the check and head on our way.

When I had been consulting Google Maps earlier making very accurate assertions about where the churches were, I had noticed a weird denomination labeled "Museo de Ron" and also the word "cocteles" which I had not seen attached to any restaurant before. I tell Dan since it is near our hotel, it is important that we finish the evening by drinking cocktails at whatever a Museum of Rum in Spain might be. He asks if I said "cocktails" and I say yes and he asks me why I bothered to add anymore information after that word, and I have no answer to that, so we start walking.

Because the little pin is relatively close to our hotel on the map, I am sure this will be an easy walk, but as we pass our hotel and go more outside the city, I find that we are in a random quiet neighborhood and there is absolutely no one here and nothing going on, and I am wondering where I am taking us until we happen upon the pin on the map, which denotes a very tiny, very neighborhoody bar. Only two people are sitting inside, and I recall Dan's and my very awkward journey into a local Irish bar in Portugal, where an old lady stood in the kitchen hammering some meat and staring at us with a beady eye until we left, and I wonder if I am about to have the same experience.

We walk in and the two people at the bar look at us, and then a nice lady comes over and asks us something in rapid Spanish, and I utter a small 'lo siento' and she smiles and points to a table. We sit down, and then we just kind of stare.

At the walls. At the menu. At the two people sitting at the bar who are staring at us, but in a friendly way, not in a by-the-time-I'm-done-hammering-this-meat-you-best-be-on-your-way way. 

If only they had more rum.

The man behind the bar comes over and he starts speaking in pretty quick Spanish. I ask him to slow down, and he very cheerily does so, and describes that we are in a tiki bar, and he has been traveling the world to learn about tiki cocktails, and that he loves rum and we are now in his rum museum and he would very much like to make us some cocktails. I know all this because I am VERY drunk, and that is the time when I understand and speak Spanish, unlike when I am sober and just sort of stutter and cry.

I ask him what is best, and he offers to make us a couple of drinks that I ascertain with my drunk Spanish powers will a. contain rum and b. possibly be in a coconut.

I watch him behind the bar, and it is evident that this man is a professional. He pours with flair, he pulls out syrups he has clearly mixed himself, and he smiles the whole time, clearly a man who would be as thrilled making a cocktail for the first time as he is for the 7000th time. I recognize a man who loves to bartend, and I am immediately excited for whatever comes next.

And I am not disappointed because he comes over with THIS.

The way to a woman's heart is setting shit on fire.

He walks away and I stare at the flame and wonder if I am supposed to blow it out before drinking, a question I ask the nice woman I have decided is his wife. She says yes, and I try to blow it out but fail. She says, "Mas fuerte!" so I blow harder and blow the entire lit sugar cube out of the glass and onto the table where she quickly puts it out and laughs at me for my overzealous blowing. 

By that time, the barman comes over with something I had not expected on our trip to Spain, which is a giant cocktail in a giant coconut. He bids us buen provecho and Dan and I both take a sip of our respective cocktails.

IT HAS ITS OWN LANTERN

If you are in Spain, go to a place called Cubaname.

It is special. It is incredible. It is some of the best tiki cocktails I have ever had, and they are made by a very happy and lovely Spanish man named Eloy, who is accompanied by his wife Loli, and they are fabulous folks who somehow made us feel like we were in the Caribbean while we were in a rather cold Spain that still necessitated a jacket I did not have.

Dan and I drown in the amazingness of our cocktails. They are on par if not more delicious than cocktails at Hale Pele. We are already quite drunk but we cannot leave these my-head-sized cocktails on the table, because they are savory and spicy and wonderfully balanced and incredible. The other two folks have gone outside to enjoy the beverages, so Eloy and Loli strike up a conversation with us, and I am drunk enough to understand everything they are saying, and they tell us to spread the word about Cubaname and the Museum of Rum and also to go visit his friend in Seville, because Spain is trying to elevate cocktail culture and we are willing to patronize a good bar wherever there is a good bar.

We leave with promises of visiting his friend, and a great photo of one of the best bartenders I've ever met.

Two cool guys and their drunk translator

I tell Dan next time we come to Spain we will need to get churros and more of these cocktails and he agrees and we return to our hotel in happy spirits because we just drank the best cocktails the size of our faces we have ever had.

Lessons Learned in Spain: 

11. I do not know where things are on the map

12. I cannot eat prawn heads

13. Jerez has amazing tiki cocktails. Seriously, who knew.

Spain Day 6: Jerez

IT’S CHURRO DAY.

Yes, after waddling home like the ice cream-laden ham-dumpster that I am, I have made the decision that come what may, today is the day I live my dreams and finally celebrate my 30th birthday by eating my white whale of a churro. No matter that my birthday was in January or that no one should spend this amount of dollars to eat what costs $1 at any Costco. The school systems and popular culture in America have told me to follow my passion and my passion is churros. 

As I am following my passion, I will let everyone know if the money follows, but churros don’t seem like very industrious desserts so I doubt they’ll be paying me anything to eat them.

I am not the best at learning lessons but I have internalized a Very Important Lesson: Eat the damn churros when you see the place is open. Don’t wait. DON’T WAIT TO EAT CHURROS. This is a lesson that I will pass on to my children, who will ask me earnestly, “Mom, what is the meaning of life?” and I will tell them just as earnestly, “You are really making this hangover worse, here’s some money to go get mommy a churro and what’s our family motto?” and they will sigh and say, “Don’t wait to eat churros,” and they will run down to the local Costco to get me a churro and while internalizing my valuable life lessons that will ensure they become very successful presidents who are also doctors.

I walk with Dan to the Churro Boob to finally fulfill my dreams and eat of the forbidden fried dough in the garden of desserts.

Hello darkness my old friend

We walk up and observe the prices, which, for the low low sum of 1 euro, I can achieve greatness. Usually it costs me about $5 to pay a homeless man to tell me I’m amazing, since they won’t do it for less than that for some reason, so this is quite the deal and I am thrilled. However, they sell churros by weight and not by the stick, my customary form of buying at Costco and all Six Flags establishments, and their weight is all in metric so I’m not sure if 1/2kg is the appropriate amount or if I should get ‘minimo.’ Dan suggests we go with minimo because 1/2kg of churros sounds like a lot, and he is a smart man who frequents markets where they sell him things by weight, so I defer to his wisdom and approach the counter. Behind stands a pillar of the earth, a wise and benevolent sage who is bequeathing his greatness onto the fortunate passers-by in the form of churros, and I approach this man with the same gravitas one approaches a yogi after a long trek up some mountain in Nepal because I am certain I’ve put in the same amount of effort by walking ten minutes from my hotel to get here.

In a small and deferential voice, I say, ‘Yo quiero minimo, por favor,” and silently I add O GREAT WISE MAN WHO WILL FULFILL MY DREAMS, and the very normal and nice Spanish man does not even blink and squirts more fried dough from a FREAKING CHURRO GUN into the giant vat of hot oil that makes dreams come true and pulls out a giant churro circle, snips a few pieces, and throws it all into a piece of paper in a cone shape so I can catch every single tear I cry into it.

Dan tells me to stop getting the churros soggy so we wander around the corner to the little cafe that is behind the churro kiosk (really part of it) and, completely unsure of what to do with my newfound treasures, I sit and order a cafe from the nice man who is making them. I open my paper cone of wonders like it is a beautiful woman’s arms covering her nakedness that I am pulling away so I can consume her insides. I hold up a piece of churro and take a bite, and the feeling of eating my dreams fills me with excessive joy.

The man who made my coffee looks at me from behind his glasses and sighs, and pulls out a packet of sugar and dumps it out on my paper. He points to the churros and at the sugar in the universal language for, “Idiot, you are doing this wrong,” and I thank him profusely in Spanish. Dan and I enter a whole new galaxy of amazingness that is sugary fried treats, and we strike up a lively conversation with Jesus, the coffee man who is also the churro expert, and another man Adolfo, who chimes in because he hears me say, “Soy de America,” like the ethnocentric sonofabitch that I am, and he says, “Soy de Paraguay, yo tambien soy de America!” We have a nice conversation about both being from America, which by the end I feel like is pretty accurate, and that I have as much in common with Adolfo as I do with people from Texas, and figure instead of splintering the Northwest into Cascadia we should start considering consolidating all the American continents and taking over the rest of the world and calling the whole thing America just so everyone doesn’t have to answer the question of where they’re from.

In the afterglow of churros, we explore the streets of Jerez, and I remind Dan that this is where flamenco was invented so we should explore some things related to flamenco.

Is it cultural appropriation if we get married in this?

I wrestle with the hardest decision of my life, which is not to buy a flamenco dress because I a. don’t dance flamenco and b. don’t dance flamenco.

I think briefly about learning to dance flamenco in order to wear this dress, but I weigh that against my decision to only eat churros for the rest of my life, and figure the flamenco dress will only gather dust after I transform into a stick of fried dough and only wear sugar until the end of time.

Earlier in the day, we were enlightened by Jesus and Adolfo to hit up Tabanco El Pasaje for some flamenco at 2pm. While the internet implies it might be a super touristy joint, the fact of the matter is that everything in Jerez is technically a touristy joint, because it is just not the big of a place. We head over, and decide that it is irrelevant what the nature of the place is, because it is awesome.

Sherry out of a tap, I guess that’s cool

We arrive a little late, so it is hard to see the flamenco, but they are a kind joint and have installed this giant mirror to make it easy for the latecomers.

Get there early so you don’t have 

to stare into the reflection of your mistakes

We return home for a siesta, and rise from our coma to go eat more food and enjoy the whole concept of eating at 9pm, which, as a restaurant worker and/or lady of the night, I appreciate fully and completely. We decide on a place called Bar Bocarambo, because Dan is interested in eating paella, and he has read that this place has paella. 

We arrive and realize the next Utter Truism of Spain: anything that is written on Google is complete and total lies. Not through the fault of the reviewers, but mostly because a lot of places just decide to do a thing sometimes and then they do it and they have no interest in doing it regularly because why should they? Life is lovely and relaxed in Spain, they are not your paella slaves, so if they don’t feel like making paella, they will not make paella.

I respect this wholly and do not fault them for the lack of paella. The bruise of no crispy rice dish is also assuaged by the fact that everything here is goddamn delicious.

Cola de toro is a national treasure in Spain and in my heart

Spinach croqueta is like if spanakopita 

and my deepest desires made a baby 

that was socially acceptable to eat

By the time the sorbet made of fresh strawberries arrives, I feel like we have failed as a country, because the ability to walk in to literally any restaurant and be excited for whatever happens to you in Spain is alive and well, while back at home I sometimes walk into restaurants and they throw me out for being ‘smelly’ and ‘an affront to humanity,’ and the food is also not as good.

By the end of our visit to Bar Bocarambo, I am as delighted as one person can be, and I am thrilled by the experience and by the beautiful Spanish words I read in the menu that I will carry with me forever:

Les damos las gracias por elegirnos y al mismo tiempo le pedimos disculpas por lis fallos que podamos cometer.

Which they translate as, “We thank you for choosing us and apologize in advance if we fail you in any way.”

And is how I will be opening all conversations for the rest of forever.

Lessons Learned in Spain:

     9.  Put sugar on your churros

     10.  Animal butt parts are delicious

     11.  The Spanish will make paella whenever they feel like it

Spain Day 5: Jerez

I realize today that I have eaten a lot of ham. I wake up and proclaim that I regret nothing and then fall back asleep until it is time for dinner. I wake up once more and proclaim myself the queen of Spanish culture because people have siesta here and I have just elevated the siesta from rejuvenating downtime to actual coma. 

By the time Dan and I go out, the sun is setting, and we are enjoying the relatively empty streets that will grow busier as the night grows longer. We do get to see our favorite residents of Jerez though, which are the multitude of dogs that roam around with their owners. 

Or no owners, whatever.

I think about how much better Spain is than home because dogs can just ramble around and do their own dog thing and it’s no big deal, and I think of how nice it would be for Likely, and then immediately think of how terrible it would be for me to continuously go to Spanish jail because my dog would round up all the local dogs and organize a crime ring where the dogs stole hams and also jewels and I’d have to explain to the police that I thought she had bought me all these diamonds and I can’t believe she betrayed me like this.

My Spanish is just not good enough to explain that they shouldn’t send me to jail, so I return to being thankful for leash laws in America. 

We have decided to return to the steak house, which is called Meson del Asador and is a traditional grill-type restaurant where they make very large plates of very large meats. Remembering our lessons from yesterday, I take the menu and tell Dan I will order us the perfect meal, and with my newfound knowledge of how to be an adult I select a salad item and also some vegetables, and also croquetas because it is important to always have those at every meal, and then instead of a plate of ham, I order other parts of the pig to eat, ignoring the part of the menu that says ‘para compartir’ and assume that just because it’s for sharing doesn’t mean it’s too much food.

Oh food

Plz stahp

FOOD STAHP

The food does not stop. The food continues. The food continues with portions that would make America weep in the knowledge that they are second-class when it comes to stuffing people until they die. We look around and see mostly families eating, and decide we probably should have enlisted seven more people to have shared this meal with us. But it is delicious and warms our bellies so we high-five for being really good at eating and wander out into the night with every intention of going home because we are so full that if we make any sudden movements it will be like the time they filled that whale with dynamite in the hopes of getting it cleanly off the beach but instead exploded whale guts everywhere and bits of whale were stuck to the beach for ages.

That is us, but if we exploded it will be completely whole pieces of Iberico ham.

So I get some ice cream.

Dan questions my choices. I tell him I am the queen of choices. 

That's El Queen of Choices to you.

He pats me on the head and rolls me back home and we go to bed to have probably very intense dreams of the ham overlords that now rule our lives.

Lessons Learned in Spain: 

     7.  Restaurants really want you to leave feeling full
     8.  I like ice cream