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2006-11-11 - 3:51 p.m.
My husband has no faith in me whatsoever. He says things like, �I just don�t feel like I can leave you alone,� all the time. It is a constant reminder to me that he doesn�t fully know me yet. This is okay�this is to be expected. It takes a long time to know someone. I still don�t know, or understand certain things about him. Like why he will obsess about the sprinkler reservoir. One week he will say a couple times a day, �we need to fill the reservoir,� and then I will fill it so the next day when he says it I will be able to say it is full and then he will say, when it rains, �I hope the reservoir doesn�t overfill.� It is OKAY that he worries about me. I can�t complain about that for heaven�s sake. He adores me and worries like crazy about me. Most days I am okay about his worries and hangup�s concerning me and my (lack of) abilities because I know that they are unfounded. I know myself. But�I DO understand why he has no faith in me. I never give him any reason to have faith in me. He really hasn�t known me in any capable capacity. I lived alone for over a decade�utterly alone, but he didn�t experience me in that medium. The only time he has lived with me is when we have lived in a foreign country where I am not only without language but also without every single thing I hold familiar (with the exception of my cats and my soul and Gari). It�s pretty easy to understand why he worries about me. I do wake up almost every day thinking that I should prove myself TODAY, TODAY is the day! But I never do. I know, however, that one can always have faith in me. The one �problem� with me is that while I am always being able to survive and function no matter the circumstance�I am also a pretty strict Occam�s Razor type of girl. I will always go for the most simple. Additionally, I am a waitress�even if I never actively work in that profession again�I am a waitress. I am efficient even in my disorder. In a way my disorders are efficiency. I will not walk upstairs, unless I need to go upstairs anyway, just to put something away in its �proper spot�. Nine times out of ten I will know where something is even if it isn�t in its designated spot. So you combine these things�the simple and the efficient�and it�s just a given that no, I am not going to waste my time and energy doing things like, say for instance, going to the post office when Eric can do it much more easily than I can. First of all�he gets up far earlier than I do and would be far more likely to be able to get to the post office during its open hours. Second, Eric speaks and understands 70% more Spanish than I do. What would be an ordeal for me is relatively easy for him. HOWEVER�if you know me, really truly truly know me�.you will know that IF I HAD TO I would be extremely competent in going to the fucking post office. Eric confuses, quite often, my anxieties, fears or plain unwillingness as inabilities. And that is far from the case. I am perfectly able to most anything. If I had to. And by HAD TO, I mean HAD TO. Yesterday I had a HAD TO moment. A couple actually. First of all, when I picked my cat up the other day the vet asked me if I had some of this antacid stuff that the cat would need to take. I did have some of it from another time he had stomach problems. I didn�t know, however, that I didn�t have enough to get through until Monday when he has his next appointment. This antacid is something that humans take and the vet had told me that if I needed more to go to the pharmacy. So yesterday morning when I saw that I only had enough antacid stuff left for one day, I didn�t hesitate in going to the pharmacy. My cats life it at stake. I marched right in there and told the pharmacist exactly what I needed. And I got it. Then I went to the grocery store to attempt to buy dinner things. (I say attempt because lately I�ve been having hard time again finding things. This country is so weird. One day they will have this huge selection of (insert item) and then the next week they have none. Yesterday I was going to make a �taco� salad. I used to make the BEST �taco� salad using Morningstar Farms breakfast links, white corn tortilla chips, vegetables (celery being the most important), cheese and honey French dressing. Since you can�t get Morningstar Farms breakfast links OR honey French dressing here I have been practicing for the last year to make my own�I�ve found the right spice mixture (though I lack the consistency) to make an okay substitute for the links by using tofu and I almost have a recipe for honey French dressing (using ketchup as a base�I just try to ignore that part of it. ANYWAY�that was my plan for dinner�taco salad and chick flicks. But of course, the store decided not to have the white corn tortilla chips they have been carrying for the last year and the �taco� salad is not so good with the yellow corn chips. So I had to have spaghetti and green beans instead.) So yeah�grocery store. As I was walking to the checkout lane one the handles on my basket broke and the basket started to fall off my arm, the checkout girl shouted, �CUIDADO!� and I instantly answered back, �No pasa nada.� Then she asked me if my arm had been hurt and I told her no. My ego was quite boosted by the exchange because it was so natural and easy. When I left I said gracias and for once she said, �a ti� (spelling is probably wrong here..but it means more or less, and to you.�) which was a huge step for me and the check out girl�usually she glares at me. So then I walked across the street to the movie store. We get movies through what looks like an ATM. There is no browsing through tangible movie cases, no handing your card to a human. You flip through titles on a screen and insert your card when you want to retrieve your chosen movies. I actually kind of like this process, mostly because I don�t have some jackass Blockbuster employee trying to sell me something when I pay for my rentals. (Okay, so I know they are just doing their job, but DAMN, Blockbuster is ANNOYING.) The only things I don�t like about it is that there is only one movie machine�so there is usually a line and I always feel hurried to pick my movies so the next person can get up there. And two�when something goes wrong there isn�t a human being to help you. Like yesterday. My card wouldn�t work. Typically I would have waited for Eric to be around to go inside the main office to get a new card (Occam girl). But�Eric is gone for a couple weeks. And�I can�t live without movies while he is gone. It�s just about the only thing I like about the times that he is gone (and being able to sprawl out in bed). I get to watch terrible romantic comedies and tear jerker dramas without having to listen to Eric berate them. So without my movies I would be kind of devastated. No Eric, no movies, no good. So, bolstered by my grocery store experience, I marched right into the main office and announced that my card was no funciona. And the woman started spouting off a bunch of rapid Spanish and I opened my eyes wide in panic and she laughed at me and apologized and then spoke not slower, but kept repeating everything in rapid Spanish until I understood. It usually took about three repetitions before I got it but� I finally understood what had happened (our original movie place had closed down several months back and while our card worked at the new store, apparently it only worked for three months and apparently they had called us to tell us that except when they called we thought they were just calling to tell us that the movie store had moved, that�s what happens when you don�t speak the language where you live�you only get a small percentage of what is being told to you) and she issued me a new card and she squeezed my hands and smiled at me and I squeezed back and smiled and it was a nice thing. So you see�WHEN I NEED TO, I CAN FUNCTION HERE. No worries. Today it is really quiet here my village. It reminds me why I wanted to move to this particular house. It�s just about the only still place around. Since April though this village has been anything but still and pensive. They are building three new houses here�one of them being eight feet away from our house. It�s been loud, lots of chipping away at stone noise. I don�t know why they aren�t working today, usually they work on Saturday. But I am not going to complain about their absence. No way. I think I might have had the best night of sleep I�ve had in two (or more) years last night. I learned two things yesterday. One�to get your wisdom teeth extracted here in Spain (under the social health care system) there is two year wait. (Unless it is an emergency I assume) And two�they offer the abortion pill for dogs here. (do they have it in the U.S.?) I cannot understand then, WHY I GOT AN E-MAIL YESTERDAY from a Spanish friend about some puppies her friends dog had that they will have to �sacrifice� if they aren�t given homes. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??? FIX YOUR DOG! And holy cow�if you messed up and didn�t fix your dog�you have even more options other than letting your dog bring eight more lives into existence and then KILLING THEM BECAUSE YOU ARE A FUCKING LOSER. (the thing that really bothers me is that there is a law here that says you cannot euthanize or kill a domestic animal unless there is a disease risk or, of course, if they are suffering. So when they say they are going to �sacrifice� these puppies, WHAT DO THEY MEAN THEY ARE GOING TO DO? I feel the very real need to write this person a letter and let them know what I think of them�Can I really just sit back and NOT?) Here is the picture that was sent along with the �take these puppies or we will kill them� message. Get mad. This is not the only instance of this kind of crap. Get mad and do something. It takes a lot more than just one person. 
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