The adoption adventure begins in 11 hours

Tomorrow is the first big day in the adoption roller coaster for the BF-turned-Hubs. Here in Catalonia, you have to enroll in a course before being able to really start the process. It is supposed to be informative and educational. What it definitely is, is expensive (711.91 euros as of today’s date). I’ll be taking copious notes to either inform you, entertain you or bore you to tears with. I have to do something with the 12 and a half hours that this entails.

In the meantime, consider the possible flavors of the possible homeland of our possible future child. Perhaps some collard greens from Ethiopia?…only if they can get their act together and re-open to younger ages (right now it’s 6 y.o. and upward). Or maybe you’re in the mood for something sweet like Meni-meniyong from Mali…the country currently on our paperwork, but one that could close at any time due to political unrest after a March coup. Hm, life is complicated when you can’t just get knocked up.

Tags: adoption, Ethiopia, Mali

Coup d’etat ruins yet more of our plans!

It’s been a while, kids, I know. It’s been crazy busy between getting our paperwork in order, setting up our company website, having Paco demand his own Facebook page and then all the regular stuff: work, stepkin, work, work.

But this week we pulled it all together. Today we each got the final certificate needed in order to present our paperwork tomorrow and truly start the adoption process. Then this was announced in the press this morning:

Mali coup: soldiers loot presidential palace after seizing power

Yep. Mali. Coup. The country we were opting for since we couldn’t go the Ehtiopia route. First, I will say how awful and sad it is. Then, I will say how absurd this all seems to me. The adoption process in Europe takes so very long that these kinds of derailments are par for the course.

Tomorrow we present everything. But I have no idea what country we are going to list. I’ll keep y’all posted. No matter what happens, we’ve always got these two:

 

Paco, Baywatch, Ethiopia closes!

This is what happens when it takes you one year to get your papers together to get married: the country you were going to adopt from “closes”. Now that I finally have all my ducks in a row, I’m told Ethiopia has been drained dry of adoptable kids.  I find that very hard to believe. We’re now waiting to hear back from the adoption agency… and filling the time going for walks on the beach! As you can see in the Baywatch pic of Paco above. If you ever need him to rescue you from the water, however, better not to call out. He’s top-heavy and… he sinks.

I’ll keep you posted on Ethiopia, Cuesters!

 

 

Tags: adoption, beach, Ethiopia, Paco

New year, new kind of post

So, I’ve come to realize this blogging thing is difficult, especially if you are employed. Finding the time to put butt to seat and hands to keyboard. Yes, I use two hands and all 10 fingers to type. I can thank my sister, the one who shall be called Snuff, for that. She was always one to give extremely pragmatic advice like, “Just go through with your confirmation, even if you don’t believe all this, because you never know what will happen in life. You might marry a Catholic guy and you do not want to go through all these classes again.” The other gem was, in 1989, not before the advent of computers, but certainly before their true usage in society, she told me, “Take the typewriting class, you never know.” She may have meant, “You never know, everything may go to hell and you’re going to need to know how to take dictation and type on letterhead.” But, I like to think she meant, “You never know, the internet age is coming and you may want to blog about a bunch of bullshit.” How prescient Snuff has always been.

But. I. Digress. I’m here to say, today marks the first day of the Daily Outing. I take one everyday, with Paco, and we see stuff, mostly in the streets of Barcelona, sometimes out and about. Things like this chick in a motorcycle parking lot:

It’s also a time when we can think: Paco about where he can find an empty plastic water littering the street and waiting to be attacked, me about all kinds of useless nonsense that I can then share with you. So, we’re going to take pics, some of which may set us on a roll (others, not so much). Today, we offer you:

The symbol of love, on that street down by where the old Roman fortified wall’s turret looked out over the Mediterranean back when people used that sea to attack other people. Love! Which is what we had in spades this past year, 2011, the year when the BF became the OBFNH (Once Boyfriend Now Husband). Maybe I need to find a new name for him. How about The Dude? We’ll Try it for a while. The Dude and I got hitched out in the country where we bought an old wreck of a house 6 years ago. It was almost completely improvised. The townspeople were amazing. They pitched in with the setting. The chairs. Our “thrones”. And when we didn’t have music, they dum-dum-de-dummed the wedding march.

Manure may have been spread on the surrounding fields and the flies may have attacked throughout the ceremony. (Note the fly on my dad’s nose…).The mayor officiating it may have been missing a paper and had everyone waiting over an hour under the noonday sun. Hey, it gave us time to take pictures! 

We may not have been able to take pics without sunglasses because of said sun. But we got it done! And the winds blew in just the right direction so that it didn’t smell like a turd during the ceremony. Ah, love. So all that is to say, Paco and I are going to be bringing you our outing pics. We hope you like them. And happy start of 2012!

Tags: l'Astor, Paco, wedding

Thanksgiving with No Dishwasher

As I write this, it’s 6 p.m. the day after the day of the bird that leaves turkey grease congealed on every dish, platter and bowl in one’s kitchen and my pruned fingers just wiped the sink down and capped my now half-empty bottle of Spain’s equivalent to Dawn dishwashing detergent, Fairy. Thanksgiving with no dishwasher makes you wonder, why do I have no dishwasher? It was a lovely night, no matter how much hand cream I will need.

Matthew ordered our two 9-pound birds from a place with a great logo that looks like it’s the sign for Los Pollos Hermanos in Breaking Bad. 

Here is Abe (named for our great President Lincoln who declared Thanksgiving a national holiday) in his turkey bucket ready to be bathed in salt water for a night of brining.

This was at the insistence of Johanna, who also diligently documented the turkey cooking process. Paco approved. He really approved of the turkey…

 So much so that a cooked Dolley (Madison) 9-pounder that Matthew lovingly shlepped to our place in a matching bucket was not at all safe from his prying snout.

 As you can see, Spanish ovens are a bit of a tight squeeze for a turkey. Poor Abe, he deserved better than this. Until Tuesday, he was a happy-go-lucky, free range bird, and now, he’s shoved in a 38 cm. by 38 cm. one-bedroom. Sigh…

But they make a great bird! Matthew and Johanna were rightfully very proud of Abe and Dolley. I can’t remember a juicier turkey breast. Sorry, Mom. I didn’t try this year’s bird, though, and I hear it was a juicy one. If salty… But I digress.

We had a neon green and red theme, a.k.a. send a kid to buy the plates and match them with random napkins. I like to think of them as psychedelic bird receivers.

But even with all those neon green plastic plates, we didn’t have enough for dessert.

And look at those pies! Delicious all, and yet I caught 3 Spanish natives laughing over the obsession we Americans have with pumpkin.

And yet, they ate like good little pigs, no matter the jibes, and I was left with hours of dishwashing, by hand. But I can’t complain because we’re getting a dishwasher…

As a wedding present! Yes, it’s true. We got married. But I’d been so overwhelmed since the nuptials, which included a dog with flowers strapped on his collar, of course, that I was a lame-o and didn’t post the whole rundown of the grand day. But it is coming…and it includes lots of flies buzzing around the wheat fields that were daubed in manure. Yeah!

If you want yet another perspective on our Thanksgiving, check out Johanna’s blog where she defends her (3!) cans of cranberry gelatin and laughs at my BF-turned-husband’s English. You’ll like her photos better as well, because she has this bizarre “nostalgia setting” on her phone that blows out all the colors and makes us all glow like we’re Oompa Loompas.

Tags: cooking, Paco, Thanksgiving

Polkas and paella

I keep trying to find a way to explain the concept of the fiesta mayor. I say things like, “It’s as if a State Fair were for a town and every town in Spain had one.” This past weekend was the festa major (as it’s written in Catalan) of l’Astor where we bought a real old house that we’ve since been told has never housed humans that anyone can remember, but has certainly had a lot of rabbits living in it.

The festa major was rural madness! Friday night was the sopar de veïns, the dinner of the neighbors. The family at Cal Mitjanes made a ginormous paella on a butane stand-up burner. So cool…

Everyone chipped in whether it was smashing garlic, setting up tables or keeping Paco entertained by torture…forcing him to give the paw over and over and never rewarding him with a treat. Poor pooch!

If it were like any other year, we’d down the paella with some wine, move onto cava (champagne from Catalonia) and go straight to dancing the polka with our mad Polish entertainer. But his year, Barça was playing. So drastic measure were taken. Wires strung, projectors set up. Not a single, solitary minute of fútbol would be missed.

And it worked! And we won!

The paella was amazing, which was a real surprise since the man was essentially cooking for an army.

And the festivities last late into the night. We even had our own label on the cava this year, featuring all the houses in the town!

And there were lots of them…

But, as always for me, the highlight is the man whose name no one seems to know and yet he can turn a humdrum night amongst the dry, harvested wheat fields into hours of nonstop polka with his synthesizer and of conga lines that involve locking hands under your neighbor’s crotch (apparently a tradition)…

…a man much like Clark Kent, by day your average Joe…

…who at night dons a red satin pirate shirt and glitter vest for your entertainment…

…an accordion-playing devil who will wrest you from your plastic seat and send you twirling under the stars…

…a man known only as El Polaco!

But maybe the highlight to the Festa Major 2011 was when the mayor confiscated the mic to announce that the BF and I were getting married, right there in l’Astor and that we were inviting everyone to toast with us after the ceremony over cava because there is no party in Catalonia without cava. So yes, dear readers, the hitching is going to happen! On September 10th. One small hurdle in the odyssey will be jumped and we will be drinking bubbly while jumping it. Visca Catalunya!

I leave you, dear readers, with a few more pics of the odd “bubble party” that involved spraying humans down with dishwashing detergent and losing children in the ensuing sea of bubbles. Leaves your feet nice and ready for a pedicure, however.

And finally, when the madness subsides, the mayor comes out to survey the damage. You’ll be seeing him in the next post, too. This is the fella who’ll be marrying us.

Tags: El Polaco, festa major, l'Astor, Paco, the BF

Accordion minstrels and stale, blessed bread, folks!

Most anybody who is reading this has likely already stuffed him or herself to bursting with burgers, dogs, corn on the cob, cole slaw and potato salad (the yellow mustard kind. Don’t try getting fancy on us). It’s the fourth of July and I’m sorry to be missing out over here in Barcelona. I considered whipping up some burgers for friends, but it’s really not the same frying them in a pan.

Over here, we had our fireworks party a little over a week ago for St. John’s day (Sant Joan, in Catalan). I’m not sure what he did back in the day, but apparently it warrants everyone in Catalonia buying fireworks and setting them off wherever they see fit, especially in the middle of the street. (If you’ve ever been to Spain, you’re probably aware of their lax fire safety regulations in the cities and their stringent ones in the countryside.) Kids here buy supercharged firecrackers, the kind that actually could take an eye out and that have the dogs of Barcelona barking all night. Luckily, Paco is a bit slow on the uptake at times, so he usually spends what is a torturous day for his canine brethren like this:

As you all are winding down your big weekend, I’ll be winding up the big week…the one where the BF and I finally present all our paperwork for approval to get hitched: birth certificates, past marriage certificates, divorce certificates, documentation of the last two years residency, an affidavit saying “I really can get married, I swear”, and other sundry sheets of dead, pressed trees smeared in ink. Yeehaw! As usual, we are cutting it all close. I have a document to get for the second time from the American consulate because I jumped the gun and got it so early it’s already expired. Oh, when your organizational skills come back to bite you in the ass… In any case, Friday is the big day, people! At least the big day to get approved. I’ll keep you, the teeming masses who read this, informed while leaving you with more interesting bits…

A couple weeks ago, we headed out to the BF’s family homestead for a traditional procession that’s I’m-not-sure-how-many hundreds of years in the making that involved going up to a chapel on the peak of a mountain in Carramia, singing, watching a priest in sunglasses bless the four winds in hopes of good crops and then snatching up a loaf or two of blessed bread.

Here’s how the day started, with the BF enjoying the company of a couple morning visitors. They did their duty and woke him up in time to get to the procession.

The terrain going up the mountain was so rough we had to abandon one car and all pile into our little SUV. I sat in the way back with the Stepkin until my butt hurt bad enough that I abandoned her for the back seat.

Here is the town that the BF’s family is from. The church is from 1141, so the place has been around for quite a while. At least the God part of it has…although the houses look pretty well settled, too.

The procession brought us up to this little chapel…

…where we waited on the priest for a good hour or two. We got to contemplate the views. Really contemplate them.

As we searched out shade to avoid baking. By the time the priest arrived, local ladies like these were chewing him out, hehehe. Hey, they were hungry.

But then it was time to sing! It was called a goig…

…which was way too complicated for me to sing on an empty stomach and with the sun stroke I was about to suffer. But everyone else forsook the views to gather around the priest (or the huge bags of bread) and whoop it up to an accordion tune.

The priest used a banner to bless the four winds.

That original banner has done a lot of blessing over the years. Then we got some bread.

It was blessed, yes, but kind of hard.

The Stepkin has good genes or she may have broken a tooth. I’m guessing it’s what they couldn’t sell off from the day before. Maybe that’s just cynicism, but it’s what happens when you get a loaf of stale bread after waiting in the hot sun on top of a mountain for a priest in some bizarre sunglasses that stick together magnetically over the bridge of his nose. So we all took our bread and ran back down the mountain…

To the real food! And the Accordion Minstrel!

Who knew men still walked around playing the accordion? The BF’s cousins prepared a regular ho-down. If anybody in the States needs one of those sausage barbecuing things let me know, because I think they’re totally rad.

The butifarra (a fresh, Catalan sausage) was made on their farm. There was also wine, made by the BF’s cousin’s family, that you drank out of a bota (wineskin). You could drink it like the BF’s godfather, in other words, like a champ.

Or, like me, into your eye.

Fun was had by all.

There was even a roaming lottery ticket vendor, of course. And small, lottery ticket buyers.

Yes, we bought…and we lost. But hey, now I can say I bought a lottery ticket at 2000-feet. Can any of you?