yoo-hoo!
here i am, in honor of my loyal readership, a dedicated and insistent tribe of three, who have remarked that my four-year lapse between posts is an interesting marketing strategy.
to be fair i shall start off with a recap of the last 1,429 days so that if you are new here (which given my stats, undoubtedly you are), you don’t feel like i’ve slapped you across the face and shouted, “where are you now? what day is it? why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
this will be enough to get you up to date, but bear in mind that as some of the transpired events expired my soul, and i’ve worked hard to forget entire seasons in one fell swoop (the idiomatic phrase, not the band subsequently known as Dispatch from my very small university which favors ice-sports and those who play them, alas not i, nor Dispatch for that matter). If you do know me and find some concerning lapses or misappropriation of time (i.e. mixing up boyfriends or claiming to have done something you did) just let me know and i will invite you to unsubscribe so that i can continue on my creative path to nowhere guilt-free.
furthermore it must be said that, despite my best efforts, i fear this timeline will not be entirely accurate, but does it really matter to you anyway if i taught myself turkish in 32 days before or after i was propositioned by a bus driver to ride the line until the terminus and see what happens?
let’s begin.
- Came to buenos aires in the summer (here) of 2007 and stayed for good without meaning to. without any winter clothes, i was forced to traipse through the streets in only a borrowed a mens XL leopard-print fleece for the entire season.
result: always assuming i was going to leave, i never invested in anything more “appropriate” and as such suffered the social consequences (equivalent to being the only 11-year old in a kindergarten ballet troop -- reference drawn from personal experience).
- Challenged Castellano to a sparring match, and after taking a few to the face, i finally got the sucker on the ground with a subjunctive uppercut, knocking him into an alternate reality where i am fluent and he still sees double.
result: confident from the win, i went back up against Italian and but the match was suspended because of a union strike.
- Discovered that while poison and traps do nothing to deter city rats, girls with rifles do. after a little target practice on my neighbor’s satellite one night, i never saw those rats again
result: altogether positive, as i also never again saw my neighbors who until that time all sat on empty fruit crates on the sidewalk outside my door drinking forties of local beer, undressing me verbally every time i left the house.
- Returned to ireland once to guide a trip and burned myself with burning coffee one morning while talking to a client, the burn severe enough to prevent use of my hand for an exaggerated length of time.
result: actually useful, as i was able leverage this to to elicit pity from the clients so they wouldn’t be upset about being forced to walk for four miles through water up to the their knees because i hadn’t calculated the tide correctly for the beach walk. (probably because i had never actually been to said beach). as such i decided not to sue the hotel that gave me the coffee that morning.
- Returned to ireland a second time to solo guide a private trip with an expired driver’s license because frankly i forgot i’d need one to rent and operate a 9 passenger van.
result: after planning to do the whole trip by donkey cart, i was saved by the man who used to rent me cars from his office in a trailer at the back of the Galway gas station. Somehow he bypassed the law in a way i had come to think only argentines manage and had a van waiting for me the next day at the shannon airport with all authorization cleared. a testament to the great things that can happen when you travel.
- Outsmarted my giant puppy (purchased on ebay) during his “teething” phase after a significant game of trial-and-error (the errors resulting in my wearing long-sleeves for two months): when, on our daily walks, Charlie would chomp down on my arm while i bent over to scoop up his purges, i would wave the plastic baggy of his shit in front of him like a prize and he would let go. a sweet, intimate game for the new and enamored puppy-owner.
result: i got my arms back, though the embarrassment that my dog always fell for the shit-in-a-bag trick was nearly not worth keeping my limbs, nor tolerating the the pitiful looks of dog-owners passing by and the casual conversation overheard on my block:
“I didn’t know someone could actually bad at having a dog.”
“Well, she is in her 30’s now and has no kids...”
“But it’s barbaric what she’s doing, that poor puppy.”
“Even the Bolivians don’t do that.”
- Asked a police officer if he could hand me back the bribe money for just a second so i could make sure i didn’t give him too much
result: the cop agreed, compensated by being able to tell his cop buddies that he’d met the stupidest gringa in the world
- Suffered a mortifying case of the falling-pants during aikido class
result: naked from the waist down with my pants on the floor, the only woman in a room of ten martial men, the most embarrassing moment of my life thus far.
- Despite the involuntary flashing incident, i did receive my 5th kyu ranking in aikido (the very first belt. white as they come).
result: i can now officially identify when someone is attacking me with a sword.
- I was conned over the internet into paying 60,000 pesos (15,000 usd) via western union to buy a truck that never arrived from england as planned.
result: told “these things happen, you should be more careful” when filing my complaint with the website that published the ad. (note: please hold any thoughts of “only idiots pay a person they’ve never met egregious sums of money for automobiles they’ve never seen in person.” it’s not helpful.)
- Hit a deer while driving a Yukon XXXXXXL Sport Utility Vehicle (hunting was not my intended sport) through Capital Reef State Park in Utah, while guiding. after a tense moment of steady eye contact (the longer she didn’t blink the more dead i thought she was), she limped off to be with her friends waiting in horror across the road.
result: a very guilty conscience and a desperate attempt at the rental-car drop off to hide the blood-and-hair-spattered front license plate by parking centimeters from the car in front of me and then running for the exit. days later it was confirmed via my credit card that my attempt was unsuccessful and i urge all readers to take heed and steer clear: save a buck and you’ll save some more.
- After four years of spotty class attendance, i was finally cleared of all responsibility by my tango teacher for my failure to progress. she blames it on my shoes, as do i.
result: my first experience embracing mediocrity. it’s not as bad as i thought.
- Bought and ran a bed & breakfast for three and a half years. oops.
result: 1 deported employee, 1 trip to the hospital, 4 visits to the police, 2 visits from the fire department encouraging me to donate to the Christmas fund, in exchange for which i would get a voucher to be shown the next time i need anything, 5 lawsuits, 3 robberies, 962 guests (867 of them happy, 89 of them ecstatic, and 7 i’d rather not talk about).
OTHER REVEALING IF NOT INTERESTING STATISTICS:
During the last four years, I spent the following number of hours in the following locations:
- Post Office 72 in a single instance, cumulatively 128
- Police Station 15 (to report robberies and one missing person at the behest of her mother, who did admit her daughter had only been gone for 3 hours but she was positive that a taxi driver had her daughter locked in his trunk. the cops were equally as convinced that the daughter had met a dashing argentine and she was busy falling in love, so they refused to file the report).
- Ministry of Labor My laywer advised me not to disclose this
- Claro (cell phone) 14 for purchase, and 27 more for activation
- Immigration 49 (plus a trip to the wine shop for christmas presents)
- Airplanes 369
- Edesur (Power Co.) 1,048,273
Sine my last posting in March of 2007, # of days spent in:
Northern Cone (NC) 193 // Southern Cone (SC) 1236
Number of times . . . NC // SC
- a waiter checked back with me to ask how everything is... 435 // 1
- I have considered walking out of a restaurant because it took more than 30 minutes to get the bill ... 0 // 1236
- I have referred to an imaginary male partner while doing business to be taken seriously ... 0 // 25
- I have been called any version of beautiful by a stranger and/or propositioned with marriage ... 1 (he was drunk) // 11,482
- I have paid bribes ... 0 (lame) // 17(!)
I think that’s enough for today. I promise that the next post will not be 1429 days from now. Could be more. Could be less. Dare to guess.