Monday, October 25, 2010

Working!!!

Last Thursday I received a phone call from the place I had an interview at the first week of October. It took them long enough!! But, I now I have a job! My first job teaching English in Chile and I am kind of excited about it. I couldn't find a full time job so I took what I could get and will be working 5 to 9:15 Monday through Friday. This institute just happens to be located about 10 feet (really little more, but not much) from Rodrigo's taxi base. I have to take a colectivo and then the metro and then Ro will pick me up at the metro and bring me to work everyday. He will also be bringing me home everyday, so we will be working pretty much the same hours, Ro will just go to work earlier than me. I am happy that I finally have a job because we really need to buy some things for this place. A couch or some chairs for the living room would be nice, and since our TV died it would be nice to have a new one of those. Those are Ro's main concerns. I on the other hand will be buying immediately a new cookware set because my "non stick" saucepan is very much STICK and is rusting... I didn't know that could happen. I am hoping to buy a nice new set and a few other things for the kitchen as well.
This house seems to have more and more problems and tonight Ro is going to talk to the landlady because he has had enough. Last night I was turning on the califont, which doesn't work very well to begin with, and since I have to immediately turn on the hot water when I have it lit, I did. Only problem? The pipe under the faucet started leaking like crazy!! So we had to turn off the line for all the hot water in the house. Which made me super happy because the only reason I was turning on the califont was to take a shower. So, Ro gave me a shower last night. It was a much faster caveman shower because I had him to pour the water on me so I could use both hands to wash myself and my hair. I should have had him do that a long time ago because now he sees how damn difficult it is. Since I refuse to take a cold shower like he does and he doesn't really want me to anyways because I will get sick and die from the cold water, now he knows exactly what I have to do just to take a shower. So hopefully very soon, the landlady will have everything fixed for us and we won't be so stressed out about this stupid house.
Well, I don't really have much else to talk about. So, until next time!!

Monday, October 18, 2010

For Dad, with love.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was little, maybe 5 or 6 years old.. Back then time went by slower and life was simpler. Christmas Eve was THE day of the year. What kid doesn’t love the day when they receive a bunch of presents and looked forward ONLY to the toys?? I was that little girl. I had my list to “Santa.” Most of my requests at that time had something to do with Barbies. I loved them and having more and more sets and accessories for them was the best you could get for Christmas. At the time opening the present and immediately playing with it was THE goal of the night. At the time I never thought about how much time it took to set it up and put it together. Maybe there really were more instructions then what came with my mom’s new vacuum, but I was more worried about my blonde Barbie (at one time I probably had a name for her maybe Dacia or Allison, but I do remember she came with paint to decorate her own “cowboy” clothes) sleeping in her new bed in her new house. I remember that my older sister’s present was a Barbie Camper and my two little brothers each got a remote control car. All toys obviously weren’t set up and “ready to go” right from the box. The cars needed the stickers and batteries put in them, the camper needed to be put together and have stickers put on them too, and my Barbie Folding Fun House needed the most time. It had a LOT of pieces in the box and needed to be put together before it would fold up. My mom helped with the sticker for the boys, Dad put the batteries in and got to work on the Barbie stuff. Yes, on Christmas Eve, it was probably 11pm way past any little kid’s bedtime. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but my dad sat down and put it all together for me. I played with it that night and for a long time afterwards.


Later in life, when I was 16 years old I got my first car. It was a gift from a cousin and I loved it. My beautiful 1995 Lincoln Continental was my prize gift that year. My dad and mom had to drive to Minneapolis to pick it up for me. They also had to do all that title stuff to put the car in my name and set up the insurance for it. They brought it home the same night that I was leaving for Montana with my aunt Karen and my grandma. That was my first Christmas that I didn’t spend with my parents. In fact, it is the only Christmas that I haven’t spent with my parents. This Christmas will be the second and I have a feeling it will be very hard for me, but that’s another story. My dad drove my Lincoln home and I just home from a basketball game, I think. It really is funny how hard it is to remember things from not so many years ago. I had all my stuff packed and we had my aunt’s truck packed for the long drive to Montana. Before I could go though I had to at least take my new car for a spin! It was snowing and I took the car to the end of the road and back. At that time my car didn’t really have any problems, but later the transmission died. Of course my dad took it in to get it fixed and also to get a new windshield for it because it had a crack in it when I got it. He fixed that car for me and I ran it until I couldn’t anymore. Of course when I crashed it in January 2007, there really wasn’t much I could do to fix it, but I drove it with the thing still and now it sits in our yard, covered by weeds in the summer, leaves in the fall, and snow in the winter. After that I had already semi moved to Chile and only needed a car when I was in Minnesota. Last year when I went to the US with Rodrigo, my dad and uncle fixed up a “work car” for me. This work car really wasn’t for work. My uncle used it to drive a quarter mile each day to the Kasella Concrete yard. It had a layer of dirt inside because that quarter mile happened to be a dirt road. I cleaned that red beast up and Ro and I drove it for the summer. Of course we had problems with it. One time it just decided to stop on 15 in St. Cloud in the middle of rush hour. Of course rush hour in St. Cloud really isn’t too bad compared to other places I have been, but there we were in the middle of the summer on a day that was hotter than hell and super humid. Dad came and tried to start the beast, but it just didn’t feel like starting. He called triple A and had it towed to a garage to be looked at. They couldn’t find anything wrong with it. From then on it started when it felt like it and sometimes not at all, but I still drove it. When it started getting cold, and Ro was already gone back to Chile, my dad fixed his “work car” for me. This car had been sitting in the yard with the Lincoln for some time, but he got it running for me, fixed the starter and put in a new battery for me. This car at least had heat. Of course it wasn’t beautiful and I did get laughed at by some guy driving a brand new Mustang at a gas station once, but I didn’t care. It got me from point A to point B. Most of the time.

These days, my dad really can’t do that much for me since I am a billion miles away. But when I go home, he takes me fishing and usually I don’t even have to put bait on the hook and I never have to take the fish off the hook, unless they are sunnies or something small. When Ro was in MN with me, he took us fishing, Ro caught an eel pout. Eel pouts are very ugly fish covered in a very smelly slime and usually they are only caught in the wintertime, but Ro caught one in the summer because he wanted to be cool. Of course Ro had no idea at the time what he was catching and I am sure even today he would have a hard time telling the difference between any kind of fish, but I think he knows what an eel pout is now. Anyways, Ro was reeling in the fish and Dad caught a glimpse of it. “Son of a bitch!” was what my dad said. Of course Ro started to feel nervous and thought he did something wrong, but it wasn’t his fault he caught that ugly thing. Dad netted it and brought it into the boat and of course Ro had to have a picture with it. I had never seen and eel pout caught in the summer time, neither had my dad. So dad got his pliers and picked the fish up with the pliers and handed it to Ro and took a picture. Dad also drove us to Canada that day on the boat, just over the border quick and back. In the winter, we went back up to that same lake to ice fish over New Years. Ro was back in Chile, but my mom and I, Shannon, Shannon and my aunt Judy were all in a fish house drinking something good talking and fishing. Yes, 3 Shannons in one fish house. We did even though we didn’t do it on purpose manage to as my uncle says, “get things all bunched up nicely.” We caught a fish. Yes, WE, meaning 3 of us, caught the same fish at the same time. Obviously we weren’t paying too much attention to our lines at the time because my mom caught the fish in the mouth and the fish proceeded to struggle and swim around and get snagged up on my line and my aunt’s line. Of course we called Dad, who was in a different fish house, to come and help with this mess. After everything was untangled and we were went back to fishing Dad went back to his house, but came back whenever we screwed something up.
 This is Ro with the eel pout, the picture doesn't do it justice though, they are much more disgusting in person.


So, today, I would like to wish Dad, one day early, Happy Birthday! Thank you for all you have done for me, and mostly thank you for helping to make me the person I am today. I love you and I miss you! Have a great birthday.

This is Dad and little bro Carl, it was Carl's birthday yesterday!
This is the only picture I have with my dad. But you can see he's waiting for me to turn around so he can take a pic too and text message it to my mom. :)

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

When you visit my house

I don't have a lot of visitors at my house and after I reread this and thought about it, it really probably is a good thing.
When you visit our house, first you will notice that the neighbor lady will come out and see what is going on. She acts all dramatic like she thinks you are actually climbing over her gate and about to rob her house, then she mutters, "Ah, you scared me." After that she goes back into the house. I think she is just nosy...
When you enter our house, you will probably not notice or you probably will that the house is a mess. You have probably 5 chances out of 7 of coming in and wondering to yourself what the fuck happened in here. I fail at being a good housekeeper. I hate cleaning and as soon as I have everything clean I feel like an hour later it looks horrible again. I think this may have to do with the fact that I have a tiny house. If I had a bigger house everything wouldn't get so cluttered so fast. I also never make my bed unless I wash the sheets not that it matters because visitors don't really go in my room.
You will also notice that there is a red piece of yarn tied around one of our chairs, if I was you, I wouldn't sit in that chair. I was thinking of making a warning sign for it because I'm sure someone will sit in it and break it 100% before we around to getting it fixed. I would just put the chair away somewhere, but I don't have a somewhere to put it. Also, the toilet seat cover is broken so when you pick it up you have a good chance of standing there holding a toilet seat cover in your hand and wondering to yourself, "How the fuck does this happen?" I don't know how it happened, it just did and now its broken and we are going to buy a new one soon, I think. You probably won't notice, but there is a melted \ / shape on the top of my washing machine. That's because one day I turned my hair straightener to 410 degrees F and set it on my plastic washing machine. Yes, I am so intelligent.
I also have to say that I have ADD when it comes to being a hostess. We never have alcohol in our house. Yes, we drink, but when we do, we drink it all. So a  quick trip to the little liquor store a couple blocks away is always needed. After returning from the little trip, I will bring out the rum, coke, and ice then wander off while you wonder where the hell your drink is. Usually Nico (Our neighbor and Ro's friend) will just go into the kitchen and get classes and make the drinks. Then when I come back I will pick up a drink like I made it and didn't forget about anything. If you come on a bad day, we won't have very much food in the house, but I am pretty good at making snacks out of anything. I mean all you need is an apple and manjar or peanut butter and wahoo a snack. Or onions, flour and beer and wahooo onion rings!!! Usually though, if we know we are having people over we will have completos and we always have chips and golf sauce. Also, if you drop food on the floor one of two things will happen, depending on what you dropped I will just say, "Don't worry, Zoe will eat it." or Zoe will have already grabbed it and if it is a grape or an onion I will grab her back legs and lift her into the air and give a little shake so she drops it. Anything other than a grape or onion, she can eat. She's part goat, I think. If you spill a drink, she will drink it, but I try to keep her alcohol consumption to a minimum since the last time someone dropped a glass of wine and she drank almost all of it up before we could get it cleaned up and she walked into things for a half an hour before passing out in the middle of the living room floor. Bad dog.
If you want to play Rock Band, I am always willing and after a few drinks I even sing! But, I do have to tell you that sometimes our TV fades to black so we have to push pause while I give it a good slap or kick and the color will come right back and we can continue playing for a few minutes. Sometimes this happens a lot, sometimes it can go a whole hour without fading to black. Also, don't be fooled, I really do suck at Rock Band and usually will fail out before people who are playing for the first time, so make sure Ro is home so he can do the secret button pushing thing and set it on No Fail Mode. Then everyone can be happy and we can continue to play the whole song and probably not get more than three stars because, I really do suck.
There is a big chance that instead of playing Rock Band, I will bring out the cards, dice, and Jenga Xtreme. Usually we play Bull Shit with the cards, and the loser has to drink a half shot... be careful... you so don't want to drink HALF a SHOT, OMG! I really don't mind losing as much as the others. In fact, I wouldn't mind taking a whole shot for losing. We play Greedy with the dice I think some people call that game Farkle too and of course the loser has to drink HALF a SHOT!! Hahahaha! After we get a good buzz on we pull out Jenga Xtreme where the loser has to drink HALF a SHOT!!! I think this is the best part of the night. I love playing games. If presidents and assholes wasn't so complicated for the Chilean man brain, I would try to get everyone to play that game because it is a way better drinking game!!

Well, apparently I started writing a blog a few hours ago and was too busy watching the news to finish it and now I don't even know how I was going to finish it...sigh.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Changed my face again... and my Simple Sunday.

I was having issues blogging and someone commented that it might be the background so I changed it. I hope you like it.


It's Monday, but I'm gonna write about Sunday because I like days like Sunday. Ro and I slept in and woke up because our room was hotter than hell. The sun was out and it didn't really matter that the heat woke us up because we needed to get moving anyways. Of course we are out of gas again and I didn't have time for a caveman shower, so I washed my hair with cold water, jumped in the shower rinsed off and got the hell outta there before I froze my ass off. We went to the feria and I was super excited because I didn't go with Ro last weekend and we finally have a little money to buy food. We spent 10,000 pesos, about 20 bucks and came home with oranges, strawberries, bananas, apples, kiwis, potatoes, tomatoes, avacados, onions, carrots, cucumbers, a potato masher, garlic powder, oregano, and one bottle of flavored bubbly water to drink while we wandered. We have a lot of fresh food now and I am kind of excited. We just need to buy some sugar and cinnamon and I'm going to make me a yummy apple pie!! Going to the feria is fun for me, I hate when it is packed and start freaking out if Ro or I get lost in the crowd, but I love the smells of everything, all the fresh produce, popcorn, and the spices!! :) I love it! After that we had lunch at Ro's grandma's and then went back home to put away all our food. Then we took a nap. I love Sunday naps : ) After our lovely nap we decided to drink some beer which is always fun. Ro's friend came over and they went to go buy some more rum at 1am.. yeah. We watched Role Model and it was hilarious!! Then once again I found myself awake at 5am wondering what the hell I was thinking so we went to bed. Today was not as lovely as Sunday because someone had his crabby pants on... ALL DAY! Ok, I'm going to eat an apple and go read in my warm bed while I wait for hubs to get home. Hope everyone had a great weekend!! : )

Friday, October 8, 2010

Well

For some reason I am still having a frickin hard time getting blogger to open and let me write a new post!! But it looks like today is my lucky day.

I still haven't heard anything from the place I had an interview at last Monday. So, I am moving on, I sent out my CV this morning and now I have to wait again. And again. Always waiting. In the mean time I have cleaned my house a few times, done the dishes a billion times, and now I'm making bread.

I don't have anything new or any thoughts to write about so I am posting this so you all know that I am still alive and still living a very boring life!

Have a good weekend everyone!!!