And just like that...

May ended as every month is fated to do.

So, while I was worried about the results of my job and finally deciding that it did not matter if I’d done something else than what I already did, yesterday, I took more time that usual for lunch. My car was at the mechanic (service, not repair), I met my wife for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant (since she is still in the detox/eat-right phase) and she took me to the car after that. It was almost 1:30 pm when I got the car and being that I was close to the kids’ school I called my wife to tell her I would pick them up and take them home.

Pinka had a birthday party for one of her classmates, and wanted to go. We had discussed the matter on Thursday and told her that she was not going because we could not take her there, but, I was already there picking her up so she started pressuring (in her own way) and I caved in. I took her to the party. Then, Lexie (the nanny) called me at work. The mother of one of Pinka’s friends had called looking for my wife or for me and left a phone number. I called her and then she told me that Pinka had a small accident when jumping in a trampoline and that resulted in an ankle sprain.

So I forgot anything to do with work and started calling and receiving calls from my wife; trying to find out who was there, what is next and where we were going to take her. We ended at the Hospital del Pr@do; a very old hospital in Tijuana, used to be very good. Every one of us was there; my wife with Mediana (who was at home at the time of the accident), Vicky (in her way from work) and me. Pinka was taken to the hospital by her best friend’s mom.

After waiting 30 minutes, a classmate of Mediana arrived with his mom; he had the same injury, while playing football (futbol, not American football; soccer for Americans) at school. We talked a little while waiting for the doctor to show up. 15 minutes later the doctor arrived, then he got a panic attack because there were so many of us and… the asked us to move to a different exam room. There we went, and another 5 minutes got me to the end of my patience. We left. Usually, it takes 15 minutes for somebody to take care of you (specially when you are in the Emergency Room!!!) so after 45 I was about to hit somebody.

Ok, I did not, because nobody was even there to be hit. Anyway; we go to a different hospital (Ange1es) and what do you know; I took Pinka to the lobby and then returned to the car to park it. By the time I got back she was out for X-Rays! It took us 30 minutes to get out of the hospital, with X-Rays and medicine and an appointment with an orthopedist on Saturday! That is what I called service.

So, we went today to the orthopedist; he had to put a cast on her leg and now she is in crutches. She was really concerned, because she is in the school play (as one of the leading actresses) and though that maybe she was not going to be ready for it; but they will remove the cast and she will leave the crutches in two weeks; so she will have two weeks to recover enough for the school play.

There was something I did not like of this development; and it was that Pinka was rather happy to have a cast on her leg; because she will be popular at school. I am worried by that; this is the third time in the last three years she had something in her health and every time she was happy about how people at school was going to react (positively). Remember I mentioned about how there are no accidents? This situation REALLY worries me.

The results of my job? Well, we were only at 85%; and 99% in the quarter. Better than expected, but I rather failed miserably that having to have one of my girls in an accident again.

Envy

I got an account in Goodreads (*). Now I am trying to create my booklist.

How did people find the time to do it? I feel compelled to list all the books that I have at home (regardless if I have read them or not), but a quick count gave me more than 1000 books (**).

I need to develop an easier way to do it.

See you around.

(*) Because I have been seeing the "advertising" in some friends' blogs.
(**) I feel a little bit like bragging here. I apologize in advance. You are free to bring me back to my normal self with your comments if you feel the same.

Resignation

OK, I got to hand it to my wife. When I think she can not surprise me, there she goes again. We are OK. Which gave me time to focus on my work.

Seems like nothing can be done at this moment. We are going to achieve only 60 to 70% of the targets we had for this month; for the quarter we will be at 85% (approx). All of it will not give us a pass, we will fail. Not good. We can blame it on whatever we want, we are failing. Our bosses will not be happy.

Then, since nothing else can be done, I've decided to take it lightly; I started to look for some information and got sidetracked by what I found in today's news. I went further and remembered the controversy caused by the Memin Pinguin stamps for the Mexican post; I still do not understand the sensitivity of these themes for Americans. Maybe (s)wine can help me here.

But me, I can tell you that the last time I went to our California factory, one of the Quality Engineers there (female), told me that if I were to work in US, I would get fired for the comment I made of her (regarding the aggressivity she was demonstrating towards the employees from Tijuana and explaining it that the reason behind it was that she was a woman; I know what you will say, and you are right, but I was already pissed at her, she deserved that!).

So now, my wife is also right; I can be an insensitive bastard sometimes (even though she would not say bastard, she would use a Mexican insult [like cabron or pendejo]). The good thing is that I know this and can change (for her).

See you around.

Careful of what you wish for...

Yesterday, when contemplating the lack of “heavy issues” in my posts I decided not to care about it and go with the flow; “There will be a time, when I feel bad/sad/depressed/angry/etc. and then I will write about it”.

As the saying goes… “careful what you wish for, you may get it”.

Last night, I had (what for me was) a in-fun discussion with my wife. She complained that I try always (big word here!) to be right; and always (same word!) to be first, to win, never to lose. I thought she was not serious, but this morning; she was really pissed about it, she was lashing at me because of that; I let it go, since I did not want to get into a discussion that I know it won’t get anywhere. I wasn’t happy, but avoided temporarily a discussion with my wife (the results of discussions with my wife, when we cannot agree to something is that we stop talking to each other for several hours or sometimes days; not a good result). I knew I would pay (because that is the other part of it; she feels like I am hurting her on purpose and start doing things to bother me, she is partially right and partially successful).

I come to work and then the day starts unraveling. There is a shipment we can not make today and is a new customer (need to keep the good impression), there is a list of products that seems like we will not finish on time (we will be short in the monthly target for shipments), there is an audit from our sister factory in California (they want to be here tomorrow, in freaking quarter/month end!!), there is a complaint from corporate regarding materials, etc.

My wife calls me next; I have not gotten the SENTRI sticker for the minivan (we got it in December; so it is 6 MONTHS ALREADY!!); so we start discussing for that, and because of yesterday’s discussion she can not see the marvelous person I am!! She only sees the irritating things that I do (like procrastinating, spending too much time in the computer [she might be into something here!], spending too little time with the kids, not putting down the toilet seat and pressing the toothpaste at the middle ;^)).

It is 9:45 am; I hope that if I write this, it will stop here and prevent any escalation to full war with my wife.

Let’s see if I am successful. I will be posting additional comments as soon as I can.

P.S. She just called me to tell me she now feels better, so this should be working!!

Living Light

Now that there is a light version of almost everything, do you miss the full version of whatever?

I tend to be really introspective whenever I have the chance. Keeping up with this tendency (from yesterday) I was wondering if what I was writing was “too light”. Should I try for the serious stuff? Should I be worried about the state of things in the world? I decided I had to, and then wrote yesterday’s post. But, in any case, it was not enough for me. So I started thinking about what to write today. And I was still trying to decide the theme of today’s post when I got an email from Pily (good friend from Guajalajara times). She called last Friday, to say happy birthday and I shared with her my blog’s address, so she could read and kind of catch up with me. She told me in the email that I sounded really serious and unhappy (?) on the phone, but after reading the blog (in Spanish) she noticed that I was still the same joyful person she knew back then (phew!).

I am not serious then? I thought I should be!! But, in any case, why should I worry about trying to find a “serious” issue to write about? Let’s keep enjoying this writing, the main reason to write is to share, and if what I share at this moment is a laugh instead of a cry, well I just hope you (and I) enjoy it!!

See you around.

To whom it may concern.

Today is a really slow day for work.

It is giving me time to think; and one of the things I am considering at this moment is that we live in changing times.

The newscasts all over the weekend (both in Mexican and American) warned of the food crisis that exists in the whole world. Oil prices are soaring and less food is available at the prices we had a year ago. Wheat had increased the customer final price in 130%, vegetables in average had increased their price 65%, and oil has duplicated its price in the last 12 months. What does it mean?

I lived in an agricultural region in the north of Sinaloa. Tomato, corn, zucchini, chili, sugar cane, beans, wheat, soy, sorghum, safflower (cártamo in Spanish), cotton, etc. Everything was set to grow in irrigation soil. A drought that lasted for five years and the government control prices drove many people relying on farming income into poverty. You would hear this in my youth: “here, there is always food for everybody”; now is not true.

My parents being teachers did not depend on money from crops. However, both my grandfathers were farmers. My parental grandfather died when my father was 13. His brothers took the lands and the animals he had for them because that was the way it was at the time. The last of them died rich; and miserable at the same time, since not even his sons and daughters liked him. My maternal grandfather moved from his hometown at the river to where he lived to where my parents live now. In 1976 during the big peso devaluation (from 1 dollar equal to 12.5 pesos, it went to 25 pesos and eventually to 3000 pesos; when it was decided to reduce the quantity of zeroes in the currency [for your reference, now the exchange rate is 10.5 pesos or 10500 old pesos per dollar]) he lost the land he owned because of bad results and a credit in dollars.

Many people do not grow anything, they rather rent the land; and it is risky to try. You need to have money to survive 6 months, in addition to the money you need to invest in seeds, machines and people. If you get to harvest anything (cotton for example is really risky, any rain will ruin the crop) you have to fight for the right price. People do not want to do the labor work required, you will get only 6 dollars a day for a day that starts at 4:00 am and finishes at 4 pm. They rather go to work in a factory (you get 12 dollars a day), or move to a big city (like Tijuana) or the US (where you will get 80 dollars a day).

So, I know second hand (because I’ve never done it) about the difficulties to produce food. And I can understand some of the costs associated. And I do not want to get worried, but I can not help it.

When my wife interviewed me for a job in Tijuana (I lived in Guadalajara those days); she asked me what I would be doing 20 years later. The standard answer was: “I will be the president/plant manager/top executive/something of the company”. My answer was: “I will be back in my hometown, growing vegetables, retired of engineering work”. That captivated her; but to tell you the truth, I am not so sure of wanting to do it anymore.

See you around.

Living dangerously

The weekend was a blur, after I came back from the company picnic (no interesting stories there) I got home to a family celebration; there was strawberry-cream cake, my brother and his family were there, my family-in-law was also there; I fell down when I tripped on the porch (there is a step, my foot got tangled with my jacket when I was trying to step on the porch) my knees are killing me but there are no permanent scars this time.

Eat cake, drank milk, talked with the in-laws and my niece and nephew, Vicky’s friend was there, played cards with the in-laws (my wife won, but nobody paid this time) and went to sleep.
Sunday. Chilaquiles in the morning (**) because my mother-in-law thought that I would be with a hangover (I drank some beers at the company picnic, my wife was not pleased because I drove back home; she is right). Took the minivan for an oil change, went to Chulavista shopping (shoes for Mediana and Pinka, they are on the school play next month; I am already tired of hearing them rehearse); then Ensenada in the afternoon.

I like to drive, scratch that, I LOVE to drive. My hometown is 1000 miles south of Tijuana; we had driven there several times. One of those times we even went to Guadalajara and Leon (another 800 miles). Great vacation, that time.

So, this time driving to Ensenada at 4:00 p.m.; great! The road was almost empty, we were not in hurry and the sea, the sky and the overall view was soooo relaxing… I could have keep driving for another couple of hours. We got to Ensenada and stopped for fish tacos and seafood cocktail (shrimp, octopus, clams, scallops, oysters, etc.) on our way to a church. Attended mass and say hello to some old acquaintances. Return to Tijuana; now is dusk. Dust in the air makes the sky red. I have Fernando Delgadillo in the CD player; the kids are watching a movie. I feel so good. I tell my wife I love her, she does love me too!

We go to the store for today’s groceries and forgot dog’s food (we have a poodle, my parents gave it to my daughters), my wife goes to get some food from her sister. I put the kids to sleep, she comes back to me and we go to bed.

I was tired, but could not sleep; the realization that life can be this good when you do not complain of the small things is engulfing me.

My paranoia is kicking in, I should not feel satisfied; something will happen to make it disappear! I decided not to care, let others worry. I sleep.

See you later.

(*) Thanks to all people that was nice to me during the weekend; I enjoyed all of it.

(**) Chilaquiles is a Mexican dish that is made of layers of fried tortillas, then a watered sauce is added and put to simmer; when the water had evaporated you add cheese and cream. Served hot (sometimes with chicken or eggs and beans), it is spicy and supposedly a great help when you have a hangover.