Twins. Death. Love.

So, remember those two year old twins I posted in the last entry? Well, they have been visiting their grandmother for the last week here in Santiago and guess who has spent every free moment helping her aunt take care of them?...that's right, 'Tia Eugenia' who - sidebar - is an awesome pseudo-aunt.

Anyhoo, because of this fact I am generally exhausted and also my conversations have been pretty much reduced to the following token phrases:

'Don't hit your sister.'
'Don't kick the dog!'
'Come on, eat. Please eat.'
'Don't touch that.'
'You want me to sing to you in english?'
'Stop kicking the dog!'
'Please let your Tia rest for two minutes, for the love of god.'

As you can see, quite fullfilling. It's fun to go out with them in public because people assume they're mine and they give me that 'oh, look at that poor thing. she has twins. she looks tired as all hell' look. and then they give me their seat on the subway/bus which is always awesome. SO, long story short, I love babies I just really really don't want to have any of my own anytime soon, especially because even the smallest possibility of having twins makes me want to cry out in pain. Not physical, although I do have the bruises to prove babies are not all the balls of fluff and love they're made out to be. trust me.

this afternoon we will possibly take them to the zoo, which should be quite an adventure. i shall have the pictures to prove it. more on that after it does/does not happen.

In the meantime, let me tell you that I have discovered two things. One, that the problem with my computer speakers was that I needed to fix the balance in the volume control. Duh. Two, that MacCenter guy really really does love me. Yesterday we had this HILARIOUS email exchange which he, by the way, started that ended with him telling me if I ever need anything he could come over to look at my computer. ...Relax father, brother, mother, I have no intentions of having him come over to look at my computer... but I thought it worth sharing because he really does know infinitely more about me than I do about him. Creepy and yet somehow kind of sweet.

What else?....man, every muscle in my body hurts from playing with these babies and let me tell you that I seem to have 2 year old fever now because I spend ALL day singing children's songs in spanish in my head. This little number is their favorite, it's called 'Los Zapatos de Papa' (excuse the lack of accents. i can't even think to look at the volume control i certainly will not bother with figuring out accents on this keyboard):

Los zapatos de papa son grandes y pesados
Al andar sonando van boom boom boom
Los zapatos de mama tienen grandes tacos
al andar sonando van cli cli cli cli cla
Y los niños chicos
con piernas muy gorditas
corren tras papa y mama
tiki tiki tiki tiki ta

Oh, if you had the melody to that song right now you would hate me soooo much because you would never EVER get it out of your head.

And off I go to the land of the two year olds again.

Will go into exile soon...and start behaving like an adult again.

Loves(Baby loves),
- E

Personal Questions

I have a few things to discuss and some pics!

So, I officialy have my computer back and it's almost the same but not quite. One, because it has inifinitely more memory now but also because one of the speakers isnt working. They were both working when I took it in and I'm not sure what the freak at the MacCenter was doing to my speakers, but I am pretty determined to find out by doing an awful lot of yelling and maybe a bit of cursing (possibly in both english and spanish).

Speaking of which, picking up the computer from the Apple hospital was really bizarre. First because one of the first things the guy who was handling the process asked me about a million personal questions including but not limited to:

"How is work?"
"I called you a bunch of times. How come you didn't answer?"
"There's no one at home to pick up the phone when you're not there?"

So now here are some of the things he knows about me:

- I teach english
- What part of town I live in
- That I live alone
- That work is slow this time of year
- My house and cell phone number
- That I went on vacation recently
- What kind of music I listen to

This is what I know about him:

- His name is Luis


I'll be surprised if he doesn't show up at my doorstep in a couple of days with replicas of the both of us dressed exactly the same.

He also made this comment that made me really uncomfortable while I was checking to see if all my pictures were recovered. He said (and I quote) "Oh ALL of the pictures are there. I looked through all of then and made sure they were all there." After that was when he said something about me having gone on vacation.

Yep, that's right. I have no further comment on the topic. I'm looking forward to submitting myself to another round of interrogation when I go bitch about my speaker.

Yay.

Let's backtrack now.

I spent Christmas in a cabin in the south with three cousins, a wife and SEVEN children. Precious, precious things that they are. I'll share some pictures for you to love and admire and if I didn't say it before, Happy New Year!

Here is a view from the bathroom window I took during the crossing from the continent to the island of Chiloe:



My cousin's twin two-year olds and I:



And just for shits and giggles, here are some salmon jumping around in a salmon cage at the salmonry (?) (Salmon are gross):

new years/computer hospital/text messages

So, this is the new year.
And I don't feel any different.

Or do I?

I kind of do.

One of my theoretical new year's resolus was to try and blog everyday. How quickly did that go to shit? Pretty damn quickly. Which leads me to the next topic...

My computer crashed. It's terrible and flirting with the guy at the MacCenter has done nothing to help my case. Basically, the hard drive needs to be replaced and I've been having laptop withdrawl for about a week and a half now and also I'm certainly not looking forward to the money withdrawl I will be experiencing when I go pick up my baby tomorrow. Sadness, I know. Although on the plus side the MacCenter guy is kind of adorable and I will likely recuperate most of my information AND (big plus) my new hard drive is 80G - my old one was only 30. So....yay? Kind of. I pretended to almost cry when I went to drop it off at the service center and, well, we all know I don't cry so this was an effort for me. But, to my dismay, I didn't manage to get much of a discount.

Tomorrow (I hope) I will be back to the world of the connected and I will try and live up to my already destroyed new year's resolu (are you digging my abreviation of the word resolution? or should I give it up immediately...comments/questions?)

On to the good stuff.

I do this really amazing thing that I've never written about before but after last night's adventures I feel that it deserves attention. You know those people who drunk dial/text message all the time? I have this very effective system that keeps me from doing those kinds of things. It takes a hell of a lot of will power but, damn it, it's worthwhile. So, if I have an urge to call or text message or email anyone after the hour of midnight I will write an email or text message to this person saying whatever it is I think is important and then I will say to myself 'Okay, tomorrow when I wake up, if I still feel this is important enough to say I will send it.' In this way I don't lose what I, at the moment, think is a significant thought and said person does not need to receive incoherent messages from me very late at night. Everyone wins.

This means I have some really hilarious messages saved that I never sent.

Examples...

'What you doin'? - abby' - this is a message to someone from abby while she was here...from my phone...keeep in mind this person does not speak english

'you're a disrespectful jerk. bye.' - moment of enlightment

you get the idea.

Anyhoo, last night I lost the battle. I was out with a friend of mine and while she was busy with other things I was trying to look busy by playing with my phone and, damn it, I sent some text messages. I also wrote a text message to myself which I then saved of some thoughts I had while watching my friend to make sure she was okay. Let me share...

'I'm a bad bad influence. Shit. I'm a bad person.' - my thoughts to myself. It took me about 30 minutes to type out the word ' shit'. awesome.


(I'm sure Abby won't mind me sharing a piece of the message I sent to her)

' I got your lip gloss. Wearing it now. Thanks so much. Can't wait to get back to nyc. Hate boys.' - I believe that last part was quite subtle and poetic.

Long story short (·insert colon here I can't figure out where it is )I may have destroyed lives last night. I'm a bad influence. Lip gloss is awesome. Boys are generally hated by me on Saturday nights. My system of embarrassment avoidal has failed miserably. I'm funny/slightly insane.

Missed me, huh?

Loves,

- E