Some things I don't understand

1. The Spanish eat all the time. I mean they eat all the time. And it's not health food or anything. It's fatty and salty and they don't seem to eat vegetables (unless they are fatty and salty). Here's what I mean:

8:00 pastry and coffee, maybe a juice (definitely several cigarettes but that's actually a different entry)

10:30-11:00 time for a snack: eat a bocadillo – french bread roll with jamón serrano, manchego, another cup of coffee. these despite the diminutive are not small. These are sandwiches. Like we'd eat for lunch. Large french rolls, like going to subway for a six-inch.

2:30-3:00 or so is almuerzo time. You sit down to a big meal. And by this I mean a big meal. Like if we go out for almuerzo this is what we get for 9 euro: a shrimp and mushroom omelette, followed by two skewers of beef shish kebab with veggies and fries, bread, and dessert. Were we drinking folks, our wine or beer would have been included as well (as it is, our 1/2 liter of water is). Now rarely in all this are vegetables consumed without them being loaded with oil (olive of course) or, inexplicably, tuna. If you order a salad, it will about 50% of the time, come with tuna on it. I do not know why this is. To me, tuna is not an obvious must have with my iceberg lettuce and tomatoes (which is what a salad is most of the time), but in spain it makes perfect sense since tuna is a) salty and b) drenched in oil.

5:00is coffee and a little something

7:00-8:00 is tapas time

11:00-12:00 is time for cena (dinner) during which time you eat an even bigger meal than what you had for almuerzo

And then you get up and do it all again!

Which brings me to number 2...

2. Spaniards do not seem to sleep. Things open here at reasonable hours. 9:00am and the shops are open. Some are open earlier. This means that people have to get up and get going (after all there is eating to be done!). They don't bathe much, so that trims off time (although unlike the French they do not smell) but still, to get there and get the shops open, to get to work and get things going, you need to be up by at least 7:30 in the morning. This means that if you ate at 12:00am (and I mean you sat down to eat) which is not at all late for the Spanish by any means, by the time you've eaten your meal, smoked several cigarettes, had your coffee, cleaned the dishes etc, you are not going to bed before 2:00am. And you are doing it on a pretty full stomach. At most, you are looking at getting about 5 hours of sleep, maybe 6 tops, a night. And the people of Madrid, as incomprehensible as their accent and their vocabulary is, are lovely people. They are kind, helpful, and sociable. They are not crabby or grouchy (unless they are waiters) or under rested. How is this possible? A lot of stuff is closed around the time of almuerzo, but they can't be getting more than an hour's worth of nap then.

When the hell do these people sleep?

And how are they not the size of sumo wrestlers since that is the schedule (and the diet) they are keeping?

3. Smoking.

The Spanish are like walking fucking chimneys. When they are not eating or, actually even sometimes when they are, they are smoking. All of them it seems, smoke. This country will single handedly keep Philip Morris in business forever. Ricardo was watching the news the other night and there was a story trying to convince people that smoking while you drive is a dangerous activity. You know how in the US we're trying to get people to stop talking on their cells or to not text and drive? Well here it's smoking because it can distract you while you drive.

Note that we don't want people to stop because smoking can kill you but because you could have a wreck. And we wouldn't want that now, would we?

No. But I have a dinner knife...

Here is what I have in my kitchen:

• A dull knife purchased at a convenience store
• a broken spatula (both pieces have been left if I want to glue them together)
• a pot handle (found the skillet it went with!)
• a plastic whisk
• a wooden spoon
• a plastic ladle
• three bottle/wine openers
• lots of plates and bowls
• wine glasses
• some small pots and pans
• five glasses
• one serving bowl
• a few mugs

Here is what I don't have:

• a can opener
• a paring knife
• a bread knife
• a sugar bowl
• a napkin holder
• a salt shaker
• any other serving pieces at all
• any large pots or pans
• any baking dishes at all
• an ice cream scoop (which I need because that's an important food group)
• a vegetable scraper (that scrapes, there is one, but you couldn't cut with it, believe me I tried this morning)
• any large glasses
• a pasta pot
• anywhere to store food at all other than the fridge

This morning we went to set up a bank account which was time consuming but easier than the usual Spanish bureaucracy. We needed only passports and money, which believe me for Spain is nothing! Afterwards we came home so I could begin to wash mattress covers. It's hot as fuck today (40° which is like 100° but terribly, terribly dry) so we decided to wash at home, dry out on the line and inventory the kitchen because breakfast this morning was a bit of a fiasco.

I should begin by explaining what happened with breakfast yesterday morning.

Our first night, we decided to buy a few things so we could have breakfast in and save a little money. We bought fabulous bread, butter, jam, plums and of course, nutella. We got milk, which here is shelf stable and kind of creepy because who thinks to buy their milk off the shelves instead of in the refrigerated section, but there you go.

Yesterday morning I awoke to realize that the microwave was aged and was not going to be the most effective way to heat milk, so I found a pot which was one of the larges I have (probably about 1 1/2 quart sized) and put it to boil. Then I tried to cut the bread.

But no bread knife.

The Kid asked what I was going to do. So I answered, "I have a dinner knife!"

Turns out the dinner knives are serrated and so I used one to hack off the bread (inelegantly) to say the least. But since this took a while and we lost time to searching, the milk boiled over and made a mess.

Fast forward to this morning when I was preparing kiwis. Turns out the vegetable peeler is totally useless. I am again making milk and prepping breakfast (pan de jamaica and jamón) and since the peeler does not work, I have to get all McGyver on this shit. The Kid says, "Are you going to use the bread knife you bought yesterday?"

No, I replied, it's too big. But I have a dinner knife!

In the midst of all this though, the milk once again boils over making a blessed mess.

Time to shop some more.

Day 1: Arriving in Madrid

We arrived this morning in Madrid. Or should I say, in the middle of the night. It was morning for Madrid. But it was 1 am for us. Ouch. I'd managed to get about 5 hours of sleep on the plane which wasn't too bad. And I have to give major snaps to Aer Lingus (which just sounds so dirty!!) for having pretty awesome head rests, terrific blankets and great entertainment which I did not avail myself of.

We sailed through immigration (one of those things where when you come in on a European carrier, most of the passengers are European) and there was no customs at all for us to go through. We did end up taking two cabs, but since it's August and the entire country is vacationing in some other country (possibly the US as far as we could tell on the plane) there was no traffic to speak of and we made it to the apartment by 8:40am.

After gaping at the strange, labyrinthine hallways, deciding on bedrooms (which we then reversed later on), breathing a sigh of relief that the showers had curtains, not semi glass walls which many European bathrooms have, and discovering there was no soap in said bathrooms, we departed for some breakfast. We ate this, standing up, like good Madrileños, at Santiago's favorite place the Museo del Jamón which serves bocadillos, a kind of a sandwich for next to nothing. We dined upon various jamón (kind of like prosciutto but saltier and thicker) sandwiches, some with manchego cheese, fresh squeezed orange juice (incomprehensibly called zumo here) and delicious café con leche made with fresh espresso. The Kid ordered a hot chocolate which was so thick that it might as well have been simply a melted chocolate bar. As he later exclaimed upon our promenade back to the apartment, "A chocolate a day keeps the pouting away!" which is a good thing since I have had just about enough of that shit right now.

We then proceeded to take a nap which was interrupted by the arrival first of my popcorn and then of the cleaning lady who had come to wash our curtains. Wha????

In a way this turned out quite fortuitous because it seems she works by the hour and will clean the entire apartment for 30 euros every other week. Sweet!

We traded rooms with the kid, unpacked, got more or less settled, found an unprotected network (hi there! coming to you live!) and went out to eat. There is a Cuban restaurant three doors down which served a good enough lunch for 8.50 euros per person all inclusive. For that, I got a spinach salad, a veal cutlet and fries, peach juice and watermelon for desert. Ricardo had the same. My maritime child had ceviche, grilled turbot and pineapple juice instead. And the Spanish do not skimp on the portions. It was a nice big salad which was great!

Now I am back at the apartment resting my knee and the boys are off exploring and walking. It's perfectly pleasant outside. It's 90° but there is no humidity at all. The laundry has been drying in about an hour and a half (yeah, no dryer which is a pain in the keister). So compared to home it's perfect outside. People complain of the heat, but it's perfectly pleasant and this morning was cool and lovely.

I am hoping I can stay awake until 10pm but I do not have high hopes. I am afraid to lie down to read for fear that I will simply fall dead asleep. But so far, good first day!

Here's something fun for the three days before we leave!

I've totally fucked up my knee. Actually, it's not my knee, it only feels like it's my knee. It's actually severe tendonitis of my hamstring muscle. And I don't know how I did it. And it's the kind of thing that may take as much as 6 months to be better.

And did I mention it's been a problem for an entire month and I've ignored it utterly? Because my assumption is just that I was out of shape and I would go to the doctor and he'd say, you need more exercise. Which I fucking hate hearing. And also I'm getting a lot what with moving and all. And now we won't have a car for a year so that will be a lot too. And I thought maybe it would just get better. But actually it got a whole lot worse.

A little medical information is a very dangerous thing as it turns out. Because I would never have actually gone to the doctor at all for this unless I had not become irrationally convinced yesterday that the piercing pain in the back of my knee was a blood clot and that I could not get on the plane to Spain with a blood clot in my leg without seeing a doctor first (note how it wasn't that I would not be going to Spain, but that I would not be going without first consulting with a doctor about how I could go with a blood clot, because clearly I am insane).

So while waiting in line at the main post office to mail various boxes to Spain (one including popcorn and maple syrup and another including the popcorn popper for the popcorn) at exorbitant prices, I called the doctor's office. My doctor was on vacation, but could I get there by 4? I could see someone else. Sure (because I probably had a blood clot) because I thought maybe I had tendonitis and wanted to be sure it was nothing (a blood clot!) before we left.

Guess what? It wasn't a blood clot (which you knew early on) but this tendonitis thing (which I actually had also self diagnosed but it wasn't in my knee. And by the way I'd need a few months of physical therapy. Well, that was going to be a problem, I mentioned, because we're moving to Spain soon. Oh, how soon? Friday.

That's soon.

Yeah.

So I got a prescription and called Ricardo who called some PTs in town and got one who could take me. Can I be there in 15 minutes?

Uh huh.

I guess it's good I'm a quick study because I'm getting two sessions before I leave for Spain and will be doing the rest on my own. And no stairs. And lots of heat. And naproxen sodium. And stretches. And then ice.

Good times!

It's 5 am. Are you in a cold sweat panic?

I've been waking up at 5am every morning. Sometimes, if I'm lucky (and well medicated) I make it to 6ish but it's always the same. Right now I greet each day with the same heart rupturing tattoo of "Jesus Fuck! What the fuck are we doing?!" This initial morning "ohm" is followed by the formula 1 race of thoughts that begin as soon as the question fully slams through my brain.

Did you cancel Netflix?

Did you pack the pedi-egg

How much popcorn will you need to get through the year?

Which jacket are you going to take?

How does the auto-refill on the prescriptions know to send to the alternative address instead of the primary address? should you delete the primary for now?

What should you do about the freakshow who bought the furniture from craigslist and hasn't picked it up in two weeks?

How will you transfer money between a Spanish bank account and an American one and not get hosed with fees?

Will you get the visas before you leave or will you have to drop another $3k to fly back to the US and get them?

How many pairs of spanx can you get away with realistically?

Can you buy spanx in fat assed sizes in Spain if you don't bring them all?

Just bring them all damnit they don't take up that much space.

Then leave one of the camis behind if you're so worried about space.

It will not be that cold and it's better to have spanx than a cami.

And I'm up and headed into the day.