Its the Little Things in Life that Mean So Little

5-1-09

Thinking about the fact that it is the first day of May made me realize that I´ve been terrible about blogging. I´m sure that my blog´s avid followers have been crying themselves to sleep. The good news for that person or two is that I think I´ll get much better about blogging since I now have a very open schedule. The bad news may be that, thanks to that open schedule, I have very little to write about. We shall see.

So, going along with that theme, I´ve been allowing myself congratulations on a job well done when I´ve accomplished extremely minor things. I am pleased if I do two things in a day. Day 2 that meant going to a Teacher´s Day celebration at the community center. Some cute little preschoolers did a traditional Paraguayan dance, everyone sang, stood around, then ate cookies, dulce de leche cake and stuff that tastes like hot chocolate but is always served cold. I stood around somewhat (read: very) awkwardly, chatting with the five or so people I knew there and being gawked at by children ages 2 to 8. First of two productive things of my day done. The second? I went for a run with Santiago to the grocery store to buy cereal, instant coffee, and a notebook. We ran back. Second productive thing--check. Day 3: had a great lunch back at the community center to celebrate the head of said community center´s birthday. I had some delicious wine and coke while being ridiculed for not drinking more and not drinking whiskey. (I am slightly worried that thanks to Paraguay I¨ll never want normal room-temperature red wine ever again. What if I´m that weird aunt or the rest of my life?!?) I taught a bunch of funny drunk women the macarena. They were disappointed by my lack of knowledge in the country-western dance department. (Note: I´m really a truly horrible dancer. I know this about myself. I feel kind of bad giving the US such a bad rep on dance floors across Paraguay.) My second productive thing was a run by myself. Today I kind of helped clean the house. My work was minimal. I actually drank terere with the family when they took breaks from cleaning, then unpacked all of my stuff. My run was the only time I left the house.

I will go ahead and say that the past three days have been good productive days. I tried explaining this to my sister today on the phone. Being the great sister she is, she tried to relate by saying that after law school ended, she has been really surprised at all her down time--"Now I only work from 9 to 6!¨she told me. Ha.