So What Can You Recall?

Somehow I have made it to 200 blog posts. A lot slower than some I admit. But here it is. And would you believe it I'm feeling really uninspired in regards to writing something original. No surprise there then!

So instead of writing something nonsensical like I usually do I thought I would mark this minor milestone by inviting you to partake in a little game of mental recall.

The rules are simple.

It is open to anyone who has read this blog for the last 5 or 199 posts (assuming they are not going to be my wife in 7 days time). I already know from experience all too well that her recall is too good. Maybe I'll get her to do the marking.

The object of the game is to try and name previous post titles or subject matter without looking back at previous posts.

The person with the highest score wins.

Unfortunately being skint I can give no prizes, in fact just like learning how to measure a hypotenuse in a school maths class it is largely a waste of time in regards to usefulness for the rest of your life - but it should be a little bit more fun.

Listening to: Little Birdy: Brother

Just Some Of The Joys That Come With Learning To Be A Step Dad

As a kid I used to enjoy watching the cartoon Charlie Brown but there was one character I never understood. I can't remember the name of the character but it was the one with the blue blankie, and it was the obsession with the carrying of the blankie around with him everywhere that I did not understand. Growing up in the UK myself I didn't know of anyone who had such a habit. And I know for sure I didn't have such a blankie. But in just a few short weeks of being a step dad here to somechileanwoman's kids I'm starting to realise that here in the US the culture is a little different.
Just this very weekend minichileanman said "My blankie! My power!" I have to confess I did not know what it meant - but it was damn funny! Maybe you had to be there to appreciate just how much.

At the time other than how funny it was I didn't give much more thought to what he said there.

Instead I spent the energy wondering why he hadn't pooped in 2 and half days. I couldn't believe I was worried about his lack of pooping but nonetheless I was. However he did finally poop. I couldn't believe I was so relieved to know that he had finally pooped. What the hell is wrong with me?

Shortly after somechileanwoman went off to work tonight I checked up on the kids sleeping in bed just to make sure everything was ok. So yeah I make for a nervous stepdad.

I opened the bedroom door and was hit my a wave of stink. It was bad. Think of bad and then multiply that badness by a figure of around 10 and you might be close to the level of badness that was the stink that hit my nostrils when I opened the bedroom door. I have to admit I was hoping it was just a fart, so I quickly checked that both of somechileanwoman's offspring were still breathing and then quickly left the room so that I could breathe some fresh air. I checked the room again 10 minutes later hoping to find that the smell had dissipated somewhat. It hadn't. By now I was desperate for reasons why the smell hadn't gone. Maybe because it was such a hot day - it was over 90 degrees farenheit today - it was just there was no place for the stink to go to but hang around and the heat was somehow making the stink worse than it should otherwise be. I know, I know I was clutching at straws. I knew as unlikely as this scenario was that I had to check the bottoms for poop. Sure enough head to bum confirmed that minichileanman had indeed pooped.

This presented problems. First of all, minichileanman does not like to be woken up at the best of times. Probably the only thing worse than waking him up before he is fully rested is me changing his nappy. Of course I now had to be in the situation of having to do both. Oh yeah - sometimes I love being a step dad!

Today was also the day that one of minichileanwoman's tooth fell out, which, beyond a small period of time where hysterics was the order of the day, in itself wasn't really a problem until we stuck it underneath her pillow for the toothfairy to come and collect tonight. She promptly rolled over and fell asleep on it, when normally she always sleeps on the other side of the pillow. Typical!

Of course at the moment they are of an age where they both sleep in the same room. Normally this is a good thing. Not so much when you don't want either to wake and you have to clean the bum of one, and lift the head of another all the while hoping, nay praying, not to be discovered - and me a heathen too.

The praying must have worked because somehow neither of them screamed, and somehow I managed to hold my breath long enough to accomplish the task without vomiting, but I have to say if that is the power of the blankie I don't like it much.

Finally A Chance To Impress The New Family And I May Have Blown It

I have been living here in Utah for 9 weeks now. And in those 9 weeks my new Chilean family seem to have taken it upon themselves to fatten me up whenever they see me. I don't know what it is but apparently being flaco is a bad thing in Chile. Up until now in most instances, except for a few years when I palyed rugby against bigger guys, I was happy being skinny but my new Chilean family seem to think it is their mission to fatten me up. And I mean everybody in the family but somechileanwoman's 14 year old brother. Her other brother has had us round for pizza and some guitar hero. Her seester has had us round for hotdog's and brownies. Her Aunt has fed us on a couple of occasions when we were just popping round for a visit. Her mother has fed us, again when we just visiting. And even her Mami and Papi who have spent something like 2 months vsiting relatives in Australia still found time to do the same. What the F? And just about every one of them has the same thing in common, they talk to somechileanwoman in Spanish (I suspect because they know I don't understand) and at the same time look me up and down and shove some food in my direction. I don't need to know Spanish to ken that there is some conspiring going on. And I love it. I am not going to deny it. I love my food. When it comes to food I am a chancho and I will take it anywhere I can get it. And if I get introduced to new Chilean foods all the better.

However I have been feeling kind of guilty. I have been wanting to for a long time to do the same for all of them, and introduce them to some Scottish foods while I am at it. And finally this weekend being Mother's Day here in the States there was an opportunity to do just that. The Seester was hosting the celebration and making the main meal but somechileanwoman and I were to bring the dessert. When I thought this I thought we could make one Chilean dessert and one Scottish dessert but that was probably going to be too much food so we settled on the Scottish dessert. A perfect opportunity I thought to impress the new family because if there is one things Scottish cuisine does well it is satisfy a sweet tooth. Together we settled on making an Auld Alliance Tart - well in America anything with apples surely can't go wrong. At the time it seemed to go down well with everyone, except perhaps the cooking time - some were a little impatient but I am the same when waiting for dessert. When it was finally dished up it was tasty good so I think all was forgiven.

However since that day I have shheeeeting in the toilet for 3 days. In between times I have been scared to fart in case I shheeet some more. I don't want to be telling tales but somechileanwoman went through some similar issues for a day or two too. Now I cannot be sure it was anything to do with the dessert that we made that we have those ailments but it would just be my sort of luck if it was. I can only hope that the rest of the family that I was so eager to impress have not been going through similar distress. Main reason being that they have been very nice to us and don't deserve it, but also because I just know they will love reminding me often by saying something like your only job is to cook dessert. Do you not realise I have had diarrhea since Eeeastersss?

Are you a Twit?

Do you Twitter? If so tell me why, because I just don't get the fascination. For me its up there with $19.99 infomercial toothpaste squeezers in terms of level of necessity and usefulness.

Lord, Forgive Me, I know Not What I Say

Salt Lake City is a very religious city. It seems that just about anyone who I have a casual conversation with will ask me "are you LDS?" It even beats the other question "where are you from?" If I am honest 12 months ago I didn't even know what LDS was. Now, unfortunately, I'm not quite so ignorant and so I know that when someone asks me that question they are asking if I am with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, in other words am I a Mormon. Regretfully I always have to say no. I regret it because it usually means a conversation about the virtues of visiting the LDS Museum at Temple Square in Downtown is sure to follow my answer. As happened yesterday when I helped an old man fix his car. I didn't mind ruining a t-shirt in the process but I could have done without the well meant preaching. 

Anyway back to why I started writing this post. Due in no small part to Salt Lake being a Mormon City you are bombarded with religious images everywhere. Which is fine. There is one in particular though that I pass a few times a week and for some reason every time I see this billboard I interpret it probably not as was originally intended. I see this and I think someone unintentionally made Jesus sound perverted. 

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy

Ironically I don't think its situated outside an LDS Church but with thoughts like these I'm probably not cut out for the faith anyway. I also might have to keep my thoughts to myself, I don't want stoned for listening to that devil on my shoulder.

Listening to: REM - Losing My Religion. I didn't choose it, blame iTunes.

"It's Crazy How You Two Met.."

My significant other will often come home from work and talk about the work colleague that likes to repeat "It's crazy how you two met" when talking about our relationship, when all she really wants to do is turn the conversation back around to her relationship because she still can't believe how they met. I can. They met at work. Not particularly unbelievable. Happens a lot I would think. Our situation was though I have to admit a little bit crazy.

There was one day I was bored and looking online for a cheap lens for my camera. I didn't find any. So I was about to click the x of the browser when something inside told me it would be a laugh to look at the adverts in the personals. I don't always listen to the devil that likes to sit on my left shoulder and whisper nonsenical advice, but this time I did. And I did laugh. Some of those adverts are rather pathetic.

A relatively sane looking one was one titled, if I remember correctly (it was a while ago now - so you can excuse me if I got the details wrong on this), Latina Looking For A Guide. The advert itself was unremarkable (sorry) really except for the fact that within the advert the word English was placed in front of guide when the advert itself was posted in a Scottish City. For some reason I thought I would be funny by replying and rewriting the advert for her and suggesting that she might get a better response because after all we Scots can be kind of funny about being called English, knowing full well that I would probably come across as an ass.

She almost didn't reply back to my message, but then did so anyway. Then I almost didn't reply to her reply, but then proceeded to do so anyway. I probably did so when I realised that she had reposted her advert by taking my advice but with the addition of adding her own sassy spin to it. Somehow one email led to another, and another, and another. Not with any expectations whatsoever. Certainly not of that falling in love crap! That'd be crazy talk! I made fun of people who thought they could meet someone off the internet with those expectations. That sort of thing never works! Nutters. In fact even now we both make fun of the adverts on tv for match.com and the other dating site I currently can't remember the name of.

Instead I gave her ideas of things to do and must visit places, with websites to look at. After a couple of emails or so I seem to remember doing something crazy and offering to be her guide when she finally made the trip. And in the meantime, we talked. A lot. We talked, and talked and talked. BT and Comcast made a lot of money from our talking. Yeah we were kind of stupid and naive about it. We were slow about finding a way of making Skype work reliably. Had we done so sooner we might have saved not inconsiderable amounts of money. Dammit!

Anyway the end result was something that was totally unexpected. I fell hard. I was smitten. I was crazy about her. So crazy I moved to America. I never wanted to live in America, what the hell happened there? I had no real ambition of ever going to America. There were many places I wanted to travel to before I died. I had a whole list of them. Maybe some day a couple of US cities too but they were way down at the bottom of the list. Those cities were probably not even on the same list. They were probably on the list of well I've visited all the other places I really wanted to see, now its time to add to it list.

I had intended to go to Morocco later on in the year. Around September. It wasn't No. 1 on my list but it was pretty high up and best of all it was one of the cheap places. I could do cheap. And it was time I had a well deserved 2 week holiday. I had done the research and just about booked the ticket when we initially started talking. I was so close to booking that ticket I could smell the food of the markets in my nostrils, and picture the sights, the people and the clothes in my head. And then some how I ended up here in October instead. Probably would have been here sooner had we not talked so much on the phone.

Sometimes even now I wake up in the morning, roll over on my bed and see this beautiful woman lying next to me and wonder how I got here. Then I get up and see a nice house (not as nice as we both want but nice enough for now), and then go for a drive in a large car in a strange country and I find myself asking how Talking Heads stole my life for their song Once In A Lifetime when I hadn't even lived the moment yet. I feel done dammit! I shouldn't be getting some sort of commission for every time that song is played on the radio or lastfm.

Now what if that advert wasn't placed or if I hadn't listened to that mischevious devil on my shoulder...what would have happened then?

Probably we'd be none the wiser and doing what we do now, laughing at those silly people who think they can find love on the internet.

Listening to: Augie March - The Night Is A Blackbird....I like.