ALL WHINE, NO ROSES

We're in and we're settled.  Settled that is, for the most part.  So before I pen another Why Spain is the Best Country on the Planet, and risk yet another pair of rolling eyeballs I thought this post to be the perfect moment to tell you what it is I miss most from back home.  Be forewarned however, that I said what, not who.  No need to pack any bags for a guilt trip that I'm not taking for failure to mention friends and family.  That my dears, is an entirely different topic on which to blog.

LO QUE MAS ECHO DE MENOS~WHAT I MISS MOST 

1.  HABANERO PEPPERS     With tomatoes at 56 centimos a kilo (that's about $0.75 for two pounds worth), I'm dying for my homemade salsa, I mean DYING.  That bitch'll put hair on your nipples, more if you've already got it.  And no, it isn't for the meek.  It's HOT.  Fire in, Fire out kinda hot if you know what I mean.  And I miss it.  The produce here is out of this world; every color of the rainbow and picked fresh they day before.  But to date I have not found my habaneros and those (notice the plural) are the key, once secret, ingredient to my salsa.  I may have to go underground and have some of you mail me seed packets.  Surely the drug dogs don't sniff for produce now do they?

2.  FRAMED PORTRAITS     There are exactly four pieces that Joe promised that he would pack in the minivan which was to be shipped first.  I made him swear up and down and inside out that he'd pack those pictures.  You know where this is going now, don't you.  The first three of the bunch are my babies, my naked babies; each of them at 8 mos. perched and cooing from their makeshift throne, an oversized antique ceramic wash basin.  They look like triplets, distinguishable only by a dimple or a roll.  I spent 99 cents on each 10x12 picture and a small fortune for the matching frames and I don't regret one red cent.  Now the fourth portrait, that's another story.  That was the studio session that ended in us practically having to take out a second mortgage on the house but netted us the coolest picture of the three that I own so I guess it's a pill I can swallow.  Oh how I miss those pictures.  And oh how Joe will miss his balls when I cut them off because he forgot to pack them in the minivan.  Where are they?   The pictures people, the pictures.  They're in a storage facility deep in the heart of Hurricane Row: Charleston, South Carolina.  Lord help the man if the humidity eats my babies.  And I mean that of course in the nicest, most sincere Lorena Bobbit kind of way.

3.  MY BED     Spain is great.  Spain is The Best.  Rah-rah-rah-blah-blah-blah.  But you know what?  Spanish beds fucking suck.  First of all they're not beds, they're cots.  And jeez-oh-Pete do they suck.  They're one step up from option B which is sleeping on the tile floor.  Coils in my back all night long is one thing but apparently I'm considered "Amazonian" at 5' 8" because none of the beds in this house are long enough for me.  I sleep like Andre the Giant, my feet dangling off the end of the bed.  This is particularly troubling to me as you'll recall the post where I mentioned having to make the bed before I get into it?  Well, when one's feet have no other choice but to go numb from the ankles down all night, there really is no point in hospital corners now is there?  And don't get me started on the pillows either.  In Spain the bed has one pillow, a uni-pillow if you will.  I know I'm not the only flip for the cold side sleeper out there.  Well, when you're sharing the uni-pillow with your partner who has a thirty pound head, it makes the flip impossible.  Pillow my ass.  The damned thing looks more like an oversized hot dog bun than it does a pillow. 

Well, there you have it, my rant.  Such a nasty little word, rant, isn't it?  Regardless, it's nothing that a seed packet, a knife (sorry, honey) & a bottle of w(h)ine can't fix. 

Right?