Challenges

B* had a nice post the other day about how “people attend to details about us that we might not ever notice.” This reminded me of a wonderful conversation I had with GoldenFriend the other night. Golden and I went to college together, and we’ve kept in touch off and on ever since, even though at this point we haven’t seen each other for a few years. Most of the time months will go by between conversations, but one of us always breaks the silence, and we always manage to find a connection again. This is something I treasure.

She called me a few nights ago, and during our conversation (especially with all the recent kids-off-to-college posts I’ve read in the blogosphere), it struck me that Golden and I met for the first time on our first day of college, almost exactly twenty years ago. Twenty years! So I asked her: Golden, you sound the same, you have the same sense of humor, I still think I know what matters to you and what your days are like. But it’s been twenty years since we’ve met, and we haven’t been around each other much for the last sixteen of those twenty. What’s different about you now? How should I adjust my mental image of you to match the person you are now?

Golden and I love these kinds of topics, so she took that question and ran with it, and we had a fascinating conversation. As part of this, of course, she tossed the same question back at me. I responded that in some ways I’m more brave than I used to be, because I have more experience and I’m more confident in my abilities. But in some ways, surprisingly, I’m less brave. There are things I did without thinking twenty years ago that just boggle the mind now (arriving in the Bangkok airport in the middle of the night with no idea of where I was going to stay is one example that comes to mind). I’m glad I did those things while I did, because the thought of them terrifies me now, and I have no idea where I got the nerve to do them them. At this point Golden interrupted me and said “But one of the things I most vividly remember you telling me then is that sometimes you did things precisely because they scared you. You said that if something was scary just because it was a challenge, that was a better reason to do it than not to do it, and that’s exactly why you flew off to Bangkok. That was always one of the things I admired most about you.”

What’s funny is that I don’t remember saying that at all, but here she’s carried it around for twenty years as part of her idea of me. (And, come to think of it, that is exactly why I flew off to Bangkok.) I’ve been facing some interesting professional opportunites lately, and they’re both exciting and scary. I’m afraid of making big commitments; I’m afraid of making a mess in front of lots of people; I’m thinking that maybe the common-sense thing to do would be to back off a bit, save my strength, not get over-burdened.

But now I wonder - maybe I should look at myself through Golden’s eyes, and take the advice I gave myself twenty years ago. Why the heck not?

High praise

Back from a brief cat-petting break, I paused by LWI's desk and dropped a kiss on his cheek as he was hard at work preparing a class on modern Germany.

His response: "Ah, that's much better than Hitler."

Curses!

My time in Spain is almost over, and I have only one day left in the archive where I've been spending mornings working on a new project. I'm looking for particular bits of information without being sure of exactly where I might find them (possibly in university records, possibly in Inquisition files, possibly in royal pardon requests...), so I've been doing lots of skimming through different kinds of documents to see how promising they look. So far I've found just enough to make me think that this project is doable, though it will continue to involve lots of sifting through files to find just a few tasty little crumbs.

I had one last section to glance at today, and I'd left it for last because I suspected it would involve even more skimming for even fewer useful bits, and because it's very poorly catalogued - the catalog only says that there are 80-some boxes covering three centuries, so I had to choose a box more or less at random hoping to land somewhere near the mid-1600s. I opened the box, and was disappointed to find that the documents were not what I expected - they dealt with the right people, but contained entirely different kinds of reports from what I thought they were going to have. (Plus they were from the 1730s, and I'm just not a big fan of the eighteenth century.) I nearly returned the box right away, but then I thought I should skim through a few more files to see if they were all the same. They seemed to be, but one of them bore the name of a small town I visited last year and really liked, so I took a closer look more out of nostalgia than anything else. Lo and behold - towards the end of each file, and entirely unexpected given the particular information these files contained, there was exactly the kind of information I'd been looking for. It was in every single file, and there were 65 files in the box I was holding.

I have only one day left in the archive. I don't know whether to celebrate like crazy, or jump off a bridge.

Generations

One of the things I occasionally marvel at is how gracefully my in-laws duck all questions of religion and politics, given the striking and potentially painful differences in perspective caused by Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 1970s and the drastically reduced role of the Catholic church. My parents-in-law are devout Catholics and politically firmly conservative; their four children belong to the generation that rejected Franco and celebrated his death. My oldest brother-in-law has stories of being in college when armed policemen came into the classroom to take his too-liberal professors away (and that particular image comes into my head more and more often these days; who knew that fascist Spain would end up being a more genuinely liberal democracy than the U.S.?).

Despite these differences, though, everyone's remarkably good about respecting everyone else's views in the household, and no one says anything to offend. Yesterday on the afternoon news there was a report of how the European parliament has issued an official condemnation of Franco and his government, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish civil war. Although we were all in the room, the only commentary came in the form of faint snorts of derision from all: ours signifying exasperation that it came seventy years too late ("breaking news! fascism was bad!"), and the parents' at the thought that the European parliament would presume from afar to condemn the system they grew up with, which gave them nothing but stability and prosperity.

Ambiente

Just to give you the full effect, this is Ainsa, the setting of the meal pictured below. (Can you tell I'm nostalgic for this trip already??)

mmmmmmmmm

The northern and eastern regions of Spain are well-known for their cuisine, and we took every opportunity to taste the local specialties. We didn't eat a bad (or even a less-than-great) meal the entire trip, but two meals stood out among the general happy feasting. The first was when we found ourselves on a Sunday in a town a bit smaller than we'd expected, where nearly everything was closed. We found one small store where we could buy ingredients for dinner that evening, but the bakery next door seemed to be closed. When we asked the store owner if there was anyplace we could buy bread, she stepped out into the street and called to a man strolling a half block away: "Pacoooooo, come open the bakery!" Paco responded graciously and brought us an enormous loaf of fresh-baked bread. Emboldened by our success, we asked if there was anyplace nearby open for lunch, and store-lady recommended a place just down the hill, past the school on the left - usually it's closed on weekends, but this was a festival weekend, so fortunately for us it was open. Oh, so fortunately! I had fresh asparagus and venison in a rich grape sauce; awesome sister-in-law had grilled lubina (a sweet white fish, not sure what it's called in English), and the Left-Wing Intellectual enjoyed serrano ham with pimientos del padron and a thick steak. Two courses each, with wine and coffee and dessert (oh, that dessert warrants a whole separate post), for which the total bill was about $25 each. (We went back to thank the store-lady afterwards.)

Awesome SIL took a picture of that lunch, so I don't have access to it yet, but below you may behold Superlative Meal #2, enjoyed in the little medieval town of Ainsa. Notice the stone walls: we're in the wine-cellar of the restaurant, cool and quiet, with plates of duck, bull-tail stew, and more lubina. (Faces blurred to protect the crucial pseudonymity of the LWI on the left and ASIL on the right. The food will have to fend for itself.)

Peace

Just a taste of treats to come: here's one of the towns we stayed in last week. The apartment itself was in an ancient stone house on the main plaza, restored so that the interior was perfect and modern and comfortable, but the main structure is centuries old. Most of the inhabitants don't have cars - why bother? - and we were at least fifty miles from any town with more than a hundred people, so there was absolute tranquility... no sound but the local folks chatting with each other in the street, and the birds and crickets, and the river passing through the valley below.

Death by dinner

Since we’re back in the city where the Left-Wing Intellectual was born and raised, naturally when we return there are lots and lots of friends to see and relatives to visit. Spaniards, as many other cultures, like to express their affection through and over food, so it’s common for us to meet friends out for dinner or to be invited to people’s houses for a meal. Naturally this is a delightful experience (especially since I have a particular fondness for Spanish cuisine), but it can be dangerous when too many of these outings cluster too close together.

Last weekend was one of those clusters. It began on Friday, when we met Guy Who Knows Everybody for lunch at his favorite Asturian restaurant. (He really is the guy who knows everybody; every time we go out with him, we can’t get half a block down the street anywhere in the city without people stopping to greet him.) The Asturian restaurant has ohmygod the most wonderful food, but in quantities that would have gotten Napoleon’s armies all the way to Moscow and back. We started with a fabada – a cauldron full of beans in a rich thick sauce seasoned with baseball-sized chunks of chorizo and morcilla sausage, eaten with warm crusty bread and fizzy Asturian cider. A plateful of this is more than I generally eat for a meal, but it’s only the first course. Next comes the merluza, a table-width platter of the most tender, delicate white fish, over a layer of tasty fried potatoes. After that we gave up any hope of moving for the next few days and went ahead and had an almond-cake dessert with liqueurs. After slouching back in our chairs and groaning for half an hour or so, we proceeded home where we collapsed on the couch and groaned for the rest of the day.

Saturday, we were invited to the house of some family friends for a barbecue. Mmmm! Nothing like a big plate of sausage and steak after a long day of sitting around recovering from sausage and beans! (Those of my readers who attended our wedding will probably have vivid memories of how Spaniards serve steak. Beef actually isn’t that common here - pork and lamb are more frequently found - but when they do beef they do it big. Nothing says love like a steak the size of my laptop!) Sunday we celebrated my father-in-law’s 80th birthday, with what else but a giant meal at a restaurant with a lovely outdoor terrace. What? You’ve only eaten two servings of ham? Here, you must have some more, it’s the best in town. (and how can you say no to a man celebrating his eightieth birthday?)

It doesn't help that left to my own devices I tend to be a vegetarian; did you notice that not a single vegetable appears in this narrative? (no, fried potatoes don't really count as a vegetable.) I love these people dearly, but I'm afraid they're going to kill me. ...In the meantime, pass the potatoes?

Princesses and espadrilles

Highlights of the past week (besides being able to connect to the internets in the national library!):

• a morning at the Madrid book fair, one of the biggest in the world. The setting is the lovely green Retiro park, where on the paths among the trees you find several hundred stands with every kind of book you can imagine (all at a 10% discount during the fair, of course), lots of author presentations and signings, and thousands upon thousands of happy Spaniards browsing through the possibilities. (I'm always impressed by how much Spaniards like to read; the book fair is one of the year's biggest attractions, and it's rare to see a commuter on the metro without a book in her hands.)

• an unexpected glimpse of Princess Elena (the oldest daughter of the Spanish royal family) at the book fair. She was dressed casually, and most people were focused on the books rather than each other, so hardly anyone recognized her (either that, or Spaniards are remarkably blase about their royal family). She was only about five feet away, and I wanted so badly to say hello just so I could say that I had, but I chickened out.

• a day in Toledo, with a deliciously slow and attentive stroll through the cathedral (which I've seen a dozen times, but it's so big and complex that every time there's something new to discover)

• several excellent outings with friends, over olives and cheese and little garlicky fishes and wine in cozy bars with worn tile floors and chunky oak tables. There are several chain restaurants here (and every day another Starbucks), but fortunately the vast majority of places are still little family-owned bars, each with its own character, that look like they haven't changed in the last two centuries.

• a morning spent waiting in line for shoes. Not the sort of thing that would usually be a highlight, but it was such an absurd situation that I enjoyed it immensely. There's an espadrille shop in downtown Madrid that for some reason attracts huge mobs of people; my sister-in-law had purchased some for her mother, but needed to exchange them for a different size, so we offered to go on a weekday morning since the place is too crowded on weekends. So imagine, a beautiful Thursday morning, we head to the neighborhood just south of the Plaza Mayor, and it's easy to find the shop because there are people standing in line outside the door. For espadrilles! We claimed a spot, settled in, struck up conversations with the other shoppers, developed a system of keeping people's places in line so they could wander off and window-shop down the street, and overheard the surprised comments of passers-by when they realized that we were all waiting for cheap shoes. Usually people start to get antsy about standing in line for so long, but I think everyone was a little embarrassed about waiting in line for espadrilles, so we all just laughed and enjoyed the morning and eventually wandered off with armloads of shoeboxes. (I didn't get any for myself, but we did get a teeny tiny pair of red-and-white Basque sandals as a gift for a friend's new baby.)

Adventures in the attic

(Preface: one of the reasons I go on these no-posting binges is that when I neglect the blog for a few days, I feel like when I post again I either have to have a really good story or to come up with some sort of apology for not having posted, and that sense of obligation becomes burdensome enough to keep me from starting a post. So the solution is to avoid the good story and the apology and just write this explanation instead, and to try to convince myself to duck the guilt, because it is just a blog.)

So anyway. Since we’ll be gone for two months, I’ve had a whole list of fixy things to do with the house before we go. Ostensibly the easiest of these involved replacing the little screen over the dryer vent where the vent exits the house. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, because it’s high enough up to need a small ladder, and there’s a flowering tree on that side of the house that makes it difficult to get the ladder just where I need it. But through some rather clever ladder-yoga I managed to get everything teeteringly in place, and got the new screen on. There were a few bits of grass and straw poking out of the vent, and though it didn’t seem obstructed, I suddenly had a flash of memory of having seen little birds hopping around that tree and ducking into the vent. That was about a year ago, and I’d realized then that the screen was loose – the birds were just pushing it aside and getting into the vent, which was like a nice little shady front porch for them. At the time I fixed the screen back into place (having seen no obvious evidence of nesting) and didn’t think much of it. This spring I noticed the screen was entirely gone, and though I hadn’t seen any more bird activity there, I wanted to get it fixed before we left.

Having done so (hey, that was easy! look how handy I am!), I thought I’d double check and make sure the vent wasn’t obstructed. Turned on the dryer – and only the faintest breath of air came out the vent. Hmmm... this is going to require an expedition into the attic. So I clambered up the wobbly pull-down ladder in the garage, crawled up into the dark, hot, dusty corner where the vent reaches the outside, wrestled it loose enough to ease an arm inside, and just at an arm’s length inside the vent there was an impressive wad of grass and shredded newspaper.

Having cleared out that wad, I triumphantly turn on the dryer again, and… just the faint little breath of air. Now I'm starting to take this personally, muttering foul curses against cute little birds and their cozy little porches. (For full effect, please keep in mind that it's well over 90 degrees in the attic and I'm doing this by flashlight, balancing on the ceiling joists, in a space that's only a few feet high). I manage to unattach the vent from the frame of the roof and un-duct-tape the last three-foot section, which turns out to have three separate grass-wads plugging up its length. How long have they been at this? Dryer on again… and still nothing. Somehow this has gone from a five-minute fix to something that will involve me dismantling my entire attic. So I turn to the next section of vent, disconnect that, and remove several more feet of grass and newspaper. It’s a bit late to make a long story short, but suffice it to say that I ended up cleaning astonishing amounts of crap out of about fifteen feet of dryer vent (and I looked like I was wearing most of it by the time I climbed back down). WTF? I can’t imagine birds nesting that far back, but they were probably irritated by the hot and mysteriously Bounce-scented wind that blew through every Sunday afternoon, and blocked it off for that reason.

Sorry, birds. But I bet my dryer will sure work better tomorrow.