Slow start this morning, for everybody, I think. Q had a sliver in his foot last night when he went to bed, which we pretty much extracted (enough so that a long, hot shower made what was left of it slide painlessly out through the little fissure we’d opened up above it), but it affected him much more than another sliver, which I had extracted (in more painful fashion) about a week prior. I think the long weekend of travel had us all pretty vulnerable. We slept like babies, and, like babies, whined about getting out of bed.
Janneke reports, though, that dropoff at camps went superbly. I rolled out the door and met a couple more people at the market place (Basi wasn’t in today – I’ll tease her tomorrow about sleeping in on her new mattress). I bought a couple of experimental foods from a vendor that a person I know there recommended, and tomorrow, when I write down their names, I’ll tell you what they were. Both were good, turns out. Then back home to check in with the Jan-meister, who’d just arrived back from shopping.
I set out to pick up Q a little early so I could stop at some men’s clothing stores up the street and see if they had any shorts for me. One had only “Dickies” brand work shorts, which I know from previous experience to be cleverly disguised ovens that roast one’s apples to a golden brown. The other offered no fitting rooms – “La cambiamos cualquier cosa”, he assured me. “We’ll let you trade anything back in.” Sorry, not walking out of the store with it if I’ve never put it on.
Back to the car, on to the camp. But today, as I found out this morning, is some kind of Puerto Rican holiday, so a lot of people didn’t work. This meant that it took me literally half the time it usually does to get to Q’s camp, which in turn meant I had a good 40 minutes to watch his morning-ending “índor” session.
“´Indor”, by the way, is indoor soccer played on a basketball gym. They always end the morning there. They were rotating the three teams in – and Q’s team stayed on the floor a good 75% of the time, because they kept winning. And they kept winning because he kept setting up his teammates to score. I saw him make three perfect assists, so perfect the receiving player only had to one-time it into the goal. I saw another two, probably, that would have been goals had the receiving player simply one-timed it and not missed it or tried to take a touch or two. He was a goal-creating machine. And just as his Cuban coach had told the boys last week, the Puerto Rican players, by and large, didn’t even acknowledge that they were being set up. One in particular, who goes by “Surdu” (his name is Ramón, but since he’s “surdo” (left-footed), he goes by that), turned and walked away from the goal with his arms in the air, almost purposely ignoring Q. Who shook his head and let it roll off his back. Surdu is two years older than Q, as a lot of the players are, and Q doesn’t feel comfortable giving him a hard time, probably. But it was almost comical to watch their studied ignorance of the fact that they were not playing alone.
And his coach for this week, turns out, is from Spain! So Q will have had deep, prolonged exposure to Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Madrileño Spanish, which, as I posted to Facebook earlier, is basically the trifecta of difficult-to-understand Spanish. And he has no problem with it at all.
Q reports that he likes this coach (“me llama ‘Q’ y no ‘Rubio’”), and that he’s come to enjoy his role as He Who Distributes the Ball. I told him I thought he was playing supremely well today.
Home, where I departed to pick up T a little early so I could stop at the mall and see if they had any shorts that would please me.
They did. But they (Sears) also apparently did not offer changing rooms. So I went to a remote corner and tried them on anyway. They fit perfectly. But I’d forgotten my wallet. D’oh!
On to pick up T. But when it was time to leave, they wouldn’t relinquish Clarabelle unless she had been “checked out” – she had been a resident there over the weekend, and needed to get officially released. And the woman who knew how to do that was on her lunch break and wouldn’t be back until 2:30.
T was happy with this – it meant she got to stay until 2:30. I started to drive home to get my wallet, thinking it would allow me time to stop and grab the shorts I’d liked, but traffic was slow and I realized five minutes in that I’d never make it back in time. So I stopped at Walgreen’s and read magazines until it was time to pick the girls up again.
The woman was there (and T, apparently, had fallen a bit ill tummy-wise, but was now recovering, lying on the couch and being entertained by a wonderful staffer’s iPhone), but she said we’d only paid half of Clarabelle’s stay. I told her, look, we paid it all, but it wasn’t me who paid it, it was my wife, and you’ve already made me wait around nearly an hour, and besides I don’t have my wallet with me, so even if I wanted to pay you (which I don’t) because I owed you (which I don’t ) I couldn’t. So you’ll have to take this up in the morning with my wife (good luck, there), and in the meantime, just give me my damn dog back.
That’s pretty much what they did, thought it took them a good ten minutes to locate her leash and collar. And T and C and I rolled in to the house around 3:25, bushed and tuckered, as it were. I napped on the divan for a few minutes, then we all headed to the beach to end our day.
The beach, this being a holiday, was jammed. The waves were high, so Q and T had fun, and I suddenly felt a surge of energy, so I went back home to change into running clothes and take a jog. Got rained on, but had a nice run.
Home, supper (including some of the new PR foods I bought today, and a fun conversation with Q about how nations rise and fall, empires collapse, and mythologies around the glory days permeate the literature of just about every nation that ever had an empire), and relaxation time. I think we’ll take in some Mr Bean before bed this evening. It really makes the day complete for me now. Not sure what we’ll do once there are no more episodes. Just watch T and Q, I guess – one of these days I’m going to post film of T dancing like Mr Bean, and Q running like him. It’s friggin’ uncanny.
To bed! Ho!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment