Miguelina

Morocco: So Far From Suburbia II

(Part 1 is here)

We ate a light Tandoori lunch and drank Pepsi.  We were starting to get nervous about having traveled to this country alone.  The women hissed at us from underneath their chadors and the men simply ignored us. We stood out, a group of young female foreigners, despite wearing the most modest clothing we owned--long-sleeved shirts, baggy pants or long skirts, socks. We tried to be respectful despite the sickening heat, but the fact that we were traveling alone was seen as a threat by some of the locals.

Still, we explored the Bazaar at Djemaa el Fna and were underwhelmed by the snake charmers.  The famed dentists were nowhere to be found.  Apparently the Square only came alive at night, but we were feeling vulnerable and there was no way we were going there after dark, fire eaters be dammed.  Instead, we went into the souk and did some shopping. 

It was much friendlier at the marketplace, where every shopkeeper was eager to invite us in for mint tea – and to by the way take a look at his beautiful handmade shawls/pewter jewelry/rugs.  My friend listened to a rug salesman tell her the story of how this rug was made by his mother and that one by his wife. I wandered off while sipping my mint tea and peeked underneath a couple of rugs: 

‘MADE IN INDIA’

‘FABRIQUE EN CHINE’

Bored and not wanting to spoil her fun, I went to the spice stand and watched the shopkeeper pop in and out of a patchwork of colors like a mole, rushing to mix flavors as the shoppers barked their orders.

   

I didn’t buy anything.  But still, the Moroccans kept offering tea.  Maybe it was all the sugar, but Amy and I decided to get some henna tattoos instead of buying worthless knicknacks.  We found a woman in a black chador working on another tourist.  She had a little girl with her.  In broken French we asked the girl if her mother could work on us and the woman in the chador nodded -- maybe smiling, maybe not.  When it was my turn she quickly mixed the henna paste and set to work on my upper arm, drawing with a plastic syringe.  I didn’t know what I wanted or how to ask for it, but she got to work anyways and I was soon decorated with an intricate lotus flower.

I smiled and thanked her.  It was beautiful, even if it was not authentic.

She worked on my friend Amy in silence, and didn't speak until she was done.  We waved goodbye after we paid the girl, but the woman kept going on and on in French.  I couldn’t understand what she wanted, so I figured she wanted more money.  I pulled out a few dollars.

She refused and grew more agitated, black fabric flapping everywhere.

We gestured for her to follow us as we looked for our Belgian friend Sylvie.  We finally found her looking at some rings.  The woman in the chador spoke to her, and seemed to calm down when she realized Sylvie spoke French.

“She wants to invite us to meet her family.”

Silence.  Somebody finally said OK.

“We’re to meet her here at 7:00 am tomorrow.”

Morocco: So Far From Suburbia

My first job out of college was as a marketing assistant in the beauty industry.  Manual labor is part of the job when you're that low in the totem pole.  For me, that meant unpacking endless boxes of product samples and marketing materials--which isn’t too bad when you’re a young beauty junkie because knowing that I got to see all this stuff before everybody else was still exciting then.  A few months into the job, by the time my life of freedom was a distant memory, I was unpacking one such box.  It was full of cosmetics that weren’t available in the US and had been sent to us for possible inclusion in the duty-free assortment. 

Among the perfume bottles and pre-wrapped boxes of miniature lotions – meant for clueless businessmen looking for a last-minute gift for ‘the wife’ -- I found a long thin metal tube.  It was just a lipstick (I remembered buying one at El Corte Ingles when I was studying abroad in Granada, Spain), but it brought back memories of dusty alleys and of the sweet taste of mint tea.

I was in Morocco in April of 1997 because it’s what you did when you were an exchange student in Granada.  We first made plans for a large group, but when the guys heard that the girls in Ibiza were easy they changed their minds at the last minute.  So instead of nine, we were a group of five - all girls.

(Jorge, our student advisor, had begged us not to go.  “Five females?  In Morocco?  Alone?  Are you mad?”  He was a law student and worried too much.)

We left Algeciras on an rusty ferry boat and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, the famous rock getting smaller and smaller behind us as we got closer to the African shore.  As soon as we docked in Tangiers everything was different --the light red and hazy, everything soaked with the smells of cooking food.  It was crowded and people came at us from everywhere.  We ignored the many offers for private taxicabs and ducked into the relative calm of the train station, rushing to catch the last train to Marrakech. 

I was relieved when the train pulled out of Tangiers.  It was dangerous and I was glad to leave.  The train was dark and I tried not to think about the condition of our cabin as I forced myself to go to sleep.

It was morning when the train reached the end of the line.  My friend Amy and I quickly gathered our things and looked for the rest of the group.  It was a madhouse and I wasn't sure how we would find them but we soon heard them.

They didn’t look good.

“What’s the deal with all the sheep?  It was like a fucking zoo in there.”

Amy and I were in much better spirits because we had snatched the last two first-class cots on the train.  For $12 we got hard benches to sleep on and shared quarters with strangers.  At least we had some semblance of privacy.  Our cabin mates were already asleep in their bunks when we entered and had left by the time we had woken up the next morning.

The rest of them were stuck in the regular cars and had to do their best to sleep while sitting up.  To make things worse, it seemed that every other person on the train was carrying either live sheep or chickens—and they did it like it was the most normal thing in the world. We didn't know it, but everyone was going home for Eid al-Adha and the whole scene was not unlike that at American airports the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, except that here people carried livestock instead of wheeled luggage.

It was still early in Marrakech and after dizzying rides in little private taxicabs we finally got to our hotel, a little hole in the wall called Hotel Ali.  It was perfect for us, cheap, clean, and most importantly, it overlooked the Djemaa el Fna square.

We were ready to explore.  One of the girls wanted to find a carpet.  I was determined to photograph a snake charmer and a Moroccan dentist.  I never got my pictures.

More here.

That's not Coffee-Mate

Guess who spoiled a perfectly delicious cup of coffee by pouring rice cereal in it?  In other news, the baby is remarkably alert today. 

Gold and Burgundy

New banner!

I was planning to take pictures of the kids out on the stoop, but Sebastian would have none of it.  So I took pictures of the flowers instead, because flowers don't throw tantrums.

Then I went inside and made a new banner based on the color of the flowers.   

I love fall colors.

What's that saying about the road to hell?

I spent a good part of yesterday evening getting organized so that I can finally stop wasting so much time.

I woke up at 6:30, showered and was ready to go before the kids were awake.  This has never happened before, but I was a woman on a mission.  Today, I was going to Get Things Done.

And!  Today is babysitter day, so I was going to have a fabulous morning of productivity.

I scheduled my first exercise class in a long, long time so I arranged my morning around it (because health comes first!)  My plan was this:

9:00 AM - 10:00 Breakfast and reading at the coffee shop. 
10:15 - 11:15 Pilates. 
11:30-12:00 Shopping for a baby shower my playgroup is throwing this weekend. 
12:00 - 12:30 Quick grocery run.

Instead, this is what happened:

8:45 AM Grab keys to head out the door.
8:46 AM Where are my keys?
9:00 AM  Seriously, where are my keys?
9:15 AM (email husband who is all the way in San Francisco) "Check your pockets - do you have my keys?"
9:30 AM  Think to check safe for a spare set of keys.  Forget combination.  Get self locked out of safe for two hours.
9:45 AM (email husband) "OMG WE'RE STRANDED!  SEND HELP!"
9:46 - 10:30 Turn entire house upside down while sitter, toddler and self look for keys.
10:31 AM Find keys in pocket of jacket left in the dirty clothes pile (also known as Mt. Rush-no-more)

I have two hours of sitting left and I'm about to run out the door like a madwoman, trying to get everything done at the last minute.  In other words, it's business as usual around here.  Maybe I should stop trying to fight the damn universe.

Mostly, I'm pissed that was up at 6:30 AM for nothing. 

Baby Saturday 4

Benjamin’s belly smells sweet - like meringue.

Inertia

I waste time every day and I don’t know why.

What am I so afraid of?  What do I keep putting off?  What am I afraid of accomplishing? 

It’s not like I set out to waste time; it simply slips away.  I have no respect for it.  I always thought that given free time I would fill it well.  When my days were busy working for others I had so many ideas and plans for how I would fill MY time when it finally became mine.  Now that my time is mostly my own, I have found that what I’m best at is wasting time.  I don’t know what to do with it.  Time scares me.  I tell myself I’m a perfectionist, but the more I try to spend my time perfectly, the quicker the minutes tick away into nothing.

My master procrastination skills are a big part of the problem.  I’ve read that the reason so many of us procrastinate is that we’re adrenaline junkies--that we’re addicted to the rush of accomplishing things at the last minute.  Because deadlines drive us only when they loom large.  So instead of doing things we procrastinate.  And if you think about it, procrastination is nothing more than waiting. 

I hate waiting. 

I hate waiting in lines, I have waiting on the phone, I hate waiting for food to heat up in the microwave.  Yet I procrastinate like a champ.  It makes no sense. 

To think of all the amazing things that can be accomplished in a day, an hour, a minute.  Instead I put it off.  And what do I have to show for it?  Nothing.

You know that dreadful feeling on Sunday afternoons when you realize that you don’t know where the weekend went?  Those precious two days you spent all week waiting for?  Gone.

I’m starting to feel that way all week.  That is scary.

I’ve got to stop waiting.  I’ve got to start right now.  Be in this moment.  Savor it.  Touch it.  Feel it.  Live it.

Because the days, they go by so fast. 

Toddler Sundays 3

Last Saturday, my husband and I went out for a date. 

The sitter fed Sebastian his dinner while we dressed upstairs.  When it was time to go, I was giving the sitter last minute instructions when Sebastian pulls up my pant leg and points to my shoes.

"You wear Lady Shoes Mama!" he said, pointing at my Italian kitten heels.

"And you wear Lady Bag!"  he said, pointing to my decidedly non-diaper bag.

"Doesn't your Mama look pretty tonight?" my husband asked.

"Yes,"  said Sebastian as he looked at my outfit approvingly. Then he gave me a kiss and rearranged my bag so that it sat on the crook of my arm, rather than on my shoulder.

"That's better.  Bye Mama!  Bye Papa!"

I can't even begin to tell you how sweet it is to have boys.  Lucky me.

Baby Saturdays 3

This has been a busy week for Benjamin:

1.  He turned six months old
2.  He now has two teeth
3.  He can sit up with minimal assistance
4.  He's figured out that solids are a very good thing
5.  Most importantly, he's starting to nap for longer than 10 minutes at a time.  HALLELUJAH!

Marketing Pooh-Pooh

Today I went to the doctor.  (Don't worry, I'm fine!)  I needed to go in to have a few things checked out, and can I tell you what's sad (other than the fact I'm telling you about this)?  It felt indulgent.  The fact that I went to see someone wearing a white coat and they there to take care of me and ask questions about me, and it had nothing to do with my kids or my reproductive parts made me feel like I was pretty special.

Which goes to show you that I'm way overdue for a Spa or Salon visit of some sort, because I'm starting to confuse internists with estheticians.  Not good.

Of course, this illusion of indulgence didn't last very long.  In fact, it lasted about as long as it took for the nurse to close the exam room door and I was faced with an instructional poster detailing the correct procedure for collecting fecal specimens:

Yes, I felt stupid whipping out my cell phone and taking a picture of this poster but I had to do it.  I may be currently living the carefree life of a SAHM, but once, not so long ago, I was a marketing worker bee and this poster brought back many emotions, not the least of which was empathy.  I know that somewhere out there, probably in New Jersey, there is a product manager at some medical device company who spent hours, maybe weeks, on this poster, probably more hours than were spent on strategy (so why did they spend so much time at school on the 4 Ps?  It's a rhetorical question.  I don't know.)

This poor product manager (whose business card probably reads "Manager, Fecal Testing Devices" --let's pray that they're not single.  THE HORROR.) had to write a brief detailing what they needed ("a poster about poop handling"), and send it out to illustrators and ad agencies and then look at the work of people who have done similar illustrations, and then hire someone and send countless emails back and forth asking the illustrator to make the poop on the collection strip less obvious (and really, do we need an "after" shot?) and then they had to make the poop more, um, realistic, in order to illustrate correctly how to "pierce the specimen in at least 5 different sites" only to come up with this work of art:

And this process goes on and on, and there are meetings about the illustrations, and there are re-writes and copywriters are involved - as well as the legal department and the regulatory department - and yes, this as exciting as it sounds.

Boy am I glad I no longer work in pharmaceutical marketing, is all.

I was once in charge of three canker sore products.  I won't go into detail about how I spent precious hours of my life on illustrations for the packaging, and how to this day I can't help but stare people at CVS when they're standing in front of the canker sore treatments, probably waiting for me to leave them alone so that they can make this borderline embarrassing purchase IN PEACE.

(No one ever looks at the illustrations.  Bah!)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my business card read "Manager, Oral First Aids" I kid you not.  I always made sure that final s was there.  Too bad I wasn't single at the time because I have a feeling that title would have made me VERY popular at bars.