Frostsicles

Shortly after moving into our new apartment, I noticed this small red button next to our freezer.  “Push every other day to defrost,” it explains beneath.  Pardon?  Even my parent’s basement fridge, which they’ve had since their wedding in 1956, automatically defrosts.  True enough.  My freezer soon produced snow, which became enormous icy frostsicles.  Thankfully, I can just push a little button.  Right.  

Every time it manually “defrosts,” a significant amount of water manages to cleverly avoid the catch tray, pool on the top shelf of our fridge, and make a puddle on the floor.  Moreover, you need to manually pull out the frost chunks while they’re partially melted otherwise they re-freeze and consume all of your freezer space.  At least I can usually avoid hacking the freezer’s ice shell with a knife if I time the removal correctly with the “defrosting” button.  

One of our friends joked that the frequent electricity outages in the DR are sufficient to defrost your freezer, so there’s no need for the automatic option here.  I am now belatedly super grateful for my previous refrigerators.  I’m amazed at the number of things I should be grateful for but didn’t/don’t even notice as blessings.

Cheese? Puhlease.

A rat ate my banana.  Honest.  We’ve been finding interesting droppings in our house lately.  In my mind they were mice.  After requesting dropping detail, our friend assured us they were not.  Ack.

Since moving here, I have acquired a fear of leptospirosis.  I’d never even heard of it, but apparently people here do in fact contract it - and die.  Rats and mice are carriers.  If your kid pops a dropping, watch out.  Joselyn’s son’s neighbor found a mouse nest in his shoe.  He dumped it out.  Whacked the baby mice.  Shook out the dust.  And put his shoe on.  The next weekend he died.  Leptospirosis.  This all sounds a bit urban legend to me, but supposedly it really happened.

Anyhow, we are now in rat-prevention mode, which is hard since the zone we live in is overrun.  You can’t even set a normal trap.  Cheese, peanut butter, puhlease.  They have to use meat as bait here.  Seriously.

We broke off the tree branch touching our balcony.  Rats here live in the trees.  Who knew?  I set a huge chlorine bottle on top of the only un-covered floor drain.  We take all the garbage out every night.  However, our apartment is still fairly open.  Then Andy read online that mice and rat hate peppermint.  Supposedly peppermint oil (not extract) is the magic natural rat remedy.  Hooray!  Far better than cat urine pellets or similar.  So we procured a bottle from the U.S. and are placing it around our balcony doors.  We’ll let you know if it works!     

Mamajuana

No, not marijuana, mamajuana.  It all started with my cell phone.  The charger was lost.  Nowhere to be found.  Maybe the rats took it.  The cell phone stores I went to sold phones, plans, but no chargers.  Shoot.  Ahhh, but I live in Santo Domingo, where every possible (used) gadget can be located on the street.  I headed to a guy who I had seen selling various chargers.  We tested the used charger in a nearby outlet and he assured me all was fine.  

I happily returned home to charge my phone.  Ready to head out the door again, I grabbed my phone and it said, “Phone cannot accept charge.”  What?!?!  Why hadn’t I checked more closely before I purchased my used charger.  I just saw the phone light up when he plugged it in and trusted him.  Mistake.

I hunted down the street vender.  We argued.  He said he couldn’t return my money, but he could trade my bum charger for another ... charger?  The man sold chargers, blackberry covers, and roach bait.  I wasn’t in the market.  

Finally, he brought me to his friend’s table where I could choose from various herbs.  I decided against the lifetime supply of oregano and went the more adventurous route to purchase a bottle of mamajuana.  I’d seen it being sold on the streets for months and my curiosity got the best of me.   The vender assured me it wasn’t marijuana, but I couldn’t discern its intended use.  (Though in hindsight, the fact that it was sold in a dirty old rum bottle should’ve tipped me off.)

I proudly showed Joselyn my new mamajuana acquisition and asked her what I was supposed to do with it.  Apparently it’s a mixture of cinnamon, vanilla and other herbs which are used to flavor rum.  It’s the favorite drink of drunks and the Dominican cure-all for various ailments.  Oh.  I don’t really drink rum, but I figured I might as well give it a try.  So I bought my first bottle of Dominican rum and poured it over my mamajuana.  I haven’t had the courage to try it yet, but I feel decidedly more Dominican with it sitting on my counter.         

Blonde

So for the last four+ months I couldn’t figure out why every carro público and most taxis had huge metal tanks in their trunk.  As a mom with a stroller to stow away, this situation was less than convenient.  Were they building rockets?  Was it compressed air for flat tires? 

Turns out that all public cars and many taxis here run on propane.  I’m still not sure who converts all the cars from gasoline to propane, but supposedly it’s a LOT cheaper to run your car on propane.  Who knew?  I wonder why this hasn’t taken off in the U.S.?  Maybe we value our trunk space more than fuel efficiency.  I don’t know.  But, I’m glad to have the mysterious rocket caper solved.