My Tree

I am sad.  Today they chopped down my favorite tree.  Someone decided to clean up one of the many vacant buildings surrounding us.  They hired a crew of Haitian laborers, who lived on the premise until all the trash was removed, until every tree had been cleared.  It took them almost two weeks.  

The last thing to go was my tree.  It provided shade for our apartment building, but was technically growing on the other side of the fence.  It had three huge trunks growing up from different places.  It had the most beautiful, full leaves.  I prayed that God would rescue my tree.  I don't think I’d ever prayed for a tree before, but it seemed like such a shame to take out one of the few mature, gorgeous trees on our block.  

They tried to cut it down on Friday and couldn’t do it with their machetes.  I celebrated.  They returned the next week with bigger machetes and down it fell.  I saved some of the leaves and put them in a vase on our table.  I will miss its large leaves swaying in the wind outside my window.  I will miss the red woodpecker who lived in the tree (even though he ruined the wooden shutters on our bedroom balcony).  By some miracle, the chicken living in the lot next door managed to survive.  

Since the “clearing” nothing else has happened.  The building is up for sale and it could be years before it sells.  Now we get to look at an ugly cleared lot instead of an overgrown little forest, which managed to bring beauty into our lives despite the mounds of garbage it more or less covered up.  

Swimming with the Fishes

We recently adopted two goldfish.  Hannah named them Goldie and Snowy.  Snowy has slightly more white on his/her (how do you tell gender on fish?) tummy, though truth be told they look pretty much identical to the unskilled eye.  Our journey towards adoption began at Hannah’s school in May.  They were doing a unit on animals and each kid was supposed to bring 50 pesos to buy either a fish or a baby chicken.  Yes, you read that right:  chicken.  

While tempted toward the baby chicken for novelty’s sake, we decided that a dead fish was much easier to recover from than a dead chicken, so we should clearly choose the fish.  Some weeks later, Hannah brought home a very sad looking Beta fish in a plastic water bottle.  He was already sort of floating on one side.  The prognosis didn’t look good.  We (the adults in the household) took secret bets as to his date of expiration.  I unfortunately won.  He didn’t make it to the next morning.  Hannah demonstrated impressive resilience.  She was quite excited by the idea of flushing a fish down the toilet. 

After returning from summer travels, Hannah and I walked to a small local pet store.  We selected two beautiful goldfish, bright blue tank rocks and a pretty green plant.  The goldfish almost suffocated in our original glass vase for lack of oxygen (strange how they’re always at the top of the water gasping for air ... hmmm).  Thankfully, Joselyn’s daughter is a goldfish expert and her roommate had a large glass aquarium that was only collecting dust.  We have since transitioned Goldie and Snowy to their new home, and they have been swimmingly happy ever since.  

The tank started out on the floor where the girls enjoyed watching the fish and Naomi enjoyed trying to catch the fish.  Unfortunately, Naomi actually fell into the tank one scary afternoon.  I’ll never forget her little feet kicking in the air and the panicked look in her big blue eyes (underwater).  Thankfully I was less than 20 feet away.  She was very scared but fine.  The fish seemed unfazed.  So now our cool tank is high up on a ledge in our enclosed balcony and I have learned a valuable lesson.  Maybe, we should have gone with the chickens?

Brange Bizcocho

Andy was gone.  I was tired of white walls.  I needed something to do at night after the kids went to bed.  Why not paint the house?  My last distant memory of painting was my parent’s rundown rental house in Delavan, IL some 20 odd years ago.  Delavan is internationally famous for 2 locals in the Guinness Book of World Records shooting marshmallows the furthest distance - from 1 person’s nose to the other person’s mouth = )  I digress.  

I clearly needed a painting refresher course, so I spent a few days watching You Tube videos on painting and spackling.  Feeling sufficiently confident that I could replicate the best prep and paint methodologies, I headed to the paint store.  Now my friend had warned me that choosing and mixing paint colors was ... umm ... different here.

My first tip-off was the dirty looks I got taking 10 paint color cards out of the display and leaving the store with them.  When I returned with my chosen colors, they hand-mixed “matching” colors from a different brand of paint all-together and showed me about 1,000 more color options on rings that were clearly not to be removed from the store.  They also suggested that I really wanted a different color than what I’d selected.  You really want this one, it will look better.  Ummm.  No, I really want the one that I chose.  No, you don’t, you should use this color.  Ack.  In the end, I think he was right, but who fights with their customers to change their paint colors?

Apparently I have a talent for picking brownish-orange colors gone wrong.  My “subtle orange” kitchen color was in fact a garish brown-orange.  I returned it for a brighter, definitely-no-trace-of-brown orange and after being blinded by its OJ intensity for a few days, I have grown fond of it.  The living room was a sadder story.  I chose a creamy wheat color.  Ha.  It came out ... drum roll please ... brownish-orange.  Depending on the time of day it looks peach or pink, definitely not creamy wheat.  Andy says our living room now resembles a big wedding cake or bizcocho.  This was not intended as a compliment.  Thus, I have cleverly entitled this blog Brange (brown+orange) Bizcocho. 

At some point in the upcoming months I hope to finish Hannah’s room (pale blue) and Naomi’s room (pale yellow).  I am curious to see what the colors actually turn out to be.  I’m optimistic that neither will veer towards brown-orange, but ... you never know! 

Happiness Is

My freshman year, I was in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, the musical.  According to Peanuts, “Happiness is two kinds of ice-cream, knowing a secret, climbing a tree ...”  Sadly enough, I can still sing most of the song.  I would like to add a cute orange rechargeable vacuum and a QVC-special Shark steam mop to that list.

I have literally spent hours upon hours sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing my floors.  I have repeatedly removed every toy and book and rug from my floors so the buckets of soapy water could work their magic before being “gomo”ed down the drains with a big rubber squeegee.  The result? ... black feet and pernicious dust the very next day.  Argh.

With no windows, the pollution walks right into our apartment, especially November through June during la zafra or sugar cane harvesting season.  To harvest sugar cane they burn the fields causing black ash to float miles and land on my floor.

However, I have won.  No more pushing the same dust around via old-fashioned mop and broom.  Ha ha ha ha.  My little vacuum eats dust for dinner and my Shark steam mop leaves the floors sparkling clean, germ-free, and chemical-free.  Booyah.  Our feet actually stay clean for at least a few days now.  Hooray.  And it takes about 10% of the effort.  I am free!  We’ll see how the system holds up come November.

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.