Birthday presents… not mine…and not an easy task

The secret of why my husband and I get along so well together (beside our awesomeness) is the fact that we’re both Taurus.

Not to crumble your spirits, but this sign is the best one of the Horoscope; what we lack in docility, we compensate with intelligence, affection and an unstoppable desire to succeed in our life.

So, as you can guess, considering that my birthday was last Monday, my husband’s is tomorrow.

I wanted to surprise him at his office so his co-workers could congratulate him and embarrass him, the way he doesn’t like it when it’s his birthday (such a considerate wife I am); so I cracked my skull thinking on innovative ideas to do after almost 7 years together (I can’t imagine what would I give him in 50 more years).

He has a sweet tooth the size of a house, but this craving only gets activated in front of Nutella, Dulce de Leche, Key lime pie or Pecan Pie… neither of those are proper birthday cakes.

Flowers, stuffed animals, chocolates and cup cakes were too girlie, I wanted him embarrassed, but I didn’t want me dead… so I opted for balloons.

In the comfort of my home (whoever came up with online shopping was a lazy SOB whom I love!) I surfed online in the millions of websites that offered Balloon bouquets (you’ve to use the appropriate word) and found the choice that most suited me: lots of colors, and a corny card (if I’m going to do the deed, I wanted to succeed with flying colors – too bad for my Taurus efficiency defect).

I couldn’t pick a regular cake to be sent, so I choose two of his favourites and made another online order for those.

If he wanted to pass overlooked, my gifts didn’t help.

Today, he received the Balloons and confessed that he entered his office from the back door, so nobody would notice the gift. Too bad for him, the bright colors didn’t let him walk by unnoticed.

The cakes arrived later in the morning and all his peers in the office, came by to congratulate him (and to steal a piece, of course!).

So, take note my dear minions, If you want to embarrass your cherished one, until their cheeks are all red and his hears are on fire, then mucho, mucho corny love for him!

1-800-Baloons: www.1-800-balloons.com

Buttercup Cake Shor : www.buttercupbakeshop.com

Now the problem lies, in fitting all my other responsibilities, into my work routine.

Human beings are wired to always have something to complain or pout about.

Doesn’t matter if you’re the King of Persia or a regular guy with a regular job, one would always want a low profile life and the other would always regret not to have born with royal blood and have lots of millions.

As Michael Bublé said: That’s life (or Frank Sinatra for the previous generation).

So now I’m working from 9 am to 4 pm, arrive at home 20 minutes to 6 pm, put on my rubber gloves and I summon the energy to scrub every place in our house, but if I choose to clean, grocery shopping and poop-scooping our balcony (Buono keeps doing his business even though he knows I don’t have time to clean up after him) have to be left for the next day.

On the other hand, attending my hubby is in my priority list; so if I’m too tired to do anything at home, I just cuddle by his side and harass him the rest of the afternoon, so he doesn’t feel that he’s been left out and I have the perfect excuse not to move a finger.

However, we manage as a team together. He helps with small menial task that in the long run, reduces my available time to do anything else.

Dinner is another issue. Who has time to cook a proper meal when you can’t even see straight, and the recipes gets mixed in your head. I’m opting to freeze some dishes, having an endless load of cereals and sandwich ingredients to get by during the week, and make more elaborated dishes during the weekends.

Dieting is always the best excuse. I always say that we should take care of our weight, and keep the line, when I’m not in the mood to go near the stove.

Having a blog damages all my chances to keep pretexts (because my husband is the first one to read my posts), so if you have some new ideas that I can use from now on, please write.

In the mean time, regards from yours truly.

Happy B-Day, Feliz Cumpleaños, Bonne Fete, Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Buon Compleanno… do I need to make myself more clear?

Birthday days have their pros and cons.
Presents and family love are definitely pros.

Even though every family has that pesterer individual that calls you at 6 am, makes you talk with every member of their household (dog and maid included) even thou it’s too early for you to process any information and most importantly: WTF is he doing calling at this hour??

So you mumble incoherent sentences while the penance endures, and then hang-up, already sleepless and in a bad mood because you missed your extra 45 minutes of sleep.

Twenty-six years of experience and you still haven’t mastered the expertise of filtering caller-ID’s during your sleep.

But you cheer up, because nobody can ruin this day for you… until you open the window and rain is pouring uncontrollably, everything is grey and depressing and you wish your birthday would have been another day of the week, maybe Saturday or Sunday if you were lucky enough… but NO, Monday and rainy for you, missy!

Suddenly, the bed looks really appealing and you’re trying to make an excuse to miss a day in your first 2 weeks of work; but you man-up, lock your back straight, walk to the bathroom and wash the sleepy feeling away.

In our birthday, we always want to look our best, so I picked my nicest outfit and accessorized it with a headband, a present from my twin sister for when my hair is unmanageable and blow-drying sound really difficult.

I’m heading to the door, and suddenly I hear a heavenly music in my ears, because I just suddenly remembered that going down the elevator, parked in our garage is our new car!!

So God isn’t that mischievous, and you have a perfect day ahead of you.

All of a sudden, the prospect of driving 40 miles, shuffling the music in your iPod and accepting calls with the Bluetooth device imbedded in the car doesn’t sound so awful.

It even sounds glamorous.

Unsafe, considering the storm; but attractive, nevertheless.

So long public transportation, hello Doris!!

A new member of our “electronic” family is born

I’m neither dead nor kidnapped; I was just acclimating to my new job and time schedules, before I decided to start writing again... don't fret!

As some of you might know, my new job demanded a huge amount of commute time, as well as different types of transportations, all combined to allow me to go back and forth from work.

The peculiarities of this commute was that arriving in time was of the essence if I didn’t want to be left stranded in a deserted industrial NY area, with my husband having a heart attack while waiting for me at home.

So, being that our problem lies in reconciling our gross habits with our net income; we decided to buy our first car… all for the sake of my husband’s health and the improvements of having 10 more hours of leisure every week, of course!

I’m awful with highways and maps, I can manage to learn the perfect grid of Manhattan’s streets but unfortunately, learning a whole new area without getting lost in the process was too difficult for me, so a Navigation system was in order to accommodate my inabilities.

So now we have a talking car, which guides you around, let you know if there’s traffic ahead, where the best parking spots are, if there’s a hot spot restaurant nearby and manages my music.

Doris is the best travel companion ever, if you have seen the Nemo picture, you can guess why we named her that… my stepmom was the one with the idea, and now, Doris became another member of our electronic family, altogether with our 2 iPhones, the iMac, the Mac Book Pro, the Dell laptop, the super efficient refrigerator, our top of the line oven, the miracle worker dishwasher, the AirPort express, our Sony Bravia, the DVD player and our huge printer machine (an inefficient decision from my husband who believes that big is better).

No wonder that we have less time to read, talk, play board games and everything else that could occupy your time if you didn’t have all the other cool stuffs around you that distracts you from the other boring stuffs that earlier generations did before technology led light in our lives.

Thanks god for small favours… and Doris for reducing my commute time 2 hours a day and making my life easier.

Adding a bunch of new tasks in my routine list… sanity isn’t one of them

Having a new job can get you really excited and it can make you feel really accomplished, even more if the job involves doing something challenging and fast paced; however, if your nerve cells have been on vacation for quite some time, it can be a handful to get them back and running again.

I feel a pool of little creatures inside my head (because even thou they’re kind of lazy, I can vouch for their quantity… a lot of neurons!) stretching and welcoming the new activity pumped into their schedule; yet they still have the dual sensation of wanting to be back in my couch reading… so I have to concentrate to keep them at bay.

Lots of coffee is being propelled into my body, and the new tasks presented before them keeps them motivated and in movement. Naughty little creatures those damned neurons!

Well, who can blame them if the challenges of being a housewife for 1 year aren’t difficult enough to keep them awake?

In the meantime, my caffeine levels are on the roof, my liver is definitely suffering damaged with all the sugar I’m ingesting to wake up my nerve cells from hibernation, all the weight that I lost with my “Gall bladder diet” is being gained back up again (I can feel it in my butt) and the only thing that’s improving is my reading hours with all the train travelling that allows me to keep up with my books.

My advice is that you don’t ever should accept an offer from a job so far away… over 10 miles from home it’s too much of a pain.

However, if you do decide to accept it, make it worth your while… good compensation, big company, lots of new challenged and a bright future ahead of you… like me.

Don’t be jealous, I wasn’t when you were working and I was home cleaning.

Regards from your currently employed housewife.

Long Island gives a new significance to the word: LONG

Dear readers, do you remember the big fiasco from my past “job experience”?
I’m happy to inform you that I’m employed once again, this time for an American Corporation who was looking for a Sales Manager for the Latin American markets… I know, I know; I told you guys that I preferred a Marketing position rather than a Sales one, but in this particular case, the offer comes with such a big challenge, and such a big incentive, that it would be a crime not to say Yes (which I did).
Wait for it, here it comes… you know me too mucho to be expecting it: The down size.
I can resume it in one word: distance.
I managed (once again) to get a job 35 miles (60 km) away from this big island.
And even more down sizing, is the fact that it doesn’t matter that I live four blocks from the biggest trains station in NY (Grand Central); the train that I have to catch to go to work is in Penn Station, 13 loooong blocks from my home and two connecting subways away.
Well, no biggie, I’ll have to put up with that fact and focus my energy on more uplifting matters, as it’s the fact that I’m being paid for doing what I love.
I’m starting next week, so I still have some more days of free time… adding every one of those together, I think 730 vacation days was enough to regain my energy and get my act together (finally).
I told myself that I was going to get a job before my birthday, and I pulled it off!!
Many people tried to hook me up with important executives in big corporation; nonetheless, I got this baby all on my own.
Luck… I don’t need; so don’t waste your time wishing it to me…but let’s just hope that I can probe myself up to their expectations; because I’ll hate to be unemployed once again.
Regards from a Long Island executive, living in Manhattan, being from Argentina, with a husband from the Dominican Republic, dying to step onto the world!!
(Well, not over the world… ON TOP OF THE WORLD!)

Queens… not the crowns and scepters type

Buying Argentinean food in the Big Apple is not a difficult task, you can find it in every restaurant owned by an Argentinean guy, you can even find some in the Supermarket around the corner; however… buying cheap Argentinean food is a whole new matter (cheap being the key word in this sentence).
Me and my girlfriends have a routine, where every two or three months we go to a small Argentinean Restaurant in Queens and find all our delicatessens, made by Argentinean hands and most important: at a moderate price.
Since the winter came, with all its might and glory, we haven’t been able to visit Queens, nevertheless, this past weekend, my husband and I where too bored for words, so we decided to give it a try, sunny day and all.
It was my husband’s first time to accompany me to Queens, so he looked at me kind of weird when I hauled my empty luggage from our storage room and headed out the door… poor guy, he didn’t even know what was coming to him.
We took the subway, my husband, me and my pink empty suitcase, and started walking from the Junction Avenue Station towards the restaurant.
Needless to say that once you’ve entered Queens, you forget about where you are (New York where?), what is the main language (English who?) and most importantly, the prices!
After seeing so much “Manhattan prices”, being outside of the bubble gives you a whole new perspective regarding expenses.
El Gauchito is a nice little place just ten blocks from the station, it’s a cute spot to have some lunch, enjoy a nice dessert with lots of caramel spread and buy some international produce.
The guy at the counter already knows me, so I gave him my list of groceries, handed him my empty suitcase and seated with my husband in a small table by the window.
Let me tell you something about my husband that you probably already know: he is a gentleman.
Remember this, because I sure as hell didn’t forgot this fact when I headed out the door from my house, with my pink “empty” suitcase; and only one though in my head: I’m not going to be the one that brings it back.
After lunch we went to the counter, I paid our groceries and I simply stood there, while my dear husband (being a gentleman and all) hauled the suitcase back to the floor, pulled up the handle and headed to the door, followed by a pink suitcase, in a Latino neighborhood, soon to be hooping on the subway… with a bunch of tough, scary guys… with a suitcase (PINK) and me.
Needless to say that this was the first and only time for my husband to come to Queens with me, from now on it would be a girlfriend’s only activity.

El Gauchito:
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=el+gauchito+queens&fb=1&gl=us&hq=el+gauchito&hnear=queens&cid=5825267050853122312

If I could ask for anything, the WILL to exercise would be it!

Supposedly, spring started like ten days ago, but with all the rain and the temperature drop, you would definitely think that we’re still in winter.
The last couple of days we had a huge storm looming above the east coast, so you can imagine how many times do I dared to get out of my house… NONE is the answer.
Today, the sky is clearing bit by bit, it’s not raining anymore, and more importantly, the temperature started to pick up, so it’s a bit nice outside.
However, I have a friend that even thou she weights as much as a feather and we all remind her of that fact every time we see each other, she’s convinced that dieting is the answer to all her prayers, as well as exercising… so she wasn’t satisfied with her state of mind of loosing weight, she most definitely needed someone to be in that state of mind with her.
What a better choice than me? (she though that the “Gall bladder diet” wasn’t enough).
So she decided to turn my life a living hell by inviting me to walk around the Central Park at 10 am in the morning, in a more or less nice day (she couldn’t wait for the spring to finally arrive… a grey day was enough for her) and I would even need to get a bus to go to the meet up place.
For me, exercise is like this boring word that involves doing something even more boring.
I would be completely up for a vaccine to be a sports person; I would even sign up for the testing processes.
But no intelligent scientist has managed to come up with THAT idea; they’re stuck with other more trivial matters while we, the unsporty people are stuck with lies and excuses to evade the outdoors activities that include running, jogging, walking, exercising… and all the others “ing”.
Just so you know, if she would have said: “let’s go to the Central Park and talk while we walk”, it would have been a different situation…
For starters, I would’ve said YES!
But as soon as she included the E word in the sentence, all was doomed for me… everything was black… pitch black!
Blame my father and his convincement that he had three little boys, no matter that every person told him that the long hair, the earrings and the girlie clothes most definitely meant that we were girls!
Well, no biggie… I’ll just have to come up with an excuse in, let’s say, 10 minutes…
Any ideas??