It's that time again - live cams for Carnaval are almost active. You can watch the countdown and check out the circuit maps, get info on the location of the blocos, and fantasize about the biggest street party of its kind. You know you wish you were here.

Wireless internet working means I can go all over the house with the computer. But mostly I just sit on the couch, which is about 8 feet from where I used to sit at the computer prewireless... I tried in the hammock, but it was kind of hard on the knees. I also tried in Ju's room but he kept trying to sit on it because everything in there he generally has free rein over. I sat at the table for a while, but everyone walking by on the way to the pool could see what I was doing, which although I am doing my best to not look at porn or anything, there are some questionable images on some of the forums I visit that I care not to share with the neighbors. So here I sit on the couch.

I haven't used Travelocity.com for flights in a long time since they didn't used to allow you to have your embarking airport outside of the US. Today, just for shits and giggles, I decided to compare the quotes between them and Expedia, who I usually use. To my utter disbelief, I was quoted $7189 to fly from Salvador to Michigan and was given only ONE option in flights, whilst Expedia quoted the exact same flight (with less stops) for $1500. I was so totally appalled at the price, I sent them a customer service inquiry, just to tell them they were ridiculous.

Another visit come and gone. This was only the second time my dad has been down here in almost 4 years (I go up there once a year, so it's not so bad). They say traveling is half the fun, which for me is still true on some level, even when dragging a two year old behind me (or more often, carrying him, his carry on, my carry on, and if I'm lucky, something to eat for each of us), but I cannot imagine is still so for my father who travels at least once a month by plane to some place or another. It's always very sad to see him go, or anyone who comes here to visit, for that matter.

Ju is very psyched to travel up there in July now. He is totally fascinated by all forms of transportation. When we took him up last June, he was sick and not happy and under rested. This resulted in a tantrum reaction to each instigation of "okay, now we have to go get on the next plane" (there were only 3 airplanes involved, thank goodness we flew into Chicago). I am hoping due to his better comprehension of time and language that he will be as excited about the trip as I will come the end of the school semester. Also, he will be three by then, and may be less likely to wander off in the airport (although only slightly), so traveling as a solitary parent won't be so overbearing. Maybe he will even carry his own suitcase.

I will have to get my head out of the future for a bit though, and enjoy the present. I always seem to do that - get all excited for the next trip to where ever. I wonder why...

I have not been kidnapped by the kidnapper doll ;)

My father is visiting here in Brasil for a couple of weeks, so I have been off having fun with him. So far we have taken him on a sunny city tour, shopping for a Brasilian speedo (because you can't wear swimming trunks without being marked as an American - another sure sign is to bring a towel to the beach), to drink beer in our favorite bars, to see the sunset, to a relatively out of the way neat beach area where a river runs parallel to the ocean front and you sit at your tables in the middle of it (Ju loved this because he could swim without any floating device and there were lots of kids to interact with), and to Itaparica island where we stayed at a friend's house that was so full of people that dad had to sleep in a hammock under the mango tree - which is surely something that he will tell as a great story at the office.

Today yet, as soon as we finish the translation for a sushi restaurant that was due last Friday, we are going to Coco Bahia restaurant where there is an open playground for kids, live ducks swimming around in the pond/water fall out front, and various live birds and their ecological bios posted around the all natural, dirt floor, plant and vine covered building. We also plan to (before Thursday when he leaves) go to our favorite North beach to spend a morning and have a little grill party in our garage area, but considering the amount of sun I got this weekend, I'm not sure I need any more beach time. I am now almost the color of the locals.

Calzones! I meant to try to post this before the new year. Didn't happen.


This is the mess. Ju helped to make it.


This is the dough. Who knew I could bake? Unfortunately, I had to squish it by hand because my rolling pin went missing. The Calzones were kind of on the thick side, but Ju liked to just eat the crust, so it still worked out well.

Here are the finished product. Lisa would be proud.

And here is the official crust tester, eating the edges off of his calzone before attacking mine and doing the same.

I think nearly every present Ju got this year has wheels on it. Next year, we need to find a different theme. The real problem with this is that you never find those cool "alternative" toys, thinks like I used to buy in Natural Wonders and museum gift shops as a kid - things based in science and art and not prone to become "just another toy." Every day I think of things I really miss about the States. Why can we have an Impressions 5?

My friends have all moved on from college. I know we did. I think about it sometimes, how far we have come since we left good ol' MSU or even CHS so many years before. I keep finding people online I had lost. It's the nice thing about the internet.

Take my friend Rachanee, for example. She was a such a character in the dorms - I remember chatting with her on ICQ every morning, even though we lived right next door to each other - we were that ridiculous. She is now a singer/song writer indi artist. The quintessential girl with guitar that I always wanted to be, but did not have the discipline to learn guitar. On some level I am jealous, but mostly I am just impressed and proud to know her.

Just want I wanted for Xmas - a cold. I can't believe I have gone almost the whole semester without catching almost anything! I guess I should count my blessings since I spent virtually the first two years strait of being a preschool teacher being sick with one thing or another. I chalk this one up to elevate stress levels due to the construction in my room over the holiday vacation and the pressure of having to empty the whole thing of all toys and materials by Friday (while still teaching 15 three year olds from 7-12 and running DI in the afternoons) and the strange actions of the PTA this morning, when they just popped in the middle of work period and started removing old toys and furniture because they were going to "replace" it with "new materials" in "January" (want to believe them? Try reading my rant about the school printer which we just got a new one TODAY). After kind of politely telling them to come back later when I had some time to devote to their cleaning, I went to the superintendent and called our coordinator who is on maternity leave and found out that the PTA did not tell anyone what they were doing and did not have this "authorization" or whatever they seemed to think they had. They were unapologetic about the mess they created and now I am missing furniture in my room which I need.

I hate my oven.

It goes without saying that this is the country of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and my stove certainly enters into that idea. Most people drive things into ground here, or at least if they don't want them anymore, they don't end up at a goodwill somewhere to waste away as junk, but rather are happily taken by someone who has nothing or very little and is happy to get whatever you are giving out. Most technology is so expensive here that using something until it's useless is the only option.

Case in point, my stove. I think it's older than me. It most certainly is the same one my husband grew up with, now covered with rust, lit with matches, with the wire frame that supports our cooking pots threatening to break through the rust spots at any moment and spill soup everywhere. The oven only has two settings; 1 and 2. No one is sure what the temperature of either of them is, not that it matters since the door doesn't shut all the way. I tie it up with string to a large peg to try to keep the gap down to a couple of centimeters instead of a gaping five or more waiting for Ju's wandering hand to find it. And while were at it, lets not forget to mention that everything burns in the front and is underdone in the back if you don't rotate your food every half and hour or so because the flame only burns in the front.

Last night, I attempted to make pumpkin chocolate cookies, which according to the recipe should only take 15-20 minutes to cook. After over an hour in the oven, I finally managed to get 6 cookies reasonably cooked enough to remove them from the pan. I gave up after midnight, when I managed to burn one side of the tray and get the tinfoil stuck in the cookie trying to get it off.

I have never attempted to bake alone before - I always had some support; my mom, then Teddi in college, then Lisa in gradschool, and then Sheila in Brasil for a while. I'd like to say that I did okay for my first time out on my own in the great world of baking, but the oven kind of ruined the experience for me.

Maybe I'll write Santa for a new stove.

If it's not kids, it's cats! After having several nights of Ju waking up and getting scared of things in the dark like stuffed animals and shadows, I finally was determined to get a good nights sleep, when low and behold, I am woken up at 4AM by none other than Ona-key who decided that she absolutely MUST be fed THIS INSTANT and told me this continuously for 5 minutes before I actually acknowledged that I heard her meowing in my ear and got up. I am dead on my feet. Or butt actually, since I am sitting down. I think I'll go sleep now.

Everything these days is "mommy, papai, Juju" - three butterflies, three cups, three paint brushes, three rocks... Each set of three has a representative of each person in the family.

Ona is more and more decrepit by the day, not really walking so much as dragging her back legs along the floor to support her behind. The consequence of this is that she will often come in and poop on the tile floor somewhere rather than try to step into her litter box. Ju knows that coco is dirty and he can't touch it, so when he finds some, he usually comes to tell me and then watches as I clean it up.

This morning he found there was some on the veranda next to the litter box, and told me so, but since it was out there and not in the middle of foot traffic, I just said "okay, don't touch it, it's dirty. mommy will come clean it" and continued drinking my coffee. A little while later, he came to the top of the stairs and told me again, but this time accompanied by a long stretch of Ju language that I was unable to decifer, so I thought I'd better take a look. When I came up stairs I saw he had a diaper sitting in front of him, and inside it was the cat poop. Outside on the veranda I found another diaper with more cat poop in it. I guess he just wanted to help.

Some interesting random things from this week:

Since I took one side off Ju's crib, he's been climbing in and out several times a night, sometimes falling out onto the flip out chair we leave beside it for that purpose, and sometimes going to sleep in the hammock. The other night Gustavo went into say good night and he wasn't in any of the former listed places, but UNDERNEATH the crib, sleeping away on the hard tile floor in just a diaper. Gustavo reckons he was hot and got out to sleep for that reason, as it runs in the family (Gustavo will slither off the bed onto the floor if he's hot and NEVER sleeps with covers, even in the winter, usually). I think it's more likely he just rolled off and found his way under there.

Ju is getting very resourceful and is climbing everything! I had to take his Spiderman ball from him today and put it up on the bookshelf because he kept throwing it at the computer screen, so he just climbed right up the shelves and got it down again. This was a real test of limits for him, as he did it right in front of me, laughing the whole time. I should also mention this shelf is eye level for me, so he was up pretty high for him. Later, he kept doing the same thing with a straw hat, so I took it and placed it carefully on top of the standing fan. He went over and shook it a bit, to see if he could get it to fall off. When that didn't work, he looked around, spotted a t-shirt I had left hanging on the dining room chair, took it and started whipping it at the hat until it fell down. Where do they learn this stuff?

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.



I wish pumpkin pie could be mailed.....

The things you learn from television or perhaps parents trying to be funny....

Ju has been obsessed with Cookie Monster since he started watch Sesame Street videos he got for his birthday. This slowly evolved into a Cookie Monster imitation of daddy being "papai monster" and pretending to try to eat him. About a month ago, Ju started tearing all the foam letters and numbers to pieces with his teeth, and recently discovered the joys of doing this to onion skin and spreading it around the house. Today he went one step further and did a cookie monster with his soup for dinner. He seemed to understand that this was not appropriate when I told him I was upset about it, and then proceeded to ask if he could go do it with the onions instead - "a cookie monster widdy uhn-uhn, num num num."

Strange finger positions. I'm sure this is genetic, but it's not from either of his parents.

As I spend time reading up on other people's lives (more and more often people I know only digitally), I become more tempted to post photos and other things on here. I so enjoy seeing them on other people's blogs, and I wish I could do the same. I am, however, slightly put off since I link to my photo educational blog and there are links to that on several public sites, and I can't help feeling that thats just a whole can of cyber-stalker worms that I don't want to open. So, for those who wish to see more photos, videos, etc, I would invite you to facebook where the privacy settings are easier to manipulate.

Major reorganization. I have been bit by the antsy bug. I have reorganized both bedrooms and my classroom in the last three days. I even fixed my hanging plant that broke (this involved making a whole new chain and connecting holder out of some very thick wire with some very crappy pliers that gave me a very nasty blister on my palm) and spent some time organizing my magic garden area on the veranda. I am sure I had to actually accomplish some work this weekend, but I haven't done it. On the other hand, things that have been in the back of my mind are now getting done, so it can't be all bad.

Since it seems to be the thing to do - Introducing Ju-Leão!