I’m sure you’ve all heard what must be huge national news — Jamaican Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, has resigned! Andrew Holness has succeeded him.
Casually changing the subject to something more personally relevant, I watched a movie called Stop-Loss that had me crying my eyes out.
Ya gotta feel for Ryan Phillipe in an army uniform.
So it’s finally November.
Windy, November.
There is a marked change in seasons. It’s in the air. I can be out of my house after 8am and not feel like butter spread over too much bread. It’s wonderful! And a good thing too, because that 10k I signed up for is looming. – Less than a month away; I’ve been trying to train.
Regrettably, I fell off the proverbial wagon late last month and have been huffing and puffing like a TB patient most mornings since. Today was no exception; 1 hours and 10 minutes of pure effort.
I’m still getting nasty blisters on my feet that Jamaicans give me advice on — Ex:
“What color socks do you wear?”
Me: “Uh, black”
Jamaican: “No sah! Yuh haffi wer white. Yuh mus wer white”
Welp, I’m sorry to all of you who sent me black socks in packages; we’ve figured out the problem.
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A few weekends ago there was an epic All-Volunteer conference that I had the pleasure of attending in the capital city, Kingston. Towards the end I met some visiting staff members from Washington (kind of a big deal) who said they wanted my opinion on this boring application that we volunteers commonly refer to as the “oh-crap,-when-is-that-due?” Turns out, the staff in Washington call it by its proper name — “The VRF”. I was flattered that they asked for my input, adapted to calling it “The VRF”, and recklessly, I agreed to give my opinion…accidentally landing myself in a professional meeting. Oops.
It’s hard to feign intelligence in conversation. It’s harder when that conversation lasts 3 hours. While I busied myself on paper (appearing to take notes but in actuality inventing axioms that satisfied their never ending string of acronyms) the other meeting-goers engaged in professional jargon and, what I can only assume to be, lofty ideas. Clearly my tactic here was going to be ‘keep your mouth shut, samm’. Better to look like a dunce than remove all doubt, nay? My cheeks flushed and my heart raced whenever the attention was directed at me; I deflected, said something witty such as “hmm, interesting point”, or “I wonder what Anika thinks”, and smiled.
Those Washington DCers gave me conciliatory chocolate afterwords though and, since time and chocolate heal all of my wounds, I have decided that the humiliation of attending a long meeting that I have absolutely no business attending was worth it and I would readily do it again for another Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup.
When I returned home, my cockroach situation had gotten seriously out of hand. These buggers were everywhere; they took over! On my yoga mat, coming out of my drain, crawling inside my refrigerator…They rushed across my table (okay, I don’t have a table, my cutting board) and asked “really, are you going to eat that?” My stomach lurches at the memory and I, in a stroke of brilliance, decided to outsource:
Who knows how to clean really, really well?
Jamaican women.
I hired Mama in what turned out to be one of the top four best decisions of my life. She came and spent six hours scrubbing, scouring, wiping, sweeping, mopping, beating, spraying, and killing while I spent those same six hours organizing, eliminating, guiding, washing, dusting, and staying out of the way. My house is now wonderful! I invite all of you to come over. The cockroach situation has abated and I feel inspired to cook.
On that positive sentiment I am going to go and do just that.
Vegetables, fruit (cutting it counts as cooking), and lemon grass tea.
Bon appetit mon cheri(s),
‘mi
Adventuresam 