You know, this one might actually turn into a post. We'll see how long until my thoughts veer to the Starbucks conveniently located only a few blocks away, and I completely lose track of what I was going on about and I end up writing about how much better Mexican cows must be treated than cows in other Starbucks locations to produce such superior milk that is then frothed and made into the loveliest latte just for me and available to me now almost at any hour of the day and/or night, and then I'll just go on about coffee vs. Starbucks coffee for several paragraphs and cap everything off with a picture of the cool Starbucks mugs the Viking bought me and...
Well. That didn't take long, did it now? Still, I guess that counts as blogging. Yes?
But what is it that's kept me from spending my boredom and general (as well as quite overwhelming) inclination to sit around for hours on end by writing my caffeinated quirks (and sometimes preaching about coffee and/or other important issues) into the great big void, also known as the blogosphere-hood of the internetz?
Well, partly (the Viking would say mostly, but I'm still telling him my obsession will get better), Starbucks is to blame. Damn their comfy chairs, alluring coffee smell, and the staff knowing my name and being all nice to me in several different locations in several different languages! That's how they get me, they have nice-smelling, polite people and a place for me to sit down while I drink my umpteenth coffee of the day. Damn them. Sometimes there are even tables. Can you believe it?
But also, there's been quite a lot of life. Quite a lot of life in Mexico and Mexico City.
I hadn't realized how much I'd missed this place - its food, people, coffee, traffic, attitude, sounds, altitude, views, colors, and so on. I didn't remember how much this place had always felt like home to me and the Viking, or how many good friends we had here, or how ardently the customer the Viking had been working with worshipped at his feet (even when they kind of reeked [sometimes the feet, sometimes the customer]), or how good a proper guacamole really could taste when it was properly made in a molcajete by a surprisingly brawny old lady with more grey hair on her head than a docile Finnish bear after it had been hunted by my hunting-crazy relatives (imagine: Extranjera with a gun! I know.). In the two and a half years we'd been gone from here, I had adapted to life in Africa and really enjoyed it too, but I had forgotten how well this continent of colors and permeating smell of raw sewage really fitted my (increasingly cellulite-inflicted) contours.
Good thing we're back, and I'm getting a chance at remembering. (The Viking maintains he remembers everything, which I take to mean I'm lucky to still have him in my life, but also that perhaps that teetotalling-thing might just be of some value when it comes to such trifles as job performance, avoiding senility, and saying only smart things instead of blurting out drunken sentences like "two dead zebras would be a wonderful buy, yes please I'd like two." But that's only me. And then there's wine. And, in all honesty, I think the two are inseparable.)
Still, our stuff is stuck in a container in South Africa, the Mexican government refuses to officially acknowledge that they'd like for us to stay longer, leaving us to live in a vacation rental apartment, out of our suitcases, without a car, without a local bank account (leaving my Danish Visa-card soon closed and screaming for mercy), without a cellular subscription, and without anywhere to properly call home. Although we already are, referring to Mexico City as home, like we never left in the first place.
Sun sets over Polanco and Santa Fe, Mexico City
Yes, that brown haze is pollution. No, you can't see it when you're breathing it in.
