New Year, blog resolutions.

Many years ago, I went to the Getty Museum in L.A. and bought this beautiful hardcover notebook. I've always had a thing for all things stationary. So I remembered when I was younger and kept a diary, and how much fun that was, so I thought maybe I could use that beautiful notebook as my grown-up diary, or journal.

You should also know I am very much into rituals - there are things that I just couldn't care less, but there are things, little things, that I am extremely and anally methodical about. So I waited for New Year's to start everything fresh.

I opened the notebook on December 31st, and as a rule - don't ask me why -, I never write on the very first page. So on the second page, I wrote 12 New Year's resolutions, which I think was for year 2007 or 2008.  The common same old story blabber "make more money, lose weight, travel, blablabla" and the very last item was:

- Frequently write on this journal.

As I was organizing some boxes for my moving (yes, I'm moving next week!), I found this notebook. Brought a smile to my face and very fond memories... I opened it, read my resolutions, and realized that was all that was written in it.

Every single year I make this "resolution" of salvaging my blog and somewhere along the year I always end up losing it. I was doing good last year, even won a trip to London as a blogger. But after that if was all chaos and I barely had time to sleep, let alone blog. So once again, my baby was set aside.
As tradition says, this year yet again, I will promise to keep it up, and hope I won't fail yet again, despite the negative history I have with blogs.

Truth be told, most of the time I feel like my life is not interesting enough to be shared,  but my friend and I decided to, let's say, commit to having a personal blog, and maybe try to get out of our comfort zone more often to shake things up a little bit and, who knows, we might have stories to tell. 

Worst case scenario, you will just be stuck with boring, sad, sob stories that will make you feel good about yourself.

Getting ready!

Seems like this adventure started so long ago, but in fact, it's just starting NOW.
The thoughts of making the first intro video, the anxiety to make the challenge video... they're nothing compared to what's coming now! And at first I thought it was probably just a trip to London with random blog posts... but it's a bit more complex than that.

So the first group of the Samsung Global Bloggers arrived TODAY in London, and they have already been briefed on some of the activities, teamed up and given names to each team...
All these things just help build up more and more anxiety - I'm so excited for them!!! I have NO IDEA what are the activities they'll do and HOW they'll do it... but I'm happy and counting the days until it is my turn to go there and have to run around to get all the juicy good stuff to people and blog about it!

So make sure you follow me on my London2012 Olympic Games blog!!! New updates coming real soon!!!

Some of us bloggers... see me??? 

The gift of silence

Anyone who knows me knows what a struggle it is for me to get through each day here in Brazil. Or at least they've heard me b•tch about it once or twice, in any given conversation.

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately (or ever since I moved here) is exactly this - the silence around my house, or lack thereof.
People think of their homes as a place to find solace from the stressful lives most of us lead - job, traffic, gossip, broken hearts... (and BELIEVE ME, whoever lives in Sao Paulo needs a place to find peace of mind and heart). Our home is supposed to be that private and quiet place where we can just be...

When I came back I told my husband that it would be hard getting used to sleeping with the street noise... cars and buses... but nothing compares to my neighbors.

Since I moved in, not a day goes by that I'm not disturbed by this. Don't people have any awareness??? I know we live in apartments, but I've lived in apartments before and have never had such noisy neighbors!!! It's like they have no respect or regard for anyone else.

It is 2.44am and they're playing loud music and hosting some friends. They're all laughing and screaming (yes, deliberately screaming "woohoo's" and "yippie's" and "OH YEAH's" for no reason at all, other than to be obnoxious to the 5 other apartments surrounding them) and they're dancing and jumping in the living room - which just so happens to be right above mine.

I've never made a complaint to the administration because I know all other neighbors do it and nothing happens. Every once in a while they circulate a memo saying "we've had complaints about the noise, please keep it down or we'll have to place a disturbance fee", and that's it.
I've thought of going up there and talking directly to them, but I don't wanna be the bitchy neighbor that knocks on their door to complain... besides I'm most afraid of retaliation. I don't doubt that they'd make it worse to piss me off.

I've called the police and they told me they couldn't do anything about it and that I should call the City Hall. Did that and they told me they couldn't do anything about it and that I could call the police. So I really don't know what else I can do to have some quiet and peace in my own home.

My geographical biological clock

Biological clocks - we all have them and they're all different yet, the works of it is pretty much the same. Sometimes your body says you're getting old, sometimes it says "hey, let's have a baby!", sometimes it says "I'm done with procreation, let's not EVER have sex anymore!"... but your biological clock also works on a daily basis, telling you things like - "hey, let's go to sleep".

I've always been a bit of a night-bird, since I was a kid, actually. And man, am I cranky when I wake up early in the morning, even though I love it when I do. It feels so good to think about how much I've done before it's even 10am. I feel very productive, but that hasn't happened in a long, long time.

Turns out my biological clock is American, more precisely, from Orange County, California.

When I lived in California I worked as a nanny for a while. The dad used to live in NY, but he'd been back for the past 5 years or so... He'd come home from work, open a bottle of wine, work on his computer for a little bit, play with the kid and by 8pm he'd be asleep, if possible. Then he'd wake up at 3 or 4am and get his day started.
To me, that was nuts. He said it was because he was still on the NY schedule and I could never understand that - he'd been back for 5 years or so!!!

Well, joke's on me. I've been back for over a year now and it seems that my body has not been able to get off the California time zone. It is not 3.12am and I do not feel sleepy - at all! If I go by my biological clock, I will start getting tired in 1 hour or 2, which is about the time I used to go to bed back then.

I've tried getting back on track by waking up early and getting really really sleepy so I can go to bed early... never works. Doesn't matter how tired I've been all day, inevitably by 10pm I start getting hyper. If I go to sleep before 10pm, I'll be up by midnight and only fall back asleep at 6 or 7am.

I've been to a sleep doctor - he told me I should not go against my body's nature and go to sleep when I feel tired and wake up late if I can. Even though I do like that advice, I'd much rather have a normal schedule. Truth be told, I'd much rather be where my biological clock belongs...

San Clemente Beach, California

Adventure ahead!

Today I left my house for the first time in 2 weeks.

It was the most stupid outing - I needed to go to the hospital and get x-rays of my back -, but I'm feeling so excited to get out of these walls, I actually decided to "get ready" for it. I got some of my makeup gear out (that hasn't been used in over 2 weeks) and pampered myself a little. My husband thought it was funny that I put on makeup to go to the hospital, but hey!, this is the most exciting thing that happened to me this month.

These past few days made me think of how many small, simple things we take for granted. Mobility is one of them. We're usually so bummed each morning that we have to get out of bed to go to work that we don't realize how lucky we are to be able to get out of bed.

Oh, yes. I was on the track to a steady recovery last week, planning on doing my outing on Saturday, but on Friday I choked over homemade Korean BBQ and coughed... that was enough to bring me back to square 1, couldn't move, couldn't sit, couldn't stand, walk... right after it happened, my husband laid me in bed and I started crying.
He thought I was crying from the pain, but it was actually mere frustration. I cried because I thought "Great. Is this what my life is gonna be like from now on? In bed, in pain, afraid to cough or sneeze?"

Two more days in constant need of help to get out of bed, to walk, to go to the bathroom... I couldn't even sit, he had to hold me up when I went to the bathroom. It's a frustrating situation and belittling to say the least... and the moment I managed to sit up on the bed by myself... triumph. It was such a small thing, that we instinctively do every day... and we don't realize that it can be a struggle for other people.

Need milk for babies

It is known all around the world that Brazil is kind of a poor country. If you go out on the street you're likely to bump into a few beggars every day.

Beggars annoy me (I guess they annoy everyone, actually), but I get specially annoyed with lying beggars, and today I came across one which has just gone up to the top of my list of ingenious beggars in second place, just behind another one I had an encounter with some years ago. I thought I'd share the stories with you.

As I said, ingenious beggar #2 happened today.
I was in the subway on my way home, and this girl, who seems to be 18-19 years old, walks in pushing an old stroller all covered up, no one can see inside it. She's wearing jeans, sandals and a black Ecko t-shirt, that seemed to be brand new (you know how black washes away). In one hand she had a bunch of slips of paper, the other, a Quicksilver bag.
She starts handing out these slips of paper to everyone in the carriage, and I'm thinking "She might be selling something" and looked away so she wouldn't come bother me... even so, she left a slip of paper on my lap and poked me to look at it. I did. The paper read:

I really need money to buy milk and food for my little brothers, so anything you give me will help.

Really??? How about I give you some advice??? Go to school, get a job and stop spending money with branded clothes!!!

[ just for reference, here in Brazil an Ecko t-shirt costs around R$80-100BRL (≈$50-60usd), which I think is pretty expensive for a t-shirt; quicksilver is also a pretty expensive brand, since it's imported. ]

Okey, ingenious beggar #1 is ingenious!
T'is the year 2001, and Brazil is broadcasting a soup opera that made a lot of success and touched a lot of people's heart, since it talked about a girl who had leukemia. (the plot of the soup opera is very much like "My Sister's Keeper")
It was kinda "trendy" to talk about leukemia, and bone marrow transplant, and there was a scene where the girl is shaving her head that was very emotional, so everyone talked about it.

One more time, there I was taking the train home, this was just a couple of days after the episode where the doctor told the mom her daughter would need a bone marrow transplant aired, and this woman in rags walks in carrying a chubby 2 year old baby. She stands in the middle of the carriage and starts her speech, at the top of her lungs:

Guys, I'm here today, because I need your help. You see, my daughter, that I'm carrying in my arms, is sick. She lost her bone marrow! When I noticed it, I took her to the doctor, and he said it costs a lot of money to get her a new one, so GUYS, I NEED YOUR HELP. HELP ME BUY A NEW BONE MARROW FOR MY SICK DAUGHTER.

Again, may I help with some advice? Try selling your tv, maybe that should cover the cost of all new bones she will ever lose in her life.

Here's a video of the so famous scene when the girl gets her head shaved.