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

Weekends in Brazil

I have an American friend living here in Sao Paulo, and a while after she moved here she told me it was hard hanging out with friends over here because most people just visit their families on weekends. I'm not sure if this happens exclusively in Brazil, but it is true in most cases here.
My husband and I are just really lazy so we don't do it every weekend, but we do try to balance weekends with friends / his family / my family. We could see his family a lot more (since they live relatively close by), but sometimes my husband is just not in the mood and, well... I'm certainly not going to insist.

This weekend and the one before were spent with my in-laws. They're not the most socially adequate people, and my father-in-law is Chinese. Oh yeah, here's some information on Chinese people: they usually have no awareness for Ocidental standards of politeness and they have no concerns to speak their mind, regardless of who it will offend or hurt. Add that to the fact that my father-in-law is not crazy about me... well, it's not a breeze to be around him.
I don't feel thrilled to go there, but in spite of all that, going there is also not as bad as it could be. They're such peculiar people, there's always a story after a day spent with the in-laws.

My husband's relationship with them is also peculiar. It seems like they depend on him A LOT (not financially, but in every other way), and he talks to them just like he would to any of his friends. His dad had a picture of a naked lady on his desktop background (don't get me started), so as a prank hubs decided to change it... to a naked tranny.
The more I talk about them, the more people think they are very bizarre. And they are, really. This was just another day at the Lee's residence.

Meatless Monday

I've been wanting to write about this for a while, and today I finally got the time and the timing right. Has anyone ever heard of "Meatless Monday"?
In a nutshell, it's a way of bringing the goods of vegetarianism to everyone. I am not a vegetarian myself, and it's a shame I don't work harder on that and my husband would never be able to pull it off either, but Meatless Monday does make a difference.

A lot of people I know say they could never be vegetarians (my husband included) because they just LOVE meat so much. And I understand that, we're raised in a carnivore world, it's like saying "can you live without chocolate the rest of your life?" - unless you have a personal distaste for it, you can't, and most people just so happens to love it. That's why Meatless Monday is so great - you get to be a vegetarian, only one day a week.

Refraining from eating meat has countless benefits. Health is one to begin with... a lot of heart problems are related to meat consumption, so this definitely helps. Environmentally, it also makes a huge difference. Anyways, I won't number them here because I'm not the most qualified person to do so, instead I will give you the links to read more about it.

Here are some links to it:

Meatless Monday (USA)
Segunda-Feira Sem Carne (Brazil)
Lunes Sin Carne (Spain)
Lundi Sans Viande (France)
Köttfri Måndag (Sweden)

My purpose in writing this is because eventually I want to post some recipes of vegetarian dishes I like to make. I'll do that whenever I post on Mondays.

Happy week everyone! :)

I believe in a thing called love

I got back in touch with a dear old friend about a year ago. (facebook *is* wonderful sometimes.)
Since we last saw each other he got married and had 2 beautiful children, and was very happy and telling me how amazing his family was. A few weeks ago we talked again and he told me he's getting a divorce.

I love my husband and I make sure I tell him that at least 10 or 100 times every day. And he does the same. We're not at all one of those couples with all the PDA or always writing on each other's facebook wall how much we love each other and how great our love is etc etc, because we both think that's very unnecessary, and that does not - at all - mean we don't have a solid and loving relationship.
After a bit more than 3 years together we have all the intimacy a couple should have - and a lot more than what's acceptable, but what are you gonna do? -, we still have our romantic moments, we've sailed stormy seas and got past it together and what I personally think is the best... pretty much every night when we go to bed to sleep, we just lay there and talk for a while about everything and nothing. And we make each other laugh A LOT with the silliest things. Seriously, sometimes I wonder what would other people think of us.

So what I mean is, I'm sure about my feelings for my husband and I'm pretty sure he is too and we have no intention of ever not being the annoyingly perfect couple that we are.
But whenever I hear stuff like that, just makes me so sad and a bit angry because I *do* believe in such corny things as eternal love, but hey - maybe my friend did too, and now he's getting a divorce. It just makes me feel so cynical and skeptic.

I guess... no one gets married thinking "Hey, we can always get a divorce 5 years from now!",  so we just have to believe in this thing called love and try to power through all the rough patches together, for better or for worse... that's how our parents and their parents used to do, right?

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.

I cracked my back.

Yes, and that's the reason I haven't checked on my blog - or any other blog - for the past week.

I've had this problem for a while now, but last Saturday my bad back finally decided to make a strong statement by leaving me immobile.

It was quite a pathetic accident, I must say - I was baking a chocolate cake, which didn't even turn out to be *that* awesome. As I was putting the cake into the oven I felt it. And then I fell on the floor and couldn't move anymore.
I managed to crawl to the living room to get my phone and call my husband, who came home to a wife, in the middle of the living room floor on her hands and knees. But then again, I think this might be every man's dream.
Only after he saw me there was no fun... he had to help me get up, lay me down in bed and luckily I have an acupuncturist for a father-in-law. I gotta say this. My in-laws are not very helpful or very nice people, but I have to be thankful for this, him being the one person who was able to get me to move again was a life saver. I guess, of all the flaws I can accuse him of, this one thing should make up for all the rest.

Anyways, coming back from NOT MOVING AT ALL is a slow recovery, but now I'm already able to get out of bed on my own, walk on my own, go to the bathroom... hell I even lifted a chair today!!!

I never thought I'd see the day this would actually happen to me, but I guess it serves me to open my eyes and get it in my head for once and for all that I do need to take better care of myself, my diet, lose weight, exercise... ugh. Recovery is just beginning and it will be a long and hard way.