The PP Gets a Headache

Today I have been thinking my eyes hurt. Oh shit my nystagmus is making my eyes hurt! Wait no, its my eyeballs. My eyeballs hurt. And my head is hurting quite alot too. Right behind my hurting eyeballs. And then it hits me. I realize what is happening to my body. I am having a legitimate headache. The kind that people always say hurts behind there eyes and then they touch there temples really dramatically. I never knew what this meant until today. And I found out 26 1st graders yelling at you isn't the right medicine. Anyway this realization has been a shocker for starters.

The problem is that I am an extremely healthy person. Healthy, ha, well, that's not the right word. I mean to say, that I have avoided corporal harm for 25 years. I have lived a pretty pain free life so far and going strong. My concept of pain is a pre-zit, a stubbed toe, an indian burn, retainers worn once every year, touching the "hot plate" at the mexican restaurant, and chapped lips. I don't think I have experienced anything truly painful. I mean I know what emotional pain is like when you lose the Mad Men episode you just downloaded or when your kindle dies but physical pain is not something I encounter often. However I've gotten pretty good at pretending it.  I even remember doing it as a child. Which side is my appendix on? Well yes it is hurting quite a lot! And even as an adult I may have sometimes been a bit dramatic and embellished some "headaches" so I could use the excuse like everyone else. ("Its behind my eyes, and these temples! Oh its the temples!). Now as I find out that there really is a way for my brain to cause pain right behind my eyes, and I am vulnerable to this heinous torture, I repent. Dear baby cheeses, I repent.

I am nervous for when I have to encounter something actually painful. I have never broken a bone, had surgery (except for wisdom teeth removal and even then I was given pain killers that might have been used longer than necessary for especially "painful" days). What if I break a bone now? I can´t even imagine. 

In Spain, pretty much everything is blamed on the weather. I said my head hurt and I got a "Es el tiempo Camille." Same with a cold I had in February. The flu? Weather. Seriously, we should just say this damn economic crisis is the weather's fault. But anyway, when I look for sympathy I find it's just a phone call away. I recommend everyone to move to a foreign country. The distance really elicits your mom's affection and sympathy. I called my mom when I had said flu this winter and she didn't say one thing about the weather, just "Oh my poor precious princess." And I thought, that's right, the poor precious princess! I may call her right now about this headache business.

A side story about "pain" in Spain (yes, sPAIN)... Last year at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning I remember crying to a doctor at the emergency room pleading for some kind of pain medication. I had a bad ear infection. She just gave me high milligram IB Profen and a smirk. At the time I thought "Estas de cono!?" (Are you of the vagina?) Now that I think back on this, I would say this was a quite painful experience but then again I am comparing it to chapped lips and hangnails. So I'm not really sure if pain meds were really needed. Apparently my sobbing didn't convince her that they were. I might have even pulled the card, this isn't even my country and I would really appreciate if you would adhere to what I'm used to.... (Shame, I know). She obviously didn't realize she was talking to someone's precious princess. She did give me the common courtesy to not blame it on the weather though. To prove just how courteous this woman is, I saw her like 9 months later when I went to a family Christmas dinner and found out she was related to the family I am good friends with. She didn't even bring up my bawl fest. What a woman. 

Anyway, I think I should be talking about Spain and the fact that I am leaving in less than two weeks. But I tend to focus on the right now. And it's headache. Which actually is receding now that I am away from hoopla. I hope my eyeballs and back of eyeballs never go through this again. I just don't think I could take it. I'm an epidural kind of girl. 


Next post, will be the final farewell to Metropolitan Vigo, the best gym there ever was. 

What is an SUV?

When you have friends visit you in Europe, you start to see things again from the American viewpoint. Being over here I tend to forget about the way Americans see things until I have an American next to me pointing out every difference, and then I remember very clearly.

Yes, Europe is rather grimy. No, that man probably shouldn't be smoking in our elevator. Are we almost getting hit by every moped? Yes, that's true it is rather inefficient to go to the fruitera, bakery and grocery store. Have I kissed 14 peoples' cheeks today? Yes that is quite a lot of kisses. Is 11:00 pm late for dinner? But I ate lunch at 3:00 pm. Oh, that's late too isn't it. Take this food to-go? Like not eat it at the restaurant we came to? Right, I remember. Two euros for a wine, I suppose that is pretty cheap...

The last one is the one that takes the cake for me. Because now my view is that anything over 3 euros a glass (at a restaurant) is crazy expensive. I am going to just fucking lose it when the american restaurants try to charge me their ludicrous prices. The bottles I buy at the supermarket are always under 5 euros and fantastic. Can someone do some research on this issue? Why the hell are the prices of wine so drastically different? Do we just need more vineyards in the states? Pues, empezamos ya! Sometimes the spanish sentence just comes out first. But seriously, you Americans are really good at getting shit done, and getting shit solved so listen to me. Stop fussing over birth control and gay marriage and fuss over something important. I will return thirsty and broke, so you guys have about t minus one month to give me an answer.

Cono! Only one month until I leave. No, no, no......

(These are just random thoughts they have nothing to do with friends who have visited or friend that is coming TODAY.) I need to go americanize myself. Carlita will be arriving in two hours. And I hope she is bringing her mexican accent. I honestly don't think she will be able to use her travel Spanish without the mexican accent. She is so damn good at it. Oh my god I can't wait to see the spanairds' faces, they will be so offended!

Wednesday Science

I finally weighed the water collected from the dehumidifier! You will not believe how long it has been on my list of things to do. Yes, it made the list. The thing is, the dehumidifier's container fills every few days and when its full an obnoxious "beep beep" noise ensues until you empty the water container. So of course the beep beep drives me rabid. I always rush to dump out the water just to pacify the beeping gods, and then think, "Cono! I wanted to weigh that water first!" Too late. Too beeping late.

Drives me rabid? That may be exaggeration. It annoys me a touch.

So why would I want to weigh water? Good question. It is a small accomplishable task. And I tend to have a habit of adding extremely trivial tasks like this one to my to-do list. I do this so that when the more important (always more mundane) things don't get done, I can feel better seeing the other lines boldly crossed out and think, "Well thank God someone q-tip cleaned the keyboard!" These tasks make you feel good when they are marked off. They are a confidence safety net.

The other reason I wanted to weigh the water is because it is like a mini science experiment. (Weighing water is science right? What if I call it H2O? And if I ask myself "Wanna hypothesis how much it weighs?") Because I do those things. And I call it science. And I won at a science fair in 6th grade so I know.*

If you are still reading, I am so very grateful!! Was reading my blog a trivial task on your to-do list?! I hope so. Tell those other boring things they can wait for some Monday or whatever. Now back to my meanigful, scientific task.

Those reasons before were hogwash. The real one is that I weighed the water to justify my complaints about the humidity in Galicia. Oh the humidity. Its been raining for the past month. Month. That is a lot of rain. The biggest problem for me and the humid weather is trying to dry my clothes. I hang them up to dry, but they take days and days. I then end up re-washing clothes to take out the incumbent mildewy smell but it still lurks. Finally I just resort to wearing weird clothes that are clean and dry. Purple jeans + arkansas t-shirt, yes, done, beautiful, outfit destroyer. Its just too humid to dry clothes. Even with the dehumidifier. This has been the first time in my life to use one of these apparati. That means it takes out the water. (The dehumidifier, not the word apparati. That's just apparatus plural.) I didn't even know dehumidifiers existed to be honest. In Oklahoma we fill the air with water. And on top of that dryers exist there. Like they are even necessary, clothes would dry in less than 24 hours with that dry, crusty climate! What fucking paradise those Oklahomans have.


So that's the reason why I weighed the water. It's now time to hypothesis how many kilos of water my apparatus collected! Go ahead, just hypothesis!
............
6.4 KILOS!!!!!  Oh what's a kilo you ask? It took me a while to figure out how much exactly but it's a bit more than double a pound. So yes, this is like 14 lbs. Of water. Sucked from the air. And collected in my apparatus. For me to weigh. On my kilo scale.

And I know what you're thinking. My dehumidifier is a bad ass. And it's true. It magically steals water from the air desperately trying to give me my normal jeans in a dry, clean state. I appreciate that little machine. That's why I decided to rename it to "the humidity-defy-er."
I sure hope a child with dyslexia didn't already beat me to this wordplay. (Aka Camille's worst fear).

And here's the humidity-defy-er, defying humidity:

And that's all. Time for bed.
XOXO COCO



*Winning a science experiment in 6th grade deludes one into thinking they have a proclivity for science. It should probably be noted though that in my case, I went to a tiny, Catholic elementary school with a class size of 12 and I entered two experiments that year because I couldn't decide how I wanted to decorate my board. I would say I had pretty good odds of winning. But I'm not a mathmetician. I'm a scientist.

Full bellies and cold showers

I just finished eating the most gastronomically orgasmic meal. It was obscene. And I loved it. I love food so much!!!!! It's totally in my top 3 favorite things in life. I don't know whats going to happen when I have a child or dog that wants to encroach on my list. There are only three spots! But this is mas adelante.

(Just reminded myself I am getting a dog this year! Ok maybe he can have one of the spots.)

Anyway I rolled myself home in an ultra food coma state, happy as a lard lark. During dessert (white chocolate mousse with strawberries and chocolate syrup) my friend offered a post-dinner movie night at her house. She described the movie as I contemplated the offer. Not for the movie night or girl time of course but because her house was downhill from the restaurant and I like going with gravity. Stuffed Camille's don't care about whether it's a comedy or a drama, they just need a comfortable sitting device and yoga pants p to the pronto. After much internal deliberation I finally decided to walk myself to my home. (The movie did sound pretty painful.) I think it was this. The first few steps though I did lots of exasperated sighing about this "uphill" walk I had to do. I decided to time myself. It took 5 minutes. It's not even that uphill. Your mind just tells you it is when you think you have added 10 kilos to your caboose.

So now, sitting here in my maternity yoga pants (that's not redundancy, they are in fact stretch maternity pants and they are incredible) I just realized that we finished dinner at about the same time people are eating in the states. With the time difference. I am going to flip when I get back.
Just flip.

I was also thinking of how great it will be to have constant hot water in the states. Oh yes, this is something to be thankful for. This morning the propane tank ran out while I was in the shower. I of course had just put shampoo in my hair. So I grabbed the shower hose, closed my eyes and started a pattern of spraying myself with ice cold water, spazzing out and stifling profanities. I tried to get the important parts but honestly it was just too unbearable. I think I looked worse after the shower. Its weird to think that this hell-like rejuvenating experience doesn't happen in the states. You guys are missing out on exciting showers! And after the wild shower I ended up boiling some water and having a proper facewash, that scorched my skin and felt sooooo good. It made me feel rustic survivally for thinking up such a brilliant idea and seeing it work so well. (Despite bright red face). 


The girl from Oklahoma shows Spain!


Also central heating will be nice. This pioneer girl doesn't like the cold.