Marriage 401, Lecture 398: Cookie conundrum

This happened two days after we ordered three boxes of Girl Scout cookies, which is highly unusual for us. We usually don't buy cookies of any sort except for the expensive Toledo cookies and look how that turned out. The only reason we bought these was because my friend at book club was telling us that she had taken her daughter door to door selling but the girls in the troop whose parents sell cookies at work for them sell way more than her daughter. My motto is if you ring my doorbell and ask me to buy your cookies, I will do it. It is a safe motto to have, as it seems that most Girl Scouts sell via their parents now.

My other motto is that I will be very annoyed - very - if I am forced to buy your child's products simply because you are my boss. Are you listening, Jim C? Bringing your kid's band candy bars to work and then asking me if I want to buy one is not fair. Am I supposed to say no to the person who controls whether I have a job or not? People. Don't ask your subordinates to buy your kid's candy bars or cookies or wrapping paper. Don't ask your co-workers. Or, at least, don't ask your childless co-workers. You parents can buy from each other - I bought yours so you have to buy mine - but leave those of us without children out of it. All we get is overpriced wrapping paper. No selling at work! That's what I'm saying.

So Julie brought her little girl to our house and SH and I pored over the cookie list and ordered three boxes, which is three more boxes of cookies than we really need in our house, especially when you consider that we still have a roll of HobNobs in the freezer from our last trip to England, which was in 2009, I think. Or 2007. I can't remember.*

And yet, SH complains.

SH: You know what don't have enough of around here?

Me: What?

SH: Cookies.

Me: Nope.

SH: Are you agreeing with me?

Me: Yep.

SH: Not enough cookies.

Me: Except there are those chocolate buckwheat and the cornmeal lemon cookies in the freezer.

SH: Not those. They're frozen.**

Me: What about the pizelle in the cupboard?

SH: Those are for with custard.

Me: So?

SH: The problem with cookies in this house is they take too much planning.




* First world problem or old age? You decide.

** And just how long does it take to thaw a cookie, really? Not very. I know, as I have eaten a cookie I have extracted from the freezer even before I have made it back up the stairs before.

*** Hiding cookies from myself in the freezer isn't necessarily the best strategy, although sometimes I forget they're there. Sometimes, I forget the Fritos are in the freezer, too, but when I remember, I want some RIGHT AWAY. NOW. Oh wouldn't they be good with the ranch dressing I made yesterday? Yes, they would. Or with the leftover Ro-Tel tomato dip from book club last week. Only half the group showed up, which was fine because that meant lots of leftover Ro-Tel dip and Memphis Junior League onion dip.

Wisconsin 101: Ice Station Zebra, the shower

Here's the other thing I'm waiting for in addition for the snow to stop and for it to be warm enough to inflate the tire, although Sharon has informed me that the valve freezing thing might not be so.

I'm waiting for the bathroom, the bathtub, and my body to be warm enough that I can shave my legs without ripping the top of every follicle off with my razor. When you shave goosebumps, you end up with blood. Blood all over the place. The shower doesn't look as bad as it did the time I colored my hair Clairol #22 Cinnaberry, but a little bit of blood goes a long way. The shower curtain is still stained from the Cinnaberry, even though I've washed it since 2005.

I try to avoid blood in the shower these days. I am the person in charge of cleaning the shower and blood just complicates things.

I faced the shaving in the cold issue when I was a Peace Corps volunteer and renting a room. I thought I was renting the top floor, but then Maruja la Bruja crammed seven more people into that house, including the three men who would each shave in the bathroom in the morning and not rinse their whiskers down the sink. I complained to Maruja that she needed to keep the bathroom clean either herself or by hiring a maid, but she was unswayed. After nearly electrocuting* myself in the shower and then having to resort to heating water on the stove and taking a sponge bath every morning when Maruja refused to repair the shower, I finally moved.

The bedbugs did not help, either. Nor did the guy who rented the room next to mine who looked like a Chilean version of Woody Allen and I assure you in the strongest terms that I am not a fan of that man telling me that all I had to do was knock on the wall between our rooms if I ever got lonely in the night.

Faced with shaving in a cold bathroom (southern Chile, where I lived, is cold) standing in a tub with two kettles of hot water balanced on the piece of wood that I had laid across the front of the tub, with a razor that until I started taking it back to my room (I know, dumb) was being used by Maruja's husband to shave his thick, white whiskers - he denied using the razor, even though he was the only person in the house with hair that color, I decided to try waxing my legs instead.

There is a reason people pay a waxing professional to wax for them.

It's because the waxing professional cannot feel the pain that the waxee feels and hence is ruthless about ripping that wax off the leg.

I applied the warm wax to my calf. Let it cool and harden. Pulled. Hard. And through the tears that oozed from my eyes, watched blood ooze from my pores.

I stopped. It hurt too much. I decided there was no reason to have shaved legs in Chile, anyhow, as the only romantic attention I had gotten was from the married father of five on the train to Santiago one night. "Here's my card," he said. "Call if you want."

He had just told me about his family. I guess I was supposed to be OK with it.

Back to now. Now I have reason to keep my legs shaved - sort of. SH and I have been together for six years now and we have things down to a routine, if you know what I mean. Now I have a functioning shower in a heated bathroom without an old man using my razor. I have no excuse except it does use a lot of energy to heat the bathroom with the little wall heater and to get the tub warm enough - no point in having warm air if the tub itself is freezing cold.

So do I shave or not?



* The shower head had an electric heater attached to it and heated the water as it emerged from the pipe. A good idea in theory, but when you have to ask your friend who is also renting the top half of the house with you to stand at the fuse box to throw the switch every time the shower heater cuts the power, you start to seek alternative means of bathing.

Marriage 401, Lecture 416: No shortcuts

As he is standing in the back door.

SH: Sweetie? Would you do me a huge favor?

Me: Sure. What?

SH: I know you don't support my political views -

Me: What do you want me to do?

SH: And that you don't agree--

Me: What?

SH: But I have snow all over my shoes --

Me: WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?

SH: And I don't want to track snow in the house.

Me: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT.

SH: Would you get that [political] sign for me so I can put it up in the yard? It's in my office.

Me: Sure. But could you just once get to the point?

Wisconsin 101: Rules for the Y and a perfectly-toned nose

I have some advice for you new-to-the-YMCA-ers.

That's great that your New Year's resolution is to get into shape.

But you're bugging the rest of us who have been coming to the gym for years.

Why?

Because you are breaking the rules.

Don't break the rules.

That's my advice.

Here are the rules I mean.

1. Have your card ready when you get to the front desk. Do not make me stand behind you while you take off your gloves, remove your sunglasses, chastise your child, and dig through your purse to find your wallet. You'll make me late and then I won't get the Good Spot in step aerobics.

2. Don't change your clothes in the upstairs restroom. Notice that there are a bunch of women at the Y in the morning and only two, yes, that is correct, only two toilet stalls in the ladies. That means that only two of us can pee at a time. Which means that the rest of us have to wait and heaven forbid that it be a school's out day and the teachers are taking all the little kids to the bathroom because then none of us will ever get a turn. Do not use the stall to change your clothes. There is 1. your house or 2. a locker room where you can compare your body to everyone else's and realize that hey, we're all in this together and nobody looks that great naked in real life.

3. If you knock over the stand holding all the exercise bands on your way back from picking up your hand weights, do not just leave it there on the floor with 100 exercise bands scattered next to it. Do not walk to the front of the class and ignore the mess you have made. Do not continue with the dead lifts. Do not wait for appalled Midwestern ladies to look at you, look at the mess, shake their heads, and drop their weights so they can clean it up. Be ashamed of leaving a mess for others. Be very, very ashamed. And don't even dare to return to class a few weeks later and then start yelling at the guy behind you. That's the only time I've ever regretted wearing earbuds and listening to the radio instead of that awful Les Mills Body Pump music. I couldn't hear what you were yelling but boy did I want to know.

I wrote an opinion piece for the local paper about going to the gym after the new year. I told people to stay away - that they would be wasting their money to join a gym in January. One commenter wrote,

tired of having gym rats with their perfect bodies look down their perfectly-toned noses at them with disdain. The same disdain that drips from Class Facotum's every word.

Obviously someone who has never seen me and who didn't understand that my main point was that these new people are taking up all the parking.

Wisconsin 101: Ice Station Zebra

So here's what I'm doing. I'm waiting for the snow to stop or at least get to the right depth so I can shovel it. There is no point in shoveling it yet: the radar still has snow over eastern Minnesota coming our way and there is only an inch on the ground.

That's the big question with snow: when do you shovel? You don't want to let it get too deep because then you can't push a load all the way across the driveway. But you don't want to start too soon because then you are wasting shoveling effort. You want to get it just right - enough snow but not too much - to optimize (i.e., minimize) the shoveling effort.

Unless you like shoveling, which means you have a very different idea about what is fun and what is not and I probably would no get along with you.

The dilemma about the shoveling timing reaches back into other activities. If you have ever studied operations research, you learned about bottlenecks and critical paths. If you have to 1. shovel, 2. drink coffee and 3. take a shower all in the same day, how do you time these activities? Which one is the bottleneck?

It depends. It depends on what you are going to do when you are done shoveling.

If you drink too much coffee before you shovel, then you will be wasting time coming back into the house to pee. But if you don't have enough to drink, you'll be thirsty.

If you take your shower early, your hair will be dry by the time you have to shovel. But if you shower before you shovel, you'll get sweat all over your clean body. If you shower after you shovel, you get rid of the shoveling sweat but then your hair is wet and you want to go out for pizza and gallery night with your husband and have to use the hairdryer on your hair, which is not so good because your hair has finally rebelled against your frequent coloring of it.

If you wait long enough to shovel, you might get out of it - your neighbor with the snowblower might do your sidewalk. Then you can leave the driveway undone. Although SH is all, "No! We can't drive on the snow! It leaves those hard tracks and they turn into ice!"

I say, "Just walk carefully. It's not like our driveway isn't going to turn into an icy Driveway of Death anyhow."

The other thing I am waiting for is for it to get warm enough to put air in the tire that is low.

Yes, this is one of those things that I never would have needed to know if I hadn't been tricked into moving to Wisconsin. If it is too cold, you can't put air in your tire. Why? Because when it is one degree, with the wind chill of 15 below, it is possible for the valve to freeze open. Even if you fill the tire, by the time you drive from your house to the Y, the air will be gone. Which is not good for the rims.

I didn't know this until I took the car to the tire place down the street to see about inflating said tire before I went to the gym for the afternoon body step class.

When it is 20 below with the wind chill, I don't exercise outside.

SH was sure I would have to go to a gas station and pay for my air, but I said I was going to ask the Firestone guys, at least. Sometimes people are nice and put air in your tire for free.

I drove the two blocks to the store. I asked the mechanic if he would put air in the tire. He told me it was too cold.

Too cold to inflate a tire?

How could that be?

"Da valve freezes open and den you have a flat," he said.

Well crap. I had eaten cookies all day in anticipation of my gym visit.

I know. It takes about two cookies to fuel an hour of aerobics. I was fueled for 7 hours. But what if there were a blizzard and I couldn't get to the store? And the power went out? Wouldn't it be better to have some extra padding to keep me warm?

I asked if the tire was too low for me to drive to the gym. He peeked out the back window of the garage. Nope. I could drive on it.

Then I asked him about how much he would charge for the air and that's when I proved SH wrong because he (the Firestone guy) said he wouldn't charge anything because sometimes, that's how people roll. And now yesterday's post might make a little more sense. I have been lacking creativity and editing abilities lately. It's too cold to think.

Wisconsin 101: Free stuff

Me: How much do you charge to fill a tire?

Mechanic at the tire place down the street: Oh we don't charge nuthin.

Me: You don't even have one of those machines that takes quarters?

Mechanic: Nope. You just bring it back and I'll take care of it for you.

Marriage 401, Lecture 947: The head cheese

SH: Hey! The cheese drawer is all out of order!

Me: What do you mean?

SH: You're supposed to stack the nuts in the back, the soft cheeses on one side, and the hard cheeses on the other. You just tossed stuff in there without even looking!

Me: So?

SH: You need to be more careful.

Me: You are more than welcome to be the person in charge of the cheese drawer in this house.

SH: You're the one who has the time.

Me: And yet I haven't the inclination.

Marriage 401, Lecture 613: Saving the good stuff

SH: I'm going to meet this guy for coffee on Monday at Cranky Al's.

Me: But they close at noon.

SH: I'm meeting him there at 8:30.

Me: In the morning?

SH: Yes.

Me: Up? And showered? And dressed?

SH: Yes.

Me: I guess I know where I rate.

SH: Yep. You get the everyday me who hasn't had a shower since yesterday.

Me: I'm so lucky.

Marriage 401, Lecture 898: Detail man

SH: Oh - I forgot to turn out the garage lights.

Me: So?

SH: I didn't want to do it while I was out there. [He was grilling salmon - yes, SH grills in the winter - is that odd?]

[I think that's perfectly reasonable - I would leave the light on until I was in the house so I can see, but I suspect SH has a different reason.]

Me: Why didn't you turn them off out there?

SH: Because then the switch inside would be in the wrong position.

Spain 12: Buying the very expensive cookies

In Toledo, we kept passing this elegant cookie and candy shop. We were cold and we like cookies, so we went into the shop. We had already browsed in some of the clothes stores on the main drag, but the stuff we could afford was made in China, so you know. Besides, we already have clothes.

We already have stuff. We don't buy souvenirs any more, unless you count cheese as a souvenir. I count is as Necessary for Life. We got our rugs in Morocco, but that was house accessorizing. I bought the coasters in Germany because I finally found some that would keep moisture off the table rather than just accumulating it in a puddle at the bottom of the coaster until it all ran out onto the wood surface.

Well, maybe we buy souvenirs. I suppose it depends on how you define "souvenir." We bought a folding pocket knife for the kid who feeds our cats. That's a souvenir - hopefully not a souvenir that will make his mom tell me he can never catsit for us again because we keep buying him inappropriate presents. He's 13. That's old enough for a knife, right?

What we mainly buy when we are traveling is food. We want to try the local foods. Our only non-tapas restaurant meal was at a small restaurant in Toledo where we had stuffed piquillo peppers, bean soup that was so good that even SH, who does not like beans, liked it, tortilla, and a local pork stew.

Almost everyone eating in the place was a tourist, but maybe that's because it was only 7:00 p.m. and only losers eat that early in Spain. SH and I were the only tourists who weren't wearing tennis shoes. We were almost the only ones who weren't wearing beat-up jackets that said "Harley" on the back. I guess I should have known that Harley Davidson had such an international reach, but to see a man with an English accent wearing a Harley jacket in the middle of Spain was a bit odd.

Yes, I am a snob about what people wear when they are traveling. Yes, I am the person who goes to the grocery store, the hardware store, Target, and the library in her gym clothes after her body pump class. I'm a hypocrite. Except that when I travel, I try not to look like a slob. I just don't care so much about looking like a slob at home because at home, I don't bear the burden of representing all Americans.

Where was I?

Oh. Right. Food. Food is our big thing when we travel. We have enough stuff in our house, except for cheese, and after trips to Spain and to Pittsburgh, we are actually good on cheese for a while. (Yes, I know. Cheese to Wisconsin, coals to Newcastle.) We always want to try something interesting.

So we thought we would try Spanish cookies. They smelled good and they were being sold by weight out of bins, which we all know means bargain.

There were about a dozen flavors, various combinations of chocolate, vanilla, and nut. The clerk offered us each a sample of a small, chocolate-filled cookie. It was good, with oozy chocolate in the middle.

Now we had to buy something. We had tried the sample. We were obligated.

I never feel that way at home, but apparently, many people do. Did you know sales increase 300% when you sample an item? I read that number somewhere so it must be true. Sometimes it is - sometimes I sample just because I am hungry and because eating is my main hobby, but occasionally, I will taste something really yummy and not horribly expensive, like the Sendik's crab dip, and buy it, even though I have never put "crab dip" on my grocery list my entire life.

"How many cookies in 100 grams?" SH asked the clerk.

"Oh, four or five," she told him.

One hundred grams cost three euros, we think. We just remember the shocking total.

If we had just done the math, we would have thought, "Hmm. Four dollars for three ounces of cookies. That seems rather expensive."

But we didn't.

We gathered our six cookies and threw in a few pieces of nougat (six euros for 100 grams ouch).

We had chosen these items. We had touched them with our plastic-glove encased fingers. We had to take them.

"Eleven euros," the clerk told us cheerfully. Actually, she said, "Once," but you know what I mean.

Eleven euros = fifteen dollars.

She handed us the very small bag containing six cookies and four pieces of nougat. SH looked at the receipt. The cookies had weighed 200 grams, not 100, which meant that instead of six cookies for 100 grams, we got three. These were some heavy cookies.

We couldn't give them back. We were too embarrassed and in too much shock over the price.

Fifteen dollars for six cookies and four pieces of nougat. About $1.50 apiece.

"That's not so expensive," I suggested as I swallowed hard.

"It's expensive," SH, the man who spends $$ on beer and wine, which is far more wasteful than spending it on baked goods.

"Not if you think about what you would pay for gourmet cookies at home," I said. Except we never buy gourmet cookies or indeed any cookies at home because store-bought cookies are not as good as homemade, especially my coffee chocolate chip shortbread cookies or my ginger bacon cookies.

SH and I are not big spenders on little things. It is hard for us to swallow spending $15 on cookies, even gourmet cookies. We should have bought two cookies and been done with it, but we thought it was a bargain and who wants not to take advantage of a bargain? Not us.

So our greed to get a Deal got the better of us. We got what we deserved, except for the part where the cookies weighed twice as much as the clerk told us and how are you going to argue about that? I have a hard enough time challenging that sort of thing in English, much less in Spanish.

We decided just to enjoy the cookies and be done with it. When we returned to the hotel, we sat down to eat some of our worth their weight in gold cookies.

They tasted like dust.

We turned to each other and gasped. "The sample cookie was a lie!" we said. We were disappointed: our fancy Spanish cookies were not all that. Fortunately, I had little Nutellas from the breakfast buffet, so all was not lost, but we learned not to judge a cookie by its sample. Next time, we'll stick with chocolate. That's always safe.

Spain 11: Getting a ticket refund with the clock ticking down

When we arrived in Madrid, we went immediately to the train station and bought tickets to Toledo, where we planned to spend the first three nights of our six nights in Spain. We missed the 6:00 train to Toledo by only a few minutes. If I hadn't lost my glasses in Charles de Gaulle - I will never see them again - and spent all that time trying to find out how to get them back, we could have made that train, but we had to wait for the 7:00 train. Which was boring, even with the cup of cafe con leche we got at the little cafe.

But we bought our tickets at the snazzy train ticket machine, which, amazingly enough, accepted our credit card. So many times in Europe* our card has been rejected, even though the rule is supposed to be that if a merchant takes MasterCard, he takes it even if it's from the US and doesn't have the microchip in it that European cards have. The merchants we have encountered have not cared whether we bought from them or not.

"Oh ze card eet does not work," they shrug. "Tante pis."

I should amend that: the clerks we have encountered have not cared. I suspect the owners of the businesses would care. But clerks? They are paid whether you buy or not, which I had to remind myself of when I was a clerk at Macy's over Christmas several years ago after I was laid off. "No matter how rude someone is being to me," I would think, "I am still being paid." Although I would also think, "Is it worth nine dollars an hour before taxes to have someone be nasty to me?"

What was not obvious to us when we bought the tickets was that there was a financial advantage to buying a roundtrip ticket over two one-way tickets. We priced the trip both ways and the price appeared to be the same. As we were not sure which train we would be taking on the return trip, we thought, Well, we might as well wait.

We left Toledo Friday morning. Got to the train station at 10:00 for the 10:30 train, bought our tickets from the ticket seller - and I noticed something on the bottom of the ticket. I asked the ticket seller about it.

"That means you get a discount when you buy the ticket to come back here," he told me.

"But we're not coming back. We've already come here. We came on Tuesday."

"Then where's your ticket? I can give you a discount."

He glanced at the clock and then at a sign next to his booth. The sign said, "Ticket sales stop 15 minutes before departure time." It was 10:11. The train left at 10:30.

We stepped out of the line while we looked for the old tickets. I searched frantically for my ticket stub. SH went straight to the pocket of his computer bag, pulled out a handful of neatly-organized documents, thumbed through it, and pulled out his ticket.

I couldn't find mine, no matter how hard I looked through my purse and my book. (You mean you don't use boarding passes and ticket stubs as bookmarks?) It was the glasses all over again. Resigned, I stepped back in line. At least I could get one refund.

I got to the front of the line again. I handed the man SH's ticket stub and his new ticket. The ticket agent refunded half the previous sale, then sold me a new ticket at the discounted price, a savings of $3.

I took everything out to SH and started looking for my ticket stub again. A three-dollar return! Just for a two-minute transaction! That's a pretty good deal.

Yet I couldn't find my stub. "I don't think I left it on the train and I don't remember throwing it away," I told SH. "Where could it be? Why isn't it in my purse? Why would I throw away something that would save me money?"

It was 10:12.

"Is that the purse you were using when we got here?" SH asked.

I looked down. I was wearing my travel purse across my shoulder. It's small with a flap and a long strap. I don't need all my regular stuff when we are walking around town.

But on the plane, I wanted a bigger purse - a purse to hold my passport and tickets and three pairs of glasses (reading glasses, regular glasses, and RX sunglasses) and a snack and a water bottle and a book.

That purse was the one I had been using when we took the train to Toledo. It was now at the bottom of my suitcase.

I threw the suitcase to the floor, unzipped it, and dug through my jeans and sweaters and socks until I found it. I opened it. Alas, my lost glasses did not appear, but there was the ticket stub.

"Give me your credit card," I demanded. SH handed it to me and I ran back in line.

10:13.

I waited as the slowest people on earth bought their tickets. They were interrogating the ticket seller about every possible option, which was crazy because the only options in Toledo are to go to Madrid. Every hour, on the half hour. That's it. Pick your time. That's the only thing you can pick.

10:14.

People got in line behind me. Too bad. Show up at the station 16 minutes before your train and expect to buy your ticket right away? Not my problem.

My turn. I rushed to the counter. Plopped everything down. "Found it!" I exhaled.

The ticket agent did not smile to see me again, but to his credit, neither did he roll his eyes as I surely would have at someone who was going through so much trouble to save a mere $3.

"But that's the cost of an order of churros!" I would have protested, had he said something to me. "Plus it's the principle of the thing - never pay more than necessary!"

He probably thought what I thought when I was at Macy's: Bless her heart I'm being paid no matter what and she's just material for my blog about crazy customers.

At 10:16, he pushed the new ticket across the counter to me. I averted my eyes as I walked past the other people in line. Sometimes you have to break some eggs.




* First world problem

Marriage 401, Lecture 951: Backwards and in high heels

SH promised me a few years ago that he would take dance lessons with me. He has tried to fulfill the promise, but we have encountered obstacles. The first salsa class we took in Madrid several years ago was allegedly 1. a beginners class 2. starting at 10:00 and 3.taught by Peladito, the short, bald guy who spoke English.

At 10:30, a tall, not-bald man showed up and started barking instructions in Spanish to the very advanced class.

SH freaked out. "I don't speak Spanish!" he said. "This is not a beginners class!"

I was annoyed but not freaking out because when someone tells me 10:00, I expect 10:00, not 10:30. You would think I would have known better after living in South America for two years. And I did, which is why I was merely annoyed instead of freaking out.

I asked the bartender for our money back. He looked confused. I explained patiently that we had been told that the class was a beginners class with an English-speaking instructor and that this was an advanced class in Spanish. He summoned the manager, who looked equally confused as I calmly repeated my statement and asked for our money back. He seemed disinclined, but I was firm. Polite but firm. We had been promised X and delivered Y.

I didn't mention the late start. What was the point of that?

He eventually returned our 20 euros to us and we were on our way.

The next time we tried taking dance classes was at a Saturday workshop at the community center. Mike and Betsy were teaching the three-hour beginner salsa class. The next Saturday would build on the beginner class.

If you've ever taken a dance class, you know that you can't go to just one. That you have to go to a few in a short time to really get it and for it to stick.

SH and I were both frustrated with Mike and Betsy because they spent way too much time talking about salsa theory instead of actually teaching us the steps. Then, at the end of the class, when I still had SH convinced that one more Saturday session would do it, Betsy announced they were cancelling the class the next week so they could go to a salsa competition in Chicago.

Leaving aside the professionalism of cancelling something that has been on the calendar for three months and for which two dozen people have enrolled and paid - OK, I won't leave it. That was horribly unprofessional. Cancel a professional obligation because you want to go to a contest? So so wrong.

Where was I? Oh. The class was cancelled. SH and I couldn't make the class held a few months later. I gave up for then.

It was a year later before I could get SH to go to another dance class. That was when we stumbled on the polka class at Polish Fest, the class where the old polka guy smiled and said, "Youse are generally doing pretty nice today."

SH was still convinced he couldn't dance and would never dance, but then groupon sold a coupon for two swing dance classes and Friday night dance at the Knights of Columbus hall in West Allis.

The groupon was about to expire, so we went to the class the other night.

The hall was rearranged from the fish fry set up and readied for dancing, with tables pushed against the wall and chairs placed facing the dance floor. The band was setting up in front.

We knew we were in trouble when other dancers walked in carrying bags with their dancing shoes. We had brought the shoes on our feet, me in cowboy boots because they are usually good for dancing and SH in his old leather-soled shoes that look like they belong on the feet of a man wearing a smoking jacket and an ascot. We thought our shoes would be fine. But we were already behind.

Some of these people were in serious swing dance mode, the men in suits and spectator wingtips, the women in dancing heels and twirly skirts. They looked great.

We were in jeans and t-shirts.

We were so behind.

The class started.

The teachers were two women, although it wasn't until the one of them introduced herself as Susan that we realized she was a woman. They were very careful to identify the dance roles as "leader" and "follower" instead of man and woman. Which I suppose is fine. I don't care. But I had never heard such a reference before, especially in a class of 30 male/female couples. Although I have seen women dancing with women at many weddings, so maybe it's not so far fetched. Sometimes you're the follower, sometimes you're the leader.

Their dancing and their speech were perfectly choreographed, just like the Sweeney sisters on Saturday Night Live. Susan would say, "The leader steps to the right" and Pam would say smoothly, "And the follower steps to the left."

SH started to panic when the teachers ordered the men to go to one side of the hall and the women to the other. Pam and Susan debated for a minute over whether the men were going to the west side or the south side. "Why not just say 'men over there, where the other men are'" I thought, but I didn't say it out loud because I am trying to leave my smart aleck days behind.

After we practiced a few basic steps, the teachers ordered us to partner up. Much to SH's relief, we were reunited.

We practiced for a minute, then the teachers ordered us to change partners.

"Followers, step one person to the left. Leaders, stay where you are."

SH's eyes flew open and his jaw dropped. Horror crossed his face. He shook his head as the next woman stepped up to him, then he apologized profusely to her for what he perceived to be his complete inability to dance. At a DANCE CLASS. As I moved further down the line to new partners and SH got new partners, he continued to apologize. Instead of dancing.

"Some of them actually knew how to dance!" he told me later. "And I was dragging them down!"

After half an hour, the class ended and the general dance began. I found SH.

"This is so stressful!" he moaned. "I can't do this!"

He sat down and had a sip of his beer.

Of course there is a bar at the K of C hall. Catholics, not Baptists. Plus this is Wisconsin. In the winter. What else is there to do?

I tried to encourage him. He really is better than he thinks. He has a strong sense of rhythm and has a lot of natural athletic ability.

"But I don't know how to lead! How do you know what step to do next? Why isn't there a formula for this?"

I tried some more to convince him that dancing was fun! and he could learn!

"If I can't do it right, I don't want to do it at all," he said firmly.

"But for you to be able to do it right, you have to learn and practice!" I said. "It's OK not to be perfect!"

"But I don't like not being perfect," he said.

"If you were perfect, I wouldn't be able to stand you," I said. "An imperfect dancer is fine with me."

He shook his head. "I don't know how to do this!"

Perhaps I could write a program in BASIC that choreographs a dance routine for engineers.

Marriage 401, Lecture 148: Leaning Pile of Visa

Me: Hey! Quit moving my stuff! I can't find anything after you've hidden things.

SH: But we're having company for supper. The place needs to look good.

Me: Is that why you have this two-foot pile of old newspapers here?

SH: It's stacked neatly.

Spain 10 : A bad churros experience

You guys, I am embarrassed to blog about this because it doesn't reflect well on me at all, but it is a story and perhaps someday, one of you will be spared our humiliation, mine self inflicted and SH's CF inflicted, because of what you learn from reading this.

Here's the deal: There are sometimes three sets of prices for cafes in Madrid. There is the standing at the bar price, the sitting inside price, and the sitting outside price. Which makes sense because that is just the cafe owners using market forces to their advantage and charging more for what is usually the more desirable real estate.

However. SH and I had forgotten about that. We hadn't done any outdoor eating since we had arrived in Spain because I hate to be cold. But it was a pretty day in Madrid and when we went into the churro shop in search of the perfect churro - we had not found such in Toledo, where we had two churro experiences, once with great, freshly-made churros but not so great dipping chocolate and the other time with fabulous chocolate but warmed on the grill previously and still a bit frozen churros,* we marched straight to the bar to order because it seemed like the fastest way to get our churros and take them outside to sit at the churro shop's tables.

"Are you going to want to eat outside?" the clerk asked.

But of course. It was nice weather. We live in Wisconsin. We take advantage of opportunities to be outside that do not involve shoveling snow.

"Then go out there and he will take your order." She nodded at a waiter.

We got a table and opened the menu. There were three sets of prices, with the highest prices double the lowest. As SH and I were arguing about what this meant and what it implied for our decisions, the waiter appeared.

Flustered, I told him: "One order of churros and chocolate."

"Do you want coffee?" I asked SH.

He didn't know. I wasn't going to order coffee on my own because I can't have an entire cup of caffeinated coffee any more and it seemed wasteful to order just a decaf. All I wanted was a few sips of SH's verboten coffee.

"Wait," I said to the waiter. "We don't know."

But he turned and went into the shop, returning in 90 seconds with the churros.

By then, after evaluating all the inside v outside prices and determining that there was at least a one-euro difference between the two, which sometimes was a mere 25% price increase and other times was a 50% price increase and a few times was a 100% price increase, and if there is anything you know about me by now it's that I always look for the arbitrage opportunity, that is, if there is a commodity (i.e., churros or a nice purse or jeans) that costs $X in one place and $2X in another, I am usually going to choose the $X option unless there is a compelling reason not to and part of the definition of commodity is that there is not a compelling reason, we decided it was not worth $3 extra to sit outside to consume a product that we could eat inside for less.

I suppose the inside/outside thing could be what makes the churros not a commodity - that the setting is what increases the value of the churros, but a churro at a cafe is a churro at a cafe is what I say.

I convinced SH to go inside.

Let me add here that moving was completely my idea and that SH was against it all along, not so much because he wanted to pay more but because he thought it would be embarrassing to move.

I am a sinverguenza. After living in South America for two years and breaking so many rules I didn't even know existed, I am immune. When you are a foreigner in a culture, you are going to do dumb things. You get over it after a while. And sometimes you even use it to your advantage.

You mean that in Germany, even if there is absolutely no traffic coming from either direction, you still wait for the crossing light? Who knew? Oh well I'm already on the other side.

Meanwhile, the old German guy who is still waiting for the light is scolding you in German, which you don't speak, so you just shrug, give him your "I'm just a dumb foreigner" look, and continue you on your merry way.

The waiter asked what was going on. "We want the inside price churros," I said, "so we are going to sit inside."

The waiter scowled. "You already placed the order!" he said.

"I told you to wait!" I answered.

He shook his head and waved the bill at me. "If you don't pay this, I eat it!"

I thought that was a little extreme. We weren't refusing to pay for our order. We just wanted the inside price.

I sat at the inside table. The waiter refused to bring us the churros.

We sat.

Nothing happened. It was a Spanish standoff.

SH said, "It's not worth it. Let's just go back outside."

Which we did, pretending that we had planned this all along, even though we were slinking past the rude waiter in shame.

Another waitress brought us our now-cold churros y chocolate. Our waiter pointedly ignored us.

We ate. "Should we leave a tip?" SH asked.

"He was really pissy to us," I said. "I get the idea that he is either not working for tips or doesn't care about pleasing us because we are tourists and probably won't be back."**

"You had already put in the order," SH noted.

I scowled. I hate to be wrong. I hate it when it's my fault.

"I told him to wait!" I protested.

"You had already given him the order."

"He didn't have to be so rude. We should have gotten just a little bit of gringo slack," I argued.

SH agreed with me that we should have gotten a bit of slack or at least not-pissy behavior. No tip. Which was very hard for SH to do as he is a 20 percenter for anything but horrible service.

Then we found out from Rubi that nobody tips in Spain anyhow - or they barely tip - so there was no satisfaction there.

Next time, I will tell the waiter to wait before I tell him what I want.




* The bartender gave us a double order for the regular price. When I asked if the servings were always so big, he answered, "Hoy si. Manana no." Today yes, tomorrow no.

** Which wasn't necessarily true. We have been to this churro place on each of our three trips to Spain. But I suppose $10 once every few years is not enough to inspire niceness. Let me note, though, that this was the only rudeness we encountered from a waiter or clerk during our entire trip and in the waiter's defense, we kind of asked for it.