Donde Esta Alfonso??

Okay I survived Christmas with out him, and now the excitement is almost over its back to the daily grind around here. It has been almost 2 weeks now since my husband left for his visit to Mexico. I was missing him a few days ago and decided to call him. First time I called his Dad, who doesnt speak English at all said, "He's not here.".(in spanish of course) I say "okay gracias"Luckily I do understand spanish, I just havent had the practice to speak it much,but I have the feeling i will be getting the opportunity to practice. The next day I called and Dad said, "He's not here, he will be coming back tomorrow in the afternoon or maybe in the night". (again in spanish) What I really wanted to say was"Where the hell is he?" And I could say that in Spanish, but the problem is I may get a lengthy answer and not understand, or even worse, misunderstand. So once again I just said,"Okay gracias." Then the next day in the night I called, Still his Dad says, "Nobody has made it home yet"..hmmm....so many thoughts in my head, but with the language barrier again I just said "Okay gracias" Later that night he called me to tell me he was back to his Parents home, He had been to Vera Cruz for a couple of days with his mom and one of his aunts and cousins. As if its not enough that i miss him like crazy now he gets to tell me all about his trip to the beach and to the Miyan Pyramids..Gosh I am so jealous..I want to go to the beach in Vera Cruz Mexico. Oh well. Thats my blog for today it sorta speaks for itself.

Who Did Your Hair?

Only Brandye could pull off purple highlights. Done by Fixations Hair Studio in Memphis TN.

Big Oopps for Rachel

This is my lovely 10 year old neice who I totally adore. Today she went back to day care after spending all of last week with me at the shop..avoiding daycare we said. She was however excited to go back to daycare this week, because as she told me,"I kinda want to see my friends, plus her brother told her they had a field trip to the skating rink on Tuesday, she was even more excited to go back.
So her little brother who is 7 and thinks he can skate, but we all know he can't,not that well anyway, but he tries. Anyway, he gets out there skating with the younger kids, and then they call ALL SKATE and Rachel sees a bunch of big kids about to run over him. So she rushes out on to the rink to rescue him, because he is kinda moving slowly. I guess she just got ahead of herself, because she fell down and landed on her wrist.. So around 10:30 am she was taken back to the daycare center, her grandmother came from Collierville to get her and take her back to the hospital in Collierville where she and Rachels dad both work.They needed to give her an IV for the pain, I guess, but she was like "that arm is fine, it doesnt hurt, you are not sticking that needle in me," this is not like Rachel, I think the pain was making her talk out of her head,Finally it took her Mother, and her friend Angela, her Dad and 2 nurses to hold her down to get the IV started, They X-rayed her arm and found that both of the bones in her arm were broken and all of the growth plates in her wrist were also broken. They put her under anistesia to reset her bones back into place. When she woke up she probably felt alot better, she went home about 8:30 pm.
Finally the end to a terrible day, for a very undeserving little girl.But as my friend Theresa said,"Thats just part of beind a kid".Of course when I told my Mom, she is just one in a millon kids that fall and break arms rollerskating, she said, "Well she is my only grandkid with a broken arm" This is also true,Mom.
I hadn't talked to Rachel during all of this, for obvious reasons, but I had kept up with her through her Mom and Dad,(my little brother).So at a quarter til 9 i got a phone call, it was this tiny sweet little voice, you could tell she felt worse than she has ever known, she said,"Aunt Shannon I am home from the hospital", So I talked to her for a moment,I told her how I hate that this happened to her, but that she's gonna be okay.She said she was going to lay on the couch and watch tv. She said ,"Aunt Shannon I love you". How sweet..She is the sweetest little girl. If you read this please say a prayer for Rachel's broken arm.

Another Country

Saturday night my husband said to me "Baby, can you believe tomorrow i will be in another country?" My answer to him "Babe, you are from another country."

Glamour Says

Hey It's OK....
...to wear the warmest thing in your closet no matter how it looks. Hel-lo it's winter.

...to glance at pictures of yourself when you were 18 and think, ha! So much hotter now.

...to be a big taker and a stingy giver in bed-sometimes.

...if you actually don't love shoes that much. You can still be a woman without the footwear fetish.

...if you dont feel bad for celebs who split up. It's not as if you know them!

...to go to sleep before the ball drops.

...to prefer the mild salsa. It's a condiment, not a personality test.

...to want it the way you want it: burgers, sex, haircuts, anything.

I like that. Alot.

A Long Cold Winter

I have known for months, the weekend was coming that my hubby would board a south-bound plane to Mexcio City to spend the holidays and until mid February with his family. It has been a long time coming. Seven years of not seeing his parents and ten years of not spending Christmas with Mom and Dad. In all the excitement of the planning of this trip it hadn't occured to me that my love-life has gone to the dogs.(literaly)I will be spending the major cold part of the winter alone..not having my warm cuddly hubby in the bed to... cuddle. And the recent discovery that aside from being cold when he's not here, I also get the heebie-jeebies about being alone in the house. I don't know why because I spent years alone befor my husband and I married just 3 years ago. So after giving this some thought I decided, who better to love you than your Golden Retriever? and who better to protect you than your Chow-Chow?? So good news doggies... you're coming in for the winter, unlike the winters past when they were allowed only in the kitchen and only on frigid nights. So come Monday its off to the Doggie Beauty Salon, for a shampoo and style (which costs more than i charge for humans) and lets not foget the perfume, they know their mama loves some perfume. And then they will have the run of the house for 2 months..I will have my overgrown cat, Beau, the true love of my life, in the bed with me as he is every night, and Lucky(the golden retriever) on a palate in the floor beside my bed, Star( the chow-chow) watching out for the boogie-man at the front door, as this is the natures of my dogs. If I cant have the affection and protection of my man in the house, i will just have to settle for "womans" best friends.We will just have to deal with how to get them back to the "outside dog" lifestyle. And if my husband forgets my christmas present due to all the excitement, he can just sleep in their old house when he gets home, it will be warm enough by then..(just a little joke honey.)

I know a little Arabic

So the other day I go into this Middle-Eastern restaraunt/market to get a few items i became familiar with in my associations with many middle eastern people, mainly my Palistinean boyfriend of 5 years and my Egyptian husband of 2 , give or take a few months.Thats a whole other story,maybe some day i will tell you about that.But for now back to my story.
I go into the store to get fava beans, lemons, homemade arabic flatbread to make this dish called foule (fool)..As I gather my things and go to the front to pay the clerk, who is clearly of middle eastern descent, walks over to the register and rings me up. I give him my bank card which was much to my surprise declined. Hmmm..okay so he tries it again , at my request, again, declined..Okay. There is a problem. I call the bank, which i had called earlier that day with a concern that a charge showed up on my account's online statement that i didnt recall making nor did i recognize the name of the company.Long story short, the bank cancel the use of that debit card, but my mom has another one with a different number, same account, and the bank told me that only the one card was canceled, I really wanted to eat some foul. I leave my goods at the counter in the bag and go less than one block to her house to get the other card. She offered me cash, just in case it didnt work either. I declined "it will work" i said..So its freezing outside and my car has no heat, but i've come this far so i go back into the store and start to pay the card my mom had given me, declined too, at this point i was really pissed at the bank, but this guy is probably thinking, this girl has no money, anywhere...so i give him another card which i know had absoutly NO money in it, and its APPROVED, what the hell is going on in the banking business ?? anyway then i remember Arabic sweets, boklava, and the little honey and nut birdnest of filo dough..I ask the clerk, can i get some boklava from resturant and pay for it over here? He's like "Yeah go ahead, I can wait." so i go to the resturant area to get boklava.It took a little while longer than it should, because the guy working over there was chatty. I am a middle-eastern man magnet, by the way, anyway, I return to to the store area again to pay for my stuff, he was at this time having what seemed for the most part a friendly conversation with another more aquainted customer.As I approached the counter he says something to the other guy and walks over to the counter again to check me out...He starts again with me as i am thinking about what he said , i am like, I have to say something, this guy just said " Let me go now and get this girl out of my ass." in arabic. I couldnt believe my ears, this guy has taken for granted that i dont understand his language..But surprise, I do!! So I asked him, "what exactly did you say to that guy a second ago in Arabic? " He says "Oh we were talking about bringing in a whole lamb or goat (to the butcher in the back) I dont like to see it when they cut it up, it makes me sick and sad" and he was acting all like a baby about it..I was just thinking to myself, how is it that this Palestinean guy has probably seen more violence than most people anywhere in the world cant stand to see a dead goat cut up? So I say " Yeah right". and smile. He says to me " You can understand Arabic?" knowing i must or i couldnt despute the answer he had given me. I said, "Well yeah some" ."mostly only the bad words" then he says" how do you know Arabic?" I say" I spent some time in Egypt" he says " they dont use bad words in Egypt." My reply was his second surprise. " I was with a Palastinean man for 5 years, he used alot of bad words" i said with a grin. His face must have turned 5 shades of red by now..So as he's getting my sweets in the bag, and forgetting my other bag from behind the counter i was getting my things in my purse, saying" now let me get out of your way.." he says" oh no its okay" I say, " No, No i have been right up your ass for long enough," in a way that he couldnt be sure if i was joking or just being sarcastic, or .. if he was so busted...the look on his face was priceless.... I swear he said these words to me..." No problem, I enjoyed it" I was about to spew out trying to hold back the laughter.. i composed myself and walked to the door,and said "shukran" which is thank you in Arabic. Even still he tested me once more.. "what do you say when you are leaving somebody in Arabic?" I said " Esalam ElaKom" and smiled as he said "wahalakom salam." I left the store.. so mad at that guy for being so nieve and then totally denying the whole thing..I own a salon and there are days where certain people get on my nerves , i dont want to do them, or deal with them, i want to "get them out of my ass" too, but i cant say that. I have to treat them with respect, I cant think,well if I can say it in a language they may not understand it is acceptable. After all the man he was speaking to heard him say a remark that he shouldnt even have heard as a customer,however in this situation there could be a bit of cultural differences too, as that the respect for men is higher than for women in most middle eastern cultures.But there again that is another story I could write. For now though, I wanted so bad to go back and tell him straight forward that I knew what he had said, but after some thought and I have heard from a few other bilingual people that it can be quite humiliating to talk about somebody thinking they dont understand you when they do. I have a feeling this is a mistake this guy wont soon make again.