The weather

(The "feels like" temperature at 10:18am is 105. At 10:18. In the morning.)

It's pretty hot here in Rio, and we're only in the first few weeks of "Spring". 

I know I complained - a lot - about the brutal winters in DC and I said that all I wanted was hot weather. But maybe I should've stated some parameters. Like I want and love "hot", but I don't want to melt.  

105 degrees is surely the maximum end of my comfort zone, and I'm more than a little nervous about how high the temp can actually go when we get to the height of summer. 

Climate change is real, people. I'm suffering through the consequences of our global mistakes right now as are millions and millions of people around the world. We've got to turn this ship around, and soon!

One little update

When I told Jimmy we'd had company for all but 6 nights since his surgery, he asked how many of those 6 nights we'd stayed at home. 

I just counted. 

We've been home 2 nights with absolutely nothing to do and no company at home since September 24.

That's why I feel exhausted!

the basketball fun has begun

Today Jimmy went to an event where the NBA donated basketball gear and materials to a favela project.  Jimmy got to meet Muggsy Bogues, the shortest player ever to play in the NBA.

How cool is that?

a long-overdue, but short catch-up

I have written approximately 67 posts in my head since my last post, but life has intervened.

Since the day of Jimmy's surgery on September 24, we have had 6 days WITHOUT overnight company in the house, which has been tons of fun but without a housekeeper, there's been a lot of sheet-washing and bathroom-cleaning and floor-vacuuming by yours truly.

I also officially started my job on October 1, right in the middle of all the company.  Between the company, lack of housekeeper, life, following online the horrible flooding in SC, etc, I just can't seem to find my groove with work.  The work itself has been very interesting to date and I'm loving it, but I can't figure out when to do my 5 hours a day or, because I'm obsessive-compulsive and want to do the best job ever, how to turn the computer off after I put in my 5 hours a day.  Yesterday was the first time where I felt like I had any balance in the schedule - I went to my Pilates class in the morning and the beach for a couple hours with our house guests, and then I came home to work while they went out. That is how I want my days to be on a regular basis.

Jimmy's shoulder is coming along. The surgeon says the surgery was a success.  He put in two screws to pull the tears back together and scraped out some gunk.  Jimmy's now doing physical therapy twice a week with a wonderful therapist.  Jimmy thought he'd be back to normal in 2 months, so he was disheartened when the therapist told him it would be more like 4 months.  But really, what's 4 months in the grand scheme of things?

Aside from work and company, we've been getting out and about and meeting interesting people over the last couple weeks. We hosted another official cocktail that was a ton of fun, and I hosted a coffee for the 7th grade parents where I got to meet some other moms.  There's always some other country's national day party, which are fun because there's a small group of people that we see at every single one of those - other diplomats and government officials - which makes Rio feel like a small town in some respects,  I attended a friend's book launch, we went to the American movie night at the Rio Film Festival where we saw Me, Earl and the Dying Girl (I should have brought more Kleenex), we attended a lunch with the consular corps to send off another consul general (the lunch was on the 30th floor of this hotel and the view was INCREDIBLE), and we went to the opening of a very cool Maori exhibition hosted by the Ambassador of New Zealand (from which we took home the most delicious chocolate and peanut bars I've ever eaten).  And that's just the stuff I've done.  Jimmy is out at night more than I am.  I don't know if this pace is sustainable long-term, but we're enjoying it while we can manage it.

Mac continues to thrive here.  He loves school, he's made a lot of friends and he made the JV basketball team, which means in addition to regular games here in town, he'll get to go to a tournament outside of Sao Paulo for a few days at the end of October.  Then during the second week of November, he goes on a 7th grade 5-day class trip to a very cool colonial city about 6 hours from Rio.  They have all sorts of fun and educational things planned for the week and I'm a little jealous that they don't want/need parents to go as chaperons.  He's off today and tomorrow from school, so he's lazing around this morning until 11, when he's been invited to the Jockey Club for a friend's birthday lunch, swim and soccer.  Again, I wish he was at the age where he needed a chaperon because I'd love to see inside the Jockey Club.  But alas, the friend's driver is picking him up along with the other friend who was invited (the "real" birthday party is next weekend; this is just a get-together with a couple friends on the actual birthday.)

This weekend the Orlando Magic are in town to play a local sports club's basketball team.  Jimmy and I are attending two cocktail parties tomorrow night where reportedly we'll get to meet players of the Magic and then the three of us will attend the game on Saturday night.  I never thought I'd get to meet professional basketball players so that's kind of cool.  I will definitely post photos if I get to take any without being obnoxious.

We are loving the house.  I cannot stress to you enough how very much we love the house.  It's big and airy and bright and uncluttered.  I need to remember to send the State Department's interior designer an email to thank her for the work she did on the house because it really is perfect in my opinion.  I told Jimmy that if and when we ever build our dream house, I would like to track her down and hire her to decorate it because I like her style so much.

The house is big, though, and not airtight so without regular cleaning, dust builds up quickly.  Which has just about driven my obsessive-compulsive self crazy.  Finally ,when I was on the brink of crazy, I convinced the lady who was helping me one day a week to give up her other jobs to come to us for full-time work, five days a week.  It's really to her advantage, because she'll get all sorts of benefits like social security, health insurance, vacation, transportation and food allowances, etc, that she doesn't get doing lots of day jobs.  I'm happy to report that she started full-time yesterday.  Already I feel like I've stepped away from the edge of crazy.

And the biggest, best house news is that we've hired a chef.  I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am we've finally found someone AND that the someone we found seems so incredibly amazing.  She lived and went to culinary school for 3 years in Italy.  Did you hear me?  Italy.  My most favorite food on the planet is Italian so the next time you see me, I may weigh 292 pounds because of excessive lasagna consumption.  She also likes to cook Asian, Mediterranean and food from the Northeast of Brazil, which means she can cook spicy food which is not so prevalent in other parts of Brazil.  AND she makes homemade jams.  Are you kidding me?  We're going to have homemade jams with breakfast every day.  I may weigh 417 pounds the next time you see me. She wants to leave restaurant life to achieve better work-life balance.  YES!  Oh boy, am I happy.  Her background check is in progress but I've asked/begged/promised food if they'll expedite it because I want, no, NEED, her to start sooner rather than later.

So that's about it from Casa Story.  We hope you're all well, wherever you're reading this from!

The Samaritan Hospital

No overseas experience is ever really complete unless you have the opportunity or misfortune to dip into the medical establishment in a foreign country.  When I think through the last 17.5 years of overseas living vis-à-vis medical care, I remember...

     ...having my eyeglasses stolen from a hotel room in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and having to go to a Mexican eye doctor to get a new prescription for my glasses.  I obviously answered the questions wrong because when I put the new glasses on and left the doctor's office, I couldn't manage to step off the curb because the prescription was so wrong.

     .....being pregnant in Maputo and having regular check-ups in South Africa with a humorless, but good and pragmatic, OB/GYN. 

     ..... Mac having a massive allergic reaction in his eye to sunscreen on a vacation in Fortaleza.  His eye looked like a fish eye, all puffed out and lumpy.  It was the most horrible experience of my parenthood.  We frantically asked the majordomo of the rental house to take us to the hospital, and naturally but unbeknownst to us, he took us to the free public hospital with a surly female doctor who whipped out a humongous needle and gave Mac a big shot in the backside.

     ..... taking Mac to the ER in Sao Paulo one Mother's Day very early in the morning where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Jimmy had already left the country for his Afghanistan training, and I was sure I didn't understand any of the terminology or medicine doses.

     ..... having Lasik surgery in Bogota as a 40th birthday present to myself and hoping that I understood everything correctly and wouldn't go blind.

And now here we find ourselves at the hospital in Rio after 3 months of living here.  After years of suffering from a bum shoulder, Jimmy is finally having surgery to repair the shoulder today.  The anesthesiologist just called to tell me that surgery is underway.  He has promised updates along the way.

I am sure this procedure would be outpatient in the US, but they are keeping Jimmy overnight.  After checking out the place and the service, I'm wondering what I could have done to spend a few nights here.

For starters, when we were checking Jimmy in, they gave him a bag of Granado toiletries.  Granado is my favorite Brazilian soap/cream company, and I was tempted to steal the bag because Jimmy was using the restroom when they handed it over and he never would have been the wiser.  Let's be honest:  is he really going to need shampoo and conditioner for one night in the hospital?  I bet he's not even allowed to take a shower.

Shampoo, conditioner, soap and cream.... all wasted on the patient.

Then they brought us up to his room, which is called an apartment.  I know small apartments, and this is definitely just a room, but still.  Calling it an apartment sounds way nicer than "room".  He got settled in, the doctor and anesthesiologist came in to visit, the nurses came for a survey, and then they brought him a pre-anesthesia pill to make him sleepy. 

He requested the XXL size and this is what they brought.  It was a little snug.

When he was getting sleepy, this nice lady from food services came in with a fruit tray for us and a tray of waters, juices and soft drinks that she left in our mini-fridge.  Um, hello.  There's a mini-fridge in the hospital apartment and it has a big bottle of Perrier in it, thanks to that nice lady.  Perrier?!?  I don't even buy that for home. 

As she was dropping off all her goodies, she asked if I'd like lunch delivered to the room.  

Um, hello, again.  

I am my mother's child, so I'd brought a bag full of snacks, but I'd heard the food was good here, so I demurely said that if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I would love to have lunch delivered.  She said she'd be back in a moment with the menu. 

The menu.

The.Menu.

In the hospital apartment.

So she returned and I had a choice of two salads (I chose the green leaf lettuce and beets), a choice of several entrees (I chose chicken in a mustard sauce) and as many sides as I wanted (I chose rice that has a lot of veggies and egg in it and some black beans).  Then we got to dessert and drinks.  The dessert of the day was something with plums in it, which in hindsight was probably delicious, but I got confused with vocabulary and thought "ameixa" was prune and I said, "no thank you".   Instead I got a delicious fruit salad that was not your average can of US hospital canned fruit cocktail.  It was freshly cut-up mango, papaya, grapes, apples, oranges and pineapples.  As for the drink, it felt greedy to request anything more so I said I would drink something from the mini-fridge.  Like the Perrier.

I am pleased to tell you that lunch was delicious.  She's already asked if I would like to see the dinner menu to make my selection, but I've got to go home to feed Mac something for dinner.

Hmmmmm.  I wonder if they do to-go meals here....

More on the patient post-surgery!

Unpacking

There is a moment (or two) in every move when you're almost done unpacking boxes and you realize you don't have item x.

And you panic.

Because item x is either something crucial to your survival that you just can't live without or it's something of such sentimental value that you can't imagine life without it. 

There's always an item x in every single move, and item x changes in every single move. 

I had item x and item y on this move. 

We've plowed through boxes, we've sorted and arranged and placed and replaced items. All boxes have been opened, and we're not in the re-boxing phase of stuff we can't use in this house.

And today I couldn't find two things that would've rendered my life incomplete. 

The first was my collection of Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, which I use for regular weeknight dinners and for every dinner party I ever host. I am not exaggerating. These are entirely replaceable, but I was panicked they weren't here. 

The second was a large mailing tube that contained an original painting by my dear, dear friend Anika. I knew I'd seen the tube a few days ago, but I woke up in the middle of last night panicked because I didn't know where it was. And nothing would do - and I mean nothing - until I found it.  Had the tube been thrown out because someone thought it was empty?  I could not bear the thought. 

I am pleased to tell you that the world is right again.  I have the cookbooks and the painting. 

I've lived to see another move, albeit with a few more gray hairs.

Mac

On Monday night, we hosted our first official reception at the residence. More details to come on that in another post. What I wanted to share with you in this post is what a superstar my boy was at the reception. 

Mac has basketball on Monday afternoons after school. At our temporary apartment, he didn't get home on the late bus until 7:30. So I was very surprised (and so thankful) that he's one of the first kids off the late bus at our new house. While I was getting ready for the party at 6:00, I heard the dribbling of a basketball on the sidewalk and knew he was home. 

I came downstairs about 6:20 and found lots of activity with the caterer working and consulate employees and officers arriving early to work the party. But there was no sign of Mac. 

He materialized a short time later- freshly showered, hair fixed and wearing his khakis, dress shirt, blue blazer and church shoes. He'd dressed up for the party because the Ambassador was coming and he wanted to make a good impression.  Be still, my beating heart. 

He circulated among the consulate people who were already there, introducing himself and shaking hands, before disappearing for awhile with Leo downstairs, and he met the Ambassador when she arrived. He came back upstairs for a bit during the party to check things out, but I don't think it was his cup of tea. (Really I think he was checking out the food situation and lost interest in the party when he didn't see any food he recognized on the caterer's trays.)

I wish I'd taken a photo of him. He was so handsome and so "adult" (but I need to buy him dress clothes in a larger size pronto because he looked a bit stuffed in them). 

This boy is definitely a keeper.