Ketchup and Other Crimes Against Humanity

 Jaime is pretty forgiving of American culture, but like every immigrant, he has his grievances. 

"There's just a lack of an understanding of refinement," he explained as if it were news to me. 

He was talking about our flavor combinations, but he made sure to include plenty of examples outside of the culinary arts. 

I'd just dropped off some gingerbread Trumps at our neighbors', and, like always, I returned with a grocery bag full of food. This bag was heavier than usual because one of their mothers had remembered us and sent some Christmas snacks. 

It was the white chocolate peppermint popcorn that really sent him. 

"Mint's only place is in tea as far as I'm concerned. And chewing gum. Chewing gum is fine, but Americans put it in everything. The only thing that's missing is your precious ketchup!" For the past week, he'd been angrily shaking dark chocolate covered pretzels into a mug of oat milk for his afternoon snack. The bag that came with our latest Imperfect Foods order included little bits of crushed peppermint folded into the chocolate, and he was fucking livid. 

I only recently learned about his aversion to this particular combination after I bought a bag of peppermint bark at Costco. I'd bought them for our mail person, lovingly placed eight pieces in an envelope and clipped it to our box. 

I showed him the bag of the remaining 790 squares and feigned disappointment that we'd have to eat them all. "I'm not eating that. You'll have to do it yourself," was his response, and suddenly, it didn't sound fun anymore. 

Chocolate and peanut butter is another one he can't abide. Really, peanut butter and anything. This isn't unique to him. Even though they have a better name for it, peanut butter (mantequilla de cacahuete) is very hard to find in Spain, and I had to defend peanut butter and jelly to every Spaniard I met. 

It wasn't just that they thought PB&J sounded gross. It sounded so abhorrently sickening to them that they thought we made it up for television shows but didn't actually eat it. 

These and more were brought up during his surprisingly long diatribe, and I think the Colombian Exchange was mentioned at least twice. 

I let him get it out of his system because (1) it was very funny, and (2) a couple hours before, I had to coach him through spitting into a small vial for his Covid test. 

"Tilt your head forward! No, forward not back. Stop blowing bubbles! The bubbles are just air! You're filling the tube with air," are some things I had to say, and you just can't take someone like that seriously no matter how refined his tastes are. 

This is a gingerbread Trump. 

A note from Jaime: His final word on the subject is "snarf". If you don't know what snarf is, it's baked Fritos covered in peanut butter and corn syrup: a Midwestern family's delight and a Valencian's waking nightmare. 

What is Spain? Spain Is Metal.

 Jaime really liked dinner tonight. 

"It reminds me of when we had braised lamb with pepper pellets for school lunch," he said. 

After we figured out he was talking about peppercorns, my mind revisited a topic I think about often: how different our childhoods were. 

"It's not like we got a whole leg or anything. They were fillets, and a lot of kids didn't like it, which was great because they gave their fillets to me." I couldn't remember the other school lunch he loved because other kids hated it and therefore gave him their portions. 

"Fish pudding," he reminded me. 

Ah, yes. Fish pudding. 

I told him that rectangle pizza was pretty popular at my school, and he laughed appropriately. 

Jaime went to an English language school in Spain run by Opus Dei, taught by Filipino teachers and called Edelweiss.  It was his parents' second choice. 

His school day started about the same time as mine, but he wasn't released until almost 6 pm. He'd have dinner with his family at about 9:30 or 10 then go to bed around midnight. Edelweiss was his elementary school. This might sound crazy to those of us who were brought up through socialist American schools, but that schedule is still the norm for kids in Spain today. 

Schoolchildren do have a long break called patio or recreo, which is like recess, during the afternoon siesta time. 

Jaime gets offended when non-Spaniards rib him about siestas. There's almost always an underlying accusation of laziness, so it's understandable he's annoyed. I used to envision the whole country sleeping in their underwear during the hottest part of the day, too, but that was before I saw for myself what really happens during siesta. 

Daily, between 2-4 pm, everyone eats an incredible and reasonably priced lunch and drinks wine or beer before returning to work and doing the bare minimum for the rest of the day until they clock out at 8. Spain is fucking metal, and what makes it metal is that Spaniards work really hard but play harder. 

(Jaime asked me to note his offense taken by the previous paragraph.) 

A couple of weeks ago, Jaime called me into a Zoom meeting he was having with a doctor at KU. Their actual meeting was over, but the man's wife was there because they wanted to tell us about their experience living in Valencia for half a year in the 1980s. 

They had two young children at the time who were attending a Spanish school. 

"I couldn't get over putting them on a bus in the morning and not seeing them again until late in the evening. I spent a lot of time at the grocery store even though the store didn't have the things I wanted." I could imagine her loneliness. Her husband was working, and the kids made friends and picked up the language easily. 

"One day, our son came home with a big bandage on his head. I asked him what happened, and he said another boy had thrown a rock at him. A teacher took him to the hospital where THEY SUTURED HIS HEAD then put him on the bus home." The school hadn't contacted her. 

Jaime and I laughed, but it was clear she was still pretty traumatized by this event. 

"Well, at least it was all free," I said. Spain really is metal. 

We had another Zoom call with our friend Antonio from the Galicia later that day and recounted the story to him. 

"Can you believe that?" we asked. 

"Yeah, I can." He said. It happened to me three times while I was in school. Metal. 

To this day, the best shit I have ever put into my temple.

Things I Did in an Effort to Distract Myself on Election Day

These are not in order of time or importance. 

1. Used a leaf blower

2. Donated blood 

3. Bled all over the pen and my sock 

4. Talked to a man about a water softener

5. Thought about bringing my neighbor some applesauce but didn't 

6. Talked to my mother (but we talked about the election) 

7. Thanked Jaime for not being Chris Watts

8. Explained to Jaime who Chris Watts is

9. Made stuffing from a box 

10. Took two Nutter Butters and not my usual one from the blood center

11. Wrote a blog post 

12. Put a caftan on, took it off, put it on again

13. Broke a mirror

14. Took two walks 

Oh Savage Day Toilet

I asked Jaime why he smelled like a man, and what I meant by that was why did he smell like any other man but himself. 

He doesn't have a strong BO, but I still pretty regularly shove my face under his arm and take a big whiff of his pit. His smell comforts me, and I like his brand. He doesn't even own deodorant, which made this new smell even more offensive to me. 

His response was that he had a zit on his forehead, so he sprayed cologne on it to dry it out. This sounded reasonable for him, so I went to brush my hair. 

Discovering the open box of Dior Eau Sauvage Eau de Toilette confused me so much, I nearly yanked a matted patch of hair from my scalp. 

Had this stinky bourgeoisie bitch truly sprayed Dior on a pimple?

He had. 

You might be asking why I have such an expensive cologne in my house, and the answer is simple and believable. I didn't buy it. My father-in-law shoved it in our suitcase last time we were in Spain. 

What might be less believable but still true is that I've never bought a perfume much less a parfum in my life. I do have two bottles, though. Elizabeth Arden's Red Door, which my mother put in my stocking one year to remind me of my grandmother's scent and Rihanna's Crush, which my father put in my stocking another year to remind me that I'm a White, lower middle-class Midwesterner. 

Was I fourteen when I got them? Was I twenty-seven? I don't know. It doesn't matter. 

What I do know is that I've never used them because even cheap perfume makes me feel like a fraud. I like to smell like me even though, if Jaime's BO is an "agree," mine is a "strongly disagree" on a Likert scale. 

I would have preferred he'd used either of the ones Santa had given me, but I guess him smelling like Rihanna would have been more confusing. Whereas him smelling like my grandmother would have been inconceivable. 

It doesn't matter, though, because neither of us would have used it otherwise. Jaime, because he doesn't smell, is unfazed by the French and has no concept of reality. Me, because I was raised by hippies, fear the French and am maybe too real. 

Anyway, I'm trying a new skin care regimen tonight. I'll let you know if it works. 

Introducing You Can Call Me Marge

 I've been doing more reading than writing lately. 

And I've been watching more drag queen videos than reading lately because that's just where I am on my education journey. 

Meanwhile, my friend has been working on an incredible project that I will let her introduce to you here: https://youcancallmemarge.com/ .

And she asked me to contribute a story here: https://youcancallmemarge.com/stories/ .

I'm really proud of her, and it felt great to write something again. 

Thank you for it all, Kim. I'm lucky to know you. You can find her here: https://youcancallmemarge.com/about-2/ .

A Love Letter to Some OGs and a Chicken Named Fluffy (Trigger Warning: Dead Animal Photos)

I don't remember who asked what everyone's plans were after the Zoom call, but I do remember who answered, "I am going to kill a chicken."

It was Poppy.

It's pretty brutal making friends in Barcelona. Most foreigners who live there are on a journey (destination: themselves), so they're really fucking annoying, and most Catalans who live there are really fucking annoyed.

I clung to the few friends I had my first year. They saw me through escaping from a witch's house in El Born, being kicked in the shins by a noseless sex worker, getting pinned up against the subway doors and groped by a bag man and being in a fictional relationship with a professional model and skateboarder who was actually neither.

But they were also with me through some hard times.

The problem was that I was at the particular point in my annoying journey where no one else I knew was.

I arrived to the OG party late because, like I said, I was very busy trying to convince a homeless man that he was my boyfriend...and not a model. And that skateboarding was a hobby if you don't get paid, but once I got there, I never left.

My first party with the OGs. I have to put this here, so you don't 

see a chicken head on Facebook.

The OGs changed everything about Barcelona. The city I'd been fighting so hard to accept me suddenly did. I dug deeper into her neighborhoods, wore the soles out of many pairs of shoes, became a regular, saw a lot of sunrises and looked absolutely ridiculous the whole time. It's weirdly painful to be so happy and in love with a place you can't stay. I think we all had a similar feeling but didn't talk about it even though we spent nearly every day together.

I would not have made it another year and a half without them, but by then the OGs had given me their best gift, and I decided it was time to bring him home to my family.

But who is this chicken named Fluffy?

Now scattered throughout the world, the OGs and I have again found ourselves at a point in our annoying journey where we need each other courtesy of a global pandemic.

Our Zoom meeting was comforting, cathartic, hilarious and over when Poppy told the group made up of many vegetarians that she needed to excuse herself to execute Fluffy who'd broken her leg because she was so fat. She said she'd send pictures.

The next morning I woke up to this:

Poppy, "I did it with so much love. I hugged her and calmed her down, I prayed and thanked her. She was very peaceful, and it was quick. Haven't decided what I'm going to do with the head yet."

I asked her what other people do with chicken heads.

Poppy, "I have a friend who feeds them to her pet flesh eating bugs and keeps the skull, but I don't have any useful pets like that."

If you like the sounds of Poppy, she hosts my favorite radio show from Castelmaine, Australia called Beats Without Borders. You can listen to it here: https://mainfm.net/shows/beats-without-borders/

I hope everyone has some friends to lean into hard during this fucked up time. Find me if you need me.

A more recent party with the OGs. Clockwise starting from us: Kansas, California, England, Australia, Spain, Albania. 

How the Gentiles Live

I accompanied this morning's kiss with a "Shabbat shalom." Jaime responded, "Shalom. Shalom. Mazel tov."

It's not the Sabbath, I've done nothing to be congratulated for and we're not Jewish.

But you already know that as much as you knew that we were not cooking meth and trafficking cocaine when we watched every season of Breaking Bad and Narcos back to back. We also never traveled back and forth through time from 18th Century Scotland to the post WWII years during our Outlander phase.

Maybe it's a consequence of the age of binging and not having to wait a week for the next episode of our favorite show, or maybe we're just dull and delusional people trying to identify with something we're not.

But in our house, that shit feels real.

After blowing through Unorthodox, we started the Israeli show, Shtisel, and now nothing in our home is more important than kissing the mezuzah.

Of course, this is very offensive. Appropriators never feel like they are disrespecting the culture they are fetishizing or failing to represent with little to no or even a negative understanding of that culture, and yet they keep fucking doing it bless them and their mother, Kris Jenner.

But Jaime and I are the descendants of the passive oppressors who invented appropriation.

If transported through the stones of Craigh Na Dun to the 1980s, we would not have been in Pablo Escobar's inner circle nor the terrified citizens of Medellin. We would have been the douchebags vacationing in Miami snorting cocaine off the rattan dresser in our two star motel room.

Our hair would have been the only remarkable thing about us because if two people have hair made just for the 80s, it's these guys.

We probably wouldn't have been the Conquistadors or SS Officers or Slave Masters, but we would have profited off the horror somehow because we're in that comfortable middle who's appalled by the atrocities we consider over and done while blind to the ways in which we still benefit from their legacies. It's only fun to imagine you're part of a marginalized group when there's no danger to yourself in it.

So, we will continue to revel in how badass Hasidic men look when they're smoking cigarettes and stress about how often their tzitzit tassels must fall into the toilet. We'll feel sorry for women who are pregnant and don't want to be and wonder how on Earth they sleep in pantyhose.

We'll react to the actors until Jaime finally notices that I've stopped reading the subtitles to him because I'm sound asleep and turns off the computer.

But while we're sleeping, people in other homes in other parts of the world are really praying, really loving and really remembering things we can only dream about.

I just wish someone would make a show that reflected me and my life. You know? 

Saturday Curry with the Boys Club

As Groucho Marx said upon resigning from the Friar's Club (whatever the hell that is), "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."

I've been great at avoiding any kind of membership since I was in Brownies (the foot soldiers of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America) because our troop leader once piled us into her van, drove to her trailer and told us to make play dough ornaments in her oven so she could chain smoke and watch TV with her boyfriend.

When our parents arrived at the church to pick us up, we were nowhere to be found, and my mom said I couldn't go back after that. I think she was actually very grateful to the lady when she finally did find me and learned I hadn't been sold. My mother is a strict non-joiner.

But some clubs are so exclusive that when you're invited to join, you carry that card for life.

We met Antonio (Ton or Tom for those who cannot pronounce the equally easy Ton) and his husband, Jamie (not Jaime, Jamie), during the time acquaintances were trying to introduce us to every Spaniard in the city.

Ton's the only Iberian who stuck because, turns out, not all españoles son compatibles.

Of the many benefits that come with Ton and Jamie's friendship, Saturday Curry with the Boys Club (SCBC) is my favorite, and I'm the only one who calls it that.

Every Saturday at noon, you can spot us at Taj Palace Indian buffet on 39th street. Jaime and I are usually the first to arrive because we've spent all morning talking about how excited we are about SCBC, warning each other not to eat because we've got SCBC and wondering who's going to be at SCBC.

I'm the only member without a penis, probably, and never once has it been an issue except for the time I asked them if the men's bathroom was just as terrible as the women's.

They all stared at me blankly until Jerry said, "Honestly, I wasn't even aware there was a women's restroom here."

The bathrooms are vital because, except for Lee whose plate is specially prepared in the kitchen before he arrives, we are eating bottomless curry. However, I can usually wait to use the one at Mud Pie, the vegan coffee shop we go to after lunch.

I don't typically order anything at the cafe. I'm just there for the company because I've had as many cups of complimentary chai tea and fried dough balls at Taj Palace as I can stand. The buffet's not expensive, but why leave anything untouched, you know?

Jaime, on the other hand, orders his usual: a large chai tea and donut. His total comes to more than the cost of his lunch.

Brian laughs at my deep sigh every time, and it's what saves our marriage.

I have learned so much from this precious, warm hug of a man group. They make me laugh, they bring me office supplies for school and most importantly, they are the reason why Jaime finally feels at home in Kansas City.

And for that, I will forever be grateful to them.

We've never taken a picture together, but this is EXACTLY what we'd look like in matching jackets.

Fuck You, No You're Not

My co-worker and I were putting out books for an after school event when I heard her shout, "Cuzco is a real place!?"

I told her it was and that I was going there next month. It was an impossible thing to do without sounding like an asshole.

"Fuck you, no you're not," was her reply. She is my favorite co-worker.

Last summer, Jaime and I had settled on China when discussing our spring break trip. He has a colleague who'd invited us to stay with her in Shanghai, and I really have a thing for the Terracotta Army and being the average height of the population.

But then his parents' friend in New Zealand reminded us that her door in Auckland is always open, and we switched gears to planning a trip there motivated mostly by the accents.

I don't remember what piqued Jaime's interest in Peru, but we decided it was a more affordable trip even if we didn't know anyone there, and we had to make the hike to Machu Picchu while he was still in good enough shape to carry me when I gave up prematurely.

When Whakaari erupted in December, we felt sort of like we'd dodged a bullet in New Zealand.

When the news coming out of China started, we felt VERY lucky we hadn't planned a trip there.

When the world started burning, we were upset that we might lose some deposits.

I also wondered how I was going to break the news to a bunch of 13 year-olds who don't give a shit that I am not going to a place that mildly captured their imaginations when we were studying the Inca. How, reader? How?

Peru's on hold for now. But if Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines can survive the end of a civilization brought on by the cruelest forms of human greed and the rampant spread of a virus, I think they'll still be there at the end of all of this.

It took me a while to convince her, but she finally slid the book over and told me to read up for our trip. I promised to send her some video lessons I'd planned to record, so she could share them with her class.

But she was right. I am, in fact, "fucked", and no, I "am not".

I Owe Everyone an Apology

Guys, I am not a witch, but I did conjure up this quarantine.

And I do apologize for it.

If you had told me a month ago that I could stay in my home every day with everyone's blessing still collecting a paycheck whilst our mother, Earth, repaired herself for a long but indeterminate amount of time, I would have pricked my finger with a golden thorn, climbed to the top of the world's tallest volcano, mixed my blood with the spit of a mountain goat by the light of the Waxing Gibbous Moon and dropped a lock of my hair into its mouth (the volcano's, not the goat's) sealing the deal BEFORE you had gotten to the part where a bunch of people die from a virus.

I would not have done all that if I'd been told that last part first.

I have nothing of value to add to the conversation about what's going on other than to be real about the fact that my greatest wish, to get paid for staying home, is not something I deserve.

I will, of course, be working during the quarantine. Children still need me to spend a lot of time on thoughtfully differentiated but manically fun lessons that they will complain about and not do, but for as much time as I'll be spending on that, I'll be spending at least three times that amount doing complete and utter bullshit that has no direction, purpose or conclusion.

Yesterday, I was cooking when I noticed that part of the counter top was peeling away, so I went to get some super glue. I shook the super glue as directed, got bored while shaking it, set it on the counter and walked away to pluck my eyebrows.

That is just one moment of a day that followed the pattern of all my other days if you believe that randomness is a pattern.

If you took a time-lapse video of our home today, you would see Jaime seated at the table working for a solid 10 hours. It's 8:15 pm, and he's still there. A lay person watching would have assumed I wasn't home at all because any trace of me would look like a streak of orange on top of a streak of white on top of a streak of black. I have been going in and out of every room for a split second for no reason all day.

And I loved it, and it was wonderful. Except that my house is still a mess, the clothes are still in the dryer, and Jaime finally just microwaved two squares of processed cheese substitute over 5 meatless hot dogs because he realized I wasn't making dinner.

I also did not do any school work.

Anyway, I'm sorry for willing this to happen. I take it back, and I just want everyone to be safe and healthy while realizing we need to take better care of one another and our planet.

I did fix this part of the counter, though.

Junior High School Is Burning

I teach junior high school. It's everyone's worst age to be and to be around.

I thought I'd learned everything I needed to know about that age when I was in 8th grade and decided to cut my extremely curly red hair into the shape of a globe, but it can always get worse. I know that now.

However, this post isn't an expose on the current state of affairs in American middle schools because despite what I say on the daily, I DO NOT want to get fired.

This is about fashion, and I am here to tell you that if you're not dressing like a 14 year-old, you're cancelled.

At my school, even teachers wear uniforms. The communist in me says, "YAS." But the 14 year-old in me says, "Fuck you." I take strong offense at making girls in their peak Mesopotamian child bearing years wear khaki pants, but all I can do is stock up on the world's thickest maxi pads because they will lose their goddamn minds if you hand them a tampon.

Anyway, so when we have a dress down day, WE WERK.

I don't know if you know what a VSCO girl is, but I don't either. What I do know is that to be a VSCO girl, it's required you have crushed velvet scrunchies in every color (preferably pastels) on your wrists, backpack and even in your hair.

Mine is bottle green, and it is very important for me to wear it on dress down day because I once told a student to put her scrunchie up because it was a distraction, and I kid you not, at least six girls whipped around and screamed, "You know what a scrunchie is!?"

Never in my life have I been so offended.

I get a lot of compliments on dress down day because I am very cool, but if they could see what I wore when I was their age, they'd never look me in the eye again.

Your jeans could not possibly be low enough when I was in middle school. Turns out, denim cutting just below your uterus and just above your butt crack looks good only on a very small number of people who don't exist.

When you bent over, of course, your butt crack fully revealed itself culminating with burst of highly flammable thong fabric. Our Hollister shirts were also very tight cutting off at the thickest parts of our arms and stomachs. Good thing our shoes were oversize to balance out the proportions.

In a radical move that makes me believe that they might actually be capable of reversing the effects of global warming, Gen Z is shunning our moronic, bullshit clothes and embracing the loose, high-waisted jeans, baggy tops and thick panty lines of the early 90s.

Important note: if any of these aren't purchased second hand, you must lie and say they are.

I am so proud of them and fully embrace this gift they've given us.

Last dress down day, I wore some very broken in denim and a flannel button down in a men's large. I thought I looked amazing until Luis said, "Ms. Green, you look like you came straight from a farm."

I started to explain that I actually had been raised in a rural community in Northwest Missouri but realized it wasn't worth it and turned my head, so he could see my scrunchie.

I think he was impressed, but I have no idea what boys wear.

Snapchat me if you want to borrow it.

Covidpendency

"Stop doing that face. It bothers me."

Apparently, the face I make when eating a bad orange has bothered Jaime since the dawn of time, but he's just now getting around to telling me.

Other than that, we're handing social distancing pretty well.

I've never met anyone as suited to working from home as Jaime. He can stay in bed for hours focused on the task at hand while declaring every 90 minutes or so that he probably gets more done naked at home than clothed in the office.

If I had a snow day, and Jaime arrived home to see me smeared with chocolate and peanut butter watching Schitt's Creek for the 9th time in a fart cloud, he would have the exact same reaction as if I'd cleaned the house top to bottom, meal planned for two weeks and completely fixed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

"Fuck it. It's your time. Do what you want with it."

I really appreciate this about him, so I try not to micromanage his time either, but the pressure of the virus got to me while stuck late at parent-teacher conferences, and even we had to make sacrifices.

After I ended the call asking Jaime to go to the grocery store, the science teacher assured me that he could do this.

He couldn't, but that's none of science nerd's business, so instead I answered the question he'd asked me before: What would you use if we ran out of toilet paper?

At first I said Jaime's old underwear, but then I changed it to bidet. I'm pricing bidets now.

The groceries were on the table when I got home. I explained it's customary to put sundries away after purchase, but he assured me he'd refrigerated all the perishables. I went to bed so freaking excited to put them away in the morning.

Jaime was still sleeping, so I had to laugh-cry silently while unpacking from what appeared to be his maiden journey to any grocery store anywhere.

He bought two jars of rhubarb jam but no bread, two boxes of cereal but no milk, oats that we already have and don't eat and the most gigantic can of baked beans made with bacon. We're vegetarians.

He explained that bread, oat milk and fresh vegetables are all perishable, so he didn't buy them. I asked him if the 23 bananas (actual number) he bought were perishable, but he just shrugged.

So now, we're just chilling at home for the unforeseeable future, snacking on some banana bread with jam reminding each other why we promised to hang out in sickness and in health until one of us dies.

Does anyone want these? Pinto beans not included.