August 14, 2007
I have been so sick lately. Winter in Santiago just kills me. It’s impossible to stay warm because central heating doesn’t exist. And riding the metro…well you might as well just insert the flu virus intravenously because after touching the handles and doors and seats and breathing the same air as a gazillion people all in one small space, you’re definitely going to get sick. Oh yeah, and then walk outside and breathe in massive amounts of smog as an added bonus. That will make you feel just peachy!
Here are some photos I took at the park the day before I got sick…they’re from last weekend but I just now got around to editing them.
I tried some fun new things in Photoshop, let me know if you like the weirdo colors.
Anyways, aside from being sick I haven’t been sleeping well either. The problem is that I have a hard time falling asleep to begin with…which has been a struggle for me ever since I was little. My brain just won’t turn off no matter what I do. I’ll be laying in bed trying trying to stop thinking and I’ll catch myself with clenched fists, a furrowed brow, every muscle in my body tense. I have to conscienciously go through and relax each muscle. And then by the time I’m done doing that, I’ve started thinking again and by the time I’ve gotten my mind more or less blank, my muscles are all hunched up again. When I finally manage to fall asleep I never get more than an hour or two of shut eye before I have to get up to go to the bathroom…
AND HERE IS WHERE YOU STOP READING OR ELSE YOU WILL BE BOMBARDED WITH TOO MUCH INFORMATION. CARRY ON AT YOUR OWN RISK.
I had a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) last year. I got it while I was living in Chile with no medical insurance (oh wait…nothing has changed, I still am uninsured in Chile, ANYWAYS). But, the good thing about this country is that pharmacists will give you pretty much any medicine you want without a prescription if you’ll describe your illness to them. So Seba took me to a pharmacy that’s inside the supermarket closest to our house. And the damn pharmacist woman wouldn’t give me any medicine without a prescription…that had NEVER happened to me before. Anyways, after begging and pleading with her to no avail, I just broke down in tears….and not just like silent, eyes welling up tears…I was sobbing like a little kid whose mommy just told her that she was not going to get a pony for her birthday. People were staring and I was making a huge scene and S. was getting angry with me because I wouldn’t stop crying. But, if you have ever had a UTI I’m sure you understand. I have a really high pain tolerance and even this was too much for me. I couldn’t handle it. Anyways, to get to the point, we just ended up buying massive amounts of cranberry juice and that cured me within hours of drinking it. Seriously, never bother going to the doctor for a UTI again, just drink the red stuff. When I got back to the States I did go to the doctor to make sure I was completely cured, and sure enough, I was. But the reason I’m writing this, is because ever since then I am like ultra tuned in to my pea sized bladder. Which makes me get up to go to the bathroom like 10 times a night. And after every time I go to the bathroom, I have to go through my whole tossing and turning and clenching and unclenching fists and trying to clear my mind thing again.
I feel like I never get a good night’s sleep and I don’t know how much longer I can handle this. I’m a woman who needs her sleep. Give me a good solid 10 hours or I’m as cranky as a Walmart cashier.
ARGH…it’s so frustrating to never feel well rested. If anybody has any suggestions, please feel free to comment. Unless that comment says, “K. stop talking about your bladder on your blog,” then please do not feel free…I warned you.
August 8, 2007
After a week and a half of horrible eating caused by PMS (or my total and complete lack of willpower…whatever. I prefer to blame PMS), the scale is headed in an upwards direction and I’m not too overjoyed about that. So I’ve started trying to control my eating, but we haven’t been to the grocery store in 3 weeks so we have no fresh fruits or veggies. We have nothing but noodles and rice. The carbs are killing me! I eat a small plate of starchy deliciousness and then in an hour I’m starving again. We really need to get to the supermarket but there are several problems, 1. We’re poor. 2. We’re poor. and 3. We’re really poor.
AWESOME!
At the end of this week after payday we’ll be able to go grocery shopping but we still don’t have a lot to spend, and inflation has just been killing me lately. When I first got to Chile I couldn’t believe that fresh produce was so dirt cheap. Now in the past months the prices of vegetables and fruit has gone up over 100%, milk and bread have also been on the rise. I’ve heard talk that this is a sign of Chile’s economy growing. Welcome to the developed world…where everything costs you and arm and a leg! But, I feel so bad for the people here who are truly poor. It’s pretty easy for me to notice inflation in food prices because we are very consistent in what we buy…always the basics, lots of fruits, vegetables, bread, milk, cereal, rice etc. Never anything too out of the ordinary (except when my husband’s cuico supermarket opens and I go CRAZY!). There was a time when we regularly spent about $50,000 pesos, or about $100 USD every two weeks on groceries. Now that’s gone up and I’m fairly positive we are still buying the same items. Now we spend about $60,000-65,000 pesos, or $120-130 USD each time. That’s not a huge increase but when you consider the fact that minimum wage is about $240 USD, spending an extra $20-30 bucks would take a serious chunk out of your monthly earnings.
I complain a lot about our financial situation. We have debt and that sucks big time. It may take us longer than we’d like to be able to move to another country. I’d like a big expensive flash for my camera.
I want to smack myself for just saying those things.
I seriously need to shut my pie hole. Compared to a lot of people in Chile, we are so much better off. Sure, we live in a room in a student residence that belongs to our parents. But, we have a roof over our heads. I might not be able to buy all my expensive imported foods from the US like peanut butter as much as I would like, but I never worry that we’re going to go hungry. Sometimes I light candles to help heat our room to save on energy costs. But we’ll never freeze because I can turn on the electric space heater whenever I want. We have electricity in our house.
Anyways, this entry turned into a total tangent and is not what I had intended to write about. Sometimes you just have to go with it. I guess the point that I’m trying to get to is that we’re not “really poor,” like I said in that first paragraph. We’re rich, and I should be more appreciative.
August 5, 2007
So, let’s talk about my weekend and what I did not do. I thought I was going to end up working as a promotora…
Remember how I went to a casting call to try and get a job in promotions? That did not turn out exactly as planned. I arrived on time and looking cute as a button, if I do say so myself. I put in the extra effort on my hair. I normally have a curly fro. Trying to straighten it totally stresses me out:
(and if I look ridiculously skinny in these pictures, it’s because I was. This was taken about two weeks before my wedding when I was at lifetime low of 129, I have since gained back about 7 or 8 pounds).
Anyways, so I straightened my hair, put on the most wonderful makeup in the world, my MAC products, which I only bust out on really special occasions. I wore jeans, high heels and a long, trendy white sweater. I set out feeling full of confidence, when I walked out the door of my house, my head was high and there was nothing in the world that could bring me down because I. Felt. HOT!
Walking through my neighborhood filled with mechanics I received more than my fair share of appreciative glances, whistles, hoots and hollers…all of which I pretended not to notice. If I look them in the eyes, they might propose marriage. I swear, that’s actually happened numerous times. I felt good, I just knew that I was going to be chosen for the job.
The lady who greeted me was wearing a ridiculous blue sequined shirt. The whole time she was talking to me I paid no attention to the words she was saying because her shirt was like a giant, mesmerizing, disco ball. I. Could. Not. Look. Away. She blah blah blah’ed and led me to a room full of 5 other prospective promotion girls.
Everybody looked extremely bored and all the girls were wearing extremely tall heels. I asked them why and they said because they had all lied about their heights on the application and were hoping the agency wouldn’t notice. Dang it! I should have lied and worn taller heels too! There aren’t many tall Chilean models, and these girls told me that even on the agency website where all the girls who are shown have stats that say they are 170 cm (5’5.5″), really only reach that height with heels on. Suddenly 5’4″ without heels made me feel like a giant among men.
So we sat there and discussed our heights, and weights and hair and heels and any other boring, superficial topic you can possibly think of. And the clock ticked on. and on. and on. We sat in a room with no windows for over an hour and a half. It was dark and gloomy and my company was so terrible that I suddenly wondered if I had died and maybe God was punishing me for not giving money to the beggar with no legs who rides around a skateboard, that I always pass by when I go downtown.
Finally when we were closing in on a wait time of two hours one by one the models started trickling out the door. I had one foot in the open air on my way to freedom when Senora Disco Ball comes running after me screaming, “Stay! Stay! OH PLEASE STAY! The client has arriiiiiiiiiiived!” There was such a desperation in her voice that I felt like her job might be on the line if a client showed up and had no models to choose from, so I stayed. Nobody else did. Jeez, gringas are total pushovers, aren’t we?
The client was a total bitch. She walked in haughtily, didn’t apologize for being two hours late, and demanded a cup of coffee. Then she sat down and stated, “I’ll be with you in a minute,” and slowly finished her beverage, not caring that I had been waiting for her for FOREVER. When she finished, all she did was tell me to stand up, turn around and walk around the room. Then she asked very condescendingly (you know, speaking veeeeerrrryyyy, slooooooooowwwwlyyy and VERY LOUDLY in case I didn’t understand) if I spoke Spanish. When I told her I did, she said, “Alright she’s in,” and left the room. Senora Disco Ball came back and told me that since I had passed the test I was required to go to a half day seminar on the bitch client’s product on Friday in order to work the next two weekends for them. When I asked if I would be paid for the seminar, she practically snorted and told me, “Absolutely not.”
I walked out the door pissed as hell, pardon my French. And on the 30 minute, now 6 blister walk, + 45 minute metro ride home I did some calculations. Including the 3 hours of time spent at the “casting call,” plus the half day product seminar, and the 9 hours workdays, the total pay was going to come out to less than 50 cents an hour.
I sent an email when I got home and told Disco Ball I couldn’t make it. She wrote back furious, and said, “This is a professional agency and when you make a commitment to us we expect you to keep that commitment. How am I supposed to find another model in such a short notice? This is the first and last time you do this to us, if it happens again you’ll have to find yourself a new agency!” I haven’t wrote back and probably won’t but if I did it would go something like this.
Dear Disco Ball,
You kept me waiting for over 2 hours, then your client treated me like dirt, and you expected me to drop everything with less than 24 hours notice for a seminar you didn’t tell me about and you want to talk to me about professionalism? Don’t worry about this ever happening again, in fact I’m already looking to find myself a new agency. Why? Not because I’m scared of your disciplinary threats, but because I won’t work for an hourly rate that would be considered slave labor in most places.
Sincerely,
The gringa who is taller than all your models without hooker heels on
Ps. The 1970′s called and they want their disco ball…oops, I mean shirt, back.
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