A Spot of Bother

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Now I know what it means to be driven to drink.

Pour me a large gin and tonic, with a tequila shot to start and to follow.

NOW!

Or I could switch to decaf.

Or water.

No matter, my rage is now starting to subside, my nerves to calm and my sanity to return.

What drove me to my looming inebriation?

The day started out good. Better than good. It was one of those cold winter afternoons when the crisp air makes you feel alive. I had finished my deadline work as a reporter and caught up on a few pending tasks. I felt good and relaxed. My two youngest kids were at home playing with toy cars, and the housekeeper was ironing a mountain of clothes.

All was pleasant.

So I left the apartment and took a walk to pick up my eldest daughter from school. I got there with time to spare and chatted with a few of the other parents, and then walked home casually with my seven-year-old daughter. We chatted about her day and the World Cup. She was thrilled about Spain knocking out Germany after Germany had knocked out her Argentina and her mother’s England. Go Spain!

We got home, went up the elevator and inside. The housekeeper was pleasantly ironing the mountain of clothes and I went to see the two youngest.

That’s when it hit.

First it was the stench and then the sight of my littlest daughter on my bed covered head to toe in, well, feces. She’d filled her nappy and decided to take it out. It was everywhere.

Shit!

I rushed her to the bathroom and along the way debris tumbled down to the floor and under my shoes. I washed her hands and set about scrubbing off the dried-on layer that caked her body. Only my nails would do the trick. I popped her in the bath and raced off to get the mop and a bucket of hot water and the strongest cleaning fluid I could find.

The housekeeper was calmly ironing.

The phone rang.

It was a friend and she asked how things were going.

“I’m taking deep breaths.”

“Oh, that bad,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

“Dettol, please. And a stiff drink.”

A Spot of Cheer

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Hey, Pine Tree Paradise got recognized. The editorial staff of GO! Overseas, a website that provides resources for traveling and living abroad, included it in a select list of travel related blogs in Argentina.

It’s not a Man Booker.

It’s not a Pulitzer.

It’s not a National Book Award.

But it’s a damn fine stroke of recognition and I am more than pleased. So much so that I will gloat for a bit.

…

Ok, that’s enough.

The challenge now is to keep readers coming back and live up to this newfound recognition. So keep tuning, or as it were, clicking in for more episodes from Argentina. And more art from my children, who feed me reams of it as well as fodder for many of the stories that make their way into the posts.

Thanks.

More

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As a kid I once heard about a surfer who hung up his surfboard and called it quits after surfing a spot so good that he didn’t think he’d ever get it any better.

He hung up his board and called it quits.

At first I thought, wow, it must have been good. But as I grew as a surfer the idea of quitting just like that came to sound ridiculous. When you get good surf, you want more. You pine for it. You get feverish about the thought of another good session. You even skip school, work and any other obligations. You go to bed early because you want the morning to arrive faster. You race to the beach and out into the waves. The adrenaline takes hold of you. You want more.

In a way, that was what it was like watching Argentina in this World Cup. They played well. They attacked. They amazed with passes that snaked through the middle of a wall of defenders. How did Lionel Messi do that? What a goal by Carlos Tevez! They had hunger, grace and magic. They were a joy to watch. I wanted to watch. I got feverish ahead matches and so did my wife and my eldest daughter.

Diego Maradona helped put it all together, an ace player who as coach of the national team for the first time breathed a bit of his magic into the players. They played well even against a faster and stronger Germany that wound up thrashing them 4 to 0.

It was hard to watch the loss after four matches that showed football can be a beautiful game, that showed that Argentina can play beautifully.

I still want more.

So keep it coming Maradona. You brought me joy and passion for your team. And my eldest daughter loved it and lived it, wearing her Argentina shorts and blue-and-white jersey often and proudly, with Tevez stamped on the back, her favorite player. She got so into it that ahead of the Germany match she asked me to make pancakes in the shape of Argentina’s football emblem. I did my best.

And after the loss, she asked if that was it. We told her yes. And she went into her room on her own. Argentina was out. Her team had fallen. Minutes passed and then from behind the closed door we heard her crooning the Argentine national anthem as sung by the players before each match.

Yes, we want more.