los lunes al sol

I decided to take up the blog again because I'm an american, back in Spain, and frankly I like reflecting on my daily life, here on the world wide web, to no one in particular.

But alas!  I have not taken it so seriously.  Or at least, I have not had enough moments of motivational inspiration to come here and ramble about them.  The photos and videos have been vain attempts to mask my lack of inspiration.

But wait..I'm wondering, can I, while on an island, in the mild mediterranean, young and unemployed but rent free, enjoying each day so incredibly fully with my partner in crime (we stole mandarins from an orchard the other day), call this lack of inspiration?

No, really, I can't.  Lack of..incentive?

Today I woke up around 9:30 and conducted my morning ritual, which consists of making orange juice and then situating myself in the corner of the living room next to the window, where I can access internet and thus, the world.  I look at my websites while I wait for Lucas to get up (it's not his forte), shower (I shower at night), and get dressed (I like to have breakfast in my pajamas and preferably stay in them all morning unless I have plans that oblige me to act otherwise).  Oh, and I also wait for him to prepare breakfast (tea and toast) because I usually get so wrapped up with the world on the world wide web that he gets around to it before I do.  Plus it's only fair because I squeezed the oranges.

Where was I?  Oh yes, lack of intelligence.

After we had breakfast, I got dressed, jumped in the car and drove through winding country roads, alongside bright yellow fields of mustard flowers and rolling hills scattered with white houses and the occasional almond tree in bloom ('tis the season).  I eventually arrived to a town nearby, Santa Gertrudis, where there is a knitting workshop (a wonderful place), to continue with my project.  You see, I'm knitting a sweater, and because I don't know what I'm doing, the woman who owns the store is helping me.

Lack of intelligence, no!  I mean lack of indecision.

Two hours later, I left the workshop with my project at the same point as where I left off...last night, in an attempt to knit and play scrabble simultaneously, I made a huge mistake that required backtracking a pretty long way this morning.  I redid some of what had been undone, and then I sat and talked with this woman for 45 minutes.  I bought a loaf of bread and went home.

What is lack of indecision?  Decision? I'm losing it. I meant lack of intrusion.

I arrived around 2:30, already realizing we were going to be having lunch no sooner than 4 pm yet again.  But to my surprise, we had impromptu lunch plans with some friends who were headed to the bar right down the road from us...

So at 3 pm, I found myself sitting out on the sunny corner of two country roads, drinking a beer and trying to pretend like it wasn't windy, because this is my version of Los Lunes al Sol, and if I were making this story up, we would have continued to have lunch outside in the sun.

But it was windy, so we drank our beers and went inside, where the six of us feasted until nearly 6 pm.

And upon arriving home, we started the fire, laid down on the couch, relaxed for an hour, and before we knew it, it was 7, Lucas had an appointment with the physical therapist, and I was to have tea all alone.

And that's how I got here, with my teapot (now empty), rambling away, and wondering if I will ever get to the point of this post.  Wondering, no, doubting.

Lack of initiative!  Yes.  Lack of initiative.  I don't think I'm alone in admitting that the busier I am, the more productive I am.  It must be human nature or something.   So I don't have much initiative lately, because I have so much beautiful time.  I don't get very much done, because I enjoy los lunes al sol, this being a phrase used often by spaniards, inspired by a 2002 film (starring Javier Bardem) about a group of laid-off shipyard workers who have their Mondays in the sun.

We are going to Madrid next week, and I'm scared for our lunes al sol.  Here, the people we know are either retired or artists or only work during the tourist season.  Isolated on the island, we don't feel the crisis as much, the crisis that has so many people out on Mondays in sunny Spain...

Morale in Madrid, according to nearly every single person I've talked to there, is not very high.  All people talk about is how bad things are, and I can vouch for that after what I've seen in the national news and press.  And what can I do?  Just hope things get better, my friends and family find work, and in the meantime try not to get contaminated by the low spirits.

And in any case, about my lack of initiative, it's the city, I am sure it will wind me up in the way cities do, and let's see if my next post is something more than, literally, my entire day (the only omission being the intermission I took a few paragraphs ago to dance to "Lust for Life" blaring on the stereo).