tía, no tengo la pasta: welcome back to spain

Welcome back to Spain.

After what felt like a lifetime but also the blink of an eye, I'm back in Spain after nearly six months stateside with a whole new outlook on things.

Well, a whole new outlook is probably an exaggeration, considering I can't quite pinpoint how I feel about it all. "It all" being life and how or where I'm supposed to live it.

Decisions and inertia and immigration laws aside, it's turned out to be the biggest dilemma of my quarter century life crisis.

Raise your hand if you're one of mine...a person who mistook her character for a wanderer, simply because she felt deprived of a place to call home.

One thing I've learned about myself over this whole escapade (which amounts to nearly four years of some of the best of my life) is that I am not a wanderer nor do I want to be. I am a nester, and, due to my own confusion, I've made far too many tiny nests. And if we take this metaphor a little further, I can say with much conviction that my wings are tired.

Oh, I sound so dramatic but how else can I put it?! Okay, fine, I'll put it simply. Like I put it to Lucas a few days ago: I just want to go somewhere, and stay there for a long, long time.

I guess our problem, though, is that tiny little word "somewhere". Where? I should really say, I just want to go somewhere, close to my mom and sister and friends, that has a high quality of life for a low price, that's near the ocean and where I can bike and walk to all the places I need to go, that has mild weather but also four seasons, with good food and good people, oh and a job for the both of us would be nice, and then I will stay there for a long time.

Anyway, in the meantime, and let's see if it serves as some inspiration, we are stationed in Ibiza. We are sort of taking care of this house whose owners split up and, in intervals, split, and the place has fallen into a sort of oblivion. I like to imagine and days and weeks and months of silence and void that filled these rooms before we came to inhabit them...

I wasn't sure if it was the best idea at the beginning. The house needed a lot of work to get back into livable shape, and we aren't even sure how long we will be here. Of course handyman Lucas has taken care of nearly everything (from the broken water heater to the despicable plumbing situation) and that has left me with the womanly duties of interior aspects and cleanliness. Knowing that we might not be here long, I did not want to get my hands dirty and in the process create some sort of attachment to the place. There was even a small temper tantrum, I remember now, about the horribly rusting and slimy silverware that were smartly left in their own watery filth. "I don't want to deal with this!!!" That's what I said.

But if we wanted to eat we had to deal with it, and because Lucas had his hands full with firewood, it was up to me. Once I had my sleeves rolled up and my hands deep in that project, I let them deal with a million other things in and around the house. And of course, it felt good.

So, welcome to Ibiza aka country life aka DIY's birthplace. We're in the middle of the woods, surrounded by Lucas's family and friends, and it may not be summer nor necessarily vacation nor a permanent spot to call home, but honestly I can't complain. There's a million things to do beyond housekeeping, especially with the fantastic weather as of late. Enjoy the photos..

Where I dwell lately.

This "interior garden" is screaming for help, but that might be a project I'm not willing to deal with.

I call this fantastic photo "Bathed in sunlight".

We went squid fishing...the first little guy...

Not really sure why this happens, but they change colors twice in the span of about 10 minutes...

We ended up catching eight squid (and one octopus which we let go)...I'll admit I felt sad for them...they made these little coughing noises...but two days later we ate stuffed squid prepared by Lucas's uncle (the bodies stuffed with the tentacles) and I have never tasted such deliciousness in my life. The texture has nothing to do with what I've tried in restaurants.

Taking picture of the sunset on a sailboat...not easy.

It's oddly forgettable, the fact that we are both in the land of the unemployed.

Best part of the house...wood burning stove.

Lucas pissed because I want him to be in every photo. Thats a giant stack of rock salt. Most of it goes to northern Europe, where, according to the informational plaque, it serves in a culinary fashion atop fresh cod. Which is a lie, because they certainly don't eat THAT much cod. It's actually used mostly for the icy roads.