As of Sunday 3/15, I can apply to grad school!
For those of you who thought I was already in grad school, the deal is that you must complete certain classes from a program with a B or better prior to officially being enrolled. I am now part way through my final one and the application period has opened.
I have had some epic birthdays.
I made an insane coursed meal for like 15 friends
I went on a hot air balloon over the pyramids of Teotihuacan
We went cosmic tubing and a friend brought essentially an entire bar in her trunk
I’ve had a surprise party
I’ve done mushrooms in a magical mountain town
I’ve had a party where we were all covered in finger paint
I’ve floated down an ancient canal in a colorful boat with a michelada in hand
I’ve stayed in a darling airstream by the beach and rode a horse
I’ve had a drink in an empty bar that a friend owned the night before a global pandemic shut down everything
We’ve gone dancing
I’ve traveled, I’ve stayed home, I’ve gone out.
This one feels hard. It’s not the age, I don’t actually care much about that, it’s just a very sharp reminder of my lack of community here. I don’t want to celebrate cause I don’t know who would actually show up and because I don’t know that I want to look that group of people in the face cause I think it might just make missing my group of people unbearable. So instead, I’m going to take care of me. I’m going to do some exercise, I’m going to love Leo, I’m going to get myself in good shape at work and school for a vacation. I’m going to eat something that came from the ground. I hope to meditate.
Otho sent me a giant bouquet of flowers last week, he knew I’d be leaving this week, and it made my week. It has also made my portera extremely curious about who is sending me flowers. She’s invasive in a mostly good way.
Can I just say, I fucking love being in school. It’s the best thing ever. You just think about things without too heavy an operational lens and without the pressure of actually having to arrive at a conclusion. And when there is pressure, it is relatively light weight. No lives or livelihoods are at stake. Mostly it’s your pride. It’s kinda like a massive crossword. I think we should all actually just be in school in some capacity forever. I mean that. Drop us to a 30 hour work week and then everyone takes a class. Something to get your juices flowing, new perspectives added to your view, the energy to find joy in just thinking. Most of my time thinking is exhausting. There’s insufficient time/money/people/pick your resource to do it well, do it thoroughly or optimize any given solution. But in school, you get to cross day dreaming with thinking. And it’s good for my soul, and I actually suspect it’s good for most souls.
The week was largely quiet except an adventure that involved me buying a 3ft tall ficus and a jasmine plant about a mile away from my house (farther than you think with a meter tall plant in your arms) and then waking up the next day being confused at how I’d managed to make my arms sore overnight. Like actually disconcerted enough that I googled “Symptoms of shingles” before looking outside and being like “oh yeah, you did this pretty ficus friend”.
After class on Saturday I ventured down to Coyoacan on a grand mission which, like many of mine, wound up being a partial victory. I hopped off the subway and meandered through Viveros, which I know I’ve mentioned before, but it’s a park that serves as the city’s nursery and includes a running track around the outside and paths up and down the middle. Some are reserved for growing baby trees, others are grassy spaces where in the mornings people practice yoga and in the afternoons they picnic. One corner of this park is a plant market. And that was our destination. But not yet, cause I was pretty confident I would buy too much to carry and I hadn’t quite decided whether I was gonna try to Uber all the stuff home without me.
Instead I walked into Centro. Coyoacan is just beautiful. Large shady trees disrupt the sidewalks and cover the narrower streets with their leafy goodness. There’s no tall buildings in this part, it’s all colonial, often brightly painted, with epic wooden doors. Parts of this city have this way of transporting you into a movie you know well and Coyoacan excels in this regard.
As I approached the plaza the streets turn to cobblestone and I am confronted with a massive array of tents. Apparently there’s an annual book fair right around my bday! Next year, I hope my Spanish is sufficient to lean into the book fair scene, cause conceptually I’m in love with these things. A multi day event for small publishers? With discounts on books and speakers? Omg. It’s amazing. And people actually show up. I think Lea translated it as a book party.
But I was there for sopa de tortillas at Danzantes. And I ate it and I was happy.
After I headed up to the Trotsky Museum which I’d never been to before. Trotsky was granted asylum in Mexico in 1937, eight years after his exile, in no small part due to the efforts of the communist leaning art community, that included Diego Rivera. In fact, Rivera gifted him his house in Coyoacan. Trotsky was assesinated here in Mexico in 1940 having lost his country and seen the persecution and death of most of his family. This home in which he lived is now the site of Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky. And, ok, the museum was a little weird and had a strong pro Trotsky stance that included the claim that he was Lenin’s natural successor, which I do not have the knowledge to validate or negate.
The museum mostly featured highly pixalated blow ups of an adult Trotsky. But there is a very cool timeline from the 1800s to the 1990s that lays out prominent occurences in the USSR, Mexico, and the world. I’m still new enough here to be delighted by the absence of the US. You then duck through a small hallway to the courtyard that’s the heart of this style home. If you’ve been to Casa Azul, you know what I mean. Needless to say, that is much better loved.
And there are more buildings filled with more unexplained photos. And then a few that preserve his belongings. You walk on a creaky metal walkway over the actual floor with a glass half way barrier. I’m not sure how much is a function of the raised walkway, but the doorways are extremely short.
And then in the courtyard, inexplicably is a chicken wired off area with several hutches placed in it that house fake bunnies. Yup. Wooden bunnies. Not live bunnies. No need for chicken wire. And it’s like serious chicken wiring.
Further down there was a non chicken wired examples with chickens that made for a better photo.
There was a small wooden building that was showing a video clip, but it was in both Russian and Spanish, so I skipped and headed back to Viveros.
I left with 3 very large pots for tomatoes, one medium size for aforementioned ficus, 20 kilos of dirt, 4 herbs and one senstive plant.
Sunday I woke up and went to town planting all my stuff! It brought me a lot of joy. And I made some pasta dough for the evening. Sometimes when I cook it’s a whole body experience. I have a sort of tenderness to the ingredients and the process and what it will be come. It’s almost meditative, this power of creation and connection. And especially available to me with dough. And this was a nice dough. supple and yellow. Pushing the heels of hands from my whole body to feel it extend across the counter and back into a ball, rotate and repeat, I rock back and forth with it. And with pasta you feel the gluten tighten as you knead, you meet more and more resistance. I’ve read that the amount of resistance you feel reflects on how the chew will be on the final product, but I haven’t tested this theory.
Then in the early afternoon I wandered down to Mercado Cien with Leo and met Fran and Gus and did some grocery shopping and came across a pop up carnivorous plants market. I did not know pitcher plants flowered! It was a little chaotic with Leo, so beat a quick retreat with our newly acquired pitcher plant and groceries and headed home to start sauce.
So, as many of you know, this dinner got a little more exciting. My plan was Marcella Hazan’s bolognese and a salad with my freshly purchased greens, jicama, fennel. pistachios and a citrus vinaigrette. This is actually what we ate, but things went a bit awry getting there.
The first incident was that I somehow got the thread off on the clamp that holds the pasta maker and it was not letting go. So I immediately put Gus to work upon his arrival. Gus is someone who likes being helpful and he likes a project. In fact Gus kinda obsesses on projects. The clamp extends through a hole toward the base of the pasta maker on side and then a screw with a flat metal piece at the other end that grabs the underside of a counter. My counter has a lip and I had carefully attached below the lip. At some point we were gently tapping the top end of the clamp with a hammer to try to get it out of the pasta maker. Then we were tapping (not so gently) the turn key at the bottom end. All to no avail.
So we are all crammed in my kitchen, at this point Gus is like on the floor trying to get leverage, we’re arguing about whether left loosey applies since it’s European, but according to Gus there’s also a mechanical standard. And I’m slicing fennel on a mandoline and suddenly I’m slicing my finger and am immediately dripping blood.
I rush to the back bathroom and it’s just too much blood to see what’s going, Fran is thrusting paper towels in the bathroom while also informing me that she’s gonna faint. Finally I wrapped up my ring finger in paper towels and just held my hand over my head while I coached Fran through preparing the rest of the salad. Meanwhile, Gus has ordered a wrench from Home Depot to detach the pasta maker.
And then we had a lovely meal, although, admittedly I was underwhelmed by the bolognese.
The wrench was insufficient to save the pasta maker so in the end the three of us all grabbed various part and went back to tapping with the hammer and managed to shimmy the damn thing off. The clamp is off the counter, but still quite stuck.
I bundled my finger super thoroughly for bed, with a plan to investigate in the morning.
Morning came (aka my birthday itself) and it was immediately apparently that I had taken off a small part of my finger and would be requiring medical attention. Fortunately Fran has a docter/surgeon she likes and was able to connect me with.
My plan, as noted above, did not involve the doctor. Dr. Cindy is lovely though. And I am bandaged. Very bandaged. Fortunately, ring finger, unfortunately right hand and yes, I am right handed.
One sad upshot is that I missed what has been described as a “WILD” meeting with a potential new software vendor that our CEO found that I was already annoyed about. Apparently it was a hot mess. Both my boss and I missed it and I was told by a co worker, to get some popcorn, having a viewing party and wait for Cara’s mic drop moment. So a little bummed I missed whatever the hell happened there. They have not yet shared the video. so I think it was real bad.
Then I got a lovely spa pedicure complete with scrub and massage. And off to Cozumel on Tuesday.
Year One Project 
Leave a comment