Stacato

Day 70

Sunday

I’ll never know what synapse goes off in our brains that tells us we need to wake up NOW and makes us shoot up in bed, like a mouse trap somehow set off. 10:27am. My brain fires and I’m awake. At some point at 8am I turned off my alarm, through some power of unconscious manipulation of my cell phone. Rubbing my eyes that weren’t quite ready to snap open quite as fast as they did, I cock my head and ask, “Really, really, really Spain?! A marching band on a Sunday morning?” The ruckus I had been quite certain was the featured background tune of my slumbering dreams was in fact a live marching band procession cruising down my street to the Teatro I live next to. Peeling back my doors, always anxious that someone might see me in my slovenly PJs, not quite up to par for public viewing, I peek out over my terrace, and marching along in an endless line for visual and auditory verification are all of the marching bands of Malaga, happily tooting or pounding away. Deciding it best to get some contacts in to really make sense of what was going on I head to the bathroom. Suddenly I see the central light to the apartment building shine through our exhaust window of sorts, which can only mean one thing; Sandy is on her way up. Chris and I had said that one of our friend’s moms could stay in Chris’s room since he’d left early and she’d be visiting her daughter for Christmas. Now when our friend had said her mom would be coming on Sunday I just assumed she meant Sunday afternoon…but apparently Sandy meant Sunday morning. Holy Hell. I got on some real person clothes right quick and tried to look awake and cheery to meet them. Damn bed head hair gave me away. And plus mom’s always know if you’ve just woken up. And they read straight through lies anyways.

While Sandy settled in I decided to head out for a quick walk to let her chat with her daughter and get the schedule of the day set. So I popped out and sat around watching the marching bands, anxiously smoothing down the damn cowlicks of my stupid short hair. After a period I thought would be polite I wandered back up, and found poor Sandy passed out with jet lag. I decided this would be a great match. The lady likes to nap.

Later when she did wake up, it was remarkable fun to chat with her about her impressions of Spain. Living with a guy is fine (actually preferable at times less drama, less emotions, easy decision makers, less fights) but I miss that ‘girl talk time.’ And so Sandy and I got into it. She popped open a Diet Coke and made me promise to not tell her daughter she was drinking it while I burned my tongue on some green tea a la half a honey bottle. God it was good to have a girl around. I’m a chatty Cathy by nature, so I was such a relief to my chatter box personality to have someone to talk with. But she didn’t last long; jet lag does that to a person. Gives them zombie like energy levels. They peak at odd hours (like 1pm-4pm) then crash for 13 hours straight. And so my new flat mate and I struck up an odd albeit, but lovely relationship of sleeping and talking, with our preferred beverages in hand.