The museum was fun. It’s big, and in 2006, we hadn’t given ourselves enough time to do the whole thing comfortably. But this time we got there around 10, so we weren’t as rushed.
The museum is a typical children’s museum, with hands-on displays about space, the human body, agriculture (specifically coffee and bananas), technology, cultural history…the whole sh-bang.
Around 1, I was getting drowsy and really craving a cup of coffee. Luckily, the museum had a cafeteria, so we had lunch. Cristina and I had the plate of the day (a heaping plate of rice and beans, potatoes, fried platano, and salad). The kids had more typical “museum fare:” hot dogs, burritos, hamburgers. I didn’t get my coffee, but I had a Coke, and that helped.
When we left the museum, which by the way is in a rather shoddy part of town, Cristina was taking a picture of the kids sitting on a big cannon. Some guy (maybe drunk, maybe homeless) walked up and told the kids to say “whiskey,” his version of “say cheese.” He must have thought, with his limited English, that he was being really clever, or amusing, because he kept saying it, over and over, and getting a chuckle. I knew what was coming. We obviously looked like tourists from another country and he was going to hit us up for money. He asked where we were from. Cristina was vague, and finally told him she was Tica. That must have been the clue for him to look elsewhere. After he was gone, Alex wished he had told him we were from Japan, but we assured him that wouldn’t have done much good.
Our glasses were supposed to be ready either Thursday or Friday, so we stopped at Plaza Rohrmoser to check. They were ready. The new prescriptions felt a little weird, as new glasses usually do, but having scratch-free vision was delicious.
We bought a few groceries at the Mas por Menos next door. I wanted to make spaghetti for dinner, and we wanted some fresh vegetables, so we bought a big head of broccoli and a few other sundries.
At home we started cooking while the kids watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua on DVD. First, Cristina only wanted them to watch 30 minutes, but she soon got hooked and they wound up watching the whole thing. I figured that was going to happen. It takes Cristina about, oh, 30 seconds to get sucked into most semi-interesting movies or shows. That’s why channel-surfing is so dangerous around her. If I linger too long on a channel, I’ll be faced with “Wait! Don’t change that!” when I do change it.
The spaghetti sauce turned out really good, if I say so myself.
After the kids were in bed, I worked on my blog a little. Cristina came and got me to show me something outside. Across the street, loud music came from the Pippi Longstocking house. Let me explain a little about the neighborhood. The street Wito and Maritza live on is an interesting mix. In fact, in some ways it reminds me of Sesame Street. Commercial businesses are dotted here and there amongst private residences. There’s a post office about 50 meters down the road, next to an elementary school and an AA center (admittedly not so Sesame Street-ish). Across the street sits a small grocery store (Mr. Hooper’s?) and their house is flanked by a dentist’s office on one side and a repair shop on the other (Luis’s fix-it-shop?) All this street really needs is a green fuzzy dude in a trashcan and a big freaky canary hanging out with a furry elephant.
Granted, Pippi Longstocking doesn’t exist in the same universe as Bert and Ernie, but her famous residence is indeed here on Sesame Street. The ramshackle house across the street (3 houses up from Hooper’s grocery store) looks exactly like I remember Pippi Longstocking’s house. It’s cobbled together with bits of scrap wood and reclaimed building materials. The house is mostly concealed by big fluffy trees, so it’s hard to get a real bead on the layout of the house. But it’s about four stories tall and it has a tower. Yes, a tower. Like a crow’s nest. The word eclectic was created to describe a house like this. I’ve always been fascinated by the house (and I’m not alone. Wito says Gringos are always coming and taking pictures of it). However, Maritza’s not too fond of it. Bit of a blight on the neighborhood aesthetic. But I think it’s lovely. I suggested we bake a cake and go introduce ourselves to the couple that lives there. Cristina seemed amenable but Wito said it would drive Maritza crazy.
The man of the eclectic Pippi house is an old codger who rummages for thrown-out scraps that can be added to his house. And he likes music. According to Wito, he has a wood-burning stove and dirt floors, but owns an extensive collection of records and often plays his music all night. All 78’s. Mostly classical, but sometimes Latin or jazz. I don’t know what he plays his records on, but I like to imagine that it’s a big, old-timey record player, the wind-up kind with the big horn, like on the grammy. As much as I’d love to meet the guy and get a tour of the house, I’d hate to find that he’s actually playing his music on a junkie CD player. Some things are just better left undiscovered. Perhaps we’ll hold off on baking that cake.
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