How Shall I Put This?

Ok, I know, I've been absent/silent for quite a little while now. My guiding rule in blog-writing regarding prolonged absences has always been 'Just Pretend Like You've Never Been Away And Make No Apologies' but this time around it doesn't seem quite appropriate to go that route entirely. So here's what, I was away for a while and I'm sorry, my sister got married in Colorado and they haven't yet received internet...they're backwards luddites out there in the Rocky Mountain State and I was cut off from all civilization; so sue me. Ok so maybe that was like 4 weeks ago now...I can't remember. If you happen to be facebooky friends with my dear sister you should check out her wedding photos...they're hilarious. Are wedding photos supposed to be hilarious? Because I swear to you that these are.

Ok, so after the wedding I spent two weeks with my parents back in Pa which was nice but they had me watching so much televsion (and I'm not exaggerating here) that I literally had no time to blog. I mean honestly, between Pawn Stars and American Pickers and Hardcore Pawn who has time to think about anything going on in the interent. To be honest though I always feel funny about blogging while I'm home in the U.S., I mean half the people that read this thing see me when I'm there. It seems to strange to go out with a friend and then write things on here like: "Rhoda and I went to get coffee the other day and I couldn't help but notice that she's really, really been putting on the weight, she's not the svelt tennis player that she used to be, but then again who could be the way she puts away the 18oz. lattes and raspberry danishes." or "I saw Dagbert in church the other day, he's 35 and still living in his parents' basement, which seems to suit his obsession with 'My Little Ponies' quite nicely."

So that about sums up my reasons for not blogging whilst in the U.S.; Coloradans don't believe in internet, my parents are television addicts and my friends have made disasters of their lives. Yup, no fault of mine here...moving on. I flew back to Honduras on the 4th of this month and upon arriving at my home I noticed a problem, the floors were dirty. Oh, believe me, I know the YES Team tried their hardest to clean this place up it's just that they tend to be incompetent in the area of "clean", they all run about like headless chickens and so while one may be cleaning, another is traipsing through a freshly cleaned kitchen with muddy shoes looking for water. While they may have given it 'the old college try' the end result was something more akin to 'beauty school dropout'. These past 2 weeks then I've been cleaning like a crazy person...I know I am crazy...people tell me this all the time, my own mother tells me this but I have to tell you, I like the craziness, it makes for a very clean living environment...and in the middle of a dusty, semi-waterless garbage dump that is no easy task.

All that to say that this is the first time I've had to sit down and truly post something on this blog of mine, and boy do I have a doozy to lay on y'all. People here in Honduras are nothing if they're not superstitious neanderthals - there's a superstition for just about anything and if these people are right it's a wonder that any of we Gringos are still alive. I've been told that it's bad to sweep the floors at night, that owls are really witches that kill children and like to eat placenta (that's right, owls eat afterbirth), that if I have a wound that it's bad to eat rice, eggs, cheese, milk or bread (in other words, starve til your wound heals). I've been warned against bathing after I run as my open pores will allow water into my buddy and I could catch pneumonia, bathing in the morning will give you a stomachache and that bathing too much in one day could cause grave, unspeakable illness in the region of everywhere (just to be on the safe side it's better to not bathe at all really). I usually laugh at the people that tell me these things, sometimes I get indignant and demand proof and sometimes I get downright mean and ask them how long they've been practicing medicine and what medical school they attended. Mostly though I just ignore the nonsense and don't think anything of it; nothing but nothing prepared me for what happened in my very home the other day though. One of the youth that lives with me has been experiencing an off-and-on earache for quite a few days now, he didn't tell me about it, he simply dealt with the pain and went about his business. It seems though that last Friday night he'd finally had enough. There is another superstition here that says if you have an earache a few drops of milk will do the trick and clear that right up. Nevermind that you're putting more liquid that's not Neomycin (which dries things up) into an ear with an ache caused by trapped fluid, it's that you're adding liquid that will putrify and attract very strange bacteria to your ear canal. I tried reasoning with this independent thinker but he told me I was wrong and that my modern medicine was just a capitalist pyramid scam. I let him go and didn't think anything of it until I found out the other half of the wive's tale and what really went down. It's not just any old milk that this recipe calls for but a woman's breast milk - our neighbor/cook Vicki has been breast feeding her 3 year old son for well, like 3 years now, and probably will be for another 3, so when Vicki came that evening to deliver the food my young charge asked for her services and she happily obliged. She had him lay down on his side in Manuel's bed and she, without any other instruments than her own body, delivered the "medicine" to the aching ear...it didn't work.

I feel vindicated. sort of.