Remi-what?

It's been a while since I truly didn't understand what someone was asking of me in Spanish. I was just at the post office mailing my brother's birthday card when they said, "Lo que sí te voy a pedir es que pongas el remitente." This is what I heard: "I just need to ask you to put the remitente on it." Hmm. Remitente, remitente. Normally new vocabulary words are obvious because of the context. It just wasn't sinking in. I had a blonde moment. Finally, another employee said, "your name and address." AH!!!! Of course. I forgot to put the return address. How silly. I mean what else could he have possibly been asking me to put on the envelope??

Out of crunchy

A few months ago I was surprised with a pretty awesome gift from the States. A college friend's little sister ventured my way and came bearing peanut butter! Crunchy AND Creamy! Mr. Crunchy now looks like this:

But I will remember him forever because he has been reincarnated as my brown sugar jar.

So, your WOTD is maní: [man-ee]: peanut

I don't want to confuse you, but it has another name in Mexico and Spain: cacahuate

But the first is easier, right? Ok, we'll go with that one. It's the one I can actually pronounce.

So, you might have figured out that we don't have maní butter in Buenos Aires. Ok, that's not true. We don't have Jif and Peter Pan and the like. Nutrition stores started producing the "healthy" maní butter a few years ago, but that's no fun. Plus they like to charge an arm and a leg for it because of simple economics: there's not much demand. So you end up staring at it on the dusty shelf thinking, "Man I'm going to have to stir in all that oil that's sitting on top, it costs half my hourly pay, I'll have to add sugar, AND it will still taste funky with my jelly..." Pass.

It's cool. I've lived without PB for the majority of the last five years, and I'll continue to smile or roll my eyes (depending on my mood) when the newbies ask where they can find Peter Pan. "In Never Never Land" I answered once. I always hope they ask for Peter because I don't yet have any jokes for Jif or Skip.

Argentines don't like maní butter. If they've ever tried it, they don't understand why we like it. BUT, you bring back Reese's Pieces and their faces light up. The trick is not to tell them what's in it. Just let them be.

Oh! And this post couldn't have come at a better time because we are soon moving into the "Peanut Butter and Jelly" apartment. It's on the "PB" floor (planta baja: ground floor) and the apartment is "J." Couldn't dream up a better nickname if I tried. Maybe I'll start my own mini maní butter factory inside to help it live up to its name.

I have been ocupada.

Terrible excuse? Yes.

True? Definitely.

What am I talking about? being busy

WOTD: ocupado (masculine)/ocupada (feminine: me): busy

VERY similar to the pronunciation of avocado. Just with "o-coo" at the beginning.
"o-coo-pah-doh"

But we're all ocupado these days, right? Everyone is always saying how ocupado they are, but we still get the stuff we want to do done. Or do we? Because I DO want to write in this blog. I do. I do. I haven't said that so much since I got married.

So I will. I will stop saying how ocupada I am, and I will start doing.

I like 2012 so far. It feels like it's going to be a good year. As long as I'm ocupada with the things I want to be ocupada with, it should stay that way!

p.s. You might have noticed by looking at the photo that ocupado is used for bathrooms when they are occupied! If someone knocks on the door, you say, "Ocupado!"

I remember not knowing what to exclaim when I first moved here. Not that people knock on bathroom doors all the time, but I remember just staying quiet. The silent treatment. Shhhh...she will go away. I think I even said, "Sí!" a few times. "Yes?" Like I was expecting them to ask me a question? Ah...from now on it's "Ocupado!" because I most certainly will be ocupada.