An Impulse Purchase and Its Electrifying Consequences

This past week saw the final episode in a small but long-running domestic drama that has continued over the late summer months. This particular drama has to do with electric current.

In mid-July we bought a new microwave from our favorite hardware store, a mom-amd-pop business in Ciudad Quesada just over the highway from where we live. We hadn't set out to buy a new microwave that day; I don't even remember what small item we had entered the store to purchase, but while there, I noticed a microwave on display that had a grill function. We had enjoyed a combination microwave/grill at our previous home in Roquetas de Mar, but left it behind when we sold that apartment. The microwave in our new home here in Montebello did not have a grill, but it was functional as a microwave. We figured we would replace it at some point in the future, but it wasn't a priority. What we had used the microwave grill for most was to toast baguettes, and it's hard enough as it is to say no to delicious toasted baguettes when we go out--we don't need to bring that temptation into the house to have to resist on home territory.

But here all of a sudden, and perhaps at a weak point, was a microwave with a grill, and equally important, one that looked as though it would fit the space currently allotted for it on the shelf in the corner above the kitchen counter. We bought it. We took it home. We removed the old microwave and replaced it with the new one. We plugged it in and re-heated a cup of coffee. Perfect. The next morning I used it, as usual, for cooking my oatmeal, and I continued using it as I normally use the microwave, which is mostly to re-heat leftovers, pop the occasional bag of popcorn, "poach" two eggs, and melt butter and chocolate on the seldom occasions that I get energetic enough to bake. In a rare success at prompt disposal of unnecessary items, I took the old microwave, a little bit rusty, to the weekly neighborhood auction and said that even if it didn't sell, I didn't want it back. 

We resisted toasting baguettes for a couple weeks, but in August I got a yearning. I scanned the instruction manual to make sure I knew how to use the grill properly, put in the toasting rack, placed the bread on the rack, set the dial to Grill, and turned the timer to a minute. Everything was fine for about 30 seconds. Then the power went out. Not just the microwave power. Not just the kitchen lights, but the lights, fans, air conditioners, and computers, all over the house, as well.

We skipped our planned tostadas, flipped the circuit breaker, and decided to wait until the next day to diagnose the microwave problem. It got worse. The next morning, when I turned on the microwave to make oatmeal,we lost electricity again, and this on regular High, which I had been using all along. We flipped the circuit breaker again and this time, all I did was to close the door of the microwave--without turning it on--and the electricity blew! We moved the microwave to the only available outlet in the dining room. It worked, but who wants to have a microwave sitting on the dining room floor? I didn't even dare to try the grill.

It seems that electricity is always a problem in Spanish houses--there are never enough outlets, they are not in the right places, and there is not enough power coming in to the house, either. We had been saying for some time that we wanted to get an electrician in to examine all the wiring and make a few improvements. Now was the obvious time. The electrician came and we explained the microwave problem. He examined a couple things and said that probably the fault was with the microwave, not the kitchen circuit.  We also walked through the entire house and looked at every switch plate and outlet and talked about what might be better done to suit our needs.

When we took the microwave back to the hardware store where we had bought it, we no sooner got inside when they said, "no, no, nothing can be done until September." True enough, August is vacation month. Factories and businesses are closed, deliveries are interrupted, and nothing much gets done. We left it there, though, and agreed to check again in September. And I managed to make oatmeal two mornings without a microwave before I gave in and bought the smallest and cheapest I could find--and without a grill--as a temporary replacement.

It was more than three weeks later that we got the call from the hardware store, saying that the new microwave had arrived. In the meantime, the electrician had spent two days at our house. Some of the old switch plates had become unstable--that is, they occasionally fell off their wall mounting--throughout the 13-year history of this house. He replaced them all, partly for consistency's sake, and partly because if they were not now iffy, they soon would be. Have I ever mentioned how much I like the Spanish electric switches that are larger (roughly 2 inches square) than the finger-width or even one-inch wide switches in U.S. houses? They require much less physical effort to flip from on to off and back again, making it easy to turn the light on or off effortlessly with your elbow while carrying coffee cups or a glass of wine or a load of laundry from room to room. Now I can move throughout the entire house with things in my hands without knocking a single one of the tired switch plates off its moorings to the floor, because all the tired plates have been retired.

One of the bedside plates with two plugs and a switch.
Photo © Johannes Bjørner 2012.

The electrician also repaired the burned-out wall outlet in my office that had almost incinerated when we plugged a portable heater into it. That was before we learned that some outlets will work with heavy-duty appliances, but most, especially if not in the kitchen or bathroom, are "light" outlets, which only serve for lamps, computer equipment, recharging devices, and the like--not space heaters, or even hair dryers, according to the electrician. Then he installed proper outlets for the washer and dryer on my upstairs terrace, so I no longer have to avoid the extension cord that had decorated the floor around the door frame since we moved the dryer up there a couple years ago. He added an outlet here and there, too, one to the office wall where I used to charge up the portable computer and the iPad and the Kindle, but never at the same time. And even though he looked at me a little strangely when I said I wanted double plugs on both sides of the bed to charge up my devices, he installed the outlets.

What he didn't do, though, was to revise the electric circuit in the kitchen. He didn't think that it was necessary for the microwave problem, and we weren't sure what we wanted done since we are contemplating a kitchen renovation, so we put that off. When we brought home the new/replacement microwave--a different brand from the original one, by the way--we tested it with a little trepidation. The microwave worked fine as just a microwave for a few days. Then last Sunday we bought a baguette at the market. I sliced it and prepared it for a tostada. I put it on the metal rack, set the function dial to Grill, turned the timer dial to one minute, and held my breath.

No lights went out. The grill element performed as expected, though I needed another minute for the perfect tostada. We ate toasted bread three times last week, I gained a kilo, and I did not buy another baguette this morning at the market. But I am satisfied that this new microwave/grill works, and that the electricity in the house works as well as it ever will. I have also experimented and found new home locations for the various items that need to be charged up regularly. So this little domestic drama was coming to a close, and we were better off for it.

The only remaining issue was to figure out what to do with the "temporary" microwave that we had bought for the August emergency. We considered--briefly--moving it upstairs for the easy re-heating of forgotten coffee. But would it work in the replaced "light" outlet in my office? Why tempt fate? We gave it away. If I have to run downstairs to re-heat coffee, that will just use up more calories so I can eat more toasted baguettes.

Day Trip to Villajoyosa

Thursday evening before we went to bed we realized that for the first time in living memory, we had no appointments the following day. Having been almost housebound for six weeks earlier in the summer, and busy with therapy and routine errands ever since, we were sorely in need of a day off, out of the house, and away from the usual. So we decided that, if we still felt up to it the next morning after waking up at some point during the night to listen to the final speeches of the Democratic convention taking place on the other side of the Atlantic, we would take off and drive north along the Costa Blanca.

We were out of the house by 9:30, a bit early, especially as it was a somewhat hazy day, with no sun making its appearance by that time. We took the road eastward over toward Guardamar and then turned north on the N-332.This was familiar territory for us--it's one of our two main routes to the airport just south of Alicante city. Still, it had been awhile since we were on it, and we enjoyed seeing the flamingos in the marshes north of Torrevieja and the tall salt mountains in Santa Pola--for the first time I saw a backhoe moving around some of the salt that will no doubt be spread onto icy roads in the north of Europe later on this year.

I have often remarked that one of the reasons I don't feel as though I am living in a country with 20% unemployment is that there are no factories nearby where large numbers of workers have been laid off. Tourism and agriculture are the big industries here, and both operate on a smaller scale than the industries I grew up with. This trip, though, I was reminded that there are some factories around. We drove past the Johnson Controls plant in Guardamar and then went by Alcoa Europe on the south side of Alicante city. We also passed by the huge patent office that is built into the ledge of a seaside cliff between El Altet airport and the city of Alicante. I have wondered about this immense office in such an unlikely location since staying at the Holiday Inn Express almost ten years ago and opening our curtains the first morning to discover that our room faced away from the Mediterranean--and directly into the front of the patent building. We didn't stop here this time (but I did discover, as I prepared this blog entry, that this is the office that registers and manages European community trademarks and designs). We just continued along our way, now in the sun, and hugging the Mediterranean on our right--passing through the raw materials that the area uses as a base for its successful tourist business.

After an hour and a half we came to El Campello, which used to be a small fishing village and is now a suburb north of Alicante, complete with electric tram that runs back and forth from the city at frequent intervals. I know because we stopped for refreshment in a cafeteria with a view across the tram line toward the sea, and at least four tranvias chugged quietly by while we drank our coffee.

Colorful houses in Villajoyosa.
© Johannes Bjorner, 2012

Back in the car we continued north  toward our destination: Villajoyosa. Villajoyosa is known for its colorfully painted houses, which so far we had only heard about. Even the sound of Villajoyosa makes me feel joyous, though joyosa more properly refers to joyas--jewels--than joy. We did not see any painted houses as we drove into town from the south, but we took a right turn and soon found ourselves down on the road beside the beach, where--this being September and a weekday--there was parking available. We found a spot and turned our back on the sea to look at the jewels of the painted houses that in turn looked out onto the blue Mediterranean.

We wandered around through colorful narrow streets, up one, down another. We were, somewhat loosely, looking for El Museo de Chocolate, which had been mentioned in the Spanish tour book we brought with us. No details about where, or opening times, or anything useful like that, but having been told more than once that I was born with chocolate genes, it would have been sacrilegious not to at least make an attempt to find a chocolate museum. Johannes is not shy about asking for directions. The first time he asked, a lady resting on a park bench said, "Oh, it is lejos" (far from here). Up in the main part of town, she meant. So we continued upward. The next person we asked employed two others to get an informed opinion. We were still lejos--a twenty-minute walk (and they didn't even know we were walking slowly on a newly replaced knee). The good news was that we were headed in the right direction.

In the next little leg of the journey we worked our way up to the main street of town, exactly where we had turned right to drive down to the sea an hour before. By now we had lost most of the colorfully painted houses and were just maneuvering through the busy streets of a small city. We had been told to walk straight ahead (todo recto) toward the train tracks, so we crossed the main street, still heading up, and recto. But then we came to a fork in the road, and no train tracks. A woman in a little shop for recien nacidos (newborns) came out and pointed us to the proper road, and now we were only a fifteen-minute walk from the museum.

Reflection shown in the glass facade of the Valor Chocolate Building.

© Johannes Bjorner, 2012

Our next few minutes brought us to the train tracks and the news that we were only ten minutes away. We walked by a large car park, the mercado de abastos indoor market stall area, a MasyMas and a Consum grocery store, and several restaurants. And then we spied an odd glass building, set off from the sidewalk by a vehicle gate, that showed the distorted reflection of the building across the street in its glass panels. As Johannes ducked around the lowered and locked gate to get a closeup picture of the glass pattern, I saw the small sign that affirmed that this was the Museo de Chocolate and also the factory of the Valor chocolate company.

"Adult Pleasure" at the Chocolate Factory

When I spied the sign saying that this was El Museo de Chocolate, I read it quickly and saw only 10:00 and 13:00. Darn! It was 12:40 now. "Hurry," I said, "we only have twenty minutes!"

But I was wrong, as the guard who had given us permission to photograph the building said quickly. The last tour is at 13:00 "en punto." We should go out the auto entrance to the sidewalk, proceed to the far end of the block-long building, and wait at the gate. At 1:00 PM "on the dot" the pedestrian gate would open and the last tour of the day would begin.

Valor had kindly set up two large umbrellas and three long benches, where we could sit and rest for twenty minutes after our long walk. I read as we waited, and suddenly I realized that 25 or so people had joined us and now it was standing room only. Most were Spanish, but I heard a couple English voices. There are not a lot of events that begin "en punto" in Spain. Trains are one. The Valor chocolate factory tour is another.

Having walked the length of a city block (the front facade of the glass building) we now walked the depth of a block and were ushered in to a small, make-shift theater, where we saw a short film about the "discovery" of chocolate (thank you, Christopher Columbus) and the making of it in general, and especially by the Valor company. The screen was not large, but the images of crushing cacao beans and the addition of milk filled the space available and were tempting. We were treated to a selection of Valor's television commercials for its products, and I found it incongruous, with a large number of children in the audience, that its slogan "adult pleasure" appeared so often. Nevertheless, it's a good slogan and one of the few adult pleasures that can be maintained in vigor as the years increase.

We then went into an adjoining building that featured two stories of memorabilia from this family-run business that was started by Don Valeriano Lopez Lloret in 1881.  Images of some of the items we saw, as well as an English-language chronology, are on the web. My favorite was a print ad reproduction that showed two very skinny adults "who didn't eat Valor chocolates," two very fat adults "after eating Valor chocolates," and two modestly sized and happy adults who ate Valor chocolates "twice a day." A recipe for adult happiness?

Our group, which had been divided into Spanish and English speaking factions for the museum visit, then reunited as we went into the factory itself. Language was not an issue here, as the noise was loud enough that little could be said anyway. We wound our way up and around a narrow catwalk through first, a very hot part of the building, and then a very cold part. If our guide was at the front of our group, I lost her. There was only one way forward, though, and we followed it, observing on our own the activity below us--surprisingly few people on the factory floor, but a multitude of different work stations for mixing, conveying, quality-control, packaging. There was one long belt of chocolate bars moving the width of the factory floor, and only two women at the end, occasionally pulling a piece off. It was impossible not to recall the "I Love Lucy" episode when Lucy and Ethel got a job in the chocolate factory.

All roads lead to Rome, and all factory tours lead to the factory store. Valor was no exception, but we were greeted by three large plates of different kinds of chocolates, free for the sampling. They were good. Following the advice from the old print ad, I helped myself twice. We also made a few purchases before we left. I don't buy chocolate often, so I don't know whether the prices were better than, worse than, or the same as in retail stores. They seemed reasonable. We hadn't paid a centimo for the tour, and the guide had disappeared, so we couldn't even tip her, so the least we could do was buy some adult pleasure to take home after our day out.

How Many Times Does it Take to Buy a Light Bulb?

The light behind my bed went out last week. I don't need this light when I wake up in the middle of the night and use the iPad, but I do need it to read a real book or a newspaper, or even to do a sudoku. I can remember the days when I could replace a light bulb by myself, and almost immediately. It was just a quick trip to the closet where we kept a supply of spares, choose the right one, take it back to the lamp, and screw it in.

That was before the days of energy-saving bulbs--more expensive and generally ugly--nothing you want to keep a supply of, because each purchase of one is an investment by itself, and, if you are lucky, the design might get a little less ugly by the following time you have to buy one. Still, we have two of these lamps in the house, so I was hoping that there might be a spare. The trouble is, I wasn't sure whether that spare would be in the indoors closet (rightly called "Goldie's closet" because the most important things that it holds are her food dish, her litter box (yep, she lives compactly) and all her supplies, plus just a few of ours) or in the outdoors attic/workshop/studio under the domain of the man of the house. So I advised the man of the house and gave him a couple days to check whether there were any light bulbs out there.

There weren't, so I took the unscrewed light bulb with me on our next shopping trip--I have long since learned that I need to take the one to be replaced or I will inevitably bring home a thick-necked one for a thin-necked lamp socket, or vice versa. We stopped at a hardware store, where the proprietor offered personal attention. While she helped Johannes find the light bulb I went off looking for a universal plug adaptor. That was another item I thought would make a great addition to my bedside table area, so I can charge up the iPad or the Kindle or the phone or the laptop and still have the light on at the same time, once I got a working light bulb again. I didn't find the plug adaptor and the proprietor apologized for the low stock--"it's August" and that meant that deliveries were not as normal.

I paid 7€ (about US $10) for the single light bulb. It's a 15-watt "mini espiral" energy-saving lamp, from Barcelona, according to the package. That corresponds to a 75-watt incandescent. On the package there are descriptions for this light bulb in four languages. The English says, and I quote verbatim:

This lamp can substitutes any kind of lamp.
Saves energy: 5 times less than normal lamp.
Long Life: 8 times more than normal lamp.
Do not use this lamp with dimmers or electronic control.

And then only in Spanish, it promises 8,000 hours of life  and affirms that it conforms to IEC norm 969.

Sounds great, and I took it home, hoping for a long and happy life together. But events being what they are, I didn't even think about it until I got into bed that night. I had to climb out again and retrieve it from my bag in my office. Got it out of the package quickly and screwed it in without any problem--that part of changing a light bulb is the easiest.

Well, I could see, but it was eerie. What was wrong? It was such a harsh, white light. Darn! But I could see. Maybe I'll get used to it, I thought. Two days later, though, I gave up, bit the bullet, and said I was going to buy another light bulb. When did buying a light bulb become such a major decision in life?

We were on our way to the Habaneras shopping center anyway, so we stopped--quickly, I thought--in the AKI home improvement store and looked at light bulbs. I had the package, though not the bulb, from my previous purchase. We looked and looked, much longer than I had thought would be necessary. There must have been 25 rows of light bulbs there and those are only the ones that looked like they would fit my lamp. All of them were Larga Duracion (long lasting) and Bajo Consumo (low energy consumption) and all of them were Espiral (spiral). That's what was in large letters. I had to squint to read any other characteristics, and so did Johannes.

It felt like a crap shoot, but finally we spied what I thought was the telling phrase: Luz Calida (warm light). That was in maybe 6-point type, whereas all the other information was in 12 or 14. But that at least addressed the issue that was wrong with the first purchase. I decided to take a chance on that, paid my 10 euros (about US $15) and took it home.

It's right. It's a nice, warm light, but strong enough for reading. 15 watts, which this brand, from Valencia, says is equivalent to 56 incandescent watts. Descriptions of the product on the back of this package appear in 10 different languages, but they are all printed so small (no more than 6 points) that I can hardly tell what the language is, let alone read any of the ones I might understand. In addition to the warm light from this bulb, there is a design advantage: it is shorter than the first bulb I bought and the original one I replaced, so it does not stick out beyond the end of the lamp. How lovely! That must be what "espiral micro" means, as opposed to "mini espiral." But it only promises to last 6,000 hours, rather than the 8,000 of the white-light bulb--six times the life expectancy of a "normal" light bulb.

And what indeed is "normal" in a light bulb anymore? This morning I read that as of September 1 (that was yesterday) it is forbidden within the European Union to manufacture incandescent light bulbs. So what are the packages going to compare their contents to in the future? CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs) are the new normal.

Maybe I will remember some of the information I have acquired when the next time comes to change a light bulb. But that should be about 6,000 light hours from now, so maybe I won't. On the other hand, I've been noticing that the overhead light in my office seems awfully dim lately ...

"Están de Vacaciones"

Quick, while it is still August, I write about August, the month of vacations.

For the past month, almost every daily action has been punctuated by the phrase "Estan de vacaciones." They are on vacation. Most of our friends here in Spain have been away in Denmark, or England, or Germany, or the U.S., on vacation. One reason is to escape the heat, which has been in the high 30 degrees C., or hovering around 100 degrees F. Another reason is simply that most families go on vacation in August, especially if the family includes children who will be going back to school in September.

Meanwhile, for those of us who have not quite achieved full mobility after knee operations,we stay at home in the cool of the air conditioning, venturing out only as a respite to cabin fever and for the necessary errands. Running errands has become even more of an adventure than it usually is. There is a curious mixture of "stores open" vs. "stores closed." Because we live in a tourist area, many establishments are allowed to stay open on Sundays during the summer season, so for a brief three months we can shop for groceries on Sunday mornings or all sorts of products at the Carrefour hypermarket until midnight every day of the week. This open commercialism is counterbalanced, however, by the tiendas, the small mom-and-pop stores and bars and restaurants, that close, at least for the last two weeks of August, for vacation.

We know, in theory, that during August anything is apt to be closed. But we forget. So when we went to the Scandinavian Center in downtown Torrevieja one Wednesday afternoon to replenish our supply of herring, we came home empty-handed, because they were closed for vacation. When we took our new microwave back to the hardware store where we bought it, after it blew out every fuse in the house, we were told as soon as we walked in the door, "The factory is on vacation. You won't get a replacement until September." I read in one of the free English newsweeklies that the city of Elche had printed a brochure listing establishments that were open in August, and I thought that a little extreme and perhaps a waste of money. That was before we drove to La Marina last Saturday morning to check out a kitchen design store with an advertisement in the same newspaper, and discovered, after we finally found it, that it was shuttered because "están de vacaciones."

If the third week of August was lonesome, the fourth became even more so. Just as I was preparing to head out to our favorite specialty wine shop last Monday to buy a bottle of South African wine for a friend, Johannes told me that an email had come through--they were on vacation for this week. The other errand we set out to do that day was to stop at a gestoria to begin the process of bringing our wills up to date, but no one answered the door or the telephone--they were "de vacaciones." Earlier this week and then again today we noticed that even the musicians who normally play and sing outside the grocery stores were nowhere to be found; they, too, are apparently on vacation.

But today is Friday, the 31st and last day of August. Officially in Europe, summer ends with August. In a rare turn of the calendar, the end of European summer occurs this year during the same weekend as that curious unofficial end of summer in the U.S., Labor Day. A few hours ago I finished my last work for the week, month, and summer, and turned my sights toward a leisurely end-of-summer weekend, and even now as I write this, my colleagues in the U.S. are finishing up their Friday before Labor Day weekend work (if they actually happened to go to work today) and preparing for the last summer hurrah. When we all return to work next Monday or Tuesday, depending on where we are, we will be starting in once again on normal life. It will not be cooler here, but at least almost everyone will be back from vacaciones.

Laundered Money

The normal rule in our household is, whoever finds the loose change in the pockets that are going in to the washing machine, or that tumbles out of the washing machine after a load is done, gets to keep it. Since the person who usually does the laundry is the person that writes this blog, that is usually me. But this week we split the laundered money.

Yesterday morning Johannes put on a clean pair of shorts, stuck his hands in his pockets and pulled out a five and a ten euro note. The blue of the five and the pink of the ten seemed a little faded, but the silvery strip on the right end was still shiny. They also were unwrinkled, and I wished that the clothing would come out as unwrinkled as the euro notes did. Since the euros had made it through the washer and the drying on the line and back into the clothes closet without my noticing them, I could hardly claim this laundered money as my own. Coincidentally, I was starting a load of laundry before we left for our morning outing; today was bedding, though, so no pockets to check.

When I went to hang the sheets out to dry upon our return, I discovered that the spin cycle had gotten stuck, the machine was still full of water, and I couldn't even open the door, since it was mid-cycle. Oh, bother. We had had an electrician at the end of this week putting in a proper outlet for the upstairs terrace laundry, and he had had to move the washer and dryer. The washer probably got unbalanced, I thought--it had happened once before. I fiddled with the switches, and started the load again. Two hours later, when I checked, I was at least able to get the door open, but the machine was still full of heavy, sloshy sheets. I hauled them out, wrung them out as best I could, and got them onto the line. Then we got the washing machine manual out to study, Johannes took a tool to unlock a filter, pulled it up, and out tumbled a bunch of coins--four euros and 50 centimos, when we counted it.

That's the money we used this morning when we went to the Sunday market. I bought almost four euros' worth of red and white grapes, a kilo of potatoes, and a chunk of fresh ginger. Then I spent a euro on a kilo of tomatoes and 55 centimos on a pound of gorgeous large mushrooms. We sat for awhile in the Norwegian cafe, reading the newspaper over a cervesa sin (beer without alcohol) and café con leche. And we walked up and down the aisles to see if we were tempted by anything else. We weren't, so I didn't have to touch the coins in my pockets--one and two-euro coins in the right pocket, centimos in tens and twenties in the left, which is the way I can come up with the small change to pay at individual stalls without going through the trouble of getting out a wallet and revealing its whereabouts to pickpockets.

Upon returning home I immediately emptied my pockets of the small change and replaced it in the ceramic bowl where it will stay safely until next market day. Then I went out on the terrace to check the laundry that I had started before we had gone out for the morning. It was fine. I was able to open the door and feel clothing with its usual pre-clothesline dampness. Seems as though we had found the cause of the washing machine's previous misbehavior. It just doesn't do well at laundering money--at least not coins.

Once in a Lifetime: Johnny Cash in Denmark and Spain

Man in Black: DVD cover from Amazon.com

Nothing connects Johnny Cash in Denmark in 1971 with Sundays in Spain in late summer of 2012 other than the curious twists and turns of a life. Nevertheless I made that connection this week when Danish television, which we pay 300€ annually to view here in Spain (and then it blacks out live Olympic coverage because they say they don't have rights to show it outside Denmark) broadcast a short and surprising program.

"When Johnny Cash Hit Søborg" was the name of the program, and not being an especially strong Johnny Cash fan I was ready to give it a miss, as our English friends here say. But it was only fifteen or twenty minutes in length and came during the time slot between the after-the-news evening issue program on Danish TV and before Charlie Rose on Bloomberg TV, and I was sitting with a glass of wine and had already cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, so why not?

Søborg happens to be the earlier home of the TV department of Danmarks Radio (DR), the public, non-commercial television system. Denmark has commercial competitors to its public TV now, of course, but back in 1971 (a year before I lived there), DR was the only game in town and country. It covered everything of importance, so when Johnny Cash came from America to record a concert in Denmark, an editorial meeting was held in Søborg to determine who should go to the airport in the suburb of Kastrup and interview him. For some reason that I didn't quite catch, it wasn't a music reporter or even a cultural reporter who was chosen. Mr. Cash's prison reputation had apparently preceded him, and therefore it was a young crime reporter, Erling Bundgaard, who was sent out to Kastrup!

During the on-the-spot airport interview--probably one of the smallest media gatherings by which Cash ever was received--he responded to the inevitable question of how much time he had served in prison by saying that he had never been in prison at all other than to give a concert--thus rendering the crime reporter's story a non-story. Cash did not offer the news that he had been in jail overnight a few times, but at one point he asked what station this interview would be on. "The only station," was the response. "Just one station?" he asked in quiet incredulity (and it is true, there was just one station in 1971 and also in 1972--and it didn't even broadcast the entire day, and it broadcast in black and white). "So what program?" Cash went on to ask. "The evening news," came the answer, and Cash seemed astonished that he would be featured on the news of the day on the only TV station in the country.

We next see him in the TV studio in Søborg, where I now realize he recorded a short concert. The funny thing is, he didn't realize he was recording the concert while he was recording it, either. Toward the end of the program I saw this week, he asked when they would start recording. He was quite surprised to be told that they had finished! Presumably he thought that what they had done for the past hour was a dress rehearsal.

That unrehearsed concert is available from Amazon on a DVD that was released in 2006, and judging from the customer reviews there it is pretty good. At least one reviewer remarks that Cash and company seemed particularly at ease, as well they might, considering they were only rehearsing. And one comment verifies that at least part of an exchange that I found astonishing and charming made it to the concert tape: that was Johnny Cash speaking--in Danish, tentatively and slowly, but understandably and from memory--thanking for the welcome, and saying he found the city of Copenhagen and the country delightful. (One wonders how much he had experienced of the city and country before saying this, but no matter--he bothered to say it, in Danish.)

So that is my once-in-a-lifetime experience for the week. I am probably one of the few Americans in the world who has ever heard Johnny Cash speak Danish. And definitely one of even fewer who understood what he was saying. And in all likelihood, the only American in Spain to have heard him and understood what he was saying.

Blacked Out

I guess I'll have to buy the DVD, because when I went to the Danish TV website to find out when the program I watched would be re-run (most everything is re-run during the week following original broadcast) I found that what I had seen was the re-run--the original program had been broadcast a week ago. But there was a notice saying that the program could be viewed in its entirety online until August 31, and I rejoiced, because I would have like to see it again to check some facts for this post.

But when I clicked, I got the message: "Because of copyright law," they don't have rights to make it accessible outside of Denmark.

Exploring San Miguel

Today is not Sunday in Spain, but it is a holiday--the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. This is one of those rare occasions when we knew ahead of time that there was going to be a holiday and that the stores would be closed on Wednesday. There had been articles in the free newspapers to warn us, and I had read the articles in time. We were a little discombobulated, however, when we saw a sign in the Consum grocery store last Saturday stating that not only would it be open all day on Wednesday, the 15th, it would be open until 10:00 PM, which is 45 minutes later than its normal closing time of 9:15. I think perhaps that means that there will be festivities in the evening and that we should be prepared for loud music and fireworks starting shortly after 10:00.

Anyway we drove out at about 11:00 this morning, following Johannes' piano class, because, well, just because it is good to get out of the house and do something during the day. We did not need groceries, so we headed away from our usual route and drove inland, between orange groves, to San Miguel de Salinas, a town that we had driven through several times, but in which we had rarely stopped. It seemed like a nice day to explore the main street and old town on foot.

Indeed it was, and made even easier because, due to the holiday, we were able to find a parking place right on the main street. We got out and walked slowly up the street, past several cafes. My half-serious goal was to locate an establishment called Bargain Books, where a couple of the women in my book group had purchased English language editions of three of the titles we have read. We did get there--it was right where they said it was, close by the plaza, across from the church. And conveniently, across from two cafe bars where lots of people were sitting out and enjoying coffee or cold drinks and a talk.

We found an empty table and sat and enjoyed our usual: cafe con leche and a media tostada con atun y tomate. And it was then that I realized that I was in witness of a rare sight in Spain. We were seated in between two tables of groups of women enjoying leisure time out. Women only--there were no men. That doesn't happen too often, as women in Spain have a rigid schedule, even if they don't work outside the home. But it can happen on a holiday, and it was lovely to watch ten middle-aged women enjoying each others' company, the good weather, and freedom from the daily schedule.

One group disappeared, though, as the town clock struck 12:00, probably to make their way home to prepare the afternoon dinner. The other stayed around awhile longer, and just before we began to make our way back toward the car, I noticed a funny thing about the cafe. The proprietor had begun setting out more tables, presumably for the dinner or afternoon crowd, whereas there had been only five for the early morning coffee customers. Each of those five tables was shaded from the sun by a large umbrella. Four of the umbrellas had bright red backgrounds with small Coca-Cola bottles in white splashed across them. The one odd umbrella had a white background. But when I looked closely I saw that it had a single Coca-Cola bottle marking it. That was a bottle of Coca-Cola Light.

Summer Doldrums, Looking Up

It is August and I am in the doldrums of summer. Energy is at a minimum. The weather is particularly hot and still along the Costa Blanca. No evening breeze drifts in now when we open the windows, so we don't open them. I turn the bedroom air conditioner on for a few minutes before I retire for the night, then zap it off and rely on the always-on overhead fan to move the air just enough so that it doesn't settle heavily over my outstretched body. At some point in the night I usually wake up, fumble for the remote and turn the a/c on again for a few minutes, and then off, and that lasts until I regain consciousness--often stimulated by the aroma of coffee--again at 6:00 or so in the morning.

I stagger downstairs and fetch a cup of coffee and then retreat upstairs to lie abed with a book, an iPad, or a paper-based sudoku for an hour. Then back downstairs to make my breakfast, which I usually eat upstairs again, while in bed or at the computer for another hour. It is only after checking email and the state of the world that I think about taking a shower and dressing. Getting up is a long affair--we don't usually leave the house for morning errands until at least 10:00, and now this summer it has more often been 11:00.

Errands--shopping, medical appointments, coffee out, and more shopping--are the height of the day's activity now. Most of the people with whom we share a face-to-face social life are away, back in the UK or Denmark or even the U.S. I received a dictum from the doctor that I should avoid the sun ("zero sol") pending a few weeks' treatment to clear up a potential trouble spot on my skin, so I skipped the weekly petanca game this past Tuesday and avoided the outdoor market this Sunday morning. Neither of my Spanish classes is meeting: the town-sponsored class won't start again until October, and even my private class teacher has decided to take August off.

If I didn't have the work and writing that I can do at the computer during the afternoons, in the quiet and comfort of my silent office air conditioning with overhead fan, and the frequent emails dropping into my inbox from numerous family members and friends far away, I would feel very despondent indeed. Work and people--responding to them, thinking about them, reaching out to them--provide the interest and internal activity that keep me active. Not focused, because the hodgepodge that draws my attention on any given day is anything but focused, but mentally active and outward-looking, making me suddenly wonder whether I am more extrovert than I had ever thought myself.

But this is not a permanent condition, I know. It is the summer doldrums and will be dispelled when normal life resumes. That was always after Labor Day when I was growing up, but it is somewhat later now. In the meantime, this mid-August Sunday morning in Spain, I decided to try to find out how to say "summer doldrums" in Spanish.

I went first to the Diccionario Cambridge Klett Compact that I keep on my main computer in my office and which is the CD-ROM version (yes, it's that old) of the paper companion that resides in the bedroom bookshelves and which is falling apart. These are my basic Spanish-English dictionaries, the ones I use as look-ups for all my Spanish homework and any word or phrase I find in a newspaper or other publication that I just have to look up. The CD-ROM version, of course, has more flexible searchability than the paper. It failed me this time, however. "Doldrums" does not appear as an entry or within any other entry.

Then I went to Merriam-Webster online and found an entry. I ignored the first meaning (zona, feminine, de las calmas ecuatoriales), which sounded like a real wild goose chase.  "To be in the doldrums," it said further on, was estar abatido (when talking about a person), or estar estancado (a business).  But then I looked up the verb abatir back in my Cambridge Klett to see what that said. It turns out to be one of those reflexive verbs (abatirse), which was given as a synonym for desanimarse. Yes, un-animated sounds right, but it was translated as "to become dejected," which sounds a little strong for the "disanimation" I am feeling.

That was nothing, though, in comparison to the first translation I got when I typed "I am in the summer doldrums" into Google Translate and clicked Spanish. I found out I was in the "crisis of summer"! I really didn't feel like this was a crisis! With Google Translate, of course, you can now click on a word and get shown alternative meanings, and then substitute one of those. I did that, and I found a milder word. I think it was a form of abatir, but I paged away from that translation before recording it. 

I went off to pursue Collins Spanish Idioms, a new phrase book of mine, and got lost for an hour in looking for and at various English (UK-style) and Spanish idioms. I could write more about that escapade, but I am running out of time before needing to go downstairs to make lunch. (Regular events for which you are responsible are important when you are in the middle of summer doldrums). 

While finishing up this description, however, I went back to Google Translate once more. Google claims that its Translate tool "learns" with input, and it appears that it had learned from its (or my) morning lesson. This time when I entered "I am in the summer doldrums" into the translate box, I got Yo estoy en la inactividad del verano in translation. The inactivity of summer. Yes, that is it.

Not Working

On Friday evening this week I heard that 1.6 million families in Spain had no one in the family working. That sounds bad, but I didn't know how many families there are in Spain. The population is about 47 million, and I know that families are larger in Spain than they are in the U.S., what with it being not at all uncommon for grandparents to live with their middle-aged children and for children who are young adults to remain at home.

Wikipedia has a list of countries of the world by number of households that shows that Spain has 16.7 million households. So if we assume that we can equate "family" and "household" for this purpose, 1.6 million families without someone working would be 9.5 percent of households without someone working. That is an awful lot of families affected by the economic crisis.

A very depressing article in The New York Times this morning gives a similar number. "Spain's Jobless Rely on Family, a Frail Crutch" says that government reports earlier this year acknowledged that about one in ten families have no working adult. It told too many stories of adult children who are dependent on their elderly parents' pension payments for their own livelihood, and older adults who do without vacations, dental work, insurance, personal services, and much more so they can house and feed their children and grandchildren. The stories from the NYT are about families in the large metropolitan areas north of us. We don't know anyone who is living under the extreme conditions detailed in the article, but I have no doubt that they exist. We do know families where there appears to be only one working adult--and that may well be part-time work.

Many of the out-of-work adults are those who used to be employed in the booming housing construction industry. We also read this week of astonishingly high fines levied on the banks that financed that unbelievable and unsustainable housing bubble, which started to burst in 2008. The banks, however, have received a bailout and have some money to pay the fines. The construction workers have not.

The Beat Goes On...

Did I say last Sunday that, even though we have all-night fiestas with loud music that goes on until 6:30 in the morning, that at least the music only comes on the weekends and never during the week? Yes, I did, and I was wrong.

I found out I was wrong on Wednesday morning. When I woke at a little after 6:00 AM I heard the music again. I had not heard it start and I was not awakened by the music, but it was clearly there after I awoke. Where was it coming from? This time I got dressed, unlocked the front door system, and went out to explore.

I walked along the east side of our development, up toward Monty's Bar. It was closed up tight. When I turned toward the west and passed slightly up the hill toward Bistro Alex, also closed, the music got dimmer. So it wasn't coming from the motorcycle hangout way past the Zoco market in this direction, I figured. I turned north and came down the hill toward our house and by then I could hear faint strains again. But soon after this, the music stopped.

Later on that morning we stopped for a cafe con leche and tostada at La Cata in Benijófar. I asked casually whether anyone there lived in town and had heard the music. "¡Si!" said the bartender; and it turned out he lived in the street right next to the source of the music, which he assured me was in the park next to the colegio [elementary school] in Benijófar. He said the music that morning had continued until 8:00, which was probably about the time that he had to get up to go to work. But he had not been out celebrating, and he told us that the festivities would still be going on for a couple days, and he was moving to his girlfriend's for the duration.

Wednesday, according to my Spanish-Norwegian calendar supplied by the Norwegian newspaper Spaniaposten, was the festival of Santiago Apóstol, the Apostle St. James, who happens to be the patron saint of Benijófar. That had been the reason for the festivities on the night of Tuesday going to Wednesday. As we left La Cata and drove through the plaza toward our home, we heard the church bells ring and saw that the church door was open, a rare occurrence. Apparently by noontime the celebration had shifted toward the more solemn spectrum. We should have stopped to see the inside of the church, which has never been open when we were near it on foot. Alas, we were no longer on foot, and there is no parking place near by, so once more we missed seeing the inside of the church. But we did learn that Benijófar is protected by its patron saint, St. James.

Fiesta Season

It's fiesta season. We don't have loud music and partying every night of the week--only on weekends. Last week the Virgen del Carmen fiesta kept me awake Saturday night. This weekend, the party started Friday night. I didn't really notice it until I woke up at 3:30 Saturday morning. Even with windows shut, I could hear the throb, throb, throbbing of the drums through the loudspeaker of the fiesta that was going on across the highway in Benijofar. I knew it was Benijofar, because we had been there Friday afternoon for a nice luncheon at La Cata, a new restaurant run by the proprietors of Magica Gourmet, and verified that this town's local fiesta began this weekend. We thought it started with a parade Saturday evening, but obviously we were wrong.

By yesterday morning at 3:30 I had already slept several hours, so it was really hard for me to get back to sleep with all that racket going on. At one point I seriously thought about getting up and joining the party, only ten minutes away. However, I just read, and after an hour and a half I felt myself drifting off again at 5:00. The next time I woke up was at 7:00 and all was quiet. Not so this Sunday morning, when I came to consciousness at 6:00. The sound was faint, but I could hear the throb, throb, throbbing of that drum again. I had left the windows open Saturday night in order to catch some cool breezes. There had been no noise when I went to bed, but who knows when it started? The miracle, I guess, was that I had not awakened earlier. At any rate, the sound of the fiesta was much dampened Sunday morning. Had someone pulled the plug on the loudspeaker, or just cut the decibel level in half, or a quarter? Or was this only an echo from the previous night? Or was I just reliving the Friday night party in a dream?

No, the sound was definitely there, though quieter. And it stopped shortly after 6:00 AM, which must be curfew time for all-night fiestas. No wonder Sunday mornings are always ethereally quiet where we live. People have just then gone home and toppled into bed.

There are some who wonder how a country that is in such economic crisis can afford municipally sponsored all-night festivities in every village and hamlet throughout the summer season. And there are those who answer that it is precisely because the country is in economic crisis that the townspeople need to hang on to their traditions by throwing a grand fiesta to honor the local patron saint one weekend each year.

Austerity Measures

Agreement between Spain and the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund--are those all the players?--has now been reached, and Spain's president of the government, Mariano Rajoy, announced a new series of austerity measures this week. Here's the list, as I interpret it, from an article in El Pais the day after the announcement. Since there was an awful lot I did not realize or understand about the Spanish economic system before the crisis and the announcement of improvement efforts, it can certainly be that I don't fully understand some of the measures announced. 

• Changes to IVA, the value added tax on almost everything, will certainly affect the most people--literally everyone. Spain having had "one of the lowest VAT rates in Europe," the current base rate of 18% will go up to 21%. I have previously written about the ins and outs of the IVA tax and I am sorry to see that now it is changing and becoming even more complicated. But I am glad to see that there will continue to be a reduced IVA for most food items, sanitary products, transportation, hotels, and admissions to cultural events--even though that category will go up from 8% to 10%-- and that the super-reduced IVA of 4% for basic necessities of bread and vegetables will remain the same. A subsequent story later in the week, however, alludes to several categories of the "reduced IVA" products being moved to the regular 21% category--primarily entertainment products like TV and entrance fees (Internet services?)--but not food.

• Government workers--including elected members of parliament--will lose their annual Christmas bonuses for, at least, 2012, 2013, and 2014. A long tradition in Spain, the Christmas bonus typically was equivalent to one month's salary, so in essence these people are taking a 7 1/2 percent pay cut for three years. 

•  Unemployment benefits will be reduced, starting in September, for new recipients. Nearly 25% of Spaniards are unemployed.

• "Green" taxes will be increased, including at least a 3-5 cent per liter hike in fuel taxes.

• The pension system will be reformed to make it more sustainable. It looks as though early retirement will be targeted.

• The number of municipal workers will be reduced by 30%. Mayors and city councilors will be required to make their salaries public. Provincial government will play a greater role in order to maintain public services evenly throughout regions.

• A popular tax deduction on the purchase of new properties will be eliminated.

• Taxes on energy will be changed. Details to follow.

• The government will continue reducing and even eliminating state-owned companies at the local level that "duplicate or even triplicate services."

• Subsidies to political parties, labor unions, and business organizations will be reduced by 20% --they have already been reduced 20% this current year.

Lest anyone think that Spain has not already taken some stringent fiscal steps, let me tell you some of the ways that the country is already cutting back spending.

First of all, the regional governments are paying some bills very slowly. This has been going on for months, but it is coming closer to home now. Local pharmacies were closed for at least two days in the past month in protest because they had not been paid by the Valencian autonomous comunidad for medications they had issued to customers.

Co-payments are being instituted for drugs and medications. Whereas you used to be able to have prescriptions filled for free, as long as you had the script from your local public doctor and a valid health car, consumers are now going to have to pay for part of the cost. How much? Some reports have said 10%; others imply more. A list of at least 400 drugs has been targeted, some for them for "routine but chronic ailments" such as diabetes, blood pressure, and heart disease.

Spain has cut down on those who qualify for free medical care. Undocumented residents, or those who have not successfully completed the process of acquiring accepted documentation (and I was in that category once) will no longer receive health services. Exceptions are made for certain groups: infants and children under the age of 18; pensioners, age 65 and older; pregnant and nursing women.

Life here is definitely becoming more expensive. Some will feel it more than others, but I think we will all feel it somewhat from now on.

Virgen del Carmen

Tomorrow is the festival of the Virgen del Carmen. It's a holiday that is celebrated in many communities along the Costa Blanca, and we were made aware of that last night, or rather early this morning.

There were no signs of celebrating when I went to bed early last night, at 9:30, to read in peace. But just as I was thinking of turning the light off and getting some sleep a little before midnight, the fireworks started. And then the music started. At first I thought the music was from one or both the bars in Montebello, just a regular Saturday night party, though we don't usually hear signs of nightlife in our house five short blocks from the commercial area. 

But the noise went on longer than those bars are open. It was still going on at 2:00, and at 3:00 and even at 3:30. That's the last time I looked at my clock before I thankfully finally fell asleep. When I woke up this Sunday morning at 8:00, it was to blessed sounds of silence.

We still didn't know exactly which town the loud music had come from, but we were pretty sure it had come from a municipal fiesta rather than a private party. Every town has a fiesta during the summer, and we had seen signs in Benijofar this past week that its fiesta was coming up. But this morning after we made our usual Sunday purchases of frutos secos and vegetables from the Zoco market, we drove along the roads of La Finca golf resort to our small town of Algorfa, thinking to enjoy a cup of coffee in the refreshing coolness of the morning breeze.

Assembling for the Virgen del Carmen Parade in Algorfa. ©2012 Johannes Bjorner.

Our timing could not have been better. As I made my way through the narrow streets of the town, I suddenly came across signs of a procession. People--old and young--garbed in traditional costumes and carrying flowers, were assembling in the streets. We parked quickly, got out of the car, and followed the parade.

Flowers from all. ©2012 Johannes Bjorner.

We didn't have long to wait. It was a small parade, but festive. First came the musicians (two of them) and then townspeople, some--especially the children--decked out in red, black and white, and bouquets of flowers everywhere. I had read this week that IVA, the value-added tax, is going up on flowers, but that didn't stop the florists this morning from doing a bang-up business.

Algorfa, like other communities, was celebrating the Virgen del Carmen festival. But the Virgen del Carmen happens to be the patron saint of Algorfa, so the celebration here is especially festive. First the parade this morning, with musicians and children carrying flowers to the church. We followed the parade down two blocks, then it turned toward the plaza, and crossed the plaza to the church.

These musicians led the parade.

The musicians stopped outside the church and people proceeded inside to lay the bouquets in front of the statue of the Virgin, I imagine. Another parade, with carriages and a local queen and princess, will take place this evening, and tomorrow at 9:00 PM the statue of the Virgin del Carmen will be brought out of the church and carried through the streets of Algorfa in a solemn procession.

Perhaps her first Virgen del Carmen festival.

We did not go into the church, but we joined lots of other people refreshing themselves at a cafe bar in weather that by now had begun to turn hot. There were lots of townspeople on the church steps, and we heard the sounds of the organ playing various hymns. It wasn't just foreigners who skipped out of the mass, though. Lots of children who had laid their flowers and shown off their finery were now playing in the plaza while their parents chatted with friends and family. We sat for awhile and enjoyed their enjoyment, and then walked and wheeled back through the streets to find where we had parked the car in haste when we first saw the signs of this celebration parade.

Playing hide-and-seek in the plaza outside the church. ©2012 Johannes Bjorner.

Spain 4 - Italy 0

Well, that was decisive. The firecrackers started toward the end of the first half, when Spain made its second goal, and they are still going on. And will continue all night, probably. But we are going to bed.

I thought Italy had the ball for a lot of the game, but fortunately for Spain, Spain had a very good goalie. It was exciting.  We watched the match on Spanish television, which makes sense. Danish TV (our main station, the one we pay 300+€ for per year) was also showing it, but they don't have rights to show it outside of Denmark, so even though we pay what they pay in Denmark, we don't get it. My understanding of spoken Spanish is improving, but it's still no match for the excited voices of two male Spanish commentators and one female one, all telling me what's going on. Thank goodness our screen is large enough so I could see it myself.

¡Viva España!

Football Fever

Spain meets Italy in the final match of the European Football (soccer) championship at 8:45 this evening. This is disappointingly late--I would have preferred to watch the match during dinner time--but nevertheless I have now planned dinner and my evening activities around it.

Until a few days ago we thought that it would be Spain against Germany. That would have been an interesting match, since Spain has been sparring with Germany over economic matters in the European Union for weeks now. I was rather hoping that an outcome to that game might be some sort of a talisman to tell what really is the correct answer for how to resolve the euro crisis and solve Spain's economic problems. But Italy beat Germany in the semifinals, so now it's just us two Mediterranean countries, both accused of faltering economies, to battle it out between ourselves.

We've done what we can for the Spanish economy and the EM championship--we bought a Spanish flag for 3€ yesterday that would have cost only 1€ last week and maybe less than that in the coming days, and it's mounted outside the sunroom in a flower pot. We'll stay awake until the final minute this evening, but we won't be moving to the streets to celebrate.

There will be a gigantic celebration tomorrow in Madrid, I read earlier. Spaniards love a fiesta. If Spain wins, they'll be celebrating that they won the championship. If Italy wins, Spain will be celebrating that they got to the finals. That's a pretty good way of looking at it, I think.

Key Issues

I've been meaning to write about locks and keys and security in Spain for a long time, but now that circumstances have forced me into being the one in the family who locks the locks, remembers the keys, and worries about security, it's time.

All houses in Spain, I believe, come equipped with numerous locks and keys. There are four locks between the inside of our house and the sidewalk in front, a space that I can traverse in about a dozen footsteps.  First there is the lock for the wooden front door. Then there is the lock for the wrought iron grate, or grille, that protects the front door. On the other side of the grate is the sunroom, formed on two sides with sliding glass doors. There is a lock for one of the sliding doors, too, which needs to be used when leaving the house. Then when you walk down two steps and over the tiled terrace, you pass through the metal gate that separates our terrace from the public sidewalk, where the car is usually parked. That gate has a lock and key, as well. That's four.

We lock all four locks every evening before retiring for the night, and when I am going to spend the afternoon upstairs in my office, I make sure the gate and the grate are locked. The sunroom door has to stand open enough so Goldie can wander in and out, and the front door itself has to stay open or ajar so she can find her way all the way inside the house. Goldie hates to get stuck on the wrong side of a locked door--the wrong side being whatever side she is on.

Goldie leaving for a stroll. Photo Copyright 2012 Johannes Bjorner.

Although four doors are locked at night only three have to be unlocked in the morning, but you can guess who is the first one demanding that the doors be opened. It used to be that we opened the back, kitchen, door to let Goldie out for her morning inspection tour. There we could leave the protective grate shut and locked--we have told Goldie that she can get as fat as she wants as long as she can still squeeze between the bars of the grate. Two petty break-ins in the neighborhood recently encouraged us to have a deadbolt installed in the back door. It's such a pain to unlock both the deadbolt and the regular kitchen door lock that now what I usually do is open the front doors instead. That means unlocking the front door itself and the front grate, as I am not thin enough to slide between its bars. All those locks have to be opened and shut with keys, but the side sliding door in the sunroom can be unlocked from the inside by removing a round center bolt that prevents the two adjoining sliding doors from sliding. I've decided that at 6:00 AM anyone prowling around will probably not notice that the side door is ajar--and if they do, they are probably too big to slide through the bars, too. After Goldie springs out, I can retrace my steps, lock the front grate and push the front door to where it is slightly ajar, and have a cup of coffee or return to bed to read, or both.

What with marble and tile floors, no wall-to-wall carpeting, stucco walls, no insulation to speak of, and tile roofs, there is little flammable material in most houses in Spain, so my fears of having to use four keys to get out of the house in event of fire are somewhat allayed. Still, we keep a second set of keys inside the front door, with the three keys we need to get out (the sun room key only works from the outside, so we don't need an extra for that). This extra set saves me from going up and down stairs a hundred times a day to the purse where I try to always keep my keys, except when they are in my pocket. I don't keep my keys in my pocket all the time because they are too bulky and because, in spite of extreme vigilance and determination for several years, I have still managed to buy a few pairs of pants without pockets, or without serviceable pockets.

Car keys are also a trial. We have two sets of car keys. Since I am usually the secondary driver, my key is the one that does not have the automatic door opener and lock. My key just opens the door--and only the door on the driver's side, I discovered to my dismay--and the trunk. By hand, by inserting key in lock; not remotely. I keep this key on my master key ring, which is another thing adding to the bulk.

Since I've graduated to being major car driver for a period of time, I have appropriated the main car key. This is a separate key ring that contains the key that can be used to open any one or all car doors remotely. There are only three buttons on the remote, but I still hit the wrong one sometimes and lock the car when it is already locked, or open the trunk when I don't want to. Heaven only knows what I would do if we had a device that rolled the windows down or turned on the air conditioning automatically.

Getting ready to leave the house for morning errands or an outing has become an activity that can take several minutes. First I have to make sure that I have both sets of keys--the house keys and the car keys. I go out to the car and move it to the optimum curbside position, where the walker can stand steady at not too much of a slant. The weather has been hot, so I generally leave the keys in the ignition, power down the front windows, and turn on the air conditioning. Then I return to the sunroom and help the patient with his walker out the door, across the terrace, and into the car. Fold up the walker and stuff it in the back seat. Return to the house with my own set of house keys and shut the front door, lock the front door, shut the grate, lock the grate, shut the sunroom door, lock the sunroom door (but leave the side door open for Goldie), and shut the gate and lock the gate. Then I get in the car and try to remember to stop at the recycling station with one of the bags of bottles, containers, or paper that I have previously stuffed into the car.

Photo copyright 2012 Susanne Bjorner.

Returning, there is also a procedure, with the addition that we usually stop first at the mailbox, where I use one key to open the master mailbox area for the community, and a second to open our private mail box. Then I park along the curb, leaving the patient in the car until I open the gate, the sunroom, the grate, and the door--where all too often I find that Goldie has gotten herself locked on the wrong side of the closed door. Then the patient hops in, and I go out to move the car, lock the car, close the gate, lock the gate, leave the sunroom open for the cat, and close the grate and lock the grate. We usually leave the front door open until after we have had lunch, and then we push it to just ajar, turn on the air conditioning, and settle down for work or siesta. We have had our outing for the day. Goldie is the only one (we hope) who can elude the locks and come and go as she pleases.

Heavy Lifting

Most marriages or other partnership living arrangements, I suppose, evolve in time to a point where each of the partners has his or her own household duties. Some partners talk about the issues of who does what for the common good and make decisions, I am told; others just drift into it. We may have been in the first category at some time--it's been so long I can hardly remember--but if so, we are certainly also in the second.

That's why, when I am suddenly called upon to assume the duties of the other partner because of temporary disability, I find myself in the ludicrous position of not knowing basic things. In which of the five or six grocery stores that we frequent is it possible to buy his favorite gaseosa drink? What about his Caesar salad dressing? Is Goldie (the cat) going to accept any old brand of moist food and kitty litter, or do I have to buy that special brand? Where, by the way, do I actually find the two different kinds of waters that we drink, once I have nailed down the right store? We usually split up when we go in to a grocery store, each with a list of our specific items, and meet at the checkout counter.

We each have our separate duties, and the shopping questions are managed mostly by talking them over. Others are not resolved quite as quickly. The first two bags of kitty litter that I bought sat for several days before it finally dawned on me that I had better empty the old and put out the new. The other major issue is driving out to stores; when we first moved to Spain we downsized to no car, because we lived in town and could walk everywhere. Now we live in a neighborhood in the country and we have to drive, so we have a car, but it is one car. And guess who drives it most? Well, he is not able to drive it for a few weeks after the operation, so I am doing the driving. Driving is not a problem for me, though I really don't like having to manually shift down and then up going through the numerous infernal rotaries that we have in Spain, and I am one of those people who doesn't mind driving around the block to avoid making a dangerous left turn.  But it's the parking that is the real problem. I don't like the tiny parking spaces; I don't like parallel parking, especially when the available space is on the left side of the street, and especially when it is on a hill. And I don't like dark, underground parking garages.

All of these little adventures are presenting themselves to me now, and guess what? I am mastering them. But the interesting thing is how many of them involve heavy lifting.Those kitty litter bags are really heavy. So are all the agua con gas one-liter bottles for me, and the gaseosa one-liter bottles for Johannes, and the one-liter milk brick packs. And not only is each of these items heavy, it used to be that we were two to carry in the groceries, but now we are just one. Plus it's not just carrying in groceries, it's also carrying them out, in the form of recyclables. I have a lovely six-bottle canvas bag from Meijer that we use to recycle the wine bottles, herring glasses, and occasional other containers, so that doesn't get too heavy. The Cambridge nylon bag that we use to stuff plastic beverage, salad dressing, and other envases in doesn't get heavy. And the bag that we use to collect paper doesn't get very heavy. But I found myself at the neighborhood recycling station this morning with a very sturdy carton that had held six bottles of wine. and I realized that there was no way that I could break down that carton without breaking down at least one finger nail. So I brought it home again. Johannes broke it down with five strong swipes of his hands, and I deposited the sides and bottom in the bag that I will eventually take back up to the paper recycling station.

Then, of course, there is a certain amount of additional lifting, of extra laundry, of rolling up the carpets when they were in the way, of moving things from upstairs to downstairs, of the walker, and chairs in the house, and the wheelchair, and even occasionally of the person. And did I mention  the watering can and hose that I use to feed the upstairs and downstairs gardens at least every second day--never a job that was on my list before.

Which all goes to show that it is easy to forget those tasks that the other person in a partnership performs on a regular basis, simply because they get done on a regular basis, by habit, and they don't get announced. So now I can say thanks, dear, for taking care of so many things that I never realize that you do.

"Can I Help You?"

This blog post is dedicated to the lady who appeared suddenly, unnoticed by me, behind my back in the Consum parking lot yesterday morning, offering help in getting a wheelchair, which I had just--for the first time--succeeded in disassembling according to plan, into the trunk of the Ford Fusion.

I turned toward her, startled, and her eyes said it all. "I've been there, too," she said. "My husband had a stroke and I had to learn about wheelchairs and everything suddenly. He's better now, he can walk again and has a "rollator" with a seat. But no one understands how tiring it is to move this stuff around--and no one ever thinks about the caregiver."

At least she said something like that. I may well have gotten the details wrong, because I am, admittedly, very tired from my unexpected care giving duties and I find it increasingly hard to focus and remember all the things I need to remember. Not that I didn't anticipate that this summer would feature a lot of fetch and carry--of course I knew that a knee replacement patient would have a hard and painful recovery, with lots of exercises to concentrate on in order to regain full use of the leg. We knew that driving was off-limits for six weeks and that he probably wouldn't be able to handle stairs for a long time, so we had prepared a downstairs bedroom and explored options for an in-tub chair, since the downstairs bath does not have a free-standing shower. But we also had talked with everyone we knew who had ever had a knee replacement--or knew someone who had--and they all told us that within 24 hours they were expected to be up walking with assistance, that strenuous therapy began immediately, and that one soon moves from a walker to crutches, to perhaps a cane. And that it is important to do the exercises!

So it came as a complete surprise to us both when the surgeon explained that for this procedure, the patient could not put any weight on the operated leg for a minimum of six weeks. Not only did that restriction delay the recovery period considerably, it changed it completely. I put away the crutches and cane we had acquired and rented a wheelchair. By using a Zimmer frame stationary walker and a 5-wheel rolling office chair, the patient can make his way around the first floor of the house fairly well; the walker and wheelchair--and someone to manage them--are necessary when leaving the house. And it was necessary to leave the house almost immediately, for trips to change the dressing, for doctor's appointments, and just to get out in the world to maintain sanity.

The man in the rental store showed me quickly how neatly the wheels and foot rests come off the wheelchair, and then with one upward hand motion, the seat comes up and the chair folds in two and can be placed easily in the trunk of the car. Yes, watching it and doing it, and then doing it again, and alone, are two different things. I wasn't even able to get the chair from the trunk of the car into the house without getting grease all over my pants and shirt the first time. Reassembling the chair that first evening was not difficult, but when it came time to take out the four movable parts and whack the seat upright, I had lost the secret. I am not mechanically inclined, and the subtleties of design of a black-on-black apparatus are beyond me. Fortunately my husband is mechanically inclined and can see the various working parts. With practice over the past two weeks, we have slowly gotten to the point where we can do a chair-to-car transfer of both patient and chair in five or six minutes and without too many visible sighs of frustration on my part.

The worst "practice" session was in the basement parking garage of the Habaneras shopping center, curiously unlighted, where I could discern no handicapped parking spots and so was panicking that a car would pull in to the "empty" spot next to our car where patient and chair were situated far too long in various stages of assembly. Of course I'm not sure whether we legally qualify for a handicapped spot during this temporary situation and don't really have time to investigate that, but on the way out of the shopping center, I left the patient in his chair at a well-lighted, extra-wide, "pre-mama" parking space, went and retrieved our car, and drove it into the expectant mother's slot--clearly one that we were not authorized to use. But it worked, and no one criticized or hit us.

A couple days later when we went to the grocery store, it wasn't busy and there were lots of parking spaces, and lots of light in the ground-level parking lot. I had no trouble at all assembling the wheelchair, and we both went into the coolness of the air-conditioned Consum to do our shopping. Leaving some time later, I discovered that a motorcycle had parked smack dab in the middle of the regular spot next to me, so there was plenty of room to get the patient into the car and dismantle the wheelchair. This time it only required a couple extra motions, and no swear words passed my lips. It was just as I went to lift the chair into the trunk that the nice lady hailed me. So she didn't need to help me lift the chair in--or worse--dismantle it. But she helped, just by understanding and sharing the experience. Some things you can understand, appreciate, and sympathize with in theory, but some you really can only understand by living them. Our brief talk, and hearing her story, lightened my load. She also pointed out a handicapped spot closer to the store, for next time.

There was one thought I did not share with her, because apparently I am a lot luckier than she was. My friends do think about the caregiver--almost all the people who have written and asked about our patient have also asked me how I am doing. So have the visitors who have made it to the house. That is very comforting, and it also helps lighten the load.

The patient improves a little more every day, conscientiously does his bending but none-weight-bearing exercises, and is counting the days until the end of the six-week prohibition. And the caregiver is hanging on.

Hospital Time

I never got back to the Algorfa ayuntamiento to deposit entries into the tapas festival drawing. I got so tied up in the busyness of knee replacement surgery that it slipped my mind until--amazingly--almost the exact hour of the drawing last Friday. At that time I was in a hospital room with the official photographer of this blog, into whose knee a prosthesis had been placed on Tuesday afternoon.

I had no personal experience with knee surgery before, so I cannot offer comparisons between anyone else and the way it went for us, but it has certainly been an interesting and tiring week. When we arrived at the hospital on Tuesday noon, we were shown to a room which was to become home for the next several days. There was one of those mechanically sophisticated hospital beds with all sorts of contraptions, a sturdy chair with movable arms, a long and fairly wide couch, and a private bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower. I've stayed in less well-fitted hotel rooms. In the next two hours various persons came into the room and prepared the patient. Then at 3:00 they wheeled him out in the bed, and at 9:00 that evening they wheeled him back in. Surprisingly and disappointingly, no meal was available at this time, at least for this patient who had been fasting for over 24 hours, so I went out and bought a sandwich for him at the vending machine in the hall. Nurses came in to check various signs and one brought me sheets and a pillow for my couch bed. In the morning, they offered me towels in case I wanted to take a shower.

Time, especially mealtime, is different in Spain than it is in the U.S., but maybe hospital time is more similar across cultures than normal time. Since I have never been in a hospital more than over one night in the U.S. I don't really know. This patient was mighty glad when the breakfast service came in the next morning at a little after 8:00, even though breakfast turned out to be only coffee (decaffeinated) and a choice of bread, donuts, or sweet rolls. Not too substantial, but meriendas came at 10:30: this snack offered fruit drinks, coffee or tea, and cookies. At some time each morning a one-liter bottle of still water also appeared. Lunchtime was served at about 1:30--early according to Spanish custom, but per Spanish custom, comida consisted of a first course, a main course, bread, and dessert. Never what I would call noisy--even when we left the door to the room open, any personnel coming in to attend us would automatically close it on the way out--the hospital became very quiet after lunch. It was, after all, siesta time. Almost on the dot of 4:00 siesta was over, the shift had changed, and the merienda service came by again with its cart of beverages, cookies, and more sweets. The main event of the "afternoon," as this period of time is called in Spain, was the doctor's visit. The first day he came at 7:00 PM; we figured that was probably exactly 24 hours after the end of the surgery. Then at 8:00 (this is more like Spanish dinner time) dinner, or la cena, arrived. Here again there was a first course, main course, bread, and dessert. I left after dinner, so I do not know if meriendas were offered again as a bedtime snack; I doubt it.

When dinner came the first night, we were also presented with a menu for the next day. Three choices were offered for each course for comida and cena, including soup or salad as a first course; fish, meat, or a somewhat vegetarian main course; ice cream, pudding, yogurt, or "fruit natural" for dessert. During his stay, the patient had some excellent fish that was completely boneless, roasted chicken, a French omelet, sliced tomatoes with olive oil dressing and salt (the only time I saw a vegetable as an accompaniment, except for the salad starter), and some delicious cremas, thick "creamed" soup, and one was crema de alcochofa, artichokes, a specialty of this region. He never graduated to caffeinated coffee--I asked--but no one objected when I went down to the hospital cafeteria and ordered two cafes con leche para llevar. I usually ate the individual bread loaf that came with the meal, sans butter, and I also appropriated the "fruit natural" ordered the first day--a kiwi, unpeeled, hard as a rock (which at first I mistook for a baked potato) with only a regular dinner knife to peel it. It's sitting downstairs in my kitchen still, ripening--maybe tomorrow for our lunchtime fruit salad.

Each day was long and tedious, punctuated only with meals, exercises, a sponge bath, the room cleaning, various nursing checks, and the doctor visit--typically, everything was quiet until the patient fell into sleep and then someone knocked on the door and came in to do something. And yet, we were only there three days following the procedure. When the doctor came at 5:30 Friday afternoon he was satisfied with the progress and offered the patient the choice of going home that night or Saturday morning. You can guess what the patient chose (and perhaps what his caregiver would have preferred). "The discharge instructions will come from the doctor in 20 minutes," said the head nurse. An hour and 30 minutes later, the instructions came. The patient could go home either in our car or in an ambulance, but he might have to wait for the ambulance. Given the experience of time for dismissal so far, it was our car. They wheeled him down to the main entrance while I fetched the car, and we left the luxury of the hospital to be at home. And that began a different adventure.