Oh no! November 1st already!

More to come about my Halloween corn casseroleThis beggar lady and a cohort farther up the street block my path to the office every morning, reaching out to me with their witchy fingersThere’s always something happening in Parque Central. Claro is one of the two cable companies. Nice for the kids to have something to do.This is the once monthly Dinner & a Movie expat get together. What’s up with gray-haired old men w/ ponytails? There are appetizers, then a theme movie, themed food during intermission, more movie, dessert, and I don’t know because this was the first time I went (Daniel and I had a 4-day break-up and I decided to expand my social horizons…but I lasted until intermission and went home to Daniel. I don’t like social horizons). If they play a French film, everyone is expected to bring a French dish, an Italian movie gets Italian food. This was Halloween. You see my over-done Boo corn casserole. The problem is cooking in some stranger’s kitchen without any ingredients. I had an early morning Spanish lesson, so I taxi’d to La Colonia w/ my recipe in hand. Yeah, like there’s really going to be creamed corn on the shelf. And good luck to me in finding Pillsbury Cornbread mix. So, you learn to improvise. I bought a cake mix, cans of corn kernels, and those pimento-stuffed Spanish olives to make googly eyes. Once I sweated my way home in a stuffed taxi with my packages on my knees, I combined 3 recipes. I used the back of the cake mix, my original recipe and one I found on the Internet. So I mixed eggs and sour cream and milk and a ton of butter and whatever I could find. I made the Boo w/ the olive eyes and went to take a nap. When I woke, my casserole was overdone and the olives had sunk into the batter. OK, raisins. I got halfway through a raisin Boo when I realized there wasn’t enuf color difference between the rains and the cake. So I ate all the raisins and substituted peanuts. I couldn’t use the oven at the party site because there was no gas, so my once-hot casserole was served two hours later. Note: I received compliments from everyone. And the buried olives were a nice touch. Take that, Martha Stewart! I’m sure I was the oldest guest, but when I’m with this group, I always feel like i’m hanging out with Mike Huckabee and his friends. An example of the ex-pat crowd: the movie was “Young Frankenstein.” The youngest (and I thought hippest) woman said to me, “Why was this movie so popular?” Astounded, I answered, “Because it’s funny.” And then she asked, “Why do you think it’s funny?” That didn’t deserve an answer. If you don’t get Mel Brooks, end of conversation. Get outta my face. Mule-like Daniel has continued to work for the circus, without being paid. Originally they were paying him on a weekly basis. Then they missed one payment and another and…. He thinks if he quits, they’ll never pay him. He doesn’t seem to realize that, even though they’ve moved on from Granada and are now in Diriomo (a 20-minute motorcycle ride for him), they’re going to pull up stakes there soon and if they don’t pay him, he has no recourse. He’s so happy to have a job, it doesn’t seem to make him crazy that there’s no recompense. It makes me crazy, so there were words exchanged. I held back on”idiota.” So he ran away to join the circus in Diriomo. Then the baby mama showed up on my doorstep again, with her fast-talking Spanish asking me to talk to him because he was so unhappy. Having a relationship with someone from another culture is really tough. I don’t win arguments in English. Having them in Spanish is an unfair handicap. “Men Are From Venus, Woman Are From Mars” or whatever the title of that book is…Nica Daniel and are aren’t even in the same galaxy. I can say to him, “I thought you were going to be here at 7 p.m.” and he responds, “Do you want me to leave?” "Does that mean you don’t love me?” I shake my head in exasperation. But 98% of the time, we’re blissful. So you get some bad with the good.