Can someone please tell me where the soap is hiding?, The Head & Shoulders Mexican Monopoly, … Oh, and where the hell I’ve been the last year

Welcome back!!! I’ve been informed that before I can jump back into posting I need a re-introduction since I have removed all my old posts. Ok, here is your introduction: Here is my blog. Read it. Don’t like it? Stop reading. Don’t know who I am or why or what I am blogging about? Hmmm, I find that hard to believe since I can count on one hand the number of people who will read this. And yes, that includes my mom, dad, brother and grandma. The fifth person? I taught my cat to read. That’s right, you wish you were as badass as me.

Let’s be honest here, I don’t know what direction this thing is going in, but for those of you near and far, this will be a good, albeit interesting way to keep up with what the hell I am doing these days. Enough introduction and now onto the actual blogging.

I recently accompanied Marco, who is my coworker; good friend; and honorary cousin, to his homeland of Mexico for his cousin’s wedding. The following are some tidbits from an amazing weekend spent drinking, eating, being perpetually confused, drinking, dancing and drinking. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with every single detail; I’ll just hit the more interesting highlights of my Gringa impression. And let’s just get this one out of the way since it seems to be first fucking question everyone asks. No, I am not sleeping with Marco. Sorry to disappoint; ladies, he’s all yours.

Let me remind you all, I speak NO Spanish. NONE. Nada. Ninguno. Actually that’s a lie. I know what Madra Puto is thanks to being called it at the Y once by an angry kid. However, not so useful when visiting a friend’s family. On our first leg of a seemingly endless redeye into Guadalajara, complete with two screaming babies, I asked Marco to school me in my “Spanish Need to Knows.” Somehow, out of all the words and phrases taught to me, the only things I was able to retain were animal names and how to order various tacos made from the following creatures: rat, cat, dog, donkey, armadillo and ant. And yes, I did spend the rest of the weekend telling his family I wanted rat tacos. I never did get one…

Let’s fast forward through lunch and a short siesta and on to showering before going out for the night. After extensive travelling the last few months, I decided that bringing soap is a waste of precious cargo space. Unlike shampoo/conditioner, I don’t have to worry about my arm hair tangling when I attempt to brush it, and unlike face wash, I don’t need to wash makeup off my ass. Except for that one time in Reno, but Courtney and Kristin have both signed nondisclosure agreements… Anyway, soap is a universal necessity and is therefore prominently displayed in the shower, right? WRONG. Apparently in Mexico, there is a special compartment where the soap is hidden. Haha Gringa, try and get clean now, you’ll never find that soap. I searched high and low, even venturing out of the shower looking for anything that remotely resembled something to wash my body. If I can’t speak Spanish, of course I can’t read it. So there I am, no contacts or glasses, dripping wet, buck naked, trying to decipher from pictures if anything in the bathroom might possibly be used to clean my stinky pits. No. Nothing. However, I did find approximately 13 bottles of Head & Shoulders in various shapes, sizes, scents and what I assume to be different purposes. Hmmmm strange, I guess this family really likes H&S and must be out of soap…? Again, WRONG!!! How so, you may ask? Taking this trip completely out of order and moving on to the following day, Marco and I stayed with family friends in Aguascalientes for the wedding. Same scenario: dripping wet, naked, blindly groping around the bathroom cabinets – and no, I obviously did not learn from my first lesson and check before entering the shower. Again, a futile attempt at locating soap, yet once more I discovered a variety of H&S. And for the third time thus far on my trip, I squirted some random H&S on my washcloth and scrubbed away, certain that I could party the night away without worrying about body dandruff.

You’ll be happy to know that upon returning to Guadalajara, I gave up my search for soap and merrily lathered myself with H&S. So can someone please tell me where the soap is hiding and what’s with the Head & Shoulders Mexican monopoly?

Oh, wait!!! I told you I would update you on the last year of my life, right? Ok, here it is, and because I’m such an ass, we’ll work backwards. Mexico for Marco’s cousin’s wedding, San Diego for Megan’s wedding, Yosemite with my PV gals, Palm Springs for Megan’s bachelorette party, Salt Lake City to visit Court, Girls’ weekend in Vegas, Keith and I broke up, camping in Sequoia, new job as a clinical research coordinator at the Veterans Affairs, lifeguarding at two local YMCAs, I quit my job at Stanford, and that brings us to Christmas which is about as far back as I want to go. That’s about a year anyway. So there, that’s what the hell I have been doing the past year or so. Details you say? I didn’t even finish telling you about Mexico???! I guess you’ll have to tune into the next installment: “Why it might be time to stop drinking.”