Postcards to Stockholm: 11 and counting

Dear Sis,

11 and counting (backwards).

 

Love,
M

P.S.: Yes, that is washi tape in our calendar.
P.S.2: October's pics are the best!

Postcards to Stockholm - Manicure

Dear Sis,

How was your day? I have a few days of holidays left yet, so I am taking things easy.

Today I got a manicure for Saturday's wedding. If my hair is going to look like a rat's, I should draw the attention somewhere else to avoid humiliation. I think they did a terrific job, don't you agree?

Love,
M

Postcards to Stockholm - God save the (new) queen

Dear Sis,

If you were worried for me, don't be. I am being well taken care of, see? Here you can see Sunday's dinner and my new favourite blanket :) I am the absolute queen of the house!

How was your first day of work?

Love,
M

It's going to be fine

Today I dropped by Agnes' blog and saw this:

It has been two months since I last posted, and that makes me feel guilty. The reason why a person feels compelled to keep telling a story in a blog still escapes my understanding, but the truth is it happens. You start to tell a story in a website and by the time you run out of ideas you have created a bond with the anonimous entity formed by readers (if any) which is very difficult to fully break.

2012 is being a busy year, I got my own place and I am getting it ready to move sooner than later, my sister finished her PhD and now she's being taken away to a cold place up north. Now my heart is devided between the sad and empty room that will be left only to myself on Sunday (when we spoke about moving out of the room I never intended you to move so far, sis) and the thousands of happy musings about visits and video chats (and cute-stuff-shopping).

WTF, my heart is broken. I am going to miss you like hell, sis.

But, if I already am a drama queen and I let myself fall in this spiral of self pity I may as well pop my eyes out to have a real reason to complain. The world is clashing down and here I am crying over my sister moving on to a better place, a better job and a better life.

I love to make promises in this blog, my favourite one is: Posting regularly,  but as it is, I never keep that promise. There is always something better to do, A L W A Y S. But now my sister is going away and I feel this blog may become a nice little cozy place where I can tell her about the stupid daily stuff that comes to my head.

I am starting a new section - yay! In which I will post (almost daily, at least for the next few months (maybe weeks, ok)) a (bad quality) bb pic of my day to day life, and tell you a few lines about what the Life in Such is Life stands for.

This is for you, sis.

Love you to pieces, to you I dedicate this section.

Coming soon (maybe too soon for my liking) in Such is Life:

 Such is Life.

STAR BLOGS EPISODE II - The attack of the Origami

A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away...

I owed you this post for a long long long while.

Why a person should put on the hand break of her car while refueling may escape her, but when it comes to arts and crafts my sister and her infinite patience out do everyone I know. By far.

She may not be able to choose which t-shirt goes with which pair of identical jeans but she can put together the most awesome origami ever. And if you give her some glue, then she will blow your freaky mind away, like she did on my birthday:

These three gentlemen are now part of my office decor (which may get me fired one day) and have added up to some other papercraft marvels:

 

Its hard to stay normal when all the force is with you!

 Other wonders handmade by my sister can be seen here and here. She may even take order if you leave a comment in this post (won't you?).

Two posts in a day, I am going to cry with joy.

May the Force be with you.

Such is life

Melon. Yet another "Such is Life" story

Remember me?

The laziest blogger ever? Well I am finally on holidays and ready to provide you with yet another typical "Such is Life" story. Enjoy!


MELON:

What if your mom cared so much about you eating well at work that every morning she would cut a nice slice of melon cut it in pieces, put it in a lunch box and leave it in your bag for you to take to work? wouldn't that be nice? Sure! Awesome, thanks mom, it is lovely.

Or not.

What if you forgot to eat half your melon and realized just on the elevator that takes you home. What would you do? You don't want to dispappoint your mom (let alone let her repeatedly tell you how unhealthy you eat and how dreadful it is that you forgot your melon).

So back to the elevator, there you are, 11pm, back from a long's day work and you panic: S**** there is melon in my lunch box! Think M, think! You live in a very high floor, the elevator is going to take at least a minute and a half to get there. Eat! Now! go! So you start to eat your melon at "12 campanadas" speed (will explain what "12 campanadas" is later), and by the time you reach your floor, chocking and still trying to swallow the last two pieces, guess what?

Your sister and father are waiting for the elevator.

You try to greet them casually, trying to hide the fact that your hand is dripping with sticky melon and that your mouth is full of melon, and that the lunch box is opened in your hand. Oh! i da', sis'er wha' ar' you do (*cough*) ere?

Sister laughs, you finally swallow. Hey dad, I was just eating a forgotten piece of melon. I'll go home now. Bye!

Your sister whatapp's you countless laughs, you finally laugh at yourself, and even more when your sister tells you what your father said: Does she really think I'm going to buy that "one melon piece" thing?

Why not dad? It is perfectly normal to eat melon as fast as you can in an elevator at 11pm on a Tuesday night, right?

Lesson learned, never forget to eat your melon, and if you do, don't lie kids. You'll get caught.

THE END

Such is Life!



12 campanadas: In Spain, we receive the new year eating one grape for each time the bell rings at midnight on December 31st. Chocking is quite common, starting the year spitting grapes to the face of the ones you love too. So. Much. Fun. You have to eat the damn grapes so fast to make it twelve before January 1st that you can barely breathe.

Origamad

Every once in a while I discover some kind of handcraft that soon becomes an obsession until I get tired of it.

Just the other day I dropped by a japanese store with a work coleague where, a pack of brightly colored papers with various patterns caught my attention. Origami paper.

At first I thought I could use it for anything, pretty paper is so pretty you cam make up anything just to use it, to cover boxes, notebooks, just to keep it and look at it... but then, back at the office as I waited for our server to come back to life (not surprising but totally nerve-racking), I googled ORIGAMI and, oh surprise! Welcome to a new world.

I started with a simple shirt, easy, then I went on browsing and discovered you can use origami to make useful things, like toothpick cases or clip stands (cause of course everyone has a pocket full of toothpiks in every pair of jeans they wear). And then I went completely crazy. I crafted a very cute tie, a tropical fish, and discovered you can make balloons with paper and blow them!

I realised then this was the kind of silly little thing my sister would love, and just then, I could easily see the kind of madness I would unleash if I showed her my origami paper. And I did!


There's this very cute origami website where they have all kinds of origami categories with instructions and diagrams...they have a page for everithing, and... oh, look! here it says Accessories, lets click here... Oh! you can WEAR origami, WEAR it, as in origami bracelets, origami rings, origami necklaces... and then and there I decided I could leave my sister the difficult parts and go for fashion. I may have done twelve origami bracelets in the last two days (lol) and next weekend: Origami beads for an  origami bracelet!!


I went out on friday night on friday and found myself being "that crazy girl folding paper", I made some more shirts and ties, and fish while at dinner, and wished I had sticky tape to make some more bracelets, but of course, that couldn't be. Crazy girl folding paper was seen again on Saturday afternoon folding paper at a cafe while having lunch with Agnes, wearing her super fashionable paper bracelets, which, by the way, are not waterproof, the rain in Madrid made that veeery clear.


Anyway, just as I had anticipated, as soon as I told my sister about origami, she went crazy too, and soon became the real origami master in the house, she made an amazing cactus and she has announced she is working on a car which may take her a while but will be awesome.

Origamad as we are now, I had to, HAD TO, get origami paper to fill a whole house. I got tons of origami paper from the same store on Saturday afternoon, of course, couldn't wait any longer. Our plan is to fill a huge box with them, or maybe we can decorate rooms, houses and castles with our origami creations.

Or maybe we'll get tired in a few days and will have just tons of colour paper we use for nothing (a very likely option).

Of course there is a dark side to this silly story. My hands are full of papercuts, and they sting like crazy.

Such is Life!

You are welcome!

If any of you know my sister, you must know she has the hability of falling asleep in the oddest situations, including while having lunch. Sitting-at-the-table. Yeap. Well, each and every single night, as we all sit in front of the TV, she consistently falls asleep and then crawls to bed in a state inbetween sleep and conciousness.

If any of you know my sister, you must know she may be very enthusiastic about watching something on TV after dinner, promising she won't fall asleep this time and make you watch the same episode of whatever TV show we are watching night after night until she finally watches it completely, which sometimes may take weeks (I am pretty sure it took her a whole month to watch the all-time classic "The Third Man").

If any of you know my sister, you must know that, try as she might, she is completely unable to stay awake once she sits comfortably on the sofa.

So here comes the story...

She brought with her from London David Attenborough's Life of Birds and Life of Mammals, and is trying to watch both documentaries episode by episode. So far I've watched "Mammals: A winning design" two nights in a row. And I am doubting I will be done with it tonight since I can see my sister's eyes closing slowly and for longer periods as minutes go by. The process is always the same: First she blinks a lot, constantly, then she closes her eyes for a few seconds, opening them from time to time, and then, a couple minutes later, just like now, she falls completely and deeply asleep only to be woken up in a couple of minutes and crawl to bed (see paragraph 1 above).

Aaaaaaaand right now... she just fell asleep.

Aaaaaaaand right now... she just woke up! frustrated that she will have to play the episode a third time, and stumbling to bed, eyes half closed. She apologises for making us watch the episode yet again tomorrow, maybe then we'll get a minute further or else I am going to use the dvd as coaster.

And here it is, yet another post dedicated to my sister. No need to thank me for keeping your popularity soaring (ha ha ha). Enjoy!

Such is Life...

SSS (i.e. Some sis stuff)

"If I had a small piece of land (in Spanish "Terrenito" for those who can catch the hilarity in the word) I would plant my own tomatoes"

M's sister

Only she hates tomatoes...

Following My sister, the online phenomenon, here some little extra insight on said phenomenon.

After making a surprisingly punctual return from Ireland a couple of weeks ago I came to realise my sister is addicted to planting things.

In the last couple of years she has managed to buy/be given the most odd sets of seeds. I have to admit I tend to indulge her planting habits, but all in all, she is always planning what to grow in the few pots we have at home that are not filled with my mom's flowers (must run in our genes, I guess).

At least we are lucky, and most of the things she plants don't even see the light, otherwise my balcony would be full of:

- Giant pumkins (no kidding).
- Cherry tomatoes
- Hundreds of tulips, and...

... The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (or so said the box).

The lack of land has made her look for alternatives, and smaller plants, thankfully. After buying seeds in a match box (that actually had the seeds stuck to actual matches), the last thing she got was a can, the size of one of those airplane cans that are so cute, painted in light blue with golden letters in which you can read:

"Grow your own luck"

You just have to guess what's in it.

And now I'll just press "publish post" cause she has been pretty intense about how much she wants to read her latest blog post.

Here you go, sis, you can keep sleeping on the couch, I'lll stay awake a little while longer, as the song says, it's hard to say I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep... but you know these things tend to happen at some point in your work life. Damn it! my sleep schemes are totally changed... Such is life!

My sister: The online Phenomenon

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present... my sister.

My only sibling is three years older than me, and ever since I started this blog has been nagging me about it. The reason? She thinks this blog is the platform that will turn her into an online phenomenon. I don't want to discourage her enthusiasm but I honestly think this poor girl has no idea of the terrible things I could say about her.

She should be thanking the Lord I am actually a nice sister, cause otherwise she would not become an online phenomenon but a social faillure.

Still, my sister, "the online phenomenon to be" doesn't surrender, and she insists on me telling stories about her.

Just ten minutes ago we had a conversation that explains the situation quite well:

Sis: I have been reading your blog today.
Me: Really, that's good.
Sis: Yeah, and I've realised the post I like most is "What this blog is not".
Me: No wonder, it's about you.
Sis: Exactly, I think you should talk more about me, it's fun.
Me: Fun?
Sis: Of course fun! I actually like the posts about me most.

At that point of the conversation my fingers started to itch, and I felt the urge to start writing. I can't understand why she tells me this kind of stuff, doesn't she know I am going to tell you guys about it asap?

So innocent, poor thing.

Here you go sis, your third post in Such is Life, congrats.

Third post of the day, what this blog is NOT

My dearest sister,

Thank you for becoming a follower, actually I should be thanking myself for making you a gmail account thus enabling you access to the comments on this blog. You have been quite useless on the process and therefore I will not abide to your rules regarding my blog.

This is, after all, my blog, and even if you just pointed out the commas should be in a different place, I will keep them where they are, since this is, after all, my blog.

This blog is not the place where I consistently prove the world how absurd you can be at times.

This is not the place where your achievements are recognised (see Parents, a comparative study to understand the meaning of achievement in this context).

This is not the place that's going to turn you into an online phenomenon.

This is my blog, and I fill it with my own ramblings. The fact that you are an important part of them only proves one thing: You are a trustworthy source of humour, and not because you chose to be so, but because you provide me with anecdotes unconciously.

I thank you for being one of my inspirations, my second follower and my beta reader, but please, let me take the credit for my writings.

Love,

your sister.

Requiem for a fish

And I was afraid I would have nothing to write and my blog would die little by little. I was sooo wrong.

It is sad, I can say almost tragic, but my fish died this afternoon. She was old, really old for a fish, at least 7 years old, and she was beautiful, shiny white with orange freckles, big eyes and round mouth, huge we thought, until we saw the size of the males of her species.

She even had a name. I still remember when we thought she was a he, till she laid eggs on our fish tank. She didn't move away from her soon to be kids while they matured. She bit any other fish that approached them, even the father... it was sad to see none of the eggs survive, but it has been even more sad to see her floating aimlessly on the fish tank, no shiny skin, her eyes opaque...

Sure she wasn't a dog or a cat (I would have been alergic to her in the second case), sure she didn't greet us happily everytime we got home, but alas she was our fish, and, believe it or not, we had grown very fond of her (and I should stop watching Pride and Prejudice if I ever want to speak current English and not XIXth century English).

This is my humble homage to our big fish, goodbye Jacinta

Why people should never laugh at other people

Call this revenge if you want, but I can't live knowing the world ignores what happened last Sunday.

I have been really busy these past few days with Marielle's visit (who left this morning :( ) and I'll be gone all weekend, so I was starting to fear there would be no new posts on this blog for a long long time. Fortunately, my sister made me a priceless gift last Sunday, a gift that will prove that there's either something wrong with the Clemente siblings or just that we are all humans after all (and definitely not dancers -what a song!).

A couple of weeks ago I humbled myself by posting one of my very intelligent ideas (see The Parafilm Experiment for more details) today, sorry Bro, I'm going to tell you my sister's brilliant idea on Sunday.


As I said before, Marielle has been visiting us for a couple of days, on Sunday we decided to take her to Chinchon, a small town near Madrid. After lunch we took a walk, and decided to try some of the pastries we had bought. With a piece of pastry in her hand, my very curious (and I must add 26 yeared old) sister spots a small group of rocks, and decides it would be a good idea to climb on one of them (by climb I mean step on it, as the rock had the size of... let's say... my head). It is a shame that no one saw the actual fall, but it seems the rock moved and she fell in the middle of the massive group of rocks. She stood up as fast as she could, but the damage was done: A very scratched arm, a less scratched knee, a bruised leg and a pair of torn tights.

I really wish someone had taped it. People carry the mobile phones with them all the time and make videos of the most stupid stuff. This was not stupid stuff. This was hilarious.

Sorry again, bro, I had to tell the world. You laughed at me a few weeks ago, and now it's my turn. Revenge is best served cold... I only fear the consequences of my actions now...