Day 2 – The Good Airs get a Good Cleaning

So wait, what day of the week is it? I am already so confused I can’t even begin to say. I believe Bush is still president of the US, but I’m not really sure. Maybe it’s the wine speaking.

So anyway, we last left our fearless heroes stranded in Buenos Aires, stinky, and sans belongings. When Our Fearless Heroes (or OFH, pronounced “Awfuh”) awoke on … fill in the correct day of the week here… they quickly ascertained several very specific and dire needs before them.

1. Bottled water. One cannot make formula from a dry powder without bottled water. Well, I suppose one could make it from tap water, but this particular one drank some tap water on this particular one’s first trip to Buenos Aires because nobody ever told him (really bad fake Mexican accent here) “Don’t drink the water” and this particular one being so cocky and self-assured figured if nobody had ever said don’t drink the water it must be safe to drink. This particular one then suffered from an interesting malady involving – you guessed it – the intestinal tract, and after days of wondering what was wrong with this particular one, and having my dear uncle (by marriage) who is a doctor tell me I had appendicitis did Ana say, “NO! Don’t drink the water!!! Are you crazy? Why do you think we all have bottled water delivered to our houses???” Oh yeah…… Interesting point…. Anyway, this is a song about Alice’s Restaurant. Remember Alice? This is a song about Alice. She had no bottled water in her restaurant, and Arlo Guthrie went to the dump, only it was closed. Oh wait, wrong song.
2. Diapers. Now, those of you who are without child may not realize quite how dire this need can be. Actually, I’m guessing you probably do. How many of us have ever woken up without a need to use the diaper-esque facilities? Well, when the OFH are down to only a few diapers, the OFH go get more. Mind you, some lucky Norwegian elderly woman just back from her trip to the Vatican is now the recipient of 6 40 lbs bags, one of which contains a brand new bag of Huggies, which depending on her size, she may or may not be able to use in lieu of Depends (probably not unless she is an abnormally small lucky Norwegian elderly woman just back from the Vatican).
3. Wipes. You know, if you don’t have clean diapers, I guess you don’t really need wipes! Problem solved!
4. Clean clothes. Now clean clothes sometimes are not important. However, as I am not making the walk of shame (or fame, depending on the direction) back at William & Mary this particular morning, clean clothes are actually somewhat important. (For the record, this statement is not an indication that the author may or may not have any specific knowledge of any particular walks of shame and or fame. The author does not intend to convey to the reader that the author has in fact made, or had any specific relationship to, a walk of shame and or fame. Any speculation that the author at one time during his or her College years had any specific knowledge of any individual walking any particular path that may have been referred to as a walk of shame and or fame is completely arbitrary and in no way related to the comments made above. In fact, I’m not even admitting I know who the author is.)
5. Toiletries. Now, a lot of toiletries can be missed. For example, I don’t really need to floss my teeth this morning. I mean I should, and my dental hygienist wouldn’t be happy to hear me say that, but let’s call a spade a shovel here: if my gums don’t get poked and prodded this morning, it’s not the end of Western Civilization. However, if I don’t have soap, nor deodorant, and I were ,hypothetically speaking, in a country wherein appearances count a LOT – one like, say, Argentina – then being a smelly gringo with food in his teeth could be a bad thing.
6. Oh yeah – food and water. But then, we wouldn’t have had food and water anyway, so almost not worth mentioning. Except the whole “don’t drink the water” thing.
7. Lastly the internet. I mean, how else do I google “lost baggage” to find out what to do? Or who to call? Or pull down a satellite map of where my baggage may be?

So we prioritized. Points 1, 2, & 6 all vied strongly for most important. Eventually we decided a) you can’t poop if you don’t eat, and b) we could eat and get bottled water at the same time, thus breaking the PETA axiom that one should not kill any birds with a stone, much less two.

Having eaten, it quickly became even more obvious to us that not only were our clothes dirty and ourselves stinky, but in fact our dirty clothes were also stinky. For example, I had been wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt that had been spit upon by a certain un-named four-month old (Sofia) approximately 47 times in three days. Normally she doesn’t spit up on me more than once a day, but literally within minutes of putting on my jeans, she spit up on them. And, seriously, I looked at it knowing the flight was 8 hours away and thought “You know, I should change or something, but I bet it will dry up and won’t be a problem.

Did you know dried spit up doesn’t smell so great?

Actually, somewhere above I went into the land of fiction – I just remembered our cousin Vero had given us a bottle of water. So we could feed our infant if she were hungry and wanted to spit up on our dirty clothes again. So we did, and she did.

Now, since we had literally no food in the house, we had to eat breakfast at the café around the corner before bathing. Our next priority was clean clothes, and we could at least bathe before we took off for that venture. So back to the house we went. And back at the house we go to bathe where I discover as I’m getting in the shower that we have no shampoo. Of course. But we do have soap. Soap, when you have a crew cut, is not a bad shampoo. Soap, when you desperately need a haircut because you look like Ringo Starr in the late sixties, is not a good shampoo. But hey, the Good Airs will wisk away any peculiar smells, right?

So, in the mean time, we needed clean clothes. Good thing we live near a store or 5,000. So off we went, to Callao y Sante Fe. “Honey, I’m sure it’s only a few blocks this way.” “Oh right, I forgot this plaza was before Santa Fe.” “So how many blocks was it?” “WHERE IS SANTA FE AND WHY DIDN’T WE TAKE A TAXI???”

Eventually we found Callao y Santa Fe (and I’m happy to say several places where Ana plans to get her hair cut in the next 12 months), a butcher (critical to the porteno experience), a few dozen cafes, and a place that will deliver a dozen empanadas for 7 pesos (or US$2). Oh – and a kids clothing store that we know. Only we didn’t know that it was absurdly expensive (well, on an Argentine budget – but on a DC budget it is only somewhat expensive), and had we stopped in the half a dozen other children’s clothes stores that we had passed in the 14 hour walk from one side of Buenos Aires to the other, we might have already been done and could have gone home.

Then we finally found a place for Ana to buy some clothes. And you know what, she looked awesome in her new outfit. I was stoked. I guess she was, too, but I think I never got around to asking her in between all the compliments I kept paying her in her new clothes.

And we found an Adidas store where I bought socks. You see, at this point, I wasn’t going to pay a lot for an Adidas shirt. But my socks and shoes were causing dogs to whimper at this point, so I was going to do the best thing I could: help the animals. Poor dogs shouldn’t have to suffer.

We head back home without having new clothes for anyone except for Ana and my feet in time to meet someone. When we arrive, guess who calls? The old woman in Oslo who read the tags on our luggage to ask if we would mind if she borrowed a diaper. Actually it was United saying “Hola, tenemos sus equipajes y vamos a llegar con ellas esta tarde.” I held out (quietly) knowing that there was no way they really found all 6 bags and ripped them out of the hands of the old woman in Oslo so that we could have a change of clothes.

Now at this point, one would be excited to learn that one was getting all of his or her earthly possessions (sans those in North America) back in a few hours. However, one then realized one had to meet a few people before then, and being in stinky spit upon clothes was not ideal for meeting a few people in a country where appearances are 125% and the rest are appearances.

But more importantly, I just realized I have written two and a half pages about stink and filth. I’m going to wrap it up quickly.

Bags arrived, we were happy. Isa went to her cousins house where she was very excited to play and finally bathe. I stayed home with Sof who napped during the entire Barcelona v Arsenal Champions League final (thank you Sof!), and our new housekeeper unpacked all of our 40 lbs bags including the 7^th bag that the old woman from Oslo apparently misplaced. Does anyone need a Norwegian woman’s belongings?

We called to get internet set up and they won’t come until Saturday. In the mean time, we have to make do with some neighbor whose unsecured wireless network named “NETGEAR” (very original name) connects to my laptop (not Ana’s) only when the wind is blowing in the right direction, the window is open, the kids are sleeping, and I hold my computer in one specific place in one specific room in our specific apartment. Otherwise, no luck. I have spent more time trying to get the connection to work than I have contemplating what the old woman in Oslo thinks of my stinky socks that I put in her bag and gave back to United to return to the Nordic dumping grounds.

Anyway, my point of all of this is to say: if you received any emails from me two or three times, it’s because my pirated internet connection keeps going in and out before Outlook can finish replicating. If you received some stinky socks in the mail, the odds that they are mine are very very low. Unless you are an elderly woman in Oslo who needs Depends. If you know a baggage handler for United that works at Dulles – tell them thanks for spoiling my shopping trip.