We are leaving for Peru tomorrow morning and I haven’t packed yet. Days at the office are always hectic before a trip; especially after a one-week vacation in Rome. Hopefully I’ll leave the office in less than an hour to get everything I need, including a manicure since I really need some sort of beauty makeover to look presentable at the training next week. I should also do the eyebrow and upper lip depilation, but that is too much to ask from me today. Hairy I should be! As always, I wonder how other women find time to look beautiful when they work, travel, have babies and much more responsibilities than I do. I need a time management course, but ironically I don’t have time for that either.

Victor and I went to the Metropolitan Opera last night to watch (and listen) Aida. As always I got impressed by the production and I can’t help to wander, how they store all the stages? Going to the opera always makes me feel at home and cozy. The opera season announces the beginning of the cold season, when the sunlight, even when scarce, has a brighter yellowish color, apple cider is sold everywhere, and you get the chance to rethink where you are, and where you are headed for next year. Plus, I always enjoy having a reason to dress up and drink a prosecco while we wait for Act 2 in the red carpet lobby.

I’m having a panic attack at this very moment. As a result of the sinus infection my doctor recommended a strong antibiotic, but after reading about all the possible side effects I’m afraid to keep taking it. Should I try to battle the bacteria myself (and probably fail) or take a medicine that will at least give me a stomachache and insomnia? Oh God! I’m the worst at making this kind of small decisions! (I feel dizzy already)

“You have a terrible sinus infection,” my doctor told me today, “you are very sick.” Funny enough I haven’t felt sick, or at least I’ve been blaming any symptoms to the last hectic days. I’m leaving for Peru on Saturday for work, so I won’t have a free weekend until November the 14th. I’m so looking forward to November 13th at 5:00 PM to be able to finally do nothing. NOTHING, except for probably going sightseeing the autumn foliage; if any of it survives this crazy weather. If not, I’ll just sit down on my couch to drink hot apple cider and read one of the new books I haven’t been able to open.
Diego moves out of the apartment to Greenpoint in a week, so our little family is shrinking. On the other hand, Lalis and his boyfriend are coming to visit during the second week of November. It will be exciting to see her in love after so many years of not finding the right person. I need more of my friends inviting me to weddings; I want an excuse to get a new dress and get drunk on someone else's behalf.

I have a new boss starting today, and being jetlagged as I am makes it impossible to show any positive energy or ideas. I’m trying to smile to sidetrack any attention to my red-watery eyes. If worst comes to worst, having just returned from Italy makes it worth giving a bad first impression. How are you supposed to get back to everyday life after a good trip? How to adequate your travel learning into your everyday life? How to keep that glow you brought for a longer period than the time it takes to unpack? How to get used to American coffee after all those early cappuccinos and afternoon espressos? Where to find real fresh mozzarella? I was impressed by Rome and by the experience of an ancient, aged city, although I prefer Paris (and the French), it’s personality, the feel to it and how it connects with the new movements (at least on film and music). We walked around the city without any plans. By the time Victor and I got tired of tourists, we left for Florence to stay with Pili and Massimo. Florence was much more than the sightseeing, it was having long conversations at night about our family, the meaning of life, extraterrestrial contact, and religion. One night we spent a few hours looking through old photo albums: the goodbye party when they moved to Italy more than 30 years ago, their trips and the stories around them (Pili and Massimo were in India when my father died), and snapshots of all of us when we shared a family life at my grandparents house.

"Why do good people die first?" my mom asked me this afternoon. "I guess because people die anyway" I replied. There are few adults whom I respected when I was in my twenties, and certainly "el Chato" was one of them. I was married to his son, and he took me in as part of their family. "Everyone talks about Javier's father," I recall Zoe telling me, "he owns a house in the woods that is open to welcome everyone. He even has a notebook for his anonymous guests to leave him messages." I still remember when he took Javier and me to buy a refrigerator for our apartment, which we never bought (we decided to live at the annex at his mother's house), going to the movies with him every Wednesday, his jokes and the way he managed to live lightly. I remember his blue jeans, his white truck, his boots and all the stories Javier told me about him. But most importantly, I remember when I belonged to his family, and this idea makes me cry. There are ties that are hard to break, and some are just meant to remain with us for all of our lives. "He left happy," Javier said when I called him this afternoon, "I tried calling you to let you know, but I dialed the number of another Brenda on my address book", he said laughing.

The last summer image

Periodically I receive an e-mail from Understating Men, a self-help group intended for women to learn what men look for in women, and more precisely to understand why they are single. A few years ago my friend Sol took me to a conference on the topic and the only thing I can remember, besides the strange feeling of analyzing dating through a Gantt chart, is that men have a natural attraction to healthy long hair. Is this why we are sold all these products for shinny, silky hair? Apparently hair is a fertility thermometer. My friends are divided into two groups: the married ones and those who secretly wish to attend a workshop to understand love and relationships.

I've been sick for four days and I’ll be traveling for a month leaving on Friday, so I need to get better before then. Getting sick in New York is never fun; always makes you homesick. Nevertheless this time was not too bad as I spent the weekend with Diego, Capuchi and Oscar without leaving the apartment, only for a couple of hours on Sunday to practice tightrope walking in the park.

I got the writer’s block. Again. Words are not flowing the way they should; I’ve been quiet as I keep trying to resolve too many things, too many stupid pieces to unscramble: my hair is a mess, most of my shoes need repair, my check account is drying, my savings account is dying, my debt on credit cards is growing, I have cellulite for sitting down all day, I still can’t make enough time for exercising, my bedroom is cramped with my boyfriend’s suitcases and my Netflix movie has been sitting down on top of my desk for almost two months.

Diego is staying with us (and will be staying for at least one month), bringing to our home all his creativity, colors and ideas. Listening to his stories about living in a diversity of places in the last few months has been refreshing for everyone in the house. After his heart was broken almost a year ago he moved to Baja, where he spent his days living in a hut by the sea. During this time, he had no harder task than peeling a grapefruit each morning, after which he was free to do whatever he pleased. For most New Yorkers spending their days doing nothing, without a plan in their calendars (even during the weekends) represents an impossible dream. After Diego shared the story about the grapefruit, everyone in the living room remained quiet, wishing to have the nerve to leave everything behind; at least for a month (or a day).

While we waited for the rain to go away

Today felt like a lost day. Victor and I had tickets for the US Open women's semifinal match, but due to the weather all matches were cancelled. The frustration came as the organizers kept postponing the game every 30 minutes, asking everyone to wait until the sessions were officially canceled. I guess they just wanted us to spend our money on beer and burgers, while we patiently stood under the rain.

I like to think that everything happens for a reason, and as a result of our frustrated plan we went to the Queens Museum of Art. It was almost five years ago when I was invited to present a video installation at their biennial exhibition. My art piece consisted of 4 monitors that simultaneously showed the lives of 4 immigrants from different countries (China, Mexico, Cyprus and Serbia Montenegro), and their relationship with their new home in New York. Back then I used to work around the concept of belonging to a place, and which elements constitute the idea of home. After 7 years in New York it is my home; this is the city where I chose to be, and the place where I learned to survive by myself. Now is time to find a new subject for my art, a new inspiration that will influence my work.

At a staff meeting yesterday we discussed how the job environment has changed in the last twenty years. Back then, one was expected to remain in the same job for almost all of your working life. Ten years later, people were predicted to have 6 to 7 jobs during their lifetimes. Nowadays, we are likely to change careers at the same speed and number. This sounds both scary and promising. We could still choose to become filmmakers, environmentalists, restaurateurs or graphic novel writers. What scares me the most is our inability to stick with one choice, and make it the center our existence. Victor’s Mom has been a Classic Ballet dancer since she was a little girl. I can’t picture her doing anything else besides designing choreographies and training children with the techniques she learned in Russia during her youth. Everything in her life is inspired from her discipline and artistic elegance. Somehow it is monothematic. On the other side of the spectrum, some of us are still trying to define precisely what drives us. It might be that our mistake is looking for something in particular that probably doesn’t even exist, and our richness relies on our flexibility to adapt and find beauty and excitement in too many things. I guess one of our eternal dilemmas is to choose between digging deep into one specific subject, or superficially learn about a wide variety of them.