On Habits

I try to stifle my coughs and I try to avoid flushing the toilet here at night. Both instincts are self-trained and entirely unnecessary now, but it's very hard for me to overcome these impulses.

I try not to cough because our dog, Aggie, trained herself to come when I cough. I wish I could say this was the result of a diligent training effort on our part, but no, she's entirely responsible. In fact, it took us a while to realize that she was doing it. Once we finally figured it out, a quick test proved that it's the most "obediant" thing she does. (Me: "HACK. HACK." And here comes Aggie)

I have no idea why she decided that she should come when I cough. It's as mysterious as why she prefers to carry her rawhides in and out of the house instead of chewing them, taking care of them as if they were scrawny offspring. If one is outside, she has to fetch it at least daily, bring it on a tour of the apartment, and then bring it back outside. This happens several times a day (especially annoying in the winter, when you have to leave the door open while the rawhide child is being shown the apartment. Brrrrr.)

She doesn't come when Bobby coughs, just me. It's cute, but it makes me feel bad if I didn't particularly want to see her. Say I'm lying in bed and she's in the living room, half-asleep. If I cough or even clear my throat a bit, she gets up and comes in with a "You rang?" attitude reminiscent of Lurch from the Addams Family. It can be useful if I actually want her. But mostly I have to struggle to avoid her hearing me cough (pillows are helpful here), or she'll get up and come trotting over and I'll feel bad for "ordering" her to do so.

So when I'm here, you would think I could cough in peace, but I have built up such a strong resistance to coughing that almost every time I feel like coughing, I have to go through the same drawn-out thought process: "Oh dear, I have to cough. I wish I could cough, but I can't because—oh wait. She's in another hemisphere and can't possible hear me. Yay! I can cough. HACK!"

Same thing goes on now with the toilet. One of the "charming" traits of the apartment is the surprisingly loud plumbing groan that the toilet makes every time it flushes. It's an old-time water tank with a pull cord, and the sound is not immediate. Something occurs a minute or two after flushing as the tank is refilling. A slow moan builds to a aching, reverberant groan, eventually reaching a deep hollow scream of plumbing sorrow.


Or at least it used to. Something happened and it's better now. I asked Héctor if he fixed it and he said he didn't do anything. There's a clue, though, which has to do with not knowing what goes on in my own apartment when it's rented out to strangers.

At least I'm convinced it's a clue: The toilet seat is broken. One of the hinges is snapped.

Now, the seat isn't anywhere near the tank, so that has nothing directly to do with the death of the toilet's scream, but how did it break? I figure you'd have to be putting in some pretty heavy time opening and closing the toilet seat to snap a metal hinge. Seems very unlikely to me. But if you were, say, standing on the toilet seat to try to reach the water tank and fix the toilet's inevitable, sorrowful groan because it was driving you crazy—especially in the middle of the night— you might easily have torqued the lid in the wrong way as you were reaching for the tank and snapped the hinge. (See photo. But the water tank isn't as tiny as the lens makes it look–I had to go wide angle to get the shot.) (I know, I know, what am I thinking, putting pictures of my Buenos Aires toilet on my blog? I was also standing in our big, claw-footed bathtub to get this picture, if you want even more information. No?)


So that's my guess. I think one of our tenants did just that. And maybe we should thank him (they've mostly been men, and it's easier to imagine a man trying that repair anyway) for breaking the seat, because he fixed the groan. And really, the seat is easier to replace than the groan was to fix.

So now, the toilet is nearly silent and I can flush whenever I like. But I don't. At night, I have the same habit-built instincts, reinforced by sleepiness. My thought process remains stubbornly ingrained: "I wish I could flush the toilet, but it's late and I don't want to wake the neighbors, or myself for that matter, with the sobbing toilet. Better leave it til morning." And often I do.

All of which is just to say that old habits die hard. But also that I kind of miss our moaning water tank. I feel a little anticipatory "will it come buck?" with each flush, but so far, nada.

And while I'm here I certainly miss Aggie's fuzzy and possibly annoyed face looking at me, saying: "You coughed?"

Some Streets

Just some pics from around here.

Nothing makes you hungry like a giant chipped plaster croissant, right?

Lomo here means steak, as in a steak sandwich.


Another of my parking lots. I have dozens more. Both the word (estacionamiento is parking lot, estacionar is to park) and the place fascinate me. Can't say exactly why. This is in the neighborhood called Once, which accounts for the wandering Jew. (Lots of Jewish commerce there, i.e. fabric merchants, button vendors, places to buy your mannequins, etc.)


I especially like them when they're empty on the weekend.

Up and Up

Prices have been on the rise ever since I first came here back in 2005, but they've been really jumping up in my last couple of visits. Food prices are especially vulnerable to inflation, and going grocery shopping is a bit disheartening. Restaurants, too. Back then, it was hard to spend $10 in the kind of restaurant I'm likely to go to. Now it's hard not to spend $20 or $30 on a meal.

You see this around town: the sign-painters haven't had a chance to catch up to the new prices, so they have to slap on an update.

FYI, that's a hamburger patty for 6 pesos, or about $1.50, a milanesa (breaded veal cutlet) for twice that, and a choripan—sausage on a roll, like a hot dog but greasier and nicer, if you like that sort of thing. So we're not talking crazy prices, but partly that's because the dollar exchange is good right now. Yes, they use the $ for pesos here, which has confused many a U.S. tourist heartily, myself included. Especially because they still list real estate prices in dollars, for which they sometimes (but not always) abbreviate U$D.

Yesterday I was treating myself to some ice cream at my favorite local place, Cadore. There's a new heladeria closer to my apartment and it's actually pretty good, plus it's cheaper and has some new flavors for me to try. But I like to be faithful to Cadore, which has been here on Corrientes since 1957. So my plan has been to eat twice as much ice cream as usual. That's been working out pretty well, so far. But yesterday I ordered my usual "cuarto" (1/4 kilogram, which sounds like a lot but I could probably eat a 1/2 without much trouble) and handed her my 14 pesos, pleased to be giving her exact change (they like to get exact change here, because coins are still scarce, or at least people think they are, so are stubborn about giving them up). She said "It's 15" and nodded to the sign. The price had gone up sometime in the last three or four days, while I was busy getting my 12-peso cuartos from the other place.

I doubt the increase will have a noticeable negative effect on my ice cream intake, but it's definitely a sign of the times.

Back in Trains

On Sunday, just one day back and I was heading to Caballito to see Victoria, riding the A line—my favorite line because they still run the old wooden cars. It's like walking into the past, but with people talking on cell phones. OK, it's not perfect, but look—there are even smoky, flattering mirrors on these cars!


I'm immediately re-struck by the casual attitude toward public safety here. Take a look at this picture: the doors on these cars are manual--meaning you just slide them open as the train pulls into the station. But they're on both sides of the car. So this guy just slid open his doors—on the track side!—to get some fresh air as the train pulls into the station. Those are the rails between him and me--he could just walk out and fall right to the tracks. Sure, they're not electrified, but still...


It's not just the wood I like—the tiles are excellent, too.


And here's the inside of the train. I was being very inconspicuous, just snapping a pic or two, no flash. Well, I thought I was being inconspicuous. It wasn't until I got home and downloaded my pics that I saw the cute guy in the middle.



Here's an enlargement.


I guess some gestures are universal after all. It seems not everyone is thrilled I'm back in town. Bienvenido, Bruno.

Sprung

From winter to spring—yes, my photographic impulses are fairly conventional. Forgive my O'Keefe moment, but it's hard not to get kind of excited by the sudden burst of energy going on in our back patio. Seems like everything shot up within the last 3 days.

At least I didn't use the word voluptuous. Oops.

All pics snapped in our yard. Only the last one is a bit of cheat, because the plants are actually in our neighbor's yard (but I was still standing on our side of the fence...)