Lorena told me upon my arrival that her mom is sick and that she has to go back to Tambo after her bosses get home. I told her to stop over to my house when she finds out what her mom has and maybe I’ve got something in my medical kit that would help it. The hellspawn she nannies were behaving like a bunch of animals, but the retarded girl’s antics were so funny that we all nearly peed our pants laughing. Something of a dance party befitting the cantina scene in Star Wars broke out and everything became so wild, ugly and bizarre so quickly that we all laughed uncontrollably for about 20 straight minutes.

      I returned to Tambo. Sometime after 8pm Lorena and her sister showed up at Julio’s house and stayed until after 10pm.

      Julio and I were supposed to go around to all the worthless Femininos to tell them that we want all money and tickets to be turned in 1 week, prior to the raffle. But I was tired and Julio spent so much time screwing around loafing with the family on the porch, that when he went to take his nightly shower at around 9pm, which he usually takes earlier but always takes before we go around to people’s houses, I just went to bed.. I don’t know why he insists on doing any going around to the neighbors super early in the morning, or super late at night. We are on exact opposite schedules concerning this and I am tired of making concessions for everyone else. So what if he prefers going to visit people late. I prefer going earlier. And if he cant be told this because no one ever addresses anything directly in this society and telling him would just cause the family’s nightly loafing ritual to be thrown out of whack and they would feel like the whole world were coming to an end, then they can just scratch their heads at why I’ve gone to bed and continue regarding me from the fishbowls of their lives as a strange foreigner.

      I began sliding into foul spirits, as that is about all I have felt here for the past 3 weeks. Something in me has run dry. The work has always been far too scant here, but I used to at least believe that one of my untested ideas would eventually hit pay dirt and someone somewhere would wind up working. I no longer feel that way. It used to be that even though the music and culture here would be among the last on this planet I would ever adopt, I could still interact with the world at large as though it weren’t an issue. I no longer feel that way either. I find that I automatically don’t like almost everyone I encounter now. I want to ask people on the street ‘what the hell they are staring at’. I want those smirking teens to pop off at the mouth so I can smash one of them in their face. The annoyance filter I used to have seems to have stopped working. Its no longer fun to be here. It’s not even interesting. If I don’t abandon the old frameworks within which my brain has been working heretofore, I can say without a doubt that I wont make it here much longer.

      Nothing productive, or indeed of much interest, took place in front of the television where we sat for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Lorena told me her boss had taken her retarded daughter to a “Naturalist Doctor” to get something to rectify her ADHD. She has never been diagnosed with ADHD, but that is clearly what she has. The “doctor” had given her 3 different types of pills containing parts of animals or something. Lorena wasn’t exactly sure. She was fairly certain snake venom was part of it, though. I told her that was idiotic and would not work. Then she told me the boss had taken the retarded girl to yet another doctor, but a “real” doctor. This doctor gave them 3 pills as well, which he said would make the daughter mad as hell for 3 days. She would pound the walls and act insane and would need to be locked up for 3 days in an empty room but would emerge from the room without ADHD. I told Lorena that was pura mierda and that that idiot doctor wasn’t practicing medicine, but rather…. witchcraft. I had used the word ‘witchcraft’ when after a long pause no other word came to mind. For whatever reason, the delivery of that statement cracked us both up. I wrote the word “Ritalin” down on a piece of paper and told her to tell the boss to find these pills and throw those other ones in the trash. I told Lorena that Ritalin could chill those other 2 hellions she nannies out too. She was very interested in that. I don’t really approve of putting kids on Ritalin, but I hate the kids Lorena nannies and would rather have them taken down a few notches than raised drug free.

      Lorena and I went out to buy stuff for dinner at the tienda next to Rodolfo’s house. A group of men were drinking on Rodolfo’s porch and Rodolfo himself stood swaying at the edge of his porch with messy hair and drooping eyelids, beckoning me with ambiguous gestures to come drink with them. He was given pause when he noticed Lorena standing there with me. Walking past his porch on the return trip to Lorena’s, I gave Rodolfo the culturally acceptable response that ‘I would be back later to drink’, though I had no intentions to do anything of the sort. After a meal of crackers and goat cheese with coffee and a really stupid concert on TV that Lorena watched enthusiastically, I left for Julio’s house through the back door of Lorena’s house to avoid Rodolfo.