On a Day like Today ....

It was a busy day today, starting at 6 am.
Anyone who knows me, knows that this is close to being considered torture or at least inhumane treatment of Me.
But for some reason, I woke up and while my sweet husband was being quiet and letting me sleep a little longer, I was awake and ready to get up and face the day/bureaucrats/silliness known as the Argentine Immigrations Office.
We got there bright and early, lovely taxi ride in very little traffic. ( this means so much ).
We walked past all sorts of lines and people standing and went to the man we saw last time, who told us to SEET.
So we sat.
A while later he got our papers, passports and we continued to seet.
We noticed that there were many Chinese people waiting with us .. Have I told you how much I like Chinese babies? My favorite was today, a wee little boy .. wobbly and fuzzy haired and intent on escaping, by way of around me and of course, this gave me all sorts of opportunities to feel his fuzzy head and make him smile at me.
I am pathetic... give me a baby, I am content.
Finally after much time and meeting a lovely lady from Taiwan who now lives here and speaks fluent Spanish and English ( how to feel like a moron in 1 easy step) .. she asked the man when he gave us our papers, freshly stamped but not actually giving us The Stamp ... why ? why no stamp?

Apparently, when the two huge buildings and offices of Argentina Immigration merged, there were a gazillion files.
And ours are missing. So they have the paper, that we have .. that says we are permanent, so every 3 months they just stamp that and our passport and we stay legally , permanently but not officially stamped.

So we go back in February. I will bring coffee and pastries and we will all have a nice breakfast together, since we are all such friends now, you know, seeing as we visit them every 3 months for the past 4 years.

So we came home ... and .... what do you do when you want to cheer up ?

We went shopping. Patio Bullrich .. I was very controlled, I got a fabulous top that I will wear when we go out on our anniversary and a pair of really great shoes... from my favorite shoe store .. Sybil Vane ( don't you just adore that name?)

Then we came home and took Pup for his walk.
Of course, no walk with Pup can be just a calm nice walk in the park. Not here.
We were cutting across the big parks, headed to a cafe on the corner where we could sit in the shade and have a cool drink, when I heard someone call ... saw a man ... saw his huge black Giant Schnauzer running ahead ... thing looked like a locomotive speeding towards us ... Pup, totally clueless to what was coming was sniffing along beside me .. as I stepped toward him to grab his collar, the locomotive hit him .. tried to mount him, I was pulling Pups collar, Pup turned to attack back and the man that owned the dog arrived, thank God, and grabbed his dog by the ears !!
Cooled that dog off fast .. but Pup's leg had collapsed under him and he was limping now.

We walked to the end of the park, to our cafe, where the sweet sweet waiter brought Pup copious amounts of cold water and we all sat and cooled off and calmed down.

The walk back was slow and easy and mom and dad were on the look-out for anything resembling another dog, there were none.
And now we are home and resting and happy that with all the excitment, no one is showing lasting effects.

As I said to my husband, walking through the park, cool breeze blowing, palm trees fanning, birds very noisy in their new nests, that on a day like today, I am happy to be here.


The Shoes