This is part of a series! Want to read the previous posts? Check these out...
Sunday - My "Monday" in the Office
Monday - The Reason Sunday doesn't bother me
Tuesday - I get Paid to Ride Horses on the Beach!
Wednesdays. Ahhh... My day off.
Now I know what you're saying. Why on earth would I ever need a day off? A vacation? Every DAY is a vacation for me, right? Well. Yes. Mostly, you are right. I am selfish for even writing this absurd blog post. But, the work, however exotic and incredible it is on a daily basis, it's still work. And it's hard work, at that! Lots of physical labor and not a lot of "me" time. Usually this is a LONG list of things. Go to the grocery store. Catch up on 123,293 blog entries. Upload 2,403 pictures to flickr. Call mom. Buy plane ticket home. E-mail lawyer about visa. Take a ride out on Infanta by myself. And the thing I enjoy the most on Wednesdays. Me Time. So that's what I try the most to do on Wednesdays. Have me time.
Except, not usually. I usually end up having "Abbey is off from work so let's go DO stuff" time. Today, it's Francisco that's bothering me (I mean that in the nicest way possible). And like most Wednesdays, nothing gets checked off my to-do list today. I slept in until about 10:30 (about as late as it gets for me these days - even after a night that lasts until the early morning). I grabbed some breakfast next door and crawled back into bed to watch reruns of friends until lunch. I grabbed some lunch next door and crawled back into bed to... I dunno... take a nap or something. Only, Francisco had this Brilliant idea that we would go to the beach. Just as I lull into slumber, I hear his car booming down the driveway. I hear him yell at Rachel's if she knows where I am. I pull the covers up tighter over my ears *maybe it's a dream - how dare ANYONE pull me out of my hangover slumber * but then I hear the clank clank as his flip flops flop across the tile floor outside my house. He's here and there's no avoiding it now.
Having absolutely no cell service in my house is annoying 90% of the time. But when it's not annoying is when you are doing anything where you would like to remain hidden. I.E. nap. However, as most of my friends in this tiny town now know where I live, have been introduced to Smokey and are not afraid to walk up to my door despite the overwhelmingly large number of random English speaking tourists loitering about, this whole "no-cell-service" thing, it's not too big of a deterrent. No, my friends tend to find me, when they want me, not short of screaming my name up at my bedroom window from outside. Fortunately, Fran's intentions today are harmless. Let's go to the beach and you can sleep there. Fine.
by @basilievichSo I let him drag me to Barbate so he can be social. He even promises he'll run me past the cafe with wi-fi on the way into town so I can call my mom on Skype (he knows how to get me out of the house - with the promise of wi-fi, i'll do almost anything). After waiting patiently for forever while I listened to the new family drama (and then waiting even more patiently as I tried to translate the drama into Spanish - yikes!) we finally met up with the friends. A couple of guys I hadn't met before. We swam, played paddle-ball, played fetch with someone's dog (who ended up not belonging to any of us) and did the normal thing I do on Spanish beaches, sleep, drink beer and giggle like a 13 year old boy at all the nudity.
By the time the sun set, I was sufficiently tipsy on summer wine and beer. We drove back to San Ambrosio and parked it back at Antonio's bar where Fran, Antonio, Vicky and I staged at sit-in while munching on bar chips and reaching over the bar to pour our own refills on beer. There was a lot of singing and dancing. A lot of teaching-Abbey-Spanish-riddles and even more bad translations of every English pop-song ever made as it came on the radio. Somewhere in the course of the evening, it wasn't the evening anymore but rather Thursday morning, and remembering the hangover I had just overcome hours earlier, I begged my dear Francisco for a ride home.
And naturally, he obliged.