Public Restroom Faucets

Easily one of the most irritating devices with which the typical person comes in contact every day is the public restaurant faucet. You would think that with so many variations of this piece of plumbing they wouldn't make you want to rip your hair out to the extent they do. This blog is dedicated to berating the models of faucets out there in public restaurants.

1) The Automatic Laser Faucet
This offender number one may not have ended up on my most-hated list if it actually worked. Instead, I swear I can hear it laugh a maniacal robotic cackle as it makes us all look like idiots flailing and waving around like we are suffering from an epileptic seizure.

We all know how well this a$$hole works....

2) The Never-Stays-On-Long-Enough Faucet
This faucet can be a subcategory of any of the other faucets. This little gem leaves your hands soapy and requires that you restart it about six times too many. I want to meet whomever the timer is based off of. I imagine it is some pouty little kid who refused to sing the recommended mental song "twinkle twinkle little star" while washing his or her hands as it takes that long to kill some germs.


3) The One Temperature Faucet
Of course, the one, unadjustable temperature is never an ideal lukewarm- it is always searing hot and risks singeing the skin off your hand or so cold you could swear an ice chunk just hit your palm. Does its designer not realize that public restaurant users like OPTIONS? I'm assuming he/she wasn't an American consumer.

Come on, we like OPTIONS, one temperature faucet!

4) The "You Have to Continuously Push it So it Stays On" Faucet
Who ever thought this model was logical? This one is actually an offender that could be placed in multiple categories- it usually only has one push button that you have to hold down the whole time and has one, unadjustable temperature. Of course, it also never stays on long enough so it is one of those as well. This one should probably jump to the spot of public enemy number one for being so unbearably awful. It makes almost as much of a fool out of its user as the laser faucet if not more so. I assume I am not the sole user who has tried to hold the button down with my elbow while pretzeling my arms around to get my hands under the stream of water. We all know how well that works (about as well as trying to lick your elbow. Elbows are just useless...).

I hate this thing more than I can express

Simply atrocious design

There's my little rant about public restroom faucets. Up next: a rant about public toilets and soap dispensers. Just kidding- although those are also irritating.

Enough to Say About Enough Said

Rotten Tomatoes let me down like a bad friend the other day when I trusted its 95% review of Enough Said to the point I was willing to drop $8.75 (the "discounted" matinee price) to see it in theaters. I suppose Rotten Tomatoes cannot be solely blamed for the over-rating of this film. I let my guard down and raised my expectations which, in retrospect, was a grave error on my part. I should continue to expect the worst of the worst as I have previously- a tactic which allows the complete evasion of disappointment.

Okay, okay- maybe I am getting a wee bit dramatic (like a 15-year-old girl whose mother just forbade her from going to prom with high school senior jock Shane Jackson after she discovered that he got busted with pot at the last football game). There were redeeming factors sprinkled among the array of average cinematic elements. My already well-established lady crush on Julia Louis-Dreyfus (is she related to Richard Dreyfus? Or is his spelled Dreyfuss? I could look it up but I am too lazy to bring my hand all the way to the search bar in the upper right corner) somehow managed to grow more than I thought possible. Her perfect portrayal of Elaine alone in Seinfeld was reason enough to watch every episode of that show. Something about her charming, over-zealous smile, quirky sense of humor and radiation of self-confidence is immensely endearing- characteristics that she carried over well from the role of Elaine to the role of Eva in Enough Said. Okay, lesbian moment over. Sorry about that, guys.

How could you not fall in love with this quirky, sexy lady??

Quick plot summary: Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced, self-employed masseuse with clients ranging from elderly men with bad breath overly excited during her massages to chatty-Cathy Momzillas who never shut up about their children and social lives. One evening, she accompanies her Australian therapist friend (Toni Collette-actually, her character might be English in this movie) and her husband to a party where she meets a new client, Marianne (Catherine Keener) and a man named Albert (James Gandolfini) with whom she briefly converses about how they both have daughters about to head to college and both find no one at the party attractive (though clearly, Albert wants Eva as he asks Australian therapist's husband for her digits later. Whatever, I'm getting nitpicky). Anyway, he calls Eva and she agrees to go out with him even though he is a bit "flabby" and not attractive in the "traditional sort of way" (in other words, he has a beer belly and a receding hairline). She takes awhile to warm up to him, but their first date is enjoyable for them and enjoyable to watch as well- I found myself awkwardly laughing out loud during those scenes (but at least I was in good company and not laughing alone to the distaste of the rest of the audience). The conversations between Eva and Albert during the first half or so of the movie are immensely entertaining and one of the best saving graces of the film.

Eventually, as their relationship progresses, so does Eva's relationship with the client she met at the same party at which she met Albert. The two ladies begin discussing the fluffy topics that ladies typically discuss- their former marriages, their current relationships, their daughters and jobs. Most notably, Marianne rambles about how awful her ex-husband is. This may be a spoiler, but I'm pretty sure they give it away in the trailer so I'm just going to say it: Eva's female client ends up being Albert's ex-wife. Plot twist! Didn't see that coming! Eva doesn't know what to do since she allegedly values both relationships and also wants to find out more about Albert's shortcomings although in doing so, she simply poisons her own mind against him. Do they end up together? Do they not? I won't give that away because then there really wouldn't be a point in seeing it even when it comes out on Netflix.

Much to my displeasure, the writers interwove a strange, unfinished plot thread through the tapestry of the main events of the film, and the fact that they left it hanging irritated me just as an actual thread hanging off a tapestry (or off a shirt- that is a more realistic scenario) would. Chloe (Tavi Gevinson, who looks exactly like a young Michelle Williams), the friend of Eva's daughter Ellen (Tracey Fairaway) has some mommy issues and therefore spends all of her time trying to bond with Eva, much to Ellen's displeasure. However, every time Eva attempts to remedy this situation with her daughter by spending more time with her, Ellen just broods and holds a grudge like your typical 18-year-old would and doesn't even make an effort. Eventually, Chloe's mom gets mad at Eva for "stealing her daughter" and then we never see either of them again and the writers leave it at that. Does Chloe ever end up with a better home situation? Does she make up with Ellen for "stealing her mother"? Who knows? I hate loose ends.

No resolution for their relationship...

Speaking of the younger characters in the movie, when Eva and Albert's relationship begins to blossom substantially, he introduces her to his 18-year-old daughter Tess (Eve Hewson). Tess is horrendously, irritatingly snobby, a personality which I see as completely unnecessary. I suppose it is to show the effect that her parent's divorce had on her personality, but all she did was bother me and make me want to slap her hard in the face. Her presence in the film is necessary, however; she acts as a McGuffin (some film class knowledge rearing its head there) which is a means of driving the plot forward.

Despite its flaws, on which I perhaps focused too much attention, Enough Said is worth seeing once it comes out, but perhaps not the overly-generous 95% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe I will think twice before trusting that site again.

Double Reflection Mirror and Easy Chairs

This being my last night in Costa Rica calls for reflection on the past weeks. I realize I already reflected in a prior post, but there must be some kind of double-reflection mirror, and it is into one of those that I'm looking.

Work at the nursing home changed my entire perspective on life. Raul, the man who bit and spat at me, was homeless for years living with a pack of dogs who waited patiently outside the nursing home doors hoping he would rejoin their group but never did. What a heartbreaking story. 

I learned to give more thanks than during opening prayers on Thanksgiving for living in the United States and not San Jose. The street vendors there do so out if necessity and desperately attempt to sell knockoff clothing for cheap to scrape by. It reminds me that every day for me is a day in paradise. Even  if I try harder than the Little Engine that Could (shouldn't it be WHO could, since the little engine is personified?) I will never miss being blasted in the face with exhaust from busses (my poor pores are still clogged with black soot), almost hit by cars due to a lack of right of way for pedestrians, sharing rooms with geckos and cockroaches, and walking in terror of being mugged at all hours, day and night. 

I made truly lifelong friendships and got a minor glimpse into how many compassionate people there are in this world of ours. My roommates hailed from different parts of the United States, Canada and Australia and each earned a coveted easy chair in the sitting room of my memory. Okay, I suppose it is a little bit pretentious to assume that an easy chair in my memory is coveted. There are a limited amount of chairs in my imaginative sitting room (do people still have sitting rooms anymore? I imagine if so, they are now for people to sit and mess around on their various social media devices. The art of the conversation is undeniably dead. Sorry, that was a cynical little side note) and sometimes my memory chairs get backordered. It can be worse than Home Depot, I swear. No one wants to deal with the chair ordering people in my memory. Wow I need to quit elaborating on this analogy and move on.

Naturally, you meet all kinds while traveling, and not all acquaintances I made became inhabitants of the easy chairs in my memory. Few, but still some individuals I met get to sit in the uncomfortable, filthy seats with backs that pitch forward and too little leg room on the long distance bus of my desperate attempts to forget.

I won't dwell on the negative. I've been fortunate enough to meet sloths, monkeys, agoutis, tropical birds, green sea turtles, and other exotic creatures (I feel okay leaving centipede off the list), zipline through a tropical rainforest, visit volcanoes and beaches on both coasts of Costa Rica, help the less fortunate, and realize how much I have to be thankful for. Wow, that was cheesy. I hope none of my readers have lactose intolerance to words....

Devoted Reptilian Mothers

Trivia time: what's the best way to start off a trip to Tortuguero National Park? A good ol' rush of cortisol pumping through the body. That was a joke, for anyone having issues detecting my cyber sarcasm. I understand that they adhere to a different schedule here, Tico time (that is to say, arriving fifteen minutes is the norm). However, when the travel agency through which I booked my tour tells me to be somewhere at 6, I'm not going to risk it. So there we were, waiting at 5:50 AM. 6 rolls by, nothing. 6:15, the anxiety begins to set in, 6:20, I'm on the verge of a panic attack. Finally, the tour company arrived at 6:30. A foul mood instantly befell me. It was only after the five hour journey to my hotel that my spirits lifted and my woes poured in the form of sweat from my skin's new exposure to humidity. 

Tortuguero National Park houses good mothers and mothers that would immediately bring social services banging on their doors. The former- the green sea turtle. What a woman. Witnessing first hand just what they go through to bring life into the world gave me a memory to hopefully calm me down as I dig my nails into my future husband's hand as I'm in labor. After swimming mile after mile to reach the beach on which they were born, they scuttle slowly and discreetly about 100 feet up the shore, dig a nest for their enormous reptilian bodies, and only then does the real work begin. Crossing her metaphorical fingers that a jaguar or poacher doesn't rip her exposed head and flippers off in the process, Miss Sea Turtle lays a good 100 or so eggs deep in a hole she dug with her drill-shaped tail. This lasts about 45 minutes and to witness it in real life fills you with an emotion that no nature special could dream of capturing. After the egg laying, she spends at least an hour flopping about to bury the eggs to really try and deter predators from eating her young. She flops about and all wanted to do was help her- ease the process along, and all. We were instructed specifically not to. Eventually, she charged on out of there like a greyhound from its box at the start of he race and rushed as fast as her flippers would carry her back to the ominous dark waves.  

This reptilian Mom of the year repeats this process four to five times a year. Thankfully for her and the male, she has a special sperm-storage pocket so consummation only need occur once. I say thankfully for the male because if it doesn't kill him, it severely weakens him. In these four to five egg laying sessions, she deposits about 500 eggs. Guess how many survive? If her intense amount of work didn't bring tears to your eyes, perhaps the fact that only 1% of every 1000 baby turtles survives. Now that is one depressing, Zoloft-inducing statistic. 

This hard-working lady was on her way back from hours of work when she was mauled by a jaguar. Now she is a rotting carcass serving as potential for vulture food. Sad.

The bad momma? I forget the scientific name of the bird, but she is better known in Costa Rica as "la mala chica" or, the bad girl. She's earned this name by making a nest, laying her eggs, and bouncing outta there, leaving the papa in charge. All the feminists on the boat tour hooted and hollered their appraisal at this fact- you go, girl!

I don't have kids! I'm off for cosmos with the ladies

And So it Ends...

The tone of this blog is about to get more emotional than the end of Marley & Me (no idea why my mind just went there since I haven't read it... maybe Old Yeller is a better example. Apparently I've got depressing dog literature on the brain). Now that my time as a volunteer is officially filed away in the file cabinet of life, (that metaphor sounds way too administrative- a completed chapter in my autobiography? Better...) I can begin to reflect on my experience. As the memories formed here in Costa Rica play out in my mental movie theater like a highschool graduation slideshow, I recognize them as trying times and life lessons brought to life by unforgettable characters forever earning a place in my heart.

Some things I won't miss. It scares me that showering with cockroaches, spiders and geckos no longer phases me. I can't wait to throw toilet paper in the toilet again (here, it all goes in the trashcan), go through a day without rain, hang up wet clothes and have dry ones mere hours later, be able to control hot and cold water in the shower, and breathe air uncontaminated by black bus exhaust thick as fog. I'm yearning for the ability to have the right of way as a pedestrian and not be terrified riding in a car like a young child yearns for Santa on Christmas. If I see another grain of white rice I will scream. But these "problems" are first world problems- mere discomforts. Witnessing first hand the often times atrocious unsanitary conditions and complete lack of patient privacy at the nursing home here quickly catapulted me from my cushy little life and into a completely different reality. I desperately want to know the secret of the nurses and other staff at the nursing home. How could they look at a suffering old man screaming as they cleaned his wounds and smile kindly at him while stroking his back even as he tried to hit them? I told one of the nuns that she was a saint and she merely laughed off the compliment saying it was simply her duty.


My last day at the nursing home was, sorry for the overused adjective, bittersweet. The hardest part, leaving Sor Isabel, wrenched my heart. Here was this little lady dressed in white who barely knew me and clearly, as could be seen in her eyes, cared for me. She took me by the arm and walked me to the door- the theme from The Hulk, that emotional song The Lonely Man, played on a loop in my mind as we strolled arm in arm- my final walk through the halls of the nursing home. As she left my at the door, she hugged me with immense strength and told me to be careful in this scary and dangerous world and thanked me profusely for my help. Tears welled behind my eyes as she turned and departed from my life forever.

Living the Frogger Life

Costa Rican drivers play their own version of Frogger called "Hit or at Least Attempt to Hit Thus Scaring the #%^* Out of the Pedestrian". Yeah, I admit that game title could use revision- for that reason I am staying away from that industry. The scoring system seems pretty basic- hit a pasty American, 10 points. Hit a ballsy Costa Rican, 5. Wobbly old Asian lady with a dog tucked under her arm? 100 points. You get double points if you ambush them by turning a corner without a signal super fast as they attempt to cross thus making them scamper in terror to avoid your bumper.

My life in a nutshell...

Hailing from a city where pedestrians rule the roost to the point of pushing drivers to the brink of insanity, I find it impossible to adjust to a place where the opposite is true. My naive mind likes to think the cars won't actually hit me, but I'm not so sure- they've pushed the boundary so much its more terrifying then the cinematic love child of The Exorcist and The Ring. The other day my mind switched back to United States mentality and I stepped in front of a taxi thus incurring the wrath of the driver who didn't hold back his feelings and laid on the horn while actually driving closer to me. Not an obituary I want- Marisa died suddenly last weekend, squished on the bumper of a red San Jose cab. Silly gringa American....

Tied neck and neck for which is scarier are riding in a car in San Jose and trying to cross the street. I learned that following stray dogs or sticking with packs of locals are the best ways to ensure a safe passage across the road. From living a life on the street, those canines developed a keen sense of street-crossing knowledge and I trust them far more than I do myself. Almost every car ride I take here has me white-knuckled in the back seat, digging my own nails into my palm. I is similar to riding a Disneyland roller coaster except you are far less sure of your survival. Last night, the rain cascaded out of the sky onto the taxi driver's windshild as he stopped behind a huge truck carrying poorly secured lumber in bumper to bumper traffic on the highway on a hill so steep he had to use the parking break (they drive manuals here) so as not to go careening backwards. My life flashed before my eyes as I recited a few Hail Mary's. Thankfully we survived that one...Next time, I may not be so lucky.
 

Crema de Rosas

The late Billy Mays would have been the perfect man to endorse the favorite product of the staff at the Cartago nursing home: crema de rosas.

Ah yes, I can hear his migraine-inducing bellows now: "Billy Mays here to tell you about an exciting new product in healthcare! Crema de Rosas does it all! Got a bleeding open sore? Scaly dry skin making an alligators look like a baby's bum? Blisters oozing multi-colored pus? Even dry eyes are no match for this multi-purpose cream! As if that weren't good enough, this cream smells overwhelmingly like the perfume of an oblivious elderly woman who can't tell she is surrounded by a cloud of it! Call now!"

Despite my lack of medical training, I still possess the common knowledge that one should not put dry skin ointment on an open, bleeding wound and then cover it tightly with gauze in order to really vaporize any chance that some healing air could enter thus helping the formation of a scab. We wouldn't want that, now would we?

Maybe the whole "use one product forever to cure any ailment" is a Hispanic culture thing. The use of crema de rosas as an ointment, lotion, antibacterial (despite its lack of antibacterial properties ), dry eye cream and more (nothing would surprise me anymore- maybe it's a toothpaste, too) triggered a memory of fizzy tabs in Spain. When I studied there, I found that the doctors suggested fizzy tabs, like Alka-Seltzer to alleviate any reported symptom. I went in for a brutal sore throat and cough combo and left with a box of fizzy tabs. My friend clearly had the flu and guess what she was plopping into her glass of water at dinner? Bacterial infection, fungal disease, merciless virus, sore muscles, joint pain- these magical fizzy tabs apparently took care of it all. You could have knocked me over with a feather I was so surprised they didn't cure my illness (sarcasm). About as surprised as I am every time a patient's bandage is peeled away an the wound looks the same, if not worse, than when previously treated. I am no less than profoundly grateful for US healthcare.