El Gringoqueño

Olaia loves to play with all kinds of things, among them, this funny hat she has, which is a box. I stuck it on her head and thought it looked like one of those silly hats that Europeans wear like the Swiss Guard.

Remember when I told you about the trash monster? Well here she is, diving into our office waste can. We put the papers back in, put the trash can in the corner, and she finds it and dumps it out anew. It’s a constant battle of cuteness.

Funny story: We were washing our fuzzy bathroom/toilet covers (I shouldn’t have to tell you who bought them). Laura threw them into the washing machine and away they went. It had been a while since we’d washed them, because; one, they were almost new and two, we had been super busy.

Pulling the out of the dryer, Laura asked, "Hon, did you take the yellow bathmats?"

No, but I saw it, did you look in the closet?"

"Yes"

I wasn’t too concerned. It’ll turn up, I thought. A week went by and I started to wonder about the yellow bathmats. Convinced that Laura had put them away, or threw them someplace and forgot, I combed the house. After 15 minutes of digging through closets and corners, I gave up. I was starting to get pretty worried. It had seemed like things were disappearing all the time… little things, socks, underwear, etc.

"Do you think some kid is messing with us?" I asked, knowing full well that this would be right up the Puerto Rican sense of humor. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to hear of a kid that breaks into a neighbor’s house only to rearrange the furniture or some such nonsense. It’s hard to get into our house, but it is possible to climb the fence (even though it is high) and open the sliding glass doors, as we usually don’t lock them.

Both of us were getting pretty worried. It’s creepy to think of someone taking things from your house, no matter how insignificant and especially with little Olaia there. We couldn’t think of anything to do.

"Let’s see there is this blue one and there is the light green one," Laura said, checking them out and rubbing her head. I was in the other room working on the computer when I heard her let out a laugh.

"Oh my God, Jim. Do you know what happened to the yellow bathmats? I think these light green ones are it. Remember how I washed them with the dark blue ones?"

"Ahhhhh, that’s right, and we don’t have any light green bathmats." I smacked my head and we both had a good laugh. It was weird that we never bought light green bathmats but we never looked twice at them when they had appeared in our house. Let some yellow ones disappear though and we are full of angst.