Estoy harta de....

Alright, so there’s no denying that the incessant rain is getting me down. I’ve been trying to rise above, and I honestly don’t mind getting wet, it’s just that this city really isn’t equipped for this kind of weather (which is probably why none of the natives are outside these days, and why they are all so grumpy when they are) and as a consequence my feet are always soggy (walking up a mountain with a river flowing down it is not conducive to staying dry)—I have decided to invest in rainboots tomorrow…of course, as soon as I do the rain will stop, but right now I’d pay good money for that so I might as well get a pair of rainboots out of the deal.
Anyway, there are definitely advantages to this harsh a winter: we get to learn all sorts of new useful phrases such as “Estoy harta de la lluvia” (I’m fed up the with the rain) plus more forceful and colloquial (that’s polite speak for learning how to swear in the Spanish) sentences such as “Estoy hasta el cono de la lluvia” (I’ll leave that one to the imagination).
But I think my favorite benefit of the poor weather is I find myself with much more time indoors and thus more time to myself. And what do I do when I’m alone with myself? I like to cook (and dance to shakira, which is neither here nor there). I should write a “rain-in-spain” cookbook with recipes of everything I’ve been whipping up this past week (although, ironically none of it has been Spanish cuisine). Strangely enough I have really delved deeply into my “Mexican roots” (I use quotation marks because I think I might be the least Hispanic person ever with all that german blood, but I’d like to believe that my love of Hispanic culture and cuisine supersedes mere genetic lineage). What I mean to say is that pretty much everything I have been preparing has been based in the Hispanic cooking tradition (with a little spontaneous Indian curry thrown in here and there, obviously). Tonight I made chicken mole tacos with garbanzo beans (couldn’t find hominy and the Spanish loooove their chickpeas—as do I) and let me tell you, I feel restored. It was like a little taste of home in a crazy backwards world where Spain gets rain and California doesn’t (I’m really trying to send some your way, I swear). Estoy harta de la lluvia…pero no puedo enfadarme cuando estoy llena del mole delicioso!