In Need of Sass

I have to admit that I've been lazy, unmotivated (are they one in the same?), and sass-less lately. This is definitely do to a myriad of outside annoyance some within and some outside my control.

My day started out on a high note since I knew I had a package. Guess who it was from. The Post Office is a disaster when I get there my two post friends are attempting to wrap a package for a woman who is beside herself because the two men are doing a terrible job and they wont let her do it herself. It took these two grown men 20 minutes to wrap a box in brown paper... poorly. I can't say that my dad back at home has every wrapped anything either so I'll let this one slide. While the box wrapping was slightly entertaining, the mean customs official was not. My usual guy who is my friend and doesn't charge me wasn't there and his counterpart who is older, creepier, and charges me (aka actually does his job) was in a foul mood. He literally opened the package and started throwing its contents all over the post office floor. I asked him to please be careful and he started interrogating me about the contents of the box. One especially confounding item happened to be a little jar of pesto pasta sauce. He asked me what it was and I told him it was pasta sauce and he looked at me like I was lying and asked me again what it was. I said pasta sauce. He said it's green. I told him he was correct, but that it was still pasta sauce to which he responded that green sauce is disgusting. My family is really repulsed by pesto as well... that's why I like it so much, no one asks me to try it! I escaped from the post office package in hand and happy although my sassiness was diminished by mean customs man. Boo.

On to Dioss' gallery. We were supposed to start accounting. Peace Corps gave us some books in French that explain basic finances so I brought two of them alone to help in the process. Let me just say that Dioss knows how to sweet talk me. I walked in and he was already working on a painting so I had to sit and watch him for a little bit while he played smooth jazz on his tape player (not a joke). Then Dioss starts this discussion about how the US and Senegal have different financial ideologies which I completely agree with. This conversation started a downward spiral of tangents about banks, personal versus business finances in Senegal, and family members always asking for money here. While extremely interesting and perhaps even a little enlightening since I now know Dioss has a bank account, it had nothing to do with listing costs and profits onto a sheet of paper.

Dioss looked through the books and told me they were interesting and that he would like to read them before we started. And I actually gave in. I agreed to it. This might be a good thing in the long run because I do think he will read the books, but I was reading to go in there guns a blazing and write some numbers on a piece of paper. Oh well, I had a very Senegalese meeting with him where we talked about semi-related material and then resolved to start next time. Nothing is going to get done between now and the new year anyway so I guess it's ok. What is not ok is my "this is ok" attitude. Leaving Dioss' gallery I resolved to get myself out of this funk.

Back at home Deenba was cleaning out some fish so I sat with her and talked and watched. She's going to make me clean fish on Wednesday. We'll see how that goes. Unfortunately, those fish were for dinner and not for lunch because lunch may have reached an all time low. It smelled good in the pot and it looked like we were having brown rice, which completely blew my mind, but I was wrong on both counts. The brown rice was actually just burnt white rice boiled in oil with some meat particles randomly floating about. When I sat down at the bowl there weren't just pools of oil on the rice but there was a film of oil and by film I mean lake over the entire bowl. My stomach turned just looking at it and it was all I could do to force myself to take three bites, claim I was full, and run away.

The rest of my afternoon was spent lounging around watching CSI: Las Vegas (obviously the best CSI) with my family, building block cars with Ahmed, and attempting to read as Ahmed burst into my room every 5 seconds since he has also realized that we are best friends. Funny Ahmed story to end my sass-less post. My mom sent me some delicious oatmeal cookies and I told Ahmed that if he left me alone for one hour I would give him a cookie. I love bribery. He did so and then threw a fit when I didn't give him a cookie. I did give him a cookie. It was an oatmeal cookie. He didn't believe me that it was a cookie. Anyway, this devolved into a tantrum with my mom also trying the cookie and remarking that it didn't taste like a cookie and Ahmed and I walking to the boutique so he could get some really cookies, Biskrem, which he then refused to share with me.

Yes, I realize I need a jolt of excitement and reclaim my being a total badass. Hopefully, that will happen tomorrow, but probably not because I'm going to a party at a pre-school!