THE MORNING AFTER

Last night was sad for me. It was a tear-in-my-beer kind of night and I had noone to share my woes with besides the occasional flying ant. Today I woke up determined to have a better day.

 I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I looked out of my french-door windows just as a huge yellow butterfly fluttered past. It had rained all night and the fog was lifting over the distant mountains. Clouds were resting on the towering Sumaca volcano like a Panama hat and a double rainbow was shooting forth from it. What homesickness?

I went into the bathroom to take a shower. No electricity, which meant a cold shower because...well, this is Ecuador and of course most showers are now run on electricity instead of gas tanks like when we lived here before. The shower lasted long enough for me to get decently clean. I jumped out and grabbed a towel. There was my landlord, Elena, peeking at me through the window. She was asking me if the electricity was back on. She orderd me to check. Yep. It had just come back on.

Tank-top barely on and my hair still wet, there was a knock at the back door. Again it was Elena. She was introducing me to the electrician who had come to fix the light connections that yesterday's carpenter had accidentally torn out. Within five minutes of learning that I was American he asked if I was married. When I said yes, he acted as if I was a liar since Joe and Carlie are still in Quito and he didn't see any evidence of them. "OMG, I need coffee", I muttered to myself.

As the water for my coffee was boiling, Elena ducked back into my house via the back door that she had left open. She told me she was going to cut off our shared Wi-fi connection because she can't afford the bills anymore. Her ex-husband husband isn't sending her any money and her grown children hate her. She began to cry and there I am, hugging and comforting her in my own kitchen like she's my baby. She wipes her tears on my tank-top and looks up at me. "You're only having coffee for breakfast? That's not good", she cries.

The electrician begins to drill through the wooden jail cell that the carpenter put in yesterday. I can feel a hint of a head-ache creeping in. Elena's dogs are barking outside, my dogs are barking inside and the electrician is interrupting Elena's dramatic melt-down to ask me if my dogs are vicious. Elena interrupts him to ask me if she can have the broken bed that the neighbor gave us to borrow. The parts have been sitting in my bedroom for two weeks, next to the other bed that Elena let us borrow. That's yet another story...

Anyway, the electrician, who's name I learn is Galo, finally leaves after coming back again because he "forgot" his tools. Elena also leaves so she can go gossip with the neighbors. All the dogs in the world stop barking and I'm finally alone with my hot coffee. I sit down at my breakfast table and take that long-awaited sip. The milk for my coffee had spoiled and it was the most horrible sip of death ever. The home-sickness returns.