That was your fault too

This has not been the easiest of weeks. Alex is out of town for a conference and Nico and I are on our own for 12 days. The combination of an absent husband, a restless four-year old, 7 months of pregnancy and the ridiculously hot Madrid weather has been tough to say the least. Last summer we didn’t end up buying an air conditioner and it turned out to be fine. The summers here are definitely hot but they are also dry and after years of living in the humidity of NYC and Tokyo summers, it really didn’t seem so bad to me. This year though, I decided we needed to break down and get an AC. The baby is due mid-August, a time when about 90% of Madrid flees for cooler climes. The entire city more or less shuts down (even some of the swimming pools!) and not only is there nothing to do and no one to do it with, but it’s too hot to want to do anything anyway. In light of that, I might as well be comfortable right? Or at least as comfortable as it’s possible to be while carrying an extra 30 pounds, one side of which is jumping up and down on my bladder, while the other side does pull-ups on my rib cage.

So Alex bought a portable AC which was delivered the day after he left for his conference. I started to set it up and approximately 20 minutes later, I had broken the internet connection, the phone and the window shutter (giving myself a sliver while I was at it). To top it off, the AC was defective and blew only hot air. When Nico woke from his nap I was in an utterly foul mood. A five hour cycle of whining (his), yelling (mine), and crying (both) ensued, during which we made a brief outing to the park in order to spread our misery. Thinking that Nico’s friend Betty had finished with a shapeless pile of sand she was constructing, I told Nico it would be okay if he stomped on it. Sadly it was not okay at all. Turns out that the pile of sand was actually a castle. Betty wailed at Nico who looked on with interest as I tried to apologize to her and explain that it was actually my fault that her architectural masterpiece was now reduced to a tiny sneaker shaped footprint in the sand. When we got home, I couldn’t deposit Nico in his bed fast enough. As I kissed and hugged him goodnight, I told him that I was sorry that I’d been so irritable with him all afternoon. “It was just a really bad day you know? I broke the phone, the computer, the air conditioner…” “Yes,” Nico interrupted me. “And you told me I could ruin Betty’s castle so that was your fault too.” For one of the few times in my life, I truly laughed and cried at the same time.