Been a While.....!

This was the note in my phone that was meant to remind me to bring up something in this post: "...bunny in the street in Portugal and any to breakers.." I do not know what I meant by bunny; but "any to breakers" refers to a man running the Bay to Breakers with a near life sized, rubber Sutro Tower on this head. It was meant to be a philosophical discussion on why we do meaningless things, or really, why most of what we do is meaningless. It stems from a conversation T and I had about bringing Albert to Portugal and the absolutely bonkers amount of paperwork, cost, vet visits and trazadone for dogs (and/or me). But bring him we did. And now it is all clear why, because the first person in the family to have a Portuguese passport is our 11 year old Parson Russell. In addition he is somehow a service dog for one clearly neurotic Leonora Wehlen- who needs her drugged out dog on her lap or she won't fly. 

The best part of the passport is on the line for sex of the animal where it says: 'Macho'.

So it's World Cup Summer people with the Wehlens on the wrong time zone. I am no expert on soccer, but am highly conversant in soccer podcasts, and on one it described France as an apex predator who plays with its food for a while, but eats in one bite at the end.  No Country Road singing will protect us from this. We are all on a slow road to being eaten with a mother of pearl salad fork and some Beaujolais Nouveau. But how I love the American WHY NOT US???!!!! attitude. It is adorable. 

The Germans who-fun fact- have won four times (only one less than mighty Brazil) are arguably better if you count (and I do) the amount of times they have been second or third. Their reputation has always been this solid group of human knee bends and hyper organization that wins every penalty shoot out. Alas this appears to be slipping....and in the words of one journalist, the problem seems to be they are not that good. Apparently the problem lies in the youth camps where originality is discouraged and they turn out only mid fielders and no one to score. 

Many other exciting things happening: high temperatures; introducing Albert to pool swimming; lots of fun conversations with architects and kitchen designers. In sad news, we found out that the man who lived with the Wehlens for 20 years or so, died a week ago; and we found out his funeral would be the next day. So we went. The first question I had was attire- can one wear a black sundress? It is 93 degrees out. Thomas has a suit and despite the looming Queen Mary trip, did not bring a tie. Oh well- we figure we will sit in the back. 

On the way over, I give us a pep talk. This is going to be incredibly awkward- but our presences will be appreciated. We can say almost nothing in Portuguese but are feverishly practicing a chat GPT version of "My Condolences".  Anyway we arrive at a graveyard but the kind that is for cremated people. It's pretty grim...unlike the one in Switzerland which is green with a view of the lake, this looks more like a bare parking lot with shelves for loved ones. Everyone is standing around in the parking lot. Luckily Carlos, the son, is there. He is our age and we know him well (he is the one who drives us). Then the widow comes and we get to hug her and we see Carlos' daughter and it is all ok but we are being sort of stared at like the obvious not part of the crowd crowd. Oh and everyone is dressed very casually -the granddaughter of the deceased is in jeans and a t shirt. So we look even more like parents who showed up at the rave. 

Never mind...we go in to the sort of chapel but its not a chapel- there is no priest, and yet we are in pews all looking forward. We sit and then the group begins to socialize pretty hard- there are zero refreshments, but they all are so delighted to see each other so it gets pretty cheerful. We wait. And wait. And wait. New people come and greet the widow and then leave. We are intrigued - is this all that is happening? Will someone speak? How do we know when to leave if there is no beginning or middle? We start giggling. We are trapped, wildly overdressed in a tiny hot chapel not a chapel looking at a coffin but no program, no refreshments. Will we be here all night?  How long is enough? Thomas makes a radical plan to get up and pretend to look for water. I follow him and then after we have been coffin watching for more than an hour, three of the mourners get up and start to say some things in Portuguese. It is short and only a little teary. And then some more men get up and start to move the coffin into another room that I see to my horror is labeled: 

SALA DE ULTIMA DISPOSIZIONE

The door opens and I kid you not we hear the roar of an oven. Seriously. It is so in your face...the coffin goes into the next room and that's it. I am not sure what happened after that because some people left and we rode the wave and got back to the safety of the old Mercedes. 

I mean, not everyone has to have gospel choirs or throngs of women in Spanish mourning mantillas..but they might as well have all gone to the beach in bikinis and chucked him off a cliff. 

He was a lovely man.

I am now looking at Thomas carefully speaking to Albert- brand new Portuguese citizen - about pool safety and how he really need not be afraid of bright blue water. Once a swim coach, always a swim coach.