i am sitting by the window working (well, blogging at the moment).  i have just watched/listened to early evening rainfall and have found the Brazilian arts station where the last show was the sound of just the brushstrokes made by an artist followed by the melodic voice of a cantora.  the breeze is light with a small edge of chill to it and is coming through the open window to gently make its presence known.  i’m still in my lounge pants and am pretty darn content.  Like, man this is lovely, content.  I like it.

this is in huge part to the change in my surroundings this week.  my friend Lenildo is on a work trip to Argentina this week and has let me squat in his lovely apartment.  High pressured shower (we’ll get to that later), a full bed, a washer machine, cable (not that important, but nice), and most importantly a lack of bugs and nasty room mates.  Man, am i grateful.  Also, I can walk easily and in the evenings to food, a market, acai… I also am joined by a friend I made at a LASA conference who happens to be in town to visit the archives and gets the spoils of this sweet apartment as well.  Talk about an upgrade in consideration and cleanliness.

Last night, after working I decide to wash my hair at 2AM.  The hottest shower I have taken in Brazil in my five times here.  SO GOOD.  Except the longer and hotter the shower, the more energy it draws and unbeknownst to me at the time, I was drawing so much energy that I caused a power outage in the apartment at 2:30AM.  Which meant instant freezing cold water and and complete darkness.  Thankfully, I decided to switch my routine of wash hair, condition hair, wash body to wash hair, wash body, condition hair.  I was on the third quarter of the condition comb out when -DARKNESS.  I was jamming to Spotify tunes and the wifi and consequent music got silenced too.  I hopped out.  Turned on the iphone flashlight, finished the last quarter.  Tried the fuse box – nada.  Got dressed.  Wrote a note to Rosanna apologizing for all of the hair everywhere since I didn’t get a chance to clean it up thoroughly and warning her of situation, and sat in the light of the street lamps to twist my hair.

When I awoke, Rosanna cheerfully told me it was super common and she just asked the porteiro to switch the fuse for the main apartment downstairs.  OH.  I thought about talking to the porteiro downstairs last night but honestly it was 3 AM by that time, my hair was wet and unpresentable, and i knew i didn’t have the energy or vocabulary to explain the situation.  i probably would have been fine, but i’m glad that R got to the bottom of it all.

Always a new lesson to learn here.  Learning and growing.