Bienvenido, Ramon!

It has been exactly one month since we lost our dear Iggy. That’s right – one month ago, I found his body decomposing in my car. Autopsies were performed, and we discovered that we lost that poor soul to a severe case of destickification. So sad.

But life goes on, and I must move forward without Iggy, holding only to the memories of our days together, driving down the highway, jamming to the radio… Oh, Iggy! Why did you leave me? How can I go on without you! Life – what is she worth without you by my side? I wail! I moan! I shake my fist at the heavens in despair!

[Give me a moment here.]

Okay, I’m better now, really. Sorry about that. Life is just hard without my little blue friend. Fortunately, I have amazing support from loving folks in my life, and Fourth Breakfast brought me a new friend – not to replace Iggy, she made sure to clarify. No, this little guy is just to help take the edge off my loss. And he has, he really has.

Meet Ramon. Now, before you even try it, let me tell you that you can NOT mispronounce his name. You MUST roll the ‘R’ – Rrrrramon! Never, EVER, call him a simple Ramon. He is Rrrrramon! And he is en fuego!

Ramon is amazing. He’s so flamboyant and wild – always up for excitement, day or night. He chatters about the fiestas back home in Montevideo (that’s where he’s from, Montevideo. Say it with me: “Montevideo…”), and his família whom he misses dearly. And sometimes, when the sadness is too much for me, he lends a supportive ear (do frogs have ears?) as I reminisce about Iggy.

But Ramon has nabbed a secure place in my life these days, and is already as dear to me as Iggy was. He picked out this nice shady spot for himself in the car, and he seems to be enjoying the cool temperatures – probably because he is so caliente! I’m not sure he’ll roam quite as much as Iggy did, since he seems pretty comfortable just hanging in his little space, but you never know. Maybe one day I’ll come back to the car and he’ll be hiding in the console. Or chilling in a cupholder. Or kicking it on the dash.

Or maybe I’ll come to the car and find him dead, just like Iggy… Ahh! The sobbing begins again!

----------------------------------

Day 8 of LaBloShoeMo: The Brown Loafers

In an effort to cheer myself up, I offer you these cool shoes with even cooler argyle socks. These have a higher heel than I might prefer for most of my shoes, and they’re a size too big for me, so I usually have to wear two pairs of socks with them (under the argyles are a pair of white socks with monkeys on them. No, I’m not kidding). But those are pretty minor. The bigger problem is that the heel makes the loudest clicking noise of any shoes I own, which means I go clomping around in these announcing my presence like a gunshot with every step. The price I pay to have cute shoes...