Why my aunt has no time . . .

1.     One cannot just get produce from the store and then use it or even just put it away. Everything must be soaked for 20 minutes in water with eight to ten drops of iodine (tinctura de yodo).

2.    One cannot buy a jug of milk. On market day, you rinse out your 20 liter bucket and wind your way through all the fruit stands to the lady who sits at the corner with 2 buckets of milk in front of her. You wait in line while she measures two liters into a plastic bag for someone else, ties it shut, and hands it to them. After letting her know that you want half her milk, you talk to her about her family and how much milk a household of ten drinks while she empties her bucket into yours. Lugging the milk home is not fun. Once in the kitchen, the big kettles come out, are filled with milk, and sit on top of the stove to come almost to a boil (usually you will get busy with something else and not remember it is simmering there until it boils over). Then the kettles sit in cold water in the bath tub until cool enough to pour into containers . . .

Voila! Milk! 

                                                                                                                                    

3.     One must make one’s own peanut butter and chocolate chips – fun, but time consuming.

4.     Market day – again, interesting, but time consuming. 

5.     Dry cereal is a luxury – no saving time in the morning!

6.     The dryer does not work.

7.     The house is a quarter-mile hike up a narrow trail from where the car parks.

8.     Because the sewer cannot handle toilet paper, you put it in the trashcan; every few days someone must take it out and burn it. 

We don’t by any means live like natives, but don’t romanticize in your mind a “simpler life.”