Dominican Housewife Chronicles - The Finish Line

Hello everyone.  I am so excited to report that we finally got a response from immigration about my petition for my husband to come to the United States.  My petition was approved YAY!!!  Now we wait for the approval on this end for his actual visa but after eight long months of waiting I feel like I can finally see the finish line.  I pray this next part doesn't take 8 months.  Reality is setting in for me that I'm going to be spending this coming winter back in PA.  I'm a little sad about that.  My body has gotten accustomed to this warm climate so snow and ice are going to be culture shock for both me and my husband.

My birthday was on August 20th and my husband did a great job pulling together a wonderful celebration for me on the beach.  I love the beach and he tolerates it for me.  One of the many reasons why I love him.  This was the first time we were together on my birthday and I had a wonderful time spending the day with my husband, his family and our friends here.  I did miss my family and friends back home though terribly but they called, texted and sang to me as usual so all was well.  Although I'm not very excited about my birthday anymore, that tends to happen after you reach a certain age.  The one thing I always look forward to my mom's happy birthday song.  I really need to record her singing that song.  You know I love pictures so here's a picture of us from that day. I have no idea who that hat belonged to but it was being passed around and everyone took pictures wearing it.

I've been busy delivering baskets here in the Dominican Republic and I'm happy to report that we met our goal of blessing 30 expectant mothers here.  We actually exceeded our goal.  While delivering the baskets to the expectant mothers we were always encountering young mothers with older infants.  I had some larger size diapers so we made up gift packs for them also which included 12 diapers and a pack of wipes.  We didn't want anyone to feel left out.  While I've been here delivering baskets my daughter Jasmine has been very busy back home working to fill the requests we've received for mothers in the United States.  We sent our first six baskets out last week to expectant mothers in Ohio, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan and Florida.  One of the mom's gave birth last week and she shared a picture of her newborn with us, he's adorable.    We're having an event next week in Harrisburg, PA.  It's an open house and basket assembly event.  I hope the community comes out to learn more about what we're doing and discuss how they can help.  During the event we will assemble the baskets for our October due dates.

I'm headed home tomorrow for a few weeks.  I'm actually going to be home for a week then going to Mexico with my youngest daughter for a few days.  This part is never easy, leaving my husband.  There's so much to do it seems before I leave.  We've both been running around like chickens with our heads cut off for the past few days trying to gather information, documentation etc for the attorney for this next phase of his immigration process.  This was a short update this week.  I'll be in touch and let you all know where things stand with phase two.

Oh just in case you're feeling generous I'm including the link to Paypal site where you can make donations to A Blessing For You.

https://www.paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/3398122

Dominican Housewife Chronicles - Status Quo

Hello all it's been a few weeks since I posted so I thought I should update you all on what's been happening around here.  As the title says it's pretty much been status quo.  I started this blog to chronicle my experiences as I navigated through learning how to be a Dominican Housewife.  I shared with you the challenges of cooking, cleaning and just general cultural differences.  Some of these experiences were funny and others were very educational.  I've gotten into a rhythm and for the most part things run smoothly.  My days usually start with a nice walk along the waterfront which is called the malecon.   This picture is one I took a few days ago during my walk.


I realized in my last post I didn't really give an update about my husbands vacation.  He was off work for three weeks and I was concerned about how him being here everyday for three weeks would affect my routine.  Ha, well there was no routine for three weeks ya'll. We also had house guests for  two of the weeks he was off.  Things went well for the most part.  There were a few challenges along the way but my husband and I always seem to find a way to resolve them without too much fuss.  Let's see one of the challenges was that no matter where we were going his daughter would be in the bathroom getting ready for at least an hour although my husband said it was two hours LOL.  I should mentioned that one of our house guests only spoke German.  So communication was a real challenge around here, even more so than usual LOL.  My husband only speaks Spanish, I primarily speak English and a little Spanish.  German wasn't being spoken much at all.  The only person who could communicate with everyone was his daughter who is a lovely young lady but she's also a pre teen and they can be moody.Th

ere was the cockroach incident.  This one was very traumatic for me.  One night I walked into the bedroom to find a very large cockroach crawling out of my CPAP machine mask.  Yes I died for about 30 seconds and then had a complete meltdown for another 20 minutes before my husband returned to the house.  By the time he got here the roach had been properly killed and fortunately I had another mask and tube here with me for my machine so my husband switched it out for me after disposing of the roach. My mask and tube are now kept in a plastic airtight container when not in use.  Ok before I get into the next incident the dog is fine.  My neighbor's dog is kept up on the roof.  Many people here keep their dogs on their roofs to keep them away from all the stray dogs roaming around.  My neighbors dog likes to jump over onto our roof from time to time.  Here is a picture of her on my roof.  Well one day last week she decided to jump. I think she jumped because the neighborhood strays were in front of the house taunting her.  Anyway she's fine and back up on the roof.  I honestly don't know if she learned her lesson and won't jump again but I'll keep you posted. Last but not least we had a baby geiko who got into the house, crawled in between the glass of our coffee table and died.  So we had to extract the dead critter from the table.  Remember guys I don't like critters at all so I'm way outside of my comfort zone here but I'm surviving.

  

  

Anyway during his vacation we had  beach days, pool days, lazy days around the house and we visited the park where we got married back in October.  It was actually the first time since we got married that my husband and I have been back there together so we took some pictures in a couple of the locations where we took wedding photos.  

Here are a couple from our wedding day and ones we took recently near the same spots as the original pictures.

It was nice to visit again with my husband.  I often visit this location as it's close to my daily walk location.  It's a very beautiful place.

So back to status quo.  After my walk I usually visit one of the three supermarkets I frequent in town.  Back to the house to handle whatever household chores need done on that particular day, laundry, general cleaning and of course cooking.  It doesn't take me as long to handle these household chores as it did in the beginning so I have plenty of time during the day while my husband is at work to take care of things for my non profit A Blessing For You.   In fact it's consuming a lot of my time which is awesome, at least I think so.  The other day I was so engrossed in putting together baskets that I forgot to finish fixing dinner.  When my husband came home from work only the potatoes where done.  I forgot to cook the meat LOL.
During this trip I planned to bless 30 expectant mothers with Blessing Baskets and thus far we have delivered 18 baskets and the remaining 12 baskets will be delivered in the next two weeks.  As we deliver the baskets we've been updating our Facebook page with pictures and we've gotten a great response.  We've received 25 requests from women in the United States requesting baskets from 13 different states.  Needless to say when I get back to Pennsylvania I'm going to be busy LOL.  I started a Go Fund Me campaign to help purchase more supplies to meet the demand.  I'm including the link here in case you are interested in making a donation to this great cause.  https://www.gofundme.com/a-blessing-for-you
We also accept supplies which are needed to create the baskets.  I've attached a flyer which provides a list of the supplies needed.

That's all for now.  I'll be in touch again in a few weeks.  Again I invite you all to visit my page on Facebook A Blessing For You and our website www.AblessingForYou.org

Dominican Housewife Chronicles - Knowledge vs. Wisdom

Here is a picture of my husband with his daughter this week   My stepdaughter who is twelve has been visiting us from Germany for the past two weeks.  My children are all grown so it’s been awhile since I’ve had a pre-teen girl in the house.  Well let me tell you it brought back some memories and not all of them were fond LOL.  It was great watching the action from the sidelines though and being the stepmother I’m the nice parent which was kinda fun.  I’m sure my children would say that I wasn’t so nice when they were growing up LOL.  Watching my husband interact with his daughter brought me back to my childhood and even when I was raising my own children.  

Things you wish you would have listen to or things you wished you would have said.

I realized a long time ago that I really should have listened to my mother and my grandparents more when I was growing up.  Someone once told me that the longer you live the more you learn.  When I heard this, I thought well of course dummy everyone knows that.  What I now realize is that no matter how much schooling you have or how many books you read in your lifetime you may acquire knowledge but acquiring wisdom is a completely different skill.  Let me explain.  If you ask google for the definition of knowledge it says this, facts, information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.  The definition of wisdom is, the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise.  So, it seems that having wisdom involves more than just having knowledge it involves using your knowledge in such a way that would be considered good judgement or wise.  I think I can finally say that I’m at a point in my life where I have acquired some wisdom, not as much as my mother has but certainly more than my children have.  There are so many things I could list as things I should have listened to my mother about but for this blog post I’m going to focus on one area.  It’s not really something she tried to tell me that I didn’t listen to or follow it’s more something she tried to explain to me and until now I really didn’t have the knowledge or wisdom to understand.

I grew up most of my life as an only child and my mom was a single mom.  She remarried when I was in my late teens and adopted two little girls but for most of my childhood it was just me and mom.  From my perspective we weren’t rich, but I didn’t consider us to be poor either.  I had a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear and most of the things I wanted.  I say most things because there were two things in my childhood that I always wanted but never got, the first is a hamster.  That never happened because my mom does not like rodents at all.  Like she can’t even look at a picture of them.  The second thing I always wanted was the big box of crayons.  You know the 64-crayon box with the sharpener in the back.  I always wanted that, but I never got it as a child.  I think was I was almost 30 years old my mom finally got me the 64-crayon box and to this day I still have it hidden away in my closet from my grandchildren.  It was probably one of the best gifts my mom ever gave me.  It’s kind of like the running joke between my mom and me.  I used to tease her all the time about my creativity being limited because I didn’t have all the crayon colors.   

Besides not having all the crayons I had a great life as a child.  My mom and I had and still have a special bond.  I watched how hard she worked, and I was very aware of the fact that she worked and made money and that’s how the bills got paid.  From a very young age, sometime in elementary school I can recall sitting at the dining room table with my mom once a month because she only got paid once a month.  Once a month she would go through all the bills and put the money into separate envelopes.  That was her budget system and it worked well for us because I can never recall a time where my basic needs weren’t met.  I didn’t understand everything, but I knew enough to know that my mom needed that job to keep things afloat.  I think one of the most traumatic things for me as a child was the day that my mom came home from work and told me that she quit her job.  I was a young teenager at this point and I remember feeling horrified.  My mom seemed so happy and calm and inside I was freaking out.  I recall asking my mother why she quit her job and at the time I didn’t understand but I recall her reasons being something like she wanted to do more with her life, she wanted to find herself.  I was thinking to myself, well how are all the bills going to get paid?   For the first time in my life I felt insecure but maybe it was foolish of me to feel so secure in the first place.  Anyway, we survived, we never slept in our car or anything like that.  Things changed a bit, but we made it.  I have always attributed that experience to my inability to take risk.  I’ve never been interested in any job where there wasn’t a base salary.  I had to know what my income was going to be on a bi weekly or monthly basis. 

Fast forward to now and why this childhood experience is relevant now.  In 2017 I took an early retirement offer from my job of 27 years.  I loved my job and I’m way too young to retire but something was pulling me away from that corporate American life.  It wasn’t my husband in fact I made the decision to take the early retirement the week before I met him.  The offer came in Sept 2016 and I made the decision to accept it in Oct 2016 right before my trip to the Dominican Republic with my daughter Jennifer and that is when I met my now husband.  The retirement package that I took gave me an 18-month payout instead of a lump sum.  At the time 18 months seemed like a long time to figure out what would be next for me.  Well now it’s month 16 and I’m getting a little anxious about what’s next.  It’s like that feeling I had when my mom told me that she quit her job BUT it’s different now because I completely understand now what she meant when she said she wanted to do more with her life and to find herself.  As I’m nearing the end of my payout I too feel like I’m not sure returning to corporate America is where I belong.  I feel like there’s something else that I am supposed to be doing with my life.   I also have a strong feeling that being here in the Dominican Republic now with my husband is a part of me finding my way to the answer.  Over the past two years I’ve been doing things to set myself up for something else.  I completed a Chaplaincy program which allows me to be a volunteer chaplain for one of the local hospitals in my hometown.  I also completed a course and have my certification now as a Certified Recovery Specialist.   I also recently started a non-profit organization called A Blessing For you.  We provide blessing baskets to new mothers in need.   I haven’t quite figured out how all the pieces fit together yet, but I know there’s something bigger out there for me.  Bigger not necessarily from a monetary perspective but bigger from an impact perspective.  So, stayed tuned as I continue on my journey.  

Dominican Housewife Chronicles - When the door closes

Hello everyone.  I've been back for 12 days and I think I can finally say things are back to normal here.  I came back with a head cold which had me down for a few days.  Just as I was back on my feet and working on getting the household affairs back in order my husband came down with a cold which was much worse than mine (at least according to him).  He's a trooper though he didn't miss any time of work but once he got home I was in full nursemaid mode, making tea and trying my best to get him to take medicine.  I have my stash of medicine from the US with me,  you know the basics NyQuil and DayQuil.  Well those don't look like anything he's used to so it wasn't easy convincing him to take it.  I finally just gave up and went to the pharmacy to get something he was more familiar with.  It's still not easy getting him to take medicine.  He's one of those people who prefers to tough it out or natural remedies.  The good news is that as I write this post he's on the mend and just in time for his vacation which officially starts on Monday.

I'm happy to report that my cooking skills remained in tact even though I took a month off.  There haven't been any bad rice incidents or anything burnt, over or under cooked.  I guess you can say cooking is like riding a bike LOL.  As for laundry well I remembered the process just fine but  my husband seems to have forgotten to rules around what clothes to place where so my first laundry day consisted of me washing almost a full load of already clean clothes.  In my defense they were very close to the dirty clothes hamper and NO I don't smell the clothes before I wash them (My husband asked me this question).  If the clothes are in, on or anywhere remotely close to the dirty clothes hamper they are getting washed. 

I titled this post when the door closes because while talking to a good friend of mine this week I expressed to her that one of the things I still struggle with is the door being open all day.  So here's the deal.  When my husband wakes up in the morning one of the first things he does is open the front door.  Once the door is open it stays open all day until we are ready to go to bed at night.  This doesn't just apply to the front door in our house.  It's just a cultural thing.  Most doors are open here and that means that everyone is visiting and talking (mostly yelling) to each other from house to house.  This steady stream of visitors throughout the day means that my husband is always entertaining someone. So when I was talking to my friend I told her that I don't feel like I get any of my husbands time until the door closes at night.  Of course I'm exaggerating a little bit but not much. I talked to my husband about it and he confirmed that this is the culture here, people hanging out, visiting etc especially in the evenings after dinner time.  He encouraged me to join him on the porch and not to stay inside away from him and his friends which is what I typically do.  I'm working on it but it's a little uncomfortable for me to be sitting among a group of men with no other women around and especially when they are all speaking Spanish and it's hard for me to follow the conversation.  This picture is one I took a few days ago.  After my husband's friends left he closed the door and we shared some time together with him laying on my lap.  I posted a black and white version of this picture on Facebook a few days ago with the caption 'when the door closes my heart is full'.  It lead to some pretty interesting comments and responses. Some confusion about what I meant but at the end of the day I knew what it mean so that's all that matters.

A brief update on my non profit.  I had a Spanish version of my logo created for the baskets here.  I filed my application for tax exempt status and am awaiting a reply.  I am waiting for the supplies I sent over to arrive so that I can start putting baskets together and delivering them to the women in need.

My husband is off work for the next three weeks so things are about to get real interesting.  I'm a creature of habit and I love my routine.  With him here with me everyday all day my daily routine is out the door that of course will always be open:-)

Dominican Housewife Chronicles - Babies & other new beginnings

Hello everyone I'm back in the DR now.  I took a few weeks off while I was in PA.  I arrived in PA on June 10th and my newest grand baby couldn't wait to meet me. He wasn't due until June 28th but he decided to come on June 12th.  All is well with mommy and baby.  It actually worked out well that he came sooner than expected because I had more time to spoil him to death, oh yes and of course help my daughter out too LOL. This is my daughters third, the others are 8 and 1 1/2.  I have no clue what she was thinking having another one so soon after the little princess Jaleah but hey he's here now so she's going to have to figure it all out and she is.  I think each day gets a little less stressful for her and her boyfriend.  Here's one of his first pictures from the hospital.

My youngest sister was also expecting and her little (well actually not so little) bundle was born on June 18th.  Meet my newest nephew Avery James Cruz Wimms.  These two little guys are just precious but there's clearly a big difference.  Jalique the oldest is about two pounds lighter than Mr. Avery.  We're signing him up for football now, Redskins of course LOL.

This trip back home was the longest period of time that my husband and I have been apart since we got married in October.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Of course I missed him terribly but I guess I was just so busy holding the babies that I didn't miss my daily housewife chores LOL.  You know I only cooked one time the entire month I was home.  My husband complained almost daily about how much he missed my cooking.  Little did he know that I wasn't cooking anything while in PA.  My youngest daughter Jenni and I were on a mission to visit all of our favorite restaurants while I was home and I must say that we did a pretty good job because towards the end of my visit we were having a tough time coming up with places to eat.

I actually did get some other important things accomplished while I was home I didn't just eat all day long.  I'm happy and excited to announce that I started a non profit organization called A Blessing For You.  This organization is designed to provide new mothers with supplies to help them during the first weeks following delivery and connect them to other community resources.  This is something that I had been thinking about and working on for the past couple of months while I was in the Dominican Republic.  Initially I wanted to start locally in my hometown of Harrisburg, PA however the more I thought about it and prayed about it I realized that the need for this was much greater in the Dominican Republic.  In the Dominican Republic when you go to the hospital to have a baby you have to bring everything with you.  The hospitals there do not supply anything at all.  No blankets, diaper, wipes or anything for the baby or the mother.  Instead of waiting to get this started when I'm  back in PA permanently I decided to start now where the need is greater and do more than just be a housewife while I am in the Dominican Republic.   While I was home in PA this time things just took off and I was able to get my paperwork filed with the state and I have my Facebook page and website up and running.  I'm working on my tax exempt status paperwork for the federal government now.  I've started to receive donations and was able to secure enough supplies to send over three boxes full of items to create 30 blessing baskets for new mothers here in the Dominican Republic. Here is a picture of a sample basket unwrapped and wrapped.

Attached is an informational flyer which lists the types of items needed.

There are so many women in need so please share this information with your network and consider making a donation of supplies or a monetary donation.

I came back to the DR with a little head cold so it's going to be a slow start to regaining the momentum I had when I left to keep up with my daily chores.  I hope I remember how to cook for my husband ya'll LOL.
The boxes I sent over will take a couple of weeks to arrive but once they do I will be full steam ahead putting the baskets together and distributing them to as many as possible.

Stay tuned for more from this Dominican Housewife/Non Profit Organization Owner

Dominican Housewife Chronicles - Just Getting Started

Hello friends.  Things for me and my hubby have pretty much been status quo for the past week.  I decided to dedicate this post to all of the graduates.  For the past few weeks my social media timelines have been flooded with graduation pictures.  This picture is of one of the special graduates in my life. She graduated from high school last week.  It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this lovely young lady is just that a young lady now.  I remember the day she was born, I was there but unfortunately I wasn't able to be there to watch her walk across the stage.  Thanks to social media I was able to see her walk via Snap chat.  Seeing her brought me to tears. Of course there were many pictures taken of her graduation but I love this picture because of the sign she's holding that says Just getting started.  So many view their last days in high school as the end of something but as you often hear during many commencement addresses it's really the beginning of the rest of your life.  As I watched many of my friends celebrating this joyous occasion for their children or other close family and friends I tried to remember my high school graduation.  It was a long time ago (I'm not admitting to exactly how long but it was long, that's all you need to know LOL).  I can remember some things very clearly as if it happened yesterday but for other things I can't recall.  One thing I know for sure is that what I'm doing right now with my life isn't at all what I thought I would be doing.  Heck what I'm doing right now isn't what I thought I'd be doing five years ago LOL. I'm sure that's true for so many of us and that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I think its important for us to look at each day as a new beginning or an opportunity to star anew.  It's a tough world that we are living in right now and these young people are being faced with challenges that are brand new and pretty scary.  On the flip side I also see opportunity for this generation and I pray that as many of them as possible seize the opportunity and make their mark in a positive way on this world.  I don't know maybe I shouldn't say that, it could make someone feel as if I am putting the weight of the world on their shoulders.  That definitely isn't my intent. 

Let me explain further.  Every since I retired I've had this feeling that I'm supposed to be doing something to help people.  I know I'm supposed to be helping people but there's like billions of people right?  So what people am I supposed to be  helping?  Am I supposed to be helping people that are asking me for help?  Am I supposed to be helping those who aren't asking but clearly need help?  I'm not sure and a few weeks ago an idea came to me about how I could target a specific population of people to help.  I got my inspiration for moving forward from something I saw on social media.  Not the actual concept itself but the inspiration to go for it.  I saw information about a non profit that is cleaning the ocean.  When you first think about it, cleaning the ocean?  The ocean is huge like how do you clean the ocean?  That's kinda how I've been feeling all this time about how do I help people?  There are so many people in so many places that need help.  I'm just one person.  How do I do that?  The answer is you start with what's in front of you or what's around you.  Do what you can to make a difference there and take it from there.  You don't stand at the bottom on the steps and say ugh that's too many steps and turn and walk away you start climbing and if you need to rest you rest but you keep climbing.  Anyway I got my inspiration from that company I saw who is cleaning the ocean because like I said I've been sitting here in this space for several months.  Thinking to myself and saying out loud that I'm supposed to be helping people but I have no idea where to start.  Seeing what that other company is doing let me know that I can't look at things as it's too much or it's too big of a task for me because everything starts somewhere.  You know everything started with one person who had an idea, a thought or a passion for something and then others joined in and they created this big force that allowed them to do this great thing and make a difference.   Back to the 2018 graduates, my prayer and hope is that they all see this as a new beginning, the next chapter in their lives.  I hope that they are all inspired to go out there and do what they are called to do, whatever that may be.  Change starts with the man or woman in the mirror. 

I'm going to be back in the United States for a few weeks.  I'm on baby watch now.  I'm expecting a new grand baby in a few weeks and my sister is also due anytime now.  Stay tuned for cute baby pictures and more stories from this Dominican Housewife.

Dominican Housewife Chronicles - What he says vs what he means

This is one of our most recent pictures together while at the beach.  My husband doesn't like the beach.  I honestly have no idea how you can live on this beautiful island and not love the beach but anyway I love when he makes the sacrifice for me.  It's even better when it's his suggestion.

Okay everyone this post is about how my husband communicates with me.  If you've been following my blog you know that my husband is Dominican and speaks Spanish and I'm American and I speak English.  I've been spending a lot of time here in the Dominican Republic over the past year so I'm learning Spanish enough to hold a simple conversation.  My husband is learning but not as fast as me.  He and I have developed a way of communicating that works for us, sometimes better than others but we usually figure it out.  Some of the examples I'm going to share with you today really don't have much to do with the difference between Spanish and English but sometimes the language barrier does play into our miscommunication.  For those of you who don't know Spanish at all this will be somewhat of a Spanish lesson for you.

The first word is Ahora - This means now in English.
When my husband says Ahora it can mean different things depending on the activity.  For example if it's something I want then Ahora means in the very near future.  If it's something he wants then ahora actually means that he's known about it for several days but didn't tell me about it until just now and AHORA means I was supposed to be ready 10 minutes ago.  You can imagine how annoying this is right?  I'm learning though.  He's a creature of habit so I watch him now and I can tell when there's going to be an AHORA event coming that I need to be prepared for.  This usually happens when he has a baseball game.  I've learned which days the games typically occur on so I can be prepared and he's not always being a total jerk it's just sometimes hes waiting to decide if he's going or not.  He plays on so many different teams.

Next let's discuss the word Hoy.  This means today in English.
When my husband says Hoy it actually most of the time means today but it can also just mean, yeah one day that might happen but not ahora LOL.  If I ask him to do something or go somewhere if I get the Si, hoy response it's a good thing.

Manana - This means tomorrow in English.
When my husband says it it means not now (ahora) it might happen tomorrow if I actually remember it or feel like it but it is something I'm somewhat interested in.

Next up is the phrase Mas Tarde - This means later in English.
When my husband says Mas Tarde it actually means I'm really not interested in that at all so I'm going to say mas tarde and hope that you forget about it or maybe I can talk  you out of it cause it's just not going to happen.  So in my house mas tarde means later or never.  It took me awhile to catch on to this one but I finally figured it out so when I hear the mas tarde response I press for a hoy or manana instead.  The mas tarde isn't my friend LOL.

Temprano - This means early in English.
When my husband uses this word for him it's going to happen soon, but for me when he says temprano he's really asking me why I'm not finished yet with whatever I'm doing LOL.

This next one is my favorite.  No cocinar hoy - This means do not cook today.  My husband has a habit of telling me this on Sunday's.  He says "No cocinar hoy, tu trankilla in casa hoy."  Basically you don't cook for me today you relax in the house today.  What he means is I don't want you to spend a lot of time in the kitchen today cooking a big meal BUT when I'm hungry later (mas tarde) I want you to be able to whip something up quick.  So the first time this happened I wasn't prepared and I was mad as a hornet.  I demanded an explanation and he told me that me warming up the leftovers or making a quick sandwich wasn't considered cooking which I guess is true.  Like I said before I'm learning and I'm hip to his little no cocinar hoy trick and I'm ready every time.  In fact it's become somewhat of a joke between us.  Kinda like when I ask him if he wants popcorn while we watch TV at night and he says no.  I always fix enough for us both because I learned a long time ago that his hand is going to be in the bowl and he usually eats more than half of the bowl.

This next word has been the source of major challenges between my husband and I especially while in the car.  The Spanish word derecho means two things, to go straight and to turn right.  You can imagine how nerve racking this can be while driving in an unfamiliar place getting directions from someone who only speaks Spanish.  Fortunately I've learned my way around this city now and my husband does most of the driving when we are out together.

When it matters the most he says what he means like when he says Te amo mucho (I love you a lot) or when he says in English you're beautiful :-)