The Hose

Dumb American Move of the...um...day? week? Month?
So my breakfast scenario is pretty straight forward. I show up to work and go find a pao de quiejo and a cappuchino (cheese bread and cappuchino for y'all not in the know). I will digress for a moment and share that breakfast is called "cafe da manha" or morning coffee, which is odd because in spanish you can get away with a colloquiel "cafe" but people call it "desayuno" which literary translates to "break fast", which seems a little classier if you ask me. I am not sure why. Anywho, love me the pao de quiejo because it makes me think fo pan de yuca (yuca bread? Who knows how to say yuca in english...) which my moms and grandmoms are all about make...But I digress (yet again). Anywho, yesterday afternoon when I went out for my late afternoon coffee (not to be confused with my breakfast coffee, or my mid mornning coffee or my afterlunch coffee) and i saw someone eating what i would call, a "butter roll, hot" if I were in a deli somewhere on the upper east side! So I resolve to have one for breakfast the next day, because these are the types of things I have to plan out way in advance. What's the word for butter? "mantieja" What's the word for hot? "Quenta" Got it good.

So this morning i find the vendor

Me: Oui
Her: bom dia, todo bem ?
Me: uhhh...sim..um...todo bem
Her:...
me:...
me: ummm.....um cappuchino com um pao com mantieja
Her:... Pao de Quiejo
me: no (i should say nao, because no actually means of in portuguese or something and the nasally no or nao, means the negative, and at this point I am almost crying, and she is looking at me wierd), esse
Her: Esta
me: no (see above...on the verge of tears)
Her: ah, pao frances?
Me: sim... ISSO
what? oh it is french bread, I couldn't say pao frances? what am i stupid? I'm stupid! I am now beating myself about the head in anger.
Her: Quenta?
Me (thumbs up...i'm thru talking...everybody's getting thumbs for the rest of the day)

Ugh, all that for a freaking coffee. There are far too many possible permutations for a conversation, you can't even properly prepare to order a friggin cup of coffee, someone asks you if you want creme, you say yeah sure and they friggin put cool whip on it like a bunch of MOMOs. Stop the madness! Its too much to bear. This is how much thought I have to put into anything. I am going batty. I wish people spoke english or at least spanish like the rest of friggin LA, who are these maniacs. Here's another quick example. Someone accused me of speaking Portu-nol, I corrected him and said it was more like Espan-uese. It was worth a good laugh. Then what? Beats me! I can barely friggin communicate. We started at each other in awkward silence.