Thursday, February 4, 2016

It's the little things...

Hi readers,

For about the last month, I've been on a search for Spanish gummy vitamins.

It all started at Christmas, when I made my semi-annual pilgrimage to CVS.  There is simply no equivalent to a CVS/Target/WalMart in Spain, or really in Europe for that matter.  Usually, I don't mind.  I do understand that CVS is full of moderately useless crap.  There is no need for 17 different kinds of band-aids, or an aisle for toothbrushes or 32 shades of red lipstick.


However....

I find a meditative peace in wondering through the vitamin aisle, wondering if my life would be different if only I had a more devoted amino acid supplement practice.  Last year, I walked around the blue, knotted carpet tiles in the deodorant aisle for a full 10 minutes, delightedly hugging a large stuffed monkey I found for sale by the door and thinking deeply about what type of antiperspirant was least likely to give me terrible cancer.


This past Christmas, I discovered gummy calcium supplements.  (Truth be told, I wanted dark-chocolate-flavored Viactiv Chews, but annoyingly they only had caramel, milk-chocolate and cappuccino flavors.  Sigh.)  Turns out, gummy calcium supplements are amazing.  Unfortunately, I only bought one box.

Hence, my aggressive tours of the Spanish farmacias.  I have been harassing the lovely Madrilena workers about the chewable vitamin possibilities since the day I could count the number of gumdrop-shaped vitamin candies left in my sturdy plastic vial.  So far I have encountered:

1) Orange-flavored chewable wafers with calcium and some unidentifiable Spanish mineral/form of carbonate rock
2) Small, rubbery gummy B-vitamins shaped like various fruits that come in a set with a Popeye-the-Sailor piggy bank
3) "AquaGummies!" shaped like various fish that may be some vague Spanish equivalent of Flinstones vitamins

Every store I go in has a different offering. So far my quest for gummy vitamins has taken upwards of 2 hours and cost approximately $40.

But you know what?  It's fun. I'm learning all sorts of weird Spanish words, and I'm no longer terrified of entering a pharmacy and talking to the people that work there, a skill I have to believe will come in handy at some point during my tenure in Span.

It's the little things that make life big, they say. 

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