I've just received outstanding, once-in-a-lifetime news from my mother, via an email chockful with delicious Mexican and Tijuana lingo:
CONGRATULATIONS!!! Ya eres oficialmente un MEXICANO 100%.!!!!! Daniel Michel (nadie sabe pronunciar Michael...) Hernandez Andrade de Tijuana, El Florido pa' que mas te guste...ju-juy!!! Ah! y todo mundo conoce el nombre Michel porque asi se llama el hijo menor de Veronica Castro (hermano de Cristian Castro) [...] ju-juy!!!!!!!
What this basically means, friends, is that I've acquired Mexican citizenship! I am now an authentic Mexican-American, or American-Mexican. Or Meximerican? We'll need some time to think this through.
Meantime, the short version of how it happened is, since both my parents are Mexican-born, and since the Mexican government allows for such things, I was able to get a birth certificate in Tijuana denoting myself as a "Mexican born on foreign soil," i.e. Kaiser in Mission Valley, San Diego. I know, I know: hilarious, but brilliant. And, frankly, what a relief.
* Your still-active-but-less-frequently-so blogger is pictured above on a windy and chilly recent night at the observation deck of the Torre Latinoamericana, Mexico, D.F.