Oh my gosh....I can´t tell you how frustrated I´ve been!! John and I went to the Telcel ( the local phone monopoly ) office recently and got ¨banda ancha¨- a broadband stick for the computer. For a few glorious days we had internet at OUR HOUSE!!! Wow, talk about being rocketed into another galaxy! How surreal to be sitting on my cocnut plantation listening to the grackles and sending e-mails and skyping! But alas... a few days into the deal, troubles began to rear thier ugly heads...slight abnormalities turned in into major gliches, major headaches then....frozen! AAHHHRRGGG.....so, I tried this, tried that...won´t bore you with all the details but the bottom line is, i think I have a bad, bad virus. As in anthrax or bubonic plague or some other hideous affliction you can only run from....I´m taking it into the shop Thursday...everyone send out positive computer vibes cuz I´d be really upset if they couldn´t fix it. A new computer is definately NOT in the budget.
Speaking of hideous afflictions, last week i was doing some yard work. There was a little pile of dead leaves and dried coconut husks in my otherwise pristine , sandy terreno so i raked them up and scooping them up with my hands, threw them over the fence ( I have no neighbor...its a vacant lot of jungle growth ). By the end of the day, my left hand ring finger was...well, it felt sticky. it was bugging me so much i took off the band with the diamonds and left on the thin gold band. By the next morning, the ring finger and the fingers on each side were itching like CRAZY. Oh man, i couldn´t dig at those babies long and hard enough to be sated. By the follwing day, the ring finger was so fat it looked like it should be smothered in kraut and served at Octoberfest and all three were covered in waterfilled blisters AND it still itched. There was absolutely no way to get my ring off my ever expanding digit and we were a bit concerned the poor thing was at the point of bursting so Dr. John attempted to cut off the ring with something out of the tool box. After all the greasing, mashing, twisting and attempted ring amputation my poor finger was purple. the blisters had all filled with , what i can only surmise, was blood. Sounding cute yet?I was given various suggestions and medicines but I had a pretty good idea it was one of those things that just needed to run its course. I´ll tell you the one thing that actually did seem to help and that was after spending time in the pool, the clorine seemed to dry it out a bit. After almost..what?...eight? nine days? I am happy to report the ring is intact ( Johns attempt only succeeded in hurting me, not the ring) , the blisters are gone and all that remains are dark spots where the worst of the blisters had been and patches of skin that resemble an old baseball mitt.
This morning the guys came by. They brought a bowling ball sized cantaloupe they had bought from a farm down the road. They came to take a rock collecting trip with me. This area is atop a shelf of limestone. There are rocks everywhere. They are incorporated into walls, houses, the bottom of my pool (under the concrete) hecne the trip to get more. They had brought a load over and thrown them out of the truck when they were working on the pool. They looked so nice where they landed, and one was perfect for a stepping stone to the pool, I asked them not to use them, to go get more. well, then i left for a week and John was in charge...wont go into that but we went to get more today. While we were all standing around eating this delicous melon, i told them about and showed them my hand. They began a search of the property and soon showed me the culprit. A large shrub\ tree sort of thing with little berries. They made it clear that brushing up against it was bad, touching the leaves-even when dead-was bad. This I knew from experience........so, i have learned a bit more about the flora and fauna of the Yucatan....After we finished the melon, we all piled in the truck and headed up the road in search of the perfect rocks. I pulled over at a spot they pointed out, turned off the truck and we all got out. The guys, Chu Chu, Abby and Manolo, all spread out and started looking. there were rocks everywhere but they knew i was looking for something in particulr. they all stopped around one large , flat stone and Manolo stuck in the pry bar and starte dto push...óh! ay! they all backe dup quickly, grabbed rocks, threw them, shuffled about then Manolo stuck the pry bar in again...áy!´more movement and at last the beast was slain...they pulled out a four foot long rattlesnake and threw it into the road. i was watching all this from my new vantage point- standing up in the nack of the truck!....they went back to hoisting out the rock and I watched the snake move ever so slightly in its death throes. I felt bad. really, there he´d been, minding his own business, chillin´in his house when ¨BOOM!¨loud noises, banging stomping rock throwing and the ultimate smashing with the pry bar...one more time, even for a snake, it just goes to show you none of us know what´s just around the corner....could be a horrible computer virus, boils on your hand or a prybar to the head....or, it just might be a visit from a friend or someone bringing over a delicous, fresh melon...so, stay aware and appreciate the good times. And if someone pries off your roof...RUN!!!
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