a typical day

Every Thursday we head into Merida. It's about an hour and a half drive. We leave Santa Clara, go through our little sister town of Dzidzantun, then through the next village which is Cansahcab and from there we connect with a highway that takes us into the city. We do the same in reverse the next day when we come home. As we were passing through Cansahcab , we noticed they were getting set up for some sort of hootenanny. On the right side of the picture, you can see the "arena". This is made entirely of sticks with grass woven in for shade. This is a two story structure that will not only support the weight of a full capacity crowd , but keep a bull corralled while they have a lariet competition. this goes on for hours...long into the night. It's a major event lasting for days. This is a good thing considering it takes 3-4 days to build. Vendors will set up all around (this always happens near the square and often in the front yard of a church). You can also see one of the vendors in this photo. There was also a corn on the cob vendor and a "hot kakes" vendor. After dark, young people will be strolling around flirtatiously, old people will be seated, chatting it up with their neighbors. There will be the "burachos" hanging out on the dark fringes hoisting cervesas, recognizable in any language or skin color by their glassy eyes, red noses and generally dissheveled look. Early in the day you'll see vacarros riding healthy, beautiful horses in circles, practicing. It's all quite spectacular doings for whatever village happens to be hosting it. We leave the festivities behind and wind our way to Dzidzantun. Here we make a couple of stops. First at the vegetable market, a tienda about 10 ft. square, we buy a papaya, some bananas, potatoes, pepper, carrot, onion and some garlic powder ( i also get bouillion and beans here ), next stop, the bakery where we pick up a couple of cinnamon rolls and a small loaf similar to a french bread. Next stop- super Willy's where we pick up yogurt, corn flakes and oatmeal ( I recently learned that mildewed oats can make you very sick...these will not be kept in the cardboard again....).One more stop...a little tienda that makes tortillas fresh daily. the ladies- 3 of them- are all very sweet.
We stop for a handfull of warm, fresh tortillas and she gives us two very strange looking things and a half dozen or so freshly picked limes. She instructs us how to cut the fruit and adds that we should squeeze on some lime ( you put lime on EVERYTHING here...maybe if i'd have put some on the moldy oats i wouldn't have gotten sick...)Oh, I also got some cookies. they are sort of like a short bread but with a bit of ...lime! flavor....She gave us the fruit and limes as a gift because she wanted us to try it. So all of the things i have mentioned and that you see in the photo cost us about $12.00. It'll last us most of the week with the "integral" (wheat) bread , milk and meat we buy at Wal-Mart (sorry, it's true...) in Merida.

Little shop of horrors called and they want their fruit back! How weird is this? It is muy deliciouso! mmmmm......my friend Carol tells me it's called dragon fruit. who knew something that looked so odd would taste so good? And speaking of hidden surprises.....i pulled my bathing suit off the clothes line on the back porch later that day, and threw it into the chair to get undressed. As i did so, i thought..'what was that i just touched?"

Oh nothing, just a FROG! Yes indeedy do..in my bathing suit! Now how did that thing get into that while it was hangin' on the line? And why?! Thank god i didnt put it on.....One day theres a frog in the sink while i'm doing the dishes. on the airmattress in the pool and now in my bathing suit bottoms! I had better start checking under my pillow before i go to sleep....

So after all the driving, shopping, swimming, cooking, eating, frog catching,etc.,etc., it's finally time to play

with Lucky!!!!! oh yes, isn't he excited?! he's running around the front yard playing keep away with his smashed milk jug because, you know, i REALLY want it.....

After we're done, i'll go inside and either have a cup of tea or some Coca-lite and john and I will play a hand of gin, maybe read for a while, watch a DVD then go to bed. In the morning we'll wake up to another sunny day and see where it goes from there.....In 3 days it will be one year since we pulled out of our driveway and started this adventure. Do we have any regrets? Look at that last picture and tell me what you think......

just touching base....

O.K., ok..."no more flamingo pictures please!!!" Is that what I'm hearing? well, i've been sick for a week and am trying to keep things simple....they just make me happy all right? Sorry to be behind, but as i mentioned, i've been ill...i at first suspected bad oatmeal. We both became ill on a sunday...both woke up with fevers and were wishing we had a revolving door installed in the bano...Mon., tues, hmmmmm... i thought.."what could it be?" I started mentally going through what we'd eaten, where we'd been and the only thing i could come up with was oatmeal. i had cooked up a vat of it and while it was simmering i thought the color looked a little...off. 'Oh it's probably just the way the light is shining...it tastes fine..." In recalling this i pondered...could it be...? Mold on cheese is ok..and who hasnt eaten moldy bread? Besides various prisoners, lots of folks- myself included- have eaten moldy bread. How many times have you heard people say "a little penicillin is good for you right?" Everyones an MD..I just had someone tell me yesterday (after explaining I'd been in and out of the bathroom for the last week) "you need to give yourself diarhea. Drink salt water with sugar in it. It'll flush you right out". This suggestion came after her enema suggestion...How many people have i heard suggest you EAT Vicks when you have a cold?! (shudder....) I've also been told garlic and yogurt were both cures for a yeast infection but never got clarity on which method of ...introduction into the body..if ya know what i mean...should be used .And none of this addresses how or why they thought an ice bath would help people with mental health issues, but i digress....oatmeal- So, i went on line...google search- "can mildewed oatmeal make you sick?" ( love the internet! ) lo and behold-yes! as a matter of fact, mildew on oats can make you very ill...fever, diarhea (for a week or more..) .Oh my god- Ive tried to poison my husband...( he's the one I gave most of the vat 'o gruel to). So, our neighbor had mentioned that there was a bug going around. She said she'd been at church and had to run to the bathroom and violently throw up..( I could make several comments here but i will with hold them...) She and her husband had been sick all of the following week. So, i'm not sure about the poisoning, but thought i'd pass along the info about the oats just so you all know.
The second piece of info is- expired antibiotics still work. We dug up some old Amoxycillin out of the medicine "trunk" (a.k.a. our coffee table). I was so tired of this bug, oat mildew poison, whatever was causing my dilema that i finally broke down and took some. It had expired in Dec. 2010- so it wasn't really old....anyway, here I am!! I have not laid down or napped for 2 days . It's a miracle i tell you! Today is John's birthday and I was able to get up, pick some flowers out of the backyard and put them in a vase for him, then i made his favorite- pancakes. The batter looked a little funny but it tasted O.K.........just kidding!!

odds and ends

Ahh! vacation time is over! The village is quiet again, the neighbors are gone leaving in ther wake a pile of refuse in their back yard. They opted to drag their waste into the yard rather then take it to the nearby basurero (dump) MUCH to Lucky's delight...Many a day he came home with a large odorific hunk of old fish ( his fave- he actually turned down a tbone bone recently..)i kept trying to keep hime in the yard so id check the security of my fence line ( the palm fence remember?). On several occasions I noticed a number of palms missing. it took me a while to figure out the neighbors were requisitioning them as incindiary devices to use in burning their trash. I should say, attempting to burn their trash, as most of it was left intact ( his best find was a shoe sized piece of shark skin...mmmm). Needless to say, Lucky was delighted to have easier access to his daily buffet, but now that they've gone until next april, I went out back the other day, machete in hand and sweating like...i don't know what...like someone really sweaty...( and i profess to be a writer..?!) to fix it the fence ( "desperado, you've been out ridin' fences..." remember the Seinfeld episode?). Hordes, DROVES of butterflies and dragonflies, all different types, were passing by right over me. Unfortunately i don't have National Geographic quality equipment so instead of seeing the cloud of flying insects, you get to see one that dropped down to take a break... I posted a little bit last week about the tempest passing through ( this is now almsot a daily occurence) and thought i might include a visual aid. You can't see them, but in the right hand corner of the lagoon, the flamingos are hunkered down waiting for the storm to pass.

I also shared with you recently about the butterflies eating the pears...somehow they lose a little of their allure when the fruit is laying on the ground (borderlining on creepy , actually...) but thought i'd include this as well.

i just paused for a moment to talk to my friend jenifer (from Kuwait) on skype...as we were talking john walked in and informed me there is evidently a tropical storm headed our way. as we were driving in from merida today, we noticed the manglar is so full of water, if it gets much more it will be overflowing the road. if there is in fact a tropical storm bringing heavy rains, we will be heading back to merida....ill keep you informed...

In the meantime, take a lesson from the flamingos- if a tempest is in your midst, hunker down and wait for it to pass. One way or another, it always does....

the calm before the storm.....

Around 10:15 A.M.:

The sky glistened like a polished robins egg and furnace like temperatures radiated from the sand. The air was oppressive with its heat and silence. No car or motorcycle passed by. No bird called out a warning. No distant motor of a fishing boat cruising in the gulf or voice being carried over the lagoon. It wasn't just an absence of noise, it was as if all sound had been erased leaving an eerie stillness. Soon, the air in the front yard filled with butterflies and dragonflies. Hundreds of them. They seemed not to have a destination only a desire to stay aloft.

As if someone hit the 'on" switch, the palms began rustling and cars appeared on the roadway. The sky began to cloud up and blacken and the wind was cued to gust. Within minutes it was raining. The force of the deluge picked up until the sound covered all other noises and you had to shout to be heard. The next addition to this orchestral piece was the sound of thunder, at first a low rumbling like a giants hungry stomache. As the storm neared, it progressed to a base drum and quickly escalated to the sound of two cars careening into each other at high speeds, metal shreiking, electrical systems sizzling. Gashes of lightning snapped through the sky seeming to cleave through the coconut trees. The flash of light followed so quickly by thunder it was impossible to count to even one before the sound erupted.

Just as quickly as it had begun, it began to pass over. It rumbled away like an angry child stomping up the stairs. Once again the sound of thunder became distant and the feeling of surging energy ebbed. As the deluge continued to form small rivers through the yard, i looked at the lagoon to see the flamingos response. They lazily continued to scoop their beaks through the water sifting out the brine shrimp, unaffected by the rise and fall of barometric pressures, sizzling ozone and monsoon like downpours. Five minutes later, the rain stopped, the water soaked into the sandy terrain and the last of the clouds cleared returning the sky to the original robins egg hue. The only proof that anything had happened was a soaking wet, red Mexican blanket thrown over a front porch chair.