Hola! Well, nothing really exciting and or interesting to report to you this week, which is not necessarily a bad thing....I got two new ceiling fans, had them put in, so I have a lovely breeze/wind blowing even when its calm outside. now, this may sound like a simple enough thing, but it took several steps. First, my friend who fixes up houses sent one of her workers to get the fans- he knows the cheap place...then I had to pick them up from her during one of my weekly merida junkets. Next step, go over to marcies ( where Marsial works ) and ask him to call his brother in law Lucio to see if he can come install them. Lucio shows up on a Saturday to look at the job and Monday he returned and installed them...Two weeks later......Then there is the crack in the front of the house that needed to be fixed. This happens ALL THE TIME at the beach. That simple repair took about a month. My concrete guy didnt have minutes on his phone, then the phone wasnt working so he couldnt read the texts...finally he brought the family over for a visit, their little boy Didier swam in the pool and the next day the crack was fixed. Of course, all of this work involves concrete and concrete involves POLVO!! Anyone who has ever spent anytime here and had work done knows what an incredible mess polve ( concrete dust) makes. it gets into every nook and cranny and takes at least 3 days to clean up. So, thats what I've been up to.

My grinning co-pilot on one of our hot trips into Merida. They say people look like their dogs and i am beginning to notice a smiling resemblance......

Here is the tree at the hotel ( I see I have inadvertantly shown it to you twice) There was a mini hurricane a week or so ago and unfortunately, this very old tree lost its life. The little mayan man who's probably in his 50's who works here, has been slowly hacking away at it with a machete! Talk about job security....It changes the whole look of the place. The back courtyard used to be a shady oasis. Speaking of hurricanes, its supposed to be a big hurricane season here because it got so hot so early. Evidently the gulf heating up contributes to hurricane formation. i must confess, Im not much of a meteorologist, so i'll take their word for it. With that in mind i set out yesterday after i checked into the hotel, to renew our hurricane insurance. I found the bank that we went through ( this is common with insurance here) , went in , figured out the system ( you get a number from a somewhat secret location-by the front door! Maybe if they didn't hide it in an obvious spot...) and wait your turn. Now, with the help of Irma at the hotel, I found out that the insurance is automatically renewed- yes! That makes it easier-BUT- that means i need to find out how much money i have in there and make a deposit. Of course the teller , all the tellers, spoke only spanish. there was one young lady at the door who spoke a bit of english and we finally got it all figured out. With her assisstance, I used the ATM card they had given us last year when we opened the account ( which has been tucked away in my files since then) to check the balance. the teller couldn't do this as , evidently, the account is in my husbands name. They couldnt give me any info so had to use the card...Long story short, all is well. We are covered, the fans are in, the crack is fixed. So it took a little doing to accomplish these tasks...What else have i got to do right? It's these challenges that drive some people nuts and they get crazy or they leave.You just need to ask for help, start doing it long before it needs to get done,and remain open to learning how to do things a different way. And aren't those great lessons to learn and be reminded of? I've been working on letting go of control for years and I ended up in the perfect place to work on that.

I do occasionally have to exert my will though. The other night as I was walking out the back door, Lucky darted out ahead of me and latched onto something. Not knowing what it was, i didnt say anything to him. It could have been a very large spider or a humongous cockroach. What it was though, was a sweet little gecko. " No Lucky!!" I shouted in my stearnest dog command voice. He looked at me like really? "Give Lucky"...again the 'do i have to?' as the squirming back half of the little creature tried to break free. He must have been holding it carefully because when he dropped it, it scampered away with all legs and tail intact. So, there's your weekly update. Nothing big, just enough to keep me out of trouble...Oh, I'll leave you with this mystery item.

The other night I was at Carols house ( she lives on the beach). She was telling me about how the night before she got up to go to the bathroom and saw a string of lights out on the water stretching all across the horizon. at first in her sleepy delirium, she thought maybe she was somehow seeing the pier in Progresso ( its the worlds longest pier but we are an hour away...come on...) Then she thought a cruise ship but again, even the Titanic or the QE2 wouldn't stretch that far. She said all of the lights were evenly spaced and it kind of freaked her out because she thought maybe it was some sort of invasion. We pondered possibilities and came up with nothing. as I got up to leave, what did i see out on the water?...lights. The longer we stood there, the more the little open spaces filled in until almost the entire horizon was filled with evenly spaced lights....