nothin' new...

Well, I'm trying to get into the habit of blogging regularly again so, though I don't have much of interest to post, i'm gonna chat a while with you. ....

It's the rainy season here now, so we are told. We have never been here in July before, so we'll take their word for it. What we've seen of it so far is it means lots of humidity, overcast days and mosquitos. We've sort of sealed ourselves up in the house for the last few days and still, we are covered with bites. It's one of lifes mysteries- how DO they get in? Can't figure it out....they also like to congregate in the cab of the truck- why? What's the draw? Is there some hidden nectar in there that only they can sense or are they rallying to take it for a spin? i don't think their little legs have enough force to shift even if they could reach the pedals.....

The other thing thats going on- well, actually it's not going on- is the water. I've talked to you about the precarious water situation here before, well, we have not had water for 5 days now. Luckily, as I mentioned before, the pool was full to the brim from rains so we are scooping it out by the bucketfull to flush the toilet. We swim daily and that can serve as a makeshift bath, thursdays we are at the hotel so that gives us a nice long shower. We get big bottles of water for our drinking so it's not like we have NO water it's just an inconvenience. John went to talk to' el presidente' today and he claimed "Im going to get my boy on it tomorrow"....manana right? we are waiting with baited breath...

Wednesday the guys are going to start work on our little guest house- a lack of water will hinder that process greatly as it is a necessary ingredient in concrete. We'll see...

So it kind of feels like we are in a holding pattern- staying indoors for the most part to avoid getting bitten, reading a lot( I'm reading a great book called Prison Angel about a woman who was a Hollywood socialite until she was 50 then went to live in a Tijuana prison as a nun to minister to the inmates), playing gin ( I am about ready to quit as the card gods have been conspiring against me), taking naps and playing with Lucky. Yeah, it's a pretty tough gig....took some getting used to slowing down again after the hustle of our whirlwind visit home in June.

We'll leave a light on for anyone headin' our way....we're still blazin' the trail for those who want to scale back, learn to live with less and figure out whats really important- like water and a case of insect repellant....

It's been a long time.....

Wow! It just took me half an hour of repeatedly failed attempts to sign on for a new post! a lesser woman would have given up but not yours truly...by god, when i set my mind to something i'll push myself around the bend to get it done!

Now then, in review, I see that May 16th was my last post. I am so sorry.....I can't possibly cover all that has happened since then so i'll give a condensed version and get us current

Most of you already know that we went back to Portland for our daughters wedding. We left here June 1 and returned July 2nd. On our return, we got stuck on the tarmack (sp?) while a thunder storm passed over us. A little disconcerting to be sitting directly under lightning in an airplane. As a result, we arrived late to Merida but patient friends were there to pick us up nonetheless

When we first arrived in Portland, our son picked us up and we spent the next two nights at his house. It was a mad dash to get the planning together for emily's wedding shower. I was the freaked out mother of the bride who showed up in stressed out bitch mode but it turned out to be great once I knew everything was in place( I of course profusely apologized later..).My friend vanessa was kind enough to loan us her car for almost 3 weeks or I never could have pulled it all off ( She is also responsible for the brides lovely hair at the wedding and my subsequent shearing before I returned to mexico). Emily's friend , and maid of honor, Kathleen had taken her out the night before for a really wonderful evening( aside from one flaky friend) downtown including an overnight stay at The Nines.

The next day we switched our "residence' to the west hills...that's right- Council Crest. What can i say...we stayed in an amazing home with an incredible view. It was really special to be invited there for the whole month. The lady of the house was away in Spain and on the 18th her husband left us to join her leaving us alone to bask in the ambiance ( and poor bus service) of the west hills. I guess folks who live up there don't need/use public transportation. It was an idylic setting, quiet and grren with a lovely view. the home was furnished with great artwork and a beautiful collection of rugs plus a great music selection! Other then mine, it was one of the most varied Ive been around in a while. Johns job was to water the many potted plants- flowering and vegetable, and he did a great job. There were no fatalities.

Preperations for the wedding occupied my time. All the little last minute details that need to be taken care of. In the meantime, Emily was in the process of applying for a much sought after position with the company she's been at for around 5 years, Fred Meyer. She was going for an assistant buyer's postition. They called her in for a final interview the DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING!! no stress there.....

june 11th:

The wedding was beautiful in so many ways. Of course the bride was STUNNING! Radiant, really, glowing...all the adjectives one could use to describe her would fit. She was exuding happiness. The food, prepared by her brother and his friend, was superb. The cake and flowers, also prepared by someone we know, were perfect as well. The guys in their tuxes, including my grandson, looked so handsome. The ladies were all stunning and the weather was perfect! The white tent, tables and chairs against the green backdrop of the grass looked like something out of a magazine and sooo many beautiful flowers, white pearlescent balloons, tulle and tissue paper flowers added to the dreamlike scene. The vows were touching, funny, serious but not too heavy. just the right combination.

There were friends and family who had driven up from california ( one of which was bitten by a brown recluse during her stay and became extremely ill) and many other familiar faces that hadn't been gathered together since john and Jill renewd their vows on their 20th wedding anniversary at the very same park. it was a great mix of old and new as Emily and her new husband and all of their friends mingled with the "old timers". Lots of folks there have known Emily since she was just a baby.

The couple had asked for any gifts to be given as a contribution to their honeymoon fund and i am happy to report that they amassed $1800.00 and will be going on a Caribbean cruise in September. Part of this money was given to them by Tyler, Emily's brother. He handed them a gift wrapped box containing 500 one dollar bills.

After the wedding, the couple- the Bowers-(still hard for me to get used to) left for the Benson Hotel and the next day went to the coast for a few evenings.

Once the wedding was over, I relaxed for a day or two. After that, it was on to dinners, coffee dates, lunches, shopping trips. I took a few friends to Bonneville Hot springs to show my appreciation for all the help they have been to us since we've been gone. They helped with our mail, our banking, our taxes, creating invitations, running countless errands and conveying countless messages. Basically doing our bidding for the last 8 months. My "girls" and i all went to dinner at Tad's Chicken and Dumplings. Other friends took us out to Marrakesh ( the restaraunt, not the city...) for my birthday, we were invited to dinner at the home of our friends Jane and Lee, lunch with people at nicholas's and Mexican dinners at El Tapatio twice ( there is no Mexican food in the yucatan, only mayan. We had to go to Portland to eat mexican!). Getting the picture? it was a food orgy!

The last night we went back to our sons house. We went to dinner with the whole family, new son in law, grandson and friends Ron and Quinton. I stayed up till 1:30 watching Benicio del toro turn back and forth from man to werewolf and finally went to sleep. Tyler and tyson took us to the airport and 20 min later i had to call and ask him to bring the laptop. Luckily i realized it had been left behind BEFORE we got on the plane...

So, here i am, back in our little house in Santa Clara. The yard looked like an abandoned home when we pulled in yesterday. The rains finally came about a week ago. The dead, brown, burning landscape has rapidly transformed into a lush, green almost boglike terrain. The yard looks like it has a lawn from all the weeds that are sprouting, the manglar is so high we had a crab running around our backyard this mornin,. the swimming pool is full to the absolute brim and the lagoons across the street will spill over and flood the road if it rains anytime soon. Everything can change so rapidly. we picked up Lucky from marcie. He has grown an incredible amount in a month. She said he got very excited when he heard the truck pull up. His laying out on the front porch now, right at home.

We were both so overwhelmed by all the love we were shown in portland. The car, the great house, the meals, the calls, the meetings. It was hard to leave. But change is good right? I now have a son in law and we are about to start work on a little guest house. Ron will be down on Aug. 1st, Maggi will be here in Oct., the dog will continue to grow and life goes on...

Thanks for participating with me.....:)

Where to begin....

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!!!

lets see...

You'll have to bear with me today. I've been up since 5 am (it's 8:30) so i'm a little scattered. I've been waking up periodically obsessing about some aspect of my daughters' wedding. Strangely enough, about the same time I started experiencing this, I developed a rash on the ring finger of my left hand. I actually had to remove my wedding band. It has now spread to the finger next to it and some nights I wake myself up digging crazily at my own flesh. Enough on that topic....
Before I go any further, let me update you on a couple of things. First, the trash. As you recall, ( at least my regular followers..) the president, Alvaro, promised garbage barrels for Semana santa. I'm happy to report that he followed through on that. And it's a good thing because that 2 weeks, we were FLOODED with people. I was in Portland for the first week (luckily) but on the second, I was having tea one morning and staring out the window at my lovely view. Before my tea was half empty...(or, half full..) I had counted 8 bus loads of people. thats busloads of people coming IN to town...and that was in 10 min or so. That gives you some idea of the volume of people that come in. Think spring break. Thats what semana santa is. So, the barrels were delivered then taken away. Too bad because there is still the problem of local trash. ( speaking of local trash- i see Sam Adams is trying to push light rail down the throats of lake oswego-ites who don't want it...and how much will that cost?) There is nothing new happening at the dump either. Same old swarm of vultures, fish carcasses and plastics strewn around and flying in the ever present ocean breezes. One thing at a time I guess. Alvaro tried to blame the garbage situation on the "culture" of the local people saying they needed to be educated about littering ( he lives 10 miles away..) politician talk for "I'm probably not really going to do much of anything.."
I will say though, judging by my neighbors ( it's the first time we've ever seen anyone there), i'd have to say he's right. They just opened the back door and let it fly. well, in all fairness , it WAS in a vague pile and they burned it before they left. Well, most of it...what hadn't blown out into the yard...
Second update...i think I mentioned the circus being in Cabsahcab? It has now arrived in Dzidzantun. We went in to get some groceries and saw a yak tied up at the corner of the vacant lot ( where rodeos, bullfights, lariet competitions and apparently circuses are held). There are several garbage barrells there....
Before i forget, I want to share with you a pondering of mine. As the guys were slugging around buckets of cement the other day and doing finish work on the pool in the blazing sun, I was thinking about ...how shall I put it nicely....misinformed people who throw around phrases like "lazy mexicans". Now, since i only live in a small (but safe )corner of mexico i can't speak about an entire population. What i CAN tell you is they are extremely hardworking when they work. They sweat so much and do such backbreaking work, i don't know what keeps them from dropping . They seldom eat much during the day and seldom have tools that could make the job easier. They are willing to dive for octopus or walk through the mud flats for hours digging up little shelled creatures then spend hours shucking for a thimbleful of meat. After a day of that, they may make the equivilant of $7.00. The difference that i see, is they work for what they need not for the sake of working. they may work a few days or weeks then take a break. I think I've touched on this before. i'm not saying they don't have ambition, they are easily satisfied. I'm curious about how many people have ulcers.... Sorry, this is becoming one of those lack of sleep tangents.....
On to flamingos- they are coming back. Now, we haven't had rain here in months so the manglar- the shallows where the birds feed- are bone dry. I hear the flamingos flying over every morning, honking as they go like Canadian geese. When the rains come back, the swamp will fill and they'll land. May 1st is the official start of the hurricane season so the rains can't be too far behind. we were discussing hurricanes with the guys the other day. Isadore was the last one that hit here about 8 years ago. It flooded everything all the way into Dzidzantun. The houses, all the houses actually, withstood the winds but 5 ft of sea ( with shells, crabs, fish, seaweed, sand) washed through all of the Santa Clara dwellings. What kind of a clean up will that be?! Good thing we got our hurricane insurance. It cost us about $173.00. You have to get it by May 1st or you can't get it.
Lastly, a number of folks we've gotten to know have left or are leaving. They will return in Sept. or Oct. They find it too hot here in the summer. We can feel left behind or more like we are holding down the fort. We stick to our routine of coming in on Thur., doing city things like going to the library, shopping, going to Home Depot, out for pizza. on fri. we go back to our peaceful home at the beach with the birds in the yard and a little pool out back. Thanks to home depot, that yard will include a fabulously fragrant magnolia. Should Mr. Iguana decide it's his new favorite, he may find himself on a one way trip to the realm of fish carcasses and burning plastics.....

Houston, heat and the circus

So, once again I failed to post anything last week...my excuse this time is that i went to oregon. Flew up for 6 days to help my daughter with some wedding planning.
I had an 8 hr layover in Houston. This frequently happens on the way up or the way back, sometimes both. I've logged a lot of hours in that airport. i've thought about getting a part time position at the L'Occitane shop because I go in there at least 3 times during my "visit" to put on hand lotion. I could be making some pocket money while im there. I will say, you can get a great egg,bacon and cheese breakfast sandwich on a lovely fresh roll for around $3.00. For airport food thats a steal...They still inform you the color of the days terror alert there. they did away ( since bush is out ) with saying if you talk badly about the president you may be arrested or detained. Honest to god they used to say that. I'm sitting there reading a New York Times someone had left behind (if i'd have gotten that job at L'Occitane i could have bought my own...). Article after article involving bad economies. A country...in the Ukraine? can't remember...is running out of hard currency, old people may have to pay their own medical, even china is having finacial problems, Portugal may go under because they are not getting a bail out from some other country....article after article...then there's the article about how the rich will not get their taxes increased and as i flip the page there is a department store add for a pair of "peek-a-boo Chanel booties" for $3600.00....THAT IS NOT A TYPO!!!! $3600.00 for a pair of shoes. Does anyone else find this grotesquely offensive!? And if not, WHY NOT!!!Ahhhh...it's a mad, mad world we're living in.....I have two words ...SALES TAX. Its really the only fair way to make the rich pay. They find loopholes in everything else. If you are out there buying $3600.00 shoes then by god you can pay a heftysales tax..what's that? Then you can't afford the $4500.00 matching hand bag? You poor thing,,how WILL you survive...i think people who buy hand bags and shoes that cost that much should be made to eat them...and I think we should form a task force of people to do it..lets say..people forced to mine diamonds, people forced to sell their daughters so that the rest of their children can eat, people who spend their whole lives on a piece of cardboard in India, people who have to walk 10 miles a day to get water. We'll be humane- we'll give them condiments.....OK, OK...I'll stop......
On to the heat...luckily, we don't have any jokesters around asking "hot enough for ya?!" with a big dopey grin on their face. It was 111 degrees yesterday. That was in merida and we are at the coast so we were a bit cooler. All i could do was lay in a hammock in the bedroom. It was too hot to lay on the bed. Unfortunately, the pool is not done......sometimes work here is a slow process...could have something to do with it being really HOT! Just a guess...it's probably pretty hard to see what you're doing when sweat is rolling into your eyes. Or possibly your focus is being disracted by the idea of "I wonder if I could hook up a water I.V. ?" As we headed into merida today ,the temperature in the upper 90's, we drove through Cansahcab. Its a village of maybe a thousand people. Little old ladies wear traditional, embroidered dresses. Trici Taxis (3 wheeled bicycles) line up around the square, the drivers swapping stories while they wait for their next customer. Folks of all ages on bicycles ride here and there with little bags of tortillas on their handlebars. As we round the bend, we see -what?- a zebra. Tied up next to the road eating grass. Not what one would expect to see along the road in Cansahcab. It was very surreal. As we drive by, I see horses and...a camel...a baby elephant...curiouser and curiouser...then i spy ( just after wiping the sweat from my face with a kerchief) a reindeer....a young, very thin reindeer....in cansahcab...in the Yucatan....I'll tell ya, very little really shocks me anymore. I must be getting to the point where the bizarre is the norm. i'll tell you what though, if one of those animal handlers would have been wearing a pair of peek-a-boo chanel booties, i would have totally freaked out.......

Garbage and other topics...

First of all, I apologize for leaving you all with that empty feeling last week.....I must say, this heat sometimes takes it out of me! That is NOT a complaint about the heat either...when i see day after day of 40 something degrees in portland, I'll take a small case of heat stroke....and this is only April. " May is the really hot month " we hear over and over. We've been here many times in june and it was never what I would call unbearably hot so i think we'll be fine. However, we did decide to put in a "dip" pool. The name tells you what its for- to get in, get wet, cool off. No laps, diving, pool toys...just a cooling dip. About 4 ft deep with a nice wide edge around it for sitting or laying ( i'll post a picture when it's done). The fellas started working. They never cease to amaze me. first of all, just going out to water overheats me. Standing in the sun with a hose in my hand for too long and my face is beet red and me eyes are stinging from the sweat rolling down my forhead into them. these guys are in full sun for hours. Lots of digging, measuring, carrying of heavy things.....After seeing some of the pyramids around here then watching them work..its the same construction! They use whatever is available. Anything is a tool. This time i saw them get out a tube of clear plastic maybe 20 feet long and about as big around as a straw. They stuck it in the cistern and got some siphon action going to fill it with water. Now, some of you guys might have seen this before but I was mesmerized. They used it as a sort of level. The ground out back slopes so they used it to adjust for that. One guy went to one point and held it in place while the other squatted on the other side at an opposite point. They somehow held them in place and marked a spot. They also incorporated several pieces of fishing line with rocks hanging from them and used a sharpie to mark spots where the fishing line intersected- voila! Theres a pool. Now, while all of these fascinating events were transpiring, a material delivery truck arrived. It was one of those trucks that ramble down the road sideways and are half rusted out with various stickers placed in strategic spots ( i think this is what really holds them together...). About 4 guys started unloading concrete blocks, gravel, cement. John went out to supervise and called to me "Jill! come check this out!" I round the back of the house to see them all standing around a cardboard box with a frayed, yellow rope tied around it. One young guy is carefully prying open a corner of the cardboard. A snout with a couple of beady, black eyes came peering out..."what is it? A puppy?" I ask? " (in spanish) "no, no no!" they all echo...a bit more head is exposed and i see fur and no, its definately not a puppy...but what the hell is it? "que es?" what is it....a flurry of words and gestures involving biting motions and vigorous displays of teeth gnashing ensue...the word peligosa is thrown out ( which means dangerous) but nobody can tell me what the viscous creature is called. The gist is that they found this creature on the road while on their way to our house and decided it was a good idea to catch it and put it in a box. " porque?" why? ( this did not seem a good idea to me at all in fact im wondering when they will be leaving and taking the box with them.....). i then heard a round of explanations involving a dog. A fight? like to bet on? No..for entertainment? no....im sorry readers, but the name of the creature and what they intended to do with it shall remain a mystery. I have looked on line to find animals of the yucatan....almost nothing...books on animals of the yucatan? almost nothing. I've been thinking i should contact Smithsonian or National Geographic and give them a heads up that there is a vast array of animals, reptiles and insects that are virtually uncatalogued down here.Even the natives don't know what these things are called! hey, if they haven't been named yet i can name them whatever i want right? isn't that the honor of the person discovering the thing? I could be naming all kinds of things! I was having this conversation with a guy who lives in Santa Clara. He and his wife moved down from Georgia with their two small children ( who are now bilingual). When i told him I wanted to find a book he said 'good luck'. he'd been trying to find one too. He and his wife have spearheaded our recent campaign to get a better garbage system.Currently, we are working with a designated dumping area where people bring their trash ( concrete rubble, household trash, piles of fish from the local restaraunt...)and they get it sometimes merely in the general vicinity of the designated area. Some feel the area OUTSIDE the dump is close enough. this is relatively new and hopefully not a trend. I will say there is a LOT less garbage in our area then some Ive seen in mexico, but there is no recycling and a lot of burning of plastics. So between this guy Jason and his wife, john and i , we have gotten a large portion of the residents of Santa Clara to attend a meeting with the municipal presidente at our house tomorrow night. We are hoping to establish a system where the trash will be seperated, plastics and metals sold, and the rest disposed of in a non toxic fashion. Some of the gringos think the locals don't care about the burning of plastics (stereotyping...)but thats not true. they know its not good and dont like it either. Its just very difficult to get things accomplished because there is a lot of corruption( politicians are politicians wherever you go!) and little follow through. I'm trying to remain hopeful and positive about the outcome. I'll let you know. Tonight is meeting night. After attending the business meeting a couple of weeks ago, there are some format changes (yes, i did have something to do with that.....)We will now have a different chair person once a month. Currently, the secretary has people do the readings then-the meeting is open! no sharing, no nothing. It has been really hard to get to know people because you never hear their story. I've never seen anything like it. So once a month it will be a ...normal format and tonights the night! And who might it be who's chairing? Yes! yours truly..... so there is my update...people ask "are you bored?' ha! just like the song says" if you're bored then you're boring". How can i be bored when there are crazy animals to deal with, fish garbage to categorize, corrupt presidentes to entertain and meeting formats to challenge?! All this in 100 plus degree heat too, I might add.....

Whew!

Okie dokie.....aren't we glad THATS over! So, where did I leave you...ah yes, Eduardo was just about to arrive......

So, he was a very nice man who did not clearly understand what we were looking for....when we explained the situation, he was as unclear as we were! Why was i not surprised...im telling you, this is a mystery indeed...An hour or so later, my friend called to see how it was going. after updating her she said 'oh thats it..we are calling my lawyer. All this running around will make you crazy." So, long story somewhat shortened, we called the lawyer and after talking with him realized everyone we had spoken with had a bit of truth to their story. If you bring your car in with a permit, you dont have to worry about it IF you have an FM 3 ( we have an FM 2). You DO need to legalize your car IF your are bringing or have brought it across the border while you are in possession of an FM2 and this costs a lot of money. In our case, because we brought it over when we were tourists and now we are full time residents, there is NO way to make the car legal........The lawyer informed us that there is a pretty good chance that as long as we only drive in the state of Yucatan ( which borders on a state of grace...) we should be OK because they arent that familiar with that particular law but if we go to another state and get stopped and they DO know, they will keep the truck and there be nothing we can do. Now that puts a spin on the insurance. there is enough of this situation going around that they ask you "is it legal?" when you ask about insuring your vehicle. So, yes, we have insurance now. Today is the second, when the old policy expires and as of yesterday, we have a new policy. It cost us around $900 for a year. End of the truck saga.......good, because it really was not very interesting.

Next topic..we had another visitor, our friend Aleka. Thats her in the picture. Lovely young woman who is 2 months shy of being a doctor. She was here for 5 days. took her to the airport this morning. Shes bound for Oaxaca where she will work in a clinic for the next month ( besides being really smart and pretty she is bi-lingual ). In 2 months she will begin working as a doc in San Francisco. One of the things i really miss about being here is that, while we've met some really nice folks here, none of them are under 50. At home I hung out with some young people ( wow, THAT makes me sound old...) including my kids and i really miss it. So it almost felt a little like hanging out with my daughter. In fact, most people thought I was her mother, which i took as quite a compliment. While she was here, we went to visit a friend. i drove there. I actually knew how to get there and felt very comfortable doing so. The traffic doesn't freak me out at all now and i can actually get my bearings ( within a certain area of town mind you). Its kind of like if i knew and stayed in down town but could find my way around inner southeast. baby steps......I drove through the heart of the market when we left her house, found a place to park, walked around the market ( it was 104 degrees) returned to the lot, got the car and returned to the hotel. You just don't KNOW what a big deal that is! I feel such a sense of accomplishment. What a big girl I am.....when we first got here, i went to the market with some ladies and was horrified by the traffic and the throngs of people. I told the woman driving how hard core I thought she was that she could navigate that madness un-ruffled. Today, I AM THAT WOMAN!Yes...AND I know how to get to the airport...wow...but hey, if you're coming, don't expect me to pick you up if its dark. Im not there yet.

My friend and I also drove to Uxmal which is a little over an hour away. it is a huge ruin-as big as Chichen itza but not as innundated with tourists. Amazing architecture and the air resembled the inside of...lets see...a smelter? a blast furnace? the 6th level of hell? We were there about 2 hours and by the time we got back to merida ( which, might I add we managed effortlessly....)we were worn out.

So there it is, another week in Mexico, a few more challenges met...still no regrets, still lovin' being here. Next challenge: helping my daughter arrange a wedding from thousands of miles away...but hey, if I can drive the market, I can do ANYTHING!!!