Sidelined in Denver

Have you been missing me? I am in Denver getting teeth filled, bursitis arm attended to, eyes tested for new glasses, seeing more doctors than I can shake a stick at, hair cut and colored, toenails polished, and the list goes on. Its amazing how time consuming all of this is when you try to squeeze it all into two weeks, coupled with visiting your family and purchasing stuff you can’t get in Baja. I will stay behind here for a week longer while Esperando goes back to Santa Rosalia to see if our dog and cats are still alive.

We are both looking forward to meeting in San Diego next week for the drive back down Baja. We plan to load the truck up with lots of construction materials for Casa Abeja, i.e., water heater, toilet, weather stripping, bathroom hardware and so on, in addition to food and pet items we can’t get locally. Once we have got the car full of stuff we will meet up with my girlfriend of long standing, the Brainy Blonde, at the San Diego airport. The three of us will travel for a tasting jaunt through the Mexican wine country, dinner at Lajas (a fabled restaurant near Ensenada), and a whale watching tour at Ojo Liebre (eye of the jacket rabbit!) to observe gray whale mamas and babies in the bay.

Our Denver house is thankfully how we have left it thanks to our excellent caretaker. Denver has had a very dry year and very little rain. Yesterday’s chance for snow left us high and dry with a small handful of flakes encountered for 2 seconds on the way to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner. The mild weather is causing the plants to start leafing out early. This is the cruel aspect of life here, for undoubtably once everything has leafed out a heavy snow storm will come through and break the branches off all the trees. This happens just about every other year. In those years when the trees pass by unscathed by the snow, they generally fall victim to bad spring hail storms.

Most years I invest in ladybugs and praying mantis eggs for the roses in our back and front yards. When I started pruning and knocking leaves off the roses yesterday, I encountered a praying mantis egg that last year’s store bought mantis laid in our yard last fall. How exciting to have an ‘authentic’ egg and not have to purchase one, especially since they always sell out early.