Getting down to the wire

We will be driving back down to Baja next week. Today was my last day of physical therapy, grins! Of course I have to continue doing the exercises on my own now. Knowing me I probably won’t push as hard and if I get off on the wrong track and don’t realize I am doing the exercise the wrong way, there will be no one to correct me. We have to pack all my bands, pulley and large styrofoam tube—makes me feel like I am taking the whole nursing home with me. I am looking forward to the day I can move my arm in all directions and it doesn’t lock up or hurt as to how far it wants to bend. In the meantime tonite, I am having a wine party with my Mother and my neighbors, all other single girls. This seems to be a block of mostly single woman, funny isn’t it? All the other blocks appear to be families. The neighbor on my left never married, the neighbor on my right is getting divorced, and the neighbor just past her has been divorced for several years and now has a steady boyfriend; then there’s me—a mining ‘widow”.

Next Wednesday is the day! It will be nice to rejoin Esperando, but sadly after we drive down and have a week’s vacation in southern Baja, he will be deserting me again to go to Northern California for two weeks. We are going to stay in Cabo Pulmo and Todos Santos, both places we have never been. I am really looking forward to our stay in Cabo Pulmo at Diane Varney's El Encanto de Cabo Pulmo ever since I first saw it on the internet. This past week I have been busy buying, buying, buying stuff to take that we can’t get in Santa Rosalia—premium dog food, impossible-to-find-in-Baja premium cat food, cat toys, bird feeders, vacuum sealer and bags, fish fryer, face cream, hair dye (they don’t have blonde colors that work very well on gringos where we are), curtain rods, custom made blinds, more dishes for the guesthouse, and a slow cooker.

I still have to pack up all my clothes. I confess I have been a bad girl having gone on quite a spending spree while in Denver. Two weeks after my surgery Esperando and I were in REI and I was already trying on shirts, even though it meant I had to remove my sling. And with my Mother here visiting, she isn’t any good influence; she keeps wanting to go back to Chico’s for one last look at the sales rack. I sequester her in the largest fitting room, then race around the store looking for her size and my size, race back try on my clothes and dress again for another tour around the store. She is much slower trying on clothes, so it gives me quite a bit of time to comb every rack and make sure we haven’t missed anything. We made a pretty good haul several days ago.

Yesterday the flicker came back to destroy our house some more. Both Esperando and I thought they would only be a problem during breeding season, which we are now past. For the last two days I have been hearing tapping noises that sounded like them. The first time the dog immediately got alarmed and when I went out in the backyard to see if that’s where they were, he started barking aggressively at me. He followed me all over the yard barking. I had to yell at him to get him to shut up and by then whoever was tapping had stopped. Yesterday when I heard it again I was on the phone. This time I went out the front door and looked up at the balcony. Sure enough, there was a flicker on the edge of the upstairs balcony beating his beak against Esperando’s repair job. When I yelled at him and waved my arms he just stayed there. I went back inside and raced up the stairs to our bedroom, opened the door to the balcony bringing the dog along, and there was the flicker perched on an outdoor lamp. He must have been a young bird because he didn’t know enough to be scared of me and stayed there until I approached within 4 feet, yelling 'shoo' and waving my arms. I could see where he had put beak dents in about seven places, but nothing serious yet. Perhaps because he is so young I have been able to scare him away permanently. This wrecking of our house is a really serious situation.

On an additional sour note before I go, the mammagram people called this morning and said I have to come back in for additional imaging. I will have to wait and fret all weekend until Monday to get re-imaged and find out everything is ok. Neither my mother nor my sister nor any female antecedents in our family has ever had breast cancer. I don't intend to be the first!