Today I moved Frida into our bedroom; she had become comfortable in her old room and didn’t run from us when we entered anymore. But now we are going to have a full house and need her room. And now that she is in a new place she is all discombobulated again and is hiding fiercely. I will have to banish Sweet Pickle to the Storyteller’s room for a few nights—thank goodness for his kindness and advice on training cats or we never would have gotten so far. I think getting used to new digs and a new dog at the same time would probably be the last straw for her! I hope this will eventually work; she just may be one of those cats that just hides all the time.
Lord knows Winnie is doing his best to convince her that it is all cool. He has slid under furniture that is too low for him to get under to talk to her, has batted a ping pong ball all over the room to lure her out, and when that has failed has just sat and meowed plaintively until she has finally came out. It’s pretty amazing to watch what an affect he has on her and how responsive she is to him. He inspected the new larger litter box I got out and indicated it would be fine by immediately jumping into it and pawing imaginary litter around, then he felt she should know where to eat so he jumped up on the counter to show her his bowl and sat back contentedly while I filled her bowl and watched her eat. I have never seen a cat work so hard at hospitality to another animal. I hope we are somewhat settled down before next Monday when the bulk of our guests will arrive.
One thing nice thing this time about having a houseful of guests is I know these girls can handle all the cleaning and feeding of people. We had a full house when Esperando and I were gone for three weeks and all reports were that everything went fine. Right now ordinarily I would start stressing, but they’ve all been through this drill before and so all I have to do is hand the cook the menu for the week and sit back and let them do the work. Amaaaaazing. I could never have imagined how capable they would be. How lucky I am to have such great employees.
October 16, 2008
October 13, 2008
A Day at the Beach
Yesterday Esperando and I spent exploring the beaches at Punto Chivato. Clever Esperando went to Google Earth to look for a beach that someone had told him about north of where we usually go. From Google Earth he could pretty much tell what road to take to get us there—thank you Google Earth! The road was windy and rocky, and it’s a good thing we had 4-wheel drive. At the beach, the waves were wild and wind driven. The sight of the raw power of the ocean was awesome. We thought the storm might have washed stuff in, and we did see lots of dead puffer fish. This beach is has rocks and shell fragments instead of sand, but interestingly these have all been worn to smooth ovals with the heavy action of the surf. So you have these beautiful polished fragments of rock and shell collected in large masses to rake through. I call this beach Rock Beach.
We spent about an hour walking around and taking pictures, then went back up over the hill to the beach we know that I call Sandy Beach near the Italian hotel, Posada de las Flores. This beach has very fine pale grey sand and some nice shells. The storm had wiped the beach clean as a slate. This beach is on a kind of mini peninsula, and it became apparent that the surf had washed over the entire little peninsula during the hurricane. All the shells had been washed to the other side of the peninsula and were strewn across the sand by the tide. Lots of them were older worn out shells that must have been submerged for some period of time as they were green or grey and not very attractive. We had our lunch there as the ocean was much calmer on this side.
We thought about going home then, but I remembered there was supposed to be a great shell beach on the southwest end of the development, so we set off in that direction to see what was at the other end. We found the last house in the development and took the road to it. As I have said previously this community is the kind of place people come to stay for about 1 month each year, so here are all these nice homes sitting around empty. Its kind of sad. Anyway, we drove down to the beach and got out to explore another fine beach. This one had lava flows and potential tide pools on the left side and a beautiful sandy beach COVERED with shells on the right side. I picked up about 10 perfect murex shells, a fragile and intact pinshell, and some I don’t know. It was a pretty incredible event—nothing like going shopping for free!
We finally decided to head for home and got back on the highway; it was then we saw how strong the wind was and how churned up the sea was for it. Hugh white caps topped the very dark blue water. The wind has continued all night and the temperature has dropped dramatically—it was 70F as a low last night and we could sleep comfortably without air conditioning or fan! Apparently this is normal fall weather here. Today it is even more windy if that is possible, and fine dust is filtering into the house through windows and the doors. Ugh!
We spent about an hour walking around and taking pictures, then went back up over the hill to the beach we know that I call Sandy Beach near the Italian hotel, Posada de las Flores. This beach has very fine pale grey sand and some nice shells. The storm had wiped the beach clean as a slate. This beach is on a kind of mini peninsula, and it became apparent that the surf had washed over the entire little peninsula during the hurricane. All the shells had been washed to the other side of the peninsula and were strewn across the sand by the tide. Lots of them were older worn out shells that must have been submerged for some period of time as they were green or grey and not very attractive. We had our lunch there as the ocean was much calmer on this side.
We thought about going home then, but I remembered there was supposed to be a great shell beach on the southwest end of the development, so we set off in that direction to see what was at the other end. We found the last house in the development and took the road to it. As I have said previously this community is the kind of place people come to stay for about 1 month each year, so here are all these nice homes sitting around empty. Its kind of sad. Anyway, we drove down to the beach and got out to explore another fine beach. This one had lava flows and potential tide pools on the left side and a beautiful sandy beach COVERED with shells on the right side. I picked up about 10 perfect murex shells, a fragile and intact pinshell, and some I don’t know. It was a pretty incredible event—nothing like going shopping for free!
We finally decided to head for home and got back on the highway; it was then we saw how strong the wind was and how churned up the sea was for it. Hugh white caps topped the very dark blue water. The wind has continued all night and the temperature has dropped dramatically—it was 70F as a low last night and we could sleep comfortably without air conditioning or fan! Apparently this is normal fall weather here. Today it is even more windy if that is possible, and fine dust is filtering into the house through windows and the doors. Ugh!
October 9, 2008
Them Phenomena
For a while now, we gringos have noticed that our lives seem run by a nebulous collective of “them” that make decisions for us without ever mentioning what they are up to. It gives our life here a mysterious undefinable quality which means every day is filled with large and small surprises. This applies to all aspects of living down here—a new maid is hired unbeknownst to the Duena, a man whom Esperando never hired quits his job in Mexicali and shows up on the doorstep to one day ready to start his new job, a guard is promoted to gardener based on a whimsical conversation, the cook sporatically makes a big addition to a carefully planned meal just when we thought she understood we were dieting, new gadgets appear in the kitchen and laundry room that were never approved. These are just a few small examples of everyday occurrences in the land of milk and honey.
Often things are left hanging such as cellular bills that don’t get paid so your phone doesn’t work, TVs that have been waiting to be installed for months because no one ever approved their installation, furniture that was ordered and paid for but never arrived—you never quite know if its in the works or just fell through the crack, but common sense leads you to believe the latter. Its essence is encapsulated by “who’s on first base.”
For the Type A personality this can lead to a nervous breakdown, but if you are more of a Type B and can learn to roll with the punches you can really develop a sense of true meaning of mañana.
Often things are left hanging such as cellular bills that don’t get paid so your phone doesn’t work, TVs that have been waiting to be installed for months because no one ever approved their installation, furniture that was ordered and paid for but never arrived—you never quite know if its in the works or just fell through the crack, but common sense leads you to believe the latter. Its essence is encapsulated by “who’s on first base.”
For the Type A personality this can lead to a nervous breakdown, but if you are more of a Type B and can learn to roll with the punches you can really develop a sense of true meaning of mañana.
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