DUH, AH3N2, Hermine and Gaston

Alternate Title: Much Ado About Nothing

I used to be an overachiever.  I'd stay at work until it was all done or I was half blind.  I'd keep my house super clean, other than the miles of piles that follow me around and usually consist of half written notebooks.  I've never been one to lose a single minute of a single day by RELAXING.  I don't know how to relax, and that is one of my goals living here....to learn to relax. The way I see it I can relax when my first pension and SS checks are deposited into my accounts and I don't have to worry about survival.  That will be in April of 2015...three years after the proposed end of the world. I feel like I am waiting for Godot.  It's not that I jumped the gun quitting my job and running away from Hawaii or anything....                

Now I find myself in a constant state of DUH.  I stare into space wondering what I should be doing.  Then I remember....check the emails, check the weather,bring the laundry down, wash some more and climb the pyramid stairs and hang it, straigthen up the kitchen, clean the cat boxes, clean the cat eating station, find some cat crunchies today, don't forget to go get the earrings (more on that later),  forget the farm, take the notebooks and get outside while it is still summer!  It is not as hot as our usual summer so I am not as inclined to live in the pool.  If I don't exert myself, I don't even start sweating!  This is definitely a different kind of summer in the Yucatán than my previous three.

I also find myself WAITING.  Today, I am waiting to see what Nacho, my Spanish renter in the front rooms, is going to do.  His plane leaves from Cancun tonight.  He was due to move out on the 2nd.  He isn't even packed.  Perhaps it would be a good idea for me to NOT leave the house today until he does, so I can talk to him about the extra days, the broken screen, and the numerous pairs of sheets and plastic containers his girlfriend cost me, get my keys back and wish him well. If he doesn't go back to Spain today, and needs another month to pack....then he can pay rent and I won't be waiting for that!

I'm waiting for LA BANDA (the guys) to leave for work this morning. They left a huge mess yesterday morning. Saturday night they played poker outside, and they left that mess too.  Pablo came down with a flu or cold this weekend, and requested a second pot of chicken soup.  Before I could use my kitchen, I had to clean up the kind of mess I had to grin and bear, hold my nose, and just bite the bullet until I could see the counter space again.  So I am staying in my room until they leave, hoping and praying they look around and realize they can't leave the house like this. 

I am waiting for La Banda's secretary to send us an email telling us we can move half of them up front for a little extra money, to make everyone comfortable and better accommodate their tools and supplies.  They have overtaken the entire property.  I stubbed my toe on some large steel thing that belongs on top of a 30 foot pole trying to get the phone to one of the guys.  It's not easy to housemother this many guys. Especially Mexican guys. I am generalizing here:  Mexican moms pick up after their boys and teach them absolutely nothing about housekeeping.  They all seem to know how to cook, though, and I find that interesting.  For someone who's not a mother, I sure have a lot of kids to take care of. 

I made the mistake of touching a basket of food, mostly bread, on the counter. It was hot.  HOT.  It was a package of old tortillas turning into penicillin. Did you know that process is a hot one?  Would it have spontaneously combusted everything on the counter had I waited?  That might be a good idea.  Ahhh...I hear the rattling of empty beer bottles now. I hope they are cleaning up. Unfortunately the one who DIDN'T make the mess is cleaning it up. Doesn't seem fair.  Oh now I hear the clinking of washing dishes. These are good sounds.  I might be willing to go out of my room after all.

Pablo may have had a touch of the new flu!  The A H3N2 flu.  The newspaper said it won't be as serious as the A H1N1 flu that scared off our tourists last year and caused a pandemic panic.  This one was first noticed in Australia and Europe.  We had one tenant arrive last week who'd been sick for over two weeks.  Pablo may have contracted it from him or he could have gotten it in the school, germ central.  If you feel achy all over, not sure if you are getting a cold, flu or just plain dying, it is likely this new illness. It's specialty, like its predecessor, is respiratory problems.  They just changed the law here and a prescription is needed for antibiotics.  Since medical care isn't always available, the folks here used ampicillin for any and all unknown ailments. Evidently they have built up too much resistance, so they took the antibiotics away from them. This comes at a time when the campesinos will be showing up with flu symptoms and have no recourse. 

It is cooler than usual this morning but super humid, which makes me cold. I checked the weather and the system to our west did form into tropical storm HERMINE.  I can't pronounce that one, so I am glad it is heading north and not east or we'd be eating hermine shit later today.  As it is, the areas it threatens don't need any more water; we see pictures of them wading through waist deep water in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and Tabasco on the news every day.  I don't think it's stopped raining there since the first storms rolled through and trashed Monterey back in late June.

The remnants of Gaston are about to enter the Caribbean, where the water temperature and conditions are perfect for tropical storm reformation. This is the first storm we will have to watch in the Yucatán.  The others have luckily headed north and toward open water.  September is prime hurricane season here because the water temperatures of the gulf  and the Caribbean are a toasty 87.8°F (31°F).  Life could get real interesting on 75th Street.  Well, time's a wastin'....time to monitor the movements around the house today, pick up the weekend trash, etc....¡que desmadre!