My Animal Friends

I sneak a cat photo into a blog now and again, but I haven't posted many animal pics lately. I can't post other folks' animals without showing off ours too, and recently I took lots of pictures of our newest animal acquaintances.  I guess I could say I really enjoy photographing animals. Last year I lost a lot of photos in a computer crash, so this update is for me as well as friends who ask how the kitties are doing. 

First, some photos of the commando.

Buster, deep in thought.  Comandante-in-Chief. 

Princesa Sak Boox.

Weasel,  adopted by the comando and Busmo's best friend.

Busmo cleans up while relaxing in the hammock. 

Little Lorenza.  The littlest comandante. 

Moka and Mokito.  He's into the catnip.  Mom's not thrilled.

Moka, THE Comandante General y Inspectora Principal.

Mokito's favorite sleeping position. 

Below are some of the animals NOT part of our comando, but with whom we spent the holidays and we visit from time to time.  They're all unique characters, provide a lot of laughs and love for us, oh, and their owners are great people too.

Willy, the whispering cat with the softest little "meow".  He loves to play with Izzy, Poodle and Klem the dogs.

Willy enjoys a spell in the hammock.

Rodney and Cheetah cuddling on a cold morning.

Rodney, Simba and Cheetah.  Brothers and best friends.  They live with Jack, Lynx(not pictured) and the two Juniors(look like Rodney-not pictured).

Can't resist a spin in the dryer. (Just kidding!)

Jack the tough outdoor cat.

Jack the gentleman wants to go inside.

Izzy the eternally playful dog.

Poodle and Klem pondering the day.

And this is Rupert.  He is from France. He looks like he could speak French, doesn't he?

Idiomasyncracies: Ambition

This is something I was seriously lacking last week, ambition. In English that is. I tend to avoid using the word in Spanish because it just doesn’t translate.

In the American Heritage Dictionary, ambition is defined as: “An eager or strong desire to achieve something; The object or goal desired; A desire for exertion or activity.” That’s how I use the word, to express my degree of eagerness for an event or a wish.  My head cold zapped all my ambition last week and left me feeling rather worthless.

I think we English-speaking people are an ambitious bunch. We are goal oriented and like to discuss our desires and ambitions. We also tend to judge one another on our ambitions or lack of them. Isn’t the first question we ask a person we meet, “What do you do?” It seems that here in México people are more interested in where you come from than what you do. Maybe it is because so many of the people in this big city are from somewhere else and seem to have dabbled in several types of employment. Or maybe it's the kind of people I attract because of how I have lived. 

In the Velázquez Spanish-English Dictionary, ambition is defined as covetousness. Here in the Yucatán the word is used to express greed and avarice. If someone tells you how ambitious you are (¡Qué ambicioso eres!) that would be an insult. You’d have just been called a greedy bastard and might want to ask yourself, am I being ambicioso or am I simply ambitious?  Good luck explaining your way out of that one.  I recommend avoiding that conversational path. 

Write Fright :) Discombobulation

Yesterday I found a clean notebook and set out to blog about last month’s events. The pen saw the paper and (we all) felt a brief moment of panic. It’s the first time that’s happened to me in nearly four years. I know I set by the wayside all my half-written articles for the holidays, but write fright…that is just plain weird.


In November I suffered a severe reality check when I finally accepted the fact that I have gone through my one-time wad of money from the Hawaii home sale. With the settlement I was able to move here, buy a house and fix it up, create a new life and live for nearly three years. I am pleased with my decisions and I am happy. But I have a worrier’s genes and battle fret and anxiety all the time. A little herb helps with the anxiety, and Pablo helps me overcome worry. We make a good team and with his youthful energy, creative ideas, and stick-to-it-iveness along with my idealistic positivism, we make things happen! I am finally re-learning to NOT live to worry, but to just live to live. And this is a good thing because it was specifically THE POINT of the move.


Pablo and I invested time and money in the construction of four bodegas and ten rooms to rent. The project was completed in mid-2009 and it is now a source of income for us. The rentals are low-cost, simple rooms with only a bath and a bed. But they are always occupied, and are an excellent transitional place for some of the village folks who work in the city. Pablo’s vision is to see a medical clinic there one day. That is easier said than done, of course. There is no medical service out in San Pedro Nohpat or Kanasín, and our location is convenient for the folks in those surrounding areas. Pablo put the word out on the internet and has received a few interested callers from the medical profession. This is a live and learn project, and until it blossoms we collect rent money every month.

If you have been following this blog you know that we opened the swim school in March 2008. Since then, Pablo’s taught most of the kids in the neighborhood and some adults to swim. In 2009 the first cold front hit us early in October, putting a quick halt to all swimming activities until spring. Yucatecans are funny about swimming and the weather; it is strictly a summertime activity. We even had to shut out our faithful pool exercisers this winter because it got super-cold.

Earlier in ’09 I rented out the upstairs room, but that didn’t work out. I rented it to the wrong person and it put me off renting for a while. In November the reality check woke me up and I put the upstairs room as well as the two front living rooms on the internet to rent. The response was overwhelming, so much so that I made a couple overbooking errors. In the long run though, we have perfect renter #1 upstairs, an engineer from Mexico City. He decided to stay here for nine months. Up front is perfect renter #2, a young guy from Spain working toward his dive instructor’s ticket. He’s staying for four months. In the heat of it all, I ended up renting out another room, the “office”, to a Cowboys fan from San Diego(perfect renter #3). And when he departed, perfect renter #4 moved in, and is still in the office now. The ambience at the house is positive and friendly. The email inquiries were flying through November and December and interest continues to this day. If I owned the house next door I could probably rent that too! Pablo painted over the swimming school sign to make way for room rentals

Meanwhile, my reputation as the cat whisperer provoked a few opportunities for us to take care of pets over the holidays. This year the “sitting” responsibilities branched out to art galleries, houses, newly laid sods, dogs and iguanas. Over Christmas we each had to sleep at a different place, feed of a set of pets, water lawns, and come home to take care of our pets and renters as well. My writing was limited to emails. My internet time was consumed mostly by Farmville and Yoville because I was too scattered to write. Our holiday was a true trip to nowhere, because we had to pack suitcases and vacate our own bedroom due to my overbooking idiocy. We were living out of the car, but sleeping at the most incredible places, surrounded by amazing beauty and wonderfully appreciative animals.

Around the 10th of January things started mellowing out. All the owners came home. We unpacked our suitcases and moved back into our own room. The perfect renters are content, and peace has been restored on 75th Street. Now I find myself less drawn to Farmville, and more drawn to this blank paper. Time has come to move the miles of piles again, finish those unwritten articles, and rewrite the book I wrote. Or write another one. Try again, so to speak. I’ve been easing myself into writing mode again with insane blabbering emails, and today I had the wherewithal to sit here and publish this. Here’s hoping 2010 is a better year for everyone, a great year that draws us together as people, to love and live and let love and let live. ¡Próspero Año Nuevo!

Idiomasyncracies: Jamón ó Jabón

In my opinion Spanish is a fascinating language and living in this environment is a constant learning experience.  As I strive toward fluency I am often humbled or even humiliated by my inability to communicate certain concepts.  On occasion I misuse words and confuse vocabulary to the point of being scoffed or laughed at.  My plan is to post a series of tidbits I've learned, and continue to learn, about these "idiomasyncracies".  Idioma means language in Spanish + idiosyncracies are life's little oddities.  Thus, the little oddities in Spanish. 

**One additional new word introduced here is autoventures:  automobile + adventures (lengthy insane car trips throughout Mexico and Central America).

Still one of my favorite stories, this first example is a scenario that took place over 30 years ago on one of my earliest Mexican autoventures.  My brother, a girlfriend and I drove from Los Angeles down the entire Baja Peninsula, ferried from La Paz to Mazatlán, and were on our way to the town of Tequila, Jalisco, one day, when we stopped for breakfast.

My brother and Karen had very limited Spanish speaking abilities.  That means I did most of the talking the first week and a half of the trip.  In 1976 my Spanish sucked, but I didn't know that then.  It got us by, and more importantly we all usually got whatever we needed, or close to it anyhow.

On this occasion my brother decided he wanted to start speaking for himself.  He said he'd order his own breakfast.  Whe the waiter asked him what he wanted, he proudly said, "Quiero huevos con jabón."

While my brother was concentrating on the words to communicate the style he'd like his eggs prepared, the waiter and I burst into laughter.  My brother's face turned crimson.  "What did I say wrong?"

"You just ordered eggs with soap."

Bro swallowed his pride and quietly corrected himself, "Huevos revueltos con jamón, por favor."  That is scrambled eggs with ham.  He probably wanted his eggs over easy, but that would have added more confusion. 

In Spanish there is often a doble sentido (double meaning) involved adding to the chiste (joke).  In this case huevos is one of several slang terms for testicles, and "I want (my) balls with soap"  can open up one's imagination. 

The way I always remembered this idiomasyncracy was:  JaMón....haM.     JaBón....Bubbles....Soap.  You have to trick your mind into remembering some of these things.

Feliz Navidad

The Christmas Canoe.

We are spending the holidays at home this year.  We have house guests and thought this year we would show some Christmas spirit by decorating a little. That means I didn't unpack all the goodies this year and go crazy.  It is a subtle approach this season.   Inside the house we created this little showcase. 

We got carried away lighting up the plants outside in the zen garden and only had this one white strand left.  It is festive.

I have a collection of ornaments I either made or was given over the past several decades.  The ones pictured above are from seed pods, shells and other treasures I've collected.  I went through a long stretch where I made different ornaments every year and gave them as gifts to my friends. 

Father Christmas has done a lot of traveling and is a bit worn, but he is still looking great and found a place in the dining room.

The angel made of philadendron sheathes is still guarding the kitchen year round, and now she has some of her old friends hanging out with her. 

The little bells below are made from regular sized styrofoam cups.  I think we made these in the early 1990's when Jim was working on the research vessel.  My friends and I painted the cups and the crew took them down in a dive bag attached to a submarine.  They went to visit Loihi, the newest Hawaiian island.  It is 3000 feet below the surface.  The air is sucked out of the styrofoam with the water pressure and they come up shrunken cups.  That was a fun year painting those cups.  Putting up the ornaments brings back a lot of memories.  For me especially, since each and every ornament I own means something to me.  I have a few Christmas balls, but even those are unique and were special gifts.  So, simple it may be, still it seems to add a bit of holiday cheer to the household. 

It Is Too Cold

When you read this morning's rant, just remember I am not one of the bloggers who whined about the heat this summer.  It is 7:20 am and 57°F.  The coldest hour was in the middle of the night.  That means it dipped way below 14°C, as it reads now.   We usually swim at 8am.  The swimming pool is holding tough during these cold nights, even with the ground cooling, it's maintaining 79°F. 

It was too cold even for Mikey, who swam in the 75°F pool  last year, when we were just learning the solar energy system. Today he is waiting until the sun is shining and we can warm up the pool before jumping in.  For me it is just impossible when it is 20 degrees colder outside than inside the pool.  When I weighed in at 162 I could have done it, but at 115 I don't have enough body fat to keep me warm.  Nor do I have a wetsuit.

What you folks up in the REAL cold weather need to consider when we whine about the cold, is to ask yourself this question:  Do you keep your house at 50°F all winter? 

No.  The heaters go on and the houses remain around 78°F, a temperature which seems to suit everyone.  So imagine you are sleeping in your light nightie, with a summer comforter and a sheet, and your heat goes off.  The temperature is dropping outside and inside.  You put on your "warmies", socks, sweats, etc., to stay warm.  The floor is cold, the toilet seat....forget about it.

Creativity Spurt

Crafting and creativity come in spurts for me.  I have tons of beads and shells and things I have collected to use to "make things".  With Pablo painting, me trying to discipline myself certain hours to write as well as relax, and now the holiday season upon us, I decided to break out all my stuff and see what I could come up with. 


On our trip to Honduras last year we found this little clay maker in La Calma, Honduras.  Last year during a creative spurt a couple friends and I painted most of the beads and I made bracelets and keychains using macrame.  This week I sat down to try to replicate one of the wind chimes that Mercedes, the clay kilner, had hanging in her little hut.  This is the result.

The other project I took on was making a mobile.  I used to love to make these mobiles but it has now been years since I have attempted it.  This one below is made from black coral pieces holding sea urchin skeletons and decorated with some painted clay beads from Honduras.  It has a good movement and is hard to show in a photo.  I was hoping to make more of these, but not very many urchin skeletons made it home from Panamá.