Perra del día

Here's Winnie, an eight-week old puppy fostered by the daughter of my friend M. from the cooking club. Winnie could be part Dalmatian from the look of the spots beginning to show under her fur, and maybe part Jack Russell terrier. M. says she's adorable, very intelligent and ready for a good home.

I scare myself

 Boo! Scary kitty from the blog Thinning the Herd

Today the Spanish-word-for-the-day (a Google gadget) tickled me: asustarse, a reflexive verb* which literally means "to scare oneself."  When I think of all the times I get myself spooked, I think this could be one of my most useful words.

It's also the name of a favorite song, and I'm starting to learn it now, so I might have it down really well by Halloween. It's originally a Dan Hicks tune, but here's a version I like by Thomas Dolby. Note the chanted refrain at the end: "It's me I'm scared of..." ¡Por cierto, la verdad!

Underbed monster, from a photo gallery inspired by childhood fears, on the Geekologie blog

*Reflexive:  (of a verb or clause) having a reflexive pronoun as its object, e.g., wash oneself.

Saturday morning play dates

It all started with a dog about the size of a kitten, with a voice the size of three dogs. Akira, like most Mexican dogs, is allowed to run free in the parking lot chasing cats, and when I spotted her I fretted, gringo-style, about her safety. Soon I was talking with her owner M.,  a ten-year-old angel , daughter of my schoolteacher neighbors. Then one evening her mom and I had a backyard chat. There are four kids in the family, the youngest only five, and they all spend the entire day at the school, year-round except for holidays. Mom has no maid to clean the house, and though Dad does pitch in with the cooking and laundry, she has very little free time.

So last Saturday M. came over while the parents were at work, and we spent the morning brushing our dogs, and walking rescue dogs at the nearby kennel. I bought Akira a real dog collar and we found that she takes to the leash very well.

While I was fixing lunch, I could tell M. was shyly trying to make a request, so I stopped and asked her, "What would you like to do?" And she knocked my socks off with her reply: "Can I check my email?"


This Saturday she came over to join me for a grocery shopping expedition and her first guitar lesson on a little pink guitar. We covered tuning and the chords A, E and D, which I assured her would be all she'd need for many songs. She wants to bake lasagna, make clay sculpture, learn to sew, play American rock and roll songs... she brings out my inner ten-year-old.


Best of all, I'm getting to know my neighbors. M's mom speaks English and has already offered to help me with my Spanish.


So maybe it won't be quite such a loss when the snowbirds fly away over the next couple of weeks. I'll just invite M. over for a guitar-and-lasagna session.

Coming out to play

Funny how things just snowball sometimes. Top of the annual wish list was a circle of friends to make music with, and suddenly it's happening. I put out the word on the local internet forum that I wanted to have a guitar workshop. Some people started getting in touch and it eventually evolved into a jam at my house today, and got me invited to play dates at a beautiful, funky beach house every Thursday afternoon. And then I found out about another one on Fridays. So far we've had a good mix of beginners with one or two very patient and more advanced musicians. I get to sing, and if someone else joins in, I can harmonize. And today,  some icing on the already yummy cake: we had a mandolin player!

Last year I learned some songs with my friend Francisco but his repertoire was mostly out of my range of ability. He considered uncool the old AED and CFG-chord tunes that most of us novices cut our teeth on. Then he moved to Guadalajara, and the Capt and I went sailing. When we came home, the Capt started playing my guitar and that was that. But now I'm plunking away on a new one, sounding horrible but everyone assures me I'll improve if I practice enough. The calluses on my fingertips tell me I'm working hard.

One of the songs my friend Diana introduced me to is KD Lang's "Constant Craving," about the mysterious urge we all seem to be born with, that drives us to do great things, or make great mistakes.

"Maybe a great magnet pulls

All souls towards truth 

        Or maybe it is life itself  

        That feeds wisdom to its youth"

My playing may never be up to my expectations, I may always be dissatisfied with it, but as KD says, "...this is a human condition."

The bittersweet part is that everybody who's come out to play with me is leaving soon. Maybe we'll swap songs through the summer over the Internet and get back to it in October. Meanwhile I'm hoping to start learning more Spanish songs so I can still fit in somewhere, when the snowbirds have all flown north.

Oops!

Oops, I'm sorry, Jomamma and MX Sailor, I somehow deleted your comments and don't know how to get them back again. How rude!

Feliz Dia De La Mujer, Girlfriends!

Lisa Henderling

I'd never have known about it if I hadn't made a trip today with Jan to feed dogs in the wilds of La Manga, where the only two-legged soul around was Simon, an elderly, toothless gent, possibly the caretaker, who despite his solitude is a very with-it fellow. Last time we saw him he was lounging in front of his battered RV reading a Dan Brown novel in Spanish. This time he greeted us with the news, gleaned from the radio, that today is "Dia De La Mujer!" Otherwise known as International Women's Day. We should go celebrate, he advised.


Is there a "Dia del Hombre?" we asked, and then answered our own question. Every day is a Dia del Hombre. He concurred.

Inseparable

Better get out your hankies, dog lovers.

When our friend Tim was hospitalized with cancer, one great worry among his friends was his dog Podin, who was elderly and big as a Shetland pony.  A couple of people tried to foster him, but when he finally was taken back to the land where Tim had lived in his RV, Podin finally seemed satisfied. Then I got this email today from my friend Kris who lives on the same land:
"I just got word that Podin left us a few days ago to be with Tim.  He never went far from the house here at Renacimiento, and was found out on the highway.  They dug a big hole, as you can imagine, and when I get details will probably mark it with a stone of some sort.

"He did well here and will be missed by all.  I remember Tim telling me last year that he thought it would be Podin's last summer; so now they can be together."

¡Esfumarse!

Is the universe trying to tell me something about my spending habits? Am I unconsciously trying to halt the hemorrhaging of money? Have I not been showing enough gratitude for my abundance?

A month ago I had two ATM cards, one for our business account, one for my personal account. Somehow in the last two weeks I have lost them both.


Each time, the cards disappeared after I drew cash from one particular machine at an Oxxo. I know I didn't leave the card there, I've gotten very paranoid about machines eating my cards, after it happened once in Obregon. Yet somehow while I was putting pesos and card away in my wallet, the card vanished. Vaporized! Disappeared into a black hole! ¡Esfumarse! (I love that comforting Spanish expression, it means it made itself disappear, in a puff of smoke.) Poof!


This time, just to reinforce with a little extra pain the lesson that I must become more mindful, I will to have to pay my US bank $45 to wire funds to my Mexican bank.


From now on, when I go to the ATM, I will make believe I'm going to a shrine. Well, isn't it, in a way?  Before sticking in my card, I will say a prayer that the machine works, has the funds and will part with them. I will carefully watch each phase of the transaction on the screen, while also checking that I (and my PIN#) am not being observed. When/if the cash comes out I will say a prayer of thanks. I will then put the pesos in my wallet, take deep breaths (good in, evil out) while waiting for the card, and then if/when it pops out, I will kiss that #%@& little piece of plastic reverently, and carefully slip it into its designated slot in my wallet, with another gratitude prayer.  Just in case, I will look at the floor around me to make sure it hasn't somehow escaped.

If that doesn't work, I'll try flowers, incense, a candle and an appeal to St. Anthony, Patron Saint of Lost Items. "Tony, Tony, turn around, something's lost and must be found."

Dreams, Dogs, Oldies and Omelets

Dreams are coming true, and wishes fulfilled.  There's a little frisson of fear at how fast things are happening, as though I'm being carried along on a rapid current of events I only imagined weeks ago.

The little Mexican Army Corps of Engineers is transforming the entire back of the condo, going considerably beyond the modest original plans, and I only hope the final bill won't send me into shock. But I'm determined to get the exterior done, meeting the initial goal of protecting the condo from rainfall off the roof and from the parking lot, by redirecting it into a channel out to the arroyo. It's a mess right now, but one day all those broken eggs are going to produce a pretty good omelet.

Finishing the interior of the new space (previously a patio that turned into a wading pool when it rained), will be an ongoing project, but an idea is taking shape:  a music room, where friends can come and practice. I'm told the structure should offer very good acoustics. For now it could be a storeroom.

Meanwhile, we're having a jam for the 13th, so some of the self-taught guitar players in the area have a chance to learn and share a few new techniques and songs. Response wasn't overwhelming, so instead of renting space for it, we'll use my living room. Kristin's son Tony, who plays at various venues in town, promised to come work with us.

And... a bonus!  A novice guitarist named Art invited me to come jam at his house with another friend last Thursday, so I went, full of trepidation that these guys would lose patience with me. But it turned out to be fantastic fun! There were three of us, two singing in harmony, doing all the old moldies from the sixties and seventies: Eagles, James Taylor, Johnny Cash… And we get to do it again next Thursday!


Meanwhile, Diana from the cooking club has been bringing her guitar over twice a week for almost a month now. Like me, she's pretty much self-taught, doesn't get a lot of encouragement at home and finds practice time hard to come by. Unlike me, she's played with other guitarists a lot more, and sounds a lot better. We're working on songs in both English and Spanish, and next Thursday she's coming with me to Art's house so we'll have a foursome. Could be awesome. Or not...

Kristin operates the Canine Center locally known as Wagmore, but she's going to be out of commission for as much as eight weeks after major surgery, so she put out a call for dog-walkers. She takes in boarders, but the majority of the dogs at Wagmore are rescues waiting for adoption, or unadoptables that she has committed to taking care of the rest of their lives. She has a son and daughter and a helper who take shifts at the center, but there are never enough people to adequately exercise the dogs. The ones shown here are a little too young to walk, but they're growing fast.

So I've been doing some dog-walking… I need some exercise too. (Yes, I do have two of my own, and I promise I'm not neglecting them.) The first one they assigned me was a baby mastiff as big as I am! Quite an experience, just having that much dog at the end of the leash, but Ricco turned out to be a pussycat, plodding along at my side or even behind me instead of pulling me off the sidewalk. I'm working on teaching him to sit. Ricco is being boarded, so one day he won't be there anymore and I already know I'll miss him.

Yesterday morning the cooking club celebrated our victory at the Chili Cook-off with a free breakfast at Barracuda Bob's. Then last night the next-door neighbors invited me over for grilled yellow-tail tuna and we had a very pleasant evening getting better acquainted. Their renovation and mine are all part of the flood diversion plan so we've been working together for six weeks, but it was a pleasure to spend some time sharing our stories and ideas.

Temperatures here in San Carlos are now cool in the mornings and evenings, and hot in the afternoons, just the way I like it. Life is sweet.
P.S. Sorry I had to post all the photos at the top, but for some reason today Blogspot wouldn't let me put them elsewhere.)

Asian Babe Alert

I do love comments, and couldn't resist putting that flashing "I Love Comments" button on my page, but it's the old story of "Be careful what you wish for." The button's now history.

Not to be picky, but I'd like the comments to be somewhat relevant to my post, not just sales pitches. Lately I'm getting an awful lot of spam comments, much of it in Asian and possibly Indian script. The Capt advised me those were for porn sites, so I finally decided to confirm that info for myself (praying I wouldn't end up just inviting an avalanche of them) and sure enough, half-dressed Asian girls who looked about 12. Consider yourself warned.