Katrina it wasn't

...but Georgette brought a lot more than we were prepared for, and two feet of water inside our house damaged a lot more than we expected. I have had homes flooded before, but I've never been IN a flood. It was just so astonishingly fast!

The Capt was out on the boat, replacing a battery so the bilge pump would function and the boat wouldn't sink. 

It started as a trickle under the front door which was nothing unusual; we need to replace that door and the threshold. But while I went off to grab a couple of towels,  the trickle became a flash flood. Details are a little vague in my memory now,  I only recall sloshing around unplugging the computers, grabbing guitars, looking for large bags to carry crucial stuff out. Second-guessing a lot what constitutes crucial. And praying a lot. Shoes from the bottom of my closet, dog dishes and books floated by as I braced the front door shut again and locked it — the deadbolt held! I was furious with myself for not having filled the 15 sandbags we had in the closet, but I'm not sure they'd have made much difference.

Loaded with bags I waded across the parking lot in the downpour to Patricia's casa. She was home with her four kids, and she had some pots  on her living room floor to catch drips, but no other worries. She came back with me several times to carry more things. Then she kept Chica the rest of the day, and overnight.

Meanwhile, the Capt was struggling to get back to land in the middle of the storm, and looking forward to being warm and dry, but instead he waded into knee-deep disaster. He recovered pretty quickly and we began the long process of sweeping, squeegeeing and bailing the water back out of the house. What was left was a film of dark brown silt over everything. The bottom two shelves of each bookcase and kitchen cupboard, the bottom two drawers of every dresser and all their contents were covered with a layer of mud. The squeegee came in really handy for banishing that and we wished we had two.

The last two days have been a battle against mold, mildew and rust, with breaks to reconnect computers, phones, sound systems... The Capt was able to save one of our three amplifiers, my computer mouse and a few electrical gadgets I was sure we'd have to replace.

Our next-door neighbors, who are away for the summer, have a sump pump, which we used to pump water out of their patio and as much as we could out of their house. They had no silt. By the next morning it was all gone.

I have plenty to be grateful for:
• The Capt came home safe
• The electricity and water never shut down, even at the height of the storm. So afterward we were able to begin the cleaning and drying process immediately instead of living with the mud.
• My neighbor helped a great deal
• The whole rainstorm lasted no more than a few hours, instead of 36 hours like Jimena last year.
• My fridge didn't take in any water!
• The guitars and computers were saved.
• Our washer and dryer are toast, but we were able to go next door to wash all the clothes and linens that got wet.
• Only a couple of days ago I had moved my family photo albums to a higher (drier) shelf in the bookcase.
• We have flood insurance (she says with fingers crossed)
• I didn't have a terminally ill dog to rescue along with everything else
• The boat didn't sink
• It could have been so much worse.

 Flooding in Tabasco, in July

 Flooded church in Baja

Georgette: up close and personal

The rain began in earnest and is still with us this morning, sporadically. Chica doesn't like to get her feet wet; to get her outside I have to carry her a distance, put her down and when she's done her business she races back inside. Such a princess.

At sunrise the whole world turned golden. The sun peeped under the lid of heavy clouds just long enough to gild the air, then everything turned blue, violet and gray as the rains started in again. But there's very little wind, for now. The Capt says that will change.

Georgette, still officially a tropical depression,  is 79 miles south-southeast of us at present. Even though her wind speed is down from yesterday at 35mph, we'll get 50mph because she spins counter-clockwise with a NNW movement of 14mph. I don't pretend to understand all this, but if you look at the right-hand edge of her path where it meets land, you see it touches the northwest edge of a little bay next to Guaymas. That spot is where we are.

And wouldn't you know it: we have a full moon again! Interesting how many significant things seem to happen at the full moon.

Our neighbor came over this morning with Akira, Chica's playmate, and urged us to be prepared for major weather. Schools are closed in Guaymas and San Carlos, and the school where she teaches will likely be flooded. If the roads are passable later, she and her husband plan to go help with the cleanup.

Compared with storms we've seen in past years, and especially compared with the major hurricanes this year that have inundated areas such as Vera Cruz, this is not bad. In case of a power outage, we have a generator on the boat that the Capt plans to retrieve.  I've got candles, drinking water and a butane stove, and I bought groceries yesterday. I even bought a new umbrella recently. We're lucky to have some advance notice, 

I always like to be prepared for company.

¡Por fín, la lluvia!

At last, the rain cometh! It seems for a month we've been watching lightning beyond the hills, but no rain, and in spite of our awareness that rain could be excessive, could cause flooding in our new home, could leak through the newly-constructed roof of our newly-constructed additional room, we're still glad to see it.  While fellow bloggers in Vera Cruz are watching entire colonias vanish beneath floodwaters, we've been sitting high, dry and hot.

This wonderful shot of lightning near the Tetas de Cabra is not one of mine... I don't think my camera is capable of such a shot. It was posted on the local forum, Viva San Carlos.

Georgette is probably responsible for this weather. StormPulse and WunderGround, two weather tracking sites I refer to, both show her as a tropical storm currently just south of Cabo San Lucas, with winds of only 40 mph. Not good for boating, but not a harrowing prospect at the moment. If she affects Sonora, it will be Wednesday around 11am according to both predictions. How do they figure these things out? Beats me.

RIP Sophie Pearl

 

Viva!

It was a night to shout, and I did my best, shouting until I was hoarse. My friend Ale and her husband Ulisses invited to Guaymas Municipal Palace for a celebration of the Bicentennial of Mexico's movement for independence from Spain.

The war for independence was launched at 6AM September 16, 1810 by Father Miguel Hidalgo in front of his church in Dolores. Mexicans still celebrate the that initial call to arms every year by gathering in their hometown's central square, where the mayor or highest ranking officeholder in town stands in front of their equivalent of city hall and shouts, as Hidalgo did, the words that stirred the people and sparked the war for independence. The Spanish word for "shout" or "scream" is gritar, and the reenactment is called El Grito. But we don't get up at 6AM for El Grito anymore because when Porfirio Diáz was president, he moved the celebration back a day, to coincide with his birthday and maybe because he was a night owl instead of an early bird. (Thanks to Mexico Bob for that tidbit).

What Hidalgo said (translated into English) was:

My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines (Spaniards)"

Then he shouted something along the lines of "Viva la México!"  The revised Bicentennial version of that shout goes like this:

Mexicans!

Long Live the Heroes that gave us our Fatherland!

Long Live Hidalgo!

Long Live Morelos!

Long Live Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez!

Long Live Allende!

Long Live Aldama and Matamoros!

Long Live National Independence!

Long Live the Independence Bicentennial!

Long Live the Centennial of the Revolution!

Long Live Mexico!

Long Live Mexico!

Long Live Mexico!

After each line, the crowd simply shouted back, "Viva!" Ale and Ulisses filled me in a little more with a little Mexican history lesson about Hidalgo,  Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez and Ignacio Allende, and others. These "Heroes that gave us our Fatherland" all came to a bad end. Josefa Ortiz was locked into a convent and the rest beheaded, their heads displayed at the public granary building, called the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, in Guanajuato.

As part of his traditional duties last night, the mayor of Guaymas, in addition to doing the shouting, had the job of ringing a large brass bell and waving a large Mexican flag, which requires quite a bit of coordination, Ale confided.

 Everywhere I looked were tiny niñas in red, white and green dresses, their hair done up in braids with ribbons, or sporting little sombreros. When the mayor had finished his performance the crowd began singing the national anthem, and even Ale (who knew several stanzas by heart) was surprised how long the song was. Just about everybody had to wait through the verses and then chime in on the chorus.

I set myself a challenge of improving my night photography, easy enough when I shot stationary objects, like the Municipal Palace, not so easy when I photographed the excellent mariachi band that warmed up the crowd.

My Olympus has a setting for capturing fireworks, so I was able to get a reasonable shot of the castillo (a framework for a series of fireworks) which at its climax spelled out "Guaymas" and included a portrait of Hidalgo. The portrait was rough, but how much detail can you expect with incendiary devices?

My goal for next year: to take sharper fireworks and night shots, and memorize at least the chorus of the anthem. Viva Mexico!

Year of the Dogs

2010 will always be remembered around here as the year of dog issues. The year Chica, our two-year-old Maltese went from being a fleet-footed, ball-chasing, scampering ball of energy to being a crippled sad-eyed creature old beyond her years. After surgery she's able now to stand and walk on that hind leg, but she still favors it when she runs, and she doesn't run as far or as fast. So much for entering her in the Doggie Olympics, even though she has now learned to toss the ball herself, with quite a bit of accuracy.

It's also the year our other Maltese, Sofia, who's almost fourteen, or 98 in dog years, got sick for the first time. This past week she has become mysteriously ill and is starving herself. She's wobbly and dazed when she's on her feet, which is rare because she spends most of her time in her bed. The vet says she has some kind of stomach infection, and gave her antibiotic injections, following up now with Azitromi antibiotic pills. We're instructed to force-feed her yogurt twice a day to counteract the side effects of the antibiotics, and  Pepto Bismol and Nutri-Plus gel that comes in a tube and is supposed to stimulate her appetite and replace the nutrients she has lost. We administer all this in needle-less syringes, inserted through the gaps in her mouth where she has lost teeth. She has no fever, which the vet says rules out tick-borne illness. It's been five days, and I can't help but wonder how long she can go on without eating. Is she going to have to be fed intravenously? Do we want to resort to that?

 Chica, Akira and Sofia

As if two dogs in the house weren't enough, we regularly dogsit a Yorkie who lives across the parking lot. She has the misfortune of being part of a family that is seldom home in the daytime because they run a school in Guaymas, which pretty much rules out her ever becoming housetrained. Whenever I'm able to be home most of the day I let them know, and Akira comes to stay with us, so she can spend time with other dogs, get outside to do her business and receive considerably more attention than she would otherwise. She also comes for sleepovers when her people have to go out of town, as they did Friday (forgetting to mention they'd be gone all weekend!) I'm keeping a close eye on her because she's at least eight months old,  hasn't been neutered and she's probably due to go into heat at some point. Her owners plan to breed her, but who would take care of her and her pups, if they did? And if they don't actually breed her, are we going to be fighting off the neighbors' two pit bulls (probably also not neutered), which are let loose every morning at dawn? Caramba!

I'm feeling way in over my head, but grateful for friends like Kristin at the Canine Center, who has seen it all and can be counted on for good advice.

Rant of a (former) slave to fashion

Sometimes I feel like I was dropped here from another planet, or I'm lacking in some ultra female gene. At 10, I had a dream of being a fashion designer, fired by a vision of launching a counter-trend that would give women permission to be comfortable in their clothes. Then I discovered boys and peer pressure, and submitted to all the insanity that brought on: waist-cinchers, high heels, petticoats, big hair... the full catastrophe.  I was over it (pretty much) by the time I reached 20.

A recent WikiHow tutorial about "How to Make Your Jeans Fit Tighter," made my skin crawl. But in my hormone-addled youth, before Spandex, I might have been all for it. I remember once taking up the seams in a pair of jeans I deemed too baggy, and when I was done I tried them on,  and was pleased with the results until I sat down(!)

On my Avoid Like Dengue List  is ultra-high heels — in fact, if they were socially required like bras are (and don't get me started on that), I'd just stay home the rest of my life or move to the hinterlands.  I confess I bought a few pairs, but they always ended up with the dust bunnies in the back of the closet. Haven't women gotten the memo about what those five-to-seven-inch stilettos do to the body? Like tight jeans, they might look attractive on a standing model. But tell her to hurry down a cobblestone street and watch something truly comical. Here in Sonora they go more for sparkly flipflops. Without a backstrap they may not stay on that well,  but at least a girl doesn't have so far to fall.

A style that seems to keep coming back like a plague of locusts is the outfit I call the "sausage dress" because it looks like the subject was stuffed into it. Every bump, lump and roll is mercilessly outlined, especially when the wearer sits. It's short enough to make bending over a risky option, and cut low enough in front that what wasn't stuffed inside appears to be spilling out over the top. This style might be a good look for a tiny fraction of women who adopt it, if they don't mind being confused with streetwalkers, but somehow it has be exalted to "must-have" status for young (and sadly, not-so-young) women.

Don't forget decorated acrylic fingernails that appear to render hands virtually useless, lamentably a style that has burgeoned here in Mexico where acrylic nail salons charge under $20 for a full set. I don't know how a woman could even cook with these, much less play a musical instrument, change a diaper or take a photo.

Combine all of the above and there you have it: the opposite of the burka and yet just as slavish, uncomfortable and detrimental to freedom of movement.

All this ruminating over the ways women enslave themselves or are physically oppressed by society began when I saw "The Canvas Prison," a long video about the imposition of the burka, particularly in Afghanistan. Fashion's not the ruler there, but male-mandated  laws rooted in deep hatred and fear of women's power of attraction. Mohammed wasn't the one who came up with this ultimate fashion disaster; it's been imposed throughout the ages, most recently in the early 20th century by a ruler who fretted over men staring at his 200 wives. His solution: throw tents over them! And they're still doing it, almost 100 years later!