Nautical pride

The Guaymenses are abuzz, getting ready for Navy Day June 1, when President Calderon will come to visit, and it's rumored Carlos Slim, CEO of TelMex and wealthiest man in Mexico (one of the richest in the world), may accompany him. Navy Day is a national annual event, and apparently a seaport is featured each year. This year it's Guaymas. We speculated whether Calderon will review the Navy exercises from the comfort of Sr. Slim's megayacht in the bay, but it would probably be more proper from the deck of a Mexican flagship with the admirals and their retinue.

The Mexican Navy, besides being the country's maritime military, also serves the same function as the US Coast Guard, rescuing distressed vessels, pursuing drug traffickers at sea, and protecting offshore oil wells.

Helicopters are thundering over San Carlos, the resort 'burb of Guaymas, and a big townwide cleanup is planned for the day before, to impress Calderon with our civic pride.

The Capt sports a paper suit, head stocking and gloves, plus a  respirator mask when he's painting, in 95+ degree heat. Note the dinghy behind him: that's going to need painting, too.

Pride and desperation is what's keeping us at the boat painting project, eight weeks after we started, eons after we lost enthusiasm for the project. It doesn't usually take this long to paint a boat, even a 33-footer, but we have never done this before, we haven't hired Mexican labor, and we're going by trial and error, with the expected mishaps. Gale-force winds most afternoons have slowed us down a little, too.

My responsibilities have been masking, a little sanding, and mixing paint. The masking often feels like giftwrapping, minus the fancy ribbon, and now that I've finished it does look a little giftwrapped, in a funky way. The gale-force winds managed to rip away about a quarter of my work, so the Capt invented a roller device so I could press the tape down more firmly.

Mixing is required because we're using white gelcoat, half-and-half with monomer (a purple liquid that always makes me think of Jim Jones' grape Koolaid), with a few drops of catalyst added just before it's poured into the sprayer. The morning sun is merciless in May, but in my paint-smeared shorts and tank-top, I can catch an occasional breeze. In his paper suit and a full face mask, the Capt feels like he's wearing a portable sauna. Since we're paying the boatyard by the day, he hasn't missed a day on the job since the beginning of April. He gets tired and cranky, but he perseveres.

This week we might actually finish, at least enough to put her back in the anchorage where she belongs. I can't wait to take photos of her, gleaming white in the water. Carlos Slim and the whole Mexican navy couldn't be any prouder.

I've Centipeded myself

There's a story about the Centipede, who was asked by the Grasshopper how he managed to coordinate and walk on all those 100 legs. All his life the Centipede had gotten around just fine, but when now he had to stop and think about it. And suddenly he was tripping all over himself.

That's me, now that I've started guitar lessons.

My last lessons were back in the Dark Ages, and they focused mostly on learning chords the easiest way possible, and using them in songs. No bar chords, no fancy minor/diminished fifths. But this time instructions cover how to hold my guitar (nicknamed Lulu), how short my strap should be (I never even used a strap before) and where my fretting fingers should be. I've found that of all but one of the chords I've been playing, from A to G and all their variations, I've been playing wrong! Caramba! I'm supposed to keep the fretting fingers close to the strings to speed up my fretting but I have an annoying habit of keeping my little finger crooked as though I'm imbibing High Tea! I'm playing scales (boooorrrrring). I'm barring chords, cringing at the muffled sound. I'm told my customary thumb-strumming is not acceptable; the thumb is only supposed to strum the low E and A, and I have to use the other fingers for the D, G, B and high E. All this time those other four fingers have been on vacation and now they're expected to go to work.

The outcome of all this awkwardness is predictable. I have an endless list of excuses why I can't practice. Negativity is prodding me, telling me the jig is up and I should have known I'd never succeed at playing the guitar. I'm too old, too clumsy. The pads of my fingers are too fat. My instructor Peter, a very accomplished British guitarist and luthier (he makes and repairs stringed instruments) is urging me to come for two classes a week, but I've already missed a session because I haven't practiced enough to suit myself. He's very positive and encouraging, but he's no match for the silly twit in my head that insists it's hopeless. I avoid even looking at my guitar, much less picking it up, strapping it on and playing.

So Lulu hangs on the wall looking lonely and neglected, though she has recently received a tuneup from Peter and sounds better than she ever has before. And I putter around the house looking for busywork, while doing a lot of navel-gazing in an effort to locate and demolish the source of my pessimism, until I realize that the navel-gazing is just another tactic to put off practicing. I have impeded (or centipeded) myself.

I'm just going to take it a little at a time. Put one foot ahead, follow with the foot on the opposite side, repeat with all the other 98 feet...


Photo: Peter in performance. You should hear his version of "It Ain't Necessarily So."

Musings on weeds and puppies

My brain seems to have hardwired itself to begin waking up at 4a.m. every morning. Not that I mind, now that the spring breezes have subsided, leaving behind a foretaste of the oppressive heat to come in another couple of months. At four, an hour before the beginnings of sunrise, the air is cool, the neighborhood is quiet. It's a good time to walk dogs. (I hear a collective sigh, as my faithful readers mutter, "There she goes again about the dogs...")

I woke thinking about a litter of five puppies in the back yard of a rental house where a Canadian couple are reluctantly packing to go home. They can't take the puppies. Somehow we have to find a place for them to go before Sunday, and it's Wednesday already.

I call them Yoda's Gang, because one of them makes me think of Yoda from Star Wars. Those ears. Those eyes, wise beyond their years. This is Yoda.

In addition to the four shown here, Yoda's gang includes a little white one. Don't know why I'm drawn to white dogs, other than the fact that they're a lot easier to thoroughly search for fleas and ticks. There's a vulnerability about a white dog that appeals to me. And they're easy to see when you're walking with them at four in the morning.

The Canine Refuge where I volunteer is already swamped with puppies, and when I proposed taking  Yoda's Gang, I was outvoted. The Canadians and I are all losing sleep over this dilemma.

An email was waiting for me this morning that brought some encouragement: we have an online newspaper here called "What's Up San Carlos," and the publishers want a photo each week for one of our puppies. The owner of Ruby Wine Bar down at the Marina wants to feature our dogs every week. My Spanish teacher emailed me yesterday that a friend wants a puppy. I clutch at every little bit of hope I can get, because I'm feeling overwhelmed. Every day,  someone is asking me if the Refuge can take another abandoned puppy or dog or litter. Now I know how it feels to manage an orphanage.

I'm reminded of weeds. One Spanish expression for "weeds" is "malas hierbas." Bad grass. Not pedigreed plants, not the kind you cultivate from seed, or raise from cuttings and pamper with special concoctions, but the kind that pops up on its own in such quantity you despair of ever getting rid of it.

And yet, weeds can sometimes be beautiful. A little vine volunteered in one of my flowerpots, after the flowers I had planted there languished and died. Dwarf grape leaves, fragile tendrils, tiny white flowers and—its defense system—obstinate little green burrs. It flourished vigorously even though I skipped that pot when I watered the others. I finally gave up and adopted the weed, since its will to live was so strong. I have no idea what plant it is. I've decided to give it a place of honor next to my back door. This is my weed.

Individually, weeds can be appreciated for their unique characteristics -- those miniature leaves, delicate tendrils and blossoms like little stars. But if I had a yard full of them, I'd be calling for the gardener to root them out because the burrs would be sticking to my dogs' fur. The weed is simply doing what it lives to do — be fruitful and multiply — but when it reaches critical mass, we no longer appreciate its uniqueness and beauty and reach for the hoe and garden shears.

At the Refuge we have at the moment a garden of little weeds, every one of them beautiful. Some resemble little German Shepherds, Labradors or Rottweilers, others are unabashedly members of a breed we laughingly call Sonoran Shorthair: medium-size, deer-like legs, slender, long muzzles and big brown eyes. Some golden, some brown and a few white or spotted like Dalmatians.

I don't know if we can find good homes, or homes of any kind, for them all. We are committed to giving them a good start, with their vaccinations, and we try to spay or neuter every one before we allow it to be adopted. All this veterinary work can't be done in a day, it requires weeks, and meanwhile we must feed them, dab eye ointment on them, clean up after them with rigorous applications of bleach and detergent. Yesterday the vet came to the Refuge to vaccinate seven puppies. By providing our own meds, we saved considerably on the cost, so we'll be driving to Hermosillo next week to buy more vaccine (a benefit of living in Mexico). A local organization called SBPA supplies us with certificates for free spaying and neutering. We have a lot to be grateful for, and we try not to think too much about the future. So we'll just take it a day at a time, a puppy at a time.

"The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it; the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now."

W. Somerset Maugham