We go pro

Over the last 24 hours the Jazzman and I have been trying to curb our enthusiasm but now that it's a done deal we are getting a little giddy.

For the first time since we have been making music (at least 10 years), we have a regular weekly gig, beginning March 8. The owners of the Marina Cantina want us to play Thursday evenings, plus they want us to play for their wedding at the Yacht Club (aren't we chichi?) and for St. Patrick's Day (OUR wedding anniversary). I can't think of anything I'd rather do to celebrate our anniversary (of the day we met, the day we married and the day we bought our boat), than make music. If it didn't sound like a cliché I'd say we're in clover.

The boat crowd tends to be retirees, who hopefully can relate to our music. The owners want to become known as the place to hear jazz, a musical genre very hard to come by here in Mexico.

It's a small place, with an outdoor patio and indoor restaurant, not the greatest acoustics but we'll manage. We stopped by this morning and worked out the day of the week we'll play, the pay (paltry, of course), talked about the wedding (we'll start playing at 10pm!) and their plans for St Paddy's. Think I want a green dress...

An Affair to Remember

For the past two weeks the Capt and I have been working toward getting ready for a big event yesterday. The occasion was "An Affair to Remember," an art exhibition for which the Capt volunteered to supply live music, i.e. us.

He also signed up to show about ten of his watercolors and oils, some of which had not yet been painted! Only one of which was properly framed. He turned out three oils in about ten days, and one was still not completely dry when we hung them at the exhibit.

He arranged to have mats and glass cut for his watercolors, and had our friend Charlie make some frames. But with only hours to go before the show, we picked up the matting and glass and found they were all the wrong size! So he had to quickly hire Charlie to make new frames the right size.

Also, since we had to fill a three-hour exhibit with music, it was necessary for us to dig up several songs we hadn't done in years, rearrange them and get them up to performance standards in about three days.

A recipe for disaster! But somehow we got through it and it was indeed for us an affair to remember. The Capt even sold one of his paintings.

The exhibit was held in a large empty brick-walled room, reminiscent of a warehouse. We were expected to provide "only background music," but at least a dozen people came up to us and asked us to crank it up, so we did. Nobody complained we were too loud.

We played in front of a huge window and the late afternoon sun, combined with the body heat of hundreds of people, made it feel like a Mexican summer, so I unwisely shed the lightweight vest I had worn over my tanktop.

A tsunami of sound bounced off the walls, as a thousand people elbowed their way through the door over the three hours. A great test of our ability to soldier on through any kind of distraction and stay on the beat.

It was exhilarating, exhausting and instructive. We came away with a few lessons learned...
1) The bass and drum tracks on our iPad system are not reliable. Sometime between rehearsals and the show, some of the songs changed tempo and added verses, creating extra havoc. We'll have to test each song an hour before the show, preferably after we've set up. Or find another system.

2) One thing we did right, and probably will do again. Since we have two big speakers, we set one up outside, and friends told us we actually sounded better out there, without the echoing background of umpteen conversations.

3) Next time we have pictures framed, we will pay to have the entire job done at the shop, so there will be no miscommunications.

4) We didn't have any business cards with us! Duh!

5) Never again will I wear a spaghetti-strap spandex top onstage without a shirt over it, no matter how hot it gets, unless I have spent at least six months at the gym.

The Capt is painting again!

Like me, he tends to work best on a deadline. So he signed up for a benefit art show this Sunday afternoon at the marina. Not satisfied to show only the work he did years ago, he rented space in a local consignment store for a studio, and he's been producing some more oils: all scenes of Mexican life, but different from the usual images you might expect. A man washing a red Volkswagen at the park in Guaymas. A chubby little boy with his puppy. A girl striding past a hole-in-the-wall taco stand. A man securing his dinghy at the marina.

He's done watercolors in the past, but he seems to prefer oils now, so he'll be exhibiting both. Here are some examples of his work, at his online gallery. But now that he's done so much more work, he's going to have a lot of new images to upload, when he gets a breather.

Did I mention how proud I am of him?

As though he didn't have enough pressure on him, we are also going to perform three hours of jazz at the art show. So when he's not painting, we're practicing.

Here's a watercolor he did of a parakeet we had for 11 years. He may have a hard time selling this one...lots of sentimental value for him.

A bit of heaven

Walking the dog in the early dawn with my camera, I stopped to capture this view of the golf course, the shining sea and hills of Guaymas.

Mornings are chilly here in February, but it's still my favorite time of year.

I'm so grateful to our six gardeners for their hard work. Because our landscaping was created in the early 80s, our trees, shrubbery and cacti are mature and thriving. There are much more palatial homes elsewhere in town, but nowhere will you find more beautiful surroundings.

Will toilet paper make you fat?

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. 

Benjamin: Yes, sir. 

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? 

Benjamin: Yes, I am. 

Mr. McGuire: Plastics. 

From "The Graduate," 1967



We've been bombarded for so long with so much info about the evil chemicals we're exposed to every day, that most of us have developed information overload. I've become somewhat fatalistic about it all.

Nevertheless, my ire was raised once again this morning when I read an article by Lynn Peebles in HuffPost about Bisphenol-A (aka BPA) which turns up in tiny amounts in things like plastic water bottles, the linings of tin cans, pesticides and (gasp!) toilet paper. This chemical, to put it simply, mimics estrogen and fools the pancreas into secreting more insulin. The resulting metabolic confusion can result in obesity and diabetes.

The article might be discounted since HuffPost is a publication I consider somewhat sensationalist in its content, but I went to the online scientific journal that published the original information, PLoS ONE, for the straight scoop. I was soon swamped by jargon (I must have slept through my biology and chemistry classes), but the conclusion was pretty clear:

Our findings suggest that BPA behaves as a strong estrogen via nuclear ERβ and indicate that results obtained with BPA in mouse β-cells may be extrapolated to humans. This supports that BPA should be considered as a risk factor for metabolic disorders in humans.

All this time we've concentrated so much on diet and exercise, guilt-tripping over every cupcake we consume and every brisk walk we've put off, and apparently there's another health risk lurking in the goods we consume every day. We don't have to even ingest the BPA, just handling cash register receipts exposes us to this vile endocrine-disruptor.

I don't know the figures in the US for diabetes, but here in Mexico it's an epidemic, as is overweight among adults (especially women over 30). I know the Mexican addictions to sugar and fat has plenty to do with it, so I've already eliminated a lot of what I find in the stores from our diet, in favor of raw fruit and steamed or grilled veggies. The Capt and I have both lost weight (he lost more, of course, being male). But even skinny people can get diabetes. So how can we at least reduce BPA exposure?

The PLoS ONE study said the control group of mice that didn't get the BPA exposure got their water in polycarbonate-free plastic bottles, and were kept in new cages so even though the cage material contained polycarbonates, they hadn't started shedding material yet. Therefore, the source of BPA is polycarbonates.

I suppose we could wear surgical gloves when handling cash register receipts (ignoring the cashier's stares), or toilet paper. But then, they're made of plastic, aren't they? Polycarbonates again.

Probably the five-gallon jugs containing the drinking water we buy regularly contain BPA, but conceivably we could buy new jugs periodically, and decant them immediately into some kind of stainless steel or glass container. Then there's the Tupperware I've been using for years...

At the moment I don't even want to think about the toilet paper question. I'm starting to succumb to information overload again, and I feel a headache coming on.

How do they DO that?

I've done yoga off and on for decades and always feel better when I'm doing it on a regular basis. No injuries, minimal soreness. In my view, the only flaw in yoga is that it's gotten too trendy. The pricey gear (eighty dollar yoga mats?), the buzz, the celebrity yogis are off-putting. Oh, well, I guess it's hard to keep a good thing to yourself.

Clip from a yoga demo video at Yoga Journal magazine's website

I want a little more energy, a little straighter posture, more strength in my arms, a little more flexibility...all things I remember liking about yoga. So here I go again, this time at home (although I may end up in the local class now and then, since it's only a quarter-mile stroll from my house).

Today I started working with a free online program called the 21-Day Yoga Challenge, sponsored by Yoga Journal magazine. I had originally signed up for it quite a while ago, but with four dogs in the house it was difficult to do anything that involved getting on the floor. Two of the dogs got adopted but by then I'd lost momentum, and it wasn't until my son's fiancee said she was thinking about it and asked me how I was doing with the Challenge, that I decided to get on with it. After all, I'm only 13 days late.

Clip from a same demo video of an advanced routine at Yoga Journal magazine's website...Owww! This is why I joined the Newbies.


There's a beginner program, and one for intermediates. I started out with the Newbies, thinking I can always switch if it's too basic.

Day One begins with some very gentle and familiar poses like the Downward Facing Dog and an easy version of the Cobra. The Challenge also involves meditation and phasing into vegetarian eating (with recipes), one meal a week to start.

Yoga Journal, by the way, is loaded with instructional videos that can be viewed for free. Some of them are forty-minute routines. Of course there are plenty of opportunities to spend money for their products, but it's also a site where a great deal can be learned about yoga without buying a thing. A parade of pretty people in poses that start out looking sooooo easy, and next thing you're asking yourself "How did they DO that?"

Foster love

Finding a home for Chiquito, the Dachsund mix I took in last summer when he had Valley Fever, looked pretty hopeless. He had oozing sores on his body, he couldn't use his left front leg because the shoulder bone had deteriorated from the disease, and he needed daily medication and baths every three days.  I doubted anyone else would want to take a three-year-old dog with health problems.

On the other hand, getting someone to adopt Choco, the miniature Dachsund the Capt rescued in early January, looked to be a piece of cake. He's only a year old, and so cute it's hard to imagine anyone turning him down. And yet three different people who indicated an interest in taking Choco changed their minds before ever meeting him.

By the time Choco arrived, Chiquito's wounds had healed, he was using his front leg normally, and he was a happy, healthy little dog no longer on medication.  They quickly became best amigos. But I was feeling some pressure from my neighbors and the Capt to make a decisive effort to find them new homes.

I finally called Alexandra, friend of mine who's involved in a Mexican organization, COAT, that helps find homes in the Hermosillo area for pets through their Facebook page. The results were beyond my expectations: within 24 hours four families were vying to adopt Choco, and a day later a good home turned up for Chiquito. These families live in Hermosillo, about an hour from here. Ale, who was going to visit her Hermosillo family for the weekend, volunteered to deliver them. She met me last Thursday, we quickly rounded up a second crate for Choco so both dogs could ride in comfort and security, and I bid goodbye to my little Doxie friends.

My next-door-neighbor, when told the boys were gone, said, "Well, I won't miss the barking." (Frankly, I won't either. My own Maltese, Chica, barks very seldom.) But the house is awfully quiet without them.

Will I foster again, knowing how easily a foster situation can become permanent? A friend of mine is now up to seven dogs (six of them large adults) and only a couple of them were intentional adoptions. Recently she took in a four-week-old puppy, even though her house and patio aren't much larger than mine. It's so easy to make room for just one more, and so hard to let them go when they have been with the family for a while. You start thinking nobody will love them as you do.

How can we be sure a foster dog is going to get acceptable care? We want to know he'll have a yard to play freely in (as opposed to being tied up for the rest of his life). We want a guarantee he'll get his shots, will get adequate exercise. Some agencies in the US have become so stringent in their requirements they are discouraging people from adopting rescue dogs. Emily Yoffe of Slate Magazine recently published an article, "No Pet for You" on the subject.

I have to draw the line at taking big dogs since my place is so small. But if another little one comes along that needs a place to stay, I know I won't refuse.