Today I'm writing from Houston, Texas. I'm here for the weekend staying with my brother and sister-in-law. Thye have air conditioning! They have sharp cheddar cheese, and they have on demand so I'm watching Major Crimes as I write this. I've never seen this before but my favorite show the Closer has no episodes on On Demand, but this show is apprently the spin off, minus Kyra Sedgewick but it seems pretty good, they have kinda changed the feeling and I like it.

The flights were fine, but oh so cold. Silly me walked out of the house with no jacket and almost nothing in my suitcase- certainly not a jacket. It was cold in the airports and freezing on the plane.
I had to fly to Mexico City first, then to Houston. One funny thing, I stood "in line" behind a bunch of people to get to security, however, ha ha they were not in line, merely talking or maybe waiting for someone....
But I did get to have a Starbucks coffee in the airport in DF, just a tall carmel machiatto, so that was nice. I guess I took care of my cravings without even leaving Mexico ha ha.

I am going to buy a light sweatshirt ot sweater before I fly back. And actually, that ac I was so happy about here is kinda cold ha ha, I guess I'm not used to anything cooler than about 100 degrees. I'm very excited to be going to an AA meeting in about an hour, in English...yipee!! All stuff I bought online is here and it is not going to fill up my empty suitcase either ha ha. But I still have shopping to do. How comforting to see a lizard out on the back porch, just like home ha ha.

The truth is I already miss my husband, I already miss Mexico. I didn't hear the ocean when I woke up and I didn't see the beautiful sky at sunset last nite. I'm happy to so my brother and my sister in law. We had a great talk last nite. I love Sandi, she's more like my sister than an inlaw. Their place is nice, simple lines and comfortable, I feel at home here. Her son is here on his first leave since joining the navy (I think it's the navy), and I hope I'm not intruding on their time with him, but they told me last nite they're so glad I'm here.
Well let's see what a day in Houston brings...

Wonderful day today! I walked down the beach with Sam watching him run in and out of the water. Got to Chela's and they were making dried coconuts into napkin holders. It's what they use in their restaurant now, but these are going to special for a wedding of their friends in November which will be held at their place. Gume sawed them so they had flat square bottoms, and the top stays rounded with a wedge cut in it to put in the napkins. I helped for about 10 minutes, ha ha, scraping the sides to make them smooth. They will be used as a party favor; the guests can take them home after the reception. After that part was finished, Gume, Tigre (Tony 3yr), Everardo & I went down to the edge of the water to collect tiny shells and smooth tiny rocks in all the colors for them to glue (I think glue) to the coconuts. It was fun collecting the shells and rocks; they are really every color. I wish I knew somebody who makes jewelry cause there are so many gorgeous shells. I have collected a few for myself, and also found a couple with perfect tiny holes thru them for necklaces or earrings.

After that we took a break and went into the surf in front of the rocks- my favorite pool and floated around and shrieked when the waves came sloshing over the rocks...ok Tony & I shreiked, Gume & Poppi laughed. It was so nice. Then....Gume says, lets go kick back in the pool...ok it was in Spanish and I know he asked something about the alberca and I immediately said SI! So we walked back down the beach, showered off the sand in the outdoor shower next to the pool, and jumped in.

OMG it was sooooo refreshing! A little cooler than the ocean it felt so fresh and clean. So we swam and chatted. Later everybody but me and a kid named Oscar got out and he & I tried to play water volleyball, no net. We were terrible! The most we ever did was 3 or 4 hits back and forth. At some point I realized Oscar was keeping score- how I have no idea since most hits were 1 or 2 only. BUt the good news was I was winning ha ha. He would only call out scores every so often and I could not put any logic to it, but at least he wasn't way ahead of me...when we quit, after about an hour, I think it was me 18 and him 15....for awhile there I had 15 to his 9, but somehow her caught up.

Came home and it was almost 5pm; I think I left around noon, and Everardo caught up with us at Chela's, so no wonder I'm wiped out after 5 hours in the sun! Showered and enjoyed the hammock, then a nice dinner of little pork chops- not really chops, but not sure what to call them- there's a small bone with the marrow in the hole which is yummy to suck out, and rice.

Now I'm packed, which is a joke because my big suitcase has about 3 shorts, 3 shirts, a skirt, and my bathroom stuff.  I think they want to show me some sites so that will be fun. What am I dying for? Kinda nothing..let's see I guess a Starbucks coffee, carmel macchiato with lots of whip cream- ha ha they might have Starbucks at the Mexico City airport.

Everything else I guess I can get here, unless my brother makes bbq hamburgers- that would be good, even though we plan to get a bbq soon and they have ground beef at Costco Acapulco (I assume anyway)...I don;t know, maybe sushi but only if they like it, and really I'm not craving it. I am craving some sharp cheddar cheese, another thing they have at Costco but we didn't have an ice chest with us and the cheeses I bought were a mess when we got home.

But when Everardo picks me up at the airport Monday, we're going to hit Costco and Home Depot, so again, not really missing anything.

So I sat again this evening out on the rocks to watch the sun go down and every time it flows over me (I almost said waves but ouch the pun); the feeling flow over me of why I love it here so much. The ocean is so amazing here, the waves are so dramatic, and the sky when the sun goes down- I need to ggogle it (ha ha I am the google queen), but we must be closer to the sun here, the colors of the evening sky, the way the clouds sit on the sky, sit on each other and you can see how they are not touching, the boulders and their shapes that we sit on and watch the waves. The crabs that run across the rocks, the little creatures inside their shell who pick it up and run- watching Sam looking puzzled and trying to figure them out ha ha. You just feel a part of, you feel like part of the earth, like you fit, and it fills you with serenity. I can hardly wait for my daughters to come here and sit on the rocks and feel the earth around them.
ha ha I can hardly wait to get back from Texas and I don't leave for Texas until tomorrow morning! Chela and Gume & Tigre are going with us to the airport cause they need to shop in Acapulco, and I think Gume & Poppi both want to buy swim fins, so I better go pack...
Viva Mexico

Well I guess I'll catch up slowly since I couldn't get this site to let me on until now and it's getting close to midnite. Before when I couldn't log on I tried writing in word, and then copy and paste, but I looked back at a couple of posts and they seem mixed up. Ha ha trying to fix them made it worse.

So we went to Ometepec this afternoon and went grocery shopping at Super Che. Kinda like the big Lucky store, groceries, a small amount of other things like shorts and sweatshirts, plastic bowls and pitchers, a bakery. I never see ground beef anywhere so I bought some frozen hamburgers- we didn't eat them tonite, but we'll try them soon. We bought a couple big slices of pizza, warm, sitting where they had some cooked chicken, to eat in the truck on the way home. Hmmmm very interesting and I believe made by someone who has seen pizza but never eaten it before. I mean it tasted good, and filled our stomachs; I wasn't hungry anymore, but it tasted nothing like pizza. The crust was more like, well bisquick, like a biscuit. There was no cheese on it, but there was ham & pineapple. No loives or anything like that. Oh and the sauce, I think it was spaghetti sauce. So it was a ham & pineapple spaghetti biscuit...a spaghiscuit...It probably would have been better as a ham & pineapple biscuit, hold the sauce. It was definitely different, so that was good ha ha.

When I was looking for the sauce I wanted for pasta- something cheesy or garlic, a man walked up to me and asked me in Spanish if I spoke English. I said I did and he introduced himself, Noe or Noah I think, and said he taught at a local technical school and he taught English. He said his students had no opportunity to practice speaking English so he tried to invite people to his class. Then Everardo walked up and I introduced him, and said he spoke English as well. Anyway we traded phone numbers with him, I would like to contribute, to help out, so we may go back up there to one of his classes. We'll see if he calls us. I thought he seemed sincere but Everardo was not sure, so we'll see if he calls us back. For me, the guy really reminded me of my old Spanish tutor, Pedro, so I hope he's on the up & up. If so, maybe I can ask him for pointers on trying to teach English. Never know- those pesky kids may come back and want to learn some English after all.....

It was the first time we remembered to bring the ice chest shopping so I got some cheese, and yipee, ice cream, and some pork but no chicken. It's really expensive around here, which seems odd since there's so many chickens ha ha. Eggs aren't cheap either, which is why we plan to have some chickens, but I don't want to grow them to eat, just eggs. In a few weeks Poppi will probably build a chicken house and it will be my first experience with them.

Well over the weekend we had to pay some guys to turn our gate around. It's a big wood gate with metal around it and then like cross bars. It goes almost all the way across the driveway, and then the other side of it is a narrow walking gate. Well the big side opened out, and with the road construction it was becoming impossible to open it al the way...well Poppi did, but he'd be out there shoveling rocks and or dirt- not to mention he had to put the truck in 4 wheel drive to get us up the short driveway from the gate to the road. Friday and Saturday they had a big tractor and so much earth...so we give, we changed it. Of course the metal hinges were old and the guys had to drill and pound and switch sides with the gate pieces.

Then the window guy showed up while they were doing that and we've been waiting awhile for him! He fixed the broken upstairs window and also one of the kitchen windows so that was good. But we learned don't pay anybody up front, or if you must, pay as little as possible. We gave this guy almost all of it ahead of time, but some of it was for needed materials. And the construction guys on the road have been really nice with us, so hopefully whatever our driveway is going to look like, be like, will be good for all of us. I'm hoping for it to come in slanted instead of straight down.

A neighbor gave us a good idea tonite- asking them to fill in the ditch betwen the road and our fence, which is a good idea cause then it could be used for visitor parking. Especially good if we ever build those bungalows, or even rent out the upstairs. Gume thinks 800 pesos a nite for a family during the season, we have 3 beds up there and a bathroom & shower...Everardo is for all of it- bungalows and renting the upstairs, but for me- at least this year I'd like to see how the season goes, maybe enjoy our little town overflowing with people. We've decided to play everything by ear, and he said if I really didn't want to do something, we wouldn't do it. Can't beat that I say. I'll probably be all for it next year, but I've never seen Playa Ventura filled up with people, with vacationers.

We also told Chela and Gume we'd pitch in and help them too when the tourists hit. ha ha I can't cook but I could probably deliver food and bus tables!
ok enough for now...

I'm SO excited!! I got my blog back!! Last Friday I stupidly- yes so stupidly open an email I shouldn't have and my computer crashed in such a big way! Lost everything. Unfortunately for me I never wrote down the password I chose for this site, and never used it after the first time I created it, so I couldn't get back in. I had one problem after another trying to get it reset....and I was so so so so frustrated.
To reset your password with Google, you have to give them your credit card #, even tho' they don't charge you anything. This is only if you cannot chose the option to have a text msg sent to your cell phone- which I couldn't cause I cancelled that number when I left the US....well unbeknownst to me, my cash card had a hold on it after I had tried to buy something online without enough money in that acct. AND I had called the credit care company to put a hold on any online purchases for it after my computer crashed.....so I couldn't finish the process. So I sent Google CS an email describing my problem there and asking for a phone # I could call to answer their security questions. This was on Sat.....by Tue I found a phone number for their customer service and sat on hold for a very long time while reading posted comments about how bad the service was...

Anyway I thought my cash card didn't work cause the little 3 numbers on the back were smuged & I couldn't read them so  called the bank. When I got transferred several times and then talked to a woman who could help me, she made me guess the 3 #'s and I was right- this is when I found out the card had a hold on it. Ha ha so she lifted the hold. So I went back and tried to google password reset process again, this was yesterday...and today they gave me a new password.

So- lessons: don't bother sending google customer support and email. Don't bother trying to call their CS dept. Follow their process- they are google- huge and don't really have to give a shit what you think.
So- gratitude: Thank goodness we have a telephone pkg that lets us call the US for free! (calling credit card companies, banks, and google equates to many many many minutes on the phone, on hold, re-giving all your info to the second third and fourth nice people you speak to. etc etc etc.)



So we're off to Ometepec- an hour away for some grocery shopping- I want some sauce so I can make one one special dish, pasta with shrimp and vegetables ha ha. So I will come back later to write about the past few days; about kids on a burro, having to turn our gates around due to the construction, a goat stuck on the side of a hill, and other mundane but silly things. ha ha I really missed my online diary...ooops I mean my blog!!