Oooops I had more...

I had more to say but that post felt so long. We did get tv finally, on Tuesday, so I think we're all set. Well it will be about a week before the water stops being salty but in the scheme of things, that's not so bad. Maybe we needed to live in the other places first and go thru some tough or at least frustrating stuff, to see that this place ain't half bad- know what I mean?

Earlier this week was the anniversary of my dad's death. Nov 4. 33 years ago- I can't believe it! I was in my early 20's, and now it seems like I hardly knew him. He got sick and died in 3 months, altho' they think he was sick for 3 months before that. I mean I knew him, but I knew my dad, as my dad. Over the years I came to know my mom as a person, but not him. I still think of him all the time and every once in a while I dream of him and he's so familiar. He was only 59 when he died, of cancer. I asked my brother when he turned 60 if he thought about it- yes of course. My sister turned 60, no wait 61, this year, well she reads my blog so she'll tell me if she thought about it as she went thru 59...me, I have already had cancer, and am finally starting to believe I beat it. In a couple of months I'll turn 57, but yes it's on my mind, too. Me going thru cancer, thru cancer treatment, is a huge reason, a huge part of why I wanted to move to Mexico. It had always been one of those dreams, and I had actually visited a few different parts of Mexico before I got sick. But I felt like, life is short, I don't want to think...I wish I woulda....

It has been an amazing adventure. But as always I am so selfish. I heard my husband tell someone today, that he was feeling stressed, kind of overwhelmed (he used different words), but so much moving in a relatively short time,  not just packing and unpacking, but emotionally. That he wanted us to be somewhere that I could be happy, but that was why he told me, when you decide you don't like it here- we go back to the states. That everywhere has things you like and don't like. I thought moving was easy for him- not physically- of course that's hard, gets tiring. But because he's lived so many places, including being homeless and living under a bridge, well I thought it was no big deal for him emotionally. That's what I mean about being selfish, I thought it was only hard for me. And being here now, I think of it as a big adventure; trying new things and finding out what works, and what doesn't. And for me, this has been pretty extreme- tropics, desert, and now here. And again, maybe it's perfect (oops not perfect but good) that we did it this way. Cause this is the closest to home climate wise, house wise, amenities wise. But I experienced so much and I'm so grateful for that.

Anyway...so we've been to Ensenada twice in 2 days. Lots of traffic there, and so much nosier than here. This was the better choice. Well and the whole I can walk on the beach every day here, see the waves from my couch, and hear the ocean- softly- from my bed thing ha ha!
We went to Starbucks yesterday and I was crushed to find they do NOT have Pumpkin Spice latte! The guy said they have it just for one month a year- October boo hoo. I also went this morning to my first AA meeting over here, and that was nice, too. Small meeting like in Penasco, and they have one Fridays at 6pm so I'll go again tomorrow...yeah settling in. So ok, I want to go check on Hazel. Viva.

Mexico fun fact:
Texas was a Mexican province which declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, resulting in war with the United States (1836-1838)

Salt water hot springs and a girl named Hazel

Our plumbing problems are not totally resolved, but are ok. It is still a drag to have to run downstairs to do anything besides pee, but not unmanageable. The toilet in the downstairs bedroom is very slow, and Mike says he's gonna replace it tomorrow. He still is not sure about the septic tank/tanks but he'll get to the bottom of it. So I'm not sure if I already described this, but our water comes from a well, is pumped up to a tank and then into the house. Sounds simple right? Oh I left out a little bit. The well is actually a hot spring, and the hot water is pumped up to a tank where it cools off before it transfers to another tank and is pumped into the house. Then to get hot water you need the hot water heater (ha ha crazy right?). But there's more. As it turns out, the water is salty. At first I didn't really notice, but then started to when it tasted salty in the shower. That a plastic glass I just washed, then filled up with water, tasted salty (the rim of the cup not the water). Our drinking water is in the big garafones that we get refilled every few days. I really started to notice in hte shower that the water felt, well rough I guess is the word. The soap didn't slide over me, and forget trying to shave arm pits much less legs. It's also starting to dry out my skin, Everardo's too.

So new decision. Everardo stopped the hot salt water from transferring to the other tank (cistern), and once it empties we're gonna have the water truck fill it up. I'm looking forward to it. When we were down by Acapulco in Playa Ventura,  people had the water truck fill up their cisterns, but our was filled by rainfall that was captured on the roof during the rainy season. We had on cistern on the roof and 2 underground. There had been a couple of rainy years so we were full to the brim. So we only needed the other kind of water truck- the one that brought the drinking water in the garafones (the big plastic jugs like you see in an office with a "water cooler"). We usually went thru about 4 a week; it was nice, they knew us and just brought them down. I think it was 23 or 25 pesos a jug, and the Pepsi truck brought them. In Penasco you could buy them from this truck that drove thru the neighborhood at 8:30 in the morning with the horn honking, and I think it was about 16 pesos per, but we took them right down the street and paid between 8 and 11 pesos. If we went down by the malecon, at the docks where the fishing boats came in it was only 5 pesos, but pretty inconvenient to save a couple of pesos....

This house has a dryer, but not a washer...until yesterday. We bought a used washing machine, brought it home, hooked it up and threw in a load. Ooops no spin. Loaded it back on the truck and went back to Ensenada this morning and the kid was really nice and we switched it for one I like better. He tested it to be sure, and now I'm doing laundry...in the house. Yipee. In Playa Ventura I never washed clothes in the arroyo (stream) next to our house like some of the neighbors, but I was pretty primitive there for a while ha ha. WE had an outside sink that actually had a small counter next to it with ridges in it, so I scrubbed the clothes there, and then took them into the shower with me to rinse them. This was the shower where you stepped on a piece of wood at the end of a rope to make the water come down. And of course, hung it on a line to dry...and it rained all the time down there...so sometimes I had to run outside to grab it. It was so hot there that it always dried in an hour or two, but I didn't always go get it that quickly...The truth is, it was a drag!! I hated doing the laundry like that. The last couple of months we were there, we took the laundry to the nearby town, Copala, and we would pick it up the next day, for about 90 pesos a week, about $7-8 USD. I was at a point I would have happily paid twice as much. In Penasco we had a washing machine, outside behind the bungalow next door. That damn thing beat the shit out of our clothes! It turned stuff inside out and I have tiny holes in lots of my tops now. And we used the clothesline. So- here we have a washer & a dryer. I actually bought clothesline and clothes pins in Ensenada yesterday- and later Everardo said wth? Why don't you use the dryer. So last nite with the load that never had the spin cycle, after I wringed (?) wrung(?) them out and remembered how much my wrists hated that, I used the dryer. Yipee....soft clothes. After we got home today with the replacement washer, I did all the laundry. So nice when it's in the house, in the "laundry room"...off the kitchen, so easy. As Everardo said, this place is the closest to Petaluma, the weather, the house, and the laundry. Yep- I'm likin' it. Like being home but not as expensive!

On the way home we decided to stop at St Paco's dog rescue. These 2 gray haired old ladies in this ramshackle house, filled with dogs! I think the house was just for the dogs, not quite sure, but it was a house full of love. All the dogs were lovely, loving, sweet. Different sizes, colors; they all had names... and I guess next door were all big dogs who were (I think) 2 years and older. They told us though, that most of those dogs needed to be socialized and probably not a good idea to put with another dog. They were working on them, one dog at a time they said. We were only there to look, but later Poppi said, all those dogs, and those women were so caring, and he thought maybe they lived there, and he said he thought- let's just pick one right now. Cause I was surprised when he said, yeah let's take this one. But this dog, super sweet but they said very protective, was getting over something and we didn't want Sam exposed to anything. I asked if they had puppies, and they said yes of course...over there. So we saw a liter of puppies; they said the mom was white lab and not sure about dad, and we met Hazel. She was the runt, the only one with no white on her, and smaller than the others. But she was very lively and the women said she was very aggressive and took on everybody else. There was a brown & white one who outweighed Hazel by 3 pounds and Poppi like her, but in the end Hazel came home with us. Sam was ok with her right off. She ran circles around the yard and climbed all over Sam. She actually has the same coloring as Lucky, maybe that's why I chose her, but more likely that coloring is why I chose Lucky...it's black with brown, kinda like a rottweiler (altho I don't think she has any rottweiler in her). We walked late this afternoon down the road towards the estuary and of course Sam went swimming. Everardo tossed Hazel in and she swam right out, then got a chill so I wrapped her in the long sleeved woodchopper shirt (you know- cotton long sleeves, plaid, usually red). and rubbed her dry. Then when we were walking back this other big dog that has met us out there before showed up. He and Sam are friendly, but the dog, after sniffing Hazel, want to play with her, but too rough. Sam jumped in and bashed into the dog! He's protecting his sister already! So he and the dog rough housed pretty strongly for a few minutes, and then every body calmed down, but he gave Hazel her space. We're making them both sleep outside tonite, Sam has a big bed and we gave them a warm blanket. But this is a nice house, and not ours, so we gotta get Hazel housebroken quick, and get her a bunch of chew toys so she doesn't attack any furniture in here. One positive thing was she went over & sniffed Sam's poop and then did one herself right next to it. They learn pretty quick when they have someone to follow. Lucky learned really fast, but being so young they have to go out during the nite, so hopefully we can make then a nice warm house until Hazel gets bigger.

So it's all good.

After one week

We are almost unpacked, now just little piles of stuff...on counters. I had no idea I had accumilated so much bathroom crap...lotions, perfumes, etc. I don't even wear perfume but have been given it as gifts over the years so they all stay pretty full. The only exception to that is some given to me by my ex brother & sister in law from Germany. I really love them; they were always so much fun. He is Palestinian (like my ex husband) and she is German. He speaks Arabic, English, Spanish, & German, but she only speaks German. I speak no German but they would come and stay with us for like a month at a time and she and I got along great! We laughed our heads off, ok ok usually drunk as girl skunks but laughing our heads off. Then they had a beautiful little girl whom I also love, who, at least the last time I saw her- a few years back- didn't speak English. I always remember when Simona and I were alone in the car going to the store and I wanted to say we need onions. I made hand motions like I was holding something small and round in one hand and cutting it with the other. Then I rubbed my eyes saying boohoo boohoo (crying right?), and she yelled..well she yelled whatever the word for onion is in German. So...yes once in a while I use a little dab of one of the perfumes they brought me from Germany.

The guy never came yet to hook up the tv. We lucked out with the internet- they came on Friday just like they said they would. It's the same company for the tv, and they said they'd come Sat or Sun, but here we are Monday afternoon and no tv. It's ok, I'm happy to have the internet first. But the truth is I'm getting sick of watching movies at nite. We watched Finding Nemo after a couple of nites of the black & white 50's movies, and the last 3 nites we've used that website Watch32 that has free movies online and Everardo hooks up his laptop to the tv, but I hate looking for a movie to watch. I never liked picking movies from On Demand when we had cable either. If they don't come today we'll try to call them tomorrow.

I've walked each day with Sam either down the road behind us that goes past the estuary or along the beach. The beach here really is amazing. The sand is so soft, and it glitters gold, like little gold flecks in the sand. Almost no debris, not alot of shells like Playa Ventura or Penasco, but really beautiful, much prettier than Penasco, and in some ways, more than Playa Ventura as well. Playa Ventura has a beautiful coastline, rocky and jagged at some points, and beautiful sandy beaches at others. It's open ocean, with the waves crashing onto the shore. Ok maybe just different, not better. Here we are in a bit of a bay, the land naturally curving inward, but this morning there were pretty big waves. You can see little neighborhoods or towns along the coast and also up in the hills. This morning there were this little birds on the beach- sandpipers I think; they have long skinny beaks that they put down into the sand. They look like little brown birds but when they take off and fly you see white and black under their wings. They didn't really mind Sam and I until I threw the ball, then mostly they just scurried the other way. I tried to hold off with the ball until we were past them, but Sam is jumping straight up in the air asking "now? now? now? now? NOW? NOW? NOW? as if he will literally die if I don't throw it. So I do. The other day I saw a seal with her baby- actually it could have been a sea lion, whatever it was I was very excited!

At nite the view is really beautiful from our house. We can see the beach out the side windows of the living room, and then the lights of Ensenada. I just love the little group of houses nestled together on the hillsides; some close to the bottom, some mid way, not alot of them on the top ridges, except right at the beach south of us. And so far almost all the people around here really really like it. They like the serenity, the calmness. There's alot of Americans, in Penasco I only interacted with a few; 3 or 4 from the English speaking AA, and then Deb & Rick. A couple times when doing something with Deb I'd be with a couple of ladies, but mostly we were with Mexicans. And of course in Playa Ventura, all Mexicans. I walked Sam up to the corner to go down by the estuary on Sat and there was a little flea market, well just 6 or 7 people set up, mostly Americans, and I chatted with them. We've met a few of our neighbors and except for the family who owns most of the land, they have been Americans. We don't have too many neighbors; most of the houses in our campo are vacant. Either owned by people who vacation here, or just plain empty.

Part of that has to do with the crazy devil  woman who is the family who owns most of the land in this campo. At first I thought she owned all of it except for ours, but a few places are otherwise owned. So some houses own the house and the land, others own the house but lease the land from her, and many are owned by her and she rents...some of them. There's probably 25 or 30 houses here, but that is a pretty uneducated guess, maybe a few more. Maybe as many as 10 are occupied full time, but it feels like to me that number is closer to 5 or 6...5 I am sure of, so maybe a couple more. So these neighborhoods, or "campos" have sprung up over time, maybe 40 years ago someone built a house here and leased the land from the family who owns it. When enough houses are in one place, they give it a name, like ours in Agua Caliente. There's La Jolla next to us and La Jolla 2 across the street from them. That's where we looked at 2 other houses. I don't know how many houses or people determines when a camp is formed, but I think one Mexican family owns most of the coastal land around here..their name might be Pacheco or something close to that. Ours is owned by a different family who's name I won't use because they are pretty fucked up people, and well at this point I just don't want to. But I will write about this crazy devil woman so ha ha I guess it's kinda the same thing.

The beaches in Mexico are all public, anyone can go on any beach. Us having "rights to the beach" for our Playa Ventura house simply means if a hotel goes up next door they can't use the beach in front of our house for their purposes. But here, people own the land right up to the beach, so even though it's public, you must cross private property to get to the beach. So for the La Jolla camp for example, if we want to go to the beach there, they'd charge us $3.00 to come into their camp. Now here, if we were renting from devil woman we could go to the beach no problem..it's less than a 5 minute walk, and I can see it from where I'm sitting on my couch right now. But, did I mention she's a devil? Yeah and in this case simply a F'ing greedy bitch. Right after we said oh we want this house, the realtor said, oh yeah- you have to pay the land owners here $50 a month to have beach access. This pissed of Everardo, but we said ok, well we'll just use a different access. And we found one yesterday walking down towards the estuary, so a 10 minute walk instead of less than 5. However, things changed when we got here, and suddenly the fee was beach access AND access to our house! The realtor was no help there, she said "I tried". She then said she'd pay half so now it's $25 to us. So we went down and talked to the devil. I mean this woman is pure evil. She has a cold dead aura around her. I mean I was spooked. If we didn't love this house I would have told her to fuck off and just gone somewhere else. As it turns out we really don't see her so I'm no longer upset about her like I was that first day. She smiled and I swear I thought a knife was about to go in my back. At one point she said she was a christian woman and I peeked upward to see if a lightening bolt was on the way or would she simply burst into flames. Anyway, she told us this big long story about the people who lived in our house for 40 years or something like that, they were their friends and the devils parents gave them access. But then they died, and the Canadians came- the current owners and they never asked for access to their house or the beach...yadda yadda yadda and some big long thing about who "really" owned the house, and how she'd like to buy it...oh and would we like to rent from her....She told us that all the land here is her family's so technically we do not have access to our house. She said it all with a smile on her face and in a way that we would "understand what is fair", and what has happened to her family that has not been fair...

So we heard elsewhere that she thinks some big company will buy all this land from her for a billion dollars (or some such number), and she will be filthy reach. So she doesn't want people in these houses, although she is renting out a couple. She wants this house because she doesn't own the land and she needs it, but as I said, I know she doesn't own at least one other lot. She has a terrible reputation around here. We have been warned or given "the look" and always told to be careful. Apparently her brother and his son are crack heads or meth heads, and empty houses get broken into. But we've talked to some people who've lived here for years and although they had nothing good to say about the family, their homes have never been broken into. I guess one of them is a drug dealer, but as long as they stay away from us I'm ok. I mean, there's crime everywhere, drug dealers everywhere- this is not cartel- just loser criminals. So she's talking away to us about how they are a "family" here, and we can be a part of that family. That she could rent a house to us cheaper than this one...like I would EVER make a deal with a devil. I told her we had a lease but she said oh you can break it and get all your money back. Yeah right. She was like an evil snake...can you tell I don't like her? So she tells us that she is not going to negotiate this fee with us. It is with our realtor. That she is just talking to us a neighbors, inviting us to be a part of the group. Then she says, in fact you do not have to pay, and the realtor does not have to pay, but you will not be a part of the neighborhood, you will have to just stay in your house. But she will have to tell her older brother and he is not as nice as she is. That he may have a problem because we do not have access to our house, so how can we be allowed to go there...anyway the words were something to that effect...and I took it as intended- as a threat! I said, look, we are going to have our realtor pay, we just want to live a quiet life and I want to walk my dog on the beach every day. She said, oh I don't mean anything by this, I just like to be honest and be sure everyone is on the same page. Everardo didn't get what she was saying at first and when I told him as we walked home he got mad...really mad- he said send her brother over..and some other things I won't repeat...Did I say she's a devil?? So- we want to live here, a week later we really like it here. We don't see her, and we are chalking it up to our rent is $25 more a month than we thought.

We did ask around and all the camps have a fee to use the camp to get to the beach if you don't live there She figures since she doesn't own our land she's gonna get something from us. Ok I know my readers are shaking their heads and saying- what? Move somewhere else! Well we're gonna stay 6 months; that's the lease we signed. Actually our realtor offered to refund our money, but we don't have another place right now, we finally found this place. She will let us break the lease in a couple of months if we find something else but we lose the security deposit. And the thing is- we really really like the house. So we're staying for 6 months, and probably a year, and who knows, right? Ok there's another thing that makes all this easier to swallow- we saw the paperwork from one person and then have heard the same story from 3 or 4 people (but seeing the court papers gave it some authenticity), that she is under investigation for numerous criminal acts, I think the one that they're going to get her for is that she doesn't pay her property taxes on all this land. She's so greedy that she takes takes takes, but she's not paying the gov't. Now she has an "in" somewhere; she's paying off somebody because they were supposed to start auctioning off some of her land a year ago and it was delayed, for a year. So something may happen soon. Or not. This woman I was chatting with on the beach; she lives in another camp down further and has 4 dogs- she lives alone. She had all the same stories when I told her where I lived, and then told me that the devil actually did some black magic spells on some people to get them to move out of their houses, and that this woman's friend does "cleaning" I forget the word but like when you burn sage to get rid of the negative energy or "bad spirits". Actually I burn sage around my home, and will do it here; I just found my sage last nite when emptying yet another bin ha ha.

So we are ok. I think if we just mind our own business & give the devil and her family a wide berth we will be fine. Oh and we're gonna get another big dog to keep Sam company and to bark real loud in our yard. That's one thing, most Mexicans are afraid of big dogs, the culture here about dogs is different than the US. Not for everyone but for many people here, they can barely feed their family, so a dog is an animal that hangs around the house, fends for himself where food is concerned. I know I've written before about the huge dog overpopulation problems here in Mexico- Penasco was terrible. I haven't seen too many strays here but have read on the local web bulletin boards that it is a problem here as well. Once the darn tv guys come we can run errands together and we'll head down to Paco's animal rescue and see what we can find- I heard they have a lot of dogs. I do know many Mexican families do have dogs as pets, and take good care of them, but there's just so many strays. One huge issue is getting the dogs spayed or neutered. It's like they don't mind with the females, but with the males it's some how some macho thing! Even Everardo was hesitant about getting Lucky fixed- but believe me- he would have gotten neutered.

So the plumbing problems are not totally resolved, now it's tomorrow. The guy who will empty the septic is supposed to come, and Mike needed to go to "town" (Ensenada) to get the stuff to finish fixing the toilets. So another day of having to go downstairs if we want to do anything besides pee....but that's better than the day & nite we couldn't use the upstairs toilet at all!! Remember our living room and bedroom are upstairs. Since the house was not lived in for so long the pipes are messed up, but Mike is a good guy and seems to know what he's doing so it's all good.

I moved the couch around this morning and like it much better. It was here when we got here and is one of those sectionals with a corner. The 2 ends have a foot rest that pops up, but my end doesn't work right, although we did get it to come up, so just leave it up! Anyway I pull the corner section out, and put one section between the 2 ends so we have basically a regular couch with foot rests, and my end? Well if I look to the left out the window- I can see the ocean!! It's an ok view, over one house and past another but hey- I have an ocean view from my couch. And we're far enough away that it's not real loud. Sounds crazy, but in Playa Ventura the ocean was so loud! I longed for silence.

Well it's 4pm so it looks like no tv today. Ha ha jokes on me- we went to Telnor (Telmex of Baja, both owned by Carlos Slim), in Ensenada and saw they offered Dish tv! So it was one stop shopping! In fact they offered to put it all on one bill, which we can receive by email, so we said, sure that would be great! It will be over 200 pesos cheaper than Sky tv for about the same number of channels. The only disappointment is they do not offer BBC Int'l News, which I really like, even much better than CNN Int'l. The guy did say that the CNN that they offer was out of Europe not Atlanta, but, oh well, we'll see.

My husband has been amazing, dragging things back and forth for me, moving furniture, AND cooking. Yum we had lobster a couple of nites ago, and whatever he's making tonite is a surprise cause he's downstairs in the kitchen now...where I should go ask if I can help. (the answer will be no- but at least I asked!)

Ok kinda caught up now, so catch ya'll later!

Mexico fun fact:
While bullfighting is Mexico's national sport, fútbol (soccer in the U.S.) is currently more popular