It took me so long to write about our trip that Thanksgiving slipped by. Thanksgiving was nice, perfect in fact...if you don't count not being with my daughters....Our first Thanksgiving on Mexico we were still down south and nobody besides me gave the day a second thought. I went back and read what I wrote that day- I called and talked to my older daughter, and played telephone tag with the younger one. Drewy & Rex had just signed a lease for their house- the one they live in now and were really excited because they'd been renting a condo for awhile.And of course I had no turkey and stuffing that day....Last year we had just arrived in Baja after 11 months in Sonora- if we had waited I'm sure we would have had Thanksgiving with Americans we knew there, but we moved on Nov 1st, so we didn't, but we did have Thanksgiving dinner over here. It was kinda sadder than the year before in Playa Ventura...I guess because it looked right... it just wasn't right....We got invited to a pot luck Thanksgiving at this church with a bunch of people, of whom we knew 3. One was a guy from AA who originally invited us, and 2 were a couple- he was the maintenance guy for the house we had just rented, and his wife. He is a super nice guy- we really have barely seen him since we moved down to the beach, but he's kept pretty busy and they are very involved with their church. Anyway it was nice but kinda awkward not knowing anyone but them and they didn't sit with us, either. So all the fixin's were there and everyone was nice enough.....OK so this year was wonderful! There were 12 people at the table I think, and we knew at least 8 of them! We brought a pie and lent the hostess some plates, and the turkey was great! The stuffing was out of this world! A bunch of people enjoying themselves, laughing and talking...it WAS Thanksgiving. Call me grateful.
One cool thing for us...and I just knocked wood to not jinx it.And my head. As always I have to take 2 steps back to tell this story. Our friend is moving back to the states after living here for 5 years. He ended up being someone we saw almost every day cause he has this big dog, Iggy, who we love, and he comes and plays with Sam & Hazel every day. Then Everardo takes the 3 of them on a long walk every afternoon, and it's funny, the people we know are calling Everardo the dog whisperer because all the dogs around here love him, and Iggy comes to him better than to his owner. Well Everardo takes them not just walking, but swimming in the ocean, throws the ball down the beach and into the waves, swims with them, and by the estuary throws rocks and balls in the water for them to chase after and romp around, so they love him. At Thanksgiving we looked over and a women who had her dog with her saw her dog with it's head on Everardo's lap- ah she said- the dog whisperer! ha ha. Actually our friend was coming over here before we lived here because his buddy lives in the studio on stilts above and behind us- that's how we found this place...he heard us say we were looking for a place to live and knew this mobile home was vacant....drove us down here....and well, here we are. But he'd come over every afternoon to sit and bullshit with his buddy and let Iggy run around and run down to the beach, so once we moved in, for Iggy, it was the more the merrier. Ok- so he got married to his girlfriend in the states and is moving back up. Well- he was getting tv reception from the U.S., and the guy he was doing thru was at Thanksgiving. I started chatting with him....and...yippeee he's gonna make the same deal with us!
2 and a half years of Spanish tv except for a couple of channels with only really really really stupid shows in English, and one channel with ok shows, but they are repeats and they show them over and over.....and over....and over....etc etc etc. But I still watched them aarrgghh. I mean when I watch tv I don't want to think, just be entertained....so I am rarely learning any Spanish from tv..I get lost and then bored pretty quick. Now we do get 2 movie channels in English but they show the same movie for about 3 months..again...aarrgghh. So the shows I have been watching are like CSI Miami, CSI NY....regular CSI, NCIS....& Criminal Minds. The only ones of those shows I ever watched before was Criminal Minds and regular CSI. Gonna say this right now- I will NEVER EVER EVER watch CSI Miami, NY or NCIS again!!!! OMG I didn't like them before....and I probly won't watch the other two for a while either, although I'm pretty sure we are at least one season behind here so there might be a couple....but they are on all day long, 5 days a week. Then a couple of months ago, that channel changed to Spanish, except for one hour during the day and one hour at nite- and not always the same hour ha ha!! Last year the tv drove me nuts....the on screen guides are always wrong, and ha ha the names of the movies, they were made up...like for example the movie called The Blind Side...about the black kid adopted by the white family who went to high school, college and then became a pro football player....they called it...Suenos Posibles - Possible Dreams! Ha ha . Somewhere along the line I simply stopped getting pissed off- it didn't change anything and I was always mad at something. So I stopped caring about it- I mean really- it is just tv....and we were laughing about alot of the time it's just background noise when we are on our computers.
To top it all off, the cable companies in Mexico are just like the cable companies in the U.S.- a pain in the butt, they overcharge, there's always a problem...and out of 13 months, the bill has been right twice. My unflappable husband who never loses his temper? Ha! You should see him on the phone with these guys! We were planning to turn it off as soon as our contract was up, but just found out we can cancel Jan 1- which we are going to do. So this is perfect timing! And the guy is going to charge us what we were paying to the Mexican company! But we are going to get all the movie channels! In English..... and the main stations as well. Did I say yippee?? It might get all hooked up tomorrow while I am gone...Ok wow that was alot about tv eh? Ha ha I know my sister skipped over all of it!
So Thanksgiving was awesome, and I spoke to both my daughters on Thanksgiving as well as long conversations the day before, and again today with younger....I also called my big sister, they're back in Florida for the winter, and my brother in Texas. My brother and his wife had a quiet Thanksgiving, no kids....and had plans to do stuff around the house for the long weekend- they are both teachers and so had Wed off as well- he said trying to get the kids to come to class the day before Thanksgiving is a joke....but the weather there was finally not so hot so they could maybe do some outside stuff. The bad/sad news is my brother in law is doing perhaps even more poorly (ouch bad sentence) than when I visited them in NY. That just sucks so much. And for them- they had been eating right, organically, the "right" foods, and always exercising, going on 600 mile bike rides (never forget that one), and this is what he gets?? Why karma why? He's a really good man.... hmmm I don't know the answer to anything except that yeah yeah I know- life is not fair. To seem him deteriorate makes me...sad, mad, frustrated, scared...and that's me so dear sister I love you so much and cannot begin to imagine how hard it is for you. For both of them, he is the one who is sick, but they both suffer, and in different ways on different days. But they both still laugh. I love that. We laughed alot when I was out there, and we laughed on the phone. I am so so grateful that I was able to go out to see them in Sept....and you never know what comes next, so we'll see, we shall see. So both daughters told me their Thanksgiving dinner was yummy- not a huge surprise because I know my ex husband cooks a mean turkey as my kid would say...and I suspect his wife is an awesome cook as well, so they probly ate gooood. I'm so happy my girls had a family Thanksgiving and Drew & Rex had their daughter with them - and I saw some pics....maybe next year they'll all come down here....
It's Sunday afternoon, and I'm sure the road to the border is full of cars returning to the states, for work or school tomorrow. We didn't have anything like Black Friday shopping or the crazy kick off to the Christmas season shopping weekend here, although we went up to Ensenada for dog food yesterday and Costco was pretty full...I think all their Christmas stuff has been out for a couple of weeks, and the really nice thing was....I didn't hear a single Christmas song on the radio until yesterday! ha ha. I am thinking about getting out my decorations, even though it's still summer like during the day...but at nite it's cold. Really cold- I mean I sleep with a hooded sweatshirt, pajama pants and socks, under sheets, 2 blankets and a bedspread. We have no heater, and the walls of this trailer are about an eighth of an inch wide..... I think we have a small propane heater, but not sure if we have the tank....and when we used it in Penasco for the few weeks it was actually this cold, man that propane went quick- 500 pesos worth in just a couple of days. Also this place is much smaller and we don't want to asphyxiate. Tomorrow I'm going with my girlfriend up to the states to go shopping. My first time since moving to Baja that I'm going to Calif just to shop- not on my way to the airport. Kinda fun eh? She has some specific things she's shopping for, and I do not. However I think I will look for some new tennis shoes for Everardo for Christmas...he really is hard at Christmas because he wants nothing. He says if we want something we get it- why spend money just to spend it. Ok ok I can understand that- but HEY! Have some Christmas spirit!!! He needs the shoes and he also knows better to get them up there, here they just don't seem to fit him right. So I'm gonna look. I also saw a couple of shirts- one a long sleeve pull over and one sort of a jacket type at Costco that his style so I'm gonna get those...but we usually just give each other a couple of gifts like that. We are planning to make donations, or give gifts to people, or a family or two somewhere down here, probly in Maneadero who is in need. We have so much- he is right- we have food, clothes, our dogs, a car....and now even tv, so what else is there? Well, people who's kids do need a jacket for the cold months, new school shoes, ect so that's what we'll do. There are people in need here where we live, but there is also a pretty large expat community who make donations and do things not just at Chrostmas but all year round for the community, which is why we're going to target the next town, which is really just local people. Everardo goes to Spanish AA meetings there and is getting to know some people and some different areas, so that's where we'll go. Anyway I'm excited to go shopping with a girlfriend.....just to walk around and look.
Well Poppi just told me that on their walk Hazel almost caught a squirrel! She grabbed onto his tail! He jumped in a bush and got away....Everardo looked in the bush and there was a huge beehive! Now he's talking about how he can get the honey!! Stayed tuned for that story! So it's time to close this up and make dinner- yeah yeah I don't cook- I'm making tuna fish and egg salad for sandwiches ....and I better get my passport and put it in my purse while I'm thinking about it. Hopefully not too many people had tomorrow off so won't be heading for the border- although we're leaving at 7:30 in the morning so we can start back by about 2:30 so we don't travel in the dark, which is fine with me. So I feel caught up here, although it seems like I'm forgetting something- I had to put this down a couple of times to talk on the phone, talk to a neighbor, ect...so it feels a little jumbled, but I do feel good. I won't exercise tomorrow.....but that's ok. Oh yeah- I tried the free class nearby...it's 3 days a week and I wanted to change up my routine a little. It's not quite enough on the aerobic side...not enough heart pumping....but the stretching and weights are ok, so maybe if I do half my beach dance (30min) before I go then it would be an all over better workout...hmmm well I'm gonna try it out this week and the classes are Tue Thur and Fri so I won't miss it tomorrow. I need to stay focused thru the holiday season...there's already sweets and cookies and crappola all over the place...I've done ok, but it's just the beginning of a long month ha ha. OK well enough for now. Viva!
One cool thing for us...and I just knocked wood to not jinx it.And my head. As always I have to take 2 steps back to tell this story. Our friend is moving back to the states after living here for 5 years. He ended up being someone we saw almost every day cause he has this big dog, Iggy, who we love, and he comes and plays with Sam & Hazel every day. Then Everardo takes the 3 of them on a long walk every afternoon, and it's funny, the people we know are calling Everardo the dog whisperer because all the dogs around here love him, and Iggy comes to him better than to his owner. Well Everardo takes them not just walking, but swimming in the ocean, throws the ball down the beach and into the waves, swims with them, and by the estuary throws rocks and balls in the water for them to chase after and romp around, so they love him. At Thanksgiving we looked over and a women who had her dog with her saw her dog with it's head on Everardo's lap- ah she said- the dog whisperer! ha ha. Actually our friend was coming over here before we lived here because his buddy lives in the studio on stilts above and behind us- that's how we found this place...he heard us say we were looking for a place to live and knew this mobile home was vacant....drove us down here....and well, here we are. But he'd come over every afternoon to sit and bullshit with his buddy and let Iggy run around and run down to the beach, so once we moved in, for Iggy, it was the more the merrier. Ok- so he got married to his girlfriend in the states and is moving back up. Well- he was getting tv reception from the U.S., and the guy he was doing thru was at Thanksgiving. I started chatting with him....and...yippeee he's gonna make the same deal with us!
2 and a half years of Spanish tv except for a couple of channels with only really really really stupid shows in English, and one channel with ok shows, but they are repeats and they show them over and over.....and over....and over....etc etc etc. But I still watched them aarrgghh. I mean when I watch tv I don't want to think, just be entertained....so I am rarely learning any Spanish from tv..I get lost and then bored pretty quick. Now we do get 2 movie channels in English but they show the same movie for about 3 months..again...aarrgghh. So the shows I have been watching are like CSI Miami, CSI NY....regular CSI, NCIS....& Criminal Minds. The only ones of those shows I ever watched before was Criminal Minds and regular CSI. Gonna say this right now- I will NEVER EVER EVER watch CSI Miami, NY or NCIS again!!!! OMG I didn't like them before....and I probly won't watch the other two for a while either, although I'm pretty sure we are at least one season behind here so there might be a couple....but they are on all day long, 5 days a week. Then a couple of months ago, that channel changed to Spanish, except for one hour during the day and one hour at nite- and not always the same hour ha ha!! Last year the tv drove me nuts....the on screen guides are always wrong, and ha ha the names of the movies, they were made up...like for example the movie called The Blind Side...about the black kid adopted by the white family who went to high school, college and then became a pro football player....they called it...Suenos Posibles - Possible Dreams! Ha ha . Somewhere along the line I simply stopped getting pissed off- it didn't change anything and I was always mad at something. So I stopped caring about it- I mean really- it is just tv....and we were laughing about alot of the time it's just background noise when we are on our computers.
To top it all off, the cable companies in Mexico are just like the cable companies in the U.S.- a pain in the butt, they overcharge, there's always a problem...and out of 13 months, the bill has been right twice. My unflappable husband who never loses his temper? Ha! You should see him on the phone with these guys! We were planning to turn it off as soon as our contract was up, but just found out we can cancel Jan 1- which we are going to do. So this is perfect timing! And the guy is going to charge us what we were paying to the Mexican company! But we are going to get all the movie channels! In English..... and the main stations as well. Did I say yippee?? It might get all hooked up tomorrow while I am gone...Ok wow that was alot about tv eh? Ha ha I know my sister skipped over all of it!
So Thanksgiving was awesome, and I spoke to both my daughters on Thanksgiving as well as long conversations the day before, and again today with younger....I also called my big sister, they're back in Florida for the winter, and my brother in Texas. My brother and his wife had a quiet Thanksgiving, no kids....and had plans to do stuff around the house for the long weekend- they are both teachers and so had Wed off as well- he said trying to get the kids to come to class the day before Thanksgiving is a joke....but the weather there was finally not so hot so they could maybe do some outside stuff. The bad/sad news is my brother in law is doing perhaps even more poorly (ouch bad sentence) than when I visited them in NY. That just sucks so much. And for them- they had been eating right, organically, the "right" foods, and always exercising, going on 600 mile bike rides (never forget that one), and this is what he gets?? Why karma why? He's a really good man.... hmmm I don't know the answer to anything except that yeah yeah I know- life is not fair. To seem him deteriorate makes me...sad, mad, frustrated, scared...and that's me so dear sister I love you so much and cannot begin to imagine how hard it is for you. For both of them, he is the one who is sick, but they both suffer, and in different ways on different days. But they both still laugh. I love that. We laughed alot when I was out there, and we laughed on the phone. I am so so grateful that I was able to go out to see them in Sept....and you never know what comes next, so we'll see, we shall see. So both daughters told me their Thanksgiving dinner was yummy- not a huge surprise because I know my ex husband cooks a mean turkey as my kid would say...and I suspect his wife is an awesome cook as well, so they probly ate gooood. I'm so happy my girls had a family Thanksgiving and Drew & Rex had their daughter with them - and I saw some pics....maybe next year they'll all come down here....
It's Sunday afternoon, and I'm sure the road to the border is full of cars returning to the states, for work or school tomorrow. We didn't have anything like Black Friday shopping or the crazy kick off to the Christmas season shopping weekend here, although we went up to Ensenada for dog food yesterday and Costco was pretty full...I think all their Christmas stuff has been out for a couple of weeks, and the really nice thing was....I didn't hear a single Christmas song on the radio until yesterday! ha ha. I am thinking about getting out my decorations, even though it's still summer like during the day...but at nite it's cold. Really cold- I mean I sleep with a hooded sweatshirt, pajama pants and socks, under sheets, 2 blankets and a bedspread. We have no heater, and the walls of this trailer are about an eighth of an inch wide..... I think we have a small propane heater, but not sure if we have the tank....and when we used it in Penasco for the few weeks it was actually this cold, man that propane went quick- 500 pesos worth in just a couple of days. Also this place is much smaller and we don't want to asphyxiate. Tomorrow I'm going with my girlfriend up to the states to go shopping. My first time since moving to Baja that I'm going to Calif just to shop- not on my way to the airport. Kinda fun eh? She has some specific things she's shopping for, and I do not. However I think I will look for some new tennis shoes for Everardo for Christmas...he really is hard at Christmas because he wants nothing. He says if we want something we get it- why spend money just to spend it. Ok ok I can understand that- but HEY! Have some Christmas spirit!!! He needs the shoes and he also knows better to get them up there, here they just don't seem to fit him right. So I'm gonna look. I also saw a couple of shirts- one a long sleeve pull over and one sort of a jacket type at Costco that his style so I'm gonna get those...but we usually just give each other a couple of gifts like that. We are planning to make donations, or give gifts to people, or a family or two somewhere down here, probly in Maneadero who is in need. We have so much- he is right- we have food, clothes, our dogs, a car....and now even tv, so what else is there? Well, people who's kids do need a jacket for the cold months, new school shoes, ect so that's what we'll do. There are people in need here where we live, but there is also a pretty large expat community who make donations and do things not just at Chrostmas but all year round for the community, which is why we're going to target the next town, which is really just local people. Everardo goes to Spanish AA meetings there and is getting to know some people and some different areas, so that's where we'll go. Anyway I'm excited to go shopping with a girlfriend.....just to walk around and look.
Well Poppi just told me that on their walk Hazel almost caught a squirrel! She grabbed onto his tail! He jumped in a bush and got away....Everardo looked in the bush and there was a huge beehive! Now he's talking about how he can get the honey!! Stayed tuned for that story! So it's time to close this up and make dinner- yeah yeah I don't cook- I'm making tuna fish and egg salad for sandwiches ....and I better get my passport and put it in my purse while I'm thinking about it. Hopefully not too many people had tomorrow off so won't be heading for the border- although we're leaving at 7:30 in the morning so we can start back by about 2:30 so we don't travel in the dark, which is fine with me. So I feel caught up here, although it seems like I'm forgetting something- I had to put this down a couple of times to talk on the phone, talk to a neighbor, ect...so it feels a little jumbled, but I do feel good. I won't exercise tomorrow.....but that's ok. Oh yeah- I tried the free class nearby...it's 3 days a week and I wanted to change up my routine a little. It's not quite enough on the aerobic side...not enough heart pumping....but the stretching and weights are ok, so maybe if I do half my beach dance (30min) before I go then it would be an all over better workout...hmmm well I'm gonna try it out this week and the classes are Tue Thur and Fri so I won't miss it tomorrow. I need to stay focused thru the holiday season...there's already sweets and cookies and crappola all over the place...I've done ok, but it's just the beginning of a long month ha ha. OK well enough for now. Viva!
