Life Style Refugee

  Whoa, that’s what I call a beach, yo!

Every paragraph I’ve tried to write about the splendors of Barra de Navidad comes across as the most dreadful porn, but I can’t help it. It is hot, so hot, steamy wet and hot, and God, do I love it there.

Who cares about the Atlantic seaboard with it’s dumb boardwalks and pedal jitneys and imitation gay ninieties  photos?

 Are you kidding? Barra is the beach, baby, coconut shells washing up on the shore and the mighty Pacific crashing and rolling, and  stoned surfers passed out in hammocks tied to palm trees. 

Actually it wasn’t just surfers. There was a taxi stand across from our hotel. I assume the drivers were busy with fares every night, because during the day they would  be crashed out like patients in a coma ward, sprawling in hammocks of their own,  slung between No Parking signs.

Pah! In Ocean City we picked daintily at blue crab and complained about the flies while we watched the class of  ‘08  traipse up and down the boardwalk,celebrating their high school graduations by getting their fake I.D.’s confiscated.

 In Barra we wrestled with 2 kilo langostas drowning in melted butter and kicked iguanas away with our huraches and left the restaurant exhausted and full to watch a parade of …oh, who knows? Toothless old war criminals, con artists, Endless Summer types, pot smugglers, and ruthless Mexican peddlars who make their livings by selling shell jewelry and whatever else they can get their hands on.

And hovering over all of it like Cinderella’s Castle is  The Grand Bay Hotel .

 The Grand Bay Isla Navidad is an elegant Wyndham resort that adds a touch of bling to the otherwise beguilingly shoddy tropical atmosphere. Separated from the rest of Barra by a moat, I mean,  lagoon, it’s there, but not really, if you know what I mean.

 One of the co-eds and I took a water taxi over to the hotel for their Sunday brunch when we were visiting Barra in January. On that occasion she and I idled on the verandah nibbling croissants and pretending to be Eurotrash countesses, but except for those rare occasions, it just provides a magnificent backdrop.

I am telling you, I love it. I don’t think Bruno knows how much I love it, but I could live there, and finally, now that I’m middle aged, realize the fantasies I’ve been nursing for 40 years to be Gidget, spending my mornings surfing a longboard and my sunsets mixing drinks in coconut shells for a beat poet draft dodger named Kahuna.

Oh, except that I can’t surf. And I’m a recovering alcoholic.

And except for the fact that there is an instant in the morning when the heat suddenly ignites, going from being just ordinarily too hot to the place where water becomes steam and if you didn’t roll into a pool that minute, you risk being scalded by the air. and for the rest of the day you have no choice but to stay in the pool or join the taxi drivers in semi-consciousness.

So I keep my beach fantasies to myself. On the way home, only a 4 hour drive, the excellent toll roads wind up and over the mountains. As you approach Lake Chapala, the temperature drops and the air feels fresher and cleaner by the mile. Kilometer, I mean. It’s a different world, and actually one that’s probably a little better suited to real life. For Bruno, anyway.

I’ll tell you where you can go to get a good feel for this place that I love so much. Check out Sparks Mexico page. He has some pictures that make me feel like I’m still there. Actually, there’s very little about Mexico you can’t find out while drifting around on his web page, so have at it.

The thing about living in Paradise is, it doesn’t take much to piss you off in the climate department.  Here in Chapala we’ve spent the week sandwiched between a bunch of tropical storms hovering off the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, and, for all I know, the Carribean and Gulf Coasts as well.

Anyway, it’s been raining steadily for six days, and it’s become common to see normally cheerful old retired guys stalled in traffic and wearing expressions like Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining.

Nothing to be done about that, however. I don’t care how green we get, nobody asked the dinosaurs if they wanted to be extinct, and nobody’s going to ask us if we want the climate to stay the same or go to hell, either.

Um, sorry. I didn’t mean to air my carefully researched conclusions on global warming in that particular spot, I just got carried away.

 I’m more concerned at the moment…a moment of sunshine, Thank God in his Heaven above…, with my beloved stepson. It turns out, and I can’t tell you how disturbing this is to me, that he has discovered how to ”handle” me.

Twerp. You don’t “handle” me! I’m not some dopey creature  running on reflex whose responses can be manipulated by a skillful pre-adolescent.

I’m a grown up!

This came to my attention when we were having breakfast at Fonda Dona Lola’s, a cavernous restaurant that’s famous for it’s low prices and straightforward food. It’s a bit like eating in an airplane hangar with no walls and cut paper flags strung from one corner to the other.

Our party consisted of Max, Ricardo the baby gringa slayer, Karina,  who was batting her eyelashes while 12 year old Ricky helped her choose  a breakfast entree ( ah, huevos rancheros, the food of love, my darling!) and my friend David. David had innocently invited me to lunch and thus found himself in the position of Mexican Scoutmaster. He insisted that he didn’t mind, even when I waved the waiter with the check over to his side of the table.

But who cares, at Fonda Dona Lola’s breakfast for 5 still came to less than $200  pesos.

Anyway, I had no idea that my nostrils were flaring in response to some impertinence  of Ricardo’s, but I heard Max whisper to him “Oh, now you’ve done it. If you don’t want her to kill you, you better….” I didn’t hear what the antidote for me was, once I started transforming  into the Mominator, but Max had apparently figured it out.

I have to say I don’t blame him. It appears that the bar of parenting ideals can’t be set low enough for me.

 For instance, when I intend to say something self esteem enhancing like “You’re a really good kid”, no one is more surprised than I am to hear someone roar ”If you don’t get your ass upstairs and stay out of my way for an hour, you’ll live to regret it.”  What?

 Luckily, that smart boy has figured out how to calm me down once he sees the whites of my eyes start to change color, and lucky for Ricardo he was willing to share the information.

 We’re off to the beach for a week, so Max is going to get plenty of practice in keeping me in line.  See you when we get back!

Hah! Every July here in Lakeside, it looks like there’s been some kind of weird in vitro event of the sort that tabloids love ( Old Lady Baby Town! Entire Town of 70 Year Old Women gives Birth!) Of course, it’s just summer vacation for the grandkids, so out of nowhere all the old babes in town have an 11 year old or two following them around, and I’m no exception.

Except that my 11 year old is actually Bruno’s youngest son.

My husband had the chicken pox when he was in his 30’s. Typically, those types of childhood illnesses are particularly dreaded by adult men because of the possiblility of being made sterile. No such luck for Bruno, although it did render him diabetic. So he has four kids, two ex-wives, no money, and has to take insulin shots at the dinner table.

Wait…what am I talking about? Oh, right.

Max is here. Er….., Yay!

At the moment I’m recovering from the flood of adrenaline that surged through my veins at that last little eye roll of my precious darling’s. I suggested to him in a voice that sounded like it was being filtered through a mechanical device that he might want to go upstairs and reflect on the valuable lessons I was teaching him.

But just between us, I’m relieved that he has turned into such a big pain in the ass. He’s always been a sensitive kid, with the manners of a miniature museum curator.  Last year I was a little worried that he was going to grow up to be a weenie, scared of noises and thunderstorms and strangers and going to bed at night.

And of course, because I’m so experienced in child rearing, I have no doubt that being scared of the dark is the first step on a path that leads inevitably to spinning under a mirror ball with mascara in one hand and a bottle of poppers in the other.

His new passion for firearms and WWII games wasn’t enough to completely reassure me, either. I saw Silence of The Lambs. There’s no rule against homos being psychotic mass murderers, as far as I know.

So, okay, I admit to a sense of relief that he doesn’t have any interest in my wardrobe of ballroom dance costumes. ( Not that there’s anything wrong with that) But boy, did I underestimate how incredibly galling a little 11 year old smart mouth can be. I thought I would be glad when the sensitive phase was over, but I know I’ll be glad when this age passes.

He’s made friends with a young Mexican American boy who inherited a flashing grin and easy machismo from his Dad, a well known gringa slayer from back in the day. Ricardo has only just turned 12, so he’s got plenty of fort building and games of tag left in him, but I noticed a gleam of interest when he realized that we lived next door to 11 year old  Karina, too.

In fact when the daylight faded on their outdoor games during a recent sleepover and the boys went upstairs, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of conspiratorial whispering going on about a subject that appeared to be deeply, deeply, intriguing. And I think I heard Karina’s name once or twice.

Not that I was eavesdropping.

Later, the three of us took the dogs out. Ricardo was clearly at home on the cobblestone streets of our village, greeting passersby with familiarity and heading toward the plaza with an unconcious homing instinct. For the first time ever in his young life, Max crossed the street with his pal to put a little distance between us. And when they crossed under one of the streetlights with it’s cloud of bobos, just for a second, some trick of the light gave him the broad shoulders and narrow hipped slouch of an older teenaged boy.

The next time I get mad at that kid for being a smart mouth 11 year old who won’t pick up after himself and who keeps forgetting that guns belong outside, I hope I remember how I felt in that moment. Sunrise, sunset and all that.

But you know what? He’s going to be a gringa slayer, too.

I started writing this blog to describe life in Mexico to people who were interested in someday making the same transition that Bruno and I have done.

More often than not, though, I lose track of my original mission because I’m so busy being baffled and delighted by the comings and goings in my little village.
But here’s something you might like to know. Every now and then, but still pretty often, one of us will look at the other and say “Goddamn, I love my life.”

Honestly, I just don’t think I ever did that when I lived one traffic jam away from the most powerful city in the world, waiting for my leg to be blown off by a terrorist bomb so I could die from lack of health insurance. Oh, did I just say that? Sorry. Let’s move on.

I’m not much of a club person. Clubs tend to require showing up at a regular time, and I can’t ever find anything that I consistently feel enthusiastic about when the meeting is scheduled. I am often excited about it the day before, or raring to go the minute after, but at the scheduled time? Usually not.

So it is with some surprise that I report to you that I have become a member of C.A.S.A, the Culinary Arts Society of Ajijic.

It’s the local cooking club. And every time I say that I’ve joined, someone asks “Oh, do you like to cook?”

Not particularly. I mean, I do, but Jesus, not in the way these scary Bon Appetit types do.

While cooking is not necessarily a passion with me, I do like to eat once in a while, and I’m here to tell you that the monthly banquet hosted by the CASA is a wonder to behold, by far the best and cheapest meal in the village.

In order to take part in this monthly extravaganza each member agrees to submit 4 dishes a year in competition, in any category that appeals to them.

I’ve already been kicked out of one women’s club this year for non participation, so after two months of not showing up at the CASA feast, I thought I’d better start doing my duty. At about the same time, an email was sent out asking for submissions, as so many people were out of town. The category? Brunch.

Perfect. I have a Paula Deen recipe for French Toast Casserole, that, like all her recipes, require very little more than to mix together a kilo each of sugar and butter. To make it a French Toast casserole, you insert some sliced bread into the sugar/butter. I have made it before for our office meeting and received rave reviews.

Of course, I forgot for a moment a fundamental fact, which is that realtors will eat anything, as long as it’s free.

Anyway, I made the casserole the night before with the idea that I was doing my club a bit of a favor, since they were struggling to fill the entries. To tell you the truth, I presumed that there might be a certain leniency in the judging, since I was doing them such a big favor. In fact, since the realtors, those starving garbage cans, had enjoyed my dish so much, I must confess that I may have entertained a thought or two of walking away with a ribbon of some color or another.

I was mistaken on every count.

I won’t bore you with a play by play of every rule that I was cited on. Jesus, who knew so much could be done wrong by bringing a dish of food to a pot luck?

 I will share that after El Presidente asked me to take the bottle of syrup off the table, she told me I couldn’t leave the casserole sitting on the bath towel I had wrapped it in to keep it warm.

And I will also tell you that the big homo who submitted the exact same casserole decorated with a variety of local fresh berries in a talavera dish won a prize. But just wait til next month! I’ve got a taste for the competition now, and I’m going to read the rule book cover to cover. The next competition is going to be for French Cuisine.

I intend to submit the same casserole.

Goddamn I love my life.

So, where have I been, you wonder? Turning 50, that’s where, and let me tell you, a lot of folks lost bets when I did.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been home for two weeks now. Even harder to believe that we forgot the San Antonio Feast Days, a mental twitch that I can only compare to woman’s ability to dull the memory of giving birth enough to ever do it again.

Why God, Why, did we not stay up North for just four more days, rather than descend into the mayhem of a Mexican Village having it’s annual fiesta?

Tired and beat from travel, we arrived at our casa at about 1:00 in the morning and were  startled awake at 5:00 by cohetes, those goddamn firecrackers that our Mexican hosts are so in love with. Over in the church yard, a bunch of tequila sodden cowboys were lighting fuses with the lit ends of their cigarettes, hollering and singing and calling the way no one but Mariachis can.

Later that day I was restocking our pantry at Super Lakes, the shopping emporium that folks travel from Mexico City to shop in, because Pancho the proprieter is so canny about the gourmet and American products he stocks for homesick gringos.

Trying to negotiate a nine point turn with the child size shopping cart in the narrow aisles  overflowing with Pop Tarts and Hellman’s Mayonnaise, my eyes welled up with tears at the memory of the American supermarkets, with their two lane highways and dispensers of handwipes by the immense shopping carts, and  the immaculate shelves stocked with 74 different choices of pickle to buy. What a great effing country.

  But at 7:00 or 8:00 the next morning, I woke up in a different frame of mind after a good nights sleep in my own bed. Next door, my maid’s husband and his cronies were enthusiastically harmonizing to the Frito Bandito song  and pitching beer cans into the street. When I stuck my head out the gate, they gave me a cheerful welcome and offered me a shot of tequila from their bottle.

I shook my head at  them, but it made me laugh and forget all about wide grocery store aisles.

Viva Mexico, y’all.

“Aw, no, hon, I don’t think we have anything like that“

Oh.

Well, if there was no internet available, the shade of aquamarine eyeshadow the cashier at the coffee shop wore must have been mail order. It was most definitely not being sold at the local Rite Aid. Because, that color of eye shadow? Hasn’t been mass produced since 1964.

In fact, this little pocket of Maryland, with it’s waterman culture and beehive sporting waitresses, makes my Mexican village seem pretty cutting edge. At least we have the wi fi, for God’s sake.

 God knows that Latina women never get tired of glamming themselves up, and they are very damn good at it.   But when they rock the turquoise eye make-up, the effect is totally different than when it’s combined with pruny lips and cats-eye glasses and floral polyester, I’ll tell you that.

Something has happened to the Surf City USA of my memory, in which Ocean City, Maryland is the epicenter of beach culture, with tanned lifeguards and beautiful blonde girls at the water’s edge, and The Beach Boys Greatest Hits playing in the background. 

Um, not. I just saw some surfers, and they were wearing NASCAR tee shirts, for the love of God.

Was this always such a small fishing town, so full of  purse lipped, squinty eyed,  and suspicious small fishing town characters?

Yew know wot, hon? I’ve got a feeling it was. Demonstrating yet again the richness of my fantasy life.

And I’m glad, because now that I’m, er,  more mature, I find myself interested in activities that don’t require me to look good in a bathing suit.  I never knew there was so much stuff to do here once you get away from the beach! 

 For which I thank God.  I now have three twenty somethings of my own, and they each have a twenty something of their own, and  when the whole mess of them are so freaking gorgeous and hip and on their way to the hottest bar in town to lord it over lesser humans of their age group, I guess it’s time for me to give up on the dream of being asked out by a life guard and just go antiquing.

Which I can totally do  here!

I’m a step in my family, a married in, and although no one would dream of conciously excluding me from anything,( actually, on the concious level there is some possiblity of me being included when their beloved Dad is not….)

Wait, what am I talking about? Oh, right, the invisible and inpenetrable bond that exists between father and children. There is a forcefield of DNA that I imagine I might bounce away from if I got too close as they walk, heads bent toward each other to share an umbrella. I am a willing enough outsider, content to amble along behind and admire the invisible tie that binds families, no matter how much time or distance separates them.

But lest I give you the wrong impression,  it’s not always a hallmark card around here. The endless ride from Northern Virginia to our present ( and last, at least of the Joachim tour 2008) location outside of Ocean City Md, should have taken four hours. In point of fact, it only took about four and a half of real time hours. In Joachim family tension time, however, it took about two years.

 One of those years occurred after we finally discovered the neighborhood our rental house was located in, a well groomed subdivision of vacation homes for people who had earned a little leisure after crabbing for forty years, or finally turning their Dairy Queen franchises over to the kids.

 My stepdaughter, the adored coed, stiffened with the outrage for which she is well known when she realized that she had signed on for a week of isolation with her parents in a house in a working class suburb, with no way to get to the beach other than be driven by a parent.  A circumstance, she reminded us in an icy tone of voice,  that she hasn’t been in since 2001, and which she didn’t tolerate  at all well back then.

The gloom in the car deepened in proportion to the drive as we continued deeper and deeper into the forested subdivision, farther and farther from the area of fun things to do.

I have to admit to a certain amount of stiffness ( if that’s the word we’re using for panic attacks), myself. After all, her sister, both boyfriends, her brother, his girlfriend and one or two other kids to whom we owe hospitality are slated to arrive at various times during the week.  

I like to picture myself as the center of surprised and admiring conversation about how awesome I am for finding such cool places to rent  for vacation weeks.   Frankly, it was kind of hard to keep the hope alive as we  finally located our  cottage. Tucked away in a man made forest, surrounded by a vinyl picket fence , it was just a short drive away from the neighborhood “yacht club” which, beneath it’s gables and wings, looks suspiciously like a double wide trailer.

Thanks a lot, VRBO.

Chattering brightly ( and duplicitously) about how convenient it was to “Just drive over the bridge! Look, just a few miles, and then turn left and over we go! Oh. Okay, and then across this other one, and then look! there’s the skyline!  That’s the beach! There, that’s where!”

My coed rolled her eyes and looked apathetically out the window in the manner of Joan of Arc waiting for the flames. Tonight we took her  to a special treat, an all you can eat Seafood Buffet, a luxury meant to lull her into complicity.  I’ve kind of blocked out the memory, but it seems to have been a hundred different variations of breaded surimi in palm oil butter on a steam table. Awful.

Its a few days later…

And  I have been won over by this suburb of the beach and it’s variety of things to do fully clothed. Most of the kids are here now,and the rest are arriving tonight. The weather is great and Bruno and I are mellow and pleased to do driving, designated or otherwise, to ferry them to the ersatz Jamaica that seems to be this summer’s big draw for the drinking set.

The coed has spent the week tanning and being bribed with new outfits and bronzing makeup, and now that her boyfriend has arrived  she is able to bask in the noble glow of having sacrificed a week of her life to filial duty. Combined with the satisfaction of his stunned reaction to her new golden skin and blonde highlights, she is as contented as a pretty cat and  I bless that boy a thousand times.

Bruno has played golf every single day at a great variety of Maryland courses, reasonably priced and challenging. I have shopped and shopped and I’m sated for another year. It’s been wonderful. And I’m ready to go back.

As I drove yesterday, (and drove, and drove, and mother-effing drove, son. There is seriously a ratio of one hour of driving for every half hour of getting anything done. It’s insane. ) I searched for a connection to this land of asphalt and ferny green deciduous landscaping, but it feels distinctly foreign. Or alien, maybe, is a better word.

 This area has been my home, off and on, for 40 of my 50 years. I was married here in the church that my Mom still attends and where my father is buried. I came here in my early sobriety to start over, and I have victories and failures that echo in almost every suburb  around the Capitol beltway. I went to high school here, wore a cheerleading uniform,  drank my first beer. I came here and met Marty during my legendary (-ish) career in ballroom dancing,….. came back here after that relationship imploded, met and married Bruno, relived my high school years a whole lot more successfully through my step kids. A lot of my life is here, and the landscape should look familiar.

But it just seems weird and overlit and harsh. And, vaguely, as if I’m in an episode of Star Trek.

Or the Jetsons.  

The point that we’re in a high tech corrider is made when you pull up to a gas station and find a flat screen tv broadcasting the news on top of the pump. Which, is cool, I guess. I’d rather find a person who would keep me from having to get out of my car.

Although the prices are high enough to make us do  a cartoon double take every time I pull into one of these gas-slash-t.v. stations, it seems that the trend is to eliminate people from places where I’m kind of used to seeing them.

I don’t mean the gas station, I haven’t  had anyone pump my gas in this country in fifteen years, but I do feel kind of abandoned when it comes ringing up my own groceries. Frankly, it’s pretty scary, and I have yet to complete a transaction without being told by the machine to wait until someone comes to assist me, which totally makes me feel like  I”m being set up to get arrested for shoplifting.

It is breathtaking, I’ll admit, in it’s beauty and newness and spotless efficiency. Somehow, after Mexico, even the red brick and ivy buildings from Virgina’s colonial heyday  look like cutting edge architecture.

Part B

Bruno is painting the front porch of my childhood home, and we are all entering my Mother’s house through the back door.

This is a minor inconvenience, barely noticeable. It is the kind of house where you might have to hold the shower head on to the pipe while bathing, or lean against the diswasher to keep the plates from tumbling out on a whitewater of Electrosol. It’s just that kind of house.

When I come in I look around for a safe place to leave my keys, and then go through several mnemonic tricks to be sure I don’t forget where, in the escalating piles of 49 card bicycle decks and  keychain flashlights  and shopping bags from  an extinct species of department stores like Woody’s and Garfinckel’s and knitting magazines from the seventies, they have been laid down.

There’s always a sense of psychic phenomena here, as if my belongings will be absorbed into the fabric of the house when my back is turned.

In contrast, last week I stayed at my friend Char’s house, an opulent mansion in a part of Fairfax County reserved for movers and shakers in the government or global software giants.

Char herself is as long limbed and slender as the trees that decorate the sylvan acreage she and her husband, a  distinguished smoothie whose laid back benevolence belies the fact that he’s a beltway jungle cat  to be reckoned with, call a back yard. But where the trees waltz with airy tranquility in the breeze, she is swing and tango and cha cha cha, baby, a rhythm section of super fabulousness, a sovereign territory of South Beach glamour.*

 Almost magically beautiful, she’s also a swell hostess, and they couldn’t have made us more comfortable in their palatial island. We lounged around eating high end chocolates or munching on popcorn in their movie theatre (really!) and slept like babies in our inviting guest room.

So, do I mind moving back to the house of my misspent youth, wading through the debris of every era of my families history to get to the tiny twin beds in the room that Bruno and I share across the hall from the bathroom?

 Well, on the one hand, I’m finally feeling that connection to my past, hearing the echoes that I thought might have disappeared.

On the other hand, duh.

* Char designs and sells amazing jewelry. You can see for yourself by clicking here

Wait, how is it Friday already?

Yes, I know I should have had a post up this week, but I’ve been muy occupado, as the local girls like to say. When they’re being really, really sarcastic about the way I spend my time. But I have!

We’re painting the house remember. And although, no, it’s not like I actually have a paintbrush in my hand, it requires hourly decisions. My impression is that painting a house here is like cooking. Oops! Orange and red walls in one room a little too hot? Better trim it in turquoise to cool it down. Needs something else now? Try fuschia!

Yeah, it’s an interesting process alright. Most of the week I’ve felt like Gulliver being swarmed over by helpful Mexicans. Especially since my new maid, Carmen….I’ll write about it someday, but Magdalena abdicated  to go work at the Pemex Gas station, where she fills out the jumpsuit in such a way as to provoke mucho tips…..but Carmen lives next door and turns up to clean house with any combination of her three daughters and their dog in tow. Added to my two dogs and Raphaels rotating schedule of laborers, well, the kind of solitude that we serious writers like to have has been in short supply.

And my husband is a big giant computer hog, too.  For various hideously boring reasons, there’s only one computer up and running in our house at the moment, and Bruno has been on it every minute of the day. Doing what you wonder? Well, luckily, he put something up in his blog for you to read, since I’m obviously not going to write anything worthwhile.

  And he also threw this together and sent it out, so I guess I won’t complain. By the way, you can get our fabulous newsletter every month by going to vidalago.com and signing up.

  Now, the real reason that I finally pushed him away from the computer and logged on. We’re headed up to the States in the morning. I have every intention of blogging from Babylon, as Bob Marley and I call it, but I had the same good intentions last year, and it didn’t work out. I’ll be gone for three weeks, so if I don’t write, cut me some slack, okay?

XOXOXO Elliott

Ow! Dammit.

Just to prove that my poor old body,  which I have often remarked has got a lot more miles than the model year would indicate, is turning 50, I’ve done something evil to my back, and it hurts like hell.

It certainly hurts enough to interfere with my ability to post my weekly entertaining article full of insights and helpful tips. Oh, wait, that’s somebody elses blog. Okay, well, it interferes with my war against the unarticulated thought, let’s put it that way.

It’s a shame, too, because this week, Bruno and I have commenced on yet another Gringo  rite of passage. We are painting the house Bright Mexican Colors.

Listen, good luck trying to find any Dutch Boy Oyster White around here. Our North American obsession with the various whiter shades of pale must seem pathetically anemic to the local folks when they finally scramble across the border. The closest thing to neutral here is called Forceful Orange.

And I’m a realtor. My instinct is to paint it white and put down beige carpet. The simple act of picking a palette when the choices are not only infinite, but infinitly bright, creates a mental lockdown.

Last week I wrote that I had been stunned into silence by the appearance of a dumb peacock, whose bright blue breast feathers amid the rest of the colors of a humble Mexican street made a simple walk something that you had to lie in a darkened room to recover from.

Hah.

That was nothing, nothing I tell you. I spent the last week dithering around with the other matrons in the Sherman Williams store here, trying to choose just the right yellow (June Day!) and  the perfect orange (Mango Smoothie!)

Jesus Christ, now that it’s up, it looks like the inside of a furnace.

On Saturday morning, I woke up to find that Raphael, our man of all work, had abandoned his usual uniform of camouflage pants and do-rag in favor of a sort of cuban sugar planter look, with a broad brimmed hat and cigar. I assume this is to mark the fact that we have given him enough money to pay helpers while painting the house, a practical move that he seems to have interpreted as a promotion to general contractor. it was pretty clear that he had no intention of getting any paint on his snowy white guayabera.

I’m scared to tell him that I think the colors I picked look like Kristi Yamaguchi’s samba dress on Dancing with The Stars.

 So I’m going to have a lot to write about as soon as I get my back taken care of.  I’m off to Chapala for an appointment with Dr. Xavier, chiropractor and acupuncturist. Yesterday, while trying to collect referrals for someone to fix my back, right now, I was satisfied that he’s my best bet.

 At a Cinco de Mayo party last night, I mentioned his name and the group I was chatting with all nodded knowingly and agreed “Oh, yeah, if he’s not in rehab, he’s great!”

You can’t do better than that. Hasta luego!

Over time the dogs and I have developed the routine of a short walk in the afternoon followed by their dinner.

Involving her daily meal greatly improves the chances that LupitaValdez will actually return to the house, and not run off looking for a handsome male poodle to take her to the really good trash cans for a meal.

Our afternoon walk happens at 4:00, after Judge Judy, and they know exactly when she drops her gavel for the last time.

At 4:00 the sun, which is never fierce around here, has been slowly heating things up until the air is saturated with warmth and very few people are motivated enough to be out and about.

April and May are our summer, and it’s hot. The atmosphere is lethargic and syrupy, and the cobblestone streets become a dusty mexican cliche. I’m prepared to testify that there is more gravity in paradise during these two months, and every step is heavy and slow. Sitting feels like being pinned to a chair.

About this same time of day recently, I dropped in to check on the progress of the new house Georgette is building. When I got there, her construction crew were all dozing on flattened cardboard cartons, hats over their eyes. The maestro was indolently warming tortillas on a small fire.

They didn’t move when we showed up, either. I personally felt anxious on their behalf, as if we’d caught them watching porn on their computers when they were supposed to be filling out quarterly goals, but neither they nor Georgette felt awkward at the interruption of their nap. We actually stepped over one of them to go look at her new fountain.

Yesterday, I was walking the dogs and I encountered an old woman hobbling from the direction of Ajijic. She looked about 99, thin and wrinkled, with a sweater wrapped around her head.

“Hacer calor!” I ventured cheerfully, since I was having one of those contented all’s-right-with-the-world moments that occur so frequently here in my village.

She returned my greeting and congratulated me on being so fat, as she believed it to be an excellent protection from the heat, and kept me from having to have a sweater on my head.

We strolled together for a little bit, the dogs capering around our ankles until a peacock wandered into our path and created a diversion. A huge, Castanedian peacock, with a chest of such a hallucinatory shade of blue that it I hadn’t known I was drug free, it would have freaked me out.

This peacock, which really did exist by the way, was dragging a tail long enough to reach across the narrow cobblestone street from sidewalk to sidewalk . The appearance of a unicorn wouldn’t have seemed any more fantastic, and the combination of the colors sported by this huge peacock and the butterflies and hummingbirds in the bougainvillea was enough to stun me into silence for a minute.

The dogs couldn’t have cared less about it’s mystical nature however, and chased it with the same lack of reverence with which they harass the less patrician local roosters.

At the sound of their noise, a pile of oily rags piled on top of a nearby cottage leapt into the air and started barking merrily, revealing itself as one of our local rooftop dogs.

My companion told me that she was coming from San Andres Church, a pretty good hike away. She’d been to a funeral, and was sad about it, and in addition was struggling with a little cold, so it was hard times all around. It was clear from her gossipy tone that sharing this list of woes was a fun and pleasant way to while away a few minutes.

I clucked and tsked, idly wondering how it was that I understood her when she was speaking in an unlikely Indian dialect, until she disappeared through a tiny door that had magically appeared in the bougainvillea spilling over an ancient garden wall, and which disappeared again as soon as she closed the door.

Okay. I made up the part about the door. But the rest is true.