Life Style Refugee – The Ajijic Blog

The old Chapala administration was broomed out this year, and new city officials took their positions after the Christmas holidays, which officially end somewhere around the middle of February. I don’t pay much attention to Mexican politics, although I will occasionally come across some tidbit that grabs my imagination. One time, for instance, I was delighted by an article breathlessly describing the ongoing drama of Mexican Senate’s version of a filibuster–they were locked into their chambers and took turns singing ranchero songs at each other all night long.

As far as our local politics go, it’s business as usual, or it will be once things settle down. The outgoing administration, in an effort to grab all the money they could and make sure that the coffers were turned over absolutely empty, stopped work on all city projects—that’s why the Ajijic boardwalk didn’t have any bulbs in it’s street lights,–before the Yuletide, which starts around here at about the same time as the NFL season. They also instituted a flurry of tax grabs in the form of invented county bills and violations. For a while we’d get home and find hand written documents that looked like ransom notes under our gate telling us that we’d better pay our car registration. These we ignored, of course, which nobody minded. The prevailing mindset of these demands was “Nothing ventured, nothing gained ” and there was the feel of a shrug and a sheepish grin about each one.

Just as the outgoing administration ceased doing anything at all that cost money, the incoming boys will spend the first few months of their terms proving their superiority by commencing their own welter of projects, and will point with pride to the lights on the boardwalk as evidence of our tax pesos at work. One of these schemes has turned up in my village in the guise of one-way streets.

I don’t live in the metropolis of Ajijic, nor the big city of Chapala. Instead, I live in the little village of San Antonio, which sleeps the day away between the two of them. If you picture a tic tac toe board from above, and put a pretty plaza in the center space, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the layout. I have never been aware of traffic congestion being much of a problem, but apparently it was.

The new traffic pattern was not, I confess, a complete surprise, as one of the projects abandoned by the old guard were two street lights, one at the top of San Jose, and a book-end at the top of Jesus Garcia. They were installed a year ago, and gave us something to talk about for a while, but only the one at San Jose got turned on before the officials realized that their terms were coming to an end, and we all got used to going over there when we needed to make a left turn to get to the Walmart. The other one, over by Panino’s, has swung blankly like one of the perpetual Christmas decorations that hang all year long, and we’ve long since forgotten it exists. So have the city officials, because it seems like it would have been easier to turn it on than re-route the village, but maybe the people that were drawing up the ransom notes are City Hall employees who needed a project to keep them occupied. The arrows that have been placed on each corner certainly look to have been made by the same hands.

Because of the new direction of the street my house is on, I have to take a different route to the office every day, and this has revealed a silver lining which I’m about to pass on to you. The detour took me past a new birria restaurant which I might not otherwise have seen. In this case, I couldn’t miss it, because it had what is called an air dancer, one of those giant inflatable tubes with arms that businesses use to get attention, flapping away on the corner. These blow ups are hugely popular down here, and it seems that few of the local families can resist owning a Santa’s Sleigh or Frosty the Snowman if they’re given the chance. This one was straightforward, a brown cylinder with a bow tie and dumb grin painted on it. Added in white chalk on one side was “Goat of Calf Soup!!” The other announced “Menudo!!” Thus, the corner has now become a landmark, and has started to be used while giving directions. As in, “You go to the corner with the Menudo Man, and then turn right.”

In honor of City Hall and Menudo Man, I give you the recipe for this soup, widely known as a cure for hangovers.

A large saucepan (see note below)
1 calf’s foot (about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds)
2 pounds honeycomb tripe
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic, peeled
6 peppercorns
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
4 quarts of water
A comal or griddle
3 large chiles anchos
A spice grinder
A large chile poblano, peeled or 2 canned, peeled green chiles
The calf’s foot
1/2 cup canned hominy (1 pound) drained (see note below)
Salt as necessary
1 scant teaspoon oregano

This amount is sufficient for 7 or 8 people. It should be served in large, deep bowls with hot tortillas and small dishes of chopped chile serranos, finely chopped onion and wedges of lime for each person to help himself, along with Salsa de Tomate Verde Cruda to be eaten with tortillas.

I didn’t know about this cure for hangovers when I was drinking. If I had, I probably would have quit a lot sooner, as the idea of looking at a calf’s foot after a big night makes me feel queasy even now. But I can’t help being a fan of Menudo Man.

February 22nd, 2010 | Category: Blog Notes | Leave a comment

I was surprised to find Violet lounging on the terrace, boots made of the skin of some exotic, possibly extinct, creature propped up on the wall and a drink in her hand, when I stopped by to preview a vacant house that I thought I might show over the weekend. Previewing houses in Mexico is much more important than in the States, where a certain amount of conformity to code can be relied on. It is never a good idea to ask “How bad can it be?” here, as the answer is always much worse than anyone can imagine. Sometimes the architectural follies can be explained away by different owners having different visions. Often, there’s nothing to do but scratch your head. Mexican builders do not have a feel for various Gringo obsessions. Closets, for instance. They don’t get what we mean when we talk about open floor plans or extra bedrooms, and their efforts to please the Yankee market often go awry. I have shown many houses that had two kitchens and one bedroom, or that featured lethal acute angles on granite countertops, or that have a mile long vanity with one lonely sink in the middle and his and hers toilets sitting next to each other.
As usual Vi was rocking a hair sculpture on top of her head, a brick red mess snatched up into a birds nest that stayed in place with the help of a knitting needle and something that looked like it might be a luggage tag. Red curls sprang out of the knot like a fireworks display, and the whole was worn over an assortment of the vintage Valentino and Pucci that she had collected back in her heyday of dating reggae musicians who moved pot by the ton in the early eighties. These priceless designer pieces she further enhanced by combining them with denim jackets that had once been worn by a cowboy she’d had an affair with who rode bulls in a prison rodeo. Yes, because he was an inmate, and no, I don’t know the details.

I pulled up a chair and joined her, steeling myself against one of my appalling hormonal events, hot flashes that creep up like a tide and cause sweat to drip from my hairline and bologna rings to appear under my arms before receding the same way–attractive! Effing menopause, it’s not empowering, no matter what the commercials say, and I doubt it’s making me any wiser.Although it could be, how would I know? I forget everything. Fanning myself with gusto and admiring the lake that twinkled in the viewfinder our toes made on the railing, I said, ” I’d like to learn the language of the fans spoken by 19th century senoritas and their duennas to communicate at fancy dress balls.” Violet looked at me and rolled her eyes, saying. “Well, darlin’, If you’re going to take the time to learn a new language, you might consider Spanish.” Bitch. Knowing Violet as I do, I overlooked this observation, more interested in why she was hanging out on the verandah of a vacant house. “Ah’m on the lam,” she told me, causing me to put my fan down and settle in to listen.

Violet moved here when it was still something of a frontier town, and has street cred as a female outlaw, partly for her ability to summon sufficient hauteur to bully the police into putting her up in a hotel instead of throwing her into the jail, which she insisted was unsuitable. That she pulled this off drunk and dripping from the lake where she had accidentally parked her pick-up on her way to meet a Mexican smuggler at the Old Posada only added to her legend. That was back in the day though, and she has long since become a respectable Mexican citizen, outlasting many generations of police force. The rookies of today don’t mess with her,but that’s because they view her as a bit of a local treasure who deserves respect for winning contests of wills with their predecessors in a time when the law was likely to wear an eyepatch and criss crossed bandoliers and have a knife scar on his cheek. It was hard to imagine anything she might have done that would put her on the wrong side of the baby faced law that runs the village these days.
I was surprised to find that there had been a disturbance at her house, a place she runs like a madam in the old West, renting rooms out during high season. There had been some unpleasantness with her renters involving marijuana, of all things, specifically that she had objected to them smoking pot under her roof. Given her past, I would have expected a little more tolerance on her part, and told her so. ” Honey, Ah’m pro-choice, too, ” she said. “But that don’t mean I want the renters running an abortion clinic out of my mirador.”
She explained that she had expected her guests, a couple of middle aged snowbirds who were renting her casita, to simply accept a friendly warning not to indulge on the premises,and that would be the end of it. Surprisingly though, the renters chose to fight for their right to party. Listening to Violet’s description, it reminded me of the time I poured out my kids’ liquor on a beach vacation, and the outpouring of invective I had to endure on that occasion. Far from accepting their landlady’s rebuke gracefully, the woman renter was reduced to casting aspersions on my friend’s physical attributes and included some predictions regarding the improbability of Violet ever “getting laid”, an unhelpful direction for the conversation to take. It caused Vi to get so mad she launched herself into some of the Billy Blanks Tae Bo moves she learned in exercise class in 1994, and it ended up with the police being called, and Violet hiding out on the terrace of a vacant house. Not hiding from the police, as it turned out.
But she’d be damned, she told me, if she was going to return any of the deposit.

I don’t know why I’m still surprised at the number of folks around here who like to toke up.This is Mexico, and we are baby boomers. There’s a part of me that is secretly tickled, if bewildered, at all these people who look like my parents who are still getting high. Of course, nobody looks as much like my parents as I do, but I always forget that, remaining, inside, a young disco dancer who used to like lighting up once in a while herself. Well, to each his own. Just don’t do it in Vi’s house.

February 14th, 2010 | Category: Blog Notes | Comments (2)

Your blogger is busy editing earlier posts, as she has been threatening to do for sometime. Blame it on the Writer’s Conference. To see what she’s working on, go here.

February 9th, 2010 | Category: Blog Notes | Leave a comment

I usually like going to the doctor here. Dr. Garcia is handsome in a classically Latin way, looking a little like Cesar Romero. He wears a tie and lab coat and is grey at the temples, and has a grave courteous attitude…altogether a reassuring candidate for the care of my health, and Bruno’s primary physician. This is in contrast to Dr Ricky, who has both a surfboard and a motorcycle parked in his waiting room, leaving us patients to sidle around his toys on the way to appointments. He has hair down to his shoulder blades and is likely to try both acupuncture and pot before switching to more conventional ideas, and of course, I like him better. On this occasion, after three long days of what I assumed was flu, I couldn’t have cared less who was on the other side of the desk…the urbane Dr. Garcia, Dr Ricky, or Doogie Howser. Bruno had dragged me over to our local clinic, muttering “enough is enough” and something I couldn’t make out about “drama queens.”

The clinic is a friendly hangout that has bougainvillea poking into most of the ground floor windows and casting shadows into the waiting area and the office of Dr.Don, the dentist. Next to the clinic is a pharmacy that looks like a magic shop, then the lab, and Mom’s Deli has the end building in the row. This fortunate arrangement makes it possible to catch up on village gossip while waiting on the shared sidewalk for lab tests or x-rays. Everyone in the village is bound to pass by sooner or later, if not for pie, then for Viagra. Not that I felt like shooting the breeze with anyone. It turned out that I had somehow caught the singular case of strep throat in a swirling miasma of colds, flus, grippes, chilblains and bronchial infections imported by our annual winter population. Swine flu, schmine flu.

I wouldn’t have been able to get anyone to talk to me if I had been feeling social, since I smelled, Bruno said most vehemently, like an old peoples’ home. The reason for this is the Mexican obsession with Vick’s VapoRub, which is pronounced lovingly as VahpOrube, and which is hauled out for everything from a chest cold to a broken bone. Carmen, who is our maid, although no word has ever been less adequate for describing the complicated and dear relationship we share, can be counted on to show up with not only the VahpOrube, but also a tupperware vat of “caldo,” a universal term for consomme, whenever the Senor or I are feeling punk. As for the caldo, I wouldn’t dare ask what these various broths might be derived from, as the answer is probably the last thing I want to hear about when I’m not feeling well. I wouldn’t be able to eat any this week anyway, since they’re so full of chili pepper it would strip off the back of my throat even without the strep. Thus I waited patiently until Carmen left the room to go change the bed and then discreetly poured it down the sink. I don’t feel guilty… I’m sure she does the same thing with the tuna surprises and other bland gringo leftovers we shower on her family.

Anyway, back to the local medical clinic slash meeting place. By the time Bruno got fed up enough with my sniveling to haul me in, I reeked of eucalyptus and tripe, and he was forced to bundle me past the jovial sidewalk coffee klatch and straight into the doctor, who patted my hand and nodded wisely and prescribed good old fashioned antibiotics. Dr. Ricky would probably have tried voodoo or exorcism first, so I was pathetically grateful that Bruno had made the executive decision. I was in no mood for drumming.

Being able to choose our doctors is a right that has been returned us now that we’ve relocated to Mexico. It’s a luxury that’s sometimes overlooked. In the states, my doctor changed with my job, and it never occurred to me to ask myself whether I liked him or not. It’s not like it would have many difference if I didn’t like him, so why bother? It’s a relief to be able to choose between Marcus Welby and Dr. Bombay depending on what my needs are, and not whether they’re “in network.” It’s also a relief to be able to afford our care. Since Bruno has diabetes, he participates in a plan that provides him with unlimited office consultations for about $250 USD a year. I seldom visit the doctor, so I just pay when I’m sick. This round of strep is going to cost about $100 USD by the time I get done with all the drugs and office visits, and that’s pretty expensive. Of course, if you add up the four years of monthly $1200 USD premiums I haven’t been paying, as I did in the States, to guarantee that I can afford the dangers that are certain to befall me outside my front door, I come out pretty well.

Office visits here are never more than $400 pesos, and many of the best physicians lakeside can be seen for half of that. Appointments run pretty close to on time and are spent in the company of the actual Doctor, who knows you and your family, and is the same one you called to see. I don’t know of any local doctors who won’t make a house calls, and they’re all affiliated with one of the outstanding hospitals in Guadalajara. Honestly? The debate on health care aside, the memory of the impersonal, inefficient, and unaffordable medical care in the States makes me feel tired and sad. After living here, it’s hard to believe that anybody would willingly choose American health care over Mexican.

January 31st, 2010 | Category: Blog Notes | Comments (3)

Once upon a time, when I lived in Tulsa Oklahoma, I was invited to attend the Azalea Ball in Muscogee, an event of such tone and prestige it was hard to believe that they carried on that way in the dust bowl. I was living from rhinestone to rhinestone back then, spending all of the very little money I made on feather boas to tack around the hem of my chiffon dance dresses. Among other cost saving measures,cadging free drinks off beaten down old salesmen, shoplifting, those sorts of youthful hi-jinks, I spent a lot of time letting hair students work on me as a way to save money. I vaguely remember that I showed up at the Azalea ball with a fall pinned onto the side of my head upside down, so that the short end hugged my neck and the long hair at the top…well, who knows. It was a long time ago, and I was drunk. More than the hairdo itself, I remember the student looking at me with a religious glint in his eye, visibly trembling with the desire to begin work on me. “I just got back from a show!,” he whispered. This, I have learned since that occasion, means that new and bizarre ideas have just been introduced that can never be duplicated in the real world, and whenever you hear it you should run away.
So guess what? I’m going to a Writer’s Conference!!!! I’m looking forward to learning fun new ideas in the field of personal essays,and when you return I bet my next entry will be completely unintelligible, and I’ll feel like Hemingway. Stick with me, kids, I’m a work in process.

January 19th, 2010 | Category: Blog Notes | Leave a comment

Kee-rist, it’s been cold around here! Although I may not be as personally involved in the global climate as many of my friends, you don’t need to be a meteorologist or an activist to feel cold when the world’s-second-best-climate turns on you. The Canadians don’t care, they’re racketing all over town in tank tops and shorts that could have been thought through a little more, in my opinion. The Mexicans don’t care, because they have as much winter gear as an Ice Road trucker, and they can’t wait to put it all on, which they do the moment the temperature gets to 65 degrees. Children particularly are upholstered in several layers of insulation, and waddle to school in Nordic ski caps and mukluks as though class was going to be held in an igloo. I personally am not that bothered by cold weather. For one thing, intermittently sweltering in my own private middle-aged ecosystem, if you follow me, it’s hard to get worked up about the temperature. The other thing is in a world of constant sunshine, a coolish spell once in a blue moon is not unwelcome. It gives us the excuse to have a sort of snow day, a change of pace.

I can tell you who is bothered by the cold, though.  People who come here looking for equatorial warmth in January and don’t get it. And since real estate clients fit in that category, I’m on the front line, so to speak. Along with a lot of sneering and endless repetitions of ” If I’d wanted to be cold I would have stayed home!” as though that little bon mot has never been heard before, unpleasant weather reminds visitors to ask us what we do around here. As in, “What do you do all day?’ said in an accusing tone of voice that implies that we ‘ve got some nerve, not spending our day zip lining and windsurfing and drinking 2 for 1’s while the band plays “Red Red Wine.”

“There’s nothing to dooooo!,”  is a noise that doesn’t sound great coming from a bored six year old. It is much, much less attractive coming from a sixty four year old.  What we do all day around here is live. We go to the office and make excuses not to exercise and gossip and help each other out when one of us needs it. We celebrate holidays and inadvertently step on toes and try new recipes and worry about money and make each other laugh and cry on each others shoulders. We watch football and go to the beach. Oddly enough, we take vacations.

I started to think about this in the grocery store before Christmas, when I was buying the ingredients for my annual Tamalepalooza. A woman stopped me to ask if I could help her tell which of the sticks of butter marked “Butter” was really butter, and which was margarine in a package marked butter. Pretending to be butter, in other words. She had heard in a restaurant that the “locals” could tell which was which.  I didn’t know what to do with her. “Listen, cupcake,” I almost said, ” I’m not the kind of person that lives in a town where there’s butter impersonation going on” This didn’t make sense even in my head. Instead, I said “What? If it says butter, it’s butter. It’s not a trick. We cook with it.”

I typed “What to do in Ajijic, Mexico” into the search engine and was led to a site that suggested I eat at the American Legion, a pastime that has never occurred to me, no matter how prostrate with ennui I may have found myself. Mostly, there are real estate sites,cleverly disguised though they may be. I should know, hello, I’m writing this blog.

So if we don’t do anything that interesting, and it gets cold once in a while, if there’s no parasailing or all night disco, why do people move here, year after year? I don’t know.

Unless it´s that there´s some truth in that dumb old saw about being ¨Human beings, not Human doings.¨ It took me a long time to settle down into friendships that aren´t networks, and to not feel guilty about hanging out. I like hanging out. It doesn´t really matter if it´s cold or not. And I like having friends because they ´re cool, and make hanging out even better, without worrying about whether they can scratch my back. I guess this appeals to a lot of other folks, too.

Once they get the hang of it.

January 11th, 2010 | Category: Blog Notes | Comments (1)

Dude, I am so over goodwill to men. And carbs.  Peace on Earth, carbohydrates? Fugeddaboudit. I know the Huichol Indians don’t celebrate the birth of Christ, but they definitely recognize that their client base gets into a frenzy of change throwing  over something right around this time every year, and the local collection of characters that make their living begging believes in striking while the iron is hot. As for carbs, don’t get me started. Take everything you’re used to and then add tamales.

Christmas is over, although the hanging village decorations which connect from terrace to balcony (or light pole or palm tree, whatever is handy) across our streets, are still up. Well, let’s face it, they’re not going anywhere. They’ll stay up past New Years, past Valentines Day, past the dozen holidays in May that involve Mothers, Virgins and Construction workers. Not necessarily in that order, obviously. Some of the decorations, impervious to weather or low flying airplanes, will stay up past next Christmas, when they will be joined by new ones.

When I married Bruno and his valu-pak of kids, I threw myself into the job of providing Christmas for my new family with a vengeance. I didn’t have much practice, as for years I’d been lying around on Christmas Day pondering the mysteries of Santa Claus and waiting for someone to give me gifts and announce dinner. When I became the Christmas maker, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss any necessary ingredient to the perfect traditional Christmas. I didn’t realize how vulnerable this made me to an industry that invents new traditions every year, new movie “classics,” new songs that it wouldn’t be Christmas without, and new recipes that we’ve always had. Every year brought a brand new batch of references to the happy golden days of yore. I was too busy trying to keep up with it all to ever ask any questions, even though my days of yore were spent on the bow of a 55′ Hatteras in Key West, and while they were indeed happy and golden, nobody ever sang about them in a Christmas carol. So I set about duplicating magazine covers and brining turduckens and eventually despaired when the folksy, the formal, the enchanted, and the Victorian all collided in an impossible to manage explosion of Christmas. Thus it is a relief to find that in Mexico, homemade Christmas rules. Aluminum foil and crepe paper still get a lot of play, and so do popsicle sticks and  elmers glue. Decorations are a pleasing medley of what you’ve got and what you can make, along with what the barrio decides is their street theme for the year, and the occasional splurge. For $40 pesos, Bruno was unable to resist two  lighted extravaganzas for our exterior wall. They are the color of a St. Patrick’s day parade, shaped like Christmas trees, feature running lights around their border and are decorated with painted elves, candy canes, and smiling virgins. I thought I would faint when he first brought them home in the those happy golden days of yore five years ago, but now when they come out of storage I feel a  surge of Christmas spirit.

Moving to Mexico freed me from more than the aneurysm inducing stress of creating magical Christmases.  I had long taken for granted mandatory membership in the homeowners associations that usually include at least one officious little turd with a clipboard who spends his life measuring hedges and holding up color swatches to make sure that houses and lawns conform to the covenants. We have no such evil here in my village. Even though I’ve learned to expect it, I’m still startled when newcomers ask me if they would be allowed to paint the exterior of their house. Looking up and down the street at the facades of tangerine and lime and turquoise, I ask ” Allowed by whom? That guy with the purple walls?”

We don’t have HOA’s here, but there is some regulation when it comes to Christmas decorations, not that I have any idea how it works.  By some version of the coconut telegraph each street in the village has it’s own theme. There is a captain of sorts for every street,and it’s that person’s job to knock on doors and get us to each kick in thirty or forty pesos for our share of the calle’s decorations.  The first year we were here, the street logo was a felt snowman with a quilted carrot nose and a sparkly top hat. One of them is still hanging. Getting them up onto a garland strung between across-the-street neighbors is an every house for itself job, and the people who hung that snowman back in 2005 moved away before they took him down. Nobody else has ever felt inspired to pick up the slack.

It seems that Calle San Jose is experiencing a little  prosperity this year, at least north of Ramon Corona. Maybe one of the families has someone sending a big remittance back, or maybe one of the little doors obscures a meth lab that’s generating profits. The money for fancy matching decorations came from somewhere, and they’ve got glamorous arches decorated in scrollwork of silver tinsel. South of Ramon Corona things are a little less opulent, with paper Chinese lanterns  dangling from garden variety metallic garland. I’m afraid my street is the most ragtag of all, as it appears that there may be a civil war of sorts going on over who gets to be street captain. Bruno and I were in Guadalajara the weekend that the decorations went up, so we missed the opportunity to buy one of the gold wreaths that we thought were going to be the theme for Calle Jesus Garcia. Without us, there was a block of wreaths, then a big gap, then one lonely wreath that our across the street neighbor hung on her door because we weren’t home to fasten her garland to our second story.  The next block , obviously under the thrall of the pretender, has an entirely different theme of poinsettias. Some people, unwilling to take sides,  just hung whatever they had, the old felt snowmen,  empty boxes wrapped in paper, or plain tinsel garland.

I  know of only one instance where the decorations, no matter how raffish or uncoordinated, fail to end up looking festive and attractive. Over on Calle Gonzales Gallo,  one of those interpretations of Northern customs that doesn’t quite work has resulted in an unfortunate motif involving two giant red Christmas balls and a stocking repeating endlessly down the cobble stone street.

But there, as everywhere, you can’t help but smile. Happy New Year, and I hope to see you here in the village. I promise, the decorations on Gonzales Gallo will still be flapping in the breeze when you get here.

January 3rd, 2010 | Category: Blog Notes | Leave a comment

I have often heard that the brain is the most powerful sex organ. Powerful or not, it is certainly the last to give up, as a visit to one of our dance spots on Saturday night will prove.  There, victims of this stubborn sex organ twitch and jerk to the strains of Proud Mary, oblivious to the fact that their mojo is missing.  Obviously, this is one of those moments that sneak unobserved into our lives, like peeing when you sneeze and viagra, the moment that Proud Mary starts to  seem like a rocking dance song. Hello? It’s not.  “Cocaine” is a dance song. “Shout” is a dance song. Anything by the Black Eyed Peas or Michael Jackson.  Don’t they know, these men who once wore their slippery polyester shirts half unbuttoned and the women who wore sequin tube tops over spandex jeans, that the first time they ask a band to play “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog”  there’s no turning back?  Seriously, what happens to baby boomers and their ability to get their groove on?

I was born in 1958, a few years before the Twist changed the world, as people say. The Stroll, a seriously sexy song, had been out for a couple of years.  Even the Madison was a pretty groovy line dance situation, far more than the abominable heel clicking nonsense being taught to unsuspecting grandmas these days. (Oh, I’m on to you, line dance teachers! No, it is not cool to do country line dancing. Not. Cool. Nor is it a good way to meet men, because you’d only meet one who was willing to do country line dancing, a disqualification so comprehensive that it ranks higher than being registered as a sex offender.)

Throbbing rock and roll and dance floor foreplay is our legacy, isn’t it? That’s what being a baby boomer is all about..we’re the generation who broke the chains of dance position. We do dirty dancing!

Last night I wandered over to Cafe Adelitas, a boite around the corner from my house. The Lucky Dogs, a justifiably popular band, were playing, and I know the guys. This has none of the cachet that “I know the band” has backstage at an Eagles concert. Here, it’s impossible to not know the band, as there is a small pool of musicians who group and regroup regularly, and can be found at the gardening supply store or waiting to get their blood pressure checked when they’re not playing. They have a following among the dancing gringos, and play all the favorites, whether they like it or not.

The Cafe is around the corner from my house in the village of San Antonio, and I told Bruno I’d meet him at the plaza, so I had occasion to walk over alone, taking my time and thinking about Mexico. It was well after dark, and only one out of three street lamps has a working bulb, so the lighting I walked by was iffy. Still, there was added illumination from doorways that opened into living rooms where Mexican families waved hello as I ambled by, and from a bright moon that made the cobblestones glitter like a dirty river, so the street was never fully dark. The weather was perfect, of course, as it only knows one way to be around here,  perfect. I passed a dog or two, old friends who thumped their tails but didn’t bother to look up. I enjoyed it.  It suddenly occurred to me that over thousands of vacations in thousands of enchanting locations, I have always tried to grab and hold on to the magic of the place where I visited, a magic that was wanting in the place where I had to return at the end of my rented week.

Until now. Now, I’m satisfied with the magic where I live, of which there is plenty

The Christmas season is coming to our village, so the magic is getting cranked up a notch, if that’s possible. There are going to be parties and concerts and children’s posadas at which I will cry for the sweetness of it.  I’m going to have my tamale making party and go to the tree lighting ceremony on the Plaza, when they plug in the lights that sit on the tree all year, along with the wrapped shoe boxes that decorate it. The school will put on their annual Nutcracker Ballet, although it doesn’t teach dance.There will be dozens of chances to dance to dumbass songs like Proud Mary and Joy to The World and there will be some Alvin and the Chipmunks thrown in.  It’s going to be awesome. And I’ll be back in 2010 to continue my bitching.  Until then, XOXOXO

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

December 1st, 2009 | Category: Blog Notes | Comments (6)

Once in a while my maid will traipse in unannounced,usually followed by one or more of the endless parade of relatives that live up and down Calle Jesus Garcia. I am effectively surrounded by her family, as if some hole in the paperwork allowed me to buy a house in one of those weird polygamous ranch/personal countries up in Utah or Montana. I can only hope they don’t someday turn on me.
On this occasion, Carmen and her daughters wore the look of delight that often accompanies the belief that they’re doing something particularly American, like cooking with trans fats. Citlaly, the lanky middle daughter who is shy, and hides her eyes as though behind a fan, thrust a small envelope sealed with a pink bow at me. ” Good God,” I thought to myself, startled that this visit involved paperwork. “What awful thing is this going to be?” The most common transactions heralded by these random visits are small loans,  the sale of sweepstakes tickets to raise money for the local school, or solicitations to help purchase flowers to decorate the shrine on the corner for one of the 363 days of the year that honor the Virgin. Opening the envelope, I found one of the pictures that Citlaly, a budding artist, likes to draw. I studied the picture of cheerful…pelicans? pterodactyls?…

“Abrir! Abrir!” they chorused, and I saw that the paper on which the capering… turkeys? dodo birds?… were drawn was folded, and opened to reveal instructions in Spanish that made no sense to me. Still afraid that I was being served a subpoena of some kind I looked puzzled until Carmen sang “Baybee Shour!” Baby Shower! The mysterious avians were Storks!
I’ve never heard of a baby shower here. Who was pregnant? How did they come up with the idea of storks and goofy invitations? Clearly, there was a yankee in the woodpile at the Mexican fiesta.

I have far too much Gringa Angst to ever decline one of these invitations, so I’ve been to dozens of dreadful parties. They always follow the same formula; white plastic chairs lined up against a wall as if outside a free clinic, giant bags of the pork flavored fried air that is served with hot sauce for refreshments, a boom box belonging to the friend of an obscure relative screeching at the highest volume, and two litre bottles of orange soda on the table next to a stack of plastic glasses. There is usually a time announced for the party to begin, a time which can be construed as the mildest of suggestions to perhaps start bathing. The arrival of the guests somewhere between two and three hours later than the time the fiesta is supposed to start is taken for granted and it is quite common for hostesses to say that a fiesta will start at 3:00 in the afternoon, and then make a hair appointment for that time so they’ll look nice when the first guests actually arrive.

Carmen’s “baybee shour” followed the familiar blueprint, including my being the only guest there for about an hour. As usual, I underestimated how tardy was tardy enough, and was left to sway uncertainly  with Karina, Citlaly’s younger sister, on a rusty porch swing that leaned apathetically in the dirt yard. A few chickens pecked nearby as our halting conversation limped along, and Karina obligingly filled my cup with Fanta. To my surprise, we were soon joined by a youngish man that I had never seen before.  I was surprised because this was clearly a women’s event, and the hombres usually stay far, far away from such boozeless venues. It turned out that the man was Chuey, newly returned from California. It was he who had imported the newfangled idea of a baby shower with storks and invitations to celebrate his wife’s pregnancy, and now, with typical Mexican civility, he had come out to keep me company with his very good English.

I enjoyed our conversation, and encouraged him to tell me of his dreams and ambitions. He had the vast good luck, he confided, to be 5 foot 2 inches tall, and to work at Disneyland in Anaheim. This was good luck because 5′2″ is the perfect height to wear not only the Mickey Mouse costume, but also the costumes of Winnie the Pooh and both Chip and Dale, so he got a lot of work at the park. He also invited me, after chatting for about five minutes, to join a group of friends who were travelling by bus that Friday to Ciudad Guzman for the Patronales Fiesta, assuring me that I could stay overnight at his mother’s house. These sorts of invitations always flummox me, as I am torn between my Gringa Angst and the possibility of actually finding myself on a 3rd class bus lurching off to Ciudad Guzman in the company of thirty five or forty amiable Mexicans that I’ve never met before.

Eventually, of course, the rest of the senoritas arrived with their gift bags and boxes. I had to leave long before young Mrs. Chuey got around to opening gifts, but when I passed Carmen’s open door the next day, they called me in and brought out each and every gift for show and tell.

This all happened a couple of weeks ago, but I was reminded it of it today because a yellow cab brought the young couple home from Guadalajara with their new baby, an adorable little tamalita wrapped in wool and crochet and down comforters as if it was below zero outside, instead of 80 degrees. This captivating baby, as sweet as anything ever born, has distracted her proud papa for the time being. Soon, he will return to the States and take up his giant Micky Mouse head.

And the trip to Ciudad Guzman will have to wait.

November 23rd, 2009 | Category: Blog Notes | Comments (2)