Seis Cervesas en Aeropuerto de Cancun.

So here's how this airport situation goes down. After 3 trips here, I've got this down. I take the bus from Playa. This time I happened to get a shitty bus. By that, I mean the TVs were blinking in and out and the air conditioning didn't originate from the Arctic. And the bus driver dropped us off at Departures instead of Arrivals. That makes more sense really, but I inconveniently needed to be at arrivals. No worries, I batted my eyelashes and looked all doe-eyed at el securidad hombre and pretended I didn't understand that he was telling me I couldn't go over to arrivals and he let me through the gates. I caught the bus at 1:30 (read 1:45 because the aeropuerto bus is invariably 15 minutes late). I got to the strategically placed Margaritaville outside the Arrivals door at 2:50.

Modela Negro por favor. Yes, Ill pay twice the price here. Esta Bien. Hashtag worthit. The hubs flight isn't due for about an hour. It's late. It was supposed to arrive at 3:30 but it isn't. And he will have customs. And anything else he does inside that door that I could probably get through with eye lash batting, doe eyes, and feigned ignorance. But Margaritaville is out here. Uno mas Modela Negro por favor.

I'm surrounded by Americans and Canadians and Europeans all looking shocked at the prices the taxi drivers and shuttle operators and tour companies are quoting them to make the 7 or so mile trek to Cancun Hotel zone. Ugh. Why are they going there anyway? And they should be shocked. $67 US dollars to go 7 miles? "Ok, ok, I give you deal. Just for you. $55 US because I like you." I keep considering just telling them to take the bus for five bucks but I'm too busy snickering to myself and drinking my overpriced beer. So far, only one guy has offered me a taxi. I looked at him like he was nuts. He moved on.

Modela Negro Tres. I may be drunk by the time my husband arrives! Damned flight delays. There's no chairs out here. I guess no one but me gets cozy and drinks a six pack. I'm sitting on the ground smiling and enjoying cervesas with shocked and confused tourists. I kind of feel like a local. Cool!

Maybe I should get some gum for that hello kiss. Nah. He probably drank on the plane. We will have drunk breath kisses in paradise. Well, I mean, in the cesspool Cancun airport that is the last stop before paradise. Another beer and Ill start offering unsolicited advice to people about the bus.

The woman in the picture (who I am certain after quatro cervesas I have very stealthily taken a secret picture of like a ninja) has been here as long as I have. I wonder what she's waiting for. I bet she wonders what I'm waiting for. Since it's much more fun to wonder, I'm not going to ask her. I am instead keeping silent and pretending (in my own game because I doubt she or anyone else cares) that I don't speak English. Or Spanish. I speak Shanoan. A little known language that very few speak. Lord, waiting at the airport can be boring in any country. Thank Buddha I'm ridiculous. What do non-ridiculous people do when they are in this situation?

He should be here soon. I hope so. My ankles are swelling up and I'm getting a beer belly. Pardon. A Cervesa belly.

Yeah. Wrong. Cervesa cinco. The woman who was with me has left. That guy over there on his bluetooth talking too loud on purpose has been here almost as long. He clearly has a personality disorder. That's probably why he keeps looking at me like he'd like to take me in the bathroom, or marry me, maybe marry me in the bathroom. I am crazy bait, should anyone ever want to capture one in the wild. I should be a new Disney Princess. Instead of Snow White having butterflies and birds while she sings a beautiful tune, I will be Shano Negra, having all sorts of men with various mental health diagnoses and at least one addiction landing on my vagina and ring finger while I sing bad karaoke. In the end maybe 7 midgets can break dance with me on 5th Avenue and I can live happily ever after.

Dear Lord, let us not let me get to Cervesa Seis. Why do you guys even read these blogs anyway?

Cervesa Seis. Sigh.

And I finally shared my gems of wisdom about the bus with someone else. They're going to Playa del Carmen. I felt it my six pack duty!!

Dos ahoras later.... where is that red bearded fucker? Sheesh! Is he ever coming out that door?

Fast forward one week...

The personality disorder ordered the same beer as me, and struck up an inevitable conversation with me. Well, technically a random woman from California struck up a conversation with me and he used it as an in to start speaking to me in response to things I was saying to her. He conveniently was also living in Playa for a year and then also wanted to go to Ecuador but he was already a dive master and was looking for a dive shop to buy and all a manner of other lies seemingly meant to make a connection. He failed. Poor fella. He probably didn't even realize that it wasn't his fault he was attracted to me. I am just a siren for nutbags. He was under the mean spell fate dropped on me. All the same, I knew better than to make eye contact with the creature in the wild. He might have followed me home.

And the bearded wonder finally arrived. Life stops when it arrives. Or life begins. Or some combination of those two. We've been diving and parasailing and zip lining and arguing a bit and laughing a bit. And eating a lot. And not sleeping much. I slept on the toilet once because Mexico believes in Mescal or so that waiter told me. When in Rome and all that...

Now I'm back on the ADO Aeropuerto bus (that was 15 minutes late) to meet a couple coming to visit us and to likely have another double priced six pack at the Aeropuerto Cancun. At least this time I will have company at Margaritaville with no chairs.

Sick Girl

September 2014

I went pretty crazy about 7 or 8 months ago after an ER visit and a couple of follow up visits to a doc unofficially clued me in that I was a "sick girl." Not a sick girl in that "drink 7up and eat some soup" way; I was unofficially "sick" in the "get used to it, sister, this is part of life now" way. I cried. A lot. After the referral to a "specialist", I knew. Everyone else was either being blindly optimistic or honestly just believed I was either drama-queening or hypochondriacing. Everyone else accepted it was innocent until proven guilty. But I knew. Deep inside, down where my fear hides, I knew. When I say I cried a lot, I don't mean I spent an afternoon eating mint chocolate chip Blue Bell mixed with drops of salt water. I mean, I cried for no less than a month.

They say there are stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I suppose, like most things, I did them all out of order. Depression and acceptance came first and simultaneously. Denial took the form of an apartment in Mexico and a whole new set of people who didnt have to know or care I was "sick", people who I didnt have to try to explain it to, people who didn't need to understand.  I'd accepted it inside myself, but I still needed to run away from it for a while. Not so much to deny it to myself, but to avoid having to deal with anyone else's denial. To avoid having to talk about or plan for or take responsibility for it. Acceptance, to me, meant running straight to a life that I wanted and knew I'd be incapable of at some undetermined time called "later."

Denial was a beach bar in Mexico. 

At least until anger took over. Anger came 15 feet from Denial. I was laying in the sand. My feet were bargaining with the ocean. I think when discussing the stages of grief for your own life, they leave out fear. Maybe it's lumped in as all of us psychology types know that the root of all anger is really just terror. I distinctly recall having a 12 oz bottle of Mexican beer in one hand and a seashell my son had just handed me in the other when I heard my cell ringing.

I think it is worthwhile to note that I never brought my cell to the beach. First, Mexico is a bit notorious for the sticky fingers of its citizens. Second, my time with the ocean was sacred haggling time where I tried almost exclusively to never interrupt with utterly ridiculous things like  communication with the outside world. Third, I was in Mexico. Answering my phone would cost me several dollars a minute. No thanks. That can buy a lot of booze in Denial. 

But I believe in things. I believe in internal voices and guidance along the road of life and "I just had this feeling"s. And that day, one of those sort of things told me to get up from the beach, walk to my Hacienda and grab my phone. I listened because I believe in those things. I've experienced the miracle/horror of a natural birth and that mythical moment people hear about when you just KNOW it's time to push. It's overwhelming. You feel more certain of it than anything in your existence. This urge was no less strong than that. 

So I got up, walked the 700 steps to my apartment, grabbed my phone and went right back to my beach towel. That was an hour before it rang.

I heard it ringing, a miracle all its own on a busy touristy beach 15 feet from a beach bar with tourist-attracting music and ocean waves competing to be heard over drunk vacationers. I had it in my hand before it stopped ringing. I didnt recognize the number but I knew. I knew it was the doctor. I suddenly knew why I had the urge to push. I knew. And I froze.

I didn't answer it. I sat frozen at Denial with a Mexican beer still in my hand, a seashell in my lap, and fear in my other hand. Fear was blinking a blue voicemail notification light. 

I'm not sure how long I sat there like that, staring at Fear, my heartbeat trying to regulate to the blue pulse. There it was. Doctors, especially specialists, don't call you with good news. That doesn't happen. I've received 2 phone calls from doctors in my life. One was to tell me I had cancer and a surgery needed to be scheduled asap. And this one. At that moment, I thought, and maybe even said out loud, I preferred the cancer call.

Either a few seconds or a few minutes or maybe an hour of being hypnotized by the blinking blue light, I pushed a button amd pulled the phone to my ear. A female voice told me it was very important that I call Dr. Reality as soon as possible. There goes any hope that it was just an unprecidented call telling me that I'd, in fact, been drama-queen-hypocondriacing and I was so totally fine and as a matter of fact I should go start prepping for a triathlon cause I was THAT healthy. 

Goodbye blue blinking Fear. Time to woMAN UP and return the call. I was still in Denial and still holding 12 oz of Mexican medicine when I pushed another button.

After about a $20.00 hold time, a female voice started saying a lot of things I didnt understand about lab levels and diagnoses and prescriptions and urgency. There were as many acronyms as there were actual words. I recall asking more than once "what does that mean" and "can you repeat that" and things of that nature. I blamed a bad connection because I was in Mexico. It wasnt a bad phone connection. It was my brain that was breaking up. I said something about being away and it was agreed to mail me prescriptions to pick up later. 

As soon as I hung up, I wrote down the acronyms I remembered and anything else that seemed important to make sense of later. I texted my mom. I said this to my son "I just talked to the doctor. It wasnt good news." My son walked up to the bar of Denial and ordered me 2 tequila shots. 

That phone call cost me $141.72 and so much more.

It took me about a week to use google enough times during rare sober moments to completely decipher all of the acronyms and words of that phone call. I already knew some of them. I'd been afraid of that one acronym since I was a child. This is a family disease. That particular set of two letters and what it does to a person is far too familiar to me. Anger was on a low burner and finally came to a rolling boil. 

I was mad at God. Funny, I think, because I am Buddhist and have no relationship with God. I lashed out at anyone I could. I pushed people away. Any people. All people. Even my sons. Everyone. Except the bartenders at Denial. They were the only people I wanted to talk to. I wanted to talk to them about tequila. I pulled the ocean close. I let my anger happen. And the crying started again. I did it in private. Every chance I got. But it was mostly anger. And by anger, I mean fear. The afraid-rage led me down some pretty dark alleys inside me. Led me to do and say things that don't agree with the me I was 7 or 8 months ago. I'm still roaming them. I've come out into the light a few times but I'm mostly surviving by moonlight. I'm still pissed. And terrified.

I started talking about it though. Started giving names, mostly acronyms, to the hell I'd been going through because of them. Notice that is plural. I forgot to mention that the doctor dropped another acronym on me that day at the beach. Two diseases. Lucky me. 

I walked around as though it didnt hurt and I was fine sometimes. Pushed myself past where I should have just to spite these mother fuckers called diagnoses. I accepted the bad days and spent them in bed. I vowed to talk to the ocean every day and I accomplished that all but one day. I was incredibly angry, more than was necessary, that I was being forced to leave my beautiful sea to go deal with S.I.C.K. 

At that moment, in those weeks, still today I suppose, the ocean is my only comfort. It's my only friend. It's the only thing that helps at all. It's the only thing I can talk to. The only thing that understands turbulence and calm. Storms and sunshine. Gentle and harsh. It understands being all skaken up and getting your foundation pulled from under you with a rip tide. The only thing that can relate to everything I am feeling. The only thing that will hug me anytime I want and hold me up when I cant move and let me dive as deep as I want and discover. It is the only thing holding my sanity together. It understands. And I had to leave it. I waited as long as I could.

Then I came "home." Home isnt this anymore. This place I'm sitting in to write this. This living room. This country. This State. This house.  Home is a place where I feel safe and free to be as screwed up as I want. Home is a place where someone understands how I feel and will gently help. That's not here. This place is full of TVs and iPads and thousands of square feet of things that don't matter and always need to be cleaned. Here is a place where people are supposed to care and don't. HERE is where I have to be sick but I have to be sick alone. Alone but surrounded by people who don't understand. Who can't see the pain I'm in; emotional, physical, spiritual. And even if it is seen, it's quickly dismissed and attention returns to the preferred piece of technological distraction. 

I've never felt so alone in my life. Here is a place with no ocean. Nobody who doesn't know I'm a "sick girl". Nobody who has no obligation to care or ask how I am. Just people who I need desperately to talk to and reach out to, explain how not Ok I really am, but who don't hear me or don't care to . I am alone. And there is no ocean.

And then I woke up this morning. I don't know how to precisely make it clear how this sickness operates, I dont understand it all myself. But today has been, to date, my worst day. I always hurt in the morning. That isn't unusual. And I did quite bad today. I assumed it would improve. 3 hours later, I was in the bathtub in scalding water pumped full of meds, tears streaming down my face. 

Before you decide that this whole post is some pity party, I'd like to make something clear. I don't cry from pain. I cry. I cry and scream and kick and yell over life, love, frustration, anger. Anything and everything not physical. But you can dig a rusty ice pick into my calf or break a toe and you won't see a single tear. I've always been tough, but the one advantage to living with an extremely painful disease is that pain doesn't hurt me like it hurts you. I don't so much as flinch at a tattoo gun. A punch to the face (and I've taken my share) won't do anything but piss me off. A steady-voiced "Ow. That hurt" is as reactive as this girl will get. I don't cry about pain. It just isn't how I operate. I'm past that. 

But today, in that bathtub, I was crying over pain. I fucking hurt. More than I have ever hurt in my life. I hurt. I am taken aback, shocked, absolutely in awe at the level of pain I am in. On that dumb 1 to 10 ER scale, I am on "worse than childbirth." And it is all over my body. It has taken me, so far, 7 hours to write this because it hurts so much to type that I have to take breaks. Meds didnt help. Scalding water only helped a little. Nothing is working. I've cried 3 times today from pain. Today, I need someone to care. I need. I considered a trip to the ER to beg for anything to make it stop. I decided against it. Because this is my life now. This is what makes me the "sick girl." 

My "husband" has only looked up from his iPad to watch the TV. My boys are buried a computer screen, an iPhone screen and I haven't even seen the oldest one's face today (nor his car). I have mentioned that I've never hurt this bad before. I have cried in the same room with them. But what can they do? What difference would them actually caring make anyway.

This is life now. I am the sick girl and I am alone. But I'm going back to the ocean soon. The ocean helps. But I'm pretty sure that I've cycled through every stage of grief today. I guess the end of this rambling blog post is acceptance.  I'm a sick girl and I never won't be again.

Cheese and crackers with my Whine..

There are church bells that ring every hour somewhere close. You can hear them here if you're out on the balcony. I'm not sure what time they stop but it tells time in 24 hour time. So at 8:00pm, it rings 20 times. It's hand rung. I can tell because sometimes there's a pause and some more tentative rings in the evening and you can tell they lost count. It makes me giggle every time. I like to imagine that they let children ring them and that's why it happens.

I know they don't go all night because I slept on the balcony last night and was only awakened by a passing storm and the workers next door attempting to raise the dead at 5:30 am by throwing something very large and heavy repeated onto some solid surface in some very echoey part of the progressing high rise next door. That, or God was playing bad drums. Either way, it's probably a good thing I don't own a sling shot. I could have put out an eye. I really really wanted to.

The next thing I woke to was my son panicking and telling me I better get inside because I was under full combat attack by a swarm of mosquitoes.  I was. No, seriously, swarm is an understatement. But I didn't have a single bite. They were just using me for a heater?  I did come inside though. Coffee. And FOOTBALL! Football is today.

Somewhere between the waking and the football I argued with my husband about nothing. He's in Australia. I'm in Mexico. He's been gone over a month. Almost time for him to come home. Tomorrow is my birthday. He's tired. I'm just waking up. He doesnt want to talk to me. I want to be liked. Same old things. Arguing about nothing. Then, there was football.

I know I'm a girl. That's ok. Girls can like Football too. I was overjoyed to learn last night that my Saints were showing on my Mexican TV! I don't even get Saints games at home in Texas! The boys pitched in and we made a pretty impressive spread from materials obtained from the OXXO around the corner. Junk central. Neither of these boys give a crap about football, but junk food is something they can get on board with! To my sorta kinda surprise, Fox Sports was showing the game with Spanish commentators. I had no idea what they were saying but the expression made it twice as exciting! The Saints lost in overtime. The Vaqueros game is still going. They suck. What else is new? Sorry, Texas, It's gonna be a long season.  Maybe they will come to the black (and gold) side now.

So, like I said, tomorrow is my birthday. And generally I'm full tilt, absolute birthday psycho. It's World Shano Day, after all. My favorite holiday of the year!!! But no 12 days of my birthday this year. No grand preparations. No warnings to others about the birthday debauchery. This year, my birthday is me and 2/3 of my kids, Mexicans, and a whole bunch of stranger tourists passing through on vacation.  I'm not sure I even want to go outside. There's no one to get drunk with. There's no spectacle. There's no silly drag queen dresses and 6 inch platform heels. There's nobody here to drag around to do whatever I want because it's MY personal holiday. Even karaoke is kind of boring if no one is there to laugh at you. I'll spend the day with my boys. They'll be sweet. It'll be nice. They'll be kind of bored. Because my birthday in paradise is making me sad. But they will make me smile. Because they are them.  I'm certain I'll get over it by tomorrow and I'll probably spend the day at the beach in paradise feeling half contented. But it's not much of a celebration without my friends, my shoes. Maybe I'll buy a pinata and me and Brando (who celebrated his birthday early at home but had his actual birthday in Mexico too) can beat the crap outta it and shove our faces full of interesting Mexican candy. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll sleep all day. Either way, I'll survive. But World Shano Day just won't be the same. But it'll probably be better than last year anyway. (Hashtag: hadtobethere.) I mean, I think most 30-mumbled-incomprehensible-second-number year olds probably celebrate their birthday in some dreading normal way. Right?

Ok, enough whining. Back to watching the Vaqueros get destroyed. That's cheering me up. Sort of.

(Insert something funny and charming here to save this blog post from total whine failure)

Shanthony Bourdain: Cancun Centro

WARNING. This post is entirely made of stream of consciousness notes I took for the last 9 hours. It's not edited. There's the f word at least a couple times and it might be out of order or even in broken sentences. It's raw. Eso Se que es.

I'm dropping my son at the aeropuerto. Sticking him on an international flight in Mexico alone. I'm not gonna lie, he just walked out of sight and I'm crying. I didn't want him to go but teenage love won and he is going to go stay with my folks for a while so he can see his Cameron. :( I'm a nervous wreck about him flying outta here alone but he's been on ten times as many flights as me. He's probably a lot better at it than I am. I just... I don't want him to go. Why does he have to be so old? 

Ok, paid way too much for a cab from the airport but whatever. I was too sad to negotiate. I have to hang around Cancun and get these appointments done and get back home. I don't care much for cancun. Too big and drunk for my taste.

Well hey there, I got my first Rewards card from a store in Mexico. I'm now a card carrying Liverpool shopper. :) Look it up. You'll understand. 

It's sad when the Mexican police are the people who u trust when u are lost. I almost asked one for directions but then I saw the building I was heading for. They all looked pissed but they are decently helpful. They've got nothing on taxi drivers. Taxi drivers are amazingly helpful. One declined to give me a ride because it was only about 2 blocks away and I'd waste my money. I found it though. It really was close.

If that girl is a "grande" in those shorts, I'm screwed. Out! I'll never come in this store again. Whatever it was called. Wait... crap. Now I don't know what store to never go in again.

So, I walked into the mall, never left the mall, walked out of the mall, and was immediately no longer at the mall and couldn't FIND the mall. So I went back into the door I came out of... which wasn't the mall and then I was in the mall again. THAT WAS WEIRD. There's no way I could properly explain that occurance. Aliens.

You know how people are always saying,  "If you come to this country,  learn the language." I'm THAT person in Mexico.  WHAT do all these people keep asking me??!?

Omg. I FINALLY FOUND SOME SHORTS WITH AN INSEAM LONGER THAN 1 INCH! IT IS A MIRACLE!

Holy dammit, I almost stepped on an iguana... In the median... crossing the highway. City Iquana are some bad ass little gangstas! Thats a freaking 6 lane highway they're chillin in the median of. I'm certain they should, if they don't already, have their own animated movie where they bully some poor Mexican chihuahuas. That's a hard word to spell. Chihuahua. Stream of consciousness.

Exploring cancun alone is an experience. Holy shit. What the f u c k am I doing here.. by myself.. What am I DOING??!? Ok. Calm down. So far you've been flawless in your execution. You got this. Wtf am I DOING right now? There isn't an American face or an English word in a 5 mile radius. WTF AM I DOING RIGHT NOW. Deep breaths. Oh... hey! There's the bus to the bus to the other bus. I got this! I GOT THIS. TIME TO WHISTLE LIKE A REAL MEXICAN! GO SUPER SHANO GO!

Ps. Apparently everyone in the universe psychically knows the bus fare on local bases except me. Maybe the driver told me telepathically and I just didn't understand the language. They never even asked me to pay them. I paid them on the way out instead after I observed how much everyone was paying. FYI.. Most of the bus fares convert to about a nickel.

I can't believe I just did that. I took bus after bus after bus and navigated my way around all over the fucking place in Mexico... ALONE... carrying large sums of cash for most of the day. I left the comfort of my gates and touristy type place at 11am, hopped a bus to Cancun, put a kid on a plane, grabbed a cab to Cancun Centro, somehow found the offices i had to find in the middle of the city of cancun proper and now I'm on a bus back to Playa.. It's been a long day of just going head first into having no idea what I was doing.

First, I was on an episode of House hunters international. Today felt more like locked up abroad...except it was still the part where the idiots who get locked up are exploring the strange foreign city with way too much cash or whatever in their purse (I had to pay for some things while I was in cancun. Totally legit reason to be carrying all that cash. The mail system here appears to be mythical. I'm not carrying it anymore. I gave It to the people I owed it to. Thank Buddha!) Now I feel like what's his face.  I cant think of his name. The awesome dry humored guy who's always drunk and visits the world via its seedy underbelly. Anthony Bourdain. That's it. I'm him. I just mastered the universe! I'm the master of local Mexico. Now I'm practically an expert. Where's the travel channel cameras. Mexico Shano. Shanthony Bourdain. <talks intelligently into into the camera.>

  So, NOW, FINALLY... I'm on the bus to HOME. Or well... Hacienda de Mexico anyway and now I'm sitting on the bus next to some British couples.
Fucking 'ell... it's nice to hear some English! Even if it's proper Queens English. They're making me smile and passing around pictures of the selfies they took last night when they were too drunk to remember doing it and being really pissed at some girl who keeps saying her phone doesn't work and using theirs and then posting on facebook and sending texts to people with her own phone. Dodgy, she is. That bloody bitch. Oh, now they are reading news about terrorism in North London. That got less fun fast!

I can tell they think I'm Mexican. Everyone seems to. Always shocked I don't speak Spanish. They keep saying things to me in Spanish like I've lied to them when I told them no comprende. FYI Republic of Mexico, I don't have a fucking CLUE what you are asking me and I'm not gonna gamble with a yes or no answer. I can sometimes form coherent sentences to you. But when you fire up your Micro-machine-spokesperson-speed tornado of espanol... forget it. All I hear is "I'm asking you an incoherent question as fast as humanly possible just to screw with you." At the lawyers office (don't ask...renting in mexico requires a lawyer..), though, I did have have a very nice exchange of knowledge with someone;  my Spanish for her English. She was on a way higher level of English than I was Spanish so we played rock paper scissors and she taught taught me some Mexican versions of patty cake. It was really a fun way to pass time in the waiting room. They should should stick a 6 year old in every waiting room.

Added Bonus: Iron Man is on the bus TV. Score!!

It's getting dark now, I'm glad I'm on this bus and I'm glad the bus station is 2 blocks from Hacienda de Shan: Season 2: Playa del Carmen.

Off the bus and there's my street dancing midget. I'm HOME.

5 Unexpected things I actually LOVE about Mexico Living

1. The clothesline.
 I LOVE not having a clothes dryer! I really really really like hanging my clothes outside! They smell better and so does my balcony, they don't shrink or fade, they aren't wrinkled, and they double as a privacy screen. I dig it! If you know anything about me, you know I've had washer/dryer drama for a few years at home and I absolutely ABHORE the laundromat. I am undeniably attached to my washer and dryer. Incidentally, there's a laundromat across the street from the apartment. It burned to the ground on the third day we were here. I can't help but feel somehow karmicly responsible.  (I do have a washer. I don't think I'd dig hand washing everything. Haha.) But, who knew it'd happen, I love NOT having a dryer here!

2. Not having a car.
Ok. LOOK. Walking everywhere SUCKS sometimes. I'm not gonna lie.. I have arthritis and my feet and toes are particularly effected by it. Sometimes, just standing up long enough to clean the house will knock me straight to the couch for a few hours.  It HURTS to have to walk so much BUT... I actually LIKE it in its own way! I don't have to spend hours in the grocery store (and the only thing I hate worse than the laundromat is the grocery store. So far, it hasn't burned down) because I can only carry so much and have to shop basically daily for food. I dig that it's forced exercise! I don't feel the need to do ANYTHING that isn't "walking distance" because I don't want to pay for a cab but "walking distance" has become MUCH broader than it'd ever be if I had a car! It's pretty great, really. But, I mean, a bicycle wouldn't ruin my life or anything. No, really, it wouldn't. I promise. With a basket. Please.

3. Shutting up.
You really don't have to talk too much to get stuff done. When you don't speak the language.. you can find a WHOLE LOT of other ways to communicate besides actually talking. As a person who talks WAY too much (Let's just be real here. Everyone knows it's true. Even me), it's been kind of refreshing to shut up.

As a side effect, though, I've started speaking in broken English on a regular basis. By the time I get home, I'll be using some sort of hybrid Sign-Spanish-English language that only a 2 year old can understand.

4. Doll house sized living.
My home at home is 4000 square feet. My home in Mexico is, umm, (looking around) about 3 square feet. Ok, maybe it's 1000. (maybe not). I can see the entire place (save the bathrooms) from where I'm sitting right now. I'm no rookie at small houses. I mean, I've lived in a 250 square foot house with 2 kids before. I considered my 1200 square foot house in Fort Worth to be luxuriously big. But, facts faced, I've been living in a big old house for a few years now and I'm used to the sprawling privacy of it. I mean, I can not even SEE my kids for hours in that house and we're all under the same roof. I can also not HEAR them for hours. (I mean, I know we are focusing on the positive here, but I'm not extra enjoying being able to HEAR three teen/tween sons 24/7. I'm just not. I can also smell every single poop. EVERY SINGLE ONE.)

But, let's discuss how long it take to clean this place. Ready? 3, 2, 1... Alright! It's CLEAN! Floors mopped, toilets scrubbed, dishes DONE, laundry hanging outside smelling all good, beds made. All that stuff I NEVER do at home because I lack the energy after just "straightening up" the place is Done. D O N E. That would have taken me a solid 8-12 hours at home. Here, I do it every morning before the kids even wake up. Why, BECAUSE I CAN. And let me tell you... I LOVE IT! Viva casa penquena!


And yes, I can hear the boy's every breath. I can smell every fart. I can hear every muttered teenage frustration and/or obscenity. I can feel their heartbeat. Yes, in some ways, this is a nightmare for all of us. We'll just refer to the boys as a collective "they". "THEY" are no secret to me in this house. "THEY" keep no secret FROM me in this house. This tiny Mexico Barbie Beach house does NOT have an elevator and you can't stick any of them on it and pull the string and send them away to pout out of sight or call me a "fucking bitch" without me knowing about it. No, I get to HEAR IT. I'm pretty sure the neighbors can hear it.

Welcome ME to mothering teenagers inside a petri dish under a microscope. We're like atoms in a boiler. We are just more and more rapidly bouncing around each other and trying to find a place to escape. We were solid, and then things started heating up. (Ok. Look. I'm homeschooling kids. It's not my fault I'm referencing science.) The POINT is: Who are these kids and what have they done with MY SWEET BOYS!?! Oh, wait! They ARE my sweet boys. We're all just CLOSER to each other. My delusion that they aren't normal teenagers who think their mom SUCKS a decent percentage of the time just doesn't have room to grow and flourish here. We're just too CLOSE to each other for that.

So, is this a bad thing? OH YEAH. So why is this in the unexpectedly positive list? Because: No pain. No gain. By day 11, I had been told that I'd never meet my grandchildren (or even grandpets) because I was so mean that "they" would never expose children (or even pets) to me; I was the most uncaring and unloving mom in the world and "they" couldn't wait to get away from me; I was "scary" (that one is hardly an insult. I mean, aren't mom's supposed to be scary? What else do we have when our children get bigger, stronger and (hard to admit this part) smarter than us? I mean, being "scary" is really the only weapon we have except that we paid for those iPhone 5's and laptops and unmatching clothes they love so much and CAN TAKE EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU OWN AWAY FROM YOU IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP. Oh sorry.. moving on...); "They" hated the entire country of Mexico and wanted to be ANYWHERE but in this country because of I am here. You get the jist. I'm a dirty awful bitch mom from hell and "they" HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE me. (I'd love to pretend I blew all this off in a completely mature, knowing way and immediately recognized it as teenage bullcrap, but ACTUALLY... I got angry, sad, a little devastated. I yelled and cried and yelled and cried some more. So much for maturity and good mom recognition. I didn't have that for a day or two. Somewhere in all the sad, mad, yelling, crying.. I did manage to speak maturely) Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm getting to the positive part.

So, here's why I think it's a good thing. However ill-expressed: My sons had feelings they weren't sharing with me. My sons had habits I didn't really know about. It's easy to lose track of WHO your teenagers ARE. It's easy to have NO IDEA what they are feeling because they turn into these closed books of secrets and independence. The only glimpse we get sometimes is when they RAGE at us. And only then can we play detective or view them like a puzzle and put the pieces together to FIGURE OUT what they REALLY mean. Plus, in the words of one of "them", sometimes they need to say things out loud to realize how stupid their psycho teenage thoughts really are. (Yeah, one of "them" really said that. They're pretty cool like that.)

Sometimes we're just the safe target for feelings that have nothing to do with us. So, being too horrible to ever meet my grandpets might just be "their" way of saying: "I miss my girlfriend and I'm mad at you for it." Or "I didn't realize how much I'd miss going to school every day and not seeing my friends." SOMETIMES it's their way of saying: "I was getting away with stuff in that big ole Barbie mansion and I want you to notice I'm doing things WRONG so you can be my MOM and stop me." That last one..yeah, it's entirely subconscious. They don't really KNOW they want to be caught. But getting caught and parented is love and they know it somewhere inside their bigger, stronger, hormone riddled bodies. They just don't say it out loud. Sometimes it's their way of saying, "I don't want to disappoint you by being unhappy, but I'm sad about something entirely teenagerish so I'm going to yell at you." Sometimes they just have gas or their hair isn't acting right and they want to yell at SOMEONE and who better than mom? I'm not invalidating their feelings by any means. I am 35 years old and I have terribly irrational, WOE IS ME, feelings that I want to rage against in absolutely unhealthy and inappropriate ways. Sometimes I want to blame someone safe for things that don't even MATTER but are making me feel like shit. I've said horrible things to my own mother. I get the feelings. I get the whole thing. I remember being a teenager. I remember hating my parents. I remember how it felt after I raged at them. (Bad. It felt BAD) I remember what I REALLY wanted them to know. We're LEARNING. All of us. And that's a GOOD thing. I also remember that this goes on and on and on until at least their mid-20s. Siiiiiigh.

The positive in short: I get to "get to know" my sons all over again and (gulp) get to figure out what kind of mistakes I've been making as a mom because we've been stuck in a Malibu Barbie dream shoebox together. I get to see them in a much closer, brighter, more detailed light and know them in a whole different way. I get to discover the not so great parts of them and they get to see that I'm a human too. They get to air their grievances (no matter how inappropriately) and we eventually get to talk about it and figure out what's REALLY going on. Small houses grow love differently. 

5. Hola Bonita! 

I could speak forever about the differences in traditional Latino culture and Anglo culture when it comes to patriarchy and sex and blah blah blah. I won't, because no one really cares. Let's go a little lighter after all that teenager talk. Here's another thing I didn't know I'd like here: the men here ALL make me feel like the sexiest woman ON EARTH. I mean, I understand that they also make the chick in front of me feel like that and the chick behind me feel like that. Or, I mean, they might make the chick to the left of me angry because she has some sort of feminist ideas about how women should be more respected and whatnot so I'll just speak for myself. When I walk down the streets of Mexico, I get cat-called, gawked at, told I'm beautiful by the more suave ones, grunted at by the more crude ones. Regardless, it's constant and I like it! I never have understood why women are so offended by construction workers making all sorts of noises and comments when they walk by. They're COMPLIMENTING you, regardless of how crude. And I eat it up. Let's just be real here. I EAT IT UP. I don't speak to them, encourage them, or even smile. I simply enjoy it and go on to the grocery store. But it's wonderful in its own way. (Cue Rue Paul.. "WOOORK, Covergirl. Turn to the left.")

One thing that I've particularly enjoyed is that I've been stopped by a number of endearingly adorable old Mexican men to simply tell me I'm beautiful. This didn't happen once, it happened MORE THAN ONCE. I want to hug them and tell them how much it brightens my day and makes me walk a little taller. I want to tell them that when you're getting older and your sagging in places you didn't expect to and your teenage kids are making you feel older and older every day and you noticed that you're growing some strange hair out of that tiny mole on your chin and your dying over your new grey hairs and no steady man is around to forget to not tell you you're beautiful; being stopped in the street to be told YOU are beautiful by a person who is completely harmless to you and has no other motive is some sort of magic happiness spell. Thank you, old Mexican men. I love you. I really really do. I want to cook you tamales and kiss your sweaty faces. Thank you. America doesn't say that to me. Viva Mexico!

I've been robbed twice since being in Mexico. The language barrier is something like an adventure-challenge that makes me call my Dad just to hear English. The grocery store is a maze that really should be it's own reality TV challenge game show. (Identify that meat. Find the milk. The sugar is WHERE? There's rice in the WHAT?) Getting the cable guy to come was like building the pyramids one brick at a time. My feet hurt. My kids are acting like assholes. And I have sand in my everything. Everything I buy is annoyingly negotiable. But, WHO CARES? It's worth it. Regardless of any and all the daily challenges of our first two weeks here, I wanted to write about the unexpected positives. That's where my head's at. My head is on how much I'm ENJOYING all of this!

Put your toys away and other beautiful sentences...

The words "Will you PLEASE put your toys away!" Almost flew out of my mouth a minute ago. But the moment I thought to say it, I sat down and smiled.

I've been very stressed this morning as I discovered that some sort of foreign Mexican insect is eating the wood chairs in the apartment, one of our air conditioners is not working and FOR THE LIFE OF ME... I CANNOT figure out how to dial the maintenance man's cell phone number from my Mexican home phone. He doesn't speak English anyway. I was almost in tears when that thought rose up to just barely in front of my lips. Mostly because I'm tired of being the brave, independent,  alone mother/woman trailblazer in Mexico and just want a man here. Feminist minded friends beware, this is going to make you uncomfortable.  I am READY for that other part of my life where I cook and clean and hand over the remote and a man does all the "manly" things and I do the womanly things. I am tired of having to try to figure out what insect is eating my furniture and how to communicate with service people. I'm tired of using tools and lifting heavy things and trying to find the hardware store. I'm tired of walking around with my corrections officer/investigator posture and speaking the "Don't mess with me. I can take you down" body language when I leave my house. I'm tired of being brave and not being able to be afraid when I'm in certain parts of town. I'm tired of  being the sole disciplinarian of the kids and the only leader of the household. I'm ready to be the weaker, dependent, too short to reach the top shelf, cant open that jar, what's that tool do,  you yell at the kids this time woman. I am READY. I am so tired.  I am ready to hand over some of the manish burdens to someone more capable. And like it or not, a man is more capable than I at many many things. I am ready to be what I am. I am ready to embrace my woman-ness and revel in his man-ness. But, this too shall pass. 

   Unfortunately,  Mexican insects don't care that I'd rather them wait to start eating chairs and air conditioners don't care about how I feel.  And no matter how soon a man arrives, I still won't know how to say air conditioner in Spanish convincingly. Sigh. So, today my goal is to manage these crises on my own. Crises that would be simpler to tackle in my own country and seem like mountainous tasks in this one. And so, my stress level hit a top. Literally, a little wooden top that I've stepped on 10 times this week. And nagging words about putting up toys almost left my lips.

But they didn't. They stopped me in my tracks. I sat down. I smiled. I tried very hard to remember the last time I'd SAID the word "toy", much less pairing them with the words "put up" and "YOUR". My boys are all iphones and laptops and snap chats and Instagrams. My sons are X boxes and YouTube and going to hang out with their friends so they can all stare at their iphones or play with their X boxes together. Occasionally a basketball or a nerf gun is requested.  But they collect dust after a day or two. Sometimes I get a glimpse of them when they beg for a game of Monopoly, but Pandora or Spotify plays in the background and turns are slowed down by message answering (for which I am also very guilty). Toys are near extinction in my big ole house in Texas. They're replaced by technology aged teens with headphones and social media profiles on sites I'm too old for.

But THIS tiny house is becoming filled with little wooden toys because... (in the epic words of my oldest son to explain his year of homeschooling)... Because Mexico. My children are being children. The "glimpses" during a game of Monopoly are turning into almost nightly games of cards and dominoes and YES, Monopoly en espanol! When I dole out pesos to spend as they wish, they don't come home with headphones and new video games, they come home with wooden tops and handmade yoyos and games that seem to step out of another, simpler time. I am watching them tranform back and forth  from digruntled, complicated, raging, eye-rolling, fit throwing "you're ruining my LIFE"  teens to children enjoying spinning a wooden top across the porch and off each others hands and heads. I am watching them go back and forth from bickering siblings to having a beach wrestling match or giving each other "water taxi" rides and throwing their little brother around in the ocean and playing "keep away" and Marco Polo in the pool.  It is BEAUTIFUL! It is tears-streaming-down-my-face beautiful.

And it's worth every disgruntled teenage complaint or rage. It's worth my mother not being COMPLETELY approving of our decision to take this adventure.  It's worth being brave for as long as it takes. It's worth being in such a small space together that there's no avoiding all the talking about teenage thinks and stinks and the "I hate you mom!" moments. It's worth missing some school plays or band concerts or trips to the mall. It's worth every sacrifice and scar that might get left from this adventure. It's worth stepping on wooden tops EVERY SINGLE DAY. (and thanking Buddha there are no Legos here)

So I will figure out how to say Air Conditioner in Spanish. I will just go find the maintanence man. I'll go back to the Mega and wander around until I manage to find the Mexican version of Raid for wood eating insects. I'll be happy tomorrow with being a strong, independent woman who had a footstool and knows every trick in the book for opening jars. This too shall pass. 

And, I have no intention of telling them to put away their toys. And I'm going to listen to them when they tell ME to put away MY phone.

Because Mexico... and Because life is short and childhood is even shorter.