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!