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.

Palm Trees and Acrobats

Day 1 of life in Playa del Carmen:

7am. I woke up to the sound of banging. Not just average ordinary knocks and noise of the apartment life.  No, this was the BANG BANG BANG BANG of the cops or an angry ex beating your door with all their might to let you know that you're in deep shit. The BAM! BAM! BAM! that makes you sit upright and go into a state of panic and confusion. What is HAPPENING?
I got up quickly and clumsily and headed toward my front door. But when I stumbled (oh yes stumbled. Part of that chronic disease thing I mentioned in an earlier post is that my body, especially my feet and hands, don't really work for a while in the morning. It's awesome! So, when I STUMBLED) toward the door, I heard all sorts of other noises. Men speaking spanish; a woosha woosha woosha of metal scraping on adobe; a weeeeeen weeeen of a drill; Bang Bang and that BAM BAM BAM that woke me up. Oh, yeah, there's that condo high rise going up next door. Normally, I'm certain I'd have been annoyed. There was no chance I'd be sleeping any more. Between the SWAT-team-esque banging, the plethora of Spanish voices, and the pounding of my still confused/panicked heartbeat, it was hopeless. So, I went for the coffee pot. I'd packed a coffee maker first thing. I know my priorities. Toilet paper, swim suit, coffee maker.

I rounded the corner to the kitchen and there it was. My palm tree. Good morning palm tree that fills my kitchen window. Good morning. I smiled. I'm pretty sure I've dreamed of waking up in my house to the sight of a palm tree since the first time I saw a palm tree. It's a symbol of everything I love; tropical, sunshiny, sand-in-your-everything, green-as-green-can-be, noisily swaying in the salty wind, coconuts and thatch roof providing palm trees. And that's all I could see. Oh, dear heaven, I'm in you. I smiled goofily at it while I waited for my hands to work enough to open my Mexican coffee (a fail, by the way. My son had to open it for me. The boys are used to that.)
He and I went onto the balcony because, well, outside is the only real place to be in this new fantasy world I'm living in. I suppose in my dream there aren't men climbing on scaffolding with ropes and harnesses, belting out fast words I can't understand or singing loud ballads of melodic nonsense while they bang and weeen and scrape scrape, but I suppose you can't have it all. In my dream, I watch my Palm tree sway in the breeze and take in the smell of screensavers. In my reality, I watched small, skinny men in hard hats seem to defy gravity and create an Adobe wall with an increasing tightening in my chest every time they moved.

Construction has got to be terrifying. How do u get used to being up in the air supported only by a 1 1/2 inch pipe or a 2×8 board laying careless over scaffolding. "Your ropes aren't even attached to anything. Why are you even wearing that harness? Please don't die tiny Mexican stranger man. Oooh, that's how adobe is made! That's kind of fascinating. You guys are sort of magic. This is a little like watching acrobats. I wish you had a net. I hope your wives make you great tamales when you get home. I bet they have no idea what you do all day. Oh damn, are yall installing a light THERE? That's gonna shine right in my window."
So, two cups of coffee and an acrobat show later, I knew how adobe was made and didn't care about the bang bam ween scrape alarm clock anymore. Time to start on that to do list.

10am Priority 1: Plastic to Pesos. I walked to the bank around rhe corner. (Everything here is down the street or around the corner). I cautiously look around, this IS Mexico, after all. The real estate guy told us to remember those words. He said them a lot. "This town is safe, but this IS Mexico" It's all in perspective. Insert card.  Ok, Checking your account balance in pesos is WAY cooler than dollars! That extra 0 on the end just makes mundane banking more fun. Current exchange rate: 13.25 pesos per 1 penny. I punch in a number and more zeros than most American ATMs allow and took my $500 bills out. Yeah, 500, Balling hard.

The couple at the next ATM were speaking french, the couple on the other side Spanish. Smile.

Time to head to the familiar. Walmart. It happens to be down the street AND around the corner. And so began my very long, hot day of regretting not paying more attention in my college spanish classes and simultaneously being grateful and dreadful that I'm living in a place with no car. My experiences in Walmart and the Mega grocery store deserve  their own post. I'll get to that. For now, I leave you with an adios!

All About That Base, No Treble

It never occurred to me to want be anything but what I was until I was an adult and people started telling me I needed to be something else. I remember the first moment I looked in the mirror and realized there were people who thought my body wasn't perfect just as it was and maybe I should lose weight. I was 20 years old and I weighed 215 lbs. I had just had my first child. Honestly, even at that weight, it hadn't occurred to me that I should be ashamed. I looked and thought that it'd be a good idea to weigh less. I looked and thought that I'd gained a lot of weight having a baby and it was time to get healthier and thinner. For me. Not for others. Me. And so I did.  I lost all that weight, gained some back, lost it, gained it, lost it. I still didn't develop any real body image problems until much later. I wore bikinis when I was 190 lbs. I never felt unattractive.  I felt like I was me. And I wore it proudly from size 10 to size 18 and back. I was just me and I was beautiful. 

 Then, one day many years later,  I had a real moment. An impactful moment. Someone close to me was getting some old clothes from me and the girl said "I'm so upset that I'm having to wear your old clothes. It's gotten so bad. I'm so embarrassed. I have to go on a serious diet."  She wasnt being cruel. She didnt even realize that she'd been insensitive. She meant no harm. She was genuinely upset. Those clothes  were size 12. I cried for days. Someone was ashamed that they were the size of me. Someone was genuinely devastated that they looked like I look. I was truly affected. I think that may have been the true moment I realized women were supposed to want to be skinny. I really hurt from that moment. I was embarrassed of my appearance for the first time in my life. I felt like I'd been walking around being a total fool believing I was beautiful when I was something women did not want to become. But that moment passed. I recovered my esteem. I recovered my sense of my own beauty. I didn't want to be "skinny"; I wanted to be perfectly me. 

That wanting, interestly, didn't come until I had lost more weight and was smaller than I'd ever been. I'd lost most of it in a perfectly effortless, metabolism speeding up, just got happier and felt better kind of way. But then, I started to obsess over being thinner and thinner. I started making a goal to be "a six." A "perfect" size 6. I realize as I write this that the ideal for beauty has become so misguided that a size six is still too big for most girls. That's still "fat". The ideal of the generations after me became size 2 or 0 or 00. I'm glad to not be a part of that generation. There is still a notion of a "perfect size six" in my subconscious. That was the message society gave me way back when I was supposed to care. Be A Six. I'd never really picked it up until then. When I finally decided I was supposed to want to be "skinny", the number was six. 

 The last and only time my body was a size 6 was when I was 11 years old; a passing station on the puberty train. I'd always known my body wasn't structured to be a size 6.  I simply wasn't built that way. That wasn't an excuse. It never occurred to me that I'd ever even need an excuse for my body. It was simply a reality. A reality I was not ashamed of. As a teenager, I was a strong beautiful dancer, an athlete. My art WAS my body and I was perfect. No one told me to be a size 6 instead. I was a size 10. My body was in the best shape it has and will ever be in. I am not a size 6 or a 4 or a 2 or that odd 00 girl. And it took me over 30 years to care that I wasn't.

At the height of my body hate, I was a size 8. I weighed less than I had in 20 years. And I looked in the mirror and hated my body. I looked in the mirror and I was ashamed of my size. This, in hindsight, really floors me. Aren't you supposed to feel BETTER when you lose weight? Isn't that the selling point? I thought I was absolutely sexy in a size 16 but half that and I hated myself. Self perception can be a tricky little bitch, can't it? I started buying one piece swimsuits for the first time in my life and I wore them with shorts and still felt exposed. I still felt embarrassed. I felt "fat". But, I was in some sort of internal struggle between the girl inside of me who had never thought body hate was a "thing" that made any sense and this new woman who cried when I stared at my naked body. The woman who did that almost every single day. I not only was fat but suddenly those stretchmarks that looked perfectly natural to me before now looked hideous and were to be hidden. The cellulite that had accumulated on my 30-something body was the worst on my growing list of things that were now wrong with my body. I was ashamed. 

But, I was also angry. I was angry at myself for the hating. I was angry at myself for being ashamed. I was angry at my body for being perfectly itself. I was angry at nature for its injustice. But I was REALLY angry at the messages that led me here. The messages my friends were giving me when they talked of or wished for or actually got plastic surgery to be "better." I was angry at the biting comments I was now remembering that people had said to me that I'd barely noticed about how I was somehow inferior as a woman and I should be ashamed or expect less because I was larger than the girls on TV or in magazines or who had had those surgeries to "better" their bodies. I was angry at the random guy in a bar who had told me that I'd be cheated on by men because I was "overweight" but that girl (pointing to a girl who was probably a size 6) would not because he'd want to not risk losing her. It was a ridiculous statement by a guy who'd never met either of us and knew nothing of us; a statement that he probably made in some Tucker Max-esque attempt to gain an advantage in taking me home. I'd looked at him at the time incredulously and laughed and informed him that I was not "over" weight, I was MY weight and I'd never want a man so shallow as to base his fidelity of the size of a girls ass. Admittedly, though, I cried later and somewhere inside I believed him. I certainly never forgot. I didn't walk as tall and confidently after that. I was angry at some things that someone very very close to me who's opinion was very important to me had said about my appearance that probably had more to do with my final decent into being the "norm" than anything else. Things suggesting I should be embarrassed, suggesting I was hideous, suggesting I should consider drastic measures to "fix" me. Some pretty brutal things that were later revealed to have an ulterior motive. I had become a "normal" girl now who hated her body and would starve or puke or give herself diarrhea or take any pill that someone else said would work just to be "skinny." I even started trying to run. I have tachycardia; running can become life-threatening to me in a very short time. I didn't care. I did it anyway. I did it because of size six.  I was angry. I was sad. I was frustrated because I was failing. And I was miserable. But, the most devastating part of the story is that I was still beautiful. I just didn't see it anymore. I didn't see it at all.

There was a period in my downfall where I admitted what had happened to me and why. And then there was a period of denial where not only was I ashamed of my new body image but I was also ashamed of being ashamed. I would look in the mirror and try to remember the things I used to think and feel. I said I was beautiful the way I was. I would wear my bikini. But it wasn't working. I was deeper than ever into shame and hate. And I was ashamed to even let anyone know. I hid it. My sons had glimpses. They would tell me to eat when I wouldn't. But I never told them the whole truth. I was embarrassed of how embarrassed I was with my own body. I was a mess. I was, probably, like most women. Obsessed with my flaws, deeply ashamed, self loathing. That thought still makes me sad, that this was all pretty normal. That thought makes me more angry at society than any friend or man or random comment. Society is a judgmental perfectionist bitch. And I hate her. 

And then something happened. Life got a little complicated.  My body started to talk to me in a whole different way. I started to develop some symptoms of a scary condition that ran in my family. And then I suddenly just sort of fell apart. It had nothing to do with my body image or my weight or my obsession with being so incredibly hideously imperfect. I just got slapped with the reality that my body had a real flaw. A chronic debilitating disease kind of flaw. The kind that put my measly manageable heart condition to shame. The kind that made me forget about the number 6 and start looking at other numbers. Number like: the number of years I have left that I'm still able to walk, scuba dive, dance, climb mountains. I had to spend 2 weeks in bed and I forgot I hated my body. I forgot that I didn't eat anymore and how important it was a week ago that the scale moved a millimeter one direction or another. I forgot all about it all. I had other wars to fight with my body. I gained 10 lbs. 

The flare up passed and I could walk again and the doctors appointments got made and specialists were scheduled. I felt relatively like my self again within a month. The disease stuck around. So did the 10 pounds. And then I noticed I was eating meals again. I noticed I hadn't weighed myself in a couple of weeks. I noticed that I wasn't staring in the mirror every day. And I'd slipped into size 10 clothes without even thinking about it. I wanted to be comfortable because my body had been so uncomfortable.  I'd completely forgotten to hate myself. I'd completely forgotten to want to be skinny. 

My family went on a vacation and I took bikinis and forgot I was supposed to hide. I was just excited I could swim and walk and dive. But when I noticed my husband's eye wandering ever so subtly to some vacationing 20 year old bodies, I remembered. I remembered hard and fast and painfully. I choked on it. I grabbed for something to hide my body behind. I fell hard into that remembering and it hurt. 

But then something happened. I looked around and noticed that there were about 3 of those perfect little young tiny bodies around and about 100 women. There were women twice my size wearing tiny bathing suits and laughing with their friends. There were tall and short and huge and tiny and everything in between. A woman with cellulite and stretchmarks and an enchantingly beautiful smile was dancing with her husband on the deck to some salsa music blaring from the air. He was looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. She forgot to hate herself that day. She was beautiful. Those three "perfect" girls were surrounded by friends who were all shapes and sizes. And they were all beautiful. Every single one of them. 

Another girl came down the steps into the water and everyone noticed her. It was clear she had spent a good amount of money to go through painful surgeries to look like she did. Her boobs stood at attention that unnaturally perfect way mine never would and her back side had clearly undergone as much implantation as her front. And my sons and my husband started to discuss her as though she were a circus clown. In fairness, she did come across as a bit cartoonish, but I defended her. She was beautiful even if a bit overdone. And another thought occurred to me. This girl had paid and bled and suffered to have her butt made bigger. BIGGER. MORE BUTT! What? 

I had another moment. This one, though, was an epiphany far greater than the one I'd had at 20 years old in my bedroom mirror. I realized that society wasn't universal in its messages about what we should hate about ourselves. This girl had come from a message that told her to envy my big ass! This girl would have killed for my natural DDD's. She paid someone to get the exaggerated features I was born with. The ones I'd spent the better part of the last 2 years of my life crying over and trying to destroy. The ones I, too, had visited a plastic surgeon to consult about eliminating! (My truer self ended up winning the plastic surgery battle. I cried and tortured over the decision for a week  and then celebrated my choice not to unnaturally alter my body and engage in an act I'd been vehemently opposed to my entire life by eating the first cheeseburger I'd had in months. A decision I didn't regret for a moment afterward. ) Society was a whole different bitch to that girl. And then I remembered a whole lot of other comments I'd barely noticed throughout my life. Comments like "I'd kill for your boobs" and "Damn girl, look at that ass" Or that guy who told me once that he usually liked girls who worked out all the time but I was more beautiful; there was "just something about my attitude, my confidence."  I also started to remember all the times men had called me beautiful and how their eyes not so subtly turned to look at ME. 

That was just over a month ago. I'd love to tell you that I've been fully restored back to the same old girl who loved herself without a second thought for 30 years or so but that would be a lie. I have my moments of mirror hate. I have moments of feeling less than. But they are farther and farther between. I eat. I wear my size 10 and even some 12 and don't mind so much. I have no aspiration for that silly unattainable 6 on this body it wasn't meant for. I smile a lot. I walk almost as tall as I always have. I tug on my clothes less and I bought a new bikini.

Making it Through

Making It Through Hard Times

January 27, 2011

One Breath At A Time...

They say when climbing Everest, the struggle is so much that you concentrate on nothing but breath. One then the next then the next. You labor to just make it through the next breath so that you can then make it through the next step. You take a step and stop then again until you have reached the top. You are nothing but lungs and breath. You are not thinking of money or your dry cleaning, the dishes or what you will eat for dinner. You are not thinking of how your spouse has offended you with an offhand comment or what car you’d like to drive. You’re thinking only of the breath you are in. You have pushed yourself so far that the air is almost too thin to sustain. But you keep going, not down, but up. You take a step then stop and breathe. You go up. On the summit, you are essentially dying, but you go up. Because on the summit, the peak is there. The end. The top. The place few others have seen. The closer you get to it, the harder it is to keep going. The worse your situation becomes. But you keep going because you know the peak is there. Each labored breath gets you closer. Each concrete footed step is 6 more inches to the top of the world. So you go. And you think only of breath. And if you pause long enough, you may think of what that breath is for. Your children, your love, your dearest friend, perhaps just the privilege of having breath. But you think of nothing else. And you are grateful for each new inhale. Grateful that you are able.

So that is the journey. Turmoil and danger and misery and breaking the limits of your will and your body. Experiencing limit after limit and pushing through them, no matter how long it takes. Excruciating cold and tooth pain wind. Reliance on guides and trails, fellow journeymen for your very life. And with each new phase, they all fade away one by one and become useless until you are relying on nothing more than your own will to pull oxygen into your lungs and push it carbon dioxide back out. Your own will to endure one more step. That is the journey you have chosen. Does the destination make all of the struggle worth it? I guess one decides for themselves. Many try, few experience the view past the jagged rocky last step to know the experience of the very last edge of human endurance. But what about those who do? They know things others never will. They have seen. They have seen and will always know what others do not, cannot. They will see the world in a way that others cannot see it. And everything, from that moment on, will be viewed through the lens of that knowledge.

And so no matter how hard it gets, take one breath at a time. Breathe, step, stop and breathe again. Keep moving up and forward. You will eventually reach the summit. And when you do, you will see and it will have all become worth it. And you will have wisdom that others cannot.