This beautiful flower is on a plant called the Carrion Plant. I should have put a dime next to it but trust me, it is huge. The buds look like big ballons before they open. I planted it next to the patio here before I knew what it was, I just loved the primordial look of the flowers. Then I looked it up and it got its name because it exudes a scent like rotting meat that attracts flies which pollinate it. I can't really say that I can smell it but it certainly works as it almost always has 4 or 5 large flies crawling around in it. I've got to move it away from the patio but I do love the look of it.

Blogging about being stuck seems to have helped, I finally got going on this financial stuff yesterday. Collecting all the documents for the refinance of the duplex here in the Cove and emailing or faxing them to the mortgage company.

Ilene asked in my comments if maybe I wasn't sure I wanted to buy the house in Merida. That's not it, in fact I've already bought the house. It's paid in full, this rearranging I'm doing now is partly to pay for the renovations and partly because the loan I have here is converting to an ARM in August and the interest rate will shoot up.

So, I need to do the refi anyway and selling the house in Petaluma is something I feel good about as well. We're selling it to the long time tenants there, they have been fantastic tenants and so I offered it to them. I'm selling it for a little less than I probably could get for it but I won't have to pay the real estate commission, I won't have to paint it and fix it and lose a couple months rent doing it and the market is such that it could take awhile to sell. So, I feel good about it and I think they do too. All around good karma.

It's just the sorting through papers and finding all the docs that gets me down. I do get a panic feeling sometimes that I am spending capitol but if I really look at it I am buying property in Mexico that so far has appreciated for me as well as the property I own in California. I've had the condo in Akumal for over 10 years and it is now worth about 2.5 times what I paid for it. I'm in Mexico more than I'm in California and it is where my interests are. So, moving some investments there makes sense. I have paid attention to the advice of my friend Bob, an ex-pat retired banker, not to invest more in Mexico than I could stand to lose. It would hurt a lot to lose what I've got there but it wouldn't wipe me out.

Of course, there are always expenses that you hadn't planned on that crop up. The transmission on our RV is one of those. Worst case scenario we will have to buy a new one for about $4500. Not good but we do have 97k miles on it and we have towed our jeep for almost all of them and every year we cross both the Rocky's and the Sierra Madre. Also we just got a big bill for title conversion on the condo in Akumal. I had planned to renovate the kitchen and bathroom and put new floor tiles there but now that will have to wait. I'm lucky that I do have the resources to do these things and so I'm thankful.

For us, the good news is that we don't have to sell a house we live in and pack and move all the stuff. We've lived in our RV now for almost 6 years, 3 years ago we made that big jump by getting rid of most of the stuff and selling the house that had been home. All we have now are rental properties, no emotional investment and no stuff to go through and get rid of or move. We don't even stay at our duplex when we are here in Cat City, we have an rv space on the lot next door to our closest friend Country but it belongs to her. I may do a lot of gardening here and pond building but it's not mine, that's a great feeling actually. I feel a little like Johnny Appleseed, spreading gardens and ponds around and leaving them behind.