OK, the mandatory dog update. This pic shows that Cuba is integrating herself into the pack, even Chica has calmed down and isn't pouting anymore, instead she is competing for attention which I think is better.

The downside is that when Cuba returned from a week at the vet this last time she had a small bump on her nose. It grew quickly and we took her back to see what it is. He says it is a fungus like ringworm! He gave us a script for pills and some spray. Of course, this creeped me out. I'm not great with things like this, anyone remember the tick episode in Guatemala? I'm trying to refrain from wanting to tear everything apart and chlorox the whole world. Instead I'm making like Lady Macbeth and spend half the day washing my hands. I really appreciate LeeAnn's comment about another vet here in Merida.

We did have fun this weekend, our friends Jen and Bart from Akumal - you saw their house here a few weeks ago - were in Merida with Jen's sister Kathy and her fiance Will. We met them down in the centro on Sat night and walked around, had dinner, drank mojitos and listened to lots of good bands. It was a perfect evening. The next day we met at Eladio's, one of the famous botana bars here. These are great places where you get 6 or 7 plates of traditional food with every round of drinks. Also loud and pretty good music, scantily dressed Coca Cola girls handing out free t-shirts, hundreds of people and ... mojitos. It was a lot of fun. The picture was when we first arrived, I took some later but they really didn't come out very well ;)
From left, Mimi, Kathy, Will, Bart and Jen.

Oh well, here's one I took as we were leaving. Heh!

Mimi got this great shot of Cuba chasing Hombre today. They were out in the field playing at full speed. She can more than keep up with him, which is shocking to him I'm sure. We've always thought he had some whippet or greyhound in him as he is very fast and runs circles around most dogs. Not this long-legged Dobie, she can catch him and when she does she just bowls right over him. They got some good exercise chasing each other.

Chica plays a little, mainly biting Hombre while he is wrestling with Cuba, but she can't keep up with the running. I'm kind of glad she keeps herself a little aloof, when she runs too much or plays too hard her broken rear leg can really start hurting her. If Cuba ran over her like she does Hombre I'm afraid it could really hurt her. She knows though, when Cuba is running at her full speed, she stops and stands very still and ready to dodge her if she needs to. Cuba tends to veer off at that point, perhaps Chica's raised, snarling lip has something to do with it.

Cuba is back home! She spent almost another week at the vet, 10 days total, had a lot of antibiotics and some kind of stomach medicine. She's eating and seems to feel good. We took the dogs down to the beach at Progreso yesterday to run. It's the closest beach to Merida, about 20 miles, and is on the Gulf coast. I forgot the camera but got this picture with my cell phone.

It was chilly and grey - chilly for us means it was in the 60's F, and we stopped at a restaurant on the beach, Flamingos. I had Sopa de Lima, hot chicken soup with lime, and queso fundido, melted cheese with chile strips. Hot food on a cold day at the beach!

On the way home, we drove down the coast a little, there is a long lagoon that runs parallel to the coast along there and we had heard there were flamingos. We saw them! Usually the flamingos are found in huge numbers at lagoons a couple hours in 2 directions from Merida. I guess these had stopped off on the way to the big gathering. The phone camera doesn't do so well at a distance, still, those pink blogs are flamingos.

Today was beautiful, sunny and warm. We had our appointment at the immigration office. Got our fingerprints taken, answered some questions, signed the documents. We should pick up our new visas next Thursday.

Mimi wanted to fly to Puerto Vallarta in Nov. to see her friend Shann, who is performing at a resort there. We looked at flights online, there are several good low cost national airlines and we were hoping for a good price. Not so good really, probably because it is one resort area to another or because there isn't a non stop flight so she has to change planes in Mexico City. We decided to go over to the mall near here and see if we could find a better deal. It's a great mall, Plaza Grande, with all the usual stores, multiple levels and branches. We wandered around, found one travel agency that was closed, and then found a branch office of the airline we were looking at, Aviansca. They had a special that saved about $80US so she got the tickets. She'll be gone from the 3rd to the 7th of Nov and I'll get to manage 3 dogs and try and stay out of trouble by myself ;) On the other hand, she gets to navigate the airport in Mexico City by herself, which is making her a little tense.

Plus, we had the perfect excuse to eat mall food. Actually, the chinese in the food court was pretty good. The one difference between mall food here and mall food in the US is that as you walk around looking at all the different foods, they offer you tastes on toothpicks at all the stalls. You could almost just graze your way to full.

Things have been a little glum around here the last few days. Cuba stopped eating on Thursday, she would not even look at food. She was drinking water and eating grass whenever we let her. She ate nothing on Thursday, same on Friday and by late afternoon I was really worried. I took her back to the vet and he kept her. I was almost in tears, we've gotten really attached to her and I felt I might not see her again. He said she had a temperature and if I understood him right it could either be some kind of gastritis or parasites. I called today and he said he wanted to keep her until Monday. Part of it is that the antibiotics that she was on orally could be what has caused her stomach problems so he is giving her IV antibiotics. He said she ate a small amount today.

To add to the fear, Hombre wouldn't eat anything yesterday. We were worrying that they got into some kind of poison, we don't think so but we don't know. Hombre is in a lot better health than Cuba and he ate normally today so I'm not as worried about him now. She was so malnourished and thin, I felt she couldn't go very long without eating. We fought the urge yesterday to pick Cuba up and make a run for our vet in Playa, we trust him so completely and we don't really know this vet very well. He seems very capable, very nice, he treats Cuba well and with a lot of caring. Still, there is a bit of a language problem and we just don't know him. I just hope we made the right decision to wait and let him treat her.

Other than worrying about the dogs, we've gotten small things done this past week. We now have 4 cell phones total, 2 from the US, 1 from Akumal and 1 from Merida. Sheez! and none of them are an iPhone. We picked up the Merida cell after an hour wait in line at the Telcel office, we probably should have just gotten one from one of the kiosks that are everywhere like we did the Akumal phone. Then, the chip didn't work and we had to go back the next day. The lines are long there but as we were standing in line the 2nd day, the guy who had waited on us the day before saw us and came out to see what was wrong. That was really nice, it didn't make all the people ahead of us in line happy but it made my day. Turns out it was a defective chip and we got a new one. All of these phones are so that people can call us as a local call, we can call anywhere in Mexico using our Verizon phones but to call us back would be an international call from here. We got the pay-as-you-go phones, they sell the minutes cards everywhere and we can add time as we need it.

We got our pictures taken for our visas, really bad black and white front and profile, they look like booking pictures. We were supposed to go and get the visas on Friday but on Thursday we got a call that our appt was moved to Tuesday, the Director went on vacation without signing our visas first. He must not know how important we are!

We got our deed and trust copied along with our passports and dropped them off to go in for the building permits for the house. We spent several hours again with the architect and we've got preliminary plans - enough for the permit application - and have decided to go with everything except the roof terrace, that can come later.

Tonight we went downtown to the centro to see the Merida ballet students put on a show of Irish dance along with some Mexican folkloric. All of it is similar in some ways, the really fast footwork and use of taps or clogs on wood floors to add to the rhythm. It was a nice show, the Irish dancing was really very good and the folkloric excellent. Afterwards we treated ourselves to a really nice dinner and walked through the closed streets watching the Saturday night bands and dancing. That's one of the things I love about this city, there is so much music and art. Every week they close the streets in the centro on Saturday night and Sunday and restaurants put their tables out in the street and bands set up and play. Strolling in the warm evenings and listening to music is a great joy. They also do this during the week at various parks in the neighborhoods, there's a schedule and we plan to catch all of them eventually.

There's an article on people from the US moving to Merida and renovating houses in the Sat. LA Times Business section. Here's the link.

Remember how I said yesterday, 'be careful what you ask the Universe for'? Well, I just want to make it perfectly clear that I do NOT want to move into our house as it is with just a fan and a light bulb!

Also internet, do you remember my vivid description a week ago of the amazing amounts of water that come out of the sky down here? We talked to the architect Friday about street flooding and he described how he raises the entry and slopes it in case the water fills the street up and over the curb. Well, we opened the door today and realized that this is exactly what has been happening. Also, the roof leaks in the kitchen, that's ok since it is going to change anyway. Still, the smell and the evidence of the receding water was a little overwhelming today.

Another effect of all that water is rampant growth, we couldn't even get through the gate into the back yard. The flooding was mainly in the entry way from the street flooding and in the kitchen from the roof. Actually, we were trying to figure out how we wanted the kitchen but it was hard as there wasn't anywhere to stand that you didn't get drips on your head.

It definitely brought us back down to earth. We're still happy and looking forward to living there but hoo boy! I really wouldn't want to live there as it is now. Did I mention the swarms of mosquitoes living there from all the water?

We took all the dogs with us to see their future home. They seemed to like it ok although they all moved into the dry room, the living room, to lay down. You can see that Cuba is thin, we're sneaking her an extra meal in the morning. This picture is for you Kelly, it's the only one I have so far of all 3 of them.

Chica is definitely pouting or depressed or pissed off, however you want to see it. She is not at all thrilled by the new female dog. Hombre seems his usual self although he is spending a lot of time sitting next to Chica, almost as if he is trying to reassure her. Cuba came up and licked Chica's ear today, I think that's a good sign and it is a submissive gesture which should make Chica happy. Right now, not much makes her happy though.

So far, Cuba is fitting in well with the humans anyway. She slept until 11am and pretty much stays on her couch watching everything. She's probably still sore from the surgery and she is still very nervous and scared. She seems pretty happy though and comes when we call her. Dobies are famous for their smiles which she did for the first time today. They kind of raise their upper lip up and wag their stubby tail. I was so excited when she did it that I had to call Country and tell her.

Back in the 1970's, when Country and I were first together, I was dog-sitting a friend's doberman. I went to work and left Country asleep at my house with the dog. At the time I was a bartender in biker bar in SoCal. I got a call in the middle of my shift from a hysterical Country, who was trapped on the bed because the dog was snarling at her. I tried to tell her he was just smiling but she would have none of it. I ended up sending a couple of the boys over on their Harley's to rescue her by locking the dog in another room. He really was just smiling at her.

There's a big iguana that sits in the sun behind our rig, I watch him from the back window but he disappears if I open the door. Today, Mimi watched while I went out and figured out he lives in the sewer drain pipe and jumps down it. Mimi took this picture of him through the window, sticking his head out of the pipe. I googled him and he is a yucatan spiny-tailed iguana, one site said they don't make good pets because they are aggressive and mad all the time. How do you tell when an iguana is mad?

He's big - I'll get a picture of all of him one of these days - and I thought it would be cool to have a big old iguana that lived in your yard. Then, I found out that the 2 biggest garden pests here are... iguanas and leaf-cutter ants. Apparently, they particularly like eating flowers and orchids and can wipe out your garden rather quickly. I've never had a garden down here, there's a lot to learn. BTW, I had unknowingly put that tile over the drain pipe the other day, he moved it out of the way.

Back to our trip over here. Of course, we left Akumal late in the day. It was raining and there were bands coming ashore from a storm south of us plus we were told that they are working on the Cobá road which is the shortcut across the peninsula to Mérida. So, we decided to take the expensive toll road from Cancun, easy driving. I was driving our little Mexican truck and Mimi the RV with the Jeep in tow. We got here at about 3am and parked next door to the RV park in the Liverpool department store lot. Have I told you internet, about Liverpool? It's a snazzy store, Nordstrom's like, and they have the most decadent and delicious looking boutique candy store right inside the front door. It is really hard to walk by those truffles and turtles and whatever. There are girls waiting to give you samples and the smells are incredible. It's huge but no matter what door I come in or what city the store is in, I always seem to enter at the candy store.

Anyway, the most interesting part of the drive was as we were on the ring road in Mérida. There was a police roadblock and they were checking for drunk drivers. They were very polite, he asked me if I had had any beer or alcohol and I laughed and said no. He said 'go on then, and have a nice trip'. He just waved Mimi on in the RV. I really like this city.

This is our current home, it's a beautiful location. It probably was once pretty isolated but now the newer part of the city has grown up to it. We are right next door to the Liverpool and only a few blocks from the Gran Plaza, a huge mall, and they are building another huge mall behind Liverpool. This land will be too valuable to stay an RV park for long, a shame. We're the only ones here now, the caravans stop here in the winter but there are few RVs out driving around the Yucatan during the rainy-hurricane season. That's our little red Toyota truck parked behind us.

OK, the other big news. While we were driving a few days ago, Mimi and I had this conversation about getting another dog. We thought it might be good to get one that was more of a watch dog, or at least looked like one. For the new house, ya know? We talked about breeds and both agreed that the doberman's we've had in the past were wonderful dogs, that they had short hair which is good for this weather and that we'd like another dobie. Of course, we'd never buy a pure bred dog because there are so many wonderful dogs that need rescuing. Be very careful what you ask the Universe for...

As we drove into the RV park we saw this young dobie running around the edges. She was very thin but not emaciated and very afraid of people. She liked Hombre though and as we set up and sat around, she played with him and we started trying to lure her in closer. We have this big bag of dehydrated lamb ears dog treats(I know, gross), and we were throwing them out closer and closer to her. It took a couple hours and then she came close enough to let me pet her. Pretty soon, she was getting lots of head scratches and staying close to the RV. I asked the manager about her and she said she didn't belong to anyone, that she'd been hanging around for a couple of months and that the gardeners fed her scraps.

Mimi and I looked at each other and went, "well, guess she is ours". Our friends Nelio and Paty came over for cocktails and Nelio said his brother-in-law was a vet that had an office nearby. We'd noticed that she was coming into heat and so we picked her up and put her in the truck and took her to the vet. He did some tests on her, she is clear of heartworm, erlichea and other nasties and had a good white blood count, and he operated on her that evening. It all happened really fast! He said she was well into her first heat and that the longer he waited the harder the surgery would be. He puts her age at between 6 months and 8 months, she's very healthy but too thin. She's clearly a pure bred Doberman, her tail was docked but her ears are whole.

We're calling her Cuba because she tried to drink my Cuba Libre cocktail that first afternoon. She spent 2 nights at the vet and we picked her up this afternoon. She is still scared and she won't walk up stairs or into the RV but she also seems pretty happy to be laying on the couch. Chica is not so happy but she's been nice to her so far. I think she hopes we'll take her to Akumal and give her to the Canadians like we did the last dog we picked up. Sorry, Chica, we're keeping Cuba.

So, here she is internet, introducing Cuba on her first night with us in Tortuga.

Mimi and I have stars in our eyes (and she had curls in her hair) and we are filled with 'house love'. We met today with the architect, we spent hours going over plans and costs and all of that. We then went to see a house he has almost finished that has some of the details he wants to put in ours. It was a wonderful afternoon, I love the plans and I love the house. There are things to work out, for one thing the cost to build everything is higher than I want to go. I kind of expected that but I wanted to price it with everything and then see what we could do, what we could postpone, what we could skip. That's our job tomorrow, we're going over to the house with the plans and walking through it, measuring to get a visual idea of the space involved, and coming up with a list of what's vital, what's important, what can wait and what we don't need. We have agreed on several changes already and he will re-do the plans to include those. I'm sure there will be lots of work and some frustration ahead but today and tonight were wonderful. Afterwards, we took ourselves out to a really nice restaurant for dinner and we dreamed and talked about it.

Earlier in the day our attorney came over and brought us the original deed and trust, the actual title to the house. It's good to have that in our hands and really feel that we own this old house. After many houses and many years paying mortgages, refinancing, buying and selling, it is a really special feeling to own a house free and clear. It may be a dump now but it's our dump and we could hang a couple hammocks and move into it if we wanted. No mortgage and property taxes are about $100 a year + trust fees of about $500 a year. Compared to the $7000+ in property tax alone back in California, that is a wonderful feeling.

Another great feeling for me is that I really don't need to pay for homeowners insurance. I hate insurance companies, I think they are legal extortionists - "pay me a ton of money or I'll make sure something bad happens to you and if something bad happens anyway, I'll wiggle out of paying you". Here, I can self-insure for a lot less and for most things that could happen. Fire? It's a stone house. Furnishings can burn but would I rather just pay to replace them or spend years fighting with an extortion company? Hurricane? We're in a big city where houses are right against each other, they are all made of stone, and they have all lasted through 100 years of hurricanes. Flood? Well, that's possible but all the floors are tile, everything drains quickly here and I can live with some water marks on the furniture if I have to. No earthquakes here. Not that I could afford earthquake insurance in California anyway after they changed the laws and priced it way out of range. So, I've been doing a happy dance ever since it dawned on me that I wouldn't have to buy insurance on the house.

So, the way I'm looking at it is if the world falls apart for me and I have no money I could live in this house for $600 a year plus whatever utilities I could afford. Oh, did I mention it has a well? Heh! I have these bag lady fantasies of camping out in the house in a hammock with one floor fan and a light bulb. Beats the hell out of worrying about ending up old and broke and living in a flop house in San Francisco. I get these fear fantasies sometimes and have to imagine the worst case scenario... it helps me get it all in perspective if I can imagine doing OK in the worst case. Everything is up from there, right?

It is a long ways up from that to what we are envisioning creating with this house. The design is really spectacular, with some features that I hadn't seen before and that really excite me. Whatever we end up with, it will be ours and it will be paid for. That's a really good feeling.

There's other big news but I'll need another post for that. The picture I just had to include is Mimi's hair after she took the braids out yesterday. She got her hair braided when we got to Akumal as all that hair is really hot. They were getting kind of fuzzy so she took them out. She had some serious curly hair going.

I edited this post to add a couple of pictures from Jen and Bart's house.

We went out into the jungle to see the house that Jen and Bart built. Jen says it is only a mile but it seems farther, winding on a tiny dirt road through brush and trees that tower over the car. The road twists and turns and since you can only see ahead and behind, it is hard to keep an image of where you are. It's truly a beautiful place, octagonal, surrounded by a wide porch and covered by a huge, 3 story palapa cone roof. They are off the grid, we saw their solar panels and inverter and bank of batteries. Yet, it is a modern house with new appliances and all the comforts of an upscale home anywhere. The woodwork is exquisite, handmade doors, frames, window frames, deck and cabinets. Many of the trees used were cut from their land. The deck is from Chichen, I was amazed at the deep burgundy of the wood, really gorgeous. Chichen is a tree that can cause an extreme poison oak type rash when fresh but once dried and varnished it is safe.

They've got a couple of small houses nearby that are used for storage and we came out with the light fixtures and some other stuff for our house in Merida. We don't need it now and it will be safer out in the jungle and away from the salt air, that's if we could have even found a place to store it in our piled up condo.

While we were sitting on the deck talking, it started to rain. Tropical rain storms are so amazing, it's been years since Mimi and I have been here in the rainy season and we forgot how much we love it. Water just pours from the sky, seriously as if someone were emptying a large bucket over you. More water than can be imagined, whole reservoirs of water, just pouring out of the sky. Scandalous amounts of water to someone from the dry reaches of Southern California, all that water just pooling on the ground and soaking quickly through the limestone. Sometimes there are enormous thunder claps and lightening, always it cools the air magically. Still it is warm, which is good since it is impossible not to get wet. Just running from cover to the car will soak you to the skin immediately.

Later I drove our truck through these buckets of water to Tulum to get gas and fish tacos (maybe I should have put that in the reverse order considering my priorities). My internal debate over who has the best fish tacos continues but right now the place in Tulum is winning, mainly because of their tamarind-chipotle sauce and the seasonings they use in the breading. Definitely more research is needed. Anyway, I could only see a few feet in front of the truck even with the wipers on crack-speed. Amazingly, most of the traffic slowed down, buses and trucks included. How odd, to slow down just because you can't see the road.

The shrimp man came down the road and our Texas born friend Paula made shrimp gumbo last night. It was the real deal, but without the damn okra which made it even better for me. So, yesterday was a culinary grand slam for me, fish tacos and shrimp gumbo, no okra. Hard to beat that.

Oh the pressure! Blogging becomes a little mother in the back of your brain telling you to 'clean up your room' or 'do something about your hair' but this little mother tells you 'it's been days and days since you posted to your blog, don't you care about those 4 people who read it?'. Then, because it was international outing of lurkers day or something, I actually put a comment on one of my favorite blogs and now I have to worry that she will come here and see that I haven't posted in a week and go 'phooie' and leave... or something. Bottom line = Guilt! I'm really good at acquiring guilt, I do thank my mother for that.

So, we arrived in Akumal and our condo is all akimbo, all the furniture is stacked in the bedrooms and there is concrete residue everywhere and evidence of crack repair on the walls. I think this is how it looks when they prepare for a hurricane, plus some construction work. Since it is all torn up anyway, I went and picked out new floor tiles and they will replace the white tiles there now. I really hate white I've discovered, I have gotten rid of every white wall and now the white floor. I picked out a fairly dark tile and I'm now worried that I went too dark, sort of a reaction to the glaring white. I got a couple samples of other tiles to cover the top of the built in couch, not sure about that though.

Anyway, we are living in the RV parked across the street. It's not bad, once again we're living on the road in Akumal. I kind of missed the gossipy parts of living on the road, everyone stops and we get to chat. If we are up in the condo I get stuck in recluse and don't see people as often.

I've had 2 root canals in 2 days - a record you don't want to beat. The first one was fine, I even fell asleep during it. The 2nd not so great and the pain when the novacaine wore off was unsettling. We ended up stopping at the beach bar on our way home and happy hour turned into midnight and lots of tequila and the pain of the tooth kind of got lost. It came back yesterday and I slept most of the day with some chemical aids. Today, pretty good. I can touch the tooth without unexpected moans and yelps. We were going to head over to Merida today but the dentist wants to add a post to this latest root canal and, because he knew something he wasn't telling me, he said it would not be good to add it for at least 3 days. Yea, he knew there would be pain from this one. So, I get the post on Monday and we'll head west either that afternoon or the next day.

I think we are all happy to be back home, I've had fish tacos twice - maybe 3 times if you count the one that I think I ate during the great tooth+tequila episode - we've had our favorite tamales, we've had our favorite arrechera, the dogs have chased a couple of motorcycles and 1 VW bug, there is sand everywhere in the RV and ... life's good.