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Lately, I’ve gotten just a tiny bit addicted to going to the spa. I would not have predicted this, I doubt anyone who knew me would have either. Mainly I go for the manicure, pedicure, foot massage stuff – but I did go once for a facial! It wasn’t that great, it was nice but not worth it for me. The foot massage though, and the green goo and the wrapping, I do love that.
Want to see? Click to enlarge any of the photos.
 I know, pretty odd. After the leg and foot massage, she spread this green mud and then wrapped my legs in saran wrap while she did the pedicure.
I’ve been sampling different spas here in Merida, this was over in Colonia Campestre. It was a nice experience but the spa itself was not all that relaxing. The one out in the north by the old bowling alley (now casino) had the best environment. Tinkling fountains, good music, great chairs and two people working on you at once. One doing the pedicure and the other the manicure.
Theresa gave me the number of someone who comes to your house but I haven’t tried that yet. I think part of it is that I like going somewhere and having this relaxing space and not being at my house with the phone and the animals.
This is my friend Sheila at the spa in the north, see how wonderful that looks? I snuck a picture from my identical position across the room. She’ll probably kill me for putting this online.
Sheila has been my spa partner but soon she’ll be leaving and I guess I’ll have to go by myself. Before that though, we have a couple more to try. Pretty soon, I could be a ‘spa guide for Merida’ – wouldn’t that be a good job. I’m up for suggestions so if anyone had a good spa here in the city, let me know.
 Other than getting my feet massaged, I’ve been scheduling my life a little better. I’m spending more time in the garden, getting in the pool every day and laying in the sun. I’ve lost that sickly pallor that I hate and I’m getting my usual tan back.
I’ve solved one of my cats vs plants problems. I had to keep aluminum foil around the base of my Adeniums (desert rose) because the cats were using them for a scratching post and killing them. Not very attractive, plants with tin foil wrapped around them. Instead, I went to one of the numerous concrete fabricators and bought some columns to put the plants on. Ah ha! The cats do not like the unsteady feel of the column, can’t reach the plant without standing up on the concrete so they are leaving them alone.
 I’m also getting somewhere in eliminating the slugs. I tried drowning them in beer once before and they didn’t bite the bait. I think it was because we only had dark beer around. I’m now putting out saucers of cheap Guatemalan Gallo beer and they are drowning every night. Who knew, slugs like cheap beer. Slugs also won’t crawl across coffee grounds so I’ve surrounded my most susceptible plants with used coffee, put saucers of beer out nearby and finally, I am not looking at slime trails and missing leaves anymore.
The weather is my idea of absolutely perfect – mid 90′s in the daytime, low 70′s at night and the humidity is a low 40%. Warm enough to swim, cool enough to sleep – paradise!
When you aren’t blogging, there’s nothing to do with the cool pictures you happen to take. Yea, I can keep them on my phone and make my friends look at them but they are much better on a computer screen.
I do miss blogging when I go into these dry periods. My motivation just sort of dries up, not sure how or why or I’d fix it. I’ve even stopped reading blogs, mostly because I can’t comment anymore.
Anyone else have this problem with blogs on Blogger? I do all the sign in ritual and then it just goes blank and back to the sign in screen. It’s frustrating, I haven’t found a solution for it, and so I stop reading.
I like commenting, I like the conversational quality of blogs, and I hate it when I can’t figure out why something doesn’t work. I even googled the problem but none of the responses seemed relevant. The WordPress blogs still work fine for me but… if I don’t open my blog reader I don’t see them and I haven’t gotten to the point yet of dividing all the blogs I read by program.
I’ve been busy, that’s not an excuse as I always seem to be busy, and I’ve been trying to carve out more time for the garden. If you asked me what is my favorite thing to do, I’d say pottering around in the garden. So, why is it that I have so little time to do that? Bad scheduling decisions is what I think, and I’m trying to change that. I want to keep 4 hours in the middle of the day for the garden, to lay a bit in the sun, swim, play with the critters. Success is elusive.
Instead, I spend a lot of time in traffic. The traffic is horrible right now here in the centro. They are closing streets seemingly at random, rerouting buses, removing all parking on other streets. It’s gridlock in front of my house every day at 1:30pm and traffic is heavier all day. Sitting in traffic can be entertaining, I try not to let it bug me. For instance, this chandelier delivery truck was in front of me for blocks the other day. I maneuvered to try and get a better picture and the guy in the back finally noticed me and started posing.
Maybe I’ll start posting more about plants and the garden, it’s what seems to interest me the most. If anyone can solve my commenting problem, I’d be grateful. I miss my bloggers.
This is a guest post by my good friend Kathe Kirkbride
There are so many places worth visiting in the Yucatan Peninsula, how does one get to them all? Well, just pick one and go there…make a point of it. I knew that I wanted to see some flamingoes and had never been to Río Lagartos nor Celestún, so I chose Río Lagartos and set off from my house near Chetumal, Quintana Roo not having a set number of days for the trip.
 Great Blue Heron Makes it sound like a simple thing, but I also decided that I didn’t want to go alone and there weren’t any humans who wanted to accompany me. Josh, my one year old Doberman, was elected to join me on the trip…not that he had a vote. Now I had to pack for me and for Josh…food dish, dog food, leash, dog bed…you get the picture. The back seat of the truck was quite full with Josh and his accoutrements and my duffle.
The route took me 400 kilometers from Chetumal north to Felipe Carrillo Puerto, northwest to Tiohsuco, northeast to Tepich, north to Vallodolid, through Tizimín to Río Lagartos. On arriving in Río Lagartos at the waterfront all I had to do was hesitate at the T intersection and I was immediately approached by a member of the local guide co-op to see if I wanted to go on a boat trip. I said that I wanted to go see birds, specifically flamingoes, but not until the next day. I asked for a recommendation for a hotel and was given a couple of suggestions.
I aimed for the most promising sounding one, the Hotel Punta Ponto, and drove down the waterfront to the south to the hotel. The owner, Roger, told me the price of the room per night and agreed that I could have the dog in the room with me. The room had two double beds, a TV with a few channels (none in English), a functional bathroom, wireless internet, continental breakfast included and a nice garden area in front for 500 pesos a night. Roger was a very friendly and interesting host and I enjoyed the times we just sat and talked. Once I arranged for the room and put my things in it, I went back down the street to the tour guide co-op.
I was originally quoted 750 pesos for a two hour trip; they negotiated down to 600 pesos then I asked to make it a three hour trip and we came back up to the 750 pesos. Birds are early risers and I knew that I would have to get up early if I wanted to see as many as I could; we agreed on a time of 6:00 am and I was told that José would be my guide.
Based on information from Roger at the hotel, Josh and I went looking for a taco stand for dinner. Josh sat patiently, tied to a faucet, while I ate some really great tacos. Each time Josh and I had to walk somewhere we had to deal with all the people, dogs and other animals and traffic. Josh had been a homebody for his entire life to this point and had never been off the home property except to go to the vet. It was all pretty overwhelming and exciting for him, but he dealt with it really well. A chicken that crossed the street (to get to the other side, our side, not sure why) caused him to almost have a heart attack and it was quite funny to see an 80# Doberman bristle up to what he considered a major attack.
The next morning, after feeding Josh and putting my camera and sandwich purchased the night before plus some water into my daypack, we headed down the street for our rendezvous with the boat. José was right on time and we headed off through the lagoon in a light rain toward the mangrove areas. Fortunately José had two yellow slickers with him and we only got slightly damp. As the sun rose we started to see the birds on the mangroves, in the water and flying around us. José was very good, after some explanation about how pictures turn out better if the sun were behind the camera, at slowly drifting up on the birds. I had my tripod with me, but decided that the photos would turn out better without the vibration of the boat being transmitted up through the tripod and instead hand held the camera.
 Flamingoes José was very generous and the trip actually ended up lasting for 5 hours…not a bit too long…and I got some great photos. The sun had eventually come out, the drizzle stopped and it was a perfect day. Josh did really well on the boat…we did have one beach landing on the trip which Josh took immediate advantage of and after 10 minutes or so we were back in the boat. I tipped José 250 pesos and headed back to the hotel where Roger put out my late continental breakfast and Josh was content to lie at my feet.
After resting for an hour or so, we jumped in the truck to go visit Las Coloradas and San Felipe, nearby towns. Las Coloradas is a town dominated by mountains of salt and a salt processing plant. There are dikes and lagoons for evaporating off salt water pumped in from the Gulf of Mexico to harvest salt; the lagoons extend for miles beyond the town. Some of them are quite pink! I went straight on through Las Coloradas, following the rudimentary map that Roger had given me, to see if I could find some more birds.
Eventually, after wandering around for miles alongside and on top of the levees, I did come to an area where there were some flamingoes but not nearly as close as the ones I had seen in the boat that morning. Josh at least got some off-leash time and it was a fun adventure. I do not recommend doing this little side jaunt if it has been raining recently as the roads bore dry evidence of vehicles that had struggled to get through.
From Las Coloradas I headed back toward the road to Río Lagartos but kept going to the town of San Felipe. It was getting late and finding an early dinner somewhere was my goal. I ate in the restaurant that was the most highly recommended by those to whom I talked. Incredibly, the name of it was Vaseline….I didn’t ask why. The food was mediocre, slid down my throat easily and was sufficient to get me through the night and we headed home.
 Beep Beep…Oh…whoops…that's a different bird. The next morning Roger served me a full breakfast with coffee, eggs, ham and toast and then I packed up and headed off not knowing where I was going next but I wasn’t ready to end my adventure. On the way south I decided on Sian Ka’an, but that is for another time.
Jonna, thanks for letting me share my trip with your readers…I had such a great time that I wanted to write about it. Río Lagartos has a resident population of flamingoes but July and August are the times when there are many thousands of them there. I imagine that there are plenty of tourists then too but I only saw one boat with other tourists when I was there. It felt like I had the place to myself.
Go here Rio Lagartos to see the rest of Kathe’s pictures from this trip.
Let’s see… it is Carnaval so things are hopping with parties, parades, music, traffic and crowds. I got stuck in one of the worst traffic jams I’ve ever seen here in Mérida last Friday, and I wasn’t even in the Centro. I was out in Colonia Mexico trying to get back home on Circuito and it was not moving at all. I think the whole city was out there trying to avoid the center just like I was and we were all sitting in our cars cursing. Eventually, I put in my earbuds, turned on Johnny Mathis on my iphone and just relaxed. When I finally got back downtown there was this strange vacuum, no cars, no traffic, the Centro was holding its breath waiting for the party to start.
 Getting this overgrown papyrus out was not easy. I’m feeling much better, back to normal. As proof, I got in the outside pond on Sunday and tore it apart. Mimi and I haven’t really done this for a couple of years and it was needed. The papyrus had jumped its pot and was taking over half the pond, another plant had done the same, a bulb was out in one of the underwater lights and thus we had to drain the pond down to about a foot in depth to change the bulb. We are not done. I didn’t have any dirt to repot with nor a new bulb so we got everything pulled out and chopped up but nothing else. Mimi is considering trying to vacuum the bottom. This is tough because there is no way to keep the baby mollies and guppies from getting sucked into the vacuum and it means spending a lot of time rescuing them from the tank. I know, they are just fish but we can’t just dump them.
 Yay! It's out. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden, cleaning up and moving things and rethinking what I want there. I’ve decided that I have to choose either a sunny garden or a shady one and it really is going to have to be shady. Which means I have to protect some plants in the summer when I do get full sun in parts of the garden. The other option is trying to keep things alive through the winter when the sun is just enough lower that the surrounding trees block it much of the day.
 How it looked at the end of the day I’m getting rid of the plants that really need full sun and I will be replacing them with those that are better suited to light shade. First to go were the Bird of Paradise. They were green and healthy but not blooming, I think they needed more sun to bloom. Sheila and a friend came and dug them out and they have a new home. I’m considering what to put in there. Perhaps giant ferns, or huge philodendrons or something smaller and more colorful.
Today I went out and paid the water bill ($11us for 2 months), the garbage bill (also $11us but for one year of 6 day a week pickup) and bought some soil. Now I’m waiting for Mimi to get home to tackle the pond again.
Stay tuned for a guest post from my friend Kathe, she took a drive to Río Lagartos with her dobie Josh. Great post and some wonderful pictures.
When I was in my 20′s I had a motto, ‘Whatever you do, just don’t bore me’. I was rather full of myself in those days, thought I was the hippest chick in San Francisco and truthfully, I was a bit of a snob. Age takes care of vanity and if you are smart it even teaches you a bit as well. I’m much less likely to be bored these days, I can find something interesting in almost any situation. Almost, you noticed I said almost didn’t you?
I’ve been thinking about my youthful motto and boredom in particular a lot this last month. I even made a list of things that bore me. #1 on that list? Illness in general and my being ill in particular. Luckily I don’t have to deal with it often because I’m really quite terrible at it. I get grouchy, resentful, rebellious… all the same symptoms I had as a youth when I was bored.
Moving on, because I hate thinking about being sick as much as being sick, I decided to explore what bores me even in my dotage. Ready?
#2. Politics and Politicians. All of them, in whatever language. I care who is elected but I surely do not care to listen to any of them stand up and lie. Write it down, I may well read it right before I vote but I certainly am not going to listen to a word a year early. Since the main item on the English news from the US is politics and politicians and even the Canadian news is full of it and BBC is not only full of politicians but also wars and what politicians think of them… bleh! I don’t watch the news in English. You think Mexican news is better? Not really, there is an election pending here too and the ‘public service’ announcements are getting thicker and thicker. Thus, I don’t watch the news. I occasionally read the Diario de Yucatán and the LA Times online because I can jump around and skip the boring stuff – which is most of it.
#3. Religious Belief. Frankly, I can’t take any of it very seriously. In my head all I can think is how odd it is that a functioning adult with a brain can believe these fairy tales. I will admit, once someone tells me they are a devout ___ (fill in the blank with any religion or occult belief) I subtract 10 to 20 points from my estimate of their IQ. Just saying. Don’t tell me about it, I don’t care and I will only think less of you.
(you should notice that I did not mention the trappings and art and music and bizarre rituals involved in some religions? I do love those. Great theater, but not something I’m tempted to emulate.)
#4. Drama Queens. Leapin’ Lizards Batman! There are so many of these folks. This is one lesson that I finally learned sometime in my 40′s, how to identify and stay away from these vampires of the soul. The expatriate community in Mérida is not deficient in these meddlers, I’m pretty sure they comprise at least 10% of any population. How do you know if you are a Drama Queen? Well, if your first idea on perceiving a wrong somewhere is to call up 20 of your friends and tell them how horrible it is – you’re a Drama Queen. If everything that happens to you is someone else’s fault and you feel it is your duty to warn others – you’re a Drama Queen. Lately there has been no shortage of subjects in Mérida for these lifelong adolescents. They pile on anything that looks like it has scandal legs and they do their best to make it worse. Bad things happen, people argue, there are hurt feelings, none of these things are helped by a full on backstabbing fight. Compromise, taking time to let your feelings settle a bit before confronting someone, listening to the other side, looking for a workable solution – those are the things that help. Walking quickly in the other direction or hanging up the phone as politely as possible is the solution when one of these DQs tries to enlist me. I haven’t had to resort to strings of garlic but it is plan B.
That’s as far as I got, not a long list although I may have forgotten something. If so, it must not be too bad or perhaps it doesn’t happen around me often. What’s on your list?
I’m trying not to disappear but being sick is such a PITA and I’m not getting better as quickly as I would like and I don’t like whiners. I seem to have started all of you on this path of my dengue and post dengue experiences so I’ll keep on.
My main problem now is lack of energy, lack of breath, and leg cramps as side effects from some of the medicine. I returned to the doctor yesterday, completely wiped out. I had stopped taking several of the prescriptions because they seemed to be causing me to get leg cramps at night. I’ve had problems with that before and the pain is so intense that I’m terrified of them. I was mentally wondering what I would do if my life depended on taking something that I knew would give me cramps, I’m still not sure. Without the steroid inhaler, I wasn’t breathing very well. I felt so bad that I thought my oxygen levels must be really down again. The headache is my constant companion, the extreme exhaustion as well.
On top of this, some really good friends that we haven’t seen in two years were in town for a short while and I wanted to spend time with them. I tried, I wasn’t a lot of fun but I really pushed myself to stay up and go places. They were wonderful and came here to the house a lot and just sat around with me and were happy to continue on their own when I ran out of steam.
So, I was pretty down when I returned to the doctor on Monday. I admitted everything I had stopped taking and told him why. I also admitted my huge fear of the cramps and the pain. He was great, he told me that there are other options for medication and we would find the right ones together. He tested and examined me again and I was relieved to find out that my oxygen levels were not back down where they had been. My blood pressure is pretty low but since mine is usually low it isn’t too bad.
He spent a lot of time with me talking about when I use the inhalers, telling me to change and use them in the afternoon so the highest level of medication is available at night and in the mornings, my worst times. He changed my medication, he reassured me, he had his assistant go over the procedure for using the inhalers several times, making sure I got it. While I’ve had these things for years I don’t think anyone has ever really gone step by step with me in their use. By the time Mimi and I left, I could feel the effect of using one of the new ones and could walk and breathe much better. Going over, I was so dizzy and out of breath that Mimi had walked with me, I was grateful as I was afraid I’d fall.
There are some up sides to this, and I’ve been looking hard for them. One thing, all of my doctor and treatment visits are only in Spanish. I’ve added some medical terms to my meagre vocabulary. The Spanish word of the week is los calambres or cramps. I had to look that one up last week as espasmo which I originally used was causing confusion. I also can now pronounce oxígeno easily, it used to tie my tongue in knots.
Oh, did I mention the red raccoon eyes I got from the potassium? That was merely irritating and funny. One of the anti-cramp medications I got last week was potassium and about an hour after I took it, while I was sitting at the RV park talking to our friends, my eyelids, eyes and cheeks turned bright red. I couldn’t see it and my friends asked me about it as I was leaving but I just shrugged since I didn’t know what they were talking about. I got to the doctor and he asked me about my eyes, again I was just confused and there were no mirrors. When I got home I realized what they were talking about and how weird I looked. I stopped taking that med too. Yesterday the doctor told me I could half the amount but I should take it for about 5 days because many of these medications reduce the amount of potassium in my blood, thus cramps. I can live with rabid raccoon eyes if it keeps the cramps at bay. When I mentioned that I was eating a banana a day, he said that wasn’t enough and that if I wanted to get more potassium from food I should also eat a whole tomato, a glass of orange juice and some kiwi. That is exactly the recommendation that Manuela our housekeeper in Akumal had given me when I told her about my last couple weeks. Folk wisdom is pretty good in many cases.
Sunday night, a friend and commenter from my blog arrived from Alaska to get some dental work done. She’s been great too with my lack of energy and was fine with me taking her to get our feet smoothed instead of walking around looking at sights. They had the most wonderful recording of the Ave Maria on the stereo and I think getting a foot massage and listening to that was the highlight of my week. Your priorities sure change when you get old and I’m feeling really old this week.
First off, you guys are GREAT!! I’ve had many offers of thermometers, real ones with mercury, and some friends here in town spotted one and bought it for me. So, I’m set on the thermometer thing. A little more embarrassing, showing how out of it I can be with new things, when I was at the doctor they had one of those new, digital ones with the pointy end… and they stuck it under my arm! It didn’t poke me like they do under the tongue, it seemed to read accurately, I felt kind of stupid. I’d no idea that the new ones are apparently designed for under the arm not under the tongue. I suppose putting a thermometer under your tongue is as old fashioned as a clock with hands.
So, that was the good news. This past weekend was pretty bad, I didn’t even get downstairs at all. The fever is pretty much gone but the headache is debilitating, my energy level is below zero and I’m having a serious shortness of breath problem. So, today we went around the corner to the lung clinic. A friend has a cousin who is a doctor there. He was great, his news was not so great. Probably this has less to do with the dengue anymore and more to do with my decreased immune system from the dengue as well as my COPD. I had a very, very low oxygen level. That probably explains the headache as well. He has me going for a nebulizer treatment twice a day for the next 3 days, taking some antibiotics, he changed my inhaler and promised he would have me feeling normal again. That would be really nice.
I was up and about all day today for the first time in over a week. I’m pretty tired but holding up. I took a pic of me hooked up to the nebulizer but it is soooooooo horrible that I had to put a filter on it. When did I get this old?
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