on the beach

After last night, I don’t think I’ll ever complain about drunk Canadians. To be perfectly honest, the DC’s and DA’s have been really quiet and calm this winter. Both Jamie and I have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of noise and partay. There is usually a campfire and drinking but the noise stops at a very reasonable hour and it has been quite pleasant. It is still really loud in camp; noise from the town and firecrackers and simple goings on. Jamie and I have been quite spoilt by the empty camps we found all over the mainland and have had us longing for El Requesón; a spit of water along the Bahía de Concepción.

I guess we didn’t appreciate the lack of general noise. About 1:00 this morning, a young(er) man who had been staying in a trailer close behind ours came hone in a belligerent mood. Coming home from a hard night of drinking in town, he began to yell and swear at his trailer-mate, waking everyone within a 10km radius. They burst out of the trailer, yelling and egging each other on. I was astonished to hear the unmistakable sound of punches landing and bodies thumping on ground and other campers vehicles. One of them started yelling about a gash to the head and I honestly started to worry about OUR safety. I honestly didn’t care much about the fighters; I just wanted peace and calm to resume. They continued fighting, yelling and there was only one adjective used; you can imagine what it was, though I did learn a new one, “cck fck”. Finally, someone called the police who must have scared the boys enough with nightmares of Mexican jails and they kept the fight inside their trailer. I’m not sure, but I think the police might have told them to stay inside the trailer. They took that suggestion to heart as we then heard glass and other sundry items breaking in the trailer. The door was slammed repeatedly. They finally relegated the fight to lower tones and eventually we heard laughing. I was astounded that they could be beating each other’s brains out one minute and 30 minutes later laughing. They left early this morning, half-heartedly continuing to berate each other.

The wind whipped up last night and by morning, there were 10 shrimp boats in “our”cove. Camp really emptied out today and Mom and Dad’s old spot against the sea opened up. I have always loved that spot and with (big) Jesse’s help (not my son) I was able to back out of our spot and up against the beach. Only took about two hours. Piece of cake. We will stay here tonight and tomorrow night, leave Tuesday for Yuma; head over to San Diego; back to San Felipe (and hopefully a camp just as empty as today) and hang out here for a couple weeks before heading back to the Bay Area for Christmas. After Christmas we’ll head for the Pacific coast of the mainland.

THEY'RE on the road

Mom and Dad left this morning headed for the Bay Area. Our plans change like the wind. We had planned to go back to the Bay Area until after the New Year, then changed that to go to El Requeson until Christmas (then back to the Bay Area), then to go to the Bay Area for a week and then down to Oaxaca, then well, we don’t know. Right now, our plans are to head to Yuma on Monday (or tomorrow) to pick up our new Internet satellite dish. Then we head to San Diego to pick up stuff we had shipped there (and a carseat I bought eons ago for Ellen). Then, well, our plans peter out. We know we’ll be back in the Bay Area so the boys and Drew can get together for a week and the kids REALLY want to spend Christmas there, but the adults want to high-tail it for the Mexican Pacific coast. We’ll see.

It was hard to see Mom and Dad leave, but we know we’ll see them soon. I don’t know if it will be possible to pepper this post with the pictures I want to, but I’ll try. If not, check Flickr. I installed it on each theme except the B one. What the hell is it called? Oh! Benevolence. I think. I’m recovering and Jamie is feeling much better. We’ll figure him out soon; his prostrate looks good; he doesn’t have parasites, but his tummy bugs him. So we’ll see.

a joke

My mom sent me this joke. I usually don’t laugh at a lot she sends me, but this one got me. Maybe it has something to do with all the medical crap we’ve been going through, or maybe I can so identify with the poor guy, but I got a chuckle and wanted to share it with you all. Don’t you feel lucky? 

The owner of this drug store walks in to find a guy leaning heavily against a wall. The owner asks the clerk : “What’s with the guy over there by the wall?”

The clerk responds: “Well, he came in here this morning to get something for his cough. I couldn’t find the cough syrup, so I gave him an entire bottle of laxative”.

The owner, wide -eyed and excited shouts : “You idiot! You can’t treat a cough with a bottle of laxatives”.

The clerk calmly responds: “Of course you can, look at him. He’s afraid to cough.”

organic mushrooms

Every time I post about our intestinal upsets in Mexico I feel like I’m single-handedly destroying the tourist economy. Even the lab technician said that to avoid parasites, you pretty much have to never eat out. Even then…

So, yeah, I have not only parasites (E Histolytica to be specific) but a raging case of mushrooms. Well, not exactly mushrooms, but that is the literal translation. Makes it much funnier than “yeast galloping madly through your intestines”. Mexican medical care is so much more civilized than the US. I suspected parasites, went to the lab, handed in my sample and at the end of the day got my results. I have some anti-aemoba drugs left over from Dolores (we got them for Jamie but it turned out he didn’t have parasites) and I’ve already started. I’ll head to the clinic tomorrow to verify the drug and dosage with a doctor and see what he thinks about the mushrooms but I’m hoping to be on the mend. To stop the viscious D I stopped eating, drinking only chicken bullion and sugar water ocassionally as even that would trigger D. It will be a very light TDay for me tomorrow, but at least I can work on it now. I think from now on, instead of trying to wait out tummy trouble, I’m heading direct to the lab. I’m now really weak and tire easy after almost a solid week of viscious D. I guess not eating doesn’t help.

We saw a doctor at the “American Hospital” today for Jamie’s complaint. He suspects an enlarged prostrate and Jamie had his PSA today. We’ll get those results tomorrow. The doctor spoke fluent English and thinks Jamie’s tummy trouble is completely un-related to the typhoid, even though it was after his typhoid that he started noticing problems. So tomorrow we get the results of his PSA, he’ll have a parasite check also (he was tested in Dolores and was negative so I expect this will be the same but we’ve already paid for the test) and see what comes up. We’ve been googling “enlarged prostrate” like mad and it looks pretty normal and uneventful.

I love Mexico; why does she hurt me so?

Once again, I’m doing electrolytes (chicken bullion and water with sugar as I cannot STAND the taste of Pedialyte) and I’m absolutely CHAINED to the toilet. You really don’t want to know more than that. The first two days weren’t that bad but the last three have been hellish. The stomach cramping, the issuance that can’t even be described as “D” but fiery burning and completely liquid. Today we found a clinic for Jamie. Ever since he had typhoid (May? of this year) he feels his digestive tract was never the same. I’ve read that about typhoid, but he thinks it is something so he finally gave the OK to start finding out what it could be. When we were in Dolores he was tested for parasites and typhoid and was negative, so we’re pretty sure it isn’t that. Parasites are REALLY obvious signs and typhoid is also REALLY obvious. Kind of like labor. If you have to ask, you know you don’t have it.

So he isn’t on top of the world, but mostly a feeling of disquiet; like something that he can’t put his finger on is wrong. Here in San Felipe, they have the “American” clinic. USD30 for a consult and while that is so much higher than the mainland (the clinic in Dolores Hidalgo, while not an “American” clinic, was a private and good clinic, only charged USD5), it can’t even begin to compare to what we would find in the US. He has an appointment on Wednesday and tomorrow I head to the laboratorio to find out what the hell is bugging me (and you can bet, it will be a bug). It is so nice to simply be able to go to a laboratory, tell them the tests you want, they do them, and THE VERY SAME DAY (at least in the mainland) they give you the results. I’m thinking I have parasites (again) and if not, will simply get Lomotil (or something like it), more probotics and hope for the best.

My folks are headed to El Centro to pick up Thanksgiving fixings as they plan to celebrate the holiday Mexico or no Mexico. No-one has an oven that will fit a turkey, so I think they’re planning on a couple ovens doing turkey breasts. At any rate, I’ve been so out of comission I don’t even know what is planned. The kids are excited at the possibility of partaking of many varieties of food.

We are planning on heading up to Yuma and San Diego to pick up technology items that we’ve had shipped there on the weekend, but we’ll see what happens. We might be down here for a while…

the Baja 1000

I can’t believe that Mom and Dad haven’t posted about the Baja 1000 yet and Jesse specifically asked me not to post yet, because Mom took an amazing photo of the boys with a rider, but I’ve never been one to follow orders.

This past week, the camp has been in quite a state of excitement as the Baja 1000 comes this way this time of year. Appartently, they have the 1000, the 500 and the 250. Today we got to see a part of the 1000. They run completely off road and have 30 hours (so I’ve been told) to do the 1000km course. I remember, sometime in the 80’s reading a story by Tim Cahill about the Baja 1000, well, I’ve spent some time on the basement of Google, and either it never made the WWW or I’m making it up. At any rate, Mom and Dad said they had such a fun time last year that we decided to head on over when they got close. It was a Very Long Day and, as I’d expected to spend only a couple hours (when in fact, we were there from 11:30am to sundown) I had to run out mid-day for food and water. The kids did pretty well considering that they had very limited room and there was only about an hour that was interesting; the rest was boring and waiting for riders to come in. There were motorcyclists, ATV’s, “buggys” and “trucks”. They all sprayed a LOT of sand and when they weren’t spraying sand, the wind was working at the same job. Today was the windiest of all the days so far and shrimpers are settling into our cove. We’ve heard to expect 2 more days of this wind. Some people can complain about anything…

IF we go again next year, we’ll know better to go for only an hour or two. This was really fun for the adults but not so much (the entire day) for the kids. Course, for a couple of adults with a cooler of beer, it probably would have been paradise, and, you might expect that we encountered this particular paradise pretty much everywhere we looked today.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with the surplus of pictures; maybe I’ll put them on Flickr.

I amn't!

That is Ellen’s new favorite phrase. Makes sense, if you can be “I am” and you are not, you certainly could be “I amn’t”. This is pretty much going to be a yoga post, so go ahead and skip over it. I think I’m going to have to set up a seperate blog for Yoga but honestly, this is supposed to be for me and the kids, so who knows…

Today I definitely got “lift-off” in Tolasana. I’m not in Lotus, or even 1/2 Lotus; just cross-legged and trying to lift my ass off the ground. Go ahead; sounds easy, doesn’t it? Try it. I’ll wait.

How did it go? Harder than it sounded? This is the LAST pose in the series. You’d think that they’d end it off with something nice and easy and relaxing, wouldn’t you? Something to sink into and rest? Nope. I’m getting deeper into my poses and finding that I am, on occasion, able to “surf” the asana (ala David Swenson). Yesterday the wind was blowing like no-one’s business and I just couldn’t get into the practice. I stopped at least twice in Sun Salutations but convinced myself to continue but it was the first absolutely half-hearted practice I’ve had. It was terribly hard to concentrate; the wind was blowing gale-force and I was slipping and sliding everywhere.

Today was so different I don’t think I could even call what I did yesterday “yoga”. I was inside the trailer and did some preparatory poses to prep my brain so I wouldn’t have to refer to The Book so often. I wasn’t even going to practice today; my Achilles must have been really strained yesterday as I was barely able to walk this morning. I really missed it though. I had convinced myself not to practice but after coffee (I usually drink/eat nothing before practice) I was musing over The Book and decided to try a couple things; just to work over some poses, and before I knew it, I was starting a practice. So go figure. This is something that very strangely REALLY resonates with me. I like it on an emotional and physical level.

A disturbing side-effect of Yoga is that I no longer crave coffee like before. I absolutely ADORE coffee, so as you can imagine, this is VERY disturbing. I had two cups today after having none yesterday, so perhaps not all is lost.