Virgin of Guadalupe

Yesterday was the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Each and every Baja town has a shrine to the Virgin. Along the highways in Baja and mainland Mexico you will see very many shrines. Yesterday was her feast day and it was celebrated well here in San Felipe. The wind has been absolutely still for the past few days and the kids love the still water on the beach. The day after they spent the entire day inside, they spent the entire day outside. Seems to even out.

A contingent of pangas left the marina and headed right to our camp beach for one of the many stops to celebrate the virgin’s day. A priest was in the decorated boat and you could hear the boats coming closer and closer by the loudness of his prayer. After visiting the small shrine erected on the beach, the boats left and headed out to the middle of the cove and then back to the marina. Of course, it could not have been a fiesta without constant firecrackers and the dogs barked and howled for hours.
It has been gloomy and overcast for what seems like days; when will the sun return? I can’t imagine living in snow…

Illiterate children

The past couple days, well, it FEELS like a week, but has only been a few days, I’m sure, the kids have been positively trailer-bound. The skies are grey and cloudy, the air is cool and they might be hibernating. For a couple days, I dragged them out to the dunes to the south of town and we spent many many hours playing in the dunes and the beach, watching the sunset and drawing in the sand temporarily vacated by tide. Yesterday the boys played a game of Monopoly that lasted until bedtime. I was going a bit stir-crazy after doing Yoga inside as it was too cold outside and by late afternoon was itching for some time OUT. I spent some time sitting on the beach, talking with others here in the camp getting progressively more drunk. It was quite enjoyable, watching the moon peek through high clouds, pangas come in from shrimp boats and the long horizon changing from blue to pink to black as the sun continued it’s journey to the other side of the world.

The other campers were certain that we’ve been keeping the kids inside, “schooling them”. When I explained that we do no formal schooling, George immediately responded, “so you’re just going to let them grow up illiterate????” at which someone else said, “Hell, they can all read; all except the 3 year old.” George thought for a nanosecond and said, “yeah, those kids have a better vocabulary than I do!” “How do they get their history and social studies?” Personally, I think the kids have a better understanding of Mayan history than many US kids and they have learned a LOT about Mexican history just from being on the road. We had started to dabble in First Nations history while in New Mexico and Colorado and Utah but too soon we left for Mexico once again. Everyone was astounded that the kids learned to read On Their Own, without anyone making them do it. If I were able to pursue the conversation, they would probably be flabbergasted that they LIKE to do fractional math, they frequently figure out different ways to convert dollars to pesos, beg me to give them math worksheets and spelling tests and read books on electricity just for the fun of it. I really worry that we don’t do enough but after typing this out, I feel marginally better.

Maus has been released and the kids were so happy to see him zipping here and there in newfound freedom. I just hope he is a Mexican maus and not a Yuma maus and we haven’t single-handedly introduced a blight on the Baja desert. Jamie is feeling better “down there” and we are hopeful that this is simply an infection. I’m going to have another PSA done before we leave here, but I need to do some research to see if taking abx while the PSA is being done would affect the results. We’ve decided to stay at Kiki’s to take advantage of Jesse’s wonderful electrical knowledge while we try to figure out why the van is not charging the trailer batteries (no current on pin 9). We’ll probably leave here Dec 19th and head for the Bay Area.

SHHHHH! Mousy's asleep!

Jesse just admonished everyone for talking so loudy; little mousy is sleeping. The kids are all whispering. I don’t suppose it would be possible to show humans the same respect?
These kids, as I suspected, have fallen in love with mousy. They were squealing with delight, just like Christmas morning, upon discovering the creature this morning. “He’s so cuuuuute!” “He’s so tiiiiiiiny!” “Look! He’s doing tricks for us!”

After all the children were asleep and I had placed the (if I do say so myself, ingenious) humane mouse trap in place, properly balanced (as that is the hardest part; balancing the top pan on the bent bamboo skewer), Jamie and I observed a moment of silence. Perfect silence. Within moments we both tuned into the noise of a scurrying animal ON THE ROOF. Jesse woke and came out; he was either too hepped up in the anticipation of a Maus Hunt to sleep or the mousy woke him with his roof antics. I was certain it was a cat on the roof - how could the maus get UP there? Jamie headed outside to watch the roof while Jesse and I listened. Sure enough, there was something up there. Eventually we heard him head to the wall with many electrical wires, the fuse box, the TV; all the wire stuff. I was SURE our electrical systems were toast, but apparently he found a way down and appeared soon after in the bathroom. Jamie surprised him and he bolted to the bunkbed room. In a stroke of incredible luck, he popped down into the heating vents. Jamie immediately covered the one in the bunk room, ran to the middle of the trailer and covered those, watching mousy scampering along the duct and yelled at me to cover the one in my room WITH MY FOOT! Um, what? I yelled back that I would NOT be covering the vent with MY FOOT and kept an eagle eye on the vent while I dragged the shoe box over it.

I was sure he had escaped somewhere, but Jamie was sure he was in the duct. We taped up 3 of the 4 vents with clear tape, covered the 4th with a clear plastic box, put a wedge of cheese outside the vent and waited. I was amazed to see him pop up and we quickly moved the box away from the vent and crowned it with a pan. He tried really hard to get out, but it wasn’t happening.

Today we get to figure out how to get something under the box so we can put a lid on it and transport him to the wonderful Baja desert. The kids think they have a pet. We’re now talking about The Plague. I SO hope I don’t need to create a “Maus” category for my posts…

it's the missing La Rue!

Is there some genetic and age defect that makes me the only person in the entire family capable of cooking and doing dishes? Why is that always MY job? I do all the negotiating (Spanish), purchasing, cooking and dishes. Someone tell me how it is physically impossible for anyone else to do this? After some 12 years, Jamie is starting to get on my very last nerve. His little idiosyncrasies, his little ways of doing things, his little habits; I know each and every one of them and they, all 2,847,091 of them, are driving me stark raving mad. Did you know the man is afraid of mice? More on that later. (the title might start to make sense to some…) I wonder if I’m PMS’ing…

We were on a mission today. Late last night, Jamie and I were awakened by a rattling. Like a rock being rolled along the floor, I couldn’t figure out what the noise was, but it started on one side of the trailer and moved to the other. When the noise started directly for my room, I sat up and turned on the light. “Jamie!”, I hissed in a loud whisper, “did you hear that?” He roused himself and said it was coming from the outside. “No way! It is coming right FOR ME”. He dragged himself out of bed and saw a tiny toy on the ground right in front of my bed. We both, groggy with sleep, but probably would not have been quicker with more sleep, confusedly stared at each other like the answer would magically appear on the other’s forehead. No such luck. Before we could stop puzzling, however, a small mouse darted out from its hiding place. Jamie SHRIEKED and jumped up on the sofa bed and I, blind without contacts, asked, “what? What was that? A cockroach?”. We spent the next few hours dozing, listening for the noise and staring wide-eyed at the black ceiling. I did a LOT more dozing than poor Jamie. He wouldn’t come to my bed; he really thought he could catch the creature.

Morning dawned and coffee performed its magic and we discussed the situation with the kids. Each and every one of them adamantly demanded that the mouse be treated humanely. I think they think they have a pet. Ugh. So, off to the brilliance of The Internet we headed and found this guy. We borrowed necessary materials and scrounged the rest. Hopefully, we’ve built a mousetrap. We left the trailer after lunch and hoped to lure mousy out with a quiet trailer while we cavorted in the dunes south of town. I had hoped to score some shrimp as we have been shrimpless since we arrived and unless some shrimpermen go out and BRING SHRIMP BACK TO TOWN, there may be mayhem soon. We’re starting to develop tics from the long shrimp drought. Coming back from the dunes, we hit 3 different pescaderias and not one had the curly god.

Have you figured out the title? It is from “Mouse Hunt”. The kids LOVE this movie and all morning, while researching and creating our trap, we were humming the soundtrack. I uploaded some pictures from today at Flickr.

pining for the heat

Only because we’re FREEZING here in San Felipe. We are loathe to head north to spend Christmas in the Bay Area. I’m trying to do some data entry and Jamie keeps rattling off temperatures. “Guess what today’s high in Loreto was?” I guess 80F. He says it was 90F (32C). He then checks the rest of the country and finds 80’s to 90’s from La Paz (Baja) to Guanajuato (mainland). I can’t believe it is so warm as Guanajuato is in the highlands and it should be cold there. But he is insistant. Guess what we’ll be doing once we find the heat? Did you figure it out? We’ll be pining for the TEMPERATE weather. Just can’t be satisfied. Sure makes me want to hightail it to El Requeson though…

health and projects

We saw a different doctor today for Jamie. We were really in some kind of limbo not knowing what should be done. The one doc said to get parasite test, PSA and maybe colonscopy and did little on the examining side. All those tests (except the colonoscopy) were negative and the doc kinda left us hanging. I have been having trouble sleeping as I felt we really needed to do something but was at a loss as to what. I looked into getting US insurance, to emailing urologists, to harassing “friends” to ask a relative MD what they thought. Finally I decided to go back to the hospital and ask to see the doctor. He was on vacation but the colonoscopy guy would be in the next day (today). He is also about 100 pesos cheaper than the first doctor. When the first doc suggested a PSA we did a lot of Internet research and wondered why the doc never did a DRE. (I’m not going to define that for you; if you don’t know what it is, you don’t want to. Believe me.) Kind of a nagging question in my mind.

So off we tramped to the hospital this morning; kids with their Knex, books and Ellen with a headphone and cassette of Fairytales. Ellen in a sundress and Jesse dressed for the snow. These kids… Colon doc looks to be all of 16. He claims to be 32 but I had my doubts. He is also drop dead gorgeous. He listens to the whole history and asks if doc 1 did a DRE. He insists on doing one; he is homing in on the problem. After Jamie about faints with pain from the DRE doc is almost certain Jamie’s trouble is infected prostrate. He gave us a receta for a VERY EXPENSIVE antibiotic and 2 weeks worth turned out to be some 800 pesos. At least he warned us. He seems very confident that this is a simple infected and inflamed prostrate and Jamie should be feeling much better in a week. So think of him, will you? He was a wonderful doc; English was pretty good and I supplemented with Spanish. He took a lot of time with us; even when a nurse interrupted that a surgery was planned and upcoming he said he’d be ready and never rushed us; listened and waited until we were perfectly comfortable.

We’ve been doing some trailer projects; Jamie installed connectors in the cargo “basement” so we can close the cargo doors and still have Internet connection (tripod is outside). He also replaced the rails on 3 drawers and man oh man, are we SO EXCITED about having drawers that work! I can’t tell you how nice it is after so many months of crappy working drawers.

So, lots of minutia and not much substance. But my brain is pretty empty most of the time anyway. We hope to move to a more deserted area outside town where it will be more quiet or maybe we’ll head over Ensenada way before heading up to the Bay Area for Christmas.

it is slowly getting warmer

It was FREEZING in San Diego (Potrero actually) and last night in El Centro was the coldest yet. Both Jamie and I woke at 6am and piled on more blankets - the weird part of that is that we were in separate rooms. I spent an entire day in Potrero heading to San Diego and picking up all the stuff we had waiting for us there and getting yet more stuff. Thanks to the lovely Julie we got a new car seat for Sissy (Ellen got her Marathon), new contacts for me, a power adapter for Jamie’s “new” Thinkpad (hand me down from Dad) and software for the kids. I then picked up a router and two wireless cards (one for Jamie’s new ThinkPad and one for Jess in San Felipe) at Fry’s. Man oh Man, Fry’s is quite the experience in merchandise overload. I then headed to Trader Joe’s and purchased about 15 months of food. I got only stuff we simply cannot get in Baja as we’ll only be here a couple weeks; organic butter and cheese (now frozen), lots of organic stuff, Good Earth tea; I can’t remember the $200 of stuff I got there. I was also able to ship off my Sony camera to have it fixed; something I’ve needed to do since we were at Aunty Chris’s house. So errands were done! I stopped by a fruit stand on the way home and the kids powered through 2 Very Large Bags of grapes a few hours after I got home. The apples are now long gone. Apples are so expensive all over Mexico.  I put a picture of San Felipe in here just cause I wanted to. Look at all the shrimpers in the cove. It was WAY windy!

The kids were having so much fun at Potrero and I was involved in figuring out why I couldn’t get my Toshiba wireless (but Jamie’s ThinkPad was an easy install) that we spent another day there, hanging out and playing. The next day (yesterday) we headed to El Centro to hit Lowe’s. Last time we were there, boondocking, we were able to get free Wifi and we still needed to hit Target and Lowes anyway. Yesterday there was no free Wifi and I didn’t feel like setting up the tripod so we simply shopped. We got new rails for the drawers in the trailer. For over a year we’ve been struggling with these piece of shit drawer rails to the point that the boys have actually stopped using them and keep their clothes in their luggage bags (thanks to Aunty Michelle for the lovely Lands End luggage bags). Jamie installed one drawer guide on the “pots and pans” drawer and it is simply LOVELY! When we were last in Papa and Tata’s RV I was checking out the drawer guides and directed Jamie to his next project. It has been so worth it; he got one drawer done and we’ll do two of the clothes drawers when we get to San Felipe. The only problem is that there is no stopper for the drawers; in a moving trailer it is important to make sure the drawer doesn’t pop open. Not sure how we’re going to fix that. Maybe someone makes a special RV drawer guide like the ones we bought.

So, leaving Target with only toilet paper and wipes (oh, Jamie snuck in a couple DVD’s) we headed to Costco for dinner (Pizza) and to bed. It was absolutely FREEZING in the trailer and Jamie hooked up the generator so we could run the heater without draining the batteries. That generator was hands down, The Best RV Investment We Ever Made. We use it all the time boon-docking and even in Mexican RV parks without hookups. I am so glad he insisted on purchasing it.

We crossed the border this morning with absolutely no trouble and traffic was simply wonderful. All through Mexicali the traffic was light and easy, very different from our last experience of stop and go traffic. When we left San Felipe a week ago, the boys were DYING to play in the mountains that MX3 follows down the penninsula. We were trying to get across the border before dark so we put them off saying, “next time”. Today was “next time” and I found a wonderful pullout where I could actually turn around. It looks like there was once a community here; there are more than 4 or 5 slab foundations and we’re camped on a nice flat slab. I wonder if hurricane Mitch destroyed this area? You can see that when it is wet season, much of the area becomes a raging river. The kids were having such a wonderful time that we decided to simply spend the night. We don’t have a lot of water, so no dishwashing (Yeah!) but the kids were thrilled to stay here.

I also found it pretty cool to be able to get online. I’d looked up coordinates (lat and long) for both El Centro and San Felipe. I was able to extrapolate from them to get our general bearings and Jamie setup the tripod. I wasn’t sure we’d actually get online; not having accurate measurements, but we did. It is a testament to the training we got that we were able to.

The stars are simply AMAZING here and as you might imagine, it is indescribably quiet. It is much warmer than El Centro (or is it a state of mind?). On the way down we knew we were in Mexico when we saw the pothole crew working on the road. One guy had a shovel and got a shovelful of black stuff (asphalt?). He then looked up and down the road, ran to the pothole, dumped the matter, looked again for traffic, looked absolutely PANICKED and RAN to the other side of the road so traffic would pass. I’m sure this was repeated ad-nauseum to fill the holes.

Tomorrow we’ll be in San Felipe with a sink full of dirty dishes.