Another Side of Mexico

When we told our friends that we were going to be spending a few weeks in Mexico, some of them asked, “Are you going to be staying at the beach?”

Most of them asked, “Is it safe?”

Well, we are not at a beach. There is actually more to Mexico than Cancun, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo.

And yes, we do feel very safe here.

In fact, this is our third visit to the same city within the past three years.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is located within the state of Guanajuato.

If you are like we were just a few years ago, you might not realize that Mexico is a large country—almost three times the size of Texas--composed of 31 states and one federal district. Guanajuato is located in central Mexico and its capital city has the same name.

The climate here is temperate, similar to the weather we are familiar with in northern California.

It seems that this area is still safe from the drug wars that have been plaguing the part of Mexico closer to the USA border.

As before, my husband and I are taking classes in the morning at Academia Hispano. If only we could remember what we learn here when we get home!!

Despite the fact that I seem to forget everything I learn when we are gone, something must remain. When I’m in class, I understand everything that Lupita, our teacher, says. I can also respond quite easily to her questions. They put both of us in the class for “Level IV” this time, a promotion from our last session. Altogether, there are only three students in the class. Yep, just us, and Ann, a retired journalist.

Saved by a Garden Hose

The day didn’t start well. Orli had warned me that Gali, her toddler son, seemed be acting a bit “off” that morning. But I had promised that I would come again to help out today—despite the fact that I was still feeling depleted from helping out three days in a row at the beginning of the week while my son-in-law was sick.

“Why do you have to go?” my husband asked blithely as he made arrangements to meet with friends for Friday morning golf. “She should be able to manage with Gali and the baby. After all, we did.”

The truth is that he doesn’t remember what it was like when our own three children were that small. Not to mention the fact that, he had demonstrated the same cavalier attitude back then. But I do remember how exhausted I was. And the only reason that I managed on my own is that I had no one to call.

I slammed the door, gnashed my teeth, and rolled my eyes—wondering how I managed to stay married all these years. Then I headed out through freeway traffic once again for the hour drive to my daughter’s house. I had slept over for two nights at the beginning of the week and had brought an overnight bag with me today, too—just in case. But I was hoping that I would not have to use it.

The day was going to be hot, even in the East Bay. So I had brought along a bathing suit. Maybe we could all go to the pool, I thought optimistically. Orli could sit in the shade nursing Oz and I would play in the pool with Gali. That would allow Gali to expend his energy and then maybe he’d take a decent nap or go to sleep early.

But everything takes so much longer with a toddler and a newborn. Crying, nursing, spitting up. Packing up all the extra clothes and food. Diapers, wipes, suntan lotion, binkies, swim diaper and suit for Gali, snacks, food—he’s always hungry. It seems that both the boys are always hungry.

When all our gear was finally ready, Gali started to balk. Wanting to play with one toy and another. When our backs were turned, he started scattering play-dough all over the living room carpet.

“Time out!” my daughter declares. She’s been using more of these “time-outs” since Oz was born six weeks ago. Gali needs to help clean up.

He helps a little. And then volunteers excitedly, “I want to vacuum!”

“No,” my daughter explains, with an aside to me. “This is just a delaying tactic.”

The morning had been sifting away. It was getting close to noon by the time we strapped the kids into their carriers in the backseat of the car and set off for the pool. The baby is crying his head off, because he hates being put in the carseat. But he stops crying as soon as we reach the freeway. He likes the speed.

In the meantime, though, Gali has fallen asleep. Totally conked out. “He went to bed late last night,” Orli tells me, and got up early this morning.” She gets off at the nearest exit and we head back home. She’s not going to resist this opportunity for some downtime, even if it does mean a change in plans.

I carry Gali upstairs to his bed, making sure that his special doggie pillow and spare binkie are tucked right next to him.

Ozi is also still asleep in his carrier seat. So Orli and I get to eat lunch, both of us sitting down together at the table, in peace and quiet. Yay!!

But of course, the peace doesn’t last for long. Soon Ozi needs to eat again and then Gali wakes up. He hadn’t eaten lunch yet. So I heat up some pasta with cheese sauce that Orli had made previously and a veggie hotdog from Trader Joe. In a couple of minutes, I have a plate set for Gali with the sliced hotdog, pasta, mini carrots and edamame hummus dip. He likes everything on the plate, but insists of eating it as a picnic outside.

Why didn’t I just say yes immediately? That would have saved some trouble.

I must have been hoping that we could finish sooner if he sat at the kitchen table and then set off once again for our excursion to the pool.

In hindsight, I should have gone along immediately with his suggestion for eating it outside. That is what we ended up doing anyway.

I won’t go into all the other details that derailed our getting out of the house again in anything approaching a timely manner. But we finally did manage to leave and arrived at the park we had planned to go to in the morning only to find that the swimming pool was closed. Why? I don’t know. We didn’t get out of the car to read the details on the sign. Maybe the park just wanted to torture us.

Orli was not to be deterred. We had everything ready for the pool, so she headed off for a different pool—a longer distance away from her house. She had gone there with one of her sisters shortly before Oz was born and had pleasant memories of the day. It’s called “Stawberry Canyon Pool”. I conjured up images of a pool surrounded by grass and trees—maybe even wild strawberries.

When we got closer, I realized that it was one of Berkeley campus pools. There were no trees and very little grass in sight. The tiny lawn was closer to the lap pool section rather than the kiddie pool where I would have to go with Gali. For some reason, the weather was much cooler here than it had been in the Oakland Hills—even though it was just the next town over. We had dressed Oz for the heat and worried that he was cold. He started crying to be fed again, Orli couldn’t find a comfortable place to sit and nurse, and Gali was running around the concrete refusing to put on his bathing suit.

“This is not at all what I had in mind,” Orli bemoaned. It wasn’t what I had in mind either, I must admit.

“If you don’t cooperate,” Orli told Gali, “We are going to leave.” He didn’t cooperate and so leave we did. Back in the car with two crying kids. Our ten dollars admission fee (nonrefundable) and four dollars parking fee down the drain together with our spirits.

Oz continued to wail as Orli wended her way through slow traffic and Gali added to the cacophony by doing his own loud and increasingly louder imitation of baby talk.

Orli had planned to try one more option for an excursion—Lake Temescal. It was on our way back to her house and it had both a playground and a small beach area. But she warned Gali that we would go directly home unless he was willing to cease and desist from his ear-shattering , nerve-jangling mimicking of his baby brother.

Gali would not be persuaded to stop. He was on a roll. We stopped cajoling and headed straight back to the house, punishing both him and ourselves.

When Orli parked the car, Oz had stopped crying and was on the verge of sleep. I decided to snap his carrier seat into the baby carriage and take him for a walk to lull him fully to sleep. I also wanted this opportunity to get some distance from Gali.

Oz fell asleep and I took the opportunity to call a close girlfriend on my cellphone, “I’m losing it as a Grandma…”

She gave me a peptalk and I felt more relaxed as I headed back with Oz, who was just beginning to stir—probably ready to eat once again.

I found Orli and Gali having a snack in the shade of a tree in the front yard. Peace had been restored.

Soon, we transitioned to letting me help Gali water the garden with the hose. He loves to water the plants and we spent a long time doing that. He was reasonably content. His pants were soaked from the process, but that wasn’t a problem. In fact, his soaked pants were what gave me the idea that really salvaged the remainder of the day.

“Let’s take off all your clothes,” I said, “And then I’ll spray the water on you.” Gali liked the idea. I ran into the house for a big towel, then helped Gali off with his clothes. Soon he was prancing and running around in circles on the front lawn. He was laughing and declaring, “Look at me! I’m a butterfly!” It was already evening, but the sun was still strong as I looked through a rainbow at my beautiful red-headed grandson, his curls flying around his head, so happy to be alive.

Lost and Found

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I had lost my favorite pair of sunglasses. They weren’t expensive sunglasses. I stopped buying expensive sunglasses after buying one pair several years ago and losing them almost immediately. These were drugstore sunglasses that cost less than $20. But the frames rested comfortably on my nose and ears without slipping off my head and the lenses were dark enough to provide good protection when I was hiking in bright sunlight.

Where had I last seen them? I thought it must have been the evening that I met my daughter in Berkeley. We had tickets to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s production of Let Me Down Easy. And I hadn’t noticed until that afternoon that the play started at 7 PM, which meant that I had to drive up there after work through the worst part of the rush hour. By the time I reached the theatre, I was flustered, tired, and very thirsty. Shelli hadn’t arrived yet. So I slipped into a small Thai restaurant across the street and bought myself a sweet and icy Thai coffee. When I couldn’t find my sunglasses the following morning, I was sure that I must have left my sunglasses at the restaurant.

But a couple of days later, I found the sunglasses on my kitchen counter at home.

Not long afterward, I lost my favorite eyeglass pouch. It’s the one that I usually use for my sunglasses. I like its convenient strap, so that I can hang it around my neck when I don’t have any pockets and don’t feel like carrying a bag. I like its hand-embroidered fanciful bird design. And I like that it was a souvenir gift that Shelli brought me from her travels in South America.

Where had I last seen it? It was last Thursday morning, when I was rushing to meet a friend for an early morning hike. I had put on my sunglasses when I was getting out of the car. Apparently, I hadn’t hooked the strap over my neck. Later, I looked on the floor of the car and couldn’t find the pouch. Dismayed, I assumed that it must have fallen into the street when I was getting out of the car.

But this morning, I opened the passenger door of the car to put something on the seat and saw my favorite eyeglass pouch nestled between the edge of seat and the door. It must have been hidden under the seats for the past week and finally gotten shaken to the side.

Such a little thing. And yet, it made me really happy to find it again.

These two incidents happening so close together make me wonder whether there is some sort of message.

This afternoon, my manager called me into a private office and told me that they are running short of funds. Since I am a contractor rather than staff—and especially since I am only a part-time contractor—it makes sense that the easiest way for them to save money is to do without my services. He didn’t ask me to leave immediately, which I appreciated. I hate when you have to sneak out like a criminal without telling anyone that you are leaving.

He simply notified me that they won’t need me anymore after the end of next week. Things might change in a couple of months. But then again, they might not.

On the one hand, this is really good timing for me to get a break from work. Excellent timing, in fact. My daughter, Orli, is about to give birth to her second son. I was planning to take off some time in any case to help out after the baby is born. Of course, I had been thinking of time as a matter of days. Not weeks and months.

But, at least this way I don’t have to worry that my time off will interfere with any deadlines at work. Those deadlines won’t be my responsibility.

I assured my manager that this decision was fine with me, agreed that I would finish things off neatly, turn in my badge and laptop, and be willing to come back and help again should they want me to return in a couple of months.

Considering that I am at an age when most of my friends have already retired AND considering that I really do want to be free to spend time with my family, I find it difficult to understand why I started to feel bad about this as soon as I got back to my cubicle.

Do you think that this too fits into my recent pattern of lost and found?

An Exploratory Evening Walk in Aruba

Did a little more exploring on Wednesday evening. The timeshare resort where we are staying is in the section of the island, called Nord. I wanted to see the section with the “High Rise Hotels”. They even call the section by that name.

That section is just a mile away from our timeshare, close to where our timeshare shuttle drops us off at the beach. During the middle of the day it’s too hot to walk that distance – even with the breeze.

Once the sun goes down, it’s a lot more comfortable to walk. And I was feeling a bit less tired today, though I’m still suffering from a chest cold. I enjoyed walking with Micha and getting a better look at the strange assortment of Chinese mini-markets (it seems that all the groceries are run by Chinese), laundries (also run by Chinese), neighborhood bars, defunct and open restaurants serving Chinese, Japanese-Caribbean, Italian, Dutch, and other food.

We walked to the beach that was near the Westin and Rui hotels. It looked very nice, maybe a little nicer than the Moomba beach that we get taken to by our timeshare shuttle. But Moomba beach is nice, too. The water here is so calm that you can swim in it as if it were a swimming pool.

After walking on the beach, we headed back and stopped on the way at a surprisingly good Thai restaurant. Sawasdee didn’t look like much from the outside. But it was decorated very nicely inside. Looking at all the pictures and statues of Buddha and elephants reminded us of our own trip to Thailand last year.

We ordered two dishes to share. The steamed fish with ginger sauce was delicious. The second dish – stir-fried basil eggplant with chicken—was more mediocre. But I was satisfied with the meal and enjoyed the walk home, too. Full moon, strong breeze, but still pleasantly warm.

Welcome Party at the Caribbean Palm Village Resort and Bon Bini Festival at Fort Zoutman in Oranjestad, Aurba

This is not one of our adventure vacations even though we are staying in a location that we’ve never visited before. The main advantage of being in Aruba right now rather than someplace else is the weather. It’s perfectly balmy every day. With a gentle breeze that ruffles our hair.

We are spending our days at Moomba beach or at the resort pools. Doing a little swimming and a lot of sitting in the shade, reading books and just relaxing.

On Tuesday evening, we attended two welcome parties. The first one was held at the resort. They had an “open bar” (for one hour), free appetizers, and some games. I didn’t volunteer for any of the games, but I didn’t make a fuss when the activity director put a hula hoop over my head and pulled me over for the hula hoop competition. I can usually keep a hula hoop going for a reasonable period of time. But not this hula hoop. The winner was a teenage girl – the only one of four of us who managed to get the hoop going at all.

Afterwards, Micha and I took a taxi into the main city of Oranjestad and went the island’s Bon Bini festival held weekly at Fort Zoutman, which also houses the National Historical Museum. “Bon Bini” means welcome in Papiamento, which is the local language. It’s a mixture of Spanish and Dutch, but it’s considered a language rather than a dialect because all classes of society speak it. They also speak English, Spanish, and Dutch. It’s a very multi-lingual society.

The entrance fee for the Bon Bini festival was nominal and I was able to buy a tasty Caribbean supper of chicken over rice with plantains and salad for just $6.50. There were different groups playing typical Aruban music and doing Aruban dances, including one group dressed up for Mardi Gras.

Still Possible to Make Changes?

It’s the first week of the new year, 2011. Guess what? I didn’t set any resolutions for this year. Did you?

If not, why not?

Are we so content that there is nothing we want to change? Or have some of us decided that we’re too old to change?

I noticed that I had lost the aura of contentment that I felt earlier this year. It seems that I have been spending less time doing some of the things that are really important to me – like writing this blog.

But I felt a spurt of the old juices starting to run again when I was reading my monthly issue of Toastmaster Magazine this afternoon. The January issue, in particular, is full of inspiring articles about setting goals and overcoming obstacles.

Last June, I joined the Toastmasters club at the company where I work as a part-time tech writer three days a week. This is my third time being a member of a Toastmasters club and my goal for the immediate future is to finish the basic Competent Communicator manual before June 2011.

I didn’t manage to complete the basic manual in my two previous clubs, although I think that I must have got pretty close to finishing at least one of those times.

My improvement is tangible. I am now able to give speeches without memorizing every single word beforehand as though it was a script. But I am still not the confident speaker that I would like to be. During our last meeting, I was filling a functionary role that involved introducing other speakers and after the meeting I started feeling bad about some fumbling that I had done.

“Why am I doing this when it is no longer something that must do?” I am not trying to advance my career in high tech, which was the situation when I joined my first Toastmaster club many years ago. I didn’t really need to do this.

But did I really want to quit without reaching my goal of finishing that basic manual?

Today, when I was reading the Toastmaster magazine, I admitted to myself that there is another reason that I returned to Toastmasters beyond my desire to stand up and give toasts at the weddings of my daughters.

I still haven’t come to the end of my “bucket list” of things that I’d like to accomplish before I die. Even though I am approaching what was once considered the standard retirement age, I would actually like to do some sort of work – just not the kind of work that I’m doing now.

There are at least two things that I have always wanted to be able to do. One is to publish a story that people will read and the other—despite my innate shyness—is to be some sort of entertainer.

I read in the Toastmaster magazine about people whose active participation in the club enabled them to change their careers and become professional speakers. Some of these people write inspirational books encouraging other people to overcome their fears of public speaking or other issues. So I’m going to keep attending Toastmasters. When I fumble, I’ll try to do better next time. As long as we keep trying, we still have the ability to change.