Just Because...

Ty commented a few days ago that I haven't written a blog post in a while, and that I haven't even been talking about post ideas (apparently he actually listens when I talk!?)  And I admitted that I haven't really felt up to it lately.  I felt my first real twinge of homesickness this past week, no real reason why, I've just been missing little things... And then I spent the last two days in bed (and the bathroom) with a painful urinary tract infection...so, needless to say I haven't been in the best of spirits lately. 

But, as I was reading my Kindle in bed and semi-listening to Ty chat and laugh with his family on the phone in the living room about all the goings-on in our new, little life... I realized he had basically written a post for me.  So, here's your update in short story-style... 

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He told his brother about what happened the other day while I was doing yard work.  I was hedging/pruning very tall, fast-growing, thorny bushes...and they were pretty overgrown and I was really going to town with a pair of shears...not really paying too-close attention.  I was letting all the overgrown, spikey stems fall on the dirt road with the intention of raking them up and hauling them off after I was done... 

While cutting, I happened to glance down and notice something on the ground a few feet away from me wiggling.  I immediately thought it was a snake and let out a little, "Ah!"  And then my next thought was...."Oh, cool, he's a striped snake."  And my next...."Where is his head?"  

It wasn't a snake, mi amigos.  No, no, no.  I unknowingly chopped off an iguana's tail while hedging!!  Apparently, that's a thing, too.  As an animal lover, I was MORTIFIED.  And it wiggled for like 5 friggen minutes, despite being unattached.  Like a chicken with its head cut off.  Mortified.  

Luckily, lizards grow their tails back...but still.  Uggh.  (Why didn't I think to take a picture so you could be mortified for me?!)  I went and grabbed Ty to show him the horrific thing I had done, and he said, "Sorry, babe.  He'll be okay." while trying not-very-hard-at-all to keep from laughing at me.

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He also told them about the Baku-hosted party we helped throw for the construction workers on Saturday.  Apparently, it's tradition here to throw the workers a fiesta after a contract is complete (that's another thing), which for Baku, was this past Saturday.  

Chef Ty offered to make them authentic steak tacos and Marianne made a tasty chocolate cake as a special treat, and I ran around frazzled trying to be helpful.  (You know, the usual.)  

There were about 10 of us that sat at plastic tables under the cool palms drinking cold drinks, eating and laughing...for like 9 hours.  No lie.  What was meant to be "lunch" went until after dark.  And it was easily one of the best nights we've had here so far.  

The Mexican guys practiced their bad English, and we practiced our even worse Spanish and there was a lot of charade-playing to aide our language barrier.  We've determined that really is the best way to learn Spanish here.... Dive right in and embarrass yourself.  

Who knows... You may even get a shirtless pic with your new best friend, Dengue, who also doesn't believe in wearing camisas. 

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What else....?  Senor Perfecto (as everyone now refers to him after Saturday night's fiesta) is doing well and he got his stitches out this weekend.  He also got shaved recently because he was getting too fluffy and hot.  It cost a whopping 27 bucks to have him shaved including a generous tip...back in Seattle we paid about 80 bucks.

Also, I check the "stats" on this silly little blog on occasion (because it must make me feel slightly entertaining or something to know that I'm not writing to thin air) and Bloo's post "Mr. Perfect" has officially hit the highest-ranking post with a 182 reads.  Because, duh.  Everyone loves Bloo more than either Ty or I.  As they should.   

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Last week, on one of the days I was feeling a little down, Ty decided to get me out of the house and we drove 30-ish minutes into downtown Puerto Vallarta.  We parked on a too-narrow street, we walked down the Malecon (boardwalk), took some touristy pictures, turned down lots of street vendors, checked out some cool architecture and stopped by our favorite fish taco stand on the way home... It was a good day.  

• Me: "Babe, take a picture with me by the water."
• Ty:  "Oh, we're gonna take the same selfie we always take whenever we go anywhere?  How original."
• Me:  "Shut up and pretend you're happy." 
• Ty:  "I never know where to look!!"
• Me:  "You're wearing sunglasses!  It doesn't matter!"  *camera clicks*
• Me:  "Ugh, let's take another one."   *camera clicks 10 more times*

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Ty didn't talk about this with his family, but I'm sure you're all dying to know.... My hair is officially the 4th member of our family and we've namd it Simba because it legitimately gets BIGGER every single day and has its own personality and does whatever the hell it wants to, like a disobedient toddler...err, lion cub.  

I've given up hope that any product will help calm the beast on top of my head...mousse, gels, creams, oils, leave-in conditioners, anti-frizz serum, diffusers, straighters...NADA.  And after spending nearly 48 hours sick in bed with unwashed hair I was almost certain I was gonna crawl out with dreadlocks.  It's a genuine worry of mine.  

I finally caved and made an appointment next week at a "gringo salon" in the next town over.  I'm getting several inches chopped off next week (for a whopping 20 bucks) and then I'm getting a Brazilian Blowout soon after.  Fingers crossed it won't feel like I'm wearing a quilt on top of my head anymore.  

I'd post of a real pic of my hair, but ain't nobody wanna see that!  Except for Ty... Strangely he likes my frizzy, orphan look.  Probably cause I match his shirtless, beach bum look.  

Welp, I have the attention span of a hummingbird, so I'm suddenly done blabbering for the night.  Love and miss you all!   Buenos noches!!  

That's a Thing?

It's hard to truly know what to expect with a major move like this... It's impossible to have realistic expectations of what your "new normal" is gonna be like until after you've lived in a place for a while.  There have been a lot of surprising situations and even more of us saying, "That's a thing??" 

Please enjoy today's list of bullet points, because apparently that's all I know how to write...

THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW WERE THINGS:

• When you need purified water you don't go to the store to buy it... You simply wait for the Agua Man to drive down your street honking his horn and yelling loudly, "Agua!"  And then you pay him 16 pesos (84 cents) for your 5 gallon jug of drinking water.  That's a thing. 
• Same with gas/propane... It's not run underground here like in the states.  Our gas water heater and stove are hooked to a big canister on the side of our house, and when we run out, we wait for the gas man to drive down our street in his truck and we wave him down for a new one.  Gas is a little pricier at 452 pesos (24 bucks) per canister but our current one has lasted us for 6 weeks so far.  

Here's some super interesting pictures of our backup water storage, gas canisters and how drinking water is stored in the house.... 

• Walking a few blocks to the local vet for same-day puppy surgery to have an infected cyst removed is thankfully a thing here!  (Senor Perfecto is healing well, in case you were wondering.  I'm convinced it's because mama kisses heal all.  Duh.)

• Also, getting a vet bill for 62 bucks is a thing here.  A very awesome thing. 
• If you take your pup for an early morning walk through the marina, you run the risk of being followed by a pack of stray dogs.  That's a thing.  They weren't aggressive, just curious, but I still managed to stress out about our 4-legged entourage bothering my sheltered puppy gentleman with a fresh wound to the back of his head.
• They don't recycle glass or paper here.  They just put it in with regular garbage.  Say whaaa?  We don't buy much glass stuff because being a guilt-stricken person from the Pacific Northwest is also a thing.   
• When you have a question about how/where/when/what to do about absolutely anything whatsoever, you just post to one of the PV or La Cruz Facebook groups you belong to and a dozen or more helpful answers appear in your notifications within the hour.  That's a very handy thing.  It's like "Expats for dummies," and it's awesome.  
• When you need to buy some rope, you don't go to Home Depot or a hardware store.  You go to the rope store.  No lie.  They have all different widths, materials, strengths, etc.  But they only sell rope.  That's a thing.  
• There is also a screw store.  All they sell are different types and lengths of screws.  That's an odd thing. 
• How do you think Mexican construction workers cut cinder blocks to the exact perfect size/angle they need?  Fance equipment?  Nah.  A machete, a hammer and good eye-balling skills.  I feel like I would be really good at that, but I doubt Ty will ever let me try.  Him never letting me have any fun with tools, is also a thing.  
• There's a "guy" for everything... bamboo guy, palapa guy, brick-layer guy, rope guy, key-maker guy, pool guy, carpenter guy, palm tree-climber/coconut-cutter-downer guy.  You name it, there's always a guy.  That's a thing. 

Side note:  Palapas are vaulted roofs made out of woven palm fronds and they're very cool.  And also terrifying/fascinating to watch them install.  (Barefoot and crawling around on sketchy scaffolding and ladders like monkeys, basically.)  This is what they look like from the inside looking up....

• All the restaurants and retail places charge more in the summer because sales go way down during the off-season.  So, rather than discount prices, they jack them up.  Makes sense, right?  That's a thing. 
• Speaking of restaurants and stores... If they wanna close for the day, they just do it.  No sign on the door, no anything.  That's a go-with-the-flow thing.
• When you go to major grocery stores, you gotta carry spare change...cause the baggers (usually elderly folks) only get paid in meager tips.  That's kinda a sad thing.
• Have you ever seen a plant grow like a foot in a week?  Well.  That's a thing.
• Have you ever gone out in the rain, for like 10 seconds and been soaked through to your underwear?  That's a fun thing.  (This one only applies to me, of course, because Ty still has yet to even wear underwear.)
• My glasses get foggy after it rains because of the one million percent humidity.  As a semi-blind person, that's an annoying thing. 
• Did you know you can have sweat dripping from your chin and knees at the same time when you're doing nothing but holding still?  That's a gross thing.  
• Have you ever had to break for an iguana crossing in the middle of town?  That's a cute thing.  
• Also, when you wanna take the "shortcut" to the fish market you gotta make sure to watch out for the 5 foot lizard that lives there.  He moves FAST and will scare the burritos outta you in a jiffy.  There's also a random, un-tethered goat that lives down there and gives us dirty looks when we walk by, but he has yet to charge at us.  Or do whatever it is that wild goats do.  So, that's a good thing. 

I think I'm gonna name him Dragon... 

• When you wanna turn left off a major road...you go to the turn lane on your right.  Makes perfect sense, right?  That's a confusing thing. 
• While driving, "right of way" goes to whichever driver takes it first.  And motorcycles have exactly zero rules whatsoever.  That's a nope thing.
• It's been kinda hard to find shorts and tank tops here.  Apparently gringos are the only ones who think that wearing less clothing means you will be cooler.  Mexicans cover up to stay cool.  (I'm sure they're right in this instance, but Ty really likes to browse the teen boy section for tank tops.  That's a lucky me thing.)   

I'm sure there are a million things I've forgotten, or will think about as soon as I hit "publish", but this post has taken me waaaaayyyy too long, and I wanna go to bed.  Good night! 

Mr. Perfect

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram or have like ever met me even once for like 5 minutes, then there's a good chance that you know I'm a mama to the most perfect, sweetest, cutest, bestest puppy gentleman in the whole entire world named Bloo.  He's a chocolate-colored labradoodle and he's about 7 years old (I think...I adopted him as a stray puppy) and he's been my main man since 2010.  He's been with me through 5 moves including moving to Mexico, he's had a couple different papas, and he is the LOVE OF MY LIFE.  We actually refer to him as "Mr. Perfect" around the house, and he responds.  Because, duh.  

Here is Bloo pretending to be a GQ model on Anderson Island....

The definition of a "fur baby".... I was regularly asked, "Where is his face?" when I let his hair get this long.  But isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen?!  Of course he is. 

Anyway... We had our first mini scare this week.  Bloo has had a harmless, benign, fatty cyst about the size of a walnut on the back of his head for over a year and it recently became infected and started oozing and doing gross cyst things.  Let me just interject here for a minute -- wives/mothers are always right!!!  Ty has this really disgusting habit of "popping" Bloo's cyst like a giant zit and our vet back home said it wouldn't hurt him, so he kept popping away...like daily.  (Boys are GROSS.)  I was constantly yelling at him not to do it because A) it's friggin disgusting and B) because I said so.  

When we got here, I specifically told Ty, "Do not pop his cyst anymore.  There are tons of stray dogs and diseases and who knows what kind of bacteria!!!  He doesn't need an open wound on the back of his head at all times.  Just STOP."  Well... Do you think he listened?  Of course not.  

I don't ever look too closely at Bloo's "bump" as we call it, but a few days ago Ty meekly admitted that it's been sorta oozing and leaking the last few days and that he thought it might be infected.  Please insert the biggest "I told you so" wife rant here.  UGGGGH. 

The next day, Ty drove Bloo the couple blocks to the village vet (without an appointment) to have his head looked at.  She instructed him to come back at 4pm and she'd cut out the non-cancerous mass because it was most likely infected and it would just be better to get it out of there.  

Ty took Bloo back that afternoon and the vet gave him what she referred to as "puppy tequila" to sedate and calm him (we were told it's like taking a Valium) and then gave him a local anesthetic before slicing his head open.  Meanwhile, I stayed at home and was being perfectly calm and rational and not thinking of all the worst-case scenarios possible.  I definitely didn't cry and I wasn't even pacing or freaking out or anything.  (Please note as much sarcasm as possible.  I specifically didn't go with Ty, because I knew I would just stress the vet out and probably Bloo too.) 

It took her over an hour to cut out Bloo's cyst because there was so much scar tissue around it.  Hmm, I wonder HOW THAT GOT THERE.  Anyway.... Ty had been gone for about an hour and a half and I was starting to get antsy, so I made the 3 minute walk into town and arrived at the vet just as Ty was about to leave.  Bloo was like a drunk baby....that's the best way to put it.  After lumbering awkwardly out of the vet's office, we had to lift him into the van for the short ride home.  I rode in back with glossy-eyed Bloo and told him that his papa was sooooooooo sorry for doing this to him.  (I was probably being a little passive aggressive and bitter, but....HE IS MY BABY.)   Once we got home, I stupidly tried to help Bloo out of the van (he was like a 100-pound sleeping toddler) and he ended up face-planting into the dirt driveway.  Awesome.  

I, of course, doted on him all night and spent a lot of time sprawled out on the tile floor kissing his puppy face and telling him how brave he is.  That's normal, right?  He was thoroughly annoyed with me, which I took as a good sign that he was feeling okay.  

If that's not a mama's boy I don't know what is... 

The next day, we were doing some yard work around the beachfront casitas and tiny flies were flying around Bloo's stitches (GROSS) and he scratched the back of his head and ripped his stitches open.  Extra awesome.  Again, I remained totally calm and didn't freak out at all.  Oh, wait.... 

We knew the vet was planning on making a house call to check on Bloo (because apparently that's a thing here), so we impatiently waited for her to drop by.  Long story short, Bloo has been re-stitched up (a little sturdier this time) and seems to be doing well.  In fact, I don't think he even knows anything was ever wrong.  He didn't seemed stressed about being cut open and stitched up twice, he's been taking his antibiotics without any trouble and he amazingly doesn't even seem to be in any pain.  (Didn't I mention he was perfect??)  Here's a disgusting pic of his frankenstein head after his second round of stitches....

Side note:  Our vet bill, which included:  initial exam (aka stopping by unannounced), sedation, local anesthetic, hour-long, same-day surgery, antibiotics, a house call and being stitched up a second time = 63 bucks total.  We couldn't even get Bloo groomed back in Seattle for 63 bucks!!!