Preparing to Return to Mexico

These are the Webbers. Curt and Judy have graciously opened their home to us for what has turned out to be three months, much longer than our original plans. We are staying upstairs in their Auburn home and feel welcome and loved. When our plans to return to Mexico became derailed in August because of my medical problem, they immediately made it clear we could stay until it was appropriate to travel back to Mexico. We have enjoyed cooking and sharing meals with them, meeting their family, chatting over Red Sox games, upgrading Judy's computer, and most of all, being in a supportive and welcoming environment while we gathered our wits after our abrupt change in plans and the painful loss our our little companion, Maggie.

Judy and I had known each other for many years while we both worked for Literacy Volunteers, first as tutors and later as trainers. When we joined the Auburn Unitarian Universalist church in 2003, they were both long-time members. They have been to visit us twice in Mexico and plan to return again this year. Pixie and I value their ongoing friendship and will miss them when we finally do leave for Mexico!

Our son, Eric, and his wife, Crystal, and Isabelle will be flying into Portland on Saturday. We will all be visiting my Dad and Step-mom, Joy, in Waldoboro for Saturday and Sunday, joined by our daughters Wendy and Cassie. Dad and Joy will be able to meet their great grandaughter Isabelle for the first time. Then, on Tuesday, I will take Crystal and Isabelle to the airport to return to Indiana, and Pixie and Eric will set out in our car, for Muncie. Pixie will visit for a few days in Indiana, then head out for Memphis where she will meet up with our good friend Trudy, from Ajijic, who will drive with her back to Mexico. They should arrive home around October 11 or 12, and I will be flying down on October 13.

I am doing well, as all of my treatment for my blood clot has been successful and stable. I am taking Coumadin, probably for good, since I have a genetic factor for clotting and a vena cava filter to stop any pesky clots that might try to cause trouble by finding their way into my lungs. So, that's all good news, and I am "good to go. " I have been cleared to fly, which should not be a problem because I am on anticoagulants. Many friends have come forward to welcome me to their exclusive "Coumadin Club!"

Pixie has had a rough year, and is looking forward to getting the long drive home over with. We are grateful to Eric and Trudy for helping her with the drive. We are looking forward to being home, in our own house, finally. Our next-door neighbors, Ron and Pat have been just wonderful, checking on our house and even arranging for a new satellite provider for our TV since our last one suddenly went out of business. What wonderful neighbors. Our friend Antonio, who has done all the work on our house, has also been watching the house and fixed a gas leak and water leak while we were gone. Our friend Fred, gave him money for parts to do the repairs. Trudy and Lew have been paying our bills. Maria Elena and Horacio, our maid and gardener have been working without pay until we return. And many of our friends have been sending us encouraging emails while we have been gone to let us know that we are not forgotten just because we are not there. Our friends here in Maine have also been wonderful, inviting us to dinner, letting us use their cars, and giving us such emotional support. We are bathed in ABUNDANCE! We feel such gratitude for all the love that surrounds us.

I have a few remaining Maine photos to share:

Here's a photo of me with my dad on a recent visit to Waldoboro.

Now a couple of photos to clarify some facts about Maine cuisine. We really do have bright red hotdogs and, this year, very inexpensive lobster!

And, so, I will next be posting on this blog sometime after October 13, from Mexico. Pixie will be taking the camera to take photos on way back to Mexico. I will be here, cameraless, Pixieless, but with good friends until I can return. So, for now, I'll sign off from Maine.

Maggie 1998-2009

Our little 9 pound Shi Tzu, Maggie, died on Monday. She had been through so much with us for the last eleven years, and her loss, so suddenly, has been devastating.

For those of you who knew Maggie, you can understand her loving way and her ability to worm her way into everyone's heart. She greeted us every morning with her wet kisses. She protected us from "big" dogs by fiercely asserting herself and never backed down from a confrontation. When I walked her, she never learned to walk calmly, but always pulled on the leash, at least until she got tired. She hated being alone, and would follow me from room to room when we were alone in the house. She was a good traveler, always watching to see what was interesting outside and, when nothing was going on, preferred to nap in the backseat. She was a good listener, cocking her little head and looking intently at you, even when she probably understood nothing you were saying. She loved going on walks, and would watch me intently every morning to see if I was heading towards her blue leash, which meant "walk!" In other words, she was a wonderful dog and companion for us. She made the trip from Maine to Mexico (she hated the snow!) and, finally back to Maine. There is now a big hole in our lives that will accompany us home to Mexico.

Here is a poem I wrote which, I think, captures her spirit:

How My Dog Loves a Walk

She lives for the moment.

When I lace my shoes

She stares, intent,

On the possiblilty

That this time

I will take her

When I open the door

And walk out, into the sun.

To her, nothing else matters.

Even on the leash

She is jubilant,

Nose to the ground

For excretory smells,

Overlooked morsels.

She’s consumed with potential.

She’s older, yet

She tugs at the leash

Hoping I will speed up

And really let her

Into the brush

Into the possibility

Of something she can catch.

Upon meeting another

Canine friend, she immediately

Whiffs his private parts,

Which gives her some

Prehistoric satisfaction.

She know where each lives

And pulls me toward each

Place where there once

Was a dog.

And she’s unconcerned

With mud, seed pods,

Vehicles and hazards,

I try to avoid

For me and for her.

She would be muddy, smelly,

And dead

Were it not for my

Wisdom and caution.

But I wish I could

Live with such

Single-minded enthusiasm

And unspoiled love.

So, we are still in Maine. I am doing well, anticoagulated, and anxious to return to Mexico. Pixie will head down the 29th of September with our so, Eric, and go to Muncie, Indiana where she will visit for a few days. Then she'll drive to Memphis and meet our friend Trudy, from Ajijic, who will drive with her down to Mexico. I will fly down to join her about October 14. We will be grateful to be home again, in nuestra casa!

Delayed Return

Once again, we have learned that life is unpredictable. Last week, which was intended to be our last week in Maine, I went to see a hematologist to check to see if maybe we might check to see if I had any particular bleeding or clotting factors which would have helped explain my brain bleed in March or my blood clot in April. She thought I probably didn’t have such factors, but she did some blood tests just to check. Luckily, she also ordered another ultra sound to check on the status of the clot in my leg, just to see how it was progressing. To make a long story short, the clot had grown, probably because of the long drive to Maine, and was now all the way up my leg into my lower abdomen. Up to now I had not been on anti-coagulation drugs because of the brain hemorrhage. I had no pain or swelling and felt fine.

Now, my condition was life-threatening because of the danger of a pulmonary embolism if a piece of the clot should break off and go to my lung. So, last week I had a filter installed in my vena cava vein, in my abdomen, to prevent such an event. I saw a neurologist who approved me going on Coumadin for anti-coagulation. This will, over time, dissolve my clot, and prevent it from growing in the meantime. It’s possible I could have the filter removed within the first 41 days, but that depends on how fast the clot dissolves.

Needless to say, we have opted to stay in Maine and get this taken care of before returning to our home in Mexico. So now we are relaxing and enjoying a bit of Maine summer heat and grateful that I went to see the hematologist. I am forbidden to drive back to Mexico, so Pixie will be driving the car back; several people have offered to fly up and help her make the trip. But for now we are just recovering from the drama of the last week.

Here are a few more photos to share:

Last week we went to Reid State Park with our daughters Wendy and Cassie. Reid is a beautiful beach framed by the typical Maine rocky coastline.

And here are Wendy and Cassie, enjoying some sister time at the beach. They don't get to see each other as much these days, since Cassie lives in Providence and Wendy in Maine.

We met our friends Kevin and Judy Simpson at one of our favorite Italian restaurants a week or so ago. They are about to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

We went up north to Solon, a small town north of Skowhegan, to scatter Pixie's Mom's ashes. We met at Chet and Barby's (Pixies aunt and uncle). Chet is an interesting man who has lived his life in rural Maine. He loves vintage cars and trucks. Here he poses with a 1954 Solon fire truck he bought recently. He's got it running and in good shape.



My dad is a lifelong watercolorist. As an eye surgeon, he always needed something to exercise his left brain, and chose painting. He has, if I say so, become an excellent artist. When he is in Maine, he goes once or twice a week with his group of friends to a painting/critique session. I accompanied him on a recent outing and was pleased not only to see him paint, but to appreciate the high regard his fellow artists have for him.




Finally, here is my annual photo of my dad and stepmom, Joy, on their porch in Waldoboro.

Family and Friends in New England

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We had a rare family reunion of sorts last weekend in Gloucester MA. My two brothers and I were able to be together with my dad, a very special time for us all. My brothers, from left, Fred, of the Philadelphia area, and Brackley, from Las Vegas, and I with my dad who celebrated his 89th birthday in June. We were all in Gloucester to celebrate my sister-in-law, Heidi's, birthday, a great excuse for a party.

Here are our youngest daughter Cassie (left), and her partner, Alana, posing in front of one of Cassie's self portraits in their apartment in Providence. We will be retuning to see them again in Preovidence on our way home.

Here is Pixie posing with her siblings at a family BBQ last Sunday: from left, Vance, Tex, and Liana. Her other borhter, Rick, was not there.

Here I am posing with our neice Jan ( Tex's daughter) who will continue the family tradition of attending Brown University in the fall. She received an almost full scholarship to Brown and, at this point hopes to study history. I am very proud of her!

Here my cousin Sally poses with my Aunt Mary, my dad's big sister, at the Gloucester BBQ, who celebrated her 94th birthday this week. She still calls my dad her "baby brother."

Here we have my neice Ariana (left, Brackley's daughter) and Loren, her friend form Tel Aviv, hamming it up before for the camera. Ariana produces a weekly television show, "Taylor Thursday" on You Tube from Las Vegas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkE5aHbui48

We had a long-awaited reunion of our gourmet dinner group. With us, this is three quarters of the group: from left, Betty, Gene, Kathy and Doug, and their new additon Zephyr. Both we're hoping they make it to Jalisco for a visit next winter.

Lst Saturday, we met up with our two good frineds from our old UU congregation, Mary Kay and Claire, and went to one of the free LL Bean free concerts last Saturday. The band was Blues Traveler, and the company was wonderful. They hope to visit us next year as well.

We will be visiting in Maine until next Friday, August 14, then head down to Providence for another visit with Cassie and Alana, and on to Muncie for another visit with Eric, Crystal, and Isabelle, before the long drive back to Mexico. It has been wonderful to see everyone and demonstrate that we are both fine, and to confirm that our friends and family are still intact. It has finally stopped raining in Maine (for now) and we are able to enjoy the summer Maine is famous for. We has lobster the other day ($4.99 a pound) and Heidi cooked steamed clams for us in Gloucester. We will soon be back in our home in Mexico, resuming our life there. Thanks to everyone here for their generous hospitality and love!

Back in Maine

Well, here we are, back in Maine, at least for the next several weeks. While here we are staying upstairs in this, the Webber homestead. Curt and Judy, who have appeared on this blog during their October '07 and November '08 visits have generously provided space for us and Maggie to live while we become reacquainted with our old stomping ground, so to speak. We have been having comfortably cool weather, generally fair, and been able to enjoy being off the road for awhile!

On one of our first evenings here, June Spear, a former colleague of mine at Central Maine Community College, hosted a gathering at her home for some of our friends and colleagues. Here are some photos:

Here are June (on the left) and Judy Frost, the librarian at the college. (Sorry Judy. I should have taken a photo with your eyes open!). June was an excellent adjunct faculty member 12 years ago before I quit being department chair. Judy is a good friend and confidante, whose husband, Rick, is the librarian at the Lewiston Public Library, and made it possible for us to access Rosetta Stone to study our Spanish before moving to Mexico.

Lucy Coombs and John Blois are former colleagues of mine from the Humanities Department at CMMC. Lucy took over my job as chair and has clearly been much better suited for the rigors of that job! John teaches, among other things, Asian studies. Here is a link to a You

Tube film he produced on a recent rip to India and Tibet with his sons. This is footage of a traditional Tibetan home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD2ajb8hwYA

And here is Pearl Sawyer who I only came to know several years ago in our Unitarian Universalist church inAuburn, Maine. Pearl began writing poetry later in life and has been an ongoing inspiration to me in my own attempts at poetry as well as a loving friend.

Liette Morin, left, worked in the cafeteria at CMCC, and helped me many times with my quilting. She always encouraged me and taught me many tricks. She is a creative and loving force in this community. Bonnie Santos taught for CMCC for many years and regaled us at the party with her stories of living in France as a child.

Lloyd Pulsifer has been a friend, and co-Sox fan, for many years. He chairs the Machine Tool Department at CMCC. Kathy, his wife, is a nurse, and has been a former student of mine. They are both avid followers of "Maine to Mexico!"

While on the trip up, we stopped for a brief visit with our friend Fred and Mardele Harland, from Ajijic, who were visiting thair daughter and family in Erie, PA. Their son-in-law Matt, a physician, was instrumental, when visiting Ajijic this spring, in convincing me to change medical care and get the scans I needed to diagnose my brain hemmorhage. (I still don't think he looks old enough to be a doctor!) Fred, also shown here, is a dear friend and fellow member of our UU fellowship (as is Mardele) as well as a member of our Great Books discussion group.

We visited my dad and stepmom, Joy, in Waldoboro this past weekend. You can tell they both love spending time with Maggie. We are planning to return for another extended visit before we leave Maine in the middle of August.

Here's Pixie and our oldest daughter, Wendy, soaking up some rare (this year) Maine sun while on our visit in Waldoboro.

Our youngest daughter, Cassie, who has been attending her MFA program in Hartford, Connecticut, these past two weeks is suffering from a stubborn urinary tract infection, so we are modifying our plans and will go to Providence next week to be with her. I will probably do another update from New England before we start our return trip south.

I hope all our friends in Mexico are enjoying the rainy season and the cooler weather. We miss you all, and look forward anxiously to our return which we plan for August 29.

Almost Back in Maine

Well. after more than two weeks on the road, we are in Albany, NY, ready to arrive back in Maine tomorrow for our long summer visit. Our trip north so far has been fairly uneventful, which is good. Being back in the United States, though, has been an adustment, however, from our simple, dusty life in Mexico. Everything is so organized and clean! The roads have such wide shoulders and are so clearly marked. they tell us about the exit coming up starting several miles ahead of the exit. In Mexico, the traffic signs are sometimes blocked by trees and difficult to see. And the notice that we have to exit the highway often appears only a few meters from the actual exit point. People in the US follow the rules very carefully and are not as casual about the rule of law as the Mexicans sometimes are.

Sticker shock is another adjustment we have to make. Prices seem so high here, especially when we have been spoiled not only by the lower prices in Mexico, but have been spoiled by the devaluations of the Mexican peso (now 13.6 pesos to the US dollar) which have made our money go even further. I can see we'll have to watch ourpennies carefully this summer!

We have been having a strange problem with our 2007 RAV4. For about a year, whenever we took a right turn we would hear a loud "thump" coming from the rear of the vehicle. Additionally, for almost the entire trip, we have had a "4WD" warning light onthe dash. In Muncie, Indiana, where we stopped to visit our son Eric and his family, we took the vehicle to the local Toyota dealership (there are Toyota dealerships in Mexico, but the warranty is not honored on a vehicle purchased in the US!). Well they discovered the problem: whenI had the right rear tire replaced in Mexico, they put on a tire the wrong size; about 2 inches short. As a result, when we took a right turn, the axle was sensing that the car needed to engage the all-wheel drive, and tried, unsuccessfully to engage. Thus the thump, and the warning light. New tire, problem solved.

Who knew?

At any rate, we had a lovely visit in Indiana and spending time with our grand daughter, Isabelle, who is now 16 month old. Here are some more photos:

So tomorrow we'll be arriving at our friends' Curt and Judy Webbers house for the next five weeks. They have been to visit us twice at Lake Chapala, and were very generous to offer their house for us to use as a home base while we are in Maine. We will be busy spending time with old friends and family. We will head back to Muncie in the middle of August and be back home in Mexico by the end of August. Maine has been experiencing cold, rainy weather during June and early July. We hope to bring the warm Mexican sun when we arrive!

Trip North

Hola to all of you who check the blog. We will be traveling north to Indiana and Maine for the summer, so I obviously won't be writing about Mexico; at least that's not the plan. We have a young grandaughter, Isabelle, in Muncie, Indiana, the daugher of our son Eric and daughter-in-law, Crystal. We will be arriving to spend about a week over the 4th of July holiday in the now blue state of Indiana. We will then be traveling north, stopping in Erie, PA to briefly visit our friends from Mexico, Fred and Mardele, and their daughter's family, and pick up a couple of small pieces of furniture to bring back to Mexico for them. (Fred and Mardele have lent us their GPS system to use on the trip up; that should be fun to try out). Then we're off to Maine, arriving around July 10. There we'll spend time with our daughters, Wendy and Cassie, my Dad (who turns 89 on Friday) and Stepmom, Joy, and other family and friends. We'll be staying with Curt and Judy Webber, who have appeared on this blog, using their home as a home base. How wonderfully generous of them. They may return to Mexico for their third trip, possibly this fall? We are looking forward to seeing Pixie's siblings and their families and my two brothers and their families. We will spend time with our old friends in Maine, and follow the Red Sox from Red Sox Nation! (They are four games up as I write this morning). We'll stop by Indiana again on our return trip, then be back in Mexico by the end of August.

I may post some family photos and some commentary about our trip, but not as frequently over the summer. I'll return to commentary about our life in Mexico in September. Best wishes to all for a safe and joyous summer. You can still reach us by email, of course. Hasta luego, amigos!

Colima

Here are our beautiful wives posing at our house this week at our "grub club" Jamaican dinner. We wanted to form a dinner group, but did not want to feel the pressure of calling it a "gourmet dinner group," so we settled on the prosaic title of "Grub Club." Pixie is surrounded here by Jeanne and Susan before we enjoyed our Jerk Chicken and other Jamaican delicacies.

Of course the big event for this week was our brief foray to Colima to celebrate out thirty fifth wedding anniversary. Colima is best known for its two volcanoes, one still active, nearby. Unfortunately, the weather was hot and too hazy to get a good view of the volcano, but here is a file photo of the volcanoes so you can get an idea of how impressive they are:

Colima itself is a fairly large city quite near the Pacific to the beach at nearby Manzanillo, so they don't stop. Colima has been the victim of numerous earthquakes over the years so it doesn't have the beautiful colonial buildings other Mexican cities do, although it was actually one of the earliest cities the Spanish settled. We stayed in the center of town on one of the two central plazas, saw some pre-hispanic archaelogical artifacts, and ate some wonderful Mexican food. We saw almost no gringos in Colima, quite a switch for us. Colima is famous for its Colima dogs, pottery dogs which represented the polular hairless chihuahuas which were popular then, especially as food. The indigenous people made pottery models of these dogs which they buried with people to help their way to the afterlife. Here are some photos of these well-preserved artifacts:

The plaza was beautiful and classically Mexican, surrounded by long buildings on all four sides which included restaurants and shops in the porticos. There was an ongoing chess group which drew lots of curious onlookers. We attended a band concert in the gazebo on Sunday night. You will notice one purple -haired Mexican nina in one of the photos, a rarity here. Here are more photos:

Closer to home, we have had a big event for the past few weeks. Our calle (street), Santa Margarita, has been the street from hell. It was rough and we had to drive very slowly on it to keep from scraping the bottom of the car. Everyone has been complaining about it. The crew came in a few weeks ago and has been doing the backbreaking work of fixiing our road by resetting the cobblestones. They work in the hot sun from 7-6 each day. Here's a photo of them working:

On a walk the other day, Maggie and I ran across this group of goats grazing in the road. Maggie, presumably thinking they were dogs, was anxious to meet them, but the goats were not pleased with her "friendliness."