Morning Thoughts---Moving

I am moving tomorrow. I hope to get it all done in one day but I have accumulated a lot of stuff in eight years. I came down with two suitcases. Now I have three rooms full of furniture and boxes and boxes of things. Useless things but still........ Being surrounded by these useless things helps me to feel secure. Sameness in the midst of constant change. I know it is a shallow security but it helps me to maintain from day to day. Until I have to move!  Then it all becomes a burden.

I only slept two hours last night. Tossing and turning. Thinking about having to take all this furniture and boxes down with ropes from the upstairs decks. They came up that way because there is a very narrow turn in the stairs and nothing large will fit through. I fell down that turn a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully my knee will heal with time. It is much better today. I have to not do too much in this move. That is hard for me. I always want to get in there and help.

I woke up this morning being very angry at the maid who talked my landlord into getting rid of me and the morning maid. We have been with him for eight years. She even got paid to do all that talking. But I know that being angry at her is just hurting me. She did what she had to do to survive. She has an entire family dependent on her. This is her way out. Her thoughts do not include how she has disrupted our lives. But anger isn't a rational emotion. It just comes, like a tidal wave. And then it goes.

I am guessing that I will be much happier living alone in my own place. And with a kitchen. It is hard to imagine having a kitchen after eight years of washing dishes in my tiny bathroom sinks. And my own garden just outside of my bedroom. And only one block to the bus. No more trudging up this hill. And Chico will be able to take walks with me again because it is closer for me to come and go.

So I need to just get on with the huge task at hand and forget about my emotions or else I will have yet another sleepless night ahead. Thank you all for your encouragement.

Morning Thoughts---Plane Going Down

I am limping along here, waiting for my new place to be ready so I can move. In the meantime, I have a room piled high with boxes, ready to be filled up. That is my goal for the next three days, get everything packed that I don't use everyday.

I am looking forward to having privacy. My own little patio. And being able to walk one block to my favorite shopping center, Bugambilla Plaza. And having a real kitchen after all these years of washing my dishes in the bathroom sink and carrying things back and forth.

Of course I have concerns, like not enough light in the rooms and if Chico will bark his head off and bother the landlady. She will be living above me. And if it will be cold inside in the winter. I am trying to hold off my fears and concerns and just focus on the relief of being out of this very uncomfortable and toxic environment. The new maid and her family are taking over. It has become too noisy and my privacy, what privacy I had, is gone. I am moving as soon as the other place is ready.

For many months here I have watched my landlord going downhill mentally and physically. I had thought about moving out but then I decided against leaving him. I have been living near him for at least eight, maybe nine years. We have been through a lot together and I had thought that there was respect and  concern for each other´s well being. I felt too guilty for thinking of abandoning him. I was willing to stay till the end...... My end or his end.

I had seen this as my home in every sense of that word because of the warmth and caring I had thought was between us. Now I just see rooms. Rooms filled with junk to pack and move. All sense of this being my home is gone.  Home is where you feel loved and where you love. It is not here anymore.  It most likely never was coming from my landlord, given that he so easily threw me out of his life. It was all illusion on my side. I will not be so trusting in the future.

So this eviction is a blessing for me. I will not have to watch him getting worse. I will not have to deal with any problems if he passed away and I was living by him. I will not have to deal with guilt for abandoning him. He abandoned me......

So, what do we owe other people?  One thought that comes to my mind is the lecture we are given when we are on airplanes about what to do if the plane goes down. They say, You have to put the oxygen mask on YOURSELF FIRST, and then the child or person sitting next to you. You can´t save anyone else if you don't save yourself!

Not that my landlord's plane is going down. Okay, it might when his new living situation takes affect. But I will be free, living my own life. (I won´t have to watch it crash and burn.)

 After all these years, he finally gave me Chico. Another blessing..... Thank you all for your loving support and suggestions. You have no idea of how much that meant to me.

Morning Thoughts Chaos

It is chaotic here now. My landlord fired his loving and reliable long time maid yesterday. She came up here crying and I felt so sad for her . She has been working for him for seven years, seven days a week. No paid vacation. No  paid sick days. No paid days off. She knows that she could see an attorney but she said she felt too much loyalty to him. This is what loyalty got her. I hope she will reconsider. She needs work . Let me know if you need help. The other helper and her family are moving into my area as soon as I leave. I am just hanging out, hoping my knee will heal before I make this move. Life is interesting. And unfair. And sad. 

Morning Thoughts

My life has turned around. Before I write anything else, I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of offers of everything; love, good wishes, storage, housing, help moving.....  I am amazed. I had no idea that people cared so much. I spend most of my time alone and this was a surprise. Thank you all. 

Next, I have a typical Mexican apartment now which I can move into as soon as the owners move into the one upstairs. It is just one block from my favorite shopping center, El Torito, Salvadoes and the theater. It has three large rooms. Finally a kitchen after eight years. And a small private patio and garden that opens up from the back bedroom. Chico and Olive will be safe there. I do not have to give them up!  

It is also unfurnished so I can keep mine and there is room for all my things. The rent is only 2500 pesos a month. Now I really feel blessed. 

More Morning Thoughts

I have been getting up too early lately. Yesterday it was three a.m. This morning it was five thirty a.m. Too upset to sleep much. I have never been evicted before. And having it happen so suddenly and without warning from a man whom I had thought was a reliable and a trusted friend, well that was an even greater shock. Now we are enemies and do not speak to each other. And for a few more weeks I still have to walk through his house to get up to mine. Awful and sad, after all we have been through together.... Eight years.

Now I see so many mistakes that I have made along the way. One mistake was to have expected that things would have gone on forever, or at least as long as I had wanted. I had thought that if I were reliable and stable myself, I would be rewarded with stability in the world. Another was to have focused on the little, unimportant things too much, like collecting things to make my life more comfortable or fun. Now I am overwhelmed with all these little things. Things everywhere and no boxes to put them in and no place to put the boxes, even if I had them.  All those trips to the States, going to yard sales and second hand stores and lugging heavy suitcases through airports.... I was under the false illusion that if I had everything I needed, I would be secure. But things don't make life secure. Eventually they just make a burden and a prison for the owner of all these things.

I will not say that having the cat and dog were a mistake. They were my joy, my family, my comfort during those years of living in that grim casita and upstairs in one room and now here. (I loved living here even though I still didn't have a kitchen.)

 I feel such grief at having to leave Chico and Olive. Since I have no stability, it isn't fair to them to try to drag them around with me. And because of my bad knee, it wouldn't even be possible to do that. Chico will have to continue living here with his real owner. The kitty will be taken care of by my dear friend, Leslie. She will be back in her old neighborhood where she was wild for many years. (The cat, not Leslie.)

Maybe in the future they will return to me but it is doubtful given that my landlord is so angry at me and being so mean to me about getting me out of here as quickly as possible. But maybe Chico will continue to be happy here. It is a safe place for him and he has lots of space. He also still loves his owner although his owner is too distracted to pay any attention to him. 

There are two economies here. The Mexican economy and the Expat economy. Today I am going to look at a Mexican house with a Mexican price. Around a hundred dollars a month. My wonderful helper saw it yesterday and she is taking me there. I have no expectations. It is in an alley not far from my old neighborhood. No yard, most likely grim, a hovel. But before this place, my other two were also hovels. At least it is close to town and the bus line and restaurants. I can heal my knee there. And if nothing else, I can rent it for storage and possibly just sleeping. I can leave town and have a place to come back to and later on decide where I want to live.

I may still take a little trip to San Blas but after my knee is better and after I have made decisions about what to do or where to go. I would like to continue living here but maybe other plans are in the works for me, plans that I don't know about. Exciting new plans full of meeting new people and seeing new places.

I get too complacent. I like my daily routines too much. I want security and comfort and to be surrounded by my pretty and useful things. I have been hiding out for many years in this lifestyle. Now I am forced to change my ways. I do not want to just go out and rent a high priced ugly furniture, no welcome for animals place with a lease. I want to keep things loose and my options open for awhile and see where life leads me. See what it is like to live on the Mexican side of the fence, in their world. (Now I will be forced to learn Spanish.)

Maybe I will want to bus around Mexico or stay at one of the beautiful beaches or maybe even fly to Thailand. I have no idea what my future holds. I need to have faith that I will be guided to doing the right thing for me.

I am sharing my life with all of you because so many people write to me and ask, What is it like to live in Mexico? Well, this is what it is like for ME to live in Mexico. We each have our own paths and they are as different as we are so I am wishing you well as you travel along on your path today and every other day. And I am grateful for so many of you, encouraging me along mine. Maybe that is all we can actually do for each other and maybe that is enough. More than enough. Thank you!

On this day I must remember, My life is not a tragedy. It is a gift. A tragedy was the World Trade Center!!!

Morning Thoughts

I have been up since three a.m. I am not good with stress and change. I worry and obsess. What will happen? How will I manage to do it all? Will my knee heal? What to do? My mind replays everything again and again. I love my life and my home here and now it is being taken away from me. But maybe it is for the best. Otherwise, I would have stayed here until my death, or the landlord's and that would have been very difficult to have had to face. So he did me a huge favor by kicking me out on my butt. Maybe waiting until after the beginning of the high season would have been kinder but there doesn't seem to be much of a low season here anymore.

Rents are always high and constantly going higher. There is always too much traffic on the roads. The buses are always too crowded. Rentals are filled with awful huge pieces of uncomfortable furniture which they refuse to remove. No dogs allowed. People aren't as friendly on the street. When I first came here I said hi to everyone on the street. The Mexicans always responded and still do. Not so for many of the new expats. They are bringing down their expat ways.....

So maybe it is time for me to move on to someplace simpler and less expensive. San Blas for awhile. I will be house sitting for my friend for a month. If the jejenes and the heat haven't driven me out by then, I will rent in town there maybe for the winter. I am storing my things. I will come back and deal with them after I know what I am going to do or where I will be living.

I don't expect that the good times here at the OK Corral are going to last more than a few months and I have my name as the first one the manager will call when the honeymoon ends. But maybe by then I won´t want to come back. Who knows what the future holds for me or for any of us.

All I know is that I really appreciate people writing to me and being supportive. It means so much to me. I haven't spent much time on my blog for a long time now. I am very surprised to run into people in town who are still checking it out. So at least the blog is still alive, a little bit.

After I settle down somewhere I will write more on here. Or maybe after I leave this area people won´t be so inclined to read it. I believe it is read because of where I live, not anything that important about my own often stressful life. But thank you all for your responses and suggestions. I am no longer looking for a place here. So I don´t need any more referrals for that. Thank you for them. Funny, many were from people reading Accesslakechapala.com, the site I write for, when I can get the time. Good to see that they are being supported.

One more comment. After all these years, my landlord is willing to let me take Chico. He has discarded us both very quickly. Love is blind.  So I will be on the beach with Chico in San Blas if any of you happen to be there this winter. Hopefully, this plan will work out. My world feels very tenuous at the moment. Can´t count on anything. Except the love and support of my friends and family and blog readers. I can´t ask for much more than that. I feel blessed and honored. 

Boring Old Story

This story is so common here that it hardly needs to be told. So I will just highlight some of it. Old disabled man falls in love with his young evening maid, kicks out a long term renter, me, and plans to move in this maid and her entire extended family. Rent free and most likely supporting all of them. Renter, me, is desperate to find another place to live. Not expecting to receive a 30 day notice, from his lawyer, I am frantically searching for housing at the beginning of the high season with two animals and a house full of heavy furniture from living eight years at the same place and with a bummed out knee from falling down the stairs due to this stress. 

Like I already wrote, sad story but not a new one. Looks like I will have to store everything and find a less expensive town. I may not write much until I get settled again. Final comment. If you need a reliable, wonderful, devoted, hard working maid, please let me know. She has been doing all the work of taking care of this man for almost eight years. I don't know how I could have managed through this upheaval without her love and support. I don't know how long she will be willing to stay here with all this extra work and of course no extra pay and no benefits. Her situation is even more dire than mine. Instead of worrying and bitching like I have been doing, she is smiling and she brought me flowers and food for my birthday yesterday. Some Birthday! But I will try to use her as an example of optimism . So many Mexicans can deal with adversity better than spoiled expats like me. I would trust this maid with my life! Also her husband and son are also reliable, wonderful gardeners who need work. 

Computer Class

I am sitting in the I pad class. Hope to learn how to use it. Still looking for housing. 

I Need a place to live

My Landlord, after eight years of living with him, has decided to make me move out so he can move in his evening care giver.... I need a new home.... Let me know if you have an inexpensive place where I can take Chico and the kitty.