The Rainy Season and the "Pink Cloud"

I sometimes get e mails from people asking me when is the best time to come during the rainy season. I can't answer that. Every year for the past four years I have left for Portland for a month or two during this time of the year. This is my first year of staying here.

I have friends who love this time of the year. Everything is so green and lush. It is fairly quiet in town with the winter people gone. The roads aren't clogged with cars. The thunder and lightening is  dramatic. The storms never last long and they are mostly at night. Don't believe people when they say it never rains during the day here. That isn't true. It does rain during the day but usually not for long. It is often just a light rain. So, take an umbrella when you go out. I have lost lots of umbrellas that way. I walk off and forget about them.

When the rainy season first started a few weeks ago, it was a lot hotter and muggier. We had just come off of several months of very hot weather. Now it is cooler and when the sun comes out it is beautiful. Usually it will come out for a few hours in the afternoon.

For now, Lower La Floresta, where I live hasn't had another electrical black out. Hopefully, it will stay on. Maybe they finally fixed the problem. And maybe my landlord won't decide to move. I think he is happy now that we can have electricity and water every day.

I am trying to learn to love this season. I am a lover of sunshine. I am not used to summers being overcast and unpredictable. But I am trying to find the beauty in this season. It is here. It is a fault in me that I expect the weather to be perfect every day as it is the rest of the year.  Okay, I admit I complained a lot about the weather when it was too hot in the afternoons for walking.

Since I don't have a car, the weather plays a much larger part in my life than it does for most expats here. Most of them have cars and also nicer homes that aren't as affected by this moisture as my little casita.

It is saturated in moisture. Smells kind of moldy in here now. I have these little white crystals that soak up the moisture in the air. I put them out a few weeks ago and already the jars they are sitting in are filling up with water.

So why don't I get a better place? Inertia, maybe. Also, it is inexpensive and convenient. I am just a block from the Wednesday market and a few blocks from downtown Ajijic. And the biggest reason for staying is my love for Chico, my landlord's dog.  So I stay. And so I have to quit complaining about the flaws here and learn to just love every day that I am alive and lucky enough to live in such a great place.

I sometimes talk about the "Pink Cloud" people experience when they first come here. I did..... It lasts for several months. That word is used with recovering alcoholics when they first get sober. Everything is perfect to them during those first months. And here, it is the same way with new people. But after awhile we have to come back to ourselves. And then we see the flaws here. This isn't paradise. No where on earth is there a paradise. So, the pink cloud gradually goes away and we are left with all our old patterns of thought and behavior and worries and complaints about things that are less than perfect.

That is the challenge, to continue looking at the good things and not focus on the things that are less than perfect or even downright bad.  These are my thoughts for an overcast morning. Looks like the sun may come out in a few hours and I can then take a long walk with Chico. He would love that. So would I.