April 23, 2018
Cherie and John were leaving on Monday and there were a
million last minute chores. People were
dropping by to say goodbye and it was very busy. Cherie’s friend, Kundra, was storing some
items in our house for the summer and she left me a classical guitar to
use. It was a cheap guitar, but it was
nice to play a full-sized guitar for a change and I could practice much longer
on a nylon string guitar without getting sore fingers.
I hung around, helping where I could and doing laundry. They finally left at 1:30. I did another load
of laundry, including the few things my roommates needed washed. It was so hot that things were drying as fast
on the line as they would have in a dryer.
The refrigerator was making a terrible racket and I had
promised to defrost the freezer. I
cleaned and defrosted the freezer. I
swept the back patio and then I was exhausted.
We had all been up late the night before and then woke early. I napped for a couple of hours. I couldn’t bring myself to go anywhere, so I
made some guacamole for dinner, practiced the guitar, and went to bed
early. The internet had quit as soon as
Cherie left, so there was no Netflix to watch.
April 24, 2018
The house was very empty with everyone gone and the neighborhood
was quiet. I got up early, made coffee,
and started cleaning the kitchen. I
cleared all the clutter off the counters and wiped them clean. The internet still wasn’t working and I
started to worry that maybe it had been shut off, although I could have sworn
Cherie said that it would be on for the rest of the month. I checked all the connections and cleaned all
the dust bunnies from around the cables.
Cleaning had become my new hobby.
I scrubbed the cabinet doors and mopped the kitchen floor.
The refrigerator was quiet but had stopped cooling. The freezer was cold, but not frozen. I had been planning to clean the refrigerator
but didn’t want to leave the door open and was starting to doubt if it was
going to be worth the trouble.
I caught up on my blog entries but couldn’t upload them
without internet. I spent much of the
day practicing the guitar and cleaning.
I swept the front patio and cooked the chicken I had in the refrigerator
for lunch. I felt very domestic.
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| The La Cruz Inn |
When dinnertime rolled around, I walked down to the La Cruz
in and ordered a chicken Caesar salad for dinner. They had internet, so I managed to reassure
people that I hadn’t died but couldn’t do much else. La Cruz was gearing up to celebrate the
departure of the gringos with their patron saint’s festival that would begin
the next day. They had erected a stage
in the street near the La Cruz Inn.
There would be fireworks at 5:00 AM and loud music every night for the
next nine days. I hoped that it would be
fairly quiet at our house. At dinner, I
overheard people who lived close to the square planning to leave for the
duration of the festival.
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| Stage for the Fiestas Patronales |
It was my friend Betty’s last night in La Cruz and I talked
to her for a few minutes to say goodbye.
I ran into my landlord on the way home and chatted with him for a few
minutes. Then I stopped at the grocery
store and bought a few non-perishable items and returned home before dark.
Our house has a lovely upstairs patio. I had never used it, since the upstairs was
John and Cherie’s territory. With them
gone, I felt free to use it. I swept up
all the dust and leaves and rearranged the furniture. There was actually pretty good light out
there. I sat outside and played the
guitar until the bugs started to irritate me.
I was going to enjoy that patio.
April 25, 2018
I had all kinds of intentions of going out to get coffee or
breakfast and use the internet somewhere, but I got distracted with things
around the house and didn’t get out the door until 2:00. I took a combi to Walmart and had lunch in
the food court. There were signs saying
it was a WiFi zone, but there were no open networks. After eating some bad Chinese food, I went to
the Buonissimo gelato store and used their WiFi for an hour or so while I ate
my dessert.
After eating, I checked out the music store at the end of
the mall. I was still looking for some
sheet music to traditional Mexican songs.
Like the music store in Bucerias, the books they had only showed the
chords. Not being familiar with the
melodies, that wasn’t helpful to me. I
would have to wait until I got home and had access to Amazon.com.
I went to Walmart and picked up a few housewares I wanted
for the house. I was hoping to buy some
CLR to clean the rust stains off the tile in my shower, but they didn’t stock
it. Since our refrigerator was not
working, the only food item I bought was a bag of fresh tortillas chips.
It was nearly 6:00 by the time I got home. I ate some leftover chicken wings and chips
for dinner. I was too lazy to make
guacamole. I had barely been able to
squeeze past all the trucks parked in the street when I came home and one of
the neighbors was setting up a band in the front yard. They must have been rehearsing (maybe to play
at La Cruz Days), because they only played one song over and over. They were very good and sounded somewhat like
Los Lobos when they play Mexican music.
I would have liked to hear more, but I just got the one song, loud
enough to rattle the windows, over and over again. Fortunately, they only played for an hour or
so. Maybe it got too dark to see. I was still able to practice the guitar after
dinner. I spent the rest of the evening
reading.
April 26, 2018
I got up early with all kinds of ambitions but ended up
spending the morning cleaning out the refrigerator and eventually giving up on
going out for coffee and just making breakfast at home. The freezer portion of the refrigerator was
still cold, although only freezing on the bottom. I put the things that needed to be cold on
the top shelf of the freezer and the things that could freeze on the
bottom. It was pretty packed in there
but emptying out the refrigerator section allowed me to clean it
thoroughly. I hoped it could be repaired
and that I wasn’t wasting my time. At
least I wouldn’t be embarrassed about the dirt if a repairman looked at it.
About noon, I took out all the trash and was about to leave
to go in search of internet when I realized that my phone was down to 26% of
the battery. Frustrated, I plugged it in
and settled down to write and practice the guitar while it charged.
That evening, I went to the La Cruz Inn for a taco
salad. It was fresh and tasty and there
was nothing about it to indicate the trouble it was about to bring me. After dinner, I went to the marina
amphitheater to watch A Family Man, the
free movie of the week. The season was
over and it was sparsely attended. The
movie was about unscrupulous headhunters who took advantage of “unemployable”
older candidates. Having been one of
those candidates and suffered through similar experiences with numerous
friends, I found the film difficult to watch.
April 27-30. 2018
I woke up Friday morning feeling a bit nauseated and very
weak. I didn’t have the runs, but felt like I should. I stayed in bed and tried to sleep. Unfortunately, our internet had been down
since Monday afternoon and neither Cherie nor I were able to call the Mexican
800 number for Telmex customer service from our cell phones, even though
Cherie’s was a Mexican cell phone. I
decided I was going to have to go to the Telmex office in Bucerias if there was
going to be any hope of restoring service before I left.
I also needed to get my nails done, so I dragged myself into
Bucerias and went to the Telmex office.
I gave them my tale of woe. They
confirmed that it was a technical problem but told me it would be three or four
days before someone could come to fix it.
I complained that I would be gone by then but didn’t hold out much hope
of seeing internet before I left. Not
feeling up to a long walk, I took a combi to the other end of Bucerias and then
walked down to the salon on Lazaro Cardenas.
Unfortunately, the manicurist was not there. It was very slow, so there was only a
skeleton crew. I was forced to make an
appointment for the following morning at 11:00. I dragged myself up the hill, took a combi
home, and slept for the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Saturday, I still felt lousy. I was so weak that I didn’t want to get out
of bed at all. I got up only in time to
get myself to Bucerias for my nail appointment.
When I arrived, I was told that the manicurist had called in sick. I turned around and went back home. Fortunately, the Telmex repairman arrived
just as I did and was able to restart our internet. Apparently, my pathetic pleading from the day
before had borne fruit. I mostly slept
for the rest of the day, but at least had internet to watch a little Netflix.
I did nothing on Sunday and Monday. I didn’t leave the house. I slept and barely ate. All plans to devour my remaining perishables
went out the window. I barely had the
energy to pack and prepare the house to be closed. I did a little work and then rested. I was very weak.
May 1, 2018
My last morning in La Cruz, I finished packing and did the
last-minute chores to close up the house.
I brought in the patio furniture and covered all the dishes in the
cabinets with tea towels to keep off the dust.
I covered the beds and couch with plastic in case of roof leaks and shut
off the water to the washing machine and unplugged all the electrical
appliances in case of lightning. My last
move on the way out the door was to unplug the WiFi router.
I walked into town and ate a farewell brunch with my friend,
Karen, who had just returned from China and Japan. We relaxed a bit at the Ballena Blanca. Then I walked back up the hill via the taxi
stand at the top of Langosta and stopped to order a taxi to take me to the
airport a couple of hours later. When I
got home I rested. Apparently, I was so
quiet that our neighbors thought I was gone.
When my taxi came and I opened the door to leave, our neighbor was
already raking the leaves from our front yard.
I believe that our house is his sanctuary from his family when we are
away. I felt well taken care of.
My taxi arrived slightly early and I got to the airport what
I thought was three hours early, only to discover that my plane had just
departed. I had been looking at the
departure time for my flight from Phoenix to San Francisco, not the leg from
Puerto Vallarta to Phoenix. The desk
clerks couldn’t fix my tickets because I had used mileage to purchase them and
had to call an 800 number. I couldn’t
call a Mexican 800 number from my US phone, so they ended up letting me use a
phone in the American Airlines break room to call. It took at least a half an hour to sort out
but cost me nothing because it was a mileage ticket. They finally routed me through Los Angeles,
arriving in San Francisco only an hour later than originally expected (at least
in theory.)
My flight from Puerto Vallarta to L.A. was uneventful,
despite sitting next to a woman with her “emotional support” dog. The dog was a tiny chihuahua and she was much
better behaved than her owner. The
flight from Los Angeles was late leaving and I didn’t arrive in San Francisco
until nearly midnight. Sandra had driven
to the airport to pick me up but I ended up having to drive home because she
didn’t know the way. I just barely
managed to stay awake that long, having been up for twenty hours. It was wonderful to finally sink into my
comfortable bed. I love Mexico, but
there isn’t one comfortable mattress in the entire country.
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