It looks like we’re in for another hurricane here in Cancun. Most tracking models are predicting that Hurricane Dean will hit land somewhere close to us here on the Yucatan peninsula, and when it does it will be coming in as a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane. No fun.

We have lived here for 4 years. And in that time we have prepared our house for 3 other hurricanes, Hurricane Ivan, Hurricane Emily and (the big one) Hurricane Wilma.

Today we start preparing for Hurricane Dean. My first task will be to get some laundry done while the weather is good. We do not have a dryer, so everything needs to line-dry. And right now the sky is a perfect clear blue, so I’ll get that done straight away.

Then I’m off to the store to stock up on food and water and batteries. Oh and cat litter! We will be trying to herd all 9 cats into the house before Hurricane Dean hits, that’s a lot of cats pooping in the house, so we will need lots of cat litter.

I will be posting Hurricane Dean preparation updates here at RiverGirl and also on my friend Steve’s Hurricane Cancun web site.

This afternoon I could be heard saying to my daughter “If I find any more bubble gum on the dog you are in big trouble!!”.

The dog, it seems, adores bubble gum as much as my daughter does. And when she discards her gum in an easy-to-raid (meaning lower than dog height) garbage basket, the dog gets the gum back out of the basket and attempts to eat it.

Now Sam doesn’t find it all that easy to eat gum, you see, he ends up trapping it under a paw and then pulling at it with his teeth. The effect of this is that he ends up with strings of bubble gum all up and down his forelegs.

So now my daughter is under strict orders to discard her bubble gum only in the tall kitchen basket (which Sam has actually learned NOT to knock over), or in the basket under the sink (which is has a cabinet door in front of it).

We will see if I can train my daughter to dispose of her gum properly. And if not, then we will see if we can train the dog not to eat bubble gum. Yeah right.

Perhaps it’s because I just went to see Los Simpson La Pelicula (just for you Portland), and it put me in an inane mood, but I’m feeling quite irreverent. However, I think I really ought to post, despite that, and get you all caught up on my little corner of the world.

Big news around here is that we did finally get all the way through the condo-buying-process with the (I think he’s a stoner) seller, who spent most of the purchase process actually being MORE stubborn than my husband is. So while the two of them have been stubborning themselves (or each other) I’ve spent the last two months repeating my mantra, which is “don’t walk away from the negotiating table”. Because, the number one rule in any negotiation is that the deal is not dead if you are still at the table, even if you knock the table over…

And so the deal didn’t die, but it did whine and moan and groan and bleed a lot. And we (finally) have possession. And the building the condo is in is over 20 years old. And the windows have not been cleaned since they were INSTALLED! Gak! I will have hay-fever for the next year from kicking up the dust while I clean those grimy things.

And it looks like the kitchen sink needs to be replaced, which we weren’t planning on.

And then there are the neighbors upstairs, who my husband thinks are probably hit-men, since they don’t seem to work at all and just play dominoes all day while grumbling into their phones like secret agents.

And then there’s the VIEW, which is of NOTHING, except it’s of trees, which is everything. So many condos here (away from the beach) have ugly views. Cancun is a concrete shoe-box city and there’s lots of not nice non-architecture to look at. But this condo has windows facing 3 directions and all windows, but one, look at trees and one looks at trees and a park also.

And finally there’s the LOCATION, which apart from not being on the beach, is fantastic. You can walk to 3 major grocery stores, Starbucks, the best liquor store in town, Blockbuster, a good sushi joint and even a McDonald’s. You don’t need a car in that location, though there is an assigned parking spot in case you have one. Other landlords who own in the building tell us that units in this building are in demand and rent in just hours. We will see if we have that kind of luck or not.

We need to paint, and fix the screens, and install a few lights and at least one ceiling fan, and probably lots of other things, but we hope to have it ready to rent out by mid-September. If I don’t die from Dengue before then (from all the mosquito bites due to the lack of screens) then I will be sure to post when we’ve got our first renter nailed to the wall with a contract.

In the meantime, I’ll be painting, and cleaning, and watching for bodies falling from the roof.