My husband figured out yesterday that he’s working 90 hours a week right now (including drive-time). And, to be completely honest, I’m not far behind him. I do get a bit more sleep than he does, but I often work 10 to 12 hours a day and that doesn’t include the time I spend cleaning cat litter or taking care of my house. And I cannot, honestly, remember the last day I took completely off. I think, but am not sure, that it was in August. There might have been a day in August that I didn’t check email, respond to a client, work on the frickin’ condo or work on a client project. Maybe. Or maybe it was in July.

The good news is that hubby and I have plans to spend two whole nights and most of three whole days in Tulum, at an “eco-resort” (eco here usually means the hotel is not on the power grid). We plan to bring the nice bikes (we each have 2; 1 nice one, and 1 crappy-city one) which will give us a good way to see the sights and get some exercise. And, of course, the place is on the beach, so we can actually act like tourists and get lobstered and snorkel and hang on the beach. I might even have a piña colada.

I’m really excited to just get away, even though it’s not far from home. It will be a break in the rhythm, a break from this monotony of work and responsibility, and I hope that we can have fun. I expect it will be fun because one of my favorite friends here, and her lovely husband, will be staying there the same weekend. So we have built-in entertainment!

All I can say is Starbucks better not start charging tax on all the money I make in their coffee shops. Or rather, they’d better not charge tax on the potential income I could make based on the contracts I sign in their coffee shops.

Today I signed a contract, in Starbucks, worth quite a lot of money, if I do my job, which I have every intention of doing.

I can’t tell you more because then I’d have to kill you, or at least make you sign a non-disclosure agreement and provide proof that you have several million usd in near-liquid assets and certain required skills and intentions.

Sorry for the mystery, but that’s what it is.

At least Starbucks can count on me always purchasing a Mocha Grande Con Leche Light sometimes Descafeinado por favor, so they ARE actually getting paid, a whole $38 pesos.

I will say that it’s very nice to be working on a big project again. It’s been a while since I tackled something of this size, and I feel, well, I feel completely in my element. That probably sounds totally conceited. But it’s not meant that way. It’s more that I just feel that the importance of this project to the client will equal the effort I give it, for once. Normally it seems that I bust my butt and then get paid peanuts. This time I will bust my butt and then be able to afford go to Italy and finally see Michelangelo’s David in person!

But first I need to do my job!

I just started reading Cormack McCarthy’s “No Country For Old Men”. Now this book has been around a little while. All my American pals have already read it I think. But here in Mexico, where we live on mañana-mañana-time I feel justified writing about a book that’s already been read by my American brethren.

I love this book. Each page that turns signals the coming of the end. The settings and descriptions remind me of Tony Hillerman, who’s work I love. And the depth of the characters and some of their particular speech patterns, and their tragedy remind me of William Faulkner.

William Faulkner raised me without knowing it. My father was a writer and was pretty widely published in his genre, and HE loved, lived, breathed Faulkner and would-have-smoked-him if he could. I didn’t realize this when I was young. But as an adult my mom handed me some Faulkner and told me how my father couldn’t get enough of him. And when I read Faulkner I understood the rest about my father, he just made sense after that. The rural southern upbringing, the need to escape to a cultured place and the failure to adapt to it, the poverty of the soul and the depth of spirit, the misery.

So I’m racing through this book, loving every page that flies by. And knowing that the Coen brothers have made this book into a movie gives the whole thing another edge. I’ve seen every Coen brothers movie made (I think) and many of them I’ve seen something between several and many times. The Coen brothers went to the same college I attended, so seeing their movies was pretty much a social requirement during college. Fortunately they are so good that continuing to see their films has not been any work at all.

The opening pages of the book read like a Coen brothers’ film. There are plenty of intelligent characters who feel real and tangible and whose dramas and insights make me think. And there are a lot of guns, all kinds of guns. And there’s so much action that it’s hard, very hard, to decide where to stick in the book mark and end that reading session.

This morning the one and only reason I put the book down was because someone, who owes me money, called and wanted to meet within an hour. Not much short of that or a family emergency would have convinced me to put that book down this morning. In fact, forget blogging, I’m going to go read it right now.

And I won’t tell you how it ends because you gotta go see the movie, which for some asinine reason doesn’t come out in Mexico until February (!). I may just have to fly to the States to see it before that.

Lots of unrelated and discordant thoughts are running through my head. Sorry for sharing the chaos.

First, my friend CancunCanuck has FINALLY started blogging!! It was a good thing waiting (and waiting) to happen. Watch her, she will need only moments to find her “blog voice”, instead of the full year of suffering it takes most bloggers. She is a sensitive and skilled writer with a big heart. (You rock Girl!)

Oh, and one of my cats is driving me nuts. He just wants to go out all the time and he cries sometimes for hours. But each time I let him leave he’s gone for days, and comes back with 3 or 4 ticks on him; not to mention that I have to listen to the husband whine the whole time the cat is gone. So it’s one whiner or the other. Jeez. Get over it guys.

I posted a while ago that I was worried that someone living nearby the condo we bought was a hit man. Well, he was, just like we thought, he got busted, he was forced to move out…so we are no longer watching for bodies falling from the roof. Now someone just needs to get rid of the drug dealer who lives nearby and fills the courtyard with pot smoke 18 times a day.

The condo is coming along. Our renter comes tomorrow to finalize contract language and see the changes. One change being that today we had a stationary gas tank installed on the roof. I hope no one steals it. The stationary gas tank will save our tenant money, since it’s cheaper to fill than the small portable dangerous tanks that most people have in rentals here. And we won’t worry about her blowing herself up hooking and unhooking those portable tanks, the only people messing with the tank will be the guys from the gas company.

And in other news I’ve fallen in love with that orange cat that I took off the street a couple of months ago. My sister agreed to take her, and I could let her go within the family. But I’m about sure that this is one of the best cats ever to walk this planet, so if she doesn’t go to someone in the family, who can continue the love exactly where I leave off, then I won’t let go of this cat.

It’s stunning to think that this amazing lovely creature was starving and alone and dirty living on the street. How could the universe leave her out like that? I can think of some people who might deserve to live under a car in the dirt like that, but not this magic cat.

And that leads me to my motto of the day, and it’s only for today, because it’s mean, and I try not to be mean, mostly. “A friendly cat is better than a catty friend.”

When I turned 35 my husband gave me Lasik surgery for my birthday. I think he was sick of seeing me suffer the pain of hard contact lenses. Back then I had to carry eye drops everywhere and could never tell when a speck of dust would force me to pull over the car, or dismount my mountain bike, it was a royal pain in the eye. So I got the surgery. And I stopped being nearsighted. And I never looked back (couldn’t resist, sorry).

Except I didn’t stop thinking like I was nearsighted. I still look at things closely. I still find myself stopping to enjoy the way the light hits a flower or a spider web. And often I find myself training my camera on things other people wouldn’t bother with. Sometimes it’s a fresh tire track in soft mud, or the bark of a tree, or the rust on a pipe that’s lying next to the road. If it has an interesting texture or color, or great light, it becomes the subject of my myopic photography.

People around probably think I’m weird, because I do stop whatever I’m doing when I see something that must be photographed. But maybe that’s the curse of my training as an artist. The art comes first, always.

Here are some recent examples of the stuff that stops me and makes me pull out the camera:

I just spent 2 days and 1 night at a high end spa and retreat center. Don’t be jealous, it was for work. And even though I had a gorgeous room overlooking the Caribbean Sea I stayed up half the night worrying over details of the contract. But still, life could be worse, I mean what better place to toss and turn than in that gorgeous room with that amazing view.

But I think the hardest part was not the business stuff, it was the lack of cats. If that hotel had say 20 cats running around, visiting you in your room, sleeping on your feet, sitting on you when you hang out in the common areas, it would have been perfect for me.

I’m so used to having lots of cats around that I just don’t feel normal sleeping anyplace without a feline friend nearby. In fact I’ll bet that half the reason for my tossing and turning that night was simply the lack of a cat anywhere on the bed. It was just too weird and I couldn’t take it.

But now I’m back home, with a cat under the chair, and one in my office window, and one in my paper recycling basket and two more in the hall, and one more wandering around whining about how he should be allowed to go out. And I’m back to feeling normal. And I think I’ve solved the problems with the retreat center contract too, so all is good.

At this moment my husband, who is a Mexican immigration agent, is in a bus traveling to the border of Guatemala and Mexico. He’s got a bunch of illegal immigrants in the bus who, I suppose, are about to get deported from Mexico. And they’ve got several police cars escorting them, just in case someone needs to get shot at or something.

The drive is going to take something like 24 hours, largely because many of the roads they need to travel are dangerous narrow mountain roads. And apparently some of the detainees have been acting up, protesting, complaining; and some of them are quite well-fed, big burly guys.

But the bus has TVs on it and they are playing crappy American movies dubbed in Spanish. So that ought to calm down those illegal immigrants right?

Most of the illegal immigrants that get caught in Mexico were planning to cross Mexico and enter the US along its southern border. Most of them want that American dream thing. Most of them want what you see in those American movies. The big car, the blond, the palatial house with the green lawn, the pockets full of dollars.

Truly the bad American movies shouldn’t calm the detainees down…the movies should remind them of the fact that their collective American dream is slipping farther away with each passing kilometer. But we can hope that instead of thinking that way, that the detainees are instead doing what any self-respecting person does when forced to watch a bad American movie and that is to fall asleep.

But still, I’m a little worried.

My dog Sam is something else. I mean it. He definitely not a dog. Not yet anyway.

I suspect this has something to do with the fact that the first year or so of his life was spent as a street dog. Because in his first year of life he didn’t learn normal dog things. He didn’t learn that he’s supposed to LIKE dog food. He didn’t learn what to do when you put a leash on him. He didn’t learn that it’s ok to WANT to go out side the house to pee.

Instead this non-dog of mine thinks that he’s supposed to eat grapes. And mixed-green salad with ranch dressing. And eggs, and garbanzo beans, and soup. And Cheerios. And whatever greasy tacos my husband gives him. And of course, that old stand by, lots and lots of cat food. But dog food? Why ever would he eat that?

And instead of wanting to go outside when it’s time to pee he’d rather hide under the bed or under the coffee table and suffer a full bladder. We literally have to drag him out the door when we suspect it’s time. And if it’s raining out? Oh, then you’d think we were torturing his eternal soul, he’d rather have his bladder bust than have to set foot out in the rain.

As for the leash, well he’s learning quickly that leash means walk (or run) and that means fun, and so he’s learning how to walk on a leash, almost like a real dog.

Now my last dog, she was a REAL dog. She ate dog food and everything. And if SHE ever, for one second, thought that I was maybe possibly going to put on my running shoes then she would tackle me in her excitement to go out for a run.

But Sam, my man, you are not a real dog yet. You have not made the connection between running shoes and going running. It’s not that hard boy. In fact my running shoes are the only shoes I own that have laces, it’s all in the laces boy. Sometime maybe you’ll get there. About when you start liking dog food, right? Right, of course, sure.

We’ve found the perfect renter for our condo. Or she found us, but whatever, she’s still perfect. Problem is that the place is taking forever to get finished. It doesn’t help that we are only finding about 12 to 14 hours a week to work over there. We’ve both got tons of other stuff going on, and we are both working full time on top of it all. And so the condo gets nicer one wall, one surface, one little bit at a time.

The painting is nearly done. The bathroom sink is brand new and is lovely. The 25 year old louvered windows have all had their crank(y) handles replaced and each has a new screen now. We’ve bought new appliances. We’ve installed new mini-blinds. The electrical has been updated, each outlet has proper polarity now (a rare thing in Mexico), and we’ve added another much-needed circuit.

But the kitchen still needs a new counter top and a new sink installed, and we’ve got a couple of closets that still need to be finished. And there’s a list of other small things. We could get it all done in two weeks if we could stop everything else that’s going on. But, I at least, have so much other stuff going on that this idea is just a pipe dream.

Now a normal person would think that hey, this being Mexico, land of cheap labor, that we should just hire some help. But there are two problems with that. One being you get what you pay for, meaning cheap labor often means you just have to look over their shoulder and get them to re-do things anyway. Easier to do it yourself.

And the other issue being that we are both actually very good at this building restoration thing. It’s kind of the perfect hobby for us as a couple because, except for all the bickering we do, we have complimentary skill sets, similar taste and a similar sense of what constitutes a job well done. And so we won’t consider hiring help, even though we are too busy to do the work.

I guess will keep plugging away a bit at a time, and hope to have it all done by Nov. 15, which is when the renter has to be out of her old place.

Wish us luck. And send pizza.

It’s supposed to be cooling off by now. A couple of weeks ago I actually had to get a blanket out of of the closet and put it on the bed because we were waking up cold in the morning. We sleep with the windows open year round (except when it rains) so we are pretty tuned in to the temperature outside.

But after allowing myself to get comfortable with thinking that the heat of summer was over, and that the perfect winter-in-Cancun weather was upon us I’m now finding that it was just a tease. A false start. Because now it’s sticky again, icky sticky, like you wake up and start sweating and you need a shower an hour after you’ve had one. Ick.