There’s snow on the ground, SNOW! I mean S-N-O-W! I can’t remember the last time I saw snow. I’m telling people that it’s been 3 years since I last had to deal with that stuff, but I don’t actually remember, it could be 4 years or more. But the interesting thing is that snow is not freaking me out the way I thought it would, in fact, I kind of like it.

The first couple of days I was here in Colorado I was freezing every minute. On Tuesday I had to take 3 hot showers just to warm up enough to not shiver constantly (and YES I was wearing proper clothing). I was about to go buy some electric socks. But then on Wednesday morning it was snowing when I woke up. I lay in bed, cozy and warm, and watched these fat flakes fall out of the sky. And it was OK.

I’ve had a few moments of being chilly since then, but I’m no longer deeply cold. People here are telling me that I just needed a couple of days for my blood to thicken. Don’t like the sound of that! I’m just grateful that I’m not shivering anymore.

As you may have noticed, I have a problem with memes that ask dumb questions. I suspect that my irritation with them may improve my writing, but I still don’t like answering them. So my daughter and I set out this morning to write a meme that asked questions we want answers to. This meme has 20 questions and the answers will involve either a list of 3 things or a revelation about the last time something happened. I hope you enjoy it.

What are your top 3 favorite foods?
Blueberries, cheesecake and cappuccino (coffee IS a food).

What was the last book you read and would you recommend it?
The last book I read was called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. It’s beautifully written, but it was first published in 1940 and deals with some issues that seem out of date to me. So I recommend it but you should know what you are in for.

What are your top 3 favorite places?
My bed, Colorado’s mountains and Bash Bish Falls.

What was the last lie you told?
I told a friend I was too busy to see them, I wasn’t.

What are your favorite 3 sports (to watch or participate in)?
I love to watch ice hockey, I love to run, I love the sport of cycling even though I don’t ride much.

What was the last movie you watched and would you recommend it?
The Fifth Element for the 7th time and I absolutely recommend it.

List 3 things you can see outside of the nearest window.
A green plastic kid’s push toy that is upside down, a large field surrounded by expensive home and a guy walking his Golden Retriever.

Where was the last place you went?
To Micheal’s Craft store in southeast Boulder, Colorado. We bought painting supplies.

What are your top 3 favorite “good causes” or charities?
My favorite cause is the environment, I’ve supported GreenPeace for years. I also am a big supporter of animal rights; I have supported PETA off and on and was a vegetarian for 11 years. And I support charities that help people, children, elderly, homeless etc. I could go on but I only asked for 3…

What was the last thing you did for someone else?
I made my daughter a fruit smoothie with blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and cranberry juice in it.

Name 3 places you have never been that you want to visit.
Venice, Italy; Barcelona, Spain and Peru.

What was the last thing you threw in the garbage/recycling?
I rinsed out and recycled a glass apple juice jar.

Name 3 things on your bedside table.
A new Coach handbag I just got yesterday, a book called Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (have not started it yet) and a magazine about search engine optimization.

Describe or name the last piece of art you looked at.
A badly painted scene of somewhere in Greece, the scene is of a patio overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. There are plants in pots, a table with chairs and you can see the side of a building with a window. At first glance it’s a pleasing scene with nice colors. At second glance you see that the painter painted shadows going in all directions, some elements don’t cast shadows at all and others have incomplete shadows. It’s truly an awful painting of a lovely location.

What are the top 3 things that your job requires you to think about?
I’m a web designer so I think primarily about visual design, how to convey the right information at the right time and how to anticipate what would be intuitive for users.

What was the last musical or theatrical event that you attended?
I went to a bar in Cancun called Acustica and watched several Mexican folks singers in a row. It was a lovely evening.

What are the first 3 things you would do if you won the lottery?
First I would probably tell my family, then I would invest the money so I can enjoy the interest from it, then I would take a month off and ponder what’s next.

Describe or name the last serious injury or illness you had?
The damn dog knocked me down a couple of months ago when we were running. My hand and elbow still hurt.

What are the top 3 things that you wish you could do?
I wish I could know my father now that I am an adult (he died when I was 15), I wish I could travel more often and I wish I could live closer to my kid right now.

What was the last thing that someone said to you that you will remember forever?
My daughter told me the other day that even though she’s had to live away from me (and with her dad) for parts of her childhood that she feels I still pay more attention to her than her dad does and has. That will be with me for a long time.

I’m going to tag a few of my fellow bloggers to prompt them to answer this meme. But guys I know it’s a long one, so no undone-meme guilt if you don’t get through it. I’m tagging CancunCanuck, Trauma the Drama, Canadian Cat and Mexico Way.

Just a quick post from Colorado. First off, I’m staying in a home which has no furry creatures in it, and it’s very weird. There should be cats at least. I always feel this way when I travel, the lack of critters screws with my head.

Speaking of critters, I’ve seen zero street dogs since coming here, but I have seen dozens and dozens of people walking and playing with their dogs in parks. I almost never see people walking their dogs in Cancun. Today I also saw a number of dogs that were hanging with their owners at outdoor cafes, that is another thing you never see in Cancun.

Since arriving in the good ‘ole U.S.A. I have been eating nothing but ethnic food. In Cancun I eat Mexican food and occasionally Chinese food when we go out and not much else. But here I’ve got my pick of food from all over. Today we ate at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant (they don’t give you forks, you eat with your hands). Tomorrow we will get Thai food. And one of the best things about eating here is that there are so many vegetarian choices in the restaurants. The only reason I eat meat at all is to make it simpler to eat in restaurants that don’t know how to feed vegetarians. So I’m enjoying being able to get good healthy vegetarian food here.

The only big bummer here is the stupid weather. People here are all excited because winter is lifting and it’s getting warm in that wet, freezing ass cold, Colorado kind of way, in other words it’s not warm but people here are so burned out on winter that they think it is. I’m freezing here. I slept under 2 huge quilts, with the heat on, and wore my sweatpants to bed. What is that? Why do I suffer from the cold so much? I’ve always been like this, even when I lived up here in the frigid north and was supposedly used to this weather I was constantly cold.

The good news is that my kid is doing really well here. She’s become a bike mechanic, and has decided she loves acting, she’s working out a lot, and her manners have improved. She’s doing well in school, especially in math. She’s taken to reading Scientific American every month and is now saying she wants to be a physicist. She complains that her dad is too attentive to what she’s up to, but if that’s her only real complaint then it ain’t much of one. She and I are having a nice time together. Today we bought some painting supplies so we can make some art together, that should be fun.

Tomorrow I am off, up into the wild blue yonder. Anyone actually know what a yonder is? Tomorrow I head to Colorado to hang with my kid for a week. We’ve got lots of plans, mostly involving buying underwear (b/c she’s too shy to even tell her dad that she’s grown out of her bras) and having one too many frappuccinos at Starbucks, we will eat at our favorite pasta place and she will try to drag me downhill skiing (I love downhill skiing but am very rusty).

I have not even started packing clothes yet. But I did gather papers and files for my briefcase, I’ve got almost every password I’ve ever used, I have the phone numbers of almost every friend I have there, I have several web client files and an active file for a real estate deal I’m doing right now.

I have made some piles of things to shove in my luggage, but am completely at a loss for what clothes to bring. I know damn well what March in Colorado is like, it’s wet; it’s cold but not always, it might snow or it might be hot. But still, the concept of putting a coat, and a sweater, and a long sleeve shirt in my bag feels really weird. Second nature at this point would be to throw a bikini, a couple pairs of shorts and a couple t-shirts in a bag and call it a day. But if I do that all it will mean is that I will be clothes shopping by Tuesday. So I will do the weird thing and dig out some closed-toe shoes and find that old LL Bean fleece jacket I have and grab those never-worn bluejeans from the drawer.

I’m going to miss the kitties, the dog and the husbandito. I’m also going to miss the friends I talk with every day here. It will feel really odd not to check in every day with them. But it will be good to have a change of scenery.

In celebration of the fact that I’m heading to one of the whitest parts of the U.S. I leave you with a link to a blog which cracks me up. It’s called Stuff White People Like. And it kills me every time I read it. Enjoy.

CancunCanuck tagged me with this meme. I often like memes but sometimes don’t remember to do them when I’ve been tagged (so sorry). This one seems to me to be very biased towards the western notion of what it means to be privileged, but I’ll go for it anyway and will include commentary.

The premise is that you bold all the statements that are true. The more bold lines one has, the more privileged one’s formative years were.

Father went to college – And he wrecked his knee playing on the college basketball team too.

Father finished college

Mother went to college

Mother finished college – Couldn’t keep her out of college, she completed a Master’s degree and a Doctoral degree, she almost finished another Master’s. She finished her Bachelor’s degree in 3 years with honors. A regular brainiac she is.

Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor – Mom has a Doctoral degree in divinity.

Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers – Well I went to high school for only two years, cut lots of classes and can’t remember a single teacher other than my 9th grade science teacher, who reminded me of my father, only with thicker glasses. I’m going to say yes since this is a stupid question. Teachers routinely do not share a whole lot about their lives with their students so how would you know this anyway.

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home

Had more than 500 books in your childhood home – My mother is a book addict, my father would read and watch tv at the same time, when I moved to Mexico fully 50% of the boxes we dragged here contained books.

Were read children’s books by a parent – And adult books and cookbooks and poetry and art books.

Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 – I had private art lessons for years. And I had private flute lessons from a drunk who showed up for them drunk! I remember hating swimming lessons. And I hated gymnastics lessons too. Probably there were other classes I don’t remember. I went to college when I was 15 so this seems like a silly question.

Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 – Yes dear.

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively – This is a stupid question! If they weren’t, would I be aware of it? What do people who dress and talk like me look and sound like? I wear shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops except when I don’t! I talk like a normal, if opinionated, person except when I don’t. I don’t dress like a junkie hooker homeless person and I don’t smell bad, so I’m taking this one.

Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 – And a checking account too, and a couple of savings accounts, can I bold it twice? This has nothing to do with privilege, this has to do with it being easier on my mom if I was responsible for my own purchases.

Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs – My mom worked her butt off to send me to college. And I got several grants because I’m so cute and lovable, and I had several scholarships because I’m a nerdy brain and was a good student. I also had some student loans, which I paid off by the time I was 26.

Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs – Finally one I don’t have to make bold! The students that I knew who were studying solely on daddy’s dime were the ones most likely to blow off class, not study and drop out. I felt sorry for many of them because they didn’t understand how fortunate they were to be in such a great college.

Went to a private high school – Went to a crappy public high school, then switched to the best public high school in the state, which was also crappy. Then went to college.

Went to summer camp – Yes, and I hated every minute of it. Summer vacation not about being up at the crack of dawn and living for weeks on someone else’s schedule. Summer camp was torture.

Had a private tutor before you turned 18 – How does this line up with having private lessons? I didn’t need a tutor. I had private study partners in college. And I tutored other students in Art History.

Family vacations involved staying at hotels – Another stupid question. Yes, they did. Sometimes. But the better ones involved staying at Grandma’s house! Or going camping in Acadia National Park! Yes family let’s go sit in a hotel room, what a great vacation.

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 – Most was. My mom used to sew lots of clothes for us too.

Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them – Mom gave me a car when I turned 18. It was a lemon but I fell in love anyway. And I drove it to about 50 Grateful Dead concerts.

There was original art in your house when you were a child – Another dumb one. Do you want me to admit that we had black velvet posters of big hair bands in my house? Is it a privilege to have painters in the family? My grandmother didn’t have running water in her home until after I was born, yet she painted non-stop for 40 years. My other grandmother was also a painter, and my mom painted a little, and my dad would draw cartoons on napkins, and my sister is an artist. I even have some of my own work on the walls. I swim in original artwork.

Had a phone in your room before you turned 18 – Yes, had my own apartment too, so I had my own kitchen, and my own bathroom, and my own rent to pay, and my own cobwebs to clean and my own icy walk to shovel. Helloooo!

You and your family lived in a single family house – Yes.

Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home – Yes we always owned a nice house.

Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course – I don’t frickin’ remember. I think so, because I remember taking the ACT test to get into college early.

Had your own TV in your room in High School – Oh so now it’s a sign of privilege that your parents are stupid enough to allow you to rot your brain in the privacy of your own room. No I did not have a tv in my room during the 2 years I went to high school and I’m glad.

Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College – Opened my first IRA when I was 25 I think.

Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16 – Yes I flew on flying crowd killers lots of times before I was 16.

Went on a cruise with your family – Did not, did not want to, can’t imagine that my mom would like a cruise. She’s more of a go out in the woods kind of vacationer.

Went on more than one cruise with your family – Duh.

Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up – Of course.

You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family – My mother owned a chain saw and cut and split and stacked all our firewood herself. I can say I was not aware of how much she spent on buying firewood. But I was aware of the effort. I was not aware of how much we spent on heating oil (to supplement the wood stove) either.

Whomever came up with this list of questions has some fairly limited ideas about what privilege means. I grew up lower middle class, yet look at how many questions I bolded. It’s true that I had a very privileged childhood in many ways. Still, I always wanted tennis lessons and we could never afford them.

I don’t believe in sin, as you’ve probably figured out. But I very much believe in morality and in knowing right from wrong. And I believe that it’s very wrong to neglect the feelings and sensitivities of other people, especially if you purport to care about them. Of course I screw this up myself all the time, but I work very hard not to and when I fail it is because I’m not aware that I’ve said or done something that might hurt another. If I knew it would hurt someone, I would never do it.

In friendship I work to actively listen and to try to see things from my friend’s point of view as much as possible. And I try to be supportive in any way I can. But sometimes it feels as though I hold myself to a standard that others do not. Sometimes it feels like many of the people who call me a “friend” do not have any real interest in me or how my life is going.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m a resource for my certain of my “friends”, people I thought I was close to, who have been calling only when they need benefit of my knowledge or connections, but not to set up time to hang out. And I’m getting sort of tired of being a resource. Maybe I should start charging for my time.

When I discuss this with my “real” friends the conclusion is always that I should be more picky about which friendships I put my energy into. And that’s true. I’ve always had the attitude that I should try to make friends with everyone, unless they are completely uninteresting to me or crazy or unsavory in some significant way. I’ve never approached friendship from the point of view of being discriminating, it seems to me to go against the nature of being friendly.

For the most part my friendship oriented attitude has meant that I’ve always had a lot of people in my circle of friends (which may be why I am seen as a resource, because I do know, and am on good terms with, tons of people).

In fact, I never lost a friend, until last year. And I’m still sad about the loss of that friendship. But I also realize that that person was not ever a loyal friend to me, not really, that friendship was an illusion on several levels. My kid saw it from the beginning and told me not to be friends with her. And my best friend here saw it too and tried to protect me several times. And my husband recognized it in his “guy” way. But I didn’t see it myself until I got hurt.

I got hurt because I gave more than I got, because I was loyal and she was not. And because I wasn’t picky enough about which friendships I put my energy into.

So I’m realizing that maybe I need to not worry so much about other people’s feelings and start worrying about my own. And if someone hurts me, if someone calls me over and over and never asks how I’m doing, if someone treats me like a resource instead of as someone to hang out with, well then I may just have to send a bill for my time.

When I first came to Cancun someone told me that once you had made it through a year in Cancun you were from Cancun, you were a Cancunense, a native. This was a recognition of both the fact that it’s hard to adjust to living here and also of the fact that (because Cancun is so young) no one over the age of 25 is actually from here. Cancun has no elders, it has no older people who have lived here all their lives the way normal towns do. And so the requirement for becoming a native, a Cancunense, is simply to survive here for a year.

And Cancun is difficult to adjust to. At least I have found it to be. I think that when older people move here, with money, to retire here in a lovely home, they probably do not find Cancun so hard to adjust to. But the people who move here as working-age adults do seem to find it hard to adjust to, especially if they face making a living here as a foreigner.

The things I did which most helped me to adjust were to make friends and to find people I could trust. At first it was hard to make friends, but then one day someone invited me to a gathering and I met people who introduced me to more people and my social circle began to expand exponentially.

Eventually, as the circle grew, I found Cancun’s elders, it’s transplanted elders. Especially a group of, primarily American, women who have each lived here 10, 15, 20 or 25 years. These women have seen it all, lived through everything Cancun can throw at you, they’ve fallen in love here, raised kids here, had careers here. They’ve been broke here, they’ve been rich here. They’ve seen loved ones die here, they’ve done it all and they’ve made it through.

And as I met them and got to know them I found that, almost without exception, every one of them reached out to me and gave me a tip or piece of advice that eased my adjustment to living here. This group treated me with a subtle relentless generosity of spirit and of affection that I’ve never found in another community.

When I look back, I remember that Cancun seemed like such an unfriendly place when I arrived. But that sense slowly abated and has been replaced by a sense of community and belonging that I have never felt anywhere outside my own family.

It’s a wonderful feeling, of course, but I miss my kid and long to return to Colorado to live with her. Yet I’m afraid that a return to the social climate there will be a huge let down for me. I truly don’t know if I can be happy there. I lived there for 14 years and while I know hundreds of people there still, I only have a few good friends there. I don’t know if my ability to make friends has gotten stronger since I left there, or if this has something to do with the difference between the cultures of these two places. But I’m afraid that it is the culture and not that I’ve just suddenly become a social butterfly…flap, flap, flap.

I’m a bit frazzled. I’ve got several real estate buyers in town right now, and I’ve got several web design deadlines in the next two days. Not a good mix. Real estate is this open-ended, lengthy schmooze process. While web design takes total concentration with no distractions or other appointments. I’m seriously considering pulling an all-nighter, I feel like I’m 18 again (and I mean that only in the worst possible way).

My daughter called and said that her agnostic/atheist father had just given her a 40 year old Bible and “how cool is that?” (I’m wondering if he wanted to make space on the bookshelf). And I’m thinking that it’s cool that she thinks that’s cool, because she was not raised with a religion, she was raised to choose her own religion, if she wants to. One of my recent conversations with her involved me reading long passages from the Old Testament to her over the phone and providing my ribbing commentary along the way (there was quite a bit of giggling, especially about not coveting thy neighbor’s ass). Anyway, I think it’s great that she’s think her Bible is cool. Perhaps it’s time for her that grandmother who has a Ph.D in Religious Studies to give her grand daughter a call… Oh Mom?

Meanwhile the next book my Book Club is going to read will be The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever edited by Christopher Hitchens. One member of the Book Club stated that she “didn’t believe in Atheists”, I’m pretty sure she voted against this book, but she lost (we have a very democratic voting system). Regardless of viewpoint I’m sure that book will make for a great discussion. And a great discussion is the only possible excuse for all the wine we drink at those meetings.

Besides musings on God and his lack, and real estate and my lack of focus on web stuff my big thing right now is my cats. Surprised right? Flaco’s death has made me appreciate the living. So I’m trying to actually pet each of the living breathing 9 cats every day. This is harder than it sounds, since several of them hide under beds night and day and only come out for meals. I’m kind of forcing love on them, I feel a bit odd, “you will accept my love, like it or not”. But my eldest and fattest, and probably most frail, Grace, the 17 year old cat that I rescued back in Colorado, is appreciating all the attention. She’s even waking me up at night by purring in my ear. So I think I’m on the right track.

I was just banging around on the internet and found that Google has been up to something cool, take a look at these:

• Google Sky
• Google Moon
• Google Mars

I’m kind of a Wikipedia junkie, I even use Wikipedia as a verb, as in “Hang on a sec, I’ll Wikipedia that”. Today I came across the Wikipedia article traffic statistics page, which provides information about how often different Wikipedia pages are viewed. But most interesting to me was the list of the most viewed pages.

In the month of February 2008 the most viewed normal page (not the home page or a search page) was, not surprisingly, a page titled “Valentine’s_Day”, at number 6. It was viewed 2,368,531 times during the month (well, the majority of views were on February 14).

The next most viewed normal page, at number 7, was the “Barack_Obama” page, which was viewed 2,625,243 times during February. That’s a lot of interest, in fact it’s more than 90,000 views per day.

Number 9 was “John_McCain” which was viewed 1,614,941 times (that’s more than 1 million fewer viewings than Barack’s page had).

I got curious about where Hillary Clinton’s page was in the list, I started scrolling down and didn’t see her name. So I used the browser’s search function and found her down the page at #77. The “Hillary_Clinton” page was viewed 646,899 times in February (that’s almost 2 million fewer viewings than Barack’s page).

In fact, in February there were a whole slew of things that Wikipedia users read about more often than they read Hillary’s page, including:

Sex at #13
Zacarias_Moussaoui at #20
Amy_Winehouse at #39
Canada at #46
Lost_(TV_series) at #32
Global_warming at #51
Abraham_Lincoln at #54
United_Kingdom at #55
Scientology at #56
George_W._Bush at #63

I’m not sure what all of this means, but I must say it didn’t surprise me. I find Lost and Global Warming and Sex and Abraham Lincoln all to be more interesting than I do Hillary Clinton. Not that I won’t vote for her if she gets the nomination, I will, but she simply doesn’t interest me.

Barack Obama on the other hand does interest me. In fact I’ve subscribed to his web site’s RSS feed, so I can stay up to date on whatever his camp is up to. And I find myself visiting the Barack Obama web site pretty often (it’s a well designed site with nice graphics and I like looking at it). I guess I’ve become a Barack Obama junkie as well.