Right now my book club is reading Christopher Hitchens’ Portable Atheist. And I have also just finished Hitchens’ God is Not Great. So at the moment I am well-steeped in religious philosophies, and especially in the shortcomings, of the world’s major organized religions.

I won’t get into the big stuff right now (like whether God exists), maybe later (just you wait). But I do want to address a couple of things that always seem to get said to me in times of need (and as such seem to fit into the religious space).

One of them is:

Everything happens for a reason.

This is said with absolute conviction. To me this is like saying “your keys are always in the last place you look.” Of course they are in the last place you look because you are not so stupid as to keep looking for your keys once you’ve found them, are you? If you look for a reason, you find a reason. Did it happen for a reason? Or were there consequences of that event that didn’t suck? It’s not very likely that every consequence of an event will be bad. You can always find a silver lining and attach a big pile of meaning to it. So it all happens for a reason, a reason that we recognize after the fact, almost as a justification for an event that we are unhappy enough about to bother to say “everything happens for a reason.”

If you followed me through that then I’ll keep with it…

The next thing people always seem to say, or maybe it’s just Mom (who has a Ph.D in Religious Studies) who says it, is:

We are always where we need to be, learning what we need to learn.

This is patent bullshit. I don’t need to be raped and murdered to learn whatever special lesson that holds. We humans are capable of great subtly and, dare I say it, inference. We can watch someone else go through hell and realize that perhaps we don’t need to go there ourselves. (Well, sometimes, some of us, with some kinds of hell.)

There are some lessons I don’t need. I don’t need my attorney to be shot in the face 2 blocks from my home (yes this happened), it’s not a lesson that’s important to me. I don’t need my husband to be afraid of being kidnapped when we are eating shitty tacos from a street vendor (he is). I don’t need to see yet another street dog that has been killed by a car at high speed and lays, pathetically, in the middle of the highway getting slowly ground to an unrecognizable pulp by the repeated cars that hit it (this happens daily here). I don’t need to walk down the beach and find large quantities of drugs washed up on the shore (I know nothing).

If you think these are lessons worth learning then be my guest, fucking learn them! I think this statement is something that is said by people who don’t have enough lessons under their belts and feel compelled to latch onto whatever lesson passes by (sorry Mom). And maybe, just maybe, there are more lessons to learn when you live in a 3rd world country, where suffering is a common everyday experience.

Thank you, good night and God bless…or whatever.

I’m feeling honored. A close friend of mine, a single woman who is 20 years my elder, asked today if I would be one of her emergency contacts in case she gets sick. Perhaps this sounds morbid, but I am deeply honored to be seen as stable and trustworthy enough to be on the short list of people she would let herself need if all hell broke loose.

I’m also honored because Gary over at The Mexile complimented my blog. He writes well and his blog is really about living in Mexico, so it has real value to people interested in Mexico. In fact, Gary’s blog makes me interested in Mexico City which is something that husbandito, who is a chilango (person from Mexico City), cannot manage to do. I think Gary was just being nice; my blog is actually just a long grumpy rant written by someone who types too quickly, does too little and doesn’t really want to live in Mexico. But I appreciate the compliment.

Sometimes I know exactly what I want to blog about. Sometimes I have several distinct blog post ideas in my head. Other times I feel the blog post ideas build up but don’t seem to be able to separate one from another. This stalls my process and usually means I don’t blog at all, which makes the whole thing worse, of course.

This past week was like that, 15 different half-formed blog posts floated through my head, but none of them became defined enough to warrant any actual typing. So I’m posting now just to post something, to clear my brain and get back to intentional blogging.

My illness of last week became a week-long fever (hence my foggy-headed state). I functioned for part of most days, but by Friday I was just a feverish lump. Friday and Saturday I didn’t accomplish shit. I hate days like that, forced days off that are no fun. If I’m going to not work I want to enjoy it, dammit. But I’m finally better now, I feel strong and fully here again. It’s about time.

The last time I had a cold was almost 5 years ago, just after we moved to Cancun from Colorado (USA). And I contracted that cold on a trip back to Colorado, I didn’t catch it here. When we lived in Colorado I got at least one cold a winter, sometimes more. And with all the dust in the air there (it’s high desert there) my sinuses would bother me often, cold or no cold. So I was a tissue-carrying girl back there.

Here in Cancun I don’t get colds. At least I didn’t. I’m coming down with one now. Husbandito came home from work on Saturday suffering the early symptoms of a cold. By Sunday it looked to me like a mild flu, he had fever and chills and sniffles and was generally miserable. He’s better today (Monday), the fever has broken and he’s feeling better. But now I’m getting it. Bah humbug! I don’t want to get sick. One of the best things about living here is that I don’t get sick, and now here I am with a headache and a stuffy nose and that pre-fever feeling. Yuck!

On the other hand I guess I should be happy that catching a cold is news, right?

I was just browsing around in Gary Denness’ Flickr Account (he’s a blogger who lives in Mexico City) and I was struck, once again, by the realization that being surrounded by good architecture is critical to the health of my soul.

This is all my parents’ fault. Of course. When I was little they bought a huge beautiful Victorian house (this followed living in a tent for a year). The house had soaring 15 foot ceilings and 6 bay windows, 2 of them in the living room. It had 8 bedrooms and 2 kitchens. It had 3 floors, a full basement, a barn, several outbuildings and so much more that any real estate agent would get writer’s cramp trying to take it all down.

But most of what that house had was classy architecture. It was beautiful inside and out. Every surface was nice, from the polished wooden floors to the fancy woodwork around the windows to the plush red carpeting on the wide staircases. There was room for everything and the spaces honored the people in them. It was a house that graced its occupants, it made you feel good. And everyone loved being in that house, it was always full of friends and family and neighbors and stray animals and I even remember a duck, once.

That house spoiled me. No house I’ve lived in since has felt so generous or so gracious. No house I’ve lived in since has made me feel honored like that. But when I see really beautiful buildings I get a taste of that back. And someday I’d like to buy another house that I really, really love. But this one can be a little smaller, that way maybe I can afford to, you know, paint it.

P.S. Check out Gary’s blog: The Mexile.

I’ve long been a fan of Vanity Fair magazine. It’s chock-full of intelligent articles on things I wouldn’t necessarily make myself read (much) about (like the art scene in China and how much the Iraq war is actually costing). And these days, with Bush in office, Vanity Fair is quite critical of U.S. Government, which I fully appreciate. Vanity Fair also has fashion ads which I actually don’t see anywhere else (because I don’t read trashy women’s magazines). So I get to keep up a little with the world of fashion without having to, you know, stoop.

In the back of each issue of Vanity Fair is the Proust Questionnaire; each month they ask a different celebrity to answer the questions. I’ve always wondered what my own answers would be, so we are going to find out:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A vacation where I have time to exercise for many hours everyday and still have time to read and to play.

What is your greatest fear?
Being bored.

What is your most marked characteristic?
No idea, perhaps my busy self-deprecating mind.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I sometimes have trouble saying “no” when I should.

Which living person do you most despise?
President George Bush.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Moving to Mexico and using so much of my savings in the process.

What is your current state of mind?
Happy and tired.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Chastity (make love not war).

On what occasion do you lie?
When the truth hurts or when I am not brave enough.

What do you dislike about your appearance?
My arms.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
The ability to listen.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
The ability be realistic.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“You know”, “I mean”, there are others I can’t think of.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My husband and my daughter.

When and where were you happiest?
The day I married my husband, April 6, 2001, on “the Hill” in Boulder, Colorado.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would have started taking better care of my body at a younger age.

Which talent would you most like to have?
I always wanted to be a rock star, what do you call the “rock star” talent?

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Raising my daughter to think for herself.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A cat.

Where would you like to live?
On the coast in Oregon, in the woods in New Hampshire, near my daughter in Colorado, near a trail up a mountain surrounded by wildflowers.

What is your most treasured possession?
My bed, or my hard disk drive, one or the other.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Living without hope.

What is your favorite occupation?
Loving my husband, discussing life with my daughter, petting my cats. Not in that order.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

What are your favorite names?
Calais, Delilah, my family’s names.

What is it that you most dislike?
Dishonesty and lack of integrity.

How would you like to die?
In my sleep, after a long life.

What is your motto?
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” - Winston Churchill

Remember those old Calgon ads for bath products? Well in Mexico it’s not common practice to put in bathtubs. In fact, in this house our bathrooms are small and square so there’s no room at all for a bathtub, we just have a shower in the corner. But I digress. I want to take a bath because I need to de-stress in the worst way. So I wish Calgon could take me away…

I’ve been killing myself for work lately. I’ve worked part of each day every day in the last 2 weeks, so I’m in need of a serious day off. It might happen next Sunday, but that remains to be seen.

I’m close to finishing 2 big web projects. Both projects have been difficult for me. Both have shown me exactly what parts of project management I happen to SUCK at.

One of these projects is for a non-profit in the U.S. I got the contract for it a long time ago. But I didn’t realize how much work it would be to get the client to make decisions. The work hasn’t ended up taking significantly longer than I expected. But the number of meetings and emails and conference calls it’s taken to make all the needed decisions has literally added ONE YEAR to the project. I’m dumbfounded by this.

The client has even had personnel changes since we started working on this project together. And guess what? My new contact person there seems to hate me. She knows nothing of the history of the project, just that it’s behind schedule. So I get the blame, all the blame. Today she destroyed a conference call by interrupting, being condescending (she sounded like a bratty teenager), and finally hanging up on the rest of us.

The project is finally within mere weeks of being done. And now it’s getting derailed by a bad attitude? Grow up already. Let’s just focus on getting this shit done and fucking be nice about it.

My husband is that champion of “fuck it all”. When he heard about her little snit he said “tell her to fuck off.” We are 98% done and he wants me to walk out on the project because someone treated me like shit. He has no tolerance for bullshit, and that’s what I love about him. But I won’t be taking his advice, not this time anyway.

Recently I attended the first ever LatAm Bloggers Blowout. Sadly I was only able to attend the Friday night blowout, I had to miss the subsequent Saturday and Sunday blowouts.

The best part was meeting all those great bloggers. Us bloggers are a bunch of blabbermouth extroverts so there was no shortage good conversation. I wish I’d had more time to get to know everyone, but there’s always next time. Thanks again to Wayne for sacrificing his sanity to organize the event, he did a bang up job.

Attendees of the Blogger Blowout were given blog homework assignments which came from the book “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog” by Margaret Mason.

My assignment:

How did you get those scars? The one on your thumb is from when you were three and you wondered whether scissors could cut skin. The one on your stomach is from your emergency appendectomy. Your boss figured you had to be in the hospital, because it was the only reason you’d ever be late to work without calling.

Your scars indicate what type of life you’ve lived. Whether you’re athletic, fighting for your health, or just occasionally clumsy, let each scar remind you of the story behind it.

My oldest scar is in the middle of one kneecap. The Momsicle tells me that I acquired it by jumping off a chair when I was about 18 months. I don’t remember exactly what she said and I don’t remember the event.

My next oldest scar is on my face, just by my eyebrow. It causes the nearby eyebrow hairs to poke out at weird angles. I was about 6 and I was trying to pull some piece of clothing out of my sister’s hands. I remember it being her clothing, or rather, I remember myself being guilty. She let go of the item and my own momentum sent me headlong into the corner of my bedpost. One inch over and I would have hit my eyeball on that bedpost.

Then I’ve got a scar just to the side of my other eye, it’s very small. This one was from a raging lunatic who had taken an ungodly amount of LSD and was drunk as well (terrible combination that is). He threw me down 3 flights of stairs. Before I passed out I remember hearing his mother yell “Call the cops before he kills her.” It apparently took 6 cops to get him into the patrol car, but I don’t remember that part. I’m lucky to remember anything at all.

I’ve also got a scar on one foot from a drop of hot oil that flew from a pan. That should have taught me not to cook barefoot…but it didn’t.

And my most recent scar is from a glass that one of my kitties broke. I brought the glass upstairs. When it was empty I placed it near the top of the stairs so I would remember to bring it down. Well my Lilah cat went romping and hit it and broke it. Then I walked by, didn’t see it, and got a deep cut in the top of one foot. That cut healed quickly, but left a distinct scar which still hurts.

I’ve got a few more scars from surgeries, but all were laparoscopic, so there’s almost no scarring on the outside. The inside, well, that’s another issue…

Five things you were doing ten years ago?

• Earning 6 times more per year than I am now
• Driving 2 hours everyday
• Thinking about divorcing my first husband
• Working for an internet startup
• Making a lot of computer art

Five things you were doing one year ago?

• Trying, in vain, to take care of 16 web clients at once
• Not exercising enough
• Risking my neck on the road to the airport everyday
• Volunteering too much
• Enjoying all my cats

Five snacks you enjoy?

• Papas fritas, I’m a potato chip junkie
• Fresh berries, when I can get them
• Grannie Smith apples, but they have to be cold
• Carrot sticks or celery with ranch dressing
• Good dark chocolate from Belgium

Five songs you know all the lyrics to?

• Any song by Pearl Jam
• Bob Dylan Masters of War
• Sublime What I Got
• They Might Be Giants Birdhouse in Your Soul
• Weird Al Yankovic Smells Like Nirvana

Five things you would do if you were very wealthy?

• Set up a foundation to help Mexico’s street animals
• Travel for 3 months a year
• Make large donations to my many favorite causes
• Help my sister with money
• Adopt more animals

Five things you like doing?

• Watching good movies
• Running and dancing
• Sleeping late
• Eating Thai food
• Listening to my daughter talk about anything

Five things you would never do again?

• Hallucinogenic mushrooms
• Have casual sex
• Go to see Aerosmith live in concert
• Jump off a 25 foot cliff into a raging river
• Intentionally try to set off a point-release avalanche

My daughter called me yesterday. She was upset. She was standing outside a slaughterhouse in Salida, Colorado, crying.

Her 8th grade class has been studying food production all year. They’ve visited McDonald’s, they’ve been to an organic farm, they’ve studied nutrition, they’ve been to the warehouse of a major U.S. supermarket chain (they even had to sign non-disclosure agreements saying that they wouldn’t reveal the warehouse’s secrets to the competition).

And yesterday, they visited a slaughterhouse. These are 8th graders. My daughter is 13 years old.

I know that there’s no way to prepare someone for witnessing a deliberate death. I’m sure that these kids were too young. But I think anyone is too young. There’s no right age to walk in and watch a cow get shot in the head and then get slit open and have it’s blood splash out all over. And there’s no way to prepare anyone for such a sight.

Several kids passed out. More of them vomited. Some of them made it outside the building before they vomited. The rest vomited onto the blood-covered floor inside the building.

Many of them vowed to become vegetarians from that day onward.

And now all of them know where meat comes from.

At first I was worried for my daughter. Then I realized that her family already “gets” it on the whole animal rights thing. She’s one of the lucky ones, she’s got emotional support for being against the meat industry. But the kids who go home to a beef dinner and unsympathetic parents are the kids who will really suffer.

My next reaction was to question whether the school knew what it was doing bringing the kids to a slaughterhouse. But as I reflect I see that the slaughterhouse is the reality. And all of us who pretend it doesn’t exist, who pretend it doesn’t feed us, well, we are the ones with the problem. The sooner these kids face the hard, shitty realities of life the sooner they will act to fix the things that are so very wrong with this world.

As she was crying into the phone I was searching for something wise and comforting to say. Do you know what comforted her? The only thing I could say that was comforting was to tell her that she had her whole life ahead of her to raise people’s awareness of how important it is to treat animals well. I reminded her that being a vegetarian herself has saved countless lives. And I reminded her that we’ve saved lots of animals from the streets and from unwanted reproduction. The only comfort I could offer her was the truth and right-ness of her own actions.

My daughter will be fine. The cows, however, are not fine. They are dead now.