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.”

I received some lovely gifts for my birthday. One of them was a pot of lilies from my husband. He likes to give me live plants, rather than cut flowers.

My mom grew lilies like these when I was a kid. Just looking at them takes me back to 1974 in New England. Lovely. (Thanks Viejo!)

I just brought to 50 the number of blogs I subscribe to via Bloglines (no wonder I don’t get my work done). The newest addition to my list is La Gringa Mas Bella, which is written by an American woman who is married to a Mexican man.

She’s witty and funny and tells it like it is. But she’s wrong about one thing, her tag-line says that she’s married to the BEST Mexican guy on the planet, but that’s me honey, not you!

Read on: La Gringa Mas Bella

Here are a few of the other 49 blogs I subscribe to:

• 1603 Katrina - A fellow alum from my college helps tear down historic but rotten buildings in New Orleans.
• New York Hack - The blog of a NYC cab driver named Melissa Plaut, she’s just published a book too.
• The Multiverse According To Ben - The blog of Dr. Ben Goertzel, artificial intelligence guru and another fellow alum from college.
• Hell’s Half Acre - Travelogue - A mom of 4 writes about their travels and their time living in the Riviera Maya.
• SimpleBits - Master web designer Dan Cederholm’s blog. His work puts the rest of us to shame.
• Julie Zickelfoose - Artist, writer, and close friend of a close friend. Julie takes lots of pictures of birds, something I can’t do with all these cats around.

When I mentioned to my vegetarian daughter (a vegan wannabe), just moments ago, that I had forgotten to buy eggs at the store she said “Good, I don’t want you to eat eggs anyway. Eggs are like abortion, except you eat them.”

Oh the mind of a 13 year old, she knows it all but is still innocent. And with that simple comment she solved the issue of what I should eat for dinner. Nothing! I’ve lost my appetite, thank you.

I spent an hour today on this, may my clients forgive me this trespass:

—–BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK—–
GAT/CA d- s: a C++++ U> P+> L—(+) E? W+++ N++ o- K?
w+++++ O—-(+) M–(+) V? PS+++ PE-(++) Y+(–) PGP t++@ 5++
X++ !R tv– b+++> DI++++ !D G– e++> h—- r+++ z+++++
——END GEEK CODE BLOCK——

If you have to ask…Google.

And I heard a couple of great quotes in recent days, I hope I can get them right:

This from a gringa friend on having a Mexican boyfriend/husband:

What is it about a Mexican man that makes you want to throw things at his head?

I only wish I knew.

And this one from another gringa:

“Did I tell you that I would be married to Eddie Vedder if my stupid ex-husband had only gone to happy hour?”

You and me both. My ex wouldn’t go to happy hour either.

It’s been a particularly hard week. There’s a sinus infection in this house that no one seems to be able to kick. So we all walk around suffering from that exploding-brain-tumor feeling, which can really make one quite grumpy.

But work-wise things go well. Real estate inquiries are picking up. And I’ve picked up several high-end real estate listings. And my web work is getting done, albeit too slowly for my taste. Now if I could just get that one old bitchy cat to quit throwing up all the time, and find a home for the new one, and get the kid to do some chores, well, then we’d be in business.

Oh, and I went to see the new Bourne movie, the Ultimatum one…and I just loved it! I just couldn’t get enough, it was like the best roller coaster I’ve ever been on. It was smart, and quick and unpredictable, but not hard to follow. It had one or two boring moments, and it had a typical ridiculous car chase scene, just to prove it was made by Hollywood. But Matt Damon was so good in it that I didn’t once even think “what a weenie”. I’m going to drag my kid to see it this weekend, maybe getting her out of the house will fix what ails her.

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.

I just got back last week from a trip to New England, I spent most of my days in Maine actually, pretty far north, near Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.

This trip was planned months ago, specifically it was planned when mom was turning 70 back in January. She wanted all of us to gather around her for that event, that big birthday event. But being the bad daughter I am I flat out refused to set foot in Maine in January. I told her I would gladly come in July, gladly, but January was out of the question.

My aunt (mom’s sister), who hails from points south as well, was very happy to back me up in my refusal to freeze my ass off in Maine in the winter, and so she quickly got excited about a July trip as well.

And so we did it, she and I. We flew to Boston, spent a night, and then drove 5 hours north the next day.

And I knew before I even got to Boston on the plane that I had badly mis-calculated which clothes I should bring. Socks, forgot about socks, forgot that people wear socks to keep their feet warm…plumb forgot. I did actually bring some socks, because I run, and I run in socks, so I had socks, I had just forgotten socks for heat’s sake.

And pants. I GREW UP in New Hampshire, I know the weather up there in New England. I went to college in Massachusetts (see, I can even spell it), I know what July is like up there. But pants, forgot about pants. I somehow thought that I would get by with a mini-shirt and a few pair of shorts. I did bring a pair of sweatpants, for running, and only because they were clean and my favorite shorts were dirty when I was packing. And I did bring ONE pair of jeans, a pair I wear about 7 times a year in Cancun. And I wore those jeans everyday that I was there, and when I wasn’t wearing those jeans I was wearing the sweatpants, even in BED!

And long-sleeve shirts, well, I DON’T OWN ANY! And so I didn’t accidentally bring any, despite myself. But I did bring 2 sweaters. And I tell you, I wore them and wore them and wore them. Man was I cold.

But I managed to survive by drinking generous amounts of hot green tea with honey, and running a lot. And of course it was great to be there, and see the family, and see the lovely land. Below are some photos I took which I liked:

Flowers from Mom’s crazy garden which needs some serious cutting back.

A Red Squirrel which was caught in a Have-A-Heart trap moments after this photo was taken and was then relocated across the river…only to be replaced by another Red Squirrel within an hour who was BETTER at raiding the bird feeder.

More flowers from Mom’s unruly flower garden.

This is one of my sister’s very fat and very cute cats.

This flower was grown by my bro-in-law, my sister’s husband, and for his birthday I gave him even more of these flowers.

I just found a web site called the Happy Planet Index. It provides an interesting measure of how satisfied people are with their lives. I wholeheartedly disagree with their rankings of some countries as being happier than others.

But when I took their survey to calculate my own Happy Planet Index (HPI) I was impressed with the questions, because those ARE the questions whose answers do indicate how happy I am. The link to the survey is below, and from it you can figure out how to find the map and the rest of the site, I’m sure. By the way my HPI is 59.7, which is higher than the average person living in Mexico.

• Calculate Your HPI

I just got yet another email from yet another well-meaning acquaintance. She forwarded an email that has been forwarded at least 5 times before. She left the headers of each of the previous forwards intact, which means that ALL of the email addresses of all the people who’ve received this email before me are present in the top of the email.

Great. Lovely. Just what I needed. Another email that forces me to scroll past a mile long list of header info just to read. Scroll and scroll. Way to dilute your message there. Way to make it a job instead of a pleasure to read your email. I promise you I will NOT FORGET THIS!

What if your stupid email isn’t interesting enough to warrant all that frickin’ scrolling? What then? Then I’ve just wasted all that energy scrolling down the whole email. And I’ve put some wear and tear on my mouse.

Excuse me but it’s OK TO TRIM THAT SHIT OFF! The email is not going to self destruct if you trim the headers. It’s not going blow up your computer if you get rid of all those email addresses and To’s and From’s and Sent Date’s and Subject lines.

Christ almighty, some people should be required to pass an emailing test before they are allowed to inflict their bad humor on the rest of us!

I swear!