I’m not particularly religious. To be more accurate I should say I’m an atheist who gets an occasional case of spiritual hiccups. And because I don’t live my life having much personal interaction with organized religion I haven’t ever looked at the effect that organized religions have had on the cultures I’ve interacted with and lived in. Until now.

When I moved to Mexico I knew it was a Catholic country. I knew it was the most Catholic country in the world (it has the highest number of Catholics as a percentage of the population of any country). But what I didn’t know what was how all that widespread Catholicism would effect the culture or the way people in Mexico learn to think.

I also didn’t understand just how much I was myself a product of a predominantly Protestant culture. I didn’t understand that even though I wasn’t raised a Protestant that I was still formed by a Protestant culture.

But living in Mexico and being married to a Mexican man (himself an atheist who was brought up loosely Catholic) has given me insight into just how strong a role religious ideals do play in the formation of culture and in the way we are brought up to think.

There are specific examples that jump out at me. One is the sense that I and many of my fellow (largely Protestant) Americans have that we are masters of our own destiny. I absolutely believe that ultimately I can and should try to control most major and nearly all minor aspects of my life. I plan and I plan and I plot and I worry and I guess and I wait for my future. My husband doesn’t. My husband often seems, from my perspective, to not even see how the choices he makes form the future he will live. And he hates to plan anything, just in case he might not want to actually do that thing when the time comes.

I think that Americans in general are seen by many as arrogant, pushy and dominant. And I think that it comes directly from that thing in our Protestant culture that tells us we can make things happen, that we can and should use the power we have to influence our lives and the world around us. And often I think we Americans use our power too freely and try to influence others too strongly. We are arrogant bastards. But we believe and know that we can control our lives. We are also organized enough, and plan well enough, that we can and do have a very strong influence on the world around us.

Mexicans, with my husband usually among them, often don’t seem to believe that they can change anything. They seem resigned to take what God gives them. They accept their fate much, much better than I ever could. They are a people who epitomize patience.

In fact patience is the number one thing that I have learned from living in Mexico. I’ve learned to be patient with others’ incompetence. I’ve learned to be patient with the lack of logical thinking present in everything here from the way people drive to the way they manage businesses to the way the government works. And I’m grateful to have learned patience. It was about time.

But to me there’s something tragic about the way that most Mexicans just accept that drug violence and corruption and environmental destruction and exploding populations of street animals are normal aspects of daily life. People in Mexico largely just accept those horrors and get on with their days. I’m constantly amazed at how happy people seem to be as they drive past a dying dog in the street and around a pile of garbage.

I’ve lived in Mexico for over 5 years. And I’ve learned that I’m never going to accept that the horrors here can’t be changed. I will never be able to see a newly beheaded body on the front page of the paper and just say ni modo (which loosely means “I don’t like it but whatever,” ) and move on about my day. I will never be able to feel that it’s “right” to bribe a cop. I will never be able to understand why people here can’t put their garbage in a trash can. I will never accept these things because I’m not made that way. I’m not made to accept tragedy and corruption and suffering. I’m a master of my own destiny remember, so when I see all that horror I feel I’ve got to change it and to fix it.

It’s my hope that Mexico will someday learn to respect its land and its animals and its people so that people here don’t have to ignore so much suffering just to be happy. Maybe someday Mexicans will be able to have faith in their own ability to make things better. Until then I guess it’s good that they are patient people.

The illustrious Isla Gringo will no doubt be miffed at me for this because I went to Isla Mujeres recently and didn’t tell him I was coming (sorry baby). But it was the last day of my daughter’s visit and we didn’t plan at all, just got up and on the ferry.

Anyway. One of the first things we did when we landed on Isla Mujeres was to spend a few minutes wandering in the cemetery on the north side of town. Despite the fact that I really, really do not want to be buried I actually like cemeteries.

And Mexican cemeteries are really special I think because they are so colorful and busy. As you can see from the photos below the Isla Mujeres cemetery is packed tight with lots of small above ground crypts (I guess that’s what you’d call them anyway).

It’s hard to walk around in there because the graves are just inches apart. But I really enjoy all the colors and all the different decorations that people put on the graves. We saw crypts painted in all colors. We saw some that were covered in floor or wall tiles. Some of the lower-rent graves were just concrete block with no stucco and no paint. Most of the crypts we saw seemed to be homemade. And not once did I see what we Americans would call a “normal” gravestone.

On many graves we saw evidence of offerings for the dead one. Flowers were common but so were other items that I guessed were things that deceased person had loved during life. On one grave we saw an altar with various plastic foods (truly unappetizing), an empty wine bottle (with cork in place), a plastic motorcycle and some laminated scratched off lottery tickets.

The grave in the photo below, I believe, belonged to a young boy. It was adorned with all kinds of plastic and rubber creepy bugs and spiders and alligators and turtles. It also had a half full bottle of soda and a half full bottle of Bevi which I think is chocolate milk. Everything a young boy could want in the afterlife.

I look forward to poking my head into other Mexican cemeteries in my future travels.

I feel I should write a post that ushers in the New Year and dismisses the Old Year, or something. So here goes.

I began 2008 with a lot more money in the bank than I ended it with. I’m a long-term investor so I’m not very bent out of shape about it, it will come back, but I did like having more money.

When the year began the exchange rate between the Mexican Peso and the U.S. Dollar was such that our house was worth more than twice what we originally paid for it (in Dollars). At year end our house is worth quite a bit less in Dollars, though still more than we paid for it. That’s frustrating. So now I’m really rooting for the Peso to gain strength against the Dollar again. Go Peso!

I began 2008 thinking that selling real estate in Mexico was something I might be good at. By May I’d been stabbed in the back on two big deals and had come to believe that if you lie down with wolves you might not get back up again. I love looking at real estate and have a strong understanding of real estate investing, so I may still help my friends find places to buy, but I’ve learned that I have to keep it light and not think of it as my work.

In 2008 my web design business made more money than ever before. I learned to be more efficient. I got faster and more importantly, I grew more realistic about what I can do for clients.

In 2008 I missed my kid way too much. As one friend told me recently “it makes you old before your time to live away from your kids.” I was happy to see her at both Thanksgiving (In November) and at Christmas, so we ended the year very close. But it still rots not to live with her.

We began 2008 with 10 cats and 1 dog. We ended with 8 cats and 2 dogs. Overall the house is happier with 2 dogs in it. But we still miss the two cats that died, one of them left a sister-cat who still cries for her, the other left his mama who isn’t close to any other kitties.

I’m not one for making lots of New Year’s Resolutions because I think it sets one up to fail. But there are several things I want and need to change this year. My one Resolution is to stop working on weekends. And I think if I stop working weekends I will automagically change other things that need to change because I will be taking more time for me and will be less stressed.

Here’s wishing you all a happy, fruitful 2009!

Boy are we lazy around here. I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing. But it sure is a thing to be reckoned with. My daughter is here, for Xmas, and we are having a very nice time. But we aren’t DOING anything. I mean we are walking the dogs, and cooking, and cheating when we play Trivial Pursuit, but besides that…we are just being really lazy.

I guess with her here I feel that trying to work would be rude, and likely frustrating, so I’m not even attempting any work. And she has no agenda. So it’s been easy to fall into not having any goals at all.

Christmas was nice and mellow here. I cooked much of the day. And we watched the movie Wall-E on DVD (cute). And we played our own special version of Trivial Pursuit where we don’t even bother to ask the useless pink questions that are always about some long-dead movie star neither of us can name and instead we hand-pick better questions about science, geography or history.

As far as loot went we all pretty much picked out our own gifts and then wrapped them for each other. So the actual Christmas gift-giving didn’t involve much surprise. But everyone was getting what they wanted, so it was satisfying.

The one gift I wanted which I didn’t get was a new patio table umbrella.

The old umbrella has a problem. Well, it has two problems. One of my cats, who shall remain nameless, decided to climb a ladder that was leaning against the house. And when she reached the top of the ladder she decided to jump onto the top of the patio umbrella. Well, that umbrella is 4 years old, so she went right through it and made a big hole in it.

But wait, there’s more. A few days after the cat jumped through my patio umbrella a second cat, who shall also remain nameless (only because I’m not sure which of the 8 it is), did the same thing AGAIN. So now the patio umbrella has 2 huge rips in it from cats falling through it.

The story is cute. But the umbrella really looks awful now. So I think we should either buy a whole new umbrella or replace the fabric on this one (its parts all work fine). But we haven’t gotten around to deciding which choice is better. So we do nothing.

I do hate that doing nothing thing. Though I am awfully good at it.

This is a cool meme because the questions change for each blogger. Read on and I hope you enjoy, and then partake, if you are so inclined…

For 7.5 million dollars, would you allow your spouse to be kidnapped and held prisoner for one year? No harm would come to him, but he would only have the basics – food, water and shelter. But at the end of the year, you’d both be millionaires.

No! Money doesn’t motivate me. Not that I wouldn’t mind having more of it. But it’s not worth my husband’s freedom. If my husband wanted to be kidnapped so he could have the money after a year, that would be his choice but I would never suggest he do it.

If you met someone who read your blog but didn’t know you personally, what would surprise them to know about you that they wouldn’t get from your blog?

Christ! This means I have to remember all the stuff I’ve said or have not said in my blog? Hmph! Well, I was a Dead Head, I went to a bunch of Grateful Dead concerts when I was in college. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned that.

And my daughter points out that people who read my blog, but who do not know me, would be surprised that I am not often sarcastic in person, though I’m very often sarcastic on my blog. I suspect she’s right. I do notice that my dry, East Coast USA, sense of humor tends to come out in my writing a bit more than it comes out of my mouth.

If you could go back in time and change one event in your life, what would it be?

Tough one. Well, when I got divorced I didn’t change my name back to my maiden name. Then I remarried and took my husband’s name. So now to prove I’m the person on my birth certificate I have to show documentation for two marriages and a divorce. That’s a royal pain in the ass. I wish that I had changed my name to my maiden name between husbands, then I wouldn’t have to keep showing off my previous marriage and divorce.

This isn’t the kind of exciting change that the question seems to invite, but it’s what I would change.

What is your favorite pet rescue story? Which one (story) changed your heart the most?

Oh shit, I have to pick just one? Each time I’ve rescued a pet it’s been a big, huge, life-changing, heart-rending event. Well…one of the early rescues was Rudy the cat. We were working on renovating our house and my husband went off one day to the hardware store. When he got there he saw a badly injured kitten. The store owner said that the kitten had been hanging around, crying pitifully, for a couple of days. The owner had bought some cat food for it, but wouldn’t take it to the vet despite a huge open infected leg wound.

My husband came home from the store (without the kitten), and when he told me about the kitten he started to cry. He said he didn’t know what to do. I said I knew what to do. We took a cat carrier and went to get the kitten. We took him straight to a vet. The vet didn’t expect him to make it. But two operations later the kitten was on the mend.

We named him Rudy, after Rudolph Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, because he purred like a motor all the time. We still have Rudy and he still purrs often.

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was a baby, would you do it?

This is the hard question for me. I do not believe in capital punishment and I’m not sure I could take another life even if my own was in jeopardy. But if I could knowingly prevent the Holocaust and its nearly 8 million murders I think I would feel obligated to do it. I’m sure it would come at a great personal cost to me, but if I could prevent those deaths I would.

Bonus question: If you choose to kill baby Hitler, how would you do it?

Painlessly. With lethal injection. The way my vet puts animals to sleep.

Fellow Bloggers
If you want to do this meme leave me a comment asking to be interviewed and I will send 5 questions for you to answer.

Then post your answers in your blog, include these directions and link back to the original post, which for me was Capricorn Cringe’s post 5+1 = blog fodder

The Rules
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

My horrible neighbors have struck again. On December 1st they decorated every square inch of their front yard with Christmas kitsch. It’s bad over there. There are more plastic Santas that I can count. There are reindeer that pathetically move their heads up and down. There are seizure-inducing flashing lights hanging from every surface. There’s even a very fake-looking plastic nativity scene with a premature Baby Jesus in it.

But the worst thing is the X-mas musak. Somewhere over there is a 25¢ speaker that blares tinny, tacky, warble-ey Christmas carols from noon (when they wake up and turn it on) until 4 am (when they get home and turn it off) each and every day. I’m so sick of listening to X-mas muzak that I want to vomit. Can you tell I’m not in the Christmas spirit yet?

Maybe I need to sneak over there and destroy the muzak maker? That would go a long way towards putting me in the Christmas spirit, well, at least it would go a long way to making my perpetual headache go away.

Today we got suckered into a timeshare presentation. My husband tried to advert disaster by asking if this was “a timeshare presentation.” But he was told in no uncertain terms that it was not…and he believed them…and I believed him. So innocently, stupidly, we went, thinking that a “free breakfast and a tour of the Presidente beach club” might actually be a “free breakfast and a tour of the President beach club.” We are such suckers.

Eventually the presenter told us “it’s not timeshare, it’s a vacation club presentation.” But the sales tactics are exactly the same as timeshare sales. The drill is the same. And all the salespeople “used to work in timeshare.”

So what’s the difference between a Vacation Club and a Timeshare? Well, the difference I see is that a timeshare actually needs a deed because it’s actually (at least under U.S. law) a real estate transaction. But buying your way into a vacation club just means you are paying for the right to have “guaranteed discounts” at some hotel chain and that you get to carry some nice shiny membership card. Oh, and they send you a magazine every month. For $9000 USD. What a great deal.

If it’s a good thing for some people then that’s fine. For me, sitting through the presentation is a total waste of my life. I feel I was robbed of 3 hours of my time. Three hours are gone that won’t come back.

And I recently canceled a much cheaper subscription to National Geographic Magazine because the Mexican postal system could not be relied upon to actually deliver it, except in the rain. Can you imagine relying on the Mexican postal system to deliver a $9000 USD magazine subscription? They would probably wait until the middle of a hurricane to deliver it.

Anyway, I feel scummy, I feel like I have dirt on me that won’t come off. I want my day back. I want those 3 hours back. They can have their free breakfast back if they want…grin…just give me back my time.

Well, I’m baaack from the States. And I’m fighting with my ever-present urge to blow off all things important and focus on not important things.

While in the states I actually read an article from Oprah’s magazine, “O”, (previously I was an “O” magazine virgin). The article was about how manage your time effectively. Basically the idea was that you write down every single thing that you think you need to do and then you categorize each item by the following:

• Important and Urgent
• Important but Not Urgent
• Not Important and Urgent
• Not Important and Not Urgent

Apparently, from what the article said and from personal experience, most of us do those things that end up categorized as Important and Urgent as well as those things we would categorize as Not Important and Urgent.

So the lesson is to make your list and then throw out anything that you would categorize as Not Important, whether Urgent or Not Urgent.

Now this sounds all good and fine. But there’s a problem. And that problem is that I seem to be addicted to Not Important and Urgent. I should marry Not Important and Urgent. I get all hot and bothered by Not Important and Urgent.

I also have a strong affinity for Not Important and Not Urgent.

So I’m thinking I might need to start a support group. Anybody wanna join me in fighting my addiction to all things Not Important? We could meet and have coffee and spend half the meeting discussing local chisme (gossip) and finally get around to talking about the Not Important things we should NOT DO right about when it’s time to rush off to our next Not Important activity.

Come on, step right up!

OK, if you want to read the original article see here: Urgent! Urgent! (Or Is It?)

Well, I may not get anywhere with this Not Important thing, but at least I’m no longer an “O” magazine virgin. (I’ve still never seen a whole episode of her show though.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers and pals out there.

Many of you know that I’m in the US visiting my kiddo for the week. It’s been a great trip so far, mostly because I’m catching up with my daughter. But it’s also been great because of all the fun stuff we’ve been doing. We went to the Denver Art Museum and saw a terrific exhibit by German artist Daniel Richter. We went to Celestial Seasonings and had a factory tour. And we’ve been to numerous restaurants, all of which have better service than any average restaurant in Cancun…

My internet connection here is unstable, so I haven’t been working and have barely been checking email. But maybe this is good, it gets me to go out and have fun.

Anyway, enjoy Turkey Day if that’s something you partake in.

Yesterday we took my visiting amiga americana to Cancun’s Museo de Arte Popular Mexicano (Mexican Folk Art Museum). And as usual we enjoyed it thoroughly. They continue to add to their large collection of Mexican arts and crafts, so each time we go there we see new pieces. And this time we listened to the audio tour, something we hadn’t done before, and it really added a lot to the experience.

But as we were leaving husbandito did his always-make-new-friends thing and started talking with one of the people who works in the museum. Well it turns out that the museum, surprise, surprise, has never made any money there (it’s in a bad location and is always empty). And so the owners, who also own Xcaret Eco-Park, have decided to move the museum to Xcaret sometime in the next couple of months, sometime in January according to the employee.

The good thing about this is that Xcaret is popular so people will FINALLY start seeing this great collection of Mexican arts and crafts! The bad thing is that this museum was basically the only place in Cancun to see a large collection of good quality arts and crafts. So I’m completely bummed out, but not surprised at all. I guess now I have yet another reason to go to Xcaret again.

If you are a Cancunense and you have not yet been to the Museo de Arte Popular Mexicano I highly recommend it, but you’d better get over there soon.