Takin’ Care of Business

Hey there, little buckaroos. Yes, it has been awhile! I’d apologize, but I doubt anyone has gone through withdrawal symptoms because I haven’t written anything for a few months.

* * * *

If you aren’t familiar with the song Takin’ Care of Business by the Canadian rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, I don’t know what to say to you. It was released in 1973, and it’s their best-known song of all time. The song has been used in a few hundred thousand movies and commercials. If you can honestly say you don’t know the song, you need to get a life.

* * * *

I’ve been retired for five years now. If you’re not retired, you should try it sometime. If you are retired, you may have noticed the same thing that I have: Retirement is literally days, weeks, and even months of not having to do anything if you don’t feel like doing it. You don’t have to go work anymore. You don’t have any pending appointments or meetings you have to attend on your calendar.

There might be some things you’ve been thinking about getting around to doing, but they’re not anything pressing, so if you decide today isn’t the day to tackle them, no one is going to care.

And then it’s almost as if all of the things you didn’t have to do conspire and BOOM! all of a sudden there’s a whole lots of shit that needs to be done.

Right. Now.

And that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been writing about my mostly incredibly boring and bucolic life. I’ve actually been busy.

* * * *

Way back in September, I conceived an idea to write about. A lots of goddamn stuff has happened since then, and I’m no longer interested in writing about it. I may get around to explaining that — we’ll see… Instead of writing, my lovely supermodel wife and I flew back to the States to attend my Aunt Noreen’s 90th birthday party at Lion’s Park in beautiful downtown Swanville, MN.

Aunt Reen is the last surviving matriarch on my mother’s side of the family. All of the elder relatives on my dad’s side of the family got dead years ago. Reen is my mom’s youngest sister, and to the best of my knowledge, she’s the oldest living person in my family’s history. We don’t tend to live much beyond the age of 80. And far too many of us tend to die much younger.

Noreen is a really neat gal, very much like unto my mom. They were best friends, and when Reen came over to my parents’ house to say good-bye to my mom just before she died, that was the sweetest thing I have ever seen in my life. It still makes me cry whenever I think about it.

It’s the only reason why I thought it was important to go to her party. I doubt any of my cousins will ever come visit us in Mexico, so I don’t see a preponderance evidence that suggests I need to spend a lots of money and energy connecting with people that aren’t going to make any effort to connect with me.

And speaking of people I don’t want to ever connect with again, there’s John, my Idiot Brother. As you have probably deduced, John and I are not good friends. Mainly because every time John contacts me, he threatens to kill me. I don’t believe 99% of the bullshit that emanates from him. I’m not sure if he’d actually kill me if he ever saw me again, but I have no doubt that he’d try to.

I knew there was no way John would miss going to Reen’s party, if for no other reason than there would be a whole lots of free beer there. So, yeah, this created a bit of a dilemma for me. As it turns out, I’m not the only person in my family that doesn’t want to be around my Idiot Brother. None of my cousins wanted him at their party either, however, they didn’t think he would even bother to attend.

Cut to the chase: John arrived at the party about half an hour before Lea and I arrived. My cousins messaged me to let me know he was there — even though they still didn’t think he would come — then they asked him to leave. John said, “You don’t think I’d really kill my brother with all these witnesses present, do you?” And they replied, “Because you say things like that, you have to leave. And if you don’t leave now, we’ll call the police.”

It was a very nice party. I got to see my old friend, Shorty Girtz. I’ve written about him and our epic vacation in Dallas, TX. You can look it up in the archives if you’re really bored. He took Lea for a ride on his new touring motorcycle, which I have to admit surprised me. Lea has never been all that interested in motorcycles, but she had blast.

According to the 2010 census, there are 350 people that live in the city of Swanville. At least half of the town was in attendance at Noreen’s party, mainly because she is probably related to almost everyone in Swanville in one way or another. Reen was very happy that we had flown up all the way from Mexico for her party. I gained a new level of respect for my cousins. And my Idiot Brother messaged me to tell me he was really going to kill me the next time he saw me, this time for sure. Again.

* * * *

We were in Minnesota for five days. On short visits like unto this one, you scramble like hell to see as many people as you can before you leave. The list of people that I’m willing to try to see keeps getting smaller, mostly for the reason previously stated above. The other reason is the impermanence of life itself. And that’s the other reason we went back to Minnesota.

I wanted to see Paul Anderson before he died to death.

* * * *

Paul and I were registered nurses, and we worked together at the Minneapolis VAMC in the In-patient Psychiatric Department for the entire twenty years I was employed there. Paul was mostly an excellent nurse. I had the utmost respect for him as a colleague, and I learned a helluvalot from him about how to do my job with the most efficiency. We supported each other through every fucking miserable event that befell us during that time, and we both had more than our share of traumas and tribulations over those two decades.

We celebrated every victory together. We celebrated even when there wasn’t much of anything to celebrate. I taught him everything I knew about smoking marijuana, and he taught me everything he knew about craft beers and red wine. Yeah, he was my drinking buddy. Unlike all of my other drinking buddies — who didn’t want to have anything to do with me after I quit drinking — Paul and I remained close friends.

In vino veritas. We knew everything there was to know about each other. He was my best friend, possibly the best male friend I’ve had in my entire life, despite the fact that he rooted for the much-despised Green Bay Peckers.

* * * *

If you’re wondering why I’m not writing another installment entitled For Whom the Bell Tolls, I just don’t have the courage to do it, even though Paul is more than worthy of a tribute from me. I’ve lost two of my best male friends in less than four months. Those losses have taken a lots of wind out of my sails, simply because losses like unto these are roughly the emotional equivalent of getting kicked in the balls.

The pain from the grief is acute enough as it is. Opening myself up to further pain by writing about it is more than I am willing to take on right now. And it’s one of the reasons I haven’t written. I rarely know what I’m going to write, and yeah, the idea that something like unto that would pour out of me honestly scared the shit out of me. I had to wait until I was sure that wasn’t going to happen.

Writing about Francisco’s death helped me process the shock and dismay that plagued me in his absence. I needed to write about him. I don’t have to do that with Paul. I’ve known he wasn’t going to live very long for the better part of this year. He told me he was dying in May. I told him to stay alive until I saw him in September.

He promised me that he would.

Lea and I drove out to see Paul, one last time, at the house he built, mostly all by himself, on September 20th. It was a bright and sunny day as we headed east on Highway 94. We visited with Paul and his wife for about an hour. That was the extent of the strength he had left. Lea and I have a boatload of fond memories of Paul and Synneva’s house. We got together frequently, usually at their home in rural Wisconsin, and shared many an ice cold beverage and a lots of laughter over the years.

It wasn’t bright and sunny anymore as we drove west, back to Minnesota and the Airbnb in St. Paul we had rented for our stay. Dark gray clouds had rolled in, and the skies opened up, unleashing torrents of rain that fell like rage. It was as if the sky had offered me an unction by crying the tears I no longer possessed.

If you were to ask me where I am in my grieving process right now, I don’t know if I could tell you. I’m not even sure who I’m grieving over half of the time. I don’t know if I can grieve individually anymore. It’s all become a kind of Grief Casserole to me, and I don’t really know how to cook.

The one thing I have going for me is I discovered I have a really great support system. My friends and family here have been there for me every time I’ve needed them. And they will be there if I need more from them.

Excuse me, I’m going to have to take a break here…

* * * *

I talked to Paul almost every day after we got back to Mexico. Our conversations rarely lasted even five minutes. I just wanted to hear his voice again, knowing there wouldn’t be many times we would talk.

I sent him all the pictures I had taken of our adventures, and his family, because I had fucking forgotten to pack them when we flew up there. I had pulled them out of storage, meaning to give them to him when I saw him, and set them on the bookcase in the Peach Room. And that’s where they were when we got back to Mexico.

He appreciated the pictures. We had had a lots of great times together, and he smiled a lots remembering them. His wife told me that.

I was going to call him on his birthday, Monday, October 11th. But when I opened my Facebook account, I had received a message from Synneva. Paul had passed away in his sleep during the night. He would have been 65 if he had lived three more hours. On the bright side, he got to see his beloved Packers win one last football game that they should have lost at least twice. So there was that.

* * * *

Time ceased to exist for me for awhile that morning. I went to the end of the patio because it was it was in the sunlight, and the mornings are getting a little chilly here. The birds were chirping in the trees. A light breeze was blowing, just enough of a breeze to tickle the hairs on your arms, but not enough to really do much more than that.

A few hummingbirds flitted from flower to flower in the garden. A vermillion flycatcher flew into one of the plumeria trees, looking for a meal. The warmth of the sun felt good. And I smiled, remembering the good times, wishing there had been at least one more visit…

Paul would have liked Mexico if he had ever gotten down here. He was planning to visit us in May of 2020. He had even bought his airfare. Then the pandemic hit and brought the world to a screeching halt. Paul cancelled his trip, with the idea to reschedule for a later date. Then he got too sick to travel, and that ended up being that.

True to his word as always, he stayed alive long enough so we could say good-bye to each other in person. Thank you for doing that.

Twenty days later, he, too, was gone.

Vaya con Dios, Mr. Anderson. The last thing you said to me was we will meet again. That is a promise you had better keep. I’m counting on you to show me the ropes again.

* * * *

In early October, our oldest daughter, Gwen, her husband, John, and their dog, Tori Belle, took up residence in the casita we had set up as a guest suite. They’re going to stay here for the next five months until they decide what they want to do when they grow up. They both work remotely from here. I guess that’s one positive outcome from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This has been somewhat of a surprise to us, that one of our kids would want to move back in with us, but it has been a good surprise. We have a kind of communal living experience going on here at the resort — minus the drugs and free love that were so popular back in the 1960’s.

It’s also somewhat ironic. Prior to moving into this house, I observed that there are a lots of gringo mansions down here. Huge honker homes that were probably occupied by one or two old, white people and maybe a couple of dogs. And then we moved into one one of those huge honker places… That’s why we invited Todd to move in with us. We had more than enough room for another person here.

When Gwen and John asked if they could take over our casita for an extended stay, we were well-versed in the process. Things are going smoothly for all of us as far as I know. If there’s anyone that is not satisfied with our current living arrangements, they haven’t talked to me about it.

* * * *

Because we no longer had a guest room for all of the people that said they were going to visit us, but probably never will — and because I needed something to do — I repainted the Peach Room and turned it into our new guest room.

I guess you could call the Peach Room a bonus room/flex space. We had it set up as a second living room/den, but we never used it. The kit-tens used to hang out in it occasionally. They probably used it more than any of the people that live here.

Yes. It’s a very big room. And that’s a queen-size bed. There’s an adjoining Jack and Jill bathroom between the guest room and Todd’s room. In this picture, the bathroom would be to your right. If you come to visit, you’ll have to share that.

* * * *

The next thing that needed to be done was repairing the ceiling in the master bedroom. I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but a few months ago our landlord finally replaced the malfunctioning solar heater for the swimming pool. Said heater rests on the roof of our bedroom.

The summer months here are the Rainy Season. We received over 40 inches of rain this year, so yeah, they call it the Rainy Season for a very good reason. That’s how we discovered the leak in the roof. We assume it originated with the new solar heater because it wasn’t there with the old solar heater. Our property manager sent a crew here to repair the roof three times. The Rainy Season has ended, so we probably won’t know if the leak has actually been sealed until sometime next June…

Just in cases you didn’t know, all of the buildings in Mexico are primarily constructed of bricks, mortar, and steel. Someone told me it was because of the termites, which are pretty much everywhere down here. Maybe that’s true. I don’t really know. Concrete might have a lots of advantages as a building material, but one disadvantage it has is it is very porous and sucks up water like unto a sponge.

And that’s pretty much what happened on our roof. Water followed the path of least resistance and after one particularly heavy thunderstorm, part of the ceiling in our bedroom kind of collapsed — not much, just a little — but it continued to do so with each consecutive rainfall. After a couple months of this process repeatedly repeating itself, the ceiling in our bedroom was in a very sorry state of affairs.

Repairing the ceiling amounted to scraping away all the loose mortar and paint, then plastering all the cracks and crevices and canyons that the leaking roof had created, and then sanding all the rough spots down until they were more or less smooth. Plastering isn’t something I would call one of my strengths, but the end result looked comparable to the other repairs that had been done to the bedroom ceiling prior to when we moved in.

Lea said she was happy with it, and that was really all I needed to hear.

The worst part of this process is the mold remediation. If you have never attempted to get get mold out of a concrete ceiling, you haven’t missed much. It is a long and tedious process. Oddly enough, the mold is no where near the spot where the ceiling first started falling apart. I might be done with that part of the job by Christmas…

When we moved into this house, we hired Francisco to paint almost every room in the house. Just about the only surfaces he didn’t paint were the ceilings — except in the master bedroom. It must have looked like hell, so that’s probably why Lea asked him to paint it. It’s the only reason why I had paint that matched perfectly, and I won’t have to repaint the entire ceiling.

The final bedroom renovations entailed moving the TV set that had been in the Peach Room that no one ever watched into the master bedroom and connecting it to the DVD player I had purchased at Best Buy® while we were in Minnesota.

* * * *

Probably Little Known Fact About DVD’s and DVD Players: they are coded for the country they are manufactured in. Yeah, I didn’t know that either, until I bought a DVD player that was made in Mexico. It would not play any of the DVD’s I had purchased in the United States of America.

* * * *

It took me awhile to switch from VHS tapes to DVD’s, but once I did I thought it would be stupid to have just one DVD. Hey, do you want to come over to my house and watch my DVD? See? I told you… So I bought a lots of them over the years.

* * * *

It took me the better part of an hour to figure out how to change the codes in my Mexican DVD player so we could watch a movie, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t bother to even watch it after we finally got everything working. I don’t use that player to watch movies. I have it hooked up to the stereo on the patio because DVD players also play CD’s, and I have a lots and lots of CD’s.

* * * *

The last thing that kept me from writing was working in the gardens here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. They were starting to look tired, so I tore almost everything out of most of them. Then Lea decided she wanted to trim the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow in the South Garden.

I guess I should have asked her what she meant by the word trim. Lea more or less ripped out everything that had regrown, leaving the fence looking almost exactly like it did one year ago when we originally attacked the hedgerow.

I was originally a little bummed out because the hedgerow looks like hell now, but as we have seen, it will return again. And her extreme trimming may even benefit the vines that I actually want to grow. Time will tell on that account. All I know is they didn’t fill in the places I wanted them to this year…

* * * *

It’s been a tough year for me. It just goes to show you that you should never think things can’t get any worse than they were last year…

I had originally planned this post to be about the Anti-Vaccine Movement, and how incredibly selfish those people are in the midst of a global pandemic that has changed, and will continue to change our lives for the foreseeable future.

I think they’re moronheads. And that’s about all I have to say about that anymore. Except I hope the Green Bay Peckers don’t secure a bye in the playoffs because of Aaron Rodgers being an anti-vaxing sissifated sniffle-snaffle. It’d serve him right.

It’s also been a very good year for me. I am very aware of that. I don’t need anyone to point that out to me. Life is all about balance and equilibrium. My life is balancing out gradually. I no longer experience the wild mood swings that owned me in July.

I remain resilient. The losses I have felt this year have bent me and stretched me to my limits at times, but they did not break me. At least, I don’t think they did.

I have lost dear friends, but I have also found support from a group of people that I didn’t expect it from. That was another good surprise.

Thank you, everyone. Everyone that has supported me. Everyone that has helped me support Francisco’s family. Thank you all from the bottom of my broken heart.

It isn’t as broken as it used to be. And that is very much because of all of you.

Future Shock

Hey there little buckaroos. How’s everything going out there? I am admittedly out of touch with most of the things going on in the world right now. My life has become a fairly insulated cocoon of intentional oblivion. I’m not terribly interested in much of anything that happens beyond our gate anymore. Perhaps you can relate to this. I don’t think I’m the only person that feels this way.

No news is good news. Ignorance is bliss.

There might a lots of truth in those statements. There might not be any. They aren’t mottos or credos that I try to uphold in my life. The only reason I mentioned them is they’re the kinds of things I’ve heard other people say when they’re not terribly interested in what’s going on around them either. And it’s not as if I’ve gone completely off the grid of current events. I don’t watch the news very often anymore, but I receive daily updates on what’s going in the world via social media and the Interweb every time I log onto one of my mobile devices.

* * * *

According one recent report I read, the Minnesota Vikings are suddenly considered to be serious Super Bowl contenders by at least one sportswriter. That made me laugh, so that guy might not be a sportswriter anymore. Football season hasn’t even started yet! That’s probably why the Vikings are contenders to be world champions at this precise moment in time.

Every team has the same chances of winning the Super Bowl right now because they’re all undefeated, and no one knows how good or bad they are. There haven’t been devastating injuries to key players, and there’s almost one or two of those that happen to just about every team as the season progresses. Unless the Vikings field a vastly different team than they did last year, that prognostication won’t stand up very long. They did spend a whole lots money this year upgrading their defense, and everyone who follows American football knows that defense wins championships. Right?

That’s a hope I’m trying to keep alive, though it has dropped precipitously on my priority list over the last few years.

Speaking purely for myself, I’ve been disappointed by the Vikings so many times in my life that I don’t care if they ever make it back to the Super Bowl again. If they do, my doctor is going to have to put me on a whole lots of Valium for the two weeks between the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl. He’ll probably have to admit me into the hospital and have me sedated during the game because I won’t be able to watch it without having a heart attack or a stroke. And if they lose for a fifth time, he might just as well put me down. I’m not sure I could live through one more post-season heartbreak from them.

Maybe that’s a hope I shouldn’t try to keep alive anymore…

* * * *

A couple of weeks ago I read an article that former president Donald Trump shut down his radically new and revolutionary social media platform (From the Desk of Donald J. Trump), after just 29 days. It turns out that his SMP wasn’t much of a platform. Not even for him. It was, wait for it — a blog. That made me laugh, too. I LOLed. And LMFAOed. And I ROTFLed. Then I re-LOLed some more.

There’s a reason for my reactions. Mr. Trump originally said he was going to create a new social media platform that would redefine the genre and make Facebook and Twitter about as meaningful as Myspace. Both of those sites suspended his accounts indefinitely after he incited a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people.

Given the fact that The Donald is a failed influencer that needs to be in the spotlight, he had no choice but to create his own social media platform, just so he could put himself back into the spotlight, especially after those fascist assholes at Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t even let him appear on their stages anymore.

* * * *

I will never stop hoping that Trump will someday be indicted for a lengthy list of crimes, and imprisoned for a very lengthy period of time — and five counts of murder/manslaughter/homicide need to be on that list. I know this will never happen, but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to hope that it will. And it doesn’t begin to describe how disappointed I am in the American justice system for letting him get away with… everything… so far.

There. Are. No. Words.

* * * *

You’d think that this self-proclaimed genius would’ve known better, wouldn’t you? A blog? I mean, OMG! WTF?!? That’s a terrible medium for The Donald — for a multitude of reasons. He was at his best — if you can call it that — when he buffooned and clowned his way around the stage for his Trump-pets, speaking off the cuff in front of a microphone with a whole lots of cameras rolling.

It would appear that Donald Trump put as much effort into revamping social media as he did in creating a healthcare system that would improve upon on the Affordable Care Act. Or preventing the pandemic. Or fixing the American budget deficit. Or making America more better greater again… I can do this all day, people. I have a really long list of President Trump’s failures.

A blog, for the most part, is a written venue of communication. There isn’t any means for immediate interaction between the writer and the audience, and there is no opportunity to ad lib anything. Additionally, The Donald cannot spel. Nor can he write a complete, comprehensive sentence. And most of his supporters can’t reed rede read.

_{The Sharpie is mightier than the Quid Pro Quo}

According to the article, that was the reason an infuriated Donald Trump shut down his cutting-edge social media platform. I mean, his blog. No one was reading it. I might have actually had more people reading my mostly meaningless blog than Trump had reading his totally pointless blog. That makes me smile a smile of vast contentment. Unfortunately, The Donald wasn’t infuriated enough to have a heart attack or a stroke.

Oh well, maybe next time… Like, when he finally figures out the election he lost will never, ever, be overturned.

* * * *

I have a lots of hypothetical situations that run through my head, so I’m going to throw this one out there as an example: I doubt that any of the thirteen people who regularly read my blog are Trump supporters, but on the off-hand chance that you are, and you’re female, and you’ve been wondering if you could be in a relationship with me because I seem like an urbane, erudite, cool guy — um, no. We couldn’t.

For one thing, I’m already in a relationship. I’m very happily married to my lovely supermodel wife. But even if that wasn’t the case, no, we still couldn’t be in a relationship. To sort of paraphrase Meatloaf, I can overlook a lots of things. But I can’t/won’t do that.

* * * *

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer as young as I used to be, but keeping up with the pace of life has become exhausting. I didn’t have insomnia prior to the first Coronavirus lockdown. Oddly, I do now. I’ve had it for about the last year. And I consider my life to be more free from stress than it has ever been.

At some point in time in this post I plan on exploring that issue. We’ll see how long it takes me to get there.

The fact that I often have trouble sleeping now — like tonight — doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers my doctor. He seems to view my insomnia as a personal affront to him. I’ve been taking Melatonin regularly at night for the last couple of weeks to make him happy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I’m retired. If I don’t sleep, it’s not like it’s going effect my performance at work the next day. And if I decide to take a nap in the afternoon it’s not going to get me fired. I don’t see this as a big problem.

There’s at least one more thing I should take into consideration about my current level of physical/emotional enervation and semi-frequent episodes of insomnia: As my wife has pointed out to me several times, I’m not 64 anymore. It’s pretty much all downhill for me from here on out…

To quote my brother-in-law, N. William Pfaff, “They can only kill you once. Everything else is just foreplay.”

Like unto many things in my life, I’m going to stand pat with the Wait and See approach; continue to monitor and assess myself from a distance because I don’t want me to know that I’m under surveillance.

* * * *

Don’t you worry. When things get back to normal again, your life will get back to normal again, too.

Perhaps. But there’s this: The world has changed, and whatever it returns to will not be the same world that existed prior to COVID-19. And there’s also this: No one I know has ever used the word normal to describe me. You probably don’t want to be the first person to go there.

* * * *

¡Feliz Día del Padre! And it’s the first day of summer too. The sun is shining. The US Open Golf Championship is playing on the TV. I usually golf on Sunday, but I took today off for a few reasons:

I haven’t been playing much golf since Todd decided he needed a vacation from us and drove up to Minnesota in early April to see his son, his daughter, and his grandson. We’re assuming that he’ll return in about a month or so. But there was never a strict timeline on his plans, so everything is subject to change. It’s one of the perks of being retired. You get to play a whole lots of things by ear.

I was under the illusion that I’ve been in a bit of slump for the last year or so. I wasn’t pleased with my scores because they, you know, sucked. But the word slump implies that at one time I wasn’t playing poorly, and I’m not sure I can state that with a clear conscience anymore — if I ever could.

I seem to remember that just before the first quarantine I was consistently scoring in the low 80’s, and I was convinced that I was going break 80 in the very near future. But I’m also the guy that forgets why he went into the kitchen in 20 steps or less, so I’m not sure my memory of being an almost not-so-terrible golfer is accurate.

Theoretically, a slump should be time-limited. Shouldn’t it?? After a year of slumping through the fairways, the roughs and the trees, the sand traps, and the greens — I’m starting to think this isn’t so much of a slump as it is a strong indicator that I’m simply not all that good at golf.

* * * *

While we’re on the subject of golf theories, I’m going to present Naisby’s Postulate of Bad Shots. And Stuff. Dave Naisby is one of the members of my country club, and he explained his theory to me the last time we played together. He’s Scottish, so you have read the next sentence with that wicked cool Scottish accent.

“Bad shots are neither created nor destroyed. They merely rotate in a random manner from one hole to the next.”

It’s the most succinct explanation of the vicissitudes of golf that I have ever heard in my life. Based on the way I’ve been playing, I’m pretty sure I’ve proven Dave’s theory multiple times, and it can now be classified as a Law.

* * * *

Another reason for decreasing my time spent on the golf course is pure psychology. I have previously described golf as a fickle mistress. One day she’s all happy to see you and treats you really nice. The next time she doesn’t have time for you and slams the door in your face. I figure if I start treating Miss Golf like I’m not interested in her anymore, she might start being nicer to me when we get together.

That ought to to do the trick, eh.

* * * *

The final reason I didn’t golf today was the weather. I know I said it was a beautiful day here, but yesterday Tropical Storm Dolores hit the western coast of Mexico, and we’ve gotten about four inches of rain in the last twenty-four hours. It was extremely soggy here this morning, and I thought it would get even soggier. But the prevailing winds must have blown the remnants of Dolores off to the north of the Lakeside Area, and it turned out to be a really gorgeous day.

The Chinese Mountains to the west of the resort will green up and look like heads of broccoli in a few days. The temperatures will moderate and cool off a bit. The dust and pollen have been erased from the sky and you can actually see the other side of Lake Chapala clearly for the first time in months.

_{See? I told you it was beautiful here}

I love the beginning of the Rainy Season. Everything feels fresh and clean. It’s like unto a second Spring. And I won’t have to spend several hours a day watering the dozen or so gardens we’ve resurrected after subduing the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow from Hell. With all of my free time I’ll be able to keep the lawn mowed and trimmed, and make sure that the current hedgerow remembers the limitations its boundaries.

And I might feel like writing more often. We’ll have to see how that goes, too.

The only negative thing about the beginning of the Rainy Season is the bugs. June bugs. Flying Buffalo Ants. The Other Flying Ants. Mosquitoes. Giant motheses. They all appear at this time of year. In hordes. Lea absolutely hates the bug invasion. I have to admit it is kind of creepy.

The only good thing about it is it’s brief. And it does provide a veritable smorgasbord for all of the birds that live around here.

* * * *

It’s been awhile since I wrote anything in my blog about my mostly boring life. I’ve actually been too busy to write. And I’m not making that up. We had a few visitors here at the resort in May. Lea’s sister, Leslie, and her husband, Bill, flew down from southern Minnesota, and spent a week with us taking in the sights and the some of the food here in the scenic Lakeside Area.

I was mildly surprised that Les and Bill made the trek down here. Neither of them is in great health, and they both have varying degrees of mobility issues. I hope they come back soon, and often. They said they would. They’re both sweet people and you’ve already had a sample of Bill’s sense of humor. He makes me laugh.

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Here’s another hypothetical situation for your consideration: Leslie is eight years older than Lea, and Bill is two years older than Leslie. That part isn’t hypothetical. That’s actually true. Bill leaves Philadelphia in a train traveling west at 65 miles an hour. Leslie leaves Chicago in her smart car traveling east at 45 miles an hour. How many tropical fruits can a Bananasarus Rex eat before Leslie will have to stop to the use the restroom for the first time?

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Lea and I both took short trips back up to the States in May. Lea said she needed to do some shopping, so she flew to Austin, TX and spent a week with her daughter, Gwen. I suggested that she get the J&J COVID vaccine while she was there because I didn’t have any faith in the Chinese vaccine we had received here. No one — not even the Mexican government — knew when the second injection would be available. And neither of us wanted to spend another ten and a half hours waiting to get it.

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I thought that little piece of paper stating you had been vaccinated would end up being far more important than it has turned out to be, didn’t you? I’m disappointed that no one has asked to see it. If I wanted to return to the States, that piece of paper is worthless. I’d have to go get another swab shoved up my sinuses to get another piece of paper that says I tested negative for COVID.

That doesn’t make any sense to me.

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When Lea returned to Mexico, I flew up to Austin to get vaccinated. And that’s the only thing I did while I was there. I flew up on a Sunday. Got the J&J vaccine on Monday. And flew back to Mexico on Tuesday. When I returned, Gwen flew down with me. She spent a couple of weeks hanging out at the resort, and we played several rounds of golf before she flew home.

Gwen is not a good golfer either, but she has demonstrated moments of being just about the luckiest golfer I’ve ever played with. Sooner or later the golf gods are going to notice that. They always do.

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Future Shock is a book by the American author, Alvin Toffler. It was published in 1970, and I remember reading it in high school. I can’t remember if it was a reading assignment for one of my classes, or if I read it because I liked to read back then. One thing I do remember is it was one of least enjoyable books I ever read. It didn’t have a happy ending.

In the dictionary, shock is defined as a sudden upsetting or surprising event or experience.

In the medical field, shock is an acute medical condition associated with a fall in blood pressure caused by blood loss, severe burns, bacterial infection, allergic reaction, or sudden emotional stress marked by cold, pallid skin, irregular breathing, rapid pulse, and dilated pupils.

In the book, future shock is a psychological state created by “…too much change in too short a period of time”.

In that regard, all of the events of the last year have unquestionably met that criterion. This profound physiological state — that’s how I’m going to describe this flashflood of multiple noxious stressors — can be experienced by individuals, a group of individuals, and even entire societies.

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In the dictionary, stress is defined as a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can be caused by almost anything, depending on the person and their perceptions. Something that one person experiences without stress can produce a goddamn pants-wetting panic attack in someone else.

A Perhaps Little Known Fact About Stress: Stress is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, stress can help you face difficult challenges and achieve your goals. The right amount of stress can help you accomplish daily tasks more efficiently. That’s right. Stress can actually make you elevate your game.

Stress can also serve as a sort of early warning system, producing the fight-or-flight response. When the brain perceives a possible crisis situation, it starts flooding the body with epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These hormones focus your senses, enabling you to quickly react and avoid potentially dangerous situations. Stress can actually save your life.

It’s only when you’re overwhelmed with stress that it becomes detrimental.

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The term future shock seems to be incongruous to me. It’s not the future that shocks us. It’s the present set of particularly nasty circumstances that make us wonder whether or not we will even have a future. And that’s where the shocking part comes into play as far as I’m concerned.

According to Toffler, all of this shock and awe about the present/future has been caused by industrialization. Just in cases you were wondering, the first Industrial Revolution started roughly in the mid-1700’s. All we have done since then is streamline the process to the point that it now has a super-charged Hemi engine complete with a couple of twin turbos.

In Toffler’s opinion, we created a monster that has become an out-of-control juggernaut. The genie has been let out of the bottle and there’s no way to get it back in there again. All we can do now is hope we can keep pace with it or we will surely be crushed to death if we don’t.

When I look at the situation in this way, the pandemic appears to be more of a blessing than a curse. It forced us to slow the fuck down, son. It gave us the opportunity to catch our collective breath and reassess almost everything we had been doing.

We have been an industrialized society for almost three hundred years. There’s no way we are going undo that process. Even if we all wanted to do that, I’m not sure it would be the smartest thing we could do. I absolutely love the fact that I have access to an ocean of information at my fingertips, even if I’m not interested in 97% of it.

It took a little over two hundred years before Toffler came up with a name for the menace we had created, even if it’s a stupid name. And we’ve spent some of the last one hundred years trying to figure what we could do about it.

In recent years, a paradigm shift has occurred. The dark future that Toffler was convinced would occur is by no means etched in stone. He may not have been able to see a path that would change his outcome, but that doesn’t mean other people couldn’t. Individuals, groups of individuals, entire societies, and most importantly, corporations have started making a conscious effort to to raise the bar of ethical standards in everything from agriculture to zoology. And that includes pretty much everything in-between.

These are very good things. These are the things that enable me to keep hoping for a better tomorrow. And if enough of us can keep this up, we might not end up destroying ourselves in the process of improving our lives.

To be sure, we still have a lots of work to do. And we have long way to go before we sit back and try to believe that we’ve done enough to correct the error of our ways. But we are doing something. And that’s the most important thing.