Cats/Vacation/Earthquake!

For those of you that like to watch movies, you might recognize the three words of the title to this installment of my blog are all movie titles, too. They’re not necessarily good movies, but they more or less sum up what’s been happening in my life for the last few weeks.

The featured image for this post is the album cover from Pink Floyd’s ninth studio album, Wish You Were Here. It was released in 1975, and it’s probably my favorite album from the Floyd boys.

* * * *

Perhaps Little Known Fact About This Band: The name Pink Floyd was created on the spur of a moment in 1965 by Syd Barrett, one of the founding members of the band. The name came from two blues musicians in his record collection: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Yeah, I’ve never heard of them either.

Wish You Were Here is essentially a musical tribute to Syd, who was booted out of his own band in 1968 due to mental illness and increasingly erratic behavior secondary to profound psychedelic drug use. Seven years later, his band mates still missed him.

It’s a musically sad album, but also very sweet and beautiful. It’s grief and anger, interspersed with doses of love.

* * * *

Cats is a 2019 feature movie directed by Tom Hooper, that was based on the 1981 play composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which was based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. I’ve never seen the movie. Or the play. Nor have I read the book. But I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a song or two from one of those productions.

Here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa, Cats has been translated into los gatitos cuatros, and a great majority of my waking life has been focused on the care and feeding thereof. We gave Gremlin and Pixie, the two starving orphans that found us in early August, full run of the house 12 days ago, and then we held our breath.

Operation Kit-ten Integration is in full swing.

Mika and Mollie haven’t exactly been friendly with their new house mates, but there hasn’t been any overt declarations of war either. So this is probably going about as smoothly as it can, at least as far as Lea and I are concerned.

I was kind of hoping our adult cats would be a bit more welcoming. Now I’m hoping Mika and Mollie will simply come to grudgingly accept Gremlin and Pixie over the next several months. Or years…

* * * *

Gremlin and Pixie are snoozing on the couch in the living room as I type this. It’s a good thing because Pixie had been walking on the keyboard a few minutes earlier. I appreciate her trying to help me, but she doesn’t type any better than I do… The babies are about four months old now. They’ve been very entertaining to say the least. They’re cute as kit-tens, and almost irresistible.

Mika and Mollie are a little over four years old, and they don’t appear to anywhere near as taken with the cuteness of the babies’ antics as Lea and I are. Maybe they don’t remember they were once cute little bundles of furry energy, too.

The babies are finally healthy, having recovered from damn near starving to death, being covered with fleas and fungi, and being infested with intestinal worms. They have fat bellies, and their fur feels like silk. I’m not sure they could be any happier or more content with their new lives.

From my point of view, our older kit-tens should be happier with the new circumstances of their lives. They’re certainly getting better service and more attention from Lea and I because of the newcomers. I clean all four of the litter boxes twice a day now, and we both take the time to check on Mika and Mollie throughout the day to make sure they don’t look too miserable segregating themselves from everything and everyone.

It reminds me of the approach I used to take with my Borderline Personality Disorder patients back when I was a psych nurse. I’d meet with them first thing in the morning and go over a few reasonable and attainable goals. I’d drop in frequently during the day to give them little pep talks, give them whatever PRN medications they desired, and prayed for the best with those bitches. You can never trust a Borderline to do the right thing for too long.

Yo, Mr. Psychiatry. This is interesting and all, but what sort of fungal stuff did your cats have, if you don’t mind me asking…

Not at all. They had ringworm.

* * * *

Ringworm of the body (tinea corporis) is a common skin infection that is caused by a fungus. It’s called “ringworm” because it usually causes a circular rash (shaped like a ring, duh) that is very red and extremely itchy. 

I can personally vouch for the truth of the above statement.

It’s also very contagious, therefore, extremely easy to spread. You can also get ringworm of the scalp (tinea capitis), which is worse than ringworm of the body, mostly because it’s much harder to treat. And there’s also the possibility you could get ringworm of the groin (tinea cruris).

It’s unfortunate our veterinarian didn’t notice the ringworms the first two times we took the babies in to her office for treatment and vaccines and stuff.. Lea and I didn’t know we had been fungally contaminated until we were on the second week of our —

* * * *

Vacation is a 2015 American comedy film written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. It’s the fifth theatrical installment of the very popular National Lampoon Vacation film series. As far as I’m concerned, they should’ve stopped at two. And there are literally thousands of movies that have the word vacation in the title, so if you don’t like this movie either, you can easily chose another.

Vacation is also a song released by the all-female rock band, the Go-Go’s in 1982. The song was the first single from their album of the same name. Vacation, the song, became one of the Go-Go’s highest charting singles, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the band’s second US Top-10 hit. 

And there’s this little tidbit from a couple of the band members, “We still saw videos as an annoying waste of time,” Jane Wiedlin said. “After seven or eight hours we sent out someone to sneak in booze.” Kathy Valentine recalled, “…we drank lots of champagne. Lots.”

Yep. Being a rockstar in the 1980’s was every bit as banal and boring as you might have imagined it was.

* * * *

Lea and I flew back up to the States at the beginning of September, and we spent two weeks exploring the State in which we had resided the longest, Minnesota. We visited with a select few family members the first few days we were there, we shopped our asses off. We visited a few places special to us, and attended one activity that we loved.

We went to the State Fair — The Great Minnesota Get-Together — it’s a very big deal in Minnesota. There were just under 250,000 people at the fairgrounds on the day we went, and we spent the entire day with our youngest daughter, Abi. That was probably the best part of our visit — we never get to spend much time with her anymore.

We went to the North Shore of Lake Superior, where the entire population is less than 250,000 people. It’s probably my most favorite place that I’ve ever been.

I have to remind myself that we actually had a great time, most of the time. The timing of our trip ended up being perhaps the worst time we could’ve picked to leave our home. And all of our kit-tens. And then Queen Elizabeth II got dead!

Fortunately, our oldest daughter and her husband and their dog had just returned to live in Mexico for the next several months until they get bitten by the Travel Bug again and take off to…wherever…again. Gwen took care of the kit-tens. John took care of everything else, and he sent me pictures of all of the kit-tens every day while we were gone. What a guy!

The first week of our vacation flew by, and that’s when things started going a bit south for us. Ironically, we were on the North Shore when I realized the itchy red circles that had erupted on both of my forearms, and Lea’s forearms, too, was fucking ringworm.

* * * *

If I had been a Med/Surg nurse instead of a Psych nurse, I probably would’ve recognized the hallmark symptoms of ringworm sooner. And then I might not have ended up looking like unto a leper, or someone who had snuffed out half a pack of cigarettes on his forearms.

Lea had a milder case of ringworm than I did, but I had spent way more time with our malnourished orphans than she had. I ended up with seven fulminating lesions on my right arm, six on my left. Fortunately, I didn’t end up with ringworm of the scalp. Or on my groin, thank you Lord. The treatment was relatively simple. A lots and lots of antifungal ointments. And hand sanitizer.

My arms look almost normal again, whatever that is.

* * * *

Once we realized what was afflicting us, Lea and I cancelled all of our remaining visitations with everyone, simply because we didn’t want to take the chance of passing our fungi on to anyone else, and we just wanted to go home. Unfortunately, if we wanted to fly back to Mexico with the tickets we had already purchased, we had to wait four more days to do so. They were some of the longest days of our lives in recent history. We bunkered up in our Airbnb in St. Paul and binge watched TV shows and movies.

We flew home on September 13th. I wanted to scream at our veterinarian, Dra. Bereniece, when we brought the kit-tens to her office to be treated for ringworm the following day — but I remembered I used to be healthcare worker — and sometimes shit just happens. And Dra. Bereniece has given our kit-tens excellent care all of the other times we’ve had to bring them to her office, so I kept my temper on a short leash, and told my mouth to sit down and shut up.

It took ten days to complete the oral meds for the kit-tens. And I gave them antifungal shampoos as often as I thought they needed them. Somewhat amazingly, the babies endured all of those treatments remarkably well. And Gremlin just might be the coolest cat that ever lived because he essentially let us do whatever we needed to do to him without so much as a hiss.

* * * *

But wait, there’s more! If you’ve been following this blog, you might remember this is the Rainy Season in the Lakeside Area. We’ve had over 30 inches of rain since mid-June. And when you get that much rain, you better have a leak-free roof.

We didn’t think we had any leaks in our roof before we went on vacation from retirement. Yeah, we were wrong about that. But I’m pleased to say those leaks have been sorted out by Tacho and Lupe. The mold that appeared on the ceiling of the master bedroom has been remediated. The ceiling around the fireplace in the living room is going to need some cosmetic work, eventually, once everything dries out.

* * * *

All of that crap was bad enough to come home to, but Lea and I both came down with terrible head colds when we were flying home. This isn’t the first time we’ve had that happen, but we’re hoping it will be the last time. We’ve been sicker than hell for almost two weeks, and have just now started feeling better enough to want to live again. It’s not COVID, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve had that shit, and I know what it feels like. And Lea appears to be immune to it.

We were expecting an actual true-to-life visitor to the resort last week, but I ended up begging her not to come down, and pleasepleaseplease reschedule her trip. Thankfully, she decided she’d like to celebrate her next birthday here at the resort in January.

Thank you, Jaye. You did the right thing.

* * * *

And that brings me to the third part of title of the post —

* * * *

Earthquake is a 1974 American ensemble disaster/drama film directed and produced by Mark Robson, starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and a cast of thousands. The plot concerns the struggle for survival after a catastrophic earthquake destroys most of the city of Los Angeles, California.

I’ve seen this movie, probably more than once. I guess it was okay. My kinda/sorta roommate when I was in the US Army, Specialist 4th Class Randy Paul was from Los Angeles. The movie gave him nightmares after he saw it because, “…that’s where I fuckin’ grew up, man! You don’t know what it’s like to see almost everything you know get wiped off the face of the earth, man.”

He had a point, so I stopped laughing at him.

* * * *

September 19th. It’s historically been a tragic date in Mexico. Three earthquakes have hit this country on that date. In 1985 at 7:17 AM, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake hit Mexico City, destroying huge parts of the city and killing at least 5,000 people, and injuring tens of thousands of people. 

In 2017 an earthquake struck at 1:14 PM with an estimated magnitude of 7.1 and strong shaking for about 20 seconds. Its epicenter was about 35 miles south of the city of Puebla, Mexico. At least 370 people were killed by the earthquake and related building collapses, including 228 in Mexico City, and more than 6,000 people were injured.

We were living in Mexico when that earthquake hit, but we didn’t feel so much as a quiver from it.

This year at 1:05 PM a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck between the Mexican states of Michoacán and Colima. There were only two reported deaths attributed to the earthquake, and less than 500 people were injured. Somewhat ironically, there had been a nationwide disaster drill about an hour before the quake. Maybe that’s why there were so few deaths or injuries. Everybody already knew what they were supposed to do…

Like unto almost every earthquake that has ever quaked, there have been several aftershocks here of varying magnitude in the days that followed. We haven’t felt any of them, but several of the people I know here have felt them, and they haven’t been any more fun than the first quake had been.

* * * *

I was sitting in a restaurant waiting for our take-out lunch order to be filled when the earthquake hit. I was sitting in a wobbly chair — you know, it kind of rocked from side-to-side because of uneven ground. Or uneven legs. Or both. And then I noticed my chair wasn’t the only thing rocking back and forth in the restaurant, and I started feeling like maybe I was drunk or something.

Everyone seated at the restaurant was looking around trying to figure out what the hell was happening. I know I was.

“Earthquake! Everybody get outside! NOW!” I’m not sure who said that, but it was someone that had definitely been through an earthquake before. In terms of terror and destruction here in the Lakeside Area, this wasn’t much of an earthquake. Only one business that has closed because of “earthquake damage”, and it probably wasn’t in that good of shape before the quake hit…

The lack of terror and destruction aside, I have to admit it felt very weird to feel the ground beneath my feet jiggle like unto Jell-O. I immediately tried calling my lovely supermodel wife to make sure she was okay, and she didn’t answer her phone. This has happened every goddamn time there’s been an emergency, and I absolutely needed to talk to her, right now!

Seriously. That’s not a joke. So, in a way, I was used to it. I told myself she was okay, and paid for our take-out order. Hey, we were hungry, and if we weren’t dead we going to need to eat… The restaurant I was at is less than a mile from our house, so it was a quick commute back home. Lea was intentionally standing in the doorway when I pulled up to the gate to let me know she really was okay.

When the earthquake hit, she had done the same thing I had. She ran outside just in cases the house decided to collapse. And when she got outside she realized she had left her cellphone on the couch. By the time she had retrieved her phone and tried to call me back, the circuits were so busy from everybody in Mexico trying to call someone else to see if they were okay that no one could call anyone.

* * * *

I don’t think I have ever hugged her so hard. And I could not stop myself from shaking. When I was reasonably sure I wasn’t going to vomit, we sat down and had lunch with our kit-tens. French dip sandwiches. And peanut butter pie for dessert.

Life will go on for us, and thankfully, almost everyone else in the seismic country we have adopted as our new home.

* * * *

I had no idea how to end this post, so I took a break from it for the last two or three weeks. I’m still not sure how I’m going to wrap this up, I only know that I need to do it. It’s time to get moving again.

I meet with a few guys every Monday to discuss our individual life experiences, and anything else that pops into our heads. I just came back from this week’s meeting. I call it A Meeting of the Two Wise Men. It gives us a certain amount of leeway, just in cases one or more us decides to do something stupid.

Yeah, it still happens, even though we’re supposed to be old and wise by now.

One of the sometimes Two Men is a guy named Bill Merrill. Bill is a much more social animal than I am, and a lots of people stop by to say hello to him when we meet. I don’t know most of the people he knows, so Bill introduces me like this, “This is my friend Mark. Mark is on a spiritual journey.”

* * * *

I can’t argue with that intro. I am on a spiritual journey. I spend more time communicating with God, the Universe, and Everything than I do with anyone else. Including my lovely supermodel wife, and I know have to start doing a better job at that.

I have found God to be almost totally unlike everything I was taught to believe about God. And my relationship with Him. Perhaps the most surprising part is how easily approachable He is. And how near. My prayers don’t have make the Kessel run to reach him. Nor do I have to wait 78.24 light years to hear a response from Him.

The guy that wants a lightsaber will understand that reference.

* * * *

The fact that I have to essentially un-learn almost everything I know is somewhat daunting. The fact that I’m totally willing to do it might somehow shorten the process, but I really do possess a headful of crap in my brain. And how does one actually empty one’s mind? This task leads me to comparisons with Hercules cleaning the Augean stables. And even the Star Wars guy might have to Google that reference.

I don’t know where this journey will lead. I only know that I’m committed to finding out, and I’m not sure I could stop now even if I wanted to. From my point of view, the ending can’t be worse than anything I’ve already seen.

So there’s a better than average chance that will have to be an improvement…

It’s All in the Wrist

I’ve heard it said that growing old is a privilege because it’s something that is denied to many. Yeah, that’s probably true, so I don’t have an issue with that.

But it probably isn’t true about being old. Being old appears to be more of a pain than it is a privilege. And I mean that in the most literal sense that I can.

* * * *

I think it was last week that I finally realized that my blog has become an on-line diary of my incredibly bucolic and mostly boring life. I’m not a smart man, but even I know that. It mostly surprises me that it took me so long to figure it out.

I’m starting to remind myself of our 1997 Chevy S-10 Blazer. We had it for 11 years, and it’s my favorite vehicle of all time. It was a deep metallic maroon color. It had running boards and heated seats. And it had four-wheel drive. Because of the length of time we had it, and possibly because of the way we utilized it — we took it down the most spurious roads we could find on the North Shore of Lake Superior– the Blazer required far more serious maintenance than all of the other cars we’ve had in the last 33 years combined.

I’m pretty sure I ended up replacing every mechanical apparatus on it except the engine and the transmission. And I upgraded the sound system at least once. Lea eventually got tired of all the upkeep on it and more or less demanded that I get rid of it.

* * * *

It’s all in the wrist is a phrase typically used to indicate a certain level of skill or mastery at something where the hands are involved somehow. It’s a reference to the deft skill required to successfully perform certain activities. It’s mostly a sports reference.

Toss a ball in the hoop with nothing but net. Sink a long putt in golf. Throw a Frisbee. Throwing a perfect spiral with a football. Casting a line or better yet — fly fishing — you got it. It is all in the wrist. That’s the latest part of my body that has been malfunctioning for the last month. And I’ll apologize in advance for putting you through this yet again

* * * *

The weird part is I couldn’t think of anything I had done to injure my wrist. The only thing I did on the day it started hurting was wait in line for my first COVID-19 vaccine injection. It took ten and one-half hours. You wouldn’t think that any mishap could befall you by doing essentially nothing except play on your phone while you wait seemingly forever for the process to run its course, but that’s what I was doing on St. Patrick’s Day this year. And that’s the only reason why I remember that date.

* * * *

Why am I here? That’s a question I have asked myself countless times in my lifetime. Not necessarily in any spiritual or existential sense. It’s more like unto Why did I come into the kitchen? I was in the bedroom, and I know I came in here for a reason… I just can’t remember why anymore…

I can’t even say that this is something new. I did it thirty years ago, too. The only difference is the number of stairs I have to climb before I forget why went up them in the first place. Here, it’s only one. In Minnesota, it was a flight of stairs that led up from the basement. And it usually took three trips up and down the stairs before I could remember what I was trying to accomplish.

_{If anything, you’d think that my ability to concentrate would actually improve…}

* * * *

If you’ve read any of my previous posts about my adventures with the aging process, you know that the first thing I do when something like unto this happens to me is diagnosis my ailment. I have described this as the process of ruling shit out until you can’t rule something out anymore. Because I am both a guy and a nurse, I tend to pick the worst outcome I can think of, then work my way back to sanity from there.

So, yes, we can eliminate getting stabbed by knives and being attacked by wolverines. Some of you might possibly be thinking, You know, a much more common wrist malady is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome… And that’s what I’ve come to believe it is, too.

* * * *

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a condition that causes numbness, tingling, or weakness in your hand, or a combination of any/all of the above. And a ridiculous amount of pain in your wrist. It’s my right wrist, and I am right-handed. It has changed almost everything about my life, so much so that I’ve contemplated coming out as Left-handed and trying out that lifestyle for awhile. I’ve even stopped playing golf because I don’t want to have start wearing Depends®.

CTS is caused by too much pressure on your median nerve. It runs the length of your arm, goes through a passage in your wrist called the carpal tunnel, hence the name, and ends in your hand. The median nerve controls the movement and feeling of your thumb and the movement of all your fingers, except your little pinky.

The main cause of CTS is chronic, repetitive motion — like typing, or any wrist movements that you do over and over when your hands are lower than your wrists, like, playing with your mobile device while you wait in line for ten and a half hours straight without a break.

Studies have shown that the incidence of CTS exploded with the emergence of the Computer Age for one simple reason. Not everyone used a typewriter before the age of computerization. Then, pretty much just like that! Everyone was using a keyboard to conduct business, for personal use, and entertainment. Up to five percent pf the world population is currently effected by CTS with varying levels of severity.

I have broken bones, sprained both of my ankles, pulled muscles, damaged my right knee three times, and partially separated my left shoulder. Those things hurt. But there is nothing that compares to the sheer motherfucking agony of putting too much pressure on one little nerve for an extended period of time.

It takes your breath away. It consumes all of your attention, so don’t get any stupid ideas about going into another room for anything. You could get lost for hours. You might end up as a Silver Alert, and that would just be embarrassing when the search party finds you in the bedroom staring at the ceiling…

* * * *

Being a nurse probably caused my CTS. At the very least, it played a significant part in my developing it. I’ve had CTS symptoms on and off for the last twenty years. My decision to try to become a rich and famous author certainly didn’t help any. And writing my blog is probably the stupidest thing I could do right now.

See? I told you I wasn’t smart.

I have a wrist splint that I have sometimes worn when I go to bed ever since the late 1990’s. I only use them whenever my right wrist greatly pains me. Historically, it has happened in streaks, then has disappeared for sometimes extended periods of time. I wouldn’t have described my symptoms as severe, until this last flareup. At least, that’s how I remember it.

I don’t think my CTS was progressively getting worse. This was more of an unanticipated blitzkrieg of pain. From hell. This was, hands down, the worst recurrence of it ever for me, and I’m hoping that it will go away again and go bother someone else for awhile. That’s probably how that phenomenon works, too.

The treatment of CTS is simple. Rest — stop doing the stuff that caused the flare up, Wrist splinting. A splint that holds your wrist still while you sleep can help relieve nighttime symptoms of tingling and numbness. And NSAIDS, drugs like Motrin® and Aleve®. And if those don’t work, you’ll probably need surgery.

* * * *

I’m not a huge fan of surgical interventions for anything, especially when there are so many non-surgical options available, so I’ve been doing all of the preventative measures mentioned above, plus, stretching exercises to try to pop my wrist into non-pain producing positions My caddy taught me how to do them. And I bought a new splint because I figured splint technology has probably changed a little in the last two decades.

My right wrist is mostly better now. Except for the low-grade ache that never really goes away, and sometimes hurts like unto two hells whenever I try to do something manly, like, open a jar of pickles. And the tingly sensation that sometimes extends from my elbow to my fingertips. And the fact that my fine motor skills are sometimes greatly diminished. My only fear is this flare up has lasted longer than any of the others. I’m not sure it’s going to bounce back all the way this time.

All of these things are more annoying than they are anything else most of the time, and I am more than accustomed to dealing with stuff like unto that on a daily basis. There are several parts of my body that are working at 80% of the capacity they had only ten years ago. As much as it sucks sometimes, getting older still beats the hell out of the alternative. It just seems to be the price most of us have to pay for staying alive.

* * * *

I want to jump back to the ten and a half hour wait that Lea, my lovely supermodel wife, Phyllis, my golf wife, and I had to endure for our first COVID-19 vaccine. It’s probably the most exciting thing I’ve done all year.

Obviously, it wasn’t well-organized. If it was publicly advertised, I didn’t see or hear about it. Almost everyone we talked to while we waited, and waited, and waited some more — had heard about from word of mouth — like us. Or they read about it on Facebook.

It was held in the little village of Ajijic — in the park down by the malecón, and it was a first come-first serve administration of all the vials that happened to make it into town on that particular day. It was sponsored by the Mexican government, and was free of charge to anyone in the country. All you had to do was produce three pieces of mandatory paperwork at the time the vaccine was being dispensed.

One of these pieces of paper was a form you actually had to fill out on-line to register for the program, then print out that form and bring to the administration site. Yes, you’re absolutely correct. You would think that once you registered on-line that would’ve done the trick. It probably would’ve worked in any other country on the planet. The other two pieces of paper contained essentially the same information as the on-line form. Failure to have the three correct pieces of paper meant that you could not receive the shot, no matter how long you had waited.

Lea said she filled out her online in form about ten minutes. It took me more than half an hour to even sign into the goddamn website. Phyllis was easily as challenged as I was by the process, and at the end she couldn’t get the form to print. Phyllis emailed all her information to Lea, and even she couldn’t get it to print. Fortunately, Phyllis had brought along almost every piece of legal paper she has collected in her time here. A government official somewhere in the vicinity of the park okayed a different piece of paper as an acceptable alternative, and she was allowed to receive the vaccine.

I’m going to guess that Phyllis wasn’t the only one who wasn’t able to print the registration form.

* * * *

It is a well-known fact of modern life that all bureaucracies run on paperwork. But the Mexican bureaucracy appears to worship paperwork. Getting a legal document down here can be one of the most frustrating processes you will ever experience. Every document has to drawn up by a notario. They’re like unto attorneys down here, only more important. All legal documents are written in a highly specialized form of Mexican-Spanish that is so stylized it’s almost incomprehensible, and the entire thing must be correct down to the punctuation. If there are any errors, the entire document must be completely re-written and that process can take months. And months…

That’s why notarios are so important. They make sure every i is dotted, every t is crossed, and every comma and period are all in the right places at the right times.

And there isn’t much logic when it comes to what is deemed to be the correct pieces of paper to have in any given situation. There are a few forms you always seem to need, but after that it is anyone’s guess.

You have to fill out reams of paperwork to get a Mexican driver’s license — which has your name, your address, a picture of you — and a shitload of other information that the Mexican government generates — but it cannot be used to prove who you are, where you live, or any of the other numbers and codes that the government provided to you, and only you.

A driver’s license is just that. Something that allows you to get behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle and do pretty much whatever you want when you’re on the roads down here. And that is all.

A rental agreement, something that is written in that very specific Mexican-Spanish jargon of inestimable profundity, cannot be used to provide proof of residency. You need something much more vital. A utility bill for telephone or internet service. Or you need a bank statement.

Evidently, commercial billing is far more of a reliable source of information to the government than anything the government actually produces.

* * * *

At the end of our ten hour wait to get our injection, there was another half-hour process where dozens of high school volunteers filled out one more piece of paper that verified all of the information we had already provided to get the shot, and they also wrote down telephone numbers and email addresses. I asked if anyone was actually going to contact me so I could get my second shot of the vaccine. Everyone that heard my question laughed. Even the people taking down all of our information.

* * * *

Yes. Three weeks later we had to go back down into the little village of Ajijic, in the park by the malecón again and wait in line once more, but this time for only two and a half hours. We had to have the three all-important pieces of paperwork with essentially all the same information again so we could to receive the piece of paper that had been filled out for us, but not given to us, after we received our first shot. You know, the one with all of the same information on it one more time, plus our telephone numbers and email addresses that no one needed because no one contacted us. We heard we had to go get this piece of paper by word of mouth, again.

This is just a guess, but I figure we’re going to need four pieces of paper to qualify to get the second COVID -19 vaccination, whenever that might be. Phyllis will probably hear about first, and then she’ll let us know once more.

* * * *

I have serious doubts about how effective this global vaccination program is going to be in the long run. I’ve read reports about people who have received the vaccine coming down with COVID. I even saw one report about a woman that survived the illness, got the vaccine, then came down with the ‘Rona again. I guess the good news is she’s still alive, but this disease doesn’t seem to play by the rules, and that’s a serious cause for concern.

The Mexican government bought all their vaccines from China. By all accounts I’ve seen, this vaccine is the least effective of all the vaccines that are currently being employed against the pandemic. I may have wasted half a day of my life for a vaccine that might not do anything against the disease it’s supposed to prevent. I had lab work done about two weeks after I received the vaccine. One of tests I had done was a COVID antibody titer test.

It came back negative.

I have no idea if I have any COVID antibodies in my system even though I may have had COVID when we went to Mexico City in December of 2019, and I most definitely received the vaccine in March of this year. The world has changed. There isn’t as much certainty as there was before the pandemic. There aren’t as many answers as there used to be. And many of the answers we have right now are I don’t know. We’ll have to see. Maybe…

* * * *

The world has been in the closest thing to a total shutdown that it could achieve for the last year. People have quarantined, worn PPE, and social distanced during that entire time. Pandemic fatigue started occurring about ten minutes after the lockdowns started, and it has continued to fester away ever since. It has been boiling over for awhile, but now it’s starting to reach a fever pitch almost everywhere on the planet

I watched a news story this morning about revenge travel. It’s a visceral reaction to not being able to travel anywhere. With the gradual relaxation of travel restrictions, people are starting to hit the road and airways to any place they can. They don’t even care where they’re going. It just has to a be a destination that isn’t the fuckin’ couch in the fucking living room.

It’s possible that this is going to be the most dangerous stage of the pandemic. Only time will tell. We’ll know soon whether or not all of the things we have done as a global society will be enough to stop the spread and continuation of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Big Question is, have we done enough?

* * * *

I remember the first time I had to administer an injection as a nursing student. My patient was an elderly nun. If I screwed this up, I’d probably get kicked out of nursing school, and I would surely go straight to Hell for torturing Mother Teresa. I’m pretty sure my hands were shaking as I drew up the medication. I told my instructor how nervous I was, and she reassured me that I was going to be fine.

“Take a deep breath. Relax. Giving a shot is easy. Pretend you’re throwing a dart. It’s all in the wrist.”

I did all of those things, except the imaginary dart I threw probably would have traveled halfway to the moon. I felt the tip of the need hit the periosteum of her femur. That had to hurt like unto three hells. It was the worst shot I would ever administer in my life. And it was probably the worst injection Mother Teresa ever received in hers.

And she didn’t say a word.

My next injection went much better. By the time I gave my third injection it was like I had done it hundreds of times. It no longer produced the adrenaline rush that it did the first time. And I had gotten past the idea that I was intentionally inflicting pain on another human, even if I was doing it for a good cause.

* * * *

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you cease to be a highly-skilled participant and transition into being a once-great-but-now-mostly-forgotten spectator. For me, that transition started on the day that I retired. Four and a half years later, I had assumed that almost everyone I used to work with had forgotten all about me.

Yesterday, something I wasn’t expecting happened. I received a message from a nurse had I worked with at the last hospital I worked. She had just started a new job a new hospital — the second hospital I worked at in Phoenix. I worked on a Gero/Psych Unit there. All of the nurses on the unit knew how to handle the myriad of medical issues their patients brought to the hospital with them, but they had no idea how to address the psychiatric issues their patients had been admitted for. I taught my Med/Surg nurses how to think like Psych nurses.

Lynn said the staff there still talked about me all the time, and what a great mentor I had been to them. She ended her message saying, Thank you for the difference you have made in all our lives!!!

No. Thank you, Lynn. And Julia. And Al. And Liligene. And all of the rest of the staff on the SAGE Unit at Del E. Webb Medical Center.

You see? Being a psych nurse is easy. All you have to do relax. And find a way to make your patients laugh. It’s the most important therapy you will give them.

It’s all in the wrist.

The Glamorous Life

It’s been a quiet week here in the Lakeside Area. Most of the weeks are quiet here. It’s kind of a bucolic place. That’s probably why so many people decide to retire here. However, it is Mexico. And it comes to celebrating just about anything, the locals don’t take a backseat to anyone.

Holy Week, Semana Santa, is coming up. Ajijic hosts a passion play every year. I hear it’s very good. You could check it out if you’re interested. Just in cases you don’t know what a passion play is, it’s a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering, death, and resurrection. It’s a very Catholic tradition. Mexico is a very Catholic country.

During Holy Week, the Lakeside Area is going to be packed with tapatios, pilgrims, and tourists, which is why I’ll be at home. There’ll be the passion play, and bands playing at the bars and los eventos, and the eruption of cohetes will fill the air.

Tapatío, in general terms, is a colloquial Mexican term for someone from Guadalajara. In more specific Lakeside terms, it’s someone from Guadalajara who comes down here to escape from the Big City for the weekend.

We used to do something similar when lived in the States. When we lived in Minneapolis, we’d go up to the North Shore. It’s still my favorite place on Earth. When we lived in Phoenix, we’d go up into the mountains to Prescott or Payson.

Urban living certainly has its advantages. Jobs. Entertainment. Shopping malls. Fine dining. Paved roads. It also has it disadvantages. Air pollution. Traffic jams. Crime. Mostly, all of the other fucking people that also live there. The population of Guadalajara is around seven million people. If you lived there, you’d want to get the hell out of there, too.

* * * *

We go to Guadalajara every couple of months to shop at Costco. Or the high end malls. It’s an adventure every time, mostly because of the traffic. Guadalajara was a little town that became a huge city with little to no civic planning. If you live there, you’ll eventually learn your way around. If you don’t, you hire a driver, or you have to depend on GPS to get from Point A to Point B. You are not going to just drive around and hope you find what you’re looking for.

We’ve lived in big cities before. We’re not daunted by traffic. And we have a system. Lea drives and I navigate. I’m a better navigator than she is. And Lea loves to drive. She’d probably love it more if she still had her sportscar. But the roads here make a vehicle like that impractical. And you can’t load a lots of stuff into a 370z.

Our current vehicle is a Buick Encore. I’ll probably keep it for a couple more years, then get an Audi Q3. I’ll have to get rid of my American plated car and buy a Mexican plated car at that time. The Audi Q3 isn’t a sportscar, but it’ll still be a lots fun for Lea to drive. And it has a great stereo system, which is the only thing I care about when it comes to cars.

I actually bought a car once because of the stereo. I didn’t even take it for a test drive. I played with the radio for a couple of minutes without ever leaving the sales lot. I told the salesman to write it up, I’d take it.

“Don’t you want to take it for a test drive?” he asked, a bit dumbfounded.

“No. I want to drive it to work. Today. My shift starts at 3:00. You have two hours. You better get busy or you’re going to miss a sale.”

* * * *

I still have no idea what I’m going to write about. Maybe this will end up being a general update on our glamorous retirement lives…

We haven’t had to deal with any major issues at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa lately. Jaime says he’s still looking for a replacement faucet for the kitchen, but the longer this goes on the more I think he’s decided he’s decided he can live with our temporary faucet, too.

It’s not a big deal. We love it here. The most annoying thing about living here revolves around our satellite TV service and the download speed for our Interweb service.

As I’ve said before, we don’t actually watch a lots of TV, but we almost always have the TV on for background noise. Silence might be golden to some people, but it drives me crazy. After thirty years as a psych nurse, I’m accustomed to noise. The absence of noise disturbs me greatly.

Wow. I can’t believe I just said that. I don’t think I had realized how much I hate silence until now.

We have Shaw Direct for our satellite TV. Shaw is a Canadian company. We had next to no problems with them at our last house. Here, our satellite feed seems to be somewhat sketchy at times. Again, not a huge deal. I’ve become very skilled at rebooting our PVR box.

If there’s one thing that seems to drive all ex-pats crazy, it’s a slow Interweb connection. Hey, we’re spoiled. We didn’t have this issue before we moved here. There aren’t a lots of options when it comes to this suddenly vital service. Basically, you can go with Telmex® or Telecable®. Compared to speed-of-light fiber optic cable, they both suck. And neither of them seem to care.

Telmex® is essentially the Mexican version of the American communications giant, AT&T, before it was broken up into a bunch of smaller companies. Telmex® is a telecommunication monster down here. It owns eighty percent of the telephone lines in the country.

We had Telmex® service at our last house. I guess it was okay most of the time, though we consistently had issues whenever we wanted to stream movies through our KODI box.

We have Telecable® at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. I wasn’t enamored with our service when we first moved in. So I tried calling the office, and that’s when I discovered there isn’t an office phone. You actually can’t call the office unless you have the cellphone number of one of the service reps, and I doubt they give their numbers out to anyone.

On their website Telecable® lists two levels of service available in the Lakeside Area: 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps. So I went down to the office to talk to one of their service representatives about upgrading my package. That’s when I met Carmen and Marisol. And I wasn’t quite so pissed off anymore. Okay, they’re young, and beautiful. And they have really big eyes. And nice smiles.

Carmen said yes, I could upgrade my package, except for one small detail. They only offer 5 Mbps in the Lakeside Area. I’d have to live in Guadalajara to qualify for the 10 Mbps service.

There is a fiber optic cable company that is getting started in Lakeside. ILOX started running lines in specific areas late last year. I have no idea when there service will be available here. Maybe I’ll wander into their office one of these days, except I doubt their service reps will be as attractive as Carmen and Marisol…

Given the limitations of available Interweb service, and the sudden sketchiness of our satellite service, we talked to one of our friends, Donald Stordahl. Donald has a streaming TV service here in the Lakeside Area. We rented one of his boxes for a month, and then I remembered I already had two streaming devices, and they were already paid for. I hooked them up and gave Donald his box back.

And everything was great until I blew up my Amazon Firestick. I had tried to download the latest update, and after that it wouldn’t work. I have no idea what went wrong, I only knew that I felt like I accidentally hit that red LAUNCH button, and there was nothing I could do to stop the missiles.

Seeing how I couldn’t repair my Firestick, I decided to buy another one, you know, eventually. But then Donald bought a used Firestick and asked me if I wanted it, seeing how I had just destroyed mine. He seems to be a pretty savvy businessman, from my perspective.

My previous Firestick had been jailbroken. The one I bought from Donald wasn’t, so I channeled my inner Millennial, and went online to learn how to do stuff.

There are a lots of online tutorials about tweaking your Firestick. I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to do this, given that I’d just destroyed my last Firestick by trying to update it. But all you have to do is follow the step-by-step instructions, and I’ll be damned, it worked!

I’ll tell ya what, I was pretty goddamn proud of myself for a couple of days there. I successfully downloaded and installed the most recent KODI app, and the Mobdro app. Then I got my lovely supermodel wife addicted to Game of Thrones, and the rest is history.

* * * *

The final season of Game of Thrones airs this Sunday. Like every other fan, Lea and I have been speculating about who’s going to win the Great Game and sit on the Iron Throne. I don’t care who it is, just as long as it isn’t Cercei Lannister. She needs to got dead, soon.

Will the Golden Company help her maintain her grip on the reins of power, or will they break a contract for the first time ever and go fight against the Night King and his army from Hell? And how many of my favorite characters are going to get killed to death…

How are Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen going to defeat an army of animated dead warriors, White Walkers, and a zombie dragon? And what will they do when they discover that they’re related? Will Jon freak out when he finds out he’s been having sex with his aunt?

Who will kill The Mountain? What the hell is a Three-eyed Raven, and what sort of spooky superpowers does Bran Stark really have?

The good news is we’ll all find out soon. Unfortunately, that’s also the bad news.