Month: May 2020

It’s Not Looking Good in Minnesota

Catching up on the latest news in the US makes me grateful my top concern today was catching the garbage truck. I have completed that task and can now bask in the foggy Baja morning. It’ll warm up someday.

Honestly, it’s times like these that I point to when people seem baffled by my sudden move to Mexico. The term “Going Galt” evokes a massive eye roll but there’s a point where you just want to get off the damn ride. Why stick around and lament something that is utterly unfixable?

I’m old enough to remember when Americans could agree on a set of facts. We generally agreed on intended outcomes and our differences manifested themselves in our beliefs about the best paths to achieve those outcomes. Now we’ve gone completely off the rails. Gaslighting, virtue signaling, concern trolling…it’s all just too much.

Americans have gotten lazy and overprivileged. We’ve stopped being thinkers. We’ve eaten every line of bullshit fed to us with a knife and a fork and asked for more. We’ve stopped paying attention to things like how money really works and abdicated our responsibilities for keeping our government in check. We’ve been so focused on viral cat videos that we forgot to question why a particular officer in Minnesota had EIGHTEEN complaints of excessive force and had never been prosecuted. I’m not saying a frivolous complaint has never been filed because that would be provably false. I’m saying maybe it’s worth a look, ya know?

We need to get our priorities in order. The US has become a giant Karen full of rules and regulations and taxes and more rules. The criminal justice system is a fucking farce. Breathing air has become criminal activity. It’s like everyone declared themselves HOA President and it’s fucking chaos. I’m done. 

I hate what has happened to us. A better person would probably stick around and try to work on a solution but I fear we are far beyond the point of repair. It’s much easier to see how dysfunctional the situation has become from a distance. If things don’t improve, this trial separation could ultimately lead to divorce.

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We’re All Human and Humans Have Needs

I once drove from Lamar, Colorado to Dodge City, Kansas on nothing but dirt roads without a map just to prove it could be done. Look, I come from a crazy family and I come by it honestly. Keeping in mind that where I come from a country mile is a legit honest-to-God mile, it really was a very small feat. If the road I was on ended in a pasture, I’d just turn in the correct direction and catch the next one. Easy peasy.

Baja isn’t like that. My navigational senses are laid out in a carefully surveyed grid pattern and no such concept exists in Mexico. The Pacific Ocean is to blame for a lot of it. The hills and mountains aren’t exactly innocent. And then there’s the poverty, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to proper road engineering and all of the accoutrements one might expect in the first world.

I promise I have a point and it is this: One must always know the back way to get anywhere. You never know when you’ll need to be inconspicuous on the way home from a bar or to avoid being arrested for exercising during a global pandemic.

The beaches in Baja California Sur have been closed for what seems like a decade and I’m just about over it. I have been social distancing since March (of 1978) and really have been trying to follow the orders laid out by the Mexican government to flatten the curve. I’ve been doing this while my neighbors continue partying and carrying on like it’s January of 2020..the halcyon days.

My main act of civil disobedience is regular exercise. This is not on the list of essential activities permitting one to leave one’s domicile and it seems like a gross oversight until you actually stop to think about it. People who are going hungry aren’t exactly thinking about going for a hike or mountain bike ride, ya know? I totally get why they left it off the list. I also know I’m not endangering anyone by walking around the hills of my neighborhood so alone I can’t see, let alone hear another single, solitary soul. I meet lots of dogs but that’s another story for another day.

I can see the ocean just fine from my house so staying away from the beach has been easy enough, I suppose. It just really got to me on Saturday, though. I walked the back way through the hills and crossed the main road at a spot that is quick and a bit remote. Like, I didn’t want to attract attention but I was wearing a hot pink outfit. In hindsight, this seems like poor planning. I walked to (not on) the beach and took a few photos to remind myself it’s still there. I did see a family on the beach with an umbrella and a pickup parked near them but otherwise it was deserted.

I’m still learning all of the hills and where roads connect so I miscalculated a bit on my way home and had to get on the main road for about a quarter-mile. I was walking along in my hot pink outfit and wouldn’t you know, here come TWO humvees full of desert BDUs and rifles making full eye contact. It was apparently not a priority for them to hassle a gringa walking alone in the sunshine so they went on their merry way…probably to remove that family from the beach. Nevertheless, I was relieved to disappear into the mismash of washed out roads and short-cut walking trails through washes and impromptu garbage dumps.

While by no means a career criminal, I have done some sneaking around doing things in my time. Unauthorized riding of horses. Unauthorized driving of cars. Unauthorized entry of structures. And now…unauthorized…exercise. This is a very strange time to be alive.

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Passive-aggressively Doing Laundry

This is the funniest thing I’ve ever been accused of in my nearly 45 years on this planet and I received permission to write about it. Living and working from home with your significant other can create unique challenges.

So I was working on the new website and I was waiting for content. I’ve written a ton about my anxiety and for funzies I also have a touch of OCD. These two conditions create an interesting work dynamic and I’ve been told on a few occasions that I’m essentially vibrating with anxiety. Like it’s literally rolling right off me and can be felt by innocent bystanders.

Basically what happens is when I’m ready to work, I mean I’m ready to get it done right fucking now. I’ve had too many experiences with fleeting motivation. I’ve learned the hard way when I feel motivated, I have to take full advantage before the feeling passes. Once it’s gone, good fucking luck getting it back.

But that anxiety over failing to do my best work is largely what makes me good at my job. Unfortunately, that anxiety also prevents me from being a good girlfriend. So when I’m about to lose my shit over being stuck in neutral, I have to get up and do something else for a minute. I’ll be right back and ready to continue.

You say passive-aggressive; I say efficient. At least your laundry is done. Now how about passive-aggressively cooking me some dinner?

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The World is a Cruel Place

I sent the dogs out to do potties right before bed just like I do every night. As per the usual, Lulu came in right away and I had to call for Sherman. He came trotting onto the patio, dropped something onto the flagstones, and made his way to the door. It was about the size of an Indian almond pod so I wasn’t terribly concerned but when I got closer I saw it was a tiny, barely hatched bird that had no feathers or features.

Goddamnit Sherman

It wasn’t moving and it was also pitch black outside so I decided to leave it. There are all manner of interesting creatures that come out at night in Baja and I didn’t want to step on any of them while carrying this dead bird to the fence over which he would be flung. I figured a cat or owl would grab it during the night and the cycle of life would continue.

As soon as I fed the dogs their breakfast this morning, I let them out to take care of business. I remembered the gift Sherman had left on the patio so I went along to see if it was still there. It was there and it was alive.

Goddamnit Sherman

Now what? If I were still in Tucson, I would have called the wildlife place stored in my phone but this is a small Mexican town during a pandemic with Marines in the barracks guard towers.

I used a leaf to roll it onto a garden trowel and began looking for a place to leave it where the dogs wouldn’t find it. This sad little hairless bird was snuggling into the base of the trowel and I just about lost it. Sherman had brought it from the front of our half-acre compound so I wanted to leave it someplace close to the nest from which it must have fallen. There were no options which would protect it from the dogs.

Some of the palm trees in the backyard hadn’t been trimmed closely so I set the poor little bird up high on a shelf left by a long-dead frond and hoped for the best while knowing he was in for the worst. And now I feel like an asshole for just leaving him there, like he’s my responsibility.

Goddamnit Sherman

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