06-May-2012 la paz, mexico.
Ali was online checking our banking today when she discovered that somebody had spent the day taking a grand or so out of our checking account. It's getting a little sickening just how often this is happening to us down here. This is the second time in six months and third time overall in Mexico. Usually it's the credit card, but this time it was the debit card which only gets used for ATMs. Fortunately it happened today and not tomorrow as I expect they would have had a nice two or three week run emptying our account while we were out sailing. It's always easily taken care of with a phone call or two, but still a big pain in the butt getting a new card to us.
Weather here has been weird. A couple of nights during my mom's visit she was actually cold in her hotel room. Fortunately like all moms she carries a heating pad wherever she goes so the cold never presents a true challenge to her. Now tonight we are roasting in our beds again wishing that there was some wind or that we owned another fan. Two isn't enough, three might be just right.
Speaking of moms being moms. We were downtown one day when she said, "Oh look, they've got a blahblahblahblah doctor here." I asked what that was and she told me some obscure doctor detail. I said, "I hope I never know as much as you about doctors and medicines. I don't even know the difference between Aspirin and Tylenol."
I really can't imagine myself aging gracefully. I'll be that guy with the fifty pound tumor growing out of the side of his chest. "Oh that? That's nothing. I bumped it when I fell off the ladder. I don't need no stinkin' doctor."
Anyway, wrapped up a bunch of housekeeping chores today and are nearly ready to disappear again.
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05-May-2012 la paz, mexico.
We should be gone tomorrow, but things never work out that way. There is still plenty to do, including buying food and diesel. Without those we aren't going anywhere. Anyway, what does one more day matter? We've been looking through the guide book a little bit and it seems to me that we have about twenty beautiful anchorages between here and Mulege, just two hundred miles away. Should be some nice easy day sails coming up. We are looking forward to it.
Picked up our new tourist visas today. We're in for another six months! And very happy about it.
Ouest got her very first haircut today. A Mama Special. She was really excited about it and did a great job of just sitting there and letting Ali snip an inch off the ends. Right up until we got to the last cut at which point she lost her patience and Ali ended up cutting it while chasing her across the deck.
I should just start calling Ouest, Frankenstein. That's an Adam Sandler movie reference, and one that is quite fitting these days. We try not to argue about clothes with Ouest as we generally just don't see how it matters too much. So when we were getting ready to go downtown today and she expressed that she didn't want to wear a shirt we didn't fight her we just threw it in the bag. Well Ouest gets treated like a rock star on a normal day, so just imagine what it was like for her today in this getup.
A family with a little girl not much older than Lowe stopped to say hi and let the two kids check each other out. When they told her to say goodbye she walked over to him and laid a big wet kiss right on his lips. She kisses, his face turns red and bottom lip sticks out, two tears develop, lips quiver, and then he belts out the cry.
04-May-2012 la paz, mexico.
Friends of ours discovered the other day that there is an agent in town that can renew a tourist visa for another six months for just a hundred pesos. Brilliant. Problem solved. We may never have to return to the States. Or at least until my cravings for a Grilled Stuffed Burrito become too great.
That was all I could come up with. A Grilled Stuffed Burrito. People ask us all the time what we miss from back home and I can never come up with a good answer. Obviously our family. But aside from that? A Taco Bell Burrito is all I can think of. That's messed up.
Our kids' nap schedules didn't jive at all today, meaning Ali spent the entire day indoors feeding and watching one child at a time. That is also messed up.
I went out at nine o'clock tonight to do five loads of laundry because there is no drop-off laundromat at this marina. Again. Messed up. What I determined from this little outing is that our kids wear entirely too many clothes. From now on I'm instituting a three wears rule. I don't care how dirty and filthy it is, they have to wear it three times.
Ali vetoed my rule.
03-May-2012 la paz, mexico.
The two guys sanding and scraping our boat's varnish off finished up today. They looked defeated. I swear when they quoted me a price they hadn't really taken a good look at the boat. That cockpit coaming was a killer. Anyway, two guys, and roughly thirty man hours later our teak is finally clean. The quote was for a hundred and twenty bucks, but I think we'll throw them a bone and add a bit to that. Ali and I would have never accomplished that task. Tomorrow the boat needs a serious washing, inside and out. That was one messy job.
Went to Wal-Mart and spent a small fortune on just a couple weeks worth of food. We've still got to make a final run to a proper market for the fresh stuff. I tell you, heading out to sea for a few weeks is much more of an undertaking with two kids onboard. Ali and I would have been good with a couple loaves of bread and some peanut butter, but apparently kids need fancy nutrition and stuff. They're all, "Ooooh, we need fruits and vegetables to grow healthy and strong." And I'm all, "I can do a hundred push-ups and all I eat is garbage. What's your problem?" Kids these days.
Only real gripe we have about La Paz is the abysmal public transportation system. There are hardly any buses, and none, it appears, that go by our marina to town. Wal-Mart is located on the same road as we are, just a few miles away, but the only way to get there is taxi. After just one day in Mazatlan we could get anywhere in the city we wanted to go for about fifty cents. Same in Vallarta. La Paz just stinks in this category.
01-May-2012 la paz, mexico.
Spent a couple of hours at Ballandra beach today. A nice white sand beach with beautiful shallow baby blue water for the kids to play in. I took Lowe out, set him down in ankle deep water, and watched as he tore around in it until we finally took him in to warm up. He loved it. The beach also had a fish taco truck and guys selling mango, so if we'd have had a tent we could have stayed a month.
All Lowe wants to do these days is stand up. He uses anything and everything he can get his hands on to stand up. Then he walks around the edge of whatever it is until he reaches the end at which point he looks down, gauges how much it is going to hurt if he lets go, and then either plops down on his butt, or lets go and stands there balancing for a few seconds until he falls down, hopefully on his butt. At this point we'd rather he would just start walking now because all crawling is for him is a way to get to the closest chair, table, or set of stairs.
After putting Ouest down for her nap today I forgot to hook up her lee cloth. Literally the first time I ever did that. An hour later we heard a big thump followed by crying. Falling out of her bed means falling onto a step from about three feet up. Fortunately she didn't hurt herself, and even more fortunately, she went right back to bed.
Grammy has forgotten over the years to avoid certain key words around children. When walking down the street you do not point to the other side of the road and say, "Oh look at all the balloons that man has." You do not mention having ice cream before you've been served dinner. You never answer any question with, "Maybe later." What, now? Now? Now? And you do not look at Ouest when you are far away from the boat and ask, "Where's Molly?" The dolly.
We hired a couple of guys to get all the varnish off the teak once and for all. It's one of those jobs that we will never get to. It's simply too far down the list. I'm looking forward to having that done. We'll look a little less ratty around our neighbors. Neighbors that now include two other Spindrifts. Sixty sailboats in this marina and five percent of them are Spindrifts. Now I know what it feels like to own a Beneteau.
