Dreams

I find myself dreaming about living in the same fishing village in Mexico that I lived in 20 years ago.  I wake up and I want to shout "Yes!  I can't wait!"  I worry that I will be disappointed when I get there.  The good news is that we don't HAVE to stay there.  We will be 'footloose and fancy free' and able to go wherever we want to go.  So I keep a list of those places that seem most promising.

While I yearn for a beach, warm water to swim in and the cool sand that makes up the beaches in the Yucatan, I then think:  "Who am I kidding?  Do I really want to venture out on a beach at 66 years of age in my granny bathing suit?"  There is a big difference in venturing out on a beach in your 40's and then showing up in your 60's!

I have to stop and remind myself that it doesn't have to be all about the beach.  I can just simply enjoy the laid back lifestyle, find a comfortable hammock and read a book with the soft gentle breeze and sounds of the Caribbean wafting over me.  Sounds like heaven to me.  I can still smell what it feels like.  If that doesn't make sense to you, then you have never been there, done that.  I have and I must say that I can't wait to go back.

And I also look forward to going to sleep every night so that I can dream about 'Mi Caribe' and all that awaits us when we get there.  Es muy tranquilo en la Yucatan.  Mi alma es aya...

Buenos noches mi amigos, hasta manana o otra dia....

Time - slipping by

OK.  I'm feeling better today and will be going back to work tomorrow.

In the meantime:

I have come to realize that time is slipping away and there is oh so much to do to get ready for the transition.  I also realize that while I am retiring on July 31st of this year, that doesn't mean that we have to be packed and out the door on that day.  I doubt that we will be ready to put the house up for sale before the fall and that will leave us time to get everything in order.

Granted it's going to rough getting everything taken care of prior to our leaving and also coordinating the sale of the house with when we are totally ready to leave.  I have to keep reminding myself that I have done this before, it's no big deal, and we will get through it.

I had started to scan old photos (and new) onto the computer, when I realized that it is a daunting task and one that will take several months.  I have been the family photographer for almost 50 years - that's a lot of photos!  I keep stopping to email copies of the photos on to family and friends.  The point being that I am trying to get rid of excess baggage (numerous photo albums).  We want to start this new phase of our life with minimal 'things'.

I have made more contacts with the people that I knew from the last time that I made this exodus.  They all have been very helpful and I look forward to seeing them again.  We just need to see if we can stay in the same area with our income from SS or if we will have to seek out another area.  I am nervous and anxious and wildly optimistic all at the same time.

Sick

I'm sick.  I have a cold.  The kind of cold that makes you wish that you could fall asleep and wake up in a few days feeling like new again.  It's a head cold that will eventually travel down to my chest, making me cough as if I am dieing from tuberculosis, consumption or some other rare disease.

I feel as if my head is in a vise.  I can't breathe through my nose, which makes my lips dry up and burn as if they had been exposed to the sun too long.  Cotton where brains should be and a buzzing in my ears making it very difficult to follow any conversation at all, least of all those with any merit or normal interest in times of well being.  "What do you think about ____?"  I don't.  And I don't care that I don't.

I want to go to sleep, but that too eludes me.  I toss and turn.  Sleeping, at most, what seems like only minutes at a time.  My head pounds and my ears buzz.  No rest for the weary here.  I need to blow my nose once again.  Will it ever stop running and let me be?  I sneeze frequently and observe what I perceive to be voluminous droplets of fluid escape from my nose and mouth.

I hate being sick and yet it happens every year at this time.

Mexico

I wanted to share some photos of my stay in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.  1989-1993

There were so very many good times and I miss all the friends that I made there.  But have to say that I look forward to the next chapter; possibly seeing some of those old friends and to making new ones.

Hasta luego mi amigos!

Yearning

As I connect with more and more of the friends I had in Mexico, and who are still there, I find that I can't wait to get back.  I know that things have changed (and not always for the better), but oh, how I miss being in Mexico!

I'm going to try to scan photos that I took during my, almost, 4 year stay there over this weekend.  I may not be able to post them all at once, but they will all get there eventually.

Mexico and Arizona are the only places that I have ever felt 'connected' to and Arizona comes in as 2nd.  I have enjoyed my time here (with many ups and downs) but it is now time to leave and live la vida bueno in the land of (almost) perpetual sunshine, tranquility and some of the most incredible people that I have ever come across in my lifetime.

In the meantime, I have told the cleaning crew at work that "Necessito a practicar mi Espanol, con ellos por favor" and they have responded "No problema."  I am blessed and they are patient and kind as I stumble through the basics.

Felicidades fin de semana, mi amigos.  Hasta luego.

Part Two

I digress a little bit...

Bill's next tour of duty after Illinois was Oklahoma.  We lived off base in a rented, furnished, 2 bedroom house in Dill City, OK.  We paid $50 a month rent.  I don't think the house was more than 700 sq ft and every time we wanted to change the channel on the TV, Bill would have to go out and turn the antenna until I shouted out for him that the picture was good and he could stop!

We got our mail at the post office as the town was way too small to hire a delivery person.  It was a very old post office with those old metal mail boxes with combination locks.  The whole town consisted of a hardware store/gas station, grocery store (very small), bank, a closed movie theater and the aforementioned post office.  We heard a story once of when the bank was robbed one time.  The robbers called the president of the bank, and when he answered with "What do you want?  I'm in bed sleeping!", they knew it was safe to rob the bank!  The president of the bank was married to the post mistress.

We had a billy goat that was fenced in, in our back yard that belonged to our landlords.  They lived two houses away.  There was either a peach or pear tree in the goat's pen (can't remember which).  Well, that goat was the meanest goat I have ever come across!  Not that I've had that many encounters with goats, mind you.  Bill tried several times to grab some fruit off that tree and got nailed by that him several times without getting any of the fruit!

Anyway, it was while we were there that Bill volunteered to go to Vietnam.  We drove back to NY where it was decided that I would live with my mother while Bill was gone.  It was going to be a very long year.

Bill went off to Vietnam and I went back into the workforce.  I was surrounded by a lot of single friends who started to ask me to join them on weekends and I started to accept their invites.  Drives into Manhattan to go 'clubbing', dancing all night until the clubs closed.  Just having a lot of fun.  I think that at that point that I knew that I didn't want to be married anymore.  It was just too much fun being single.

We had, after all, gotten married way too young and both of us came from families that did not present good, happy, roll models.

Bill came back from Vietnam and his next tour of duty was in Abilene, TX.  We found another house to rent there.  I remember our next door neighbors introducing themselves, along with their little boy, Chance.  She explained his name by saying "That's what we took and he's what we got!"  Then there was the day before the postage rates were going up and she asked me if I wanted to go to the post office to buy up some stamps before the price went up!  Thanksgiving came and our neighbors asked if we wanted to come over to watch her mother kill the turkey...  Needless to say, I declined.  I seem to recall that Bill went.

I had had enough and missed all the fun that I had back in NY.  I announced to Bill that I was leaving, packed up all my things and drove home.  The divorce was final a few months later and we went on our separate ways.

It was 6 years later that I decided to get married again (1972).  21 years after that, I was once again divorced.

Fast forward almost 38 years.  Bill was working in California and while at work decided to log onto Classmates.com where he saw my profile.  He emailed me: "Can exes still be friends?"  It was my day off from my job and I immediately answered his email.  I took me 3 years before I agreed to marry him again.

May 3, 2008