Why My House Smells Like Pot

So I love my quiet neighborhood here in Cancun. Lots of families, very clean, everyone says hello, etc etc etc.

And then there’s my next door neighbor. A pretty normal-looking, average guy who isn’t at all friendly, but doesn’t really bother anyone either.

Yesterday I came home from work and I saw his dogs tied up to the window in the front yard. I figured, “Oh, they must be doing some work in the backyard.” I walked into my kitchen and was overwhelmed by the smell of pot in the air. I whined about it on Twitter, then went about my day since this is a pretty frequent occurence. (Our houses share a wall, so smells and noises frequently make their way over to our place.)

I sat on the couch and noticed some of my neighbor’s friends enter his house. Minutes later, I heard chanting in some unknown language coming from his backyard. I was about to go peek into his backyard from my upstairs window when the chanting was suddenly accompanied by what sounded like hammering. Confused and more than a little weirded out, I decided to stay put.

The chanting and banging eventually stopped and the men all came back out into the front yard. Jorge got home just then, and I heard them ask him a question and he responded cheerily.

When Jorge came into the living room, I said “What did they ask you?”

“They wanted me to check if their pigeon had flown into our backyard.”

…

…

…

I really hope that pigeon made it to safety.

Dear Chaac, Thanks a Lot.

After a week of lovely weather, Saturday afternoon was suddenly filled with ridiculous amounts of rain. Strange, since rainy season is now over. (Here in the Yucatan Peninsula, we like to attribute these shenanigans to Chaac, the Mayan god of rain.)

Luckily our house doesn’t flood, but several hours of non-stop heavy rain did cause my backyard to look like a pond:

Aaah, paradise.

Luckily the rain cleared out by Saturday evening. We had to cancel our plans of going to a nightclub in the Hotel Zone because of flooding, but we did get to go to one of my favorite downtown spots, Ora Si! Mariscos y Chan Chan (horribly long name, great place).

With the sun shining and the birds singing, on Sunday Jorge and I toured the Hotel Zone a little (our new Sunday tradition), then went to his aunt’s house for fried fish, pico de gallo and tacos.

In the end, a potentially wasted weekend was saved by sunshine once again!

Online Shoppers Don’t Have To Put Up With This

The other week while shopping at Plaza Las Americas for a sweater for Jorge’s upcoming Christmas trip (yay!), I stopped by a clothing store to browse a bit. On a high-up shelf, there was a headless, armless, legless mannequin wearing a gorgeous cream-colored strapless dress.

Since I couldn’t find the dress on any racks, I asked a saleslady for help and she asked my size. “Large”, I answered. The saleslady goes into the back and brings back a dress. “Sorry, we only have medium. Try this one on.”

A tad doubtful, I made my way to the fitting room with the medium dress in-hand.

The skinny fitting room attendant looks at me and says, “Are you sure you don’t want a larger size? Maybe something wider?”

She then made me hold the dress up to my body to make sure it was the correct size.

Then she brought the large size down from the mannequin “just in case”.

…

Wow. Consider me humiliated.

Anyway, I’ve been going to the gym for a year and was doing well, but I haven’t been able to lose any more weight for a few months now. I’ve plateaued. (sp?)

So this week I went to a nutritionist and have officially begun my new 1300 calorie diet to lose my recommended 25 pounds of fat! The diet combined with my normal workout routine will hopefully result in fabulousness by April or May.

Let’s do this.

**Note: The medium size fit, by the way. In your face, fitting room attendant!

Still Stuck in Rio!

First of all, Id like to apologize for lack of apostrophes in this post (and the last one). I havent quite figured out how to get a good apostrophe on a Brazilian keyboard.

So yesterday I told you guys that we were stuck in Rio de Janeiro after missing our flight. Well, we are still here!

Our airline, TAM, just opened up their flights with Mexico last week, so right now they only have 1 flight going back to Mexico per day. We went to the airport at 4 am today to put ourselves on the waiting list for the flight. They were actually overbooked by 15 people (!!), so we werent able to get on. The girl at the TAM counter told us they were overbooked for Tuesday as well so it wouldnt be worth it for us to try it… but she did manage to get us on Wednesdays flight!!

I know 3 extra days in Rio sounds like an amazing deal, but its not ideal because Im missing 3 days of work and Jorge has a lot of work to do on his final project for school. We really, really just want to be home. Plus we have spent the past 36 hours either at the airport or stressed about what to do… it has NOT been fun and we have gotten very, very little sleep. Were absolutely exhausted. Were also overbudget thanks to the extra days, so we have been living off of Subway, McDonalds and Choco Krispies. Still, were mostly relieved that we wont have to fork over a few thousand bucks for a ticket back… yay!

Now that we have tickets back home and a nice, cheap place to stay today and tomorrow, we can finally kick back and relax a little bit. (We just woke up from a 5 hour nap, our first time sleeping more than 3 hours straight since Friday night).

Anyway, Im off to the beach since I have nothing better to do today 🙂 Gotta take advantage of our time here to make it worth all the frustration!

Where I´m At…

Well here we are, safe and sound back in lovely Cancun, Mexico after a fabulous, worry free honeymoon in Rio de Janeiro!

Oh WAIT…

That´s what I would be saying in an alternative universe where Jorge and I didnt miss our flight!

I wont tell the long story because… well… lets not go there.

Short version: We slept in this morning and missed our flight. Unless we can squeeze into an already full flight leaving tomorrow morning on the waiting list, we might have to pay a very large amount of money to fly back home. (Also, its difficult to communicate with anybody when its 9 am and youre in a time zone 4 hours ahead of the people who can help you.)

Luckily the apartment we were renting is still available tonight, so we came back to Copacabana and just woke up from a nice, long nap! We´re by the beach and the weather is amazing, but we just dont feel like doing anything after the morning we had.

This will hopefully be the last time you ever hear me complain about an extended vacation. Boo.

On a more pleasant note, up until this point it has been one of the best weeks of my life! Cant wait to tell you all about it when Im on the right continent.

Peace out

Lamest. Hurricane. Ever.

We spent yesterday hanging out with Juan and Viri since I got the day off of work for Hurricane Rina, and she sure was taking her time in getting to Cancun. We went to the mall and had lunch at Pescaditos on Yaxchilan Avenue.

God bless you, Pescaditos.

Then we all went home to prepare for the big hurricane. Since Jorge and I had stashed our outdoor stuff inside already, all that was left was to cuddle up and watch the new episode of X Factor. There was tons of lightning and thunder that caused lots of growling from my dogs (apparently Dolly has learned to meow??) and that’s about it. Our power didn’t go out all night, and neither did our Sky dish service.

I woke up this morning to the sun shining and the birds singing… not a single fallen branch in my neighborhood.

The weather was so nice that I got called back into work today. Fabulous.

Image from Cancun’s Best

Hurricane Rina Heads Toward Cancun’s Hotel Zone: Photos

My friend Tori took these beautiful photos of Hurricane Rina rolling into Cancun’s Hotel Zone. Kind of disappointed to be stuck in the office right now!

Hurricane Rina Approaches. Cancun Panics.

We finally have our first (and hopefully last) hurricane of the 2011 season… Hurricane Rina. Trajectories show her headed straight for Cancun, and she should be hitting Cozumel at 2 pm tomorrow, passing through Cancun in the evening, then out of here by 2 am Friday morning. **Update: this has now changed to 8 pm Thurs to 8 am Friday… NOOOO!!! But they’re saying she’s breaking up and will only be a Category 1 🙂

Update #2: Hurricane Rina should only be a tropical storm by the time it hits Cancun.

She should turn into a Category 3 before hitting the peninsula, then go back down to a 2 as she heads over Cancun.

Long story short: an annoyance, but not nearly as bad as Hurricane Wilma from 2005.

I’m thinking Hurricane Rina won’t be a big deal for 2 reasons. First of all, the sea turtles nested near the ocean in Cancun this year, which indicates that there won’t be any big weather events this hurricane season. Also, I woke up to lots of birds chirping this morning (as usual), and my friend tells me that if the birds are hanging around right before the hurricane, it’s not going to be a big deal. Sounds about right to me!

Cancun woke up sunny and bright this morning. Hurry up, Rina!

I’m hoping she gets here quickly and leaves quickly so I can get my weekend back! I’m going to be live tweeting at the Festival de Vida y Muerte at Xcaret on Sunday night, their annual Day of the Dead celebration. (**update: the festival has been cancelled for the 30 and 31, but is still on for Nov 1 and 2) If Hurricane Rina is out of here by Saturday, I’ll also be going to their parade on 5th Avenue in Playa del Carmen. Fingers crossed, people!

Plus our flight for Brazil leaves on Tuesday, so I need the Cancun airport to be operating at 100% by then!

Jorge and I did a bit of hurricane panic shopping last night, a Cancun tradition. We bought a roll of duct tape (keeps shards of glass from flying across the room if the window breaks), 2 small boxes of milk, Fruit Loops, spaghetti sauce and 2 small flashlights.

True story: We were at City Club last night. We saw a woman walk by with arms filled with maybe 25-30 rolls of duct tape… for reals. We asked her where she found the duct tape, and she says, “Over on that table, but hurry up! There are only 2 rolls left!”

Hmmm…

Pinches Chaquistes

Having tons of bugbites on your feet when you’re too ticklish to properly scratch them is the worst feeling in the world.

Didn’t get much sleep last night.

(Life is sooooo haaaaaard!)

Luckily I brought Vitacilina with me to work today, which has been a lifesaver. If you don’t know what Vitacilina is… you have never watched a Mexican morning show.

 

**Positive note: Itchy-scratchiness is from pesky chaquiste bites while enjoying my best friend’s awesome beach wedding… so maybe I’m whining too much. Will hopefully post photos later this week. 🙂

Cockroaches, Slugs and Poo… Oh My!

So the last week and a half has been interesting at my house. We had a very dry season for several months without a single drop of rain. Two Saturdays ago, however, that all changed. Torrential rains began all of a sudden. We had two days of rain, followed by a week of sunshine, followed by spurts of rain the last 2 or 3 days.

Rainy season at our house was ridiculous last year. To explain, we leave our back door open during the day when we’re not home so the dogs can go outside to do their business. (We have a back gated door as well, which remains closed. The dogs can slip out to the backyard, but no one can get in.) Anyway, when the ground is wet, my snobby princess poodles don’t want to get their precious little paws wet… which means pee and poo on my living room floor when I come home. (We hadn’t had a single incident in MONTHS, and now we’re back to square one.)

This year, however, has been far worse than last year’s rainy season at my house.

One on particular occasion last week, Suki got diarrhea and decided to leave evidence all over the living room and stairs. She also thought it would be productive to smear it around. That was a fun afternoon.

We also get some large cockroaches here in Cancun, which everyone’s kinda used to. We kill them on-site with chankletazos (meaning “hard blows with a flip-flop”… I love the Mexican language). A few days ago, I put the dog’s food bowl on the counter and poured some dog chow. I went to the fridge for yoghurt, and when I turned back around there was a huge cockroach in the dog bowl. Jorge and I looked on in horror as the cockroach grabbed a large piece of kibble, carried it out of the bowl and on to the counter, and began to eat it. A cockroach eating dog food on my counter. I don’t think I can even begin to describe how gross that is.

We also seem to have a slug infestation. I didn’t even know Cancun had slugs, much less our backyard. Since we’ve been leaving the back door open, on several occasions we’ve found a slug in the kitchen near the back door. Last night we went to the movies and got home to find about 30 – 40 slugs all over the walls and floors of our kitchen, hallway, living room, downstairs bathroom and stairs. I wish I’d taken pictures, but my memory card is broken. 😦 But they look like this:

So anyway, after a nice movie date, Jorge and I finished off our romantic evening by cleaning puddles of dog pee (me) and scraping slugs off the walls with a floor squeegee (Jorge). Then we watched an episode of Law and Order, because there’s no way I was going to sleep after that horror of an evening.

I’m happy to say that soon we will be fixing up the backyard with grass, shade and a doghouse so that the dogs can stay outside while we’re not home. That way we can finally actually USE our living room and keep the back door closed so the slugs and cockroaches don’t get in. *shudder*

If I don’t invite any of you over to my house until 2012… you’ll know why. On the bright side, our trees and plants look lovely.