11/27/24

The anniversary of our entry into Mexico has made me reflect some more about our current situation. For our dear readers who have been following our journey for the last year, I would like to share something positive: After a difficult year trying to adjust to our new life in Mexico, we finally feel like we have turned a corner. This Thanksgiving, we can truly be thankful.

For months, we had felt stuck. Unable to move forward. We’d had solar power since January, but we didn’t have enough batteries to run what we needed at night. No refrigerator at all, no computer or air conditioning at night.  By June it was getting pretty warm. By July, thanks to our birthday GoFundMe, we agreed that we could afford to upgrade our solar power, from 7 panels / one battery, to 12 panels / three batteries. We placed the order. The new panels were installed, and right away we noticed how much quicker our battery charged up in the morning. We didn’t panic as much on cloudy days. But nights were still humid and miserable, even with three fans running and all the windows open.

August came, then September, then October, and the batteries STILL had not arrived. We were pretty sure they had to ship them from China, so it wasn’t the company’s fault, but still. We were hot and irritated. The dogs were panting constantly. Lurko and I argued every day over petty crap. Once I was so angry at him I went online and looked at flights to see how soon I could get him on the next plane back to the States. Thankfully that feeling did not last, and I would not dream of doing that to him now. But that’s how angry I was. We both were. Being unemployed for extended periods of time will do that to you. Going to bed every night in a concrete box with a heat index of 117 will do that to you. Struggling to open your doors every day because they require two keys will do that to you. Feeling guilty about tethering your dogs to you constantly because you have no yard will do that to you.

We clung to the one shred of hope we had, that things had to get better. And they did. We finally got the call, at the end of October, that the batteries had arrived at the distributor’s warehouse. Two weeks later, they were installed. We were cautiously optimistic. We experimented with how long we could run the air conditioner at night, and settled on running it on a timer. 30 minutes on, 90 minutes off, until 10am when the panels alone could run it. Having AC at night was a HUGE improvement, both physically and to our mental health.

Then we tried plugging in the fridge, but it wouldn’t run. Arrrrgh. We still had to live out of our cooler, buying ice every day. The freezer did work, so we could at least store some extra ice. Luckily we found a repair guy in Punta Mita who could come look at the fridge. He diagnosed a faulty fan, went home to get a spare, and replaced it that evening. Again, cautiously optimistic. We monitored the fridge for a few days with a meat thermometer before we felt safe making our first “real” grocery store run. Then we went to Mega and bought a ridiculous amount of food, because we could.

Then Lurko’s desktop computer wouldn’t start, so that spent a week in the computer hospital while Lurko moped and ate junk food. But a week later the computer was fixed. We paid the solar people and still had money left over, so we decided it was time to replace the doors.

We chose beautiful parota wood doors with a mirrored window and a dog door, and two weeks later, that was done.

Then we couldn’t have a dog door without a yard, so we priced a chain-link fence and that got finished last week.

This time, we allowed a celebration. We taught the dogs how to use the dog door, and let them run around the yard for the first time. Auggie barked at the mules next door, and the one who was closest ran away. I’m sure Auggie was very proud of himself. He didn’t pursue the animals further– and he still doesn’t understand that they could seriously injure him if they wanted to. But the fence did its job, and kept the dogs and mules apart. The humans, however, can still feed our neighbors carrots over the top of the fence.

With everything going on, I would honestly be ok with resting on our laurels for a bit. But as fate would have it, last week we got a knock on the door and it was the bricklayer. We had been trying to find a bricklayer to finish our kitchen for a year. We had a sink and a stove ready to install, but nowhere to put them, and nowhere to put our dishes, pots, and pans. The guy who made the doors had told us that he knew a guy…and here he was at our door. The bricklayer quoted us a reasonable price for concrete shelves and a countertop, so we gave him money and he started last Monday.

It’s kind of exciting to have all this progress on the house, after being stuck for months. And last week we took another baby step, and hung some of my foamcore mounted photos in the bathroom. Years ago I had some of my prettiest travel photos printed and mounted, and we brought them all here and never hung them up. I ordered some double-sided tape so we can hang up the rest of them, and hopefully that will inspire us to pull the nice framed pictures out of the trailer and hang those up too.

At last, Casa Buenavista is starting to feel like a home. Our home.

The kitchen may not be finished yet, but it will be. In the meantime, we will make Thanksgiving happen with our trusty camp stove, toaster oven, and Instant Pot.

Happy Thanksgiving. Happy to be in a position where we can be thankful, and we hope all of you can say the same for yourselves.