Cabo and Other Things

 Hey Everyone, 

Sorry for not posting in a long time.  You just get used to life and all the interesting stuff about moving to a new country becomes ordinary.  But anyway...

We've been in Mexico for one year now.  We renewed our Temporary Residency for another 3 years.  After that we can apply for permanent residence.  Which is the plan.  We love it here.

My sister-in-law was surprised when we (mom and I) told her we were never coming back to the USA.  But we can't fathom going back to that life.  There's so many great things about life in Mexico that we'd have to give up in the USA:

1. Able to get my tramadol at any pharmacy, no questions asked.  No need for drug tests or expensive services where I have to justify my need for pain relief.

2.  Home vet visits so we can give our cats the best possible care in the most convenient way.  We have a personal relationship with our vet.  He knows our cats and our cats are used to him.  

3.  Better and less expensive medical care all around.  The private medical care system is how celebrities get treated in the USA.  We're eligible for the public system now, but we're not going to add ourselves to an already overburdened system.

4.  Friends.  Neighbors.  REAL FRIENDS.  The kind you can rely on to pick you up from the hospital or airport.  I have literally NEVER had neighbors like this before.  As I speak my neighbor is driving my mom to run an errand (because I'm too sick).  Even with broken Spanish I have true friends here.  I feel safe.  Watched by my neighbors.  Protected.

5.  Nearly all the things I liked in the USA are available here in some way.  Craving USA-style grapes?  US style cuts of beef?  Sams Club.  USA-style fried chicken?  There's one single KFC.  But honestly, the Mexican options are better and cheaper.

6.  Food delivery for $20 all-in.  You can go crazy with that if you're not careful.

A million other things I'm not thinking of, but this was the best decision of my life, and I'm glad I'm crazy enough to do things like this.  Moving back to the USA now would be such a negative adjustment for us.  (Especially since we sold our house.)

I don't know if I updated this previously, but we have yet another new kitten. Yes, having close neighbors is great, but the problem is, everyone knows everyone elses' business.

What I mean is, everyone in our colony knows we're cat-lovers.  We feed numerous outdoor cats.  We put out quality dry food in a tub every night, with clean water, and feed our 'regulars' wet food twice a day.  

So, when someone loses a cat, they come to our house and give us the picture.  Then, inevitably, the cat comes to eat and we get them back to their owner.  Great, right?

Well, everyone also knows that Frijole was dropped in our backyard and we took him in.  The story of how he literally dropped out of the sky spread throughout the Colony.  Great?

And then one day...someone ran up to our gate and threw in a sick kitten and ran away.  -_-  Seriously.  My mom saw them do it but couldn't catch the person.  (But we know who it is.  The woman who cuts hair in her house had 8 grey tabby kittens.  I know damn well it was her because she lives only 2 doors down and could run into her house before we caught her.)

Whatever.  I mean, if she asked us to get vet care for the kitten we would have.  

Quackers, our new little boy, was on death's door.  Trembling.  Not eating.  Not drinking.  Stuffed up.  Coughing a horrible wet cough.  We took him and put him in a cat container with a heating blanket.  Mom and I thought he wouldn't survive the night.

The next morning...he was still alive.  And rest and warmth apparently did him some good.  He started eating and drinking ravenously.  Great.  So we got vet care for him and after two vet visits he was healthy.

The plan was to bring the healed kitten back to the hair dresser and pretend we didn't know it was her who threw him in our gate.

But this kitten...my God.  We've never had such a loving and sweet baby before.  He loves all people.  No fear of anyone.  He wants to cuddle all the time.  He wags his tail and meows with glee every day when I come down stairs.  He loves to be on shoulders or laps.  He's just...too sweet and perfect.  

So yeah.  Now we have 3 cats.  So much for traveling around Mexico.

Except we did travel.  We're only 2 hours from Cabo.  I wanted to check it out.  My mom and I are seeing a neurologist who works half the time in La Paz and half in Cabo.  His La Paz office takes months to get an appointment.  We waited on the first one, but for the second I decided to go to Cabo and spend the night in a hotel there.

Cabo is not for us.  The resorts control all the good beaches, and apparently they're dangerous because they get deep too fast, unlike the beaches in La Paz.  There is only one highway through the city with ocean on either side and it's a pain in the ass.  Everything I looked up on GPS is some coordinate on this highway, which is hard to find, so we ended up passing places we wanted to go and had to keep driving until we could get to an overpass to go in the other direction.  Which we'd have to do until we could get to another overpass to get on the correct side of the highway again.  

It's a huge pain in the ass.  Add to that, everything is 'dumb American tourist' prices.  We went to a pharmacy to see if Ozempic was cheaper.  I thought it was.  It's around $5000 pesos in La Paz for the oral pills my mom takes (like $300, the dollar has tanked so much since we moved here).  I asked the guy how much and I though he said Dos Mil Pesos.  Like $2,000 pesos.  I was like, FUCK YEAH!  Let me stock up.  But my mom pointed out that he'd actually said:  Diez Mil pesos.  $10,000 pesos, or $700!!  THAT'S WHAT IT COSTS IN THE USA FFS!

But that's who they cater to.  Everyone was speaking English in the stores, which annoys me, because I know Spanish and I want to speak it.  But I talk in Spanish and they reply in English and won't talk to me in Spanish no matter how much I try.  -_-  How the fuk would someone ever learn Spanish there?

We ended up just going to a nice restaurant to eat out (which wasn't all that good).  Gringos were everywhere, often in bridesmaid dresses or party dresses.  It's definitely not a city for locals.  

Another problem is because it's on the tip of the peninsula with ocean on three sides, it gets HAMMERED during hurricanes.  

On the way to Cabo I picked up a hitchhiker.  I can't help myself.  The poor guy was walking down the highway, miles from the nearest exit.  He had been walking for 3 hours before we picked him up.  We took him all the way home, and gave him $1000 pesos, because he was too broke to have any water with him.  (He drank and ate ravenously the water and food we gave him in the car.)

Anyway, after he drank and ate he because talkative.  Telling us about Cabo.  Work.  Etc.  Mentioned his wife.  My mom asked if he had kids.  No.  Their baby was killed in the last hurricane. They're still grieving and are not trying again yet. 

MY GOD.  That just broke my heart.

He kept saying that he's shocked women would pick up a man.  Warned us it could be dangerous.  I mean...yeah.  But I can't help myself.  And it's always worked out so far.

Anyway, we went to Cabo to see a neurologist (brain doctor).  Why?  Because I was forgetting words and my mom sometimes gets lost.  Someone once told me that the brain is so good at compensating for problems that by the time you have symptoms you are already too far gone.  So I figured forgetting words might be the start of something bad.

The first appointment we'd have said both me and my mom do not have dementia or altheimers.  My mom is in great shape mentally for a 77 year old (it's true).  And I also had no signs.  But, I wanted to be sure, so we got MRIs.

The MRIs were a miserable experience.  The equipment was old.  It took half an hour.  I remember an MRI I had in the US that took 3 minutes.  So...one point for the USA here.

I was freaking over getting the results to my doctor, because I didn't want to drive all the way to Cabo and not have it.  The people were like:  Chill.  We'll send it to you on Whatsapp and you can send it to him.  One point for Mexico here.  They give you your results.  You don't have to pay a doctor to get them if you don't want.

Anyway, my brain was completely fine and normal.  The only thing that showed up was sinitis .  No issues in any way what so ever.

Mom had grey matter shrinkage that's typical with age.  The brain is a muscle and she's been retired since 55 and doesn't do complex tasks.  She needs to continue to learn Portuguese to build up her gray matter again.  She also has a cyst that probably isn't a problem and isn't currently causing problems or pushing on anything.  She needs to check it in 2 years with another MRI.  But this is good news all around.

One of my goals of the appointment was to ask for the Shingrix shingles vaccine.  It's been proven to reduce the chance of demensia, and may even be part of why my mother never had demensia like her mother and sister.  She got the vaccine years ago.

The study showing that Shingrix helps prevent demensia was only a few months old so I thought I'd have to explain it to the neurologist.

HA!  Not only was he on top of that, he had ordered the vaccine for his patients already because of it, and he was able to give me the first shot THAT DAY IN HIS OFFICE.

Damn.  The medical care here is just fucking amazing.

Unfortunately, it made me horrendously sick.  I'm just now getting my strength back.  I missed a lot of work.  It's going to be an ordeal trying to catch up.  But, my risk for dementia is lower, and even though I really DIDN'T need to see a neurologist, I'm glad I did.  

Mom's First Birthday in Mexico

Well, I had a birthday here too in June, and it was a big one, I turned 50. 

 

You'd think we would have done something for that.  Before the election I had wanted to go to the hotel inside the Mall of America and explore the shops and go to the indoor theme park.  It was the perfect low stress vacation idea where everything was guaranteed to be handicapped accessible for my mom.

BUT DID WE?  DID WE DO THIS?  DID WEEEEEEE?!

No!  Because assholes voted for Trump and our whole life got turned upside-down.  

So...think of it this way, for my 50th birthday I got to go to La Paz Mexico.  That's a trip, right?  Beach town.  Beautiful place.  Heck I even drove down the Malecon...

On the way to the fecking hospital to get my uterus cut out of my abdomen.  

Yeah.  That was my 50th birthday, y'all.  I had major surgery.  :sigh:

Oh well, now it was time for my mom's birthday in January.  So we invited our neighbors to go to Fumos with us.  Fumos is a super-fancy restaurant in La Paz.  We've been there several times.  We keep going back because I know they have parking.  

There's lots of other fancy restaurants in La Paz, but they're all on the beach.  And I don't know if they have parking.  I kind of think they don't.  Because everyone walks the malecon (boardwalk) and it's not really a car-centric area.  

And that's fine.  I could find a paid parking lot and then go to a fancy restaurant.  But how much walking is my mother going to do, y'know?  Will there be decent sidewalk the whole way for her walker?  Maybe, but maybe we have sand to cross to get to the front of the restaurant or something.  It's just better to go where we know.

And we invited our neighbors because I thought it would be a big treat for them.  Y'know, they make the average Mexican income.  I didn't think that they would have ever been to this expensive restaurant.

But that's my gringo brain.  Um...yeah.  They had just been there for their daughter's birthday a few months earlier.  -_-  It's like we get this idea that people are poor and we're so well off etc.  But, even poor people can save up for special occasions and order something not too expensive from the menu, so...GTFO.  Felt stupid.

The other thing:  I really wanted them to have a great dinner.  Enjoy themselves.  But the father DIDN'T WANT TO ORDER ANYTHING.  -_- He was like, Oh, my daughter's ordering a pizza I'll just have a slice of that.  I'm like, dude!  Get a steak!  Get the short ribs!  But no, he didn't want to cost me money.  

It's like this all the time.  You either get people like my cousins and aunt in Puerto Rico who are too proud to ask for money and when they really need it and you send them more than they asked for they get mad.  And it's like, why can't you let me enjoy helping you?  Why are you so proud!  I'm your niece, your cousin, I make a decent income.  WHY CAN'T I HELP YOU?  

They live in government housing on government assistance.  I bought my cousin Diana a car which really helped her and she's got her own house-cleaning business.  But her mom had her washing machine break and asked us for $150 to repair it.  We sent her $300.  Live a little.  Treat yourself.  She asked me to go through things step by step with her to explain how to send the extra back.  -_-

So Rudi my neighbor's husband doesn't want to order anything.  He won't order a mixed drink.  Won't order a beer.  I have to order a Jamaica water for him (very popular soft drink pronounced hi-may-ee-ka made from hibiscus flowers, tastes like a very light cranberry juice, and is super healthy for you, the tamarind water is also amazing and healthy).  

Then I just ordered him a skirt steak, because WTF.  And I felt like a bitch doing it because he just wanted to share his daughter's pizza and I'm forcing this expensive steak on him.  WHICH HE DIDN'T EVEN EAT!  Because it was medium rare and Mexicans like steaks well done.  

But his wife said, good, it's raw.  I can cook it and make tacos tomorrow.  -_- 

Yeah, they had a ton of leftovers.  But it was a bit tense also.  My neighbor's marriage isn't great and the two of them weren't talking.  Basically I had to invite the wife Elba separately from the husband Rudi.  They both showed up separately (I drove Elba and her daughters because she doesn't have a license plate on her car and they always crack down on that in the beginning of the year here.) 

Elba was okay with her husband coming.  She wanted him too.  She just didn't want to invite him because she wasn't talking to him.  So I did.  I have WhatsApp and a translator extension so it wasn't a problem.

Speaking of that, we were pulled over because we didn't have a license plate on the front of our car.  Just the USA plate in the back (which you're allowed to drive with here).  Very pleasant exchange.  Very friendly female cop.  No issues.  La Paz has a very low amount of police/National Guard corruption here.  We really lucked out. 

Part of me thinks of maybe exploring other areas of Mexico and seeing if there's somewhere else we want to settle, but La Paz is so nice.  We have everything we need here.  We have friends.  Our landlord asked us if we were going to stay in this apartment and we said yes, for at least another year if not more.  He said, great, because we're good tenants.  

The best part of the dinner was that they gave mom a free cake with a firecracker on it.  The second best thing were my neighbor's two daughters.  The youngest was dancing in her seat the whole time, so happy to get good food.  And the other one speaks English and does art for me.  Two great girls who are just great kids and have bright futures.

Anyway, we agreed that the dinner wasn't what we'd hoped for and next time it will just be me and mom together.  Oh well.

El Navidad (Christmas in Mexico)

 Welp, it's getting near Christmas time in Mexico.  The neighbors invited us for Christmas dinner.  Except, they invited us to have it in our house. 

They're making a second floor to their house, but it's not ready yet.  That means 80sq meters (two bedrooms, tiny living room/kitchen, 1 bath) for four people.  I've never been in their house, but they say they don't have any space.

I believe them, because we share a wall and I know my downstairs is the floorplan of their whole house.  This place would be too small for my mother and I if it were just the downstairs.  I can't imagine with two more people.

So we set up our little table and brought out folding tables to put in front of our couch.  Not needed.  We all ate at the small table, and it was fine.  The husband came late so we ate in shifts.

And we finally had birria!  My neighbor made the low spice version so my mom could eat it.

It's not actually Christmas today.  They are traveling to Sinoloa to visit family tomorrow, but they didn't want us to celebrate alone, so had another celebration for us.

Friends in Mexico are true friends.  It was fun.

Other news:

I found out I can get monthly soda/water delivery from Coca Cola Mexico.  Water jugs, water bottles, soda, and Topo Chico.  This is really a life-saver because we're constantly running out, and the stores never have enough.  It's good to have regular water jug delivery too because chasing the trucks that go by every once in a while for water sucked.

Other than that, not much to report.  We stay home most days.  I work.  It's not much different day to day from the USA, except I don't have to struggle with my pills, and when my mom needed a colonoscopy they saw us right away.  It was clear.  We'll do the rest of her 'make sure the cancer hasn't come back' tests next month.

This year I'm grateful for a new life in a new country where my federal tax is almost gone, I can get my medication easily, and my rent is cheap.  This year has been a blessing for us, and we are grateful.

Black Friday in Mexico

 So, at first I thought Black Friday was a different thing called 'Buen Fin' (good end) here.  There were stores advertising 'Buen Fin' sales.  It's a week of sales in the middle of November.  So I figured, okay, that must be Mexico's Black Friday.

Nope.  Buen Fin was thier own thing.  They *ALSO* do Black Friday here.  But they don't do Thanksgiving.

La Paz has a high gringo population.  All of Baja California does actually, both above and in my state, Sur.  You can't beat the benefit of being able to drive with your USA license plate all throughout the peninsula.

A lot of gringos settled in little beach colonies on the Pacific ocean or sea of Cortez.  But many made it all the way down to La Paz (and further South to Cabo, or Los Cabo the rich gringo area).

Still, turkey isn't really eaten much here.  They have turkey slices for sandwiches, and that's about it.  But...we have gringo stores.  Sams Club and Walmart.  I figured I'd find a turkey there.

Actually, the regular grocery story, Chedraui, had turkeys!  Fricking expensive $30 turkeys.  Is that what turkeys normally cost now in the USA?  I seem to remember being able to get a turkey this big for under $20 before.  It's just me and my mom, so a small one is fine...there really wasn't much selection.  Just 3 or 4 to pick from from a freezer section.

No stuffing.  I didn't check Walmart or online, but it wasn't in the Mexican grocery.  I could probably order it.  I don't know.  

At one point I pondered inviting our neighbors over to do Thanksgiving with us.  We'd have to do it in the back garden area.  That's a big undertaking for us, and I'd want to make pumpkin pies (no canned pumpkin here--just weird light brown 'sort of' pumpkins in the stores that don't make good pies).  And pecan pie, and all the normal Thanksgiving dishes to really show our culture.

But...lazy.  I'm still going to put together a dinner for the neighbor, but she can take it and eat it at her own house.  Maybe next year I'll plan something.  We have two neighbors we can invite actually...so...I'd need to get a big table and chairs.

The second neighbor friend is because we feed stray cats.  We've done it since we got here, so we're known as the 'cat people' on the block.  When people lose their cats they show up at our house.  We leave out dry food, and feed a 3-cat colony (along with several others who clearly have owners but like to 'eat out').  

So far we were able to get one lost kitty back to their owner.  He was easy to spot.  He had a cast on his leg.  So no doubt this wasn't a stray.  Anyway, we're friends with the neighbor who lost his cat now.  

Having neighbor friends is great because in Mexico they actually do leave packages with your neighbors when you're not home, and neighbors actually do give you the packages.  Very convenient!  The delivery men always call you on the phone too.  When has that ever happened in the US?  

I normally don't have to buy many gifts for Christmas. Just some stuff for my brother and his family, and stuff for a family I sponsor through a charity.  I've sponsored them for years and their kids have grown up, moved out, etc.  I don't know what gifts to buy them!  So I just send one big gift card.  They always appreciate it.

Letter from the Family

This year I have my neighbor, her husband, and her two daughters to get gifts for!  Man...Christmas was never so expensive.  But the mother cleans our house so she deserves a bonus, and one of the daughter is an 'intern' for my game company.  So...I'll get gift cards at least.

We've been here 8 months.  Life in Mexico is beyond anything we could have imagined.  I met another gringo the other day and he asked with a smile how I like it here.  Like he knew the answer...of course we love it!  This place is amazing.  

And to think...we waited so long.

Dentist in Mexico

 I feel bad constantly pointing out how much better my life is in Mexico, because people in the USA are suffering and there are a lot of people I care about there.  As some point it feels like this meme when I compare the Mexico to the USA:

And not everything is better here.  I guess I just stress the positives because I grew up being told that the USA was the best and it sucked everywhere else.  It makes you defensive when you find out you were lied to.

Today I had a dentist appointment and we did an egregious amount of shopping.  At the end of the day we just wanted some good food fast.  Like...drive-thru fast.

Mexico is just not a drive-thru culture.  That's not to say they don't have cars...they do, and in my area cars are as prevalent as they are in the USA.  It's just that they don't look for 'fast food'.  

They're not constantly in a hurry like we are in the USA.  And when they want 'convenient' food, there's plenty of taco stands (and hotdog stands, Elote/tamale stands, burger stands, shrimp stands, sushi/ceviche stands, etc.).

There is fast food where I live, but it's all USA imports.  And because we just wanted to go through a drive-thru and get something good to eat, that's what we were limited with.  

In our city there is one of each of these:  Mcdonalds, Subway, Little Ceasars, Carls Jr., KFC, WingStop. That's it.  Those are all the places that have drive-thrus.

In Tucson I could have enjoyed Taco Bell, Canes, Inn-and-Out, Koreabowl (or whatever it's called), El Pollo Loco, and the list goes on and on.  Choices on every corner.  Also I could get an 8 piece fried chicken from the grocery store, which was always a great option.  

Out here the drive-thrus tend to be clustered in the gringo areas.  It's not cheap food.  (Though I guess that's the same in the USA lately.)

We end up going for gringo options a lot and we shouldn't.  This area of Mexico is a very corn-tortilla centric food culture.  If you order Chinese food you'll get a stack of corn tortillas with it.  Food is just eaten with tortillas.  

But honestly?  I don't like corn tortillas.  Especially these pale ones that are so popular.  They seem raw to me.  And gritty.  I have European heritage and that means wheat products, and wheat tortillas.  They just taste so much better to me...but I don't need one to eat Chinese food with.

In our fridge were stacks of plastic bags filled with 20 corn tortillas (small ones) from all our delivery orders.  We just gave them all to our neighbor so she can feed them to her chickens recently.

But, ANYWAY.

Back to the good.  The dentist.

I went to the dentist because it hurt to brush one side of my teeth.  Nerve is exposed.  In the USA?  It would have been a root canal and a new crown.  For around $1,600, or probably more because it's been 3 years since my last dental work.

Here?  He painted some varnish on the tooth.  It wasn't a cavity.  I didn't need more than that.  He was super nice, too, and loved practicing his English with me.

We've been to the dentist in Mexico before, but it was on the border in a town known for dental tourism.  My mom still got a nice zircon bridge for $3,000 in 2013 or so, but it was very pushy and up-selly.  Kind of like USA dentists...who push you to get work you might not really need, or more expensive work compared to what might be a better cheap option.

I want to mention one more thing on the 'Mexico is better' side.  Next to my house is a pharmacy that I can walk to for my antidepressants, painkillers, and other medicines.  I'd been getting Desvenlafexine from there.  It was 500 pesos for a one month supply...really expensive for Mexico, but I needed it so whatever.

Yesterday I went to get the pills and I got a two month supply for 300 pesos ($15).  I was like: what the heck?

The worker said that someone started buying Desvenlafexine here a while a go so they asked corporate to send them the generic to save them money.

ME.  I was the one who started buying that there a while ago.  THEY GOT ME CHEAPER PILLS FOR ME.  ;_;

I love Mexico so much.