Drenched

I know it was meant to happen, it hadnt happened yet but did last night on my way back home. One of these days you're looking at the window at work and dont even see the building across the street. What i was seeing though was my bike on the balcony looking at me like it knows what's gonna happen next.

Every time i feel lazy or completely unwilling to bike back home,  i focus on the following morning at 8am, picturing 4 buses passing in front of me without stopping cuz they're jammed packed. And i think, let's bike then, i'll be arriving home and i'll take a shower and put on some dry clothes.

Yesterday, at 6pm, i raced into my biking clothes, grabbed my bike as fast as i could, rushed downstairs with bike on my shoulder and made it to the front door of my office's building right on time for the begining of the downpour.

Half a block down the street and i was soaked to the bone. The main difference is that it's still 30°C outside so risks of getting a pneumonia are actually pretty remote :)

What was worrying me a bit was that Exiquio Corona Avenue, which is the very last portion of my way back home. It's always the worse part when it rains cuz the draining system is inexistant and the streets get completely flooded.

Well that time was no exception. Except that something quite new happened to me. Every time my foot was at the lowest point of the pedal, my entire foot and shoe was UNDERWATER. I mean seriously 100% underwater. And obviously, it's not that nice clean pool water we're talking about. It's that nasty, stinky, oily street dirty brown water... GROSS.

I made it home after killing my crotch not seeing this big hole in the road around the corner from my house, thanked god i'm not a man, and made it home literally swimming in my shoes. 

Plotch plotch plotch.

Dear beloved was home, handled me a dry towel to make my way to the bathroom and emptied my bag to dry everything (especially my phone which was already taking a foot-bath).

The rain stopped about an hour after i made it home. I believe this was the last rain of the rainy season. 

It got me good.

I Scare People

Quite a while back, an ex-colleague of mine told me i always scared her. I thought it was hilarious. But then another friend of mine told me that i was intimidating. And i started to think about it and i honestly dont see what's intimidating about me. But anyways,

I currently live in a very, very mexican area of Puerto Vallarta. What i mean by that is that i'm most likely the only white person living in that part of town. And even though my neighbors and people in the block know me now, at first, they stared at me from head to toes. And they do a second scan as soon as i start to speak spanish to them. Cuz i dont have much of an accent.

When we crashed the car, i used to take the bus to go to work. Thus i also used to take the bus to come back home too. Now i bike but i have so many bus stories i should really start to write more often!

I've just realized recently, that when i'm in "my" bus, people stare at me, which i dont really care about, and people are scared of me. Or intimidated. Or whatever you want to call it. 

Bottom line is: i scare people off. I mean tonight for example, i had to wait quite a while to get my bus back. So obviously when it finally comes, a lot of people get on. I get the first stares when i get on a bus that doesnt go anywhere close to a tourist place. The only "tourist" stop it makes is wal-mart. But generally, tourists just dont take that bus. So most of the locals stare.

One day, i was sitting at the back of the bus and this old woman was standing in the alley (i didnt leave her my seat cuz there were tons of free seats) and she looked me up and down in disdain or in disbelief or in wonder or maybe all of the above for about 25 minutes (pretty much the entire length of my trip back home). I mean i dont get uncomfortable easily but after a while, i really wanted to stand up and ask her what her damn problem was. But it was late, i was tired and i didnt want to make a fuss. After all, it's a free country and i paid my trip and i was going home, just like everybody else in that bus. But still.

That day, the seat next to me was empty. And stayed that way the entire journey. Same tonight. I mean the bus is jammed packed, there is a free seat next to me and nobody dares to seat there. 

Why?

Because i'm white.

I think.

I dont mind really. You guys keep on stucking each other against each other and i'll keep comfy on my 2 seats :)

I Have a Purple dog

Like a friend of mine would say, Oh, Em, Gee, i have a purple dog!

Following up on my dog's health status...

So yesterday, she had her shot. But the vet was pretty specific and told me that every day, i have to clean her wound with hydrogen peroxide (?? is that the name really in english?, it's "eau oxygénée" in french and "agua oxygenada" in spanish but anyway). So i had to clean her wound everyday and then put an antiseptic on it morning and afternoon for the wound to heal.

In France, we'd use mercurochrome, a cranberry-red antiseptic that stains your skin for weeks. Well here in Mexico, it's called violeta and as the name so very well says, it's purple. A deep shade of purple.

And i have a white dog.

At least, i used to.

This morning, Lola didnt think any good of the violeta session and things got a bit out of hand. Ok things got totally out of control. 

As i was getting ready to pour some violeta on her wound, she flipped her head to check something so much more interesting than me trying to cure her and knocked the bottle of violeta off my hand, splashing generously my hands, my legs, the floor and obviously, her face in the process.

A colleague of mine says awwww, she looks like she's wearing a lucha libre's mask. Buu, she's gonna be the laughing stock of the entire neighborhood! She's gonna get bullied. She's gonna get traumatized for life and will never want to get out of the house ever again. 

Or is it only me?

Shots ... Like In Injection ... With A Needle!

So yesterday, i went to the vet to take care of my two injured pets: Lola, my bullterrier with a cut from ear to ear and Nina, my youngest kitty cat who's almost got eaten alive by my dear dog mentioned above.

The good news are: 

* Nina is starting to use her back leg again to walk ... it's far from being fully recovered but she also started eating again so she should be back to her normal pain in the ass self anytime now.

* Lola's cut is slowly closing itself up but again, without stitches and with a cut that wide, it's gonna take some time.

If it wasnt for me, i dont think Lola would actually bother wandering around with her head open wide. But being the worried "mom" i am, well, you know!

So yesterday, the vet did give both of them a shot. And told me: come back tomorrow with both so they can get another shot.

Well today, my situation wasnt gonna be any different than it was yesterday: i dont have a car and i get back home at 6:30pm. Vet closes at 7pm. So there is no way i'm getting both Lola and Nina to the vet, separetly moreover!, in 30 minutes. Took me 1h30 yesterday.

When i told the vet he said: so, you'll do it then! Here's the needle and the potion.

JA

JA

JA

Whaaaaat? O_o

Me? Giving a shot to my pets? You're kidding right?

Well no he wasnt. 

For those of you who dont know, i'm terrified of needles, i cant watch a needle entering a vein, no matter if the vein belongs to my dog, my cat, my man, myself, if it's live or on TV, just the thought of it gives me goose bumps. 

So no, i'm not giving ANY shot to anybody.

Luckily for me, one of my ex colleague and friend, who's an animal passionate lives 6 houses down. I called him and he said, yeah sure, no problem, piece of cake.

He just left. 

Nina is now completely and happily stoned and sleeping.

Lola is killing her gigantic bone, looking at me in sheer adoration, like dogs do. 

Lemus, you're my hero today!

THANK YOU!

Woo freaking hoo!

Worse Birthday EVER

Well it started ok. It just ended dreadfully.

I was in Mexico City over the weekend and we let our neighbor take care of our dog and 3 cats. Lola was going to be in a gigantic enclosure with the neighbor's 6 dogs and the cats were  going to be at home like normal. The neighbor was just gonna come and feed them every day.

I managed to get a flight back home instead of the 12 hour bus ride i was initially gonna take. And i thought, well, that'd be good, i'll get some rest, in my own bed.

Well not so much. 

When i went back to get my dog, neighbor said he saw a nasty cut on her head in the morning. First thing i thought was, well if it's that nasty, why didnt you take her to the vet? So i asked: do you think she might need stiches? And he said yes maybe.

And i thought oh my fucking god if my dog needed stiches why the flying fuck didnt you take her to the vet? I mean dude, you said you'd take care of my dog, it's like taking care of a kid. If he/she breaks his leg or get a cut that needs stiches, you dont just wait for the parents to come back, you take that kid to the ER, get him/her fixed and then call the parents.

Well the cut was even worse than i actually anticipated. And trust me, when its about imagining nasty gory stuff, i'm top notch.

So i did my best to clean the wound but it's never easy with such an excited dog or with hands shaking like that, or even when it's pitch dark outside. I cleaned it and then put some antiseptic and then had the amazing idea to put a band over it so it wouldnt get infected with some dirt or god knows what else. And since i didnt have any bandage at hand, i used an old sheet to make one of my own. And i was sincerely pretty proud of the result:

No, i didnt get her ears under the bandage, she just put them back, like a good submissive dog!

What i wasnt expected was that while i was finally taking my well deserved shower, Lola would throw herself at Nina (my youngest cat) who had ran outside and couldnt get back in.

The scene i witnessed (after very nearly breaking a leg because i ran soaking wet through the tiles of my living room) was horror movie worthy. If i had seen it on TV i would have switched channel. It was Lola going for the kill and the prey, her prey, was my cat.

What do you do when one of your pet tries to kill another pet of yours? 

After what seemed centuries, I managed to stuff my fist inside Lola's mouth eventually and Nina dropped on the floor and was so shocked that she was standing there, not even blinking. She was covered in blood and so was Lola. 

It took my 60 kilos to keep her still and a good 20 minutes to calm her down, away from the scene. And it took one extra set of gutts and another liter of sweat to carry Lola inside the house to get her leash and go back out to tie her up while i was taking care of poor Nina.

Needless to say i didnt sleep. 

My dear friend Nahomi did me the favor to help me go back and forth to the vet this morning to check on both. 

Verdic: Lola needed stiches, at least 8, but part of the wound was getting dry and nothing more than a shot and some more antiseptic to clean the open wound could be done.

Nina doesnt seem to have any broken bones, the 2 bites are superficial but she's beaten up inside and has been administrated strong painkiller and antibiotics. She still doesnt use one of her back leg yet and hasnt eaten anything in 24 hours.

Vet said that both will be just fine. 

My pets are bad-ass.

But that was still the worse birthday presents ever. And 24 hours later, i still feel like a gigantic pile of poop.

Early Celebration

I work in a company of 15 people. With 3 people who recently quit and have yet to be replaced, one that is now working from home and 2 currently on the other side of the country to open a new office there, that makes a grand total of 9. Out of these 9 people left, 5 are born in September. On the 5th, 13th, 18th (me), 22nd and 28th. What are the odds? 5 people who were conceived right around Christmas and New Year celebrations ... That could be material for an entire new post! LOL

So we all thought that September was gonna be the big fat month of cake eating and zillion calories. Cuz we generally have a birthday cake for birthday people. So 5 cakes in a month, that's about a zillion calories in birthday cakes. Just the thought of it was enjoyable.

Well we didnt. We didnt have 5 cakes. We had one gigantic cake, today, with a "happy birthday ALL" written in blue icing. They sang the mañanitas, the happy birthday song and i even get to sing it in French too, all alone but still.

I'll be honest. It was a gigantic trillion calories chocolate cake so compact and thick that one bite needed to be shoveled down with the help of a Coke gulp. And since i got the honor of cutting the slices, trust me that i was pretty generous on the portions. 

It was truly a delicious cake. And even though i had to say how old i'm turning on Sunday (11 years older than the one who was the actual birthday girl!! aargh) and that it wasnt my real birthday day (yet), and that i didnt have to blow any candle, it was still a nice quiet celebration, with a lot of laughters and quite a nice touch from the boss.

But i still want my own cake.

Seriously?

6:58am


It's 31.7°C outside.

Seriously?


Is it real?


Is it even possible?