I can't believe I haven't posted since the first of March! Thanks to Mom's friends for their encouragement to keep it up. I had sort of gotten caught up in other writing projects and have been ignoring this.
It has been a busy month so far with the cycle of visitors starting again. We had Emily, whom I taught with at Bodwell, visit for a week at the beginning of the month, and now we are enjoying a visit with Rob's parents. I am jumpy with excitement as the date for mom's return creeps nearer. She arrives on Monday and then on Tuesday morning we are all piling into a mini van and driving to Acapulco for two nights. It should be a crazy week! I'm sure it is going to take Lucas a couple of weeks to wind down after all the excitement of seeing his grandparents...but so much fun!
Rob has been really busy at the club with 100% occupancy. As exciting as this has been we find ourselves looking forward to the end of the high season so that we can have a bit more time together. Rob has been working a pretty grueling schedule of six days a week and very long days. Ironically he will now be home before Lucas and I as the manager's retreat this year is in Vancouver! I was a bit stunned at the news since had we planned it better we could have gone home together, but that's the way it works sometimes. I think they'll have him pretty booked up anyways.
The weather here as been quite lovely the last month with gentle breezes coming in and out most of the days. Lucas and I have slipped quite comfortably into a nice routine of dog walking, car playing, eating, dancing and laughing together. He is an increasingly active boy. He happily walks several kilometers on his own when we walk the dogs. It's not usually in a straight line...but the stroller is rusty from unuse! He is trying very hard to get more words out and has mastered some of the basic baby signs we've taught him. Thus communication is getting easier and easier. He is growing upwards very fast, and those feet of his that were unnaturally large when he was born; well they are still unnaturally large! I think the shoe shops here are going to like us. Even if they constantly try and discourage me from buying such big shoes for a 1 1/2 year old!
We've had lots of doggy adventures in the last month or so. Unfortunately these have not been so good. Chola had a terrible encounter with an angry, angry hippie who decided to punt her like a football from two feet away. Granted she had peed on his dirty blanket that was on the ground, but I was right beside her and would have happily paid for his hemp bracelets. Poor Chola, who is mostly deaf and blind, just couldn't fathom what had happened and literally cried in pain as she curled up like a little bug. Needless to say, all of Mom's unintentional training in how to swear is Spanish came in very useful. I'm afraid I made quite a scene yelling in Spanish and then English when words failed me. Anyways, I scooped up Lucas and picked Chola up off the ground to see if she could get home. The man said nothing and sheepishly began to clean up his wares. It took us a disproportionate amount of time to get home, where I finally crumbled and called Rob in tears. The idiocy of some people I will never understand.
Since the incident, Chola has been pretty sore, but in good spirits. I think she likes the extra attention. She has however developed a worse limp than normal, so we thought we should take the dogs off to the vet for a check-up since Pillo was also due for some vaccines. Well, we always try and do a bit of a better groom before the vet (you wouldn't wear dirty underwear to the doctor would you?) and what would I find to my horror and disgust? Ticks. Nasty, nasty, blood-sucking ticks. I shudder even now just to remember. When Chola was a pup she had once had fleas and I had though that was just about the grossest thing. I was wrong. Ticks are worse.
It turns out the anti-tick flea etc. stuff we had been giving them just wasn't strong enough for the Mexican variety. So our vet appointment turned into a 24 hour gong-show of de-ticking the dogs and de-yuckifying the house. The war on bugs just never seems to end in this tropical environment. The dogs, for the most part however, are doing much better now. We figure Chola was feeling pretty sick with all those ticks sucking the life out of her. Poor thing.
Well, I hope no-one is gagging from that story. I think maybe I needed some blogging-therapy to get it out of my own system. I was having trouble sleeping because I kept waking up dreaming about ticks! Perhaps you can carry that weight for me now?!!
This morning a Jehova's Witness without a word of Spanish knocked on our door to try and convert Rob. We laughed to learn that he was from Vancouver Island and his wife had gone to the same high school as Rob. So weird.
Have a super weekend. Ting
