NATURE WOMAN SPEAKS
This may be our favorite time of the year at our Winter Residence. The weather is cooling down a bit and the humidity is lower. But mostly it is quiet; very, very quiet. Luis and Joannes, and Randy are the only people in the condo complex besides us. Muy tranquilo. There have not been many adventures to report upon. Things are very normal and routine; it really is our home here as much as at the Northern Estate. (Sound really rich, don't we?) So here is a little report of the everyday from Mrs.T.
It has been quite warm this year in Mexico. But it is getting cooler so that when I get in the pool every day I tend to give a little EEK! (She also goes EEK! when she enters the hot tub at our summer estate. –dt) Our pool is too short to swim much but often I do my yoga exercises (except for two which are impossible to do without drowning myself). Usually at night I go out and float on my back and look at the stars. I do this Zen meditation where I think of myself as a star and send out warm healing thoughts to all those I love, especially the halt and the lame. (That includes us two. –dt) So if you feel a surge of good health late in the evening it is probably from me; hey, you never know. I end up sending good wishes to all sentient beings. I hope mosquitoes are not sentient because I simply cannot wish them well. (Mrs.T is a mosquito magnet. –dt) I read once in Albert Schweitzer's biography that he would not swat a mosquito. I guess that is the difference between a saint and your plain old garden variety eccentric!
Speaking of fauna I have a couple of semi-pets. Every night I go out and look for the little geckos who run up and down the screens on our patio and sometimes venture upside down on the ceiling. I always encourage them to eat more bugs. (She talks to them and the iguanas in the back also. –dt) One day a housefly landed near one a gecko the screen. The fly was almost as big as the gecko. The gecko started forward to check it out. I really don't know what he was thinking because there was no way he could have possibly eaten it. A gecko's tongue should exceed his grasp I suppose. But the fly was not buying it and chased the gecko right down off the screen and into the bushes!
This year for some reason the Chihuahuan crows have become quite bold. (I don't think that is the actual species. Any bird people able to identify them? Sorry no picture. –dt) They fly down and perch on our tables under the palapa or strut around the edge of the pool making various shrieks and squawks and whistles. Dan has opined - and correctly I believe - that they are imitating other birds or sounds they have heard. Therefore whenever they start I shout "Nevermore" at them. I don't seem to have enhanced their vocabulary but I have annoyed Dan quite a bit. (And Edgar Allan Poe is rolling over in his grave. –dt)
We are preparing for Christmas in our own Mexican way. I have put up our tiny Christmas tree. I use jewelry for most of the ornaments. I imagine that armadillo Christmas ornaments would be unusual in Ohio but here they seem right. Instead of a nativity we have a Nacimiento which has an elephant, a camel, and a horse because everyone knows that is what the Magi rode. Of course it has no baby Jesus because he hasn't been born yet. (He will go in on Christmas Eve. –dt) The same yet different; I like remembering putting out our crèche every year with Nick and Marla and then reading the Christmas story from the Bible after we lit the candles. As Tiny Tim said on that long ago Christmas day, "God bless us every one!"
Here are a few pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9151458@N07/sets/72157632194939164/
Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.
Happy Holidays!
Dan and Rebecca
www.casa-de-terrible.blogspot.com
