Sushi and Sorrow

I’m a very jumpy person, easily scared and startled.
Not one of my best qualities.
I woke up Saturday, with something tickling my leg, and with the deadly combination of an overpopulated insect/rodent community, I might have over reacted. ☺
I jumped out of bed, as resolutely as a mom who imagines her child crying in the night. And with a triumphant flourish of the arm pulled back all my covers, so I could catch and kill the thing tickling me.
I saw two dark colors on my white sheet, about the size of golf balls. Screaming at the top of my lungs I could barely hear my thoughts “Mice so bold as to get in my bed!” while fumbling with my glasses and the light switch at the same time.


You know what else looks like two mice in your bed, and might tickle your leg, the pair of socks you wore to bed that later slid off your feet in the middle of the night.

I’m sure my girls enjoyed the eye opening scream at 6am Saturday morning. I just decided to go ahead and shower since I was so wide awake. I wonder what my life would be like without my imagination.


You know who else is paranoid- one of my girls, C—of this swine flu. She’s been wearing a bandana over her mouth, and not letting people sit close to her. She keeps explaining that you get it from other people’s mouths. Which, while correct is highly unlikely from anyone in our family. She told me she wanted to sleep on the couch and not in her bedroom with her 2 roommates. Today several of my children sat around listening to a 40 minute broadcast interviewing doctors and things about the swine flue. (oh so doomsday-esq, the only news they have of the outside world is the radio! We’re alone!) They are even passing out papers in the streets of how to prevent spreading it. Joanne talked to a health official Tuesday night, and they said there are no confirmed cases on our peninsula. I found out two more words that my kids know in Spanish that are really English candy, and sticker.

Some really stinky things have happened the last few days. Somebody who living in our town and who had begun to create relationships with our missions group died on Saturday, and then my friend's parents had a horrible car accident. But good things have happened too, like obedience from children when you least expect it; or hand rolled California rolls with friends; or fruit salad with granola, pecans, and cottage cheese in it; or opportunities to be more self-less. sigh. I think the sushi most helped with my sorrow.

to bed it is.

the rain like silver in my ear...

(that's a David Gray quote)


Going on a bike ride (before Good Friday, when it rained oddly) I noticed doll house sized crevasses, microscopic canyons, elegent folds, ripples, in the hardened mud. No rain for two months, and yet it’s memory, it’s evidence is everywhere. My favorite is where there are deep tire tracks, and there is clover (mostly dead) in it. The plants are another reminder of where water was, lonely(wish this were an adverb, but the computer doesn’t accept loneily) surrounded by other dusty furrows not quite deep enough for something to take seed in.

People take trips to the river, but only in the winter/early spring because the farmers siphon it off for their crops with big pvc pipe deep in the mountains. The pipes are supported by makeshift piles of bricks and rough hewn wood perilously nailed together. The deep parts of the river in the mountains come up to your waist. There are well worn dirt bike hills in the dry river beds closer to town and the ocean. My favorite view on the way to the border is a gigantic river bed south of Santo Tomas(I think?) that has houses and corrals built IN it.

You may not be able to tell, but this pipe is resting on stacks of concrete blocks.


Here is a pipe taking away the river water!


My bug problem is much improved, I’m only killing one or two a day. My children told me that the Earwigs/pincher bug (I think they are eating the beetles) hurt you. I told them they were definitely crazy and shouldn’t make up stories. The other night I went to the bathroom and when I stood to wash my hands I stepped on something that poked me! I looked down expecting a bobby pin, or earring, but no, I had stepped on an Earwig/pincher bug! That’ll teach me.

"Thou doubtest because thou...

...loves the truth."

so, I finished listening to Lilith by George MacDonald. Thanks to Librivox.org

what a wonderful book. I enjoyed it.

I was posting something else today, but with breaking news, decided that maybe I'd better post this instead.

I'm fine. Mexico is fine. Nobody (that I know of) is dead or dying or sick from the swine flu.
I think the outbreak is on the mainland, and I practically live in America. Remember, we say things like "ridey" (ride) and "trokey" (truck).
Unfortunately, I may be dying until May 6th! Which is how long the Gov't has SUSPENDED school so as not to get the whole country sick. This comes on the heels of a two week spring break we had that just got over April 19th. While the other kids stay home, I'm trying to help one of mine be ready to take exams that will get her into 7th grade. She has to be ready to pass math May 11th. It can be very hard to study when everyone else is playing, and it can be very hard for me to teach when everyone else seems to need something. (and her assessor dropped off the wrong book tonite, and he's not supposed to work again till May 6th b/c of the swine flu, and we're in a time crunch for her academically)
Long Division and Decimal places are the bane of my existence, but we'll make it through.
This totally reminds me of SARS, except now I'm in the "dangerous" place.

We had some people take a quick tour of the house I live in today, so I had to make sure it looked pretty.
I didn't change the living room light bulb b/c it works half the time, and I figured they would get to the house while it was still light out.
Well, it was already dark when they came over, AND the light didn't work.
Maybe my kids cleaned the living room for naught?
oh well :)

We'll probably take the kids to the beach for "dia del niño" on Friday, that should be fun. (day of the child.)

that's when I knew...

Do I always write about food, maybe I do. That’s ok though.
Part of a mom’s job is to always think about providing nutritious meals several times a day. My first thought often in the morning is, what can I serve the kids for breakfast. I’ve been here almost a year and a half, and just last month someone introduced me to this nut mix. It has sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and peanuts with chili and lime on them. IT IS SOOO GOOD. I’m going to have to export it to the U.S. if something comparable doesn’t already exist there. I also haven’t ever had red dye stained fingers like my kids, but now that I eat these nuts, I now am indistinguishable from the children ☺

One of the kids here doesn’t like themselves, and we had a long talk about feeling awkward and things (I don’t know who reads this blog, sorry for being cryptic) so I told her about the moment I knew I liked myself and felt good about who I was, and told her that I will pray God gives her one of those moments. There are other issues that I probably shouldn’t get into but if you could pray for her, that’d be great! When I first got here I probably would have thought this was my responsibility to fix, but now I know better. Prayer, Love and Time.




...not a thing I could say or do.

Bell Peppers, Food, yummy-ness

One of the ways the little kids play is they read recipe books/magazines and then act like they are eating those foods by scooping their hands at the page and making eating noises. Except you know it’s pretend b/c nobody I know really eats that loud!

When we were at the grocery the other week I asked one of my older girls, M—, 19, to pick out the bell peppers we needed for the week. She walked a way, I heard her get a plastic bag to put them in (I was choosing tomatoes- the place we’ve been going they are really cheap, but you have to pull out only the good ones) and then she came back behind me and said, “what else can I do?” and I was like, “you didn’t get the peppers yet, do that and I’ll tell you another way to help.” And she said, “no. tell me something different.” I was shocked that she was being so disobedient in public. I started to explain to her that nobody gets to choose, we just do the things on the list in order, when she tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to whisper in my ear. I turned my head, and tilted it down because I was up on a pallet, and she whispered, “I can’t reach them.” I looked over at the peppers, and sure enough, she was too short. But what confused me about all this exchange is she was getting in trouble publicly, and yet corrected me privately. Is she ashamed of being short? Ashamed of correcting me? Who knows.

We had two little blessings yesterday. Johanne, head house mom, was discouraged about our food situation b/c we only bought the basics and not some nice extras that she had been thinking about, plus she's been trying to not eat any carbs/sugar. She has high blood sugar although thinks that through diet and exercise she won't have to take insulin. One of her sons had said he wanted pop tarts. Well, wouldn't you know it, like half an hour later some people came by to drop off a bunch of food. We had no idea they were coming and they brought boxes and boxes of sugar free things. Carmel syrup, Mapel syrup, Strawberry syrup, Chocolate syrup, cookies, peppermint patties, truffles, energy bars, and even organic off brand Pop tarts. so Pop tarts and sugar free treats! fabulous. God is so good to us.

Gifts and Whales

One thing that I’ve had to learn is that when you give a gift, you no longer have control over it.
Here that is magnified b/c I live with the people that I give gifts too, and I see others give my children gifts. I might see them re-gift an item, or they forget that “super special thing that you thought they’d love” in the laundry room, and you realize that it’s not as important to them as it was to you. A very specific example of this…
Steve decided to take the kids camping to the river for the night. Earlier that day, I had just given the new girl a blanket that I had been keeping in my room. It was freshly laundered and smelled like fabric softener! She had been too cold the night before, and so it seemed like a nice thing to do for her.
The next evening, I went up in her room to stop the toilet from running, C— can’t hear if the water doesn’t stop filling, and she’d been the last one in the bathroom. I noticed that my blanket wasn’t on the new girls bed, I looked in their dirty laundry- she had taken it camping, and it no longer smelled like fabric softener, BUT campfire.
All I could think was, why the nice blanket??? Why didn’t you take already dirty blankets? Or a sleeping bag from the laundry room?
But as a gift, I had to let it go.
Another example of this is kids sharing! I want to be proud of them for it, but recently C—received some sweet (smelly!!) pencils and (novelty!!) erasers, and a couple days later I realized that she’d given most of them away. I wasn’t the giver, but I thought to myself- would other adults see that as being ungrateful, or be hurt? I realized they’d probably be proud of her, but hard to wrap my mind around. The kids really share a lot, and I don’t know if that’s big family culture, Mexican culture, or just they way we’ve taught them to live.


I was having a long talk with a child yesterday, and she told me they don't make close friends with people b/c when you spend a lot of time with people they lose respect for you. I told her to go away then, that all of our chatting was causing me to lose respect for her. She then laughed and realized how ridiculous what she said was. But I think she genuinely believes it. What warped, sad thinking.

Not many people have watched the whale watching videos yet, so I’m going to embed them. There are 4 of them and they are all under a minute. One is only 7 seconds long. One has a rainbow where the whale snorts at us. There is lots of squealing and giggling, and at one point a whale obeyed me :) I tell him to snort and he does, but maybe it was coincidence and not obedience b/c I was saying it every 15 seconds ;)











Have a nice Saturday!

Leave behind all that we don't need dear...

This week I’ve gotten a lot of (personal) things done. Yay! I cleaned my room on Tuesday. This was a big task, as I moved my bed to vaccum under it and cleaned off two dressers that had accumulated lots of things. I washed all my pillow covers, cleaned window sills, everything! It felt like spring cleaning. Part of the reason I did it is b/c water came through my ceiling from the bathroom above me and got my bed all wet (clean water). Luckily I was able to move things quickly and my computer didn’t get damaged. Part of the reason I did it was to see if it will help in the fight against the bugs. I’ll let you know! I’ve only lived here a year and a half, yet somehow junk accumulates. I listened to 7 podcasts in the course of cleaning my room.

Yesterday I uploaded two photo albums
Mexico 14

Mexico 15

There are photos of whale watching, a catorceañera (14th party, that’s not a word, I made it up. usually we celebrate big 15th birthdays, but we read the date on the birth certificate about 2 weeks before the already planned party, oops! We all sincerely thought she was turning 15) a soccer tourney, the sweet school project that was the BEST in her class, a fake starbucks, the board walk in Ensenada, road work in our town, a trip to the RIVER, C--’s new shoes…etc.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and videos are worth even more, I’ll leave you with this stuff today…

A Whale of a Tale
-I uploaded some videos from whale watching finally! I know, 2 months late.

Also I got a cut and color. We’re so blessed to have a hair stylist living in our community, and she cuts our hair as her ministry. I feel like a new person! The hair dye was a donation, and I got to relax while my friend applied it to my head. I usually dye my hair my self, so that was a nice change. Two of my girls love my hair cut, and now are asking to get cut too!
One of my other kids, M—, told me that many (muchas) people didn’t like it. I asked who? And she could only think of two people’s names… 2 = muchas, hehe.

Today I ended up translating the church service to my friend. I left on such a high from feeling "on fire" from that 40 minutes or so, even though I couldn't think of how to say boldness. That's ok. I spent so much time whispering in her ear, that I couldn't tell you what the visiting speaker looked like! :)

I homeschool 1ish of my kids. Today, I decided to wait for her to come to me to start school while I helped another child, since she is a capable teenager. She never came, much to my disappointment. Finally, I went to her, 3 hours late for starting school, and said, "You know it's 11" and she said, "so?" I said, "You'll do school till 3 o'clock then." Immediately I was being unfair (according to her) She had been "studying" in the other house, even though her school books were next to me the whole time I was waiting for her to show up. In the end it worked out, and we worked through lunch. She wrote me a letter to practice friendly letter writing. It was very sweet about me going home, and that she is going to miss me and things, but then she didn't sign her name to it, but a different child's, as if, SHE isn't going to miss me, but the other girl certainly will!

Goodbyes are the hardest.




"this is no place for you to rest your head" -Brown Feather Sparrow

Soccer!!! More Kids!!!

Since December of 2007, when I first arrived, we have 7 more children! This doesn’t count the children that lived with us and left, A--, A--, R--, J--, hopefully we made an impact on them as well, or maybe their relative’s lives. When I first got here I couldn’t imagine living with so many people, and even sometimes the idea of, “one more?” comes along and seems overwhelming, but it all works out. This means we have 21 children! Woah.

T—, 16, is quiet in groups of people, but fun when she is just around 2 or 3 people. I told her, jokingly, that I don’t let people that are cuter than me live in my house! I don’t think she ever leaves the house without makeup on, and I recently discovered that she wipes it off on the WHITE bathroom curtain. She is washing it with bleach (finger’s crossed) and will be using other towels in the future. She’s fun to play trivial pursuit with.

S--, 15, is also quiet. She’s cute too, and looks like she could be my sister. She is one of the few Mexicans that I’ve met that are taller than me! She lacks self-esteem, and is very self-conscious about not looking “Mexican” like everyone at school. She knows how to sew and play piano


We're taking a lot of the kids to a soccer tournament in Ensenada! Should be a blast! Gotta run :)

no blue kool aide :(

Easter was on Sunday. I’m sure you all noticed ☺
My friend was scheduled to lead the music time during church. Basically only the local English speaking missionaries come, so it’s small. She had asked me to play piano with her last week, and I had said yes and we practiced a bunch. But then on Friday there was talk of changing our service time b/c it was Easter on Sunday, and we both went, Easter? Wha? That came quickly. We thought it wasn’t for another week. So here we were in a conundrum, we hadn’t practiced ANY “Easter” hymns/songs. So… we didn’t play any! But then one of our friends organized a hymn sing in the afternoon, and it was sooo much fun. We normally only have one service on Sundays, but we had a blast with two, albeit one VERY informal. One of the missionaries can play guitar by ear and read music, so we were playing hymns and he was just following along! There were several guitar players there, a harmonica player, and singers. We jammed for like 2 hours, and it was the first time I’ve played chords in public (usually, I stick to reading music). I came home with a sore throat, but my Easter was really special! (And brunch made it nice too, even though we didn’t have any blue kool aide. Sigh.)

(My family normally eats at Bob Evans with friends and we drink blue kool aide on Easter! One of our family traditions.)

Tax Day. In case you forgot.

-or-
Peanut Buttery Yards!


One of the reasons I wasn’t blogging was b/c I made other things a priority, but I’m glad to report that I finally made it through Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy.

One of my favorite quotes from it is “When I ask someone to do or to be or to give something, I stand with that person in the domain of a constraint without force or necessitation. We are together. A request by its very nature unites. A demand, by contrast, immediately separates. It is this perculiar “atmosphere” of togetherness that characterizes the kingdom and is, indeed, what human beings were created to thrive in.”

I hope to have learned a lot from that book, I certainly am seeing the Gospels in a new light. I’ll keep praying that my behaviour will reflect that new head knowledge. We’ll see.

I also read the New Testament in “The Message” translation, which certainly echoed some of the same passions of The Divine Conspiracy.

Living in a rural area has made me think more about crops. Last week, I played “The Farming Game” which is like Monopoly but with a pile more math, and which I think I like better. It cracked me up b/c sometimes we talk the way the game is written. We may have lost the winter wheat. Many of the fields near my house have winter wheat planted in them.(The ones that don’t have strawberries or little squash.) A couple weeks ago I heard that if we didn’t get rain the farmers would lose the wheat, and you could see a dramatic colour change- from green to brown. It definitely rained on Good Friday, it rained long, and out of season. (Dec-Feb is season, and even then, it’s only be raining a dozen times) We were shocked! We stopped what we were doing just to listen to it on the roof. Nobody spoke. I can’t tell you how it changed our mood; maybe there is the same elation when you get a strange hailstorm, or a puffy thick snowfall.

Another thing that is certainly out of season here are the town Christmas decorations. STILL UP. South of here, they took them down just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. My town did not follow suite. Maybe they thought the longer they had them up, the more chance the clouds would think it’s still rainy season? It’s windy every afternoon, and soon it will be foggy every morning. I made the mistake of walking outside in a skirt with fresh lotion on my legs. When I arrived at my friends house, it looked like I had a spray on tan, but really it was just dust and sand. Ok, collective “ewww”

Lotion and wind, Christmas decorations and spring, my head and my heart, so many things in opposition. Galoshes and bicycling also make the list. Galoshes are made so you don’t slip/get wet. Seeing as how after it rains my yard has the texture and consistency of peanut butter I decided to wear galoshes even though I was biking to a friends house (plus what if I ran into an uncrossable puddle on the way??- It’s happened before) . They served their purpose until I made it to the road and mounted my eldest child’s bike (she lets me borrow it whenever I want!) But they DIDN’T provide for a gecko like grip. The whole ride to my friend’s house my galoshes kept slipping off the pedals, until finally I decided to use the heel of the shoe as my leverage. I will possibly never wear galoshes while using a bike ever again, it probably looked funny anyways.

Here’s to looking funny! ☺

Buzz Buzz Buzz

I feel totally incapable of writing right now. My head is abuzz with possibilities, and reining it in is like trying to get rid of an ant trail (without mercilessly killing them). Move their target, throw it out, (solve the possibilities) and they keep walking back and forth on their path, and even might start looking for other interesting places to go. Incidentally, I have an ant trail in my room right now. And it’s not my fault. Every year/season we seem to have an inexplicable infestation of something. Last year it was blind? slow moving spiders with long legs. This year, it’s beetles. Which I initially thought were cockroaches. They all crunch when you step on them, what’s the difference?

I had been killing about 10 a day (in my bedroom, not counting other ones I kill during in other places, like the ones hiding in the clean towel bin) when one night I was too lazy to pick up all the smashed ones before bed. I don’t enjoy touching bugs, dead or alive. The next morning, all the carcasses were gone, but I didn’t notice it. Someone asked to use my bathroom, and I said, “sure, but ignore all the dead bugs on my floor.” She said, “there aren’t any dead bugs on your floor.” At first this was serendipitous news, but now I might know who took care of all the dead bugs. Quite possibly a very happy and now well fed, ant colony.
The beetles seem to be fewer in number, but now I have ants in my trash can, when all that could possibly have attracted them was dirty tissues and DEAD BUG CARCASSES.

P.S. I decided to kill the beetles with boric acid sprinkled liberally around my baseboard. It kills them by spreading into their living area as they carry it back to the colony. BUT they can’t carry it back to the colony if they keep getting smashed and put in the rubbish bin, so I stopped smashing them and let them live. Counter-intuitive, but it worked. Sometimes you have to be counter-intuitive with kids as well.

I kill the daddy long legs that chose to make my bedroom their habitat. But I spare those that I see are eating the beetles. I also hear centipedes like to eat the beetles. Two have been found inside the houses, both the length of an adult hand from tip of middle finger to heel of hand. Makes sense that they would show up where such a plentiful food source is.

When I chose to come to Mexico, I didn't realize i was coming to a rural area. I didn't use to be snobby about water before, but now after drinking well water for a year and a half, over chlorinated city water is not my style. I never used to be able to tell the difference. I'll take living with bugs for just a little while longer. The people (and the well water!) here are worth it.

in which the parentheses take over

-or-
Do they not have pen and paper where you are?
-or-
update! update! update!

It’s been about a month since I’ve written (I’m behind on emails too….sorry! other moms know how much kids take up that mental energy and free time), and while I’ve tried to keep track of things that happen, I’m sure much escaped me (to my sorrow indeed).
Notably, April 8th was my father’s birthday. So if you haven’t wished him a happy b-day, you can get right on that.
I’ll be back “home” (where is home, right?) June 7th. It was sort of emotional buying that plane ticket, but luckily I had a friend, with a more level head than I and a faster internet connection act as my personal travel agent ☺ (the one-way across country ticket was only $120. What a blessing!) Who thought a year and a half would go by so quickly…I have about 2 months more in Mexico, and then I’m leaving it “forever” (I don’t have plans to live here again in the foreseeable future). I’m really excited to get home and see my friends babies, see 4 marriages begin, try my hand at interpreting at a local clinic, begin serving the migrant community in literacy, serve the local church, and even get a job. Ideally I would like to work in a library, or interpret (although not sure what my qualifications are for either). In the near future I’d like to go back to school for further training (in one or both library services and interpreting) so I’m ok having a temporary job. Nannying for the summer? Anyone? Advice?

I’ll be leaving behind a big spot here. If you know of anyone that enjoys working with kids, being a mommy, doing EVERYTHING/ANYTHING, let me know! Not only can my family use the help, there is another family in our organization who is taking care of 9 Mexican children (5 are siblings). Even simple tasks like laundry are big work. There are always opportunities to serve here. Even though you won’t get paid, there are rewards in character building, in the impact you have on others, and maybe even in learning Spanish.

oh, and in the last month I've gotten 2 new girls, have I told ya'll about them? S and T. Now I have 6 girls, a "full" house.

Well, this is the first of what I hope to be 60 consecutive blogs. Let’s see if I can do it! Consistency is the key! I'll also try to get some new photos up.

(This entry was sponsored by some strings music, specifically Kronos Quartet Performs Phillip Glass, without it pouring through my ears, my writing would not have been possible.)