A Vacation of My Favorite Things: Friends, Family, Food, Lakes, Laughs and Dora Nearly Drowning

We just got back from a week-long trip to Massachusetts. In true Joy/Brendan style, we crammed in as much visiting with friends and family as we could muster, and so this week, we’re barely alive. For now, though, a few fantastic highlights:

- Catching up with a few of our nearest-and-dearest NYC amigos — Dora & Gene, Adam & John, and Connie — at our lakeside cabin rental in The Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

Lake Ashmere, Berkshires, Massachusetts

Our pretty little cabin, plus a few enhancers we brought.

Everyone expected me to fall off the float, I did not!

- Dining at the tucked-away Dreamaway Lodge, a former brothel.

Dora, John and Adam in front of the lodge. The food: scrumptious!

- Visiting Lake Onota, and renting a pontoon boat, just like we did back in ‘07 on Lake George. Fabulous way to spend an afternoon, and the water temperature was magical — I could have swam for hours in the slightly chilly waters. Oh wait, I did swim for hours (and I love how New England sun doesn’t burn me! I can apply sunscreen just once and then forget all about it).

- Laughing so hard it hurt when Dora fell out of an inflated float, letting out a shriek, but refusing to let go of her beer. Classic Dora: Nearly drowning, laughing, while doggy paddling one handed.

- Tieing for first with Adam for in our First-Ever Cannonball Contest. I fully expect a rematch next summer. We’ll take photos next time for a photo finish.

Brendan has now driven pontoon boats in Wisconsin, New York and Massachusetts.

Post-swimming bliss. I'm truly happiest while floating/swimming.

It rained like crazy that day, but we had enough sun to enjoy a few hours on the boat.

- Being towed around the lake on a float by Adam and John in their kayaks, a la Cleopatra down the Nile. A man passing by in a boat told me “You got the life, don’t you?”

- Watching Oscar and a duck endlessly flirt.

A dog and a duck: A love story.

- Gorging self on fantastic Italian food at Salvatore’s in Lawrence, Mass.  The meat lasagna. The pizza margarita. The calamari. The fresh Italian bread and herbed olive oil. The Peroni beer.  Lordy oh lordy, I miss good Italian food.

- Watching Brendan’s cousin and her hubby celebrate their vows, and meeting lots of Brendan’s family that after 8 years I still hadn’t met!

The newlyweds.

– Stumbling upon good food before our return flight home in the Ironbound District of Newark, known for its Portuguese and now Brazilian immigrants. Using the Blackberry, we looked up Portugese restaurants, found one called Nossa Casa, and decided to have lunch there (gracias a el GPS).

When we walked in, it soon became apparent that the restaurant had been expropriated by the local Latin American community, evidence by the Mexican Norteno songs blasting from the juke box and a menu that was in Spanish, not Portuguese. (Though our waitress was Brazilian and happy to speak to us in either Portuguese or Spanish.) In any case, the food was wonderful and Brendan was served a 1/2 order of paella so huge it easily could have fed an apartment full of day laborers.

A Toast to Jenny — and Her New Kidney

My oldest friend in the world is Jenny. I think we first had a class together in the third grade. Here’s us looking really dorky in the 5th grade, Mrs. Castro’s class. I am in the back row.

In high school, we didn’t hang out much. We attended the same college, though, and ended up taking inorganic chemistry together. For her, it became her future career. For me, I scraped by with a C, and the best thing to come out of my failed attempt at stoichiometry was our friendship.

Good times in college. Lori, me, Jenny in braces, Brent and my other close friend Kristie down in front. (The NyQuil was a joke, and I think those sunglasses were trendy at the time?)

About two years later, I transferred colleges out-of-state to try and pursue a nursing degree (and ended up switching to journalism). She was one of only two friends from “back home” who came to my graduation. She met all my new college friends, helped me pack, and rode with me in the moving van the entire 14-hour drive from Las Cruces, N.M. to Corpus Christi, Texas, where I had taken a job as a copy editor at the newspaper.

Yes, there are pictures of us not drinking, but they’re not as fun. Jenny is on the far left, I’m on the far right. This is “Y2K.”

Jenny’s always had a harder life than most of us. She was raised by her father, who was a good dad but was in a motorcycle gang and hung out with a really rough crowd. There was not much money to send her to college, but she did it.  After 7 years, she finally graduated. Like she did for me, I attended her graduation, along with our then-boyfriends, now-husbands.

I’ve since moved from Texas to New York to Mexico City, but Jenny and I have always been in touch. She got married, got a great job, bought a house, and is the proud mom to dogs Maggie and Annabel.

About a year and a half ago, during one of my trips home, Jenny pointed to her ankles, which were swollen. Her cholesterol and blood pressure were far beyond normal. A nephrologist diagnosed her with an autoimmune kidney disease known as IgA nephropathy. She started taking medicines and thought all would be well.

But each time I came home, Jenny seemed a bit more worse off. The swelling was expanding, moving upward, and hurting her. In September of last year, even her eyelids were swollen. She would press her puffy legs and it left lasting indentions in her flash. It meant two things: The medicine wasn’t working, and her kidneys were failing.

After finding a better doctor, she started more aggressive treatment in December, and promptly lost 40 pounds – all of it from fluid her kidneys were not flushing out. Since then, thrice-a-week dialysis has helped her stay healthy, but for a young woman who works a full-time job, it’s not a solution. A transplant is.

Jenny emailed me today: Her transplant is finally scheduled for June 26. A relative of hers is donating a kidney. I am ecstatic.

Through it all, she has been amazingly stoic. And optimistic. A few weeks ago, when I last visited, she even stayed up until past midnight with me, at a blues bar. As a group of us from high school caught up on recent goings-on, she shrugged off the murmurs of pity from us. But it was hard to deny: When she started sharing her struggle, I definitely felt a bit silly for whining about jet lag and traffic. As the night wore on, and we were the only two left from our group, an older woman came up to us at the bar and dragged us onto the dance floor.

Before we knew it, it was like old times again: we were dancing, in a bar. This time of age and far less reckless than our late teens/early 20s. Jenny may have been abstaining (no alcohol for her, of course), but it was as fun as it ever was.

When Charlie Has Fun, Everyone Has Fun

This past weekend we stayed in lovely Malinalco, Mexico, with our in-laws and their friends, renting a house, hanging out in hammocks, eating fresh Mexican produce, playing dominoes and visiting the town (we recommend Las Placeres restaurant).

Charlie came along, too, and he worked on getting in touch with his inner wolf.

He spent a significant portion of the weekend hidden in the garden.

"Are you calling my name, again? Can't you see that I'm just fine???"

Of course, though, he can't resist the attention of his humans.

How My Husband Is Just Like Barack Obama

Besides their good looks, charm and intelligence, the huzzband and Barack share something else in common, I learned today:

“I admit that I am not always great about hanging up my clothes,” Obama has said.

(To create your own crank call with this quote, go here.)

Things I Like about Going Home to South Texas

In a week, I head up north to South Texas for a full week. I love going to visit, it’s so relaxing. After living in NYC and now Mexico City, it’s like an escape to another, calmer world. Some things I like:

• iced tea served everywhere, and refilled frequently
• migas breakfast plates (scrambled eggs, peppers, onions, tomatoes and crushed up tortilla chips, served with refried beans and super-thick, warm flour tortillas)
• the wide, quiet streets & overall lack of traffic
• spicy, smoked beef jerky
• the warm air, the high humidity and the gusty winds – always occurring together, always bad for hair.
• the smell of the salt grass on the sand dunes of Padre Island
• plush carpeting in my parents’ house
• jalapeno hush puppies

Things I love even more now that I have lived in Mexico City for a year:

• (relatively) safe tap water and ice
• people who speak English
• giant drugstores like CVS
• breakfast burrito bars at gas stations
• cops who are basically trustworthy
• Old Navy and Target and Ross Dress for Less and all the oh-so-cheap clothes/shoestores.
• anything you could ever need is at HEB

Wordless Monday: So, How Was My Vacation?

A Photographical Ode to the Cabin

As this summer approached, we couldn’t decide: go to the cabin or don’t go to the cabin?

Normally, we spend a few weeks each summer at Brendan’s parents’ cabin in Wisconsin, for as long as possible. And we bring the dog, Charlie.

But this summer, with us living here in Mexico City, we weren’t sure what to do. On one hand, we thought, the cabin could wait, because we live in Mexico, fergoodnesssakes, the land of beachy beaches, shiny sunshine, and margaritas. In a word, vacation. (Also, “importing” and “exporting” Charlie to the U.S. for just a week is tough and stressful, and it’s hard to imagine going to the cabin without him.)

But, on the other hand, the more we thought about it, the more we wanted to go, since Mexico is flooded out by the rainy season during the summer months. And, unlike staying in a hotel, or with friends, the cabin is ours to enjoy without anyone bothering us, while at the same time, we get to see our family.

The Fuzzbucket Is Back

One of the hardest aspects of living abroad is what to do with our much beloved dog, Charlie. Back when we lived in NYC, we traveled all over the damn place guilt-free, either with Charlie in tow, or we dropped him off at our friend Dora’s house.

But, in Mexico, it’s not easy transporting him back and forth to the U.S. for just a week’s long trip, so we take him to Hacienda Campus Canino, a “pet resort” about an hour outside of Mexico City. (Actually, he gets picked up and dropped off, which is fantastic).

Today was his third time returning from Campus Canino, and I think he’s getting used to it. Unlike the previous two times, he seemed happy and normal and not totally racked with anxiety:

Why It’s Good to Visit New York

Brenda and Dora’s smiles…

John’s goofiness, and Eileen’s tolerance/amusement…

Chrissy’s always spot-on fashion sense, and her hilarious spa stories from her extensive travels (and, while we’re at it, let’s plug Merril’s new gig programming movies at the Pacific Standard bar in Park Slope)…

“Being hot” with Adam & Dora at SpaCastle (much more on that in an upcoming post)…

Discussing all things cultural with Concetta, and meeting her awesome new man. And because like me, Connie is often “behind the lens” instead of in front of it, I’m adding her candid photography to the list, which means I actually have photos of me from a trip…but none of Connie…doh!

I love this photo (“Lord, what is she talking about now?“)

And the Connster got a great shot of our toes after a group pedicure outing (Brendan, sadly, didn’t go, but his giant toes are in the photo anyway). If we ever start a band, we’ve got our first album photo right here:

Photos: Slices of Everyday Mexico City Life

My father-in-law took lots of great photos on his second visit. (Photos by Bob Walsh.)

At the weekend mercado in Roma. We wondered “how long does it take her to set up all those toys?”

Want more? No problem…

Remember: Don’t Break the Diphthongs!

On Friday night, after returning from a 7-day full Spanish immersion program in nearby Cuernavaca, I did one thing: sleep like a baby who just finished the longest temper tantrum of her life.

It’s been, oh, a good 8 years since I was in any sort of formal classroom setting on a regular basis, and wow, I didn’t miss it. I’ve occasionally thought about going back to school for a graduate degree, and this pretty much solidified my conviction that no mames, I’m not going back. I like the working world too much, since it’s highly unlikely that on an average Monday, I’m not going to be yelled at by teachers for breaking diphthongs or for forgetting the present progressive tense of the “helping” verb haber. I also don’t ever have homework.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy immersion. I really did. Before we left, I would have put my fluency at about 10%. Now it’s up to 25%. While that means I still have 75% of the language to go, it only took one week of immersion to get me from 10 to 25%, while it took six months of weekly tutoring (two classes at night) to get me from 0 to 10%.

Going back to school at 31 years old had the added dream-like strangeness of my spouse sitting next to me the entire time. We tested in the same level, so we were in every single class together, and because we stayed with a local family, and had no transportation or much spare time or freedom at all, we spent basically every moment of the entire 7 days right next to each other — and I mean shoulder-to-shoulder right next to each other.

Which, most of the time, was a good thing, except when I patted him on the back (forgetting we were sitting in a classroom) or, conversely, scolded him for not knowing common verbs like deber. (“What?!? How could you not know that?” I chided him, followed by laughter from our classmates.)

Of course, now that I’m back to living in Mexico City, and working most of the day editing documents in English, I’ve probably dropped down to 18% (and counting) fluency. Vamos a ver, I guess.

Some highlights of the immersion:

• Going on a tour with other students to the ruins of Xochicalco and fake smiling when the other students (mostly undergrad college students) mentioned how rare it was for them to hang out with people “our age.”
• Watching telenovelas with our host family each night. The language was basic enough that we could follow along, and the plotlines were hilarious enough that we kept wanting to watch.
• Grinning and bearing it as the family’s abuelita referred to us as “los gueros.”
• Getting in really dumb arguments about when to use por versus para.
• Listening to funny stories from one of our teachers, Raul, who taught both the Shah of Iran and Leona Helmsley (former Cuernavaca residents.) He said the Shah was rather stupid, and that Leona only wanted to learn the command forms of the verbs, as in “callate.” (Shut up!)
• Placing imaginary “estrellas de oro” on Brendan’s forehead when he won an argument.
• Learning to use “no mames” y “guey“ more naturally.
• Sweating the entire week, since air conditioning seems to be a foreign concept in Cuernavaca, even though the climate is like Houston on a July day.
• Attending a music class and belting out “La Paloma Blanca” and “Besame, Besame Mucho“

And, as normal in Mexico, we saw pretty things, like the town of Tepoztlan:

And we saw weird things, like this tree growing into a building at the Hacienda de Cortes:

And pretty weird things, like this toilet:

For more photos of our week in Cuernavaca, go here.

At Least My Fear Isn’t Totally Irrational

Joy awakens at 1:50 in the morning to a cacophony of police sirens, including a new siren she’s never heard before. It sounds frightening. In her exhausted, disoriented state, she bolts upright, assuming the new siren sound is The Siren. The one that goes off about 60 seconds before an earthquake strikes. (Yes, an alarm system is important for a city of millions, at least to get school kids under their desks, but what do you do in the middle of the night? If you’re in the shower? In the subway? In an MRI machine?) Still, Joy didn’t feel like taking chances.

Joy: Brendan, Brendan….Brendan!

Brendan (muffled): Eh…ugh…what? Stop tapping me.

Joy: Do you hear that? That siren? Do you think it’s….

Brendan (interrupting): No.

Joy: But it’s not going away like the other sirens.

Brendan: It’s been going off for awhile. Trust me, we’re fine.

Joy huffs and closes the windows to reduce the siren noise.

Brendan (laughing): Look at you! You were about to rush outside in your undergarments!

Joy: Well, that’s a lot of sirens.

Brendan: Yes.

Joy: Someone is having a shitty night tonight.

Brendan: Yes.

Next morning:

Brendan: Remember when you woke me in the middle of the night ready for the earthquake?

Joy: You never know. Plus, I was disoriented. There were sirens!

Brendan: Just what were you going to do if it was an earthquake?

Joy (perplexed that she has so no plan besides waking Brendan, especially since she’d rather be crushed than rush outdoors in her undergarments): I don’t know, grab Charlie…and…stand in a doorway.

Brendan: Great plan.

Joy (thinking about Brendan’s fear of cotton balls, but holding back): Thanks.

So This Is What It Feels Like: Reverse Culture Shock

There’s culture shock, and then there’s reverse culture shock.

On my recent two-week visit to Texas, I had a lot of the latter. Like when:

• I was nearly brought to tears seeing all the enormous strip malls along I-35 between San Antonio and Austin. What gives, Texans? Why do you love those damn things so much?
• I couldn’t get over how “sleepy” Corpus Christi felt. Also, poor.
• I kept thinking Texas women wear too much make-up. Yet couldn’t put the mascara down.
• I realized what a Mexican food snob I’ve become. And how Texans think Tex-Mex is Mexican food. Sigh.
• My ears perked up whenever I heard Spanish, which is much easier to understand when spoken with a Tex-Mex drawl.
• I found excuses to browse for random crap at Walgreen’s. And H-E-B PLUS! (Drug store chains here are so disappointing, and the grocery stores aren’t much better. But really, no grocery store compares to H-E-B, I’ve decided. I love you, H-E-B. There’s a reason you’re a monopoly in Texas.)
• I finally realized how gorgeous Austin’s Barton Springs/”Lady Bird” Lake is. How many cities have something like that? (Can someone please stop all the people from moving to Austin, though? Except for my friends and family, of course.)
• I found driving in the U.S. stupidly easy.

I’ve been back two days, and I feel far more adjusted this time around then after I returned in December. Perhaps I’ve:

• Gotten really used to living la vida loca. And having a cleaning lady twice a week. Bless her heart.
• Arrived at a spectacular time. It’s 82 degrees, the trees are still covered with bright purple jacaranda blooms and a new giant breed of yellow butterflies are fluttering about.
• learned more Spanish than I realized.

It also helps that:

• I enjoy the quirky moments, and get less freaked out by them. (Ex: I read an article today entitled “Tamales de Iguana.” Yep, bet you never ate iguana tamales before. And never will I.)
• I am more aware that this whole working-at-home-all-day-thang can be lonely. But that Mexico City is a great place to give it a go. And I have the blessed internets.
• I am going to Acapulco soon. It’s four hours away. Four hours away.
• I have a bunch of Project Runway episodes on DVD. Muchos gracias, Bob!
• I came home to a disheveled, lonely and disoriented-without-me esposa y mascota.

Who Knew? Dinosaur Blood Makes for Crappy Gasoline

The following conversation took place as Joy drove home with her parents in a fossil fuel burning Chrysler. They were discussing Pemex, the nationalized oil company of Mexico. Mexico sells a lot of its crude oil to U.S. companies. Joy’s father is a long-time petrochemical refining consultant, so he’s seen his share of Mexican crude.

Dad: [Name of refinery redacted] processes about 50,000 barrels of Mexican crude every day.

Joy: 50,000 barrels a day? That’s a lot of gasoline. How we don’t run out, I have no idea. (Trying to sound smart)… Most Mexican oil is from offshore drilling.

Mom: I wonder why they don’t do more drilling onshore in Mexico?

Joy (speculating wildly): Probably because of all the mountains. It’s not flat like Texas.

Dad: No, that has nothing to do with it. It’s random, you find it where ever dinosaurs died….

Joy (dumbfounded): ….I thought gasoline was from, you know, old plants and stuff.

Dad: No, mostly dinosaurs. They’re huge and there used to be tons of them. That’s what most gasoline comes from.

Joy: That’s kind of creepy. And sad.

Mom: Yeah, it really is, isn’t it?

Dad: There’s even some crude that’s hard to use because it contains so much iron. Iron from the blood of dinosaurs. It’s hard to remove the iron.

Joy (a little grossed out): Uh, wow.

(Hours later, an incredulous Joy Googles the issue and discovers that one Tyrannosaurus Rex yields 460 gallons of gasoline. Moral of the story: Dinosaurs fuel this world.)

Water Aerobics and Green Mohawks

Today I went to water aerobics. Here’s where you laugh and say “but isn’t that for fat old ladies?” Yes, but it’s also for 31-year-old not-so-fat ladies on vacation. Water aerobics may not be the New York Marathon, but 1) I didn’t sweat 2) I had fun and 3) I shoved the foam barbells underwater so many times I know my arms will be feeling it tomorrow. So there.

Still, when I got home to my parents’ house after my “workout,” my 60-something parents pointed out that 1) I like to play bingo and 2) I attended water aerobics today. Harumph, I said, while admiring the pocketwatch collection on Antiques Roadshow.

But don’t send me off to the home just yet: One of my photos (taken at a loud rock concert! attended by people with tattoos!) made it onto the homepage of MohawksRock.com. Which means I am completely cool, hip, young, edgy and everything the opposite of water aerobics. Even if I had no idea what MohawksRock was until about four minutes ago.

Here’s my photo, and check out MohawksRock.com while yer at it, folks.

If I ever have the privilege of naming a new mascot for a water aerobics team (one day, it will be an Olympic sport, you’ll see), The Green Mohawks is it.