happy right now

I stay angry about the health care disaster in the US. Tuesday I'm admitting Daddy to an assisted living center. My stepdaughter won't speak to me, and insists I fired her, when she actually quit of her own accord. My middle sister had a wreck with someone uninsured, of course. My nephew's recovery from back surgery isn't going all that well.

So what's to be happy about right this minute? I'm trying, and the fact of being able to escape the US in the next 6-8 months fills me with joy. To remember my future home, I watch this a lot.



Things are steadily leaving the house. I remember when I obsessed over finding one of these:


The hunt for a plump, red, Riviera tea pot consumed me for years, long before the internet improved the odds of finding one. Mine's going to Ohio, along with a pair of the Riviera handled tumblers that fueled my relapse into Riviera obsession twenty years ago. I'd collected Riviera in the mid-'70s, then sold the bits I had. Once I found the pair of tumblers for a dollar each, I was hooked again. Now I can't even remember why I cared. At all.

It's hard to believe such a passion could simply vanish, but if I could wave a wand and have all of the stuff I've devoted half a lifetime to collecting suddenly disappear (leaving behind a cash equivalent, of course), I'd be thrilled.

I just heard from our attorney in Merida and he okayed doing some minor construction now. "Take possession," he said. "It will be better to do a little bit now. The house is yours." Sounds good to me.

I took possession of that little beach cottage in my heart and soul the instant I walked in the door. Tonight I'll go to sleep thinking of the day I'll wake up to the sound of waves right outside my window. I can't wait. It keeps me happy right now.

on a happier note . . .

the flamingoes of Yucatan.

beach house

We did it. That little pink house on the beach, just a block or so from the town square of Chuburna Puerto? It's ours and that's the view from my front porch at sunset. It's shocking. I'm excited. I'm terrified.

I am a child of caution, the baby of Depression-era parents who planned and conserved and didn't take inordinate risks. Though I cast off their conservative ways in my teenage years and have carried a certain free-spiritedness into adulthood, faced with something as dramatic as giving up my life in the country of my birth and moving to a strange land, it all comes back.

I am afflicted with what-ifs. What if beach erosion takes my little house away. What if the Category 5 hurricane comes. What if the massive number of gringos fleeing the US results in an anti-gringo backlash among the Yucatan people, a people, by the way, who only allowed paler-complected folk into their state in the early 1900s (read about the Yucatan Caste War for details ~ the Mayans were justified, but they are the fiercest of warriors).

The idea of being without income of my own, of relying on my husband is as terrifying as anything. I've earned my own money since I was 12. I was essentially self supporting (clothes, activities, doctor visits) from 14 on. Yes, my parents put a roof over my head and paid utilities and such, but my urge for independence was so extreme that I refused almost all other financial support.

On the other hand, I fell in love with Yucatan. Merida is stunning and such a gorgeous, cosmopolitan city, that it felt like a more beautiful New York. My little village, Chuburna Puerto, is home to 2500 souls. There are tiendas, a cement store, a soon-to-be-internet cafe, and a town square where people gather. There was a carnival going on while we were there, and a real bullfight, replete with blood. I'm told the town is sleepy, quiet, slow most of the year. There's not a Wal-Mart in sight. I can do that.

On Yucatan time, I felt free. My mind stopped racing. Oh, we started planning some changes to the house, but that was fun and wasn't anything like the constant low level hum of anxiety and dread that afflicts me here.

Basically, I have to make ~ or I've already made ~ a decision to go rogue. I'm not going to do what I'm supposed to do. I'm not going to work until I'm 67. I'm not going to stay put any longer. I'm going to be a bad grandma and a worse stepmother. The good daughter in me will keep me around until Daddy's gone, but I don't expect that to be more than a couple of years and then I am out of here for good.

Out of here for good. Out of here for good. I type those words and it seems unreal. Really? Me? Moving to a foreign country? It's incomprehensible. And exciting. And frightening. And really, really exciting. I'm happy. Except when I'm scared. But I'm mostly happy.