Batsweat, dragonpiss, Thai limeaide to the rescue!

I am feeling much better today. I did some research on the web for homemade electrolyte drinks and found several recipes. Most of them used sugarfree Koolaide, salt substitute (for the potassium), sea salt and baking soda, but the simplest ones used either lemon juice or orange juice (for the potassium), sugar and salt. When I did RenFair, there was always dragonpiss available,which is basically Country Time Lemonade with salt added to it, or bat's sweat which is pretty much the same thing except using real lemons, or is it the other way around? Thailand has a very similar climate to the Yucatan, and the Thai make Iced Limeade which has sugar, limes and salt! The very things you need to replenish your electrolyte balance when you are sweating up a storm!
Yesterday, I drank a considerable amount of Nestea with lemon with a pinch of salt added to each glassful, I also drank plain water with a pinch of salt and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice (Real lemon juice, since I didn't have any real lemons), if I had been thinking about it, I could also have had sour orange juice but I wasn't myself.
Today, despite not getting much sleep (gee, could it have been the caffeine in the tea??) I woke up with out a headache for the first time in about a week!!!
Here is my plan:

1. A banana a day (either in fruit form or blended in a smoothy)
2. Actually take the multi-vitamin that I bought
3. Alternate plain water with other beverages, including adding a little salt and citrus juice to my plain water.

Nothing too radical, but it should help!

The sticky ickies

Daily, I wake up with a mild headache, the sixteen ounces of water that I drank throughout the night make me head to the bathroom but other than that don't seem to have done anything towards hydrating me. The combination of being thirsty and really,really, really needing to pee at the same time just isn't fair. It's the heat and humidity that's doing it. It's no hotter than it's ever been,it may even be cooler than it's been in times past but it's just that it seems like it's been this hot forever. Like a little drop of water that eventually carves a channel in rock, the heat is wearing me away. Unfortunately, not literally, I am no thinner than I was a month ago. I am not even losing water weight.
Instead of bouncing out of bed all bright eyed and bushy tailed, I act like a teenager during finals week, I don't want to get up. No,no,no. I have no enthusiasm, no spark. It's hot and I am bored, mostly I am bored because it's hot. My brain is fried, maybe I'll feel better after I take a nap, is it too early for my first nap?

Tormenta de postres

La nieta de la Maestra graduated prepa on Friday. We were invited to the ceremony. La Maestra is a punctual person, not as punctual as a gringo, but much more punctual than the average Mexican. On Thursday, she called to ask if could we meet at her house at six thirty? According to La Nieta, she was expected to arrive by seven and be lined up promptly with her fellow graduates at seven fifteen. On Friday, she amended that to "maybe a half hour earlier"so we could find parking.Not really thinking, I told Husband that she wanted us there at 6 pm. Husband is punctual, more than punctual, not as bad as my dad who considers anything less than five minutes early as arriving late.
This lead to a bit of anxiety on Husband's part, I have acclimated to a more relaxed view of time.
My relaxed point of view was also because in my mind, we needed to be at La Maestra's around six, maybe six oh five, or six ten, in Husband's it was six sharp. Husband announces our itinerary like a general making a battleplan, leading up to us leaving the house at 5:30 to make a fifteen minute trip. My admittedly lackadaisical outlook leads to some less than stellar moments on both our parts and I hustle out of the house sans makeup. Husband made some comment about gilding the lily, but this lily wasn't buying it.
We arrive promptly at 6pm, which means that we hang around chatting until La Nieta comes downstairs, and five minutes later La Maestra. She suggests that we go ahead and take La Nieta while La Maestra picks up another friend. Apparently, the ceremony doesn't really begin until seven thirty, but we can get seats and find parking. Unfortunately, La Nieta has no idea on how to get there. La Maestra asks her in disbelief "How have you been getting to school, it's on the same block?" La Nieta smiling replies "by bus". My suggestion that we all take the bus is dismissed by the others.
Our strategy planned, we deploy and arrive at the site five minutes early! La Maestra looks around, there is only one other family ahead of us. Finally, at seven fortyfive, the doors open and we file in. Promptly at 8:00 pm it began.
The ceremony was lovely and took less time than we spent trying to arrive on time. I would have taken some photos but I left my camera behind in the great rush to be early.
What does this have to do with a tormenta de postres? When we were sitting at dinner and discussing desserts, La Nieta's good friend and ersatz big brother told us about a homework assignment where his partner translated "desert storm" into "tormenta de postres". Sometimes I think when our ideas hit Mexican reality, that is what we end up with, a tempest in a teakettle or what I now think of as a tormenta de postres, not quite translated correctly.

The 5 stages of buying a house in Mérida

Several years ago, when Husband and I were new to Ex-pat life, he came across Culture Shock for Australian Ex-pats in America. It's a good read and many of the stages are similar to what American Ex-pats in México go through. Here in Mérida we see people in the various stages, it's recognizable, we've been there too. I think that there are the five stages of buying a house in Mérida too.

1. The search for the perfect house. This portion often takes place online. Real estate websites are poured over daily. The NSA probably doesn't review satellite photos with the same intensity and attention to detail. A future ex-pat on a house hunt is a determined being.
2. The house is chosen and purchased, often, sight unseen. Sometimes the house is even bought online, but that is a special sort of madness reserved for the true believers.This is also a learning experience for the new ex-pat. Compra-Venta contracts, notarios, fidicomiso, and the current exchange rate are the subject of much discussion.
   
3. The remodel begins, unless the buyer has bought a turnkey house, this is the most stressful part of the home owning process. People are asked "who did your house?". Recommendations are sought, advice is given, the names of architects are bandied around, gossip about remodels gone bad are as tantalizing as the latest soap opera . INAH is trotted out, the monster under the bed for most historical remodels. Often, the ex-pat has romanticized ideas of Mexican style which INAH shoots down in the name of preserving historical accuracy. There is enough drama inherent in this to fill the Enquirer for a month.
4. The remodel runs over. It seems like everyone that I know has been told that their remodel will take 6 weeks. That 6 weeks is directly related to the 15 days that the hardware store also claims as a restocking cycle. Sometimes the house is never finished, at least not by the original contractor.
   
5. The house is finally finished. Life as an expat begins, or the expat realizes that this is not the perfect house, the perfect neighborhood and starts the search for the next house, which will be perfect this time.

Or you find yourself living in the Neverending Remodel, little details that you didn't think of before, things that your friends did that you want to copy. At some point, either your house takes over your life or an intervention is staged, and you agree that you are done, except maybe for this one more thing.....

Weathering the heat....

The other evening we had a tremendous thunder storm, Husband and I sat under the terraza and watched the light and sound show, counting the seconds between the lightening bolts and the thunderclaps. After an almost simultaneous crash and flash, Mr. Dog tucked his tail under his legs, suddenly remembering that he needed to check under the kitchen counter for something. He always sneaks away whenever there is a storm, afraid that Thor, or rather Chaac ,might notice him. Sugar, the cross-eyed cat, ignores the weather, she is Yucatecan.
I love the smell of the rain, it smells like fabric softener claims to make your clothes smell. I don't remember the rain smelling like that when I lived in California. I think it's because Northern California rain is cold winter rain, while Mérida rain is cool refreshing summer rain. The rain starts and my first reaction is to wonder where my sweater is. Even after almost half a decade, I just feel like I should have one, rain meant cold, bone chilling cold. Here you get caught in a cloud burst, it's not a big deal, you dry off soon enough.
It's been sweaty, miserable and hot lately, but the rain makes me forget about it. A sort of selective short term memory loss. I choose to quickly forget my past misery and enjoy the glorious present. It isn't a bad way to live.

Really wireless

We've been having problems with our internet connection lately. Finally, Saturday afternoon, the modem failed. I love that, se fallo means it failed, it also means it died. Today, I trotted down to Telmex and turned in the old modem. The girl behind the counter asked if I had called and gotten authorization for a new modem. When I replied in the negative, she explained that without an authorization code she couldn't give me a new modem, just another one. I said that was okay. I didn't care if it was new or used, I just needed internet. I then promised to call the 800 number if this modem dies on us too. Our modem came in a new box, with all it's paperwork and look just like the old one. I have no idea what happened but am perfectly happy with it now.
I have blogs and email to read, and catch up on, and of course, stuff to blog about!

Just what I needed.

I made Spring rolls yesterday, here is the finished product. I blogged about it on the cooking blog, plus some other stuff. Of course, there is more to the story but if you want to read it, here it is.