Katie

When Rob and I move to Mexico, one of our biggest considerations is going to be our cat, Katie.

We've had Katie for just about three years now. We adopted her and her brother when they were 6 months old, from a local cat shelter. I saw them about a week after we had to euthanize Splitz, my companion of 18 years, and my emotions were still raw. There they were, two orange balls of fur, one the adventurer and the other the nurturer. They were in our house within 24 hours.

We named them Spencer and Kate, after the famous Hollywood actors, since they were redheads, and because we thought the names were somehow clever. It took us about 3 weeks to recognize that they should have been named Bart and Lisa, their more appropriate models, but by then they had learned their names, and the die was cast. Spencer/Bart remained the adventurer: within 6 months Rob had retrieved him from several trees (loved going up; could never figure out getting down), a raccoon trap, from underneath a verandah, and the neighbour's roof. That spirit of adventure got him in trouble, though. Although the vet pronounced him healthy when we got him, she neglected to test him for and give him the FLV vaccine, and just after a year of living with us, he died from Feline Leukemia. We still miss him dearly. Although Rob and I have each had several pets, he was by far the cat with the most personality of any we've shared our lives with and, as Rob puts it, he fully lived his nine lives in his one short, eventful career. His ashes are currently resting beside Splitz's in our yard.

Our Katie, (Kate didn't last long) on the other hand, is very much Lisa. I've never known a cat with so many opinions, and with such a vocal range to express them. As a kitten, she would often come through the living room towards the food bowl, meowing whole paragraphs as she walked, almost all of them, we felt, tales told on her brother. Now her stories are about moths she has nearly caught, or birds at the bird feeder, or other tales told about her adventures looking through the window. Katie is an indoor cat. From the moment of her brother's diagnosis (and her own positive test for FLV as a result) she has stayed indoors, for her own protection against disease, and to protect other cats from being infected.

FLV is actually misnamed, I've learned. It was discovered when a high number of cats seemed to be dying of Leukemia, but the disease itself is not leukemia. It is actually a weakening of the immune system, which seems to allow Leukemia (along with other possible viruses) into the system. Cats like Katie can be otherwise healthy, and as long as their immune system isn't attacked, can live normal, and sometimes long, lives. Katie is now 3 1/2, the average age for cats with FLV to survive, but her care is better than lots, we give her immunity-boosting vitamins, and our hope is that she'll be healthy and happy when the big move to Mexico will take place in just under four years.

Getting her moved will be another matter. I can't imagine her anything like silent for a 8 hour series of plane rides, and I don't know how she'd handle a 4 day car trip. This cat talks, and unlike a child in the backseat, won't be bribed with McDonald's, or mesmerized by a gameboy.

She is a cutie, though, and if there's a way under heaven to get her down behind the walls of our house in Mexico, where she could safely laze in the sun, we'll get her there.

Mmmmm...Tortilla Soup

Sometimes, partly in order to keep us 'in tune' with things Mexican, I'll cook something that reminds us of our time down south. These meals are seldom, if ever, authentic, partly due to the lack of good fresh Mexican ingredients in Canadian supermarkets, but they have enough of the flavour of the real thing to keep us salivating for the true Mexican cooking to come.

This recipe is one I got from my friend Judy E., and which I tweaked a little to end up with the version we use quite regularly. It does freeze, which is a good thing because it makes a fair batch (certainly 2 meals worth for Rob and I) and it's a very hearty, one-bowl meal. Although hearty, we don't just eat it in the winter, but like Mexicans, or most South Americans, enjoy it in late summer evenings as well. Be warned, it is made of the simplest of items found in the supermarket, not fresh from-scratch ingredients at all, but it is yummy, and who doesn't like simple?

Judy's Tortilla Soup

1 jar salsa. (I use medium, I have used mild. Use hot at your
own peril.)
1 can corn. Do not use creamed corn.
1 litre (or quart) of chicken broth. (Here I do use my own broth, because I like making broth. Judy uses the carton kind.)
1 can black beans, drained (Rob isn't fussy on black beans, so I used mixed beans. I also leave the beans out in the summer, when I want a soup that's a little less hearty. It is still enough for a dinner on its own. )
shredded chicken (I cook extra chicken, like an extra thigh, when we
have chicken, and freeze it to make this soup later. You could make chicken just for this soup, because it's that good, but that adds to the work.)

Ok. So now you combine the jar of salsa, the beans, the stock and the corn, and heat it all through. Let it simmer a bit to combine the flavours. Add lots of shredded chicken, in bits big enough to taste, but small enough for your spoon.

Ladle into bowls, and add some corn chips, slightly broken up doritos or other corn-based tortilla chips. Press them into the soup with the back of your spoon.

Add a nice handful of shredded cheese. If you feel like splurging for the texmex mixed stuff, it's very good. Otherwise, just grate some cheddar or other cheese. There's plenty of zip in the salsa and the corn chips, if you get the flavoured ones.

Now that's Judy's recipe, and it's a good, comfort food one. Here's how I tweaked it:


Into the soup, before you ladle it, squeeze the juice of one lime. Pour into the bowl, and stir in a good helping of chopped fresh cilantro. Then add the tortilla chips and the cheese.

If you want to freeze it, do so before the lime, cilantro, chips and cheese. Save those ingredients for the night you are going to eat your soup, to keep the flavours strong and separate.

Like I said, it's not fancy, or even really authentic. But it sure tastes good, and you feel a little Mexican when you eat it.

Hurricane Dean

It's a very strange thing, owning a house two countries away, especially when you can't go to it very often.

As I've said in this blog, Rob and I won't be able to live in our house for a little more than three years, when he retires. Until then, we can visit at the most twice each year, for two or three weeks each time. The house is rented for the most part in between.

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the house. I decorate and redecorate, visualize myself in the kitchen and the garden, have imaginary conversations with the neighbours, and generally fantasize about our future life there. I make lists and lists of things we might do to renovate parts of it (the kitchen is my special project), and try and superimpose some of our things here onto walls and shelves down in Mexico. It's a fun pastime, and for the most part, a harmless one.

There's a down side, though, to imagining the house that can't be reached easily. When Hurricane Dean swept through Jamaica on a clear course to Mexico, I was on the weather channel almost constantly, tracking its destructive path, one which, in my mind, led right down our Avenida and directly into the courtyard of number 225. Now I'm well aware that few hurricanes make it into the Lake Chapala valley, but, in my vivid imagination, Dean was headed there, in full force, and had a particular grudge against our house.

I'm reading the local Chapala webboards today, as people prepare for the heavy rains that are the more benign consequence of Dean in our area. Even that doesn't appease me, as I imagine water coming under the front door and along our tiled foyer. It doesn't help that the house is empty until the end of the month, so there's no one there to help defend it against the floods that I see making their way up to the second floor.

It's silly, I know. The house has withstood many rainy seasons in its 15 year life, and a couple of days of heavy rain this year aren't going to make any difference. Except there is a difference this year, because the house is ours, and I don't want anything to happen to it while we're not there. I'm getting almost maternal, not just proprietal about it.

Is this because it's the only house I've ever owned? Or is it because I'm not in it? Perhaps people who own cabins or cottages feel this way off-season, when they hear of major snowstorms blasting against their shuttered summer homes, or perhaps, when you've owned a place for awhile you take these things in stride, recognizing that catastrophes don't lurk around every corner.

All I know is that I'd rather be thinking about countertops and herb gardens today.

I have readers!

I have readers!

As I've been writing my blog entries so far, I've been imagining people coming across them ( I didn't know how exactly), and hopefully enjoying them, but I haven't been surprised by the '0 Comments' note at the end of each entry. I do have to admit that I didn't know how long I'd keep writing to '0 Comments', but the announcement didn't bother me, at least for the first while.

But a couple of days ago there was a comment, from Ann, who I certainly don't know, but who came across my blog and thoughtfully wrote to me. Then, the next day a comment from Brenda
and I felt rather famous. Now I know, in the world of blogging, my fledgling effort is barely on the radar, but on some radar it apparently is, and you can't believe how excited that has made me.

What makes Ann and Brenda's comments even more fun is that both women have preceded me on my route to Mexico, and both women have their own blogs, so not only can I learn from their successes (and possible failures) as they made the move to Mexico, but I can also steal shamelessly from their posts. (Just joking, Ann and Brenda).

Which brings me to the first point of this post. I've discovered an amazing amount of material online for anyone considering a move to Mexico, or even Lake Chapala, where we're heading, written by ordinary people who have made the same move and have enjoyed it, or hated it, have adapted to it or who have found it not to their hopes. I regularly lurk at a couple of webboards that have been set up for and by expats living in Mexico, and I've a whole binder of information about restaurants, service people, community resources, legalities and such that it would have taken Rob and I many frustrating months, even years, to accumulate. People are more than willing to offer suggestions, recommendations, examples from their own experience, and lots of people have gone out of their way to do so for us.

Most of this material is very helpful, and most of the people positive in their answers to questions I or others have raised. There is a 'curmudgeon' contingent, I admit, that one has to get used to when reading the posts on these webboards, as I suppose there will be in reality when we move down there. The area we are moving to is made up largely of retirees, and, as we all know, aging often makes us more exaggerated versions of the people we were when younger. Well, it does so for other people. You and I are exceptions, of course.

My second point of this post, is that doing this research has introduced me not only to important material, but to very interesting people. Reading a person's blog can become quite addictive, and I'm looking forward to going through Ann and Brenda's blogs to get to know them as people. The first 'Mexican' blog I discovered was Elliott's, and it only took me one entry to decide that I'd like her very much if she's anything like the narrator of her adventures in Mexico. It appears that Ann and Brenda read Elliott's blog, too, so I feel part of quite a special group.

My third point of this post has less to do with Mexico than it does about writing about Mexico (or whatever else comes to mind, I guess.) I was an English teacher for many years (yes, I know, I know), but, although I wrote speeches for graduations, and edited countless essays, compositions and journals, I haven't written anything much, just for my own pleasure, for many, many years. I'll never make a writer, but I find that I do enjoy the process of thinking through what I want to say, finding the 'mot juste' (or more often, something that'll work), and hitting the "publish post" button. It's actually quite a thrill to see it in 'print' on my monitor, once the blog fairies have taken the plain text and placed it into the template. Thanks to Elliott for encouraging me to give it a try.

I like it.

Spanish classes, part two

Well, dear readers (both imaginary, and at least one real...about that in a day or two), I prepared to sign up for my Spanish class at M University earlier this week.

I remember registration from my long-ago undergraduate years as a process that involved thumbing back and forth through the telephone-book sized calendar, making draft after draft of timetables trying to balance my need for 12 hours sleep each night with the 8 a.m. start time of all of the courses I wanted, and generally dealing with a huge bureaucracy and lists of acronyms until I finally gave up and took courses leaving me with 3 hours between some classes and races across campus to reach others. I remember long lineups for student card photos, armfuls of papers, pamphlets from various clubs and committees, and horrendous trips through the maze of textbooks in the bookstore for overpriced texts.

Now, I've taken a couple of university courses at other institutions since retirement, and I know that 'plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose' when it comes to registration. The computer has replaced the reams of paper, but the websites are as awkward to navigate as the hallowed halls, and the acronyms have grown in length and obscurity of meaning. Student card photos are as horrific as ever, and textbook prices are obscene. But I thought I'd cut through many of the problems as I planned to take this course at my alma mater, where my student number is still on file, and where I don't have to show that I have academic credentials, as they granted them to me.

Wrong I was. It was true that I was an alumna, and the fact that I still remembered my student number was a plus. (6903729...a number which, having had to record it on every term paper, exam, and every form for four years is as familiar to me as my social insurance number). What didn't help is that students now have a bar code as well as a student number, and attaching one to my 35 year old student number seemed to be beyond the ken of the university computer system. Add to that the fact that one bureaucrat said that I would be considered a 'continuing ed' student, (which led to a two-day excursion through the continuing-ed department, both physically and online, and which turned out to be a wasted trip), while another labelled me a 'continuing' student (note the subtle distinction here), which led me on a totally different path to registration. Add again to the equation that my husband is employed by the university, which entitled me to a bursary for part of the tuition, but only if I took the course for credit, not if I audited it (costing the university twice as much), and only if I filled out a series of forms which had to be submitted before the date that my registration could be complete, and before I knew if I would be accepted into the course, and the result was a confused, bemused, frustrated and bewildered applicant who sat down in front of my home computer, armed with my student number, bar code, student I.D., password, master calendar, and timetable code, ready to register for my Introductory Spanish class, to find....


The %$#@ COURSE IS FULL!

Spanish classes, part one

So, about the second step I took en route to Mexico. The one that ended up harder than I expected.



Both Rob and I recognize that we have to learn Spanish in order to have the kind of life we want in our neighbourhood in Lake Chapala. Lots of expats there don't speak Spanish, and you certainly don't have to in order to socialize, if you want to live a 'gated community' existence (whether or not your neighbourhood has gates) with other expats, but we agreed when we chose our home and neighbourhood that we wanted to be as much a part of the area as we could, and that won't happen without Spanish. Plus, I just think it's polite to know the language in the land where you intend to live.



Now I took an intensive Spanish course in my first year of University. It's not that I'm particularly proficient in foreign languages, but requirements for my major (English Literature) at that time were that one had to have some ability in two languages other than English. I spoke highschool French (as all university-bound kids in English Canada did in those days), but didn't take another language in high school as most of my friends did. Latin was the usual second language, but my parents, practical working class folks, thought I should take shorthand and typing instead of a 'dead' language, as I'd more likely be a secretary than an academic, in their eyes.



So, when I went to university instead of becoming a bank teller or an insurance secretary, I was short a third language. Enter the intensive Spanish course, which was meant to take students from 'nada' to high school grad level in one year. Intensive, indeed. I took the course, enjoyed some of it, got the prerequisite for my major, and promptly forgot 99.9% of it for over 30 years until I started vacationing in Mexico about ten years ago.



Now, my Mexican vacation Spanish consisted mostly of 'una cerveza, por favor', or 'la cuenta, por favor', which is not exactly going to go far when I try to talk to the clerk at Sorianas, or to the water or gas men delivering at our door, so a Spanish course (or 6) are required. With three and a half years before the actual big move, this should not be a problem. And wasn't, until now.



I took a refresher course at the community college last semester, during which the present tense of most verbs came back surprisingly easily, but the past tense looked like something I had never seen before in my life. Luckily we didn't even think about the conditional or pluperfect, which I remember in the abstract as long strings of memorization , and in the reality, not at all. I felt more confident after my 10 weeks of Monday evening classes, but the pace was slow, and I didn't like once a week classes. I'd leave the classroom at 10 p.m. muttering in Spanish all the way to my car, and rolling my rrrrr's into the rearview mirror, only to forget it all 6 days later when I went to pick up my homework for the next week's classes.



No, a different way was required. Something daily. Something intensive. Something like the course I took 30 odd years ago.....in fact, exactly the course I took 30 years ago. With that brilliant idea in mind I went online to my alma mater and checked out the courses available, discovering that the old course was still there and ready for me to register.

And that, dear readers, is when things got complicated.

passport renewal

Well, today I took a couple of steps closer en route to Mexico. One I expected to be difficult, the other easy. Turns out I got them backward.

The 'difficult' one was to renew my passport. It's a chore I dislike, not the least because of having to get the infamous passport photo, an exercise for me on par with having root canal work. Maybe worse, as a dentist visit really doesn't bother me that much, but sitting in front of a bored Black's Photoshop clerk, whose job s/he thinks is to get me in and out as quickly as possible, but whose occupation I think is to create a photo that I don't mind looking at from time to time as I pass it in front of airport security people...now that's torture.

I take an awful picture. One of the reasons I married Rob is that we both take awful pictures, and thus have the same attitude towards taking them. When we go on vacation, we (well, he) take lots of pictures of all kinds of things. Neither of us, however, is in any of them. It was only with the strong pressure of my best friend and Rob's mother that we even had a photographer at our wedding...and those pictures, created by someone who knew his job was to make us look good, or at least make the pictures acceptable, now sit in the back of some drawer, and not in an album. I find Rob perfectly attractive, and I hope he thinks I'm ok, too, but something happens when a lens gets between us and someone clicking a picture. Presumably, when they line up the shot, they think there's something in the viewfinder that's going to be worth recording, but the result is always disappointing.

Anyway, off I went to get the photo taken. The Simpsons-prototype teenager taking the photo didn't help when he told me I couldn't smile. Now I thought they'd loosened up on making passport photos look like mugshots, and in my case I need all the help I can get, but I didn't argue, as I should have, and looked suitably sober and not the least terrorist-y into the camera. Twenty minutes later the kid slid me the photos, in the envelope, across the counter as though we were in a spy movie. Taking his cue, I took them and waited until I got outside before opening the envelope for a surreptitious look.

Sigh. Oh, well. It's not much worse than the last one, I suppose. Only older.

The second reason why I thought getting the passport renewal would be a problem was because of the change of law in the U.S. which requires Canadians to show a passport before entering the States. (Or Americans from doing the same before returning from a trip to Canada, too.) Now Canada and the U.S. have had a deal forever that crossing 'the longest undefended border in the world' by citizens of either nation has only ever required some form of photo ID, and even then it has seldom been asked for. I know times have changed and America has some legitimate worry about foreigners, but Canadians have always had this special relationship, especially those of us who live close to the border. People living on either side have thought nothing for years of crossing the border for dinner, or drinks, or shopping (depending on whose dollar gives the best deal at whichever given time.)

Now, with this new rule, literally millions of Canadians have been scrambling to the passport office to get them the ticket to Buffalo wings or Disneyland. The media has been reporting the long lineups at the passport office, and the huge wait times to get new passports through the mail. I dreaded the whole ritual of getting the guarantor's signature (the list of acceptable guarantors in Canada is bizarre to say the least: doctors, judges, I understand, but postmasters?), filling out the forms, and sending off important identification through Canada Post to some overworked passport employee in Ottawa, and waiting...months, according to the reports....to get my new passport, with its glossy new picture inside.

So I decided to go in person to the passport office, and wait in line, getting much of the paperwork done in one nasty go, and keeping my other identification. I'd still have to wait forever for the passport, I reasoned, but if I faced the fact that I'd have to sit and wait for my number for two hours, took a book along with me, and just gritted my teeth through it, I'd be done.

Imagine my surprise. Yes, there were twenty people ahead of me (only 20! I've been there when there's been a hundred, most of whom needed help filling out the forms), but the best thing is that finally, unbelievably, the Canadian government has recognized that perhaps people currently holding a valid passport don't necessarily need to go through the whole routine again and start at Step One as though they were totally unknown to the Passport Office. As of today, TODAY in fact, a new form has been introduced for people renewing passports, that is actually rather painless. A few facts, a couple of contact names, hand over the old passport, and...wait for it.... the new one will come by registered mail in two weeks.

That was it. In and out in 25 minutes. I even got my deposit money on parking back because I was there less than 1/2 hour. I felt almost euphoric.

Until I remembered the picture.

Oh well. I was off to the easier job on my list. Or so I thought...

Blogging Virgin

Well, with little knowledge of the methodology, and only a little idea of what I'm going to attempt here, I hereby plunge into the pool of blogging, if not into the deep end, certainly into the shallow end without a noodle to keep me afloat.

My vague idea is to write about my life as a kind of 'in between'. I am retired (jubilada) with a plan to go to Mexico, where my husband and I have, in a move uncharacteristic of me, rather recklessly purchased a home. The idea is that we'll live at Lake Chapala when he retires, in three and a half years.

Once I got through the enormous panic of realizing I'd plunked a huge chunk of my life savings into buying my first home at the age of 56, I'm now really excited about the house, and keen to begin living there. I'm in a really strange place, though, in that, If I weren't married, I could be there now. All is in place, except us, and we can't move down there until Rob's working career ends in '011. And that is strange, because the whole idea of my retirement being dependent upon someone else's is a new one to me. Rob and I only married 4 years ago, and I have never been married before. I love being married; I love linking my life with his. I just feel a bit in limbo as I've reached the 'jubilada' milestone, but can't celebrate it quite as I'd like until he gets there with me.

Anyway, the decision to move to Mexico has raised a number of other issues: learning the Spanish language, deciding how best to deal with the house while we wait, visiting Lake Chapala when we can, deciding how best to organize our lives in Canada after we make the move to Mexico (current plans are to spend six months in each country each year), dealing with money issues, figuring out where our pet cat comes into the picture, inviting guests to our new home, etc. My loose plans for this blog are to deal with these issues over the next two years or so, and then deal with the actual details of the moving process and our acclimatization to Mexico. I'm hoping that will be enough material to keep both me and my imaginary readers interested.

So, to anyone who might come across these admittedly haphazard posts, welcome! Mi blog es su blog.

Jubilada