Scratching the Seven-Year Itch

 

                        Scratching the Seven-Year Itch

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I have lost three entire nights of sleep this week, misplaced where there will be no finding, scratching the seven-year itch.

You could also name my malady the Grass Is Greener Syndrome.

The grass is never greener. It just looks that way from across the fence.

This is not an unusual occurrence for me. Something within me likes the challenge of new experiences. Frequently over the years while I’ve lived out on my little chunk of quiet, peaceful Paradise, I’ve cast my eyes around town and had the thought that I’d like to live in town, smack dab in the middle of noisy things happening.

I think about getting increasingly less mobile with age. Living in town would be easier in some ways. Cheaper, too.

My neighbor is negotiating to sell her little bit of Paradise. She won’t be moving far, a half hour drive to the village of her husband. These last few years the couple has split their time between here, La Mesata and her home in Minnesota. She talks with me about these changes, her fears and her excitements.

That was all the trigger I needed. I can justify any move, any change. If I moved to a wee rental in town, I wouldn’t have the constant upkeep I have here. I ain’t gettin’ any younger. And so on  and so on, my mind goes gadding about.

All in the comfort of my bed, eyes refusing to stay closed, I located a casita, fronting the sidewalk, like every other house on the block, warmer with every casa sharing walls on each side. In back, just enough room for a clothesline and my few herb pots.

I packed. I discarded, made piles, gave away, saved, and made arrangements for all to be dispensed, disposed or moved, all with my head on my pillow, all while telling myself to shut up and go to sleep.

My Lola The Dog had to learn to become a house dog, content to lie on a rug. When we walked the neighborhood, she had to learn the leash again, no more roaming free. She got pudgy, more rounded.

My new neighborhood had a tiny grocery around the corner, easily located, as tiny groceries dot every block. The tortillaria was conveniently across the street. My neighbors included a few other elderly women as well as the usual young men with loud cars and louder parties. Boom, boom, boom went the Beat! I am realistic, even in my imaginations.

I watched a parade of things I miss by living out on the edge, in the countryside. Street vendors carrying buckets of tamales, trays of doughnuts, carts of hot sweet potatoes. Reluctantly I added the propane trucks slowly passing, loudspeaker announcing their coming and going; the cars with speakers over the roof, telling us of events in the Plaza, coming election news, specials at the new box stores, relentless.

All of this activity, all the energy expended, all night long, left me worn out by day. The next night, I hit rewind and played it again.

Reality is that nobody is queued up at my gate wanting to purchase my casita. Reality is that I have created a unique and beautiful haven. (Reality is that I do this wherever I go because that is who I am.) Shhh, I tell myself. Quiet. Breathe. All will be well.

Today I am sitting out in my back yard, in the sunshine, surrounded by greenery and flowers, and birds and butterflies, all manner of color and blossom and brilliance. After three nights of work, I fired myself from the job of relocating, no workmen’s comp coming to me except that I shall sleep tonight.

This is my today, my salve to comfort the itch. The grass may not be greener but it is my greener.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January chilly, frost up the mountain

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Animal Stories

 

            Animal Stories

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It was a dark and stormy night. Oh, wait! Different story.

It was the day before New Year’s Eve. Leo and I were sitting in the sun chatting after he had mouse-proofed my washing machine with a length of screen and duct tape.

Mice are on the move every year during corn harvest when they temporarily are forced out of their home and well-stocked grocery. My washing machine sits tucked away in the back corner of my patio, outdoors. This is not the first time mice thought the machine makes a good dwelling place. It’s only a short scurry to the Dog Dish fast-food restaurant.

Take my word for it, you do not want mice to set up housekeeping inside your washing machine. Our solution isn’t pretty, but aesthetics don’t matter or is it that I make it oblivious to myself?

So we were sitting in the sun just chewing the fat, satisfied with outwitting a horde of stinky mice. (That sentence is technically wrong on so many levels but I’m an old woman and I no longer care.) Leo asked me if I had enough drinking water to last until Tuesday morning or did I want him to go fill my empty jug now.

That question was code for, “I’m a young man and this is New Year’s and all my friends and I will be partying and I won’t return before Tuesday.” Then he asked about my New Year plans.

I laughed. “Oh, Leo. I’m such a party animal. I will be kicking up my heels on Sunday night too. I will. In bed with a good book by 7:30, that is. Asleep by 9:00, no doubt. The noise of fireworks might wake me, but I’ll roll over and go back to sleep. I’m a bear-ish kind of party animal.”

Then Leo asked, “What age were you when you no longer wanted to party?” This was code for “I’m 36 and party life is no longer as fun as it used to be.”

I gave thought to his question. “Everyone’s different, Leo. Drinking and dancing and all that was fun, but, for me, partying always carried a cloud of fear. I’ve looked back a lot. Drinking and dancing, for me, was an excuse for the ‘all that’. I kept trying though. It was a relief when I could finally say, ‘I’m done.’”  I’d always had to be on guard from my own actions, always scared, afraid of what I might do or say or cause. Most people aren’t that way. Most people don’t count their drinks and wonder why stopping at two didn’t work.”

As an example, I told Leo about my first New Year’s Eve party, welcoming 1964, in the Cowboy Bar in Dodson. I was only 18 but it didn’t matter. This was ’63-’64 in Dodson. I was with my husband. The bar was packed. This bar served two kinds of drinks and I sure wasn’t drinking whiskey. I might have had two beers but that didn’t keep me from trouble.

I remember saying something horrible to a neighbor. Maybe nobody heard. He probably wouldn’t remember. But I do. I spent many nights awake in humiliation and self-loathing, reliving my actions. That may sound like a small thing but it was huge to me. I’ve spent time re-living every party.  I do not miss those nights afterward, swamped in guilt and fear and embarrassment.

If you want to know how to really party, watch the Partridge Doves. Those little feathery fluffs know how to have a good time. A whole flock has set up housekeeping in my Bottlebrush tree. They paint a Christmas card picture, sitting on branches in pairs in the early morning chill, huddled, preening, fussing, being worshipped by the rising sun.

One could do with a worse model. The night of New Year’s Eve, 2023-2024, sure enough, I was in bed before eight, snuggled in my Christmas bed jacket, my replacement addiction, a book in hand, Amazon my pusher, party animal that I am.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Welcome to 2024

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My Magic Bed Jacket

 

My Magic Bed Jacket

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My bed jacket. It is a sign. A portent of things to come.

Christmas Eve I went to Oconahua for a traditional Mexican feast of tamales and hot chocolate with my friends. When I returned home, a gift bag stuffed tightly with something rather heavy, sat on my patio table. I reached in and pulled out . . . a jacket.

This jacket is made of that plush, fluffy stuff, like a baby blanket. Thank goodness it is not a pale pastel. I’d have to gift it onward. No, amazingly, the jacket is patterned in a boxy red and brown cowboy-type plaid. And, it has a hood. I love it.

When I first held the jacket, I pictured myself wearing it while walking Lola. I put it on for size. Nice fit. Hung my new jacket on the coat closet, which in my limited space, is a pole with prongs for six jackets or sweaters and a hat.

As I prepared for bed, somehow the jacket skewed its way into my thoughts. Hmmm, I said, removing it from the coat stand, and putting it on over my night shirt. A bed jacket. A perfect bed jacket. I climbed into bed with my book.

Understand, I’ve never had a bed jacket. Bed jackets appear in British novels and Hollywood movies from the 30s and 40s. Bed jackets are filmy, wafting, woven of air and a few silky threads, pastel and pretty, for the rich and privileged. Not that I would ever admit to being limited in my thinking. I certainly never imagined myself in a bed jacket. Not me.

I didn’t allow myself to realize until that very moment I put it on that I had actually wanted a bed jacket, perhaps subliminally I had always wanted a bed jacket, and that this plaid bed jacket was the perfect gift for me.

No matter how warm my main room is, my bedroom is always cool. On cold winter nights, while I read a few chapters, I carefully tuck the bedding around my shoulders and snake one hand outside the covers to hold the Kindle. That was then.

Now, I sit in bed, covers around my legs, my new bed jacket keeping my top half toasty warm. Ah, such comfort. Such luxury. Such privilege.

As this year comes to an ending (Thank you. I never thought you’d leave.) and the new year is born and toddles into January, it is fitting that I consider my new bed jacket a sign, a portent of changes to come.

I like signs and portents. Tea leaves. Chicken intestines. Clouds in the sky. Oracles. They are all good. They all work.

Several years ago I was complaining to a dear friend about a situation in which I need to make a choice. “I don’t know what I want to do. Either option looks good to me and I just can’t choose.”

This man, a Harvard Law graduate, mind you, not a woo-woo bone in his body, dug a coin out of his pocket. “Heads is Option A and tails for option B. You call it.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t believe in that kind of magic.”

“Just call it,” he replied.

“Tails.”

He flipped the coin, it landed on my choice. “Okay, does that make you feel happy with the decision or do you wish the coin had landed on heads?’  

Ah. I got it. Flipping a coin is just one way of letting my silly self see what I really want when I can’t make up my mind because both options look great and my head had gone into over-think.

That’s how I see my new bed jacket as a sign of changes to come. If I can jog my attitude toward a simple article of clothing out of the historical box into which I had locked it, what other attitudes might I be able to change in the year to come? Oh, the excitement! Oh, the anticipation.

Thank you, Dear Crinita, for the gift which is changing my winter life.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking Out My Backdoor

December 27, 2-23

The World Is My Apple

 

The World Is My Apple

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Or, one might say, this week, apples are my world.

Every year I put a lot of thought into my gift giving for Christmas. Grandchildren are easy. Gift certificates. They are of the age where money is the better choice. Gold, right? For the babies, my grandchildren, my daughter handles that chore for me. She knows best what they want, need, and enjoy.

The hard part is for us few who are here this holiday season in Gringolandia. We are old. We already have everything we want. If I never see another scented soap, special candle, or crocheted bookmark, I will be a happy woman. That’s me. I speak for myself only. Maybe for others, those items would satisfy their hearts’ desires.

My first thought was to make round tuits. Okay, so maybe I’m stuck in eight-year-old humor, but I think it would be fun to “get a round tuit”, artfully custom made, of course.

However, we are a multi-cultural community and I’m not sure the humor would translate.

So, as often, the solution to my quandary came down to something we all like and will use, with the added benefit that I enjoy making and baking . . . apple pies.

A trip to the market for extra flour, sugar, butter and a half-bushel of apples, on with my apron, and I’m ready to roll. Roll dough, that is.

Apples. This is not apple-growing country. Oh, for the crab apple tree that used to grow in the corner of the pig yard on our farm on the Milk River. Those apples took a lot of work, but fruit of any kind was precious in those days. Anybody who messes with choke cherries and huckleberries knows what I mean. Those crab apples made the best jelly and apple pies of any apple ever. Tart and juicy.

Trial and error led me to the ugly apples. They are grown in Mexico. They are not pretty. They are not always uniform. Look a little warty. But they are tasty and make a good pie. (Other apples are shipped in and the flavor is lost in refrigerated trucks. My opinion.) Most of us gringos call them, you know, those ugly apples. So ugly apples it is.

While peeling applies, rolling out the dough, I like to think I am pouring love into my pies along with sugar and spices and everything nices.

Tomorrow is delivery day and I have one more pie to bake. This one is for my own self. I get gifted too.

May you all have a most wonderful Christmas, whatever your beliefs, no matter how you celebrate, celebrate life and love.

Sondra Ashton

Looking Out My Backdoor

December 20, 2023

Weirding my way into winter

 

Weirding my way into winter

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No longer can I remain in denial. I am an addict. I am addicted to sunlight.

When I lived in Poulsbo, Washington, on the Kitsap Peninsula where it rained ten months of the year, I remember how hard it was by February to keep up my spirits.  That is normal behavior, pretty much.

Now, these years later, after a mere couple (2) cloudy days with rain, and I begin to wonder if a Prozac Big Gulp would really work.

Having grown up in a country of constant drought, I love the rain. However, I love it more here, where (usually) the days have a mix of sun and rain (when it comes in season). When it is weird, like now, not so much.

Three weeks now, well entrenched in the Dry Season, October to June, three weeks, I repeat, three weeks of rain. The skies have emptied their black crumpled doomy-gloomy clouds of rain, rain, rain every day. Makes me want to lay my head on the chopping block like a chicken who gave up, go a-head, ready for the pot. (Sorry, couldn’t help the pun.)

When we are gifted with two days of sunshine, sunlight, sunglow, glorious, beautiful, warm, brilliant, sizzling, sun, as we are today, were yesterday, ah. Happiness is.

Forecast for tomorrow is cold, cloudy, doomy-gloomy and rain.

Nobody wants to give attention to the words “climate change”. Simple. I understand. Overworked becomes overlooked. For my own benefit, I’ve changed the words. Admit it or not, we are well entrenched in Weather Weirding. (Along with other kinds of weirding but . . . )

Winter is bad enough without going weird. With harvest well under way, thousands of acres of corn are now ruined, good only for silage. Cane harvest has only just begun so should be okay except for the small amount of cut cane on the ground.

On a personal level, cold and wind and wet often find me huddled shivering in a blanket. In an effort to take better care of myself, I splashed out.

A good bathrobe is a lovely and decadent way to treat oneself with gentle care. I never knew that until now. After an evening shower, I cuddle in my plush hooded robe, double wrapped in front, which almost drags on the floor, with a book and a cup of steaming tea with a candy cane, warm and cozy, waiting for my hair to dry.

I take my pleasures when and where I can, luxuriate in such simple joys. I give them my attention, thank them for participating in my life. Makes me feel rich.

Look out the window at my dog, Lola. There she is, on her back in a puddle of sunshine, legs uplifted into the air, a look of silly satisfaction on her face. She is a good model for mental health.

In the Garden Weirding department, remember the lime tree I witched a few months ago. I had tried being nice. I had even threatened that if she didn’t pop out some limes soon, I would rip her out and replace her with a guava. Then a friend who looks good in pointy hats and is handy with a broom, suggested I witch my barren lime tree. Feeling foolish, I followed instructions. My lime tree today, who can say how or why, coinkydinky I’m sure, has branches so heavy with fruit that some are near to kissing the ground.

The Weirding part though is not that. In addition to limes, she is giving me lemons. Uh huh. Lemons. And the same branches also have limes. Mostly limes. Some lemons. Explain that! Weird!

If I could, I would follow Lola’s example and go lie on my back in the sun and soak it up the sun before the clouds invade. If I get my creaky bones down to the ground, I fear I might never get up! I suppose I could roll under a lime tree and suck on a lemon.

However, it is clouding up and rain is on the way. Where did I put my bathrobe?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Raining in December

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A Different Kind of Day

 

            A Different Kind of Day

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Interesting how we carve time to suit particular purposes. I won’t look it up, but thinking about it, I’d not be surprised that our universal way of dividing our days started with the Industrial Revolution, as a way of getting the workers to be where and when the bosses wanted them to be. That is as political as I am willing to be this morning.

My day began yesterday, actually. It rained yesterday, so that jiggered up walk times with Lola, but we managed to wriggle them into slots that worked for us. I don’t walk in the rain and Lola is definitely not a water dog. She is a huddle in the warm dog house dog.

Then there was a very large and very loud wedding at El Eden, just a couple kilometers down from my house. Weddings around here are not quiet and seemly affairs. This one was huge. It began early with music blaring from a wall of speakers, punctuated by fireworks, day and night. Music is live, with bands lined up to cater to every taste, beginning with the brand of music we older folks tend to like and remember, and I’m grumphing here, it is downhill from there.

I’ve always wanted to walk over, just show up, if asked, I’m a friend of the bride or the groom, whichever. For the food. Oh, the mountains of food. Fill a plate, sit in a corner and watch the people. This would be, of course, early in the event. Food, of course, is accompanied with quantities of liquids.

Back when I used to go with Kathy to her resort, we watched a lot of weddings. Thus, I know by the noise level, pretty much what is going on down the way. Eventually the elders retire and the youngers take to the floor. We would say, Rock and Roll.

Until five in the morning, I kid you not. So that was my night. Fortunately, even with interruptions, I am an easy sleeper. So I woke at pretty much my usual time, according to the light. Sort of. I don’t use a clock for wake up. Sunlight, even muted, does that job.

Something seemed off, the day didn’t sound right, but after ablutions, I got dressed, ready to go walk my dog. Looked out the window and all plans came to a stop.

It could have been raining all night from the looks of it. And it looks like it could rain all day. Sorry, Lola.

This is our third rain in a week. The first one blessed us with more rain than we had in the entire (nearly non-existent) rainy season. Farmers are well into corn harvest. Cane harvest just began. Oops. Not good timing.

My tomatoes are beautiful and in full blossom, so not sure what this will mean for them. Everything else must be soaking up the moisture with gratitude.

I feel discombobulated. My whole routine out the door just turned in the door. I had to turn my light on above my desk. I never turn on a light in the morning. Natural light is plenty. I have to laugh at myself. I look out the window. Raining. The forecast for the day hasn’t changed in the last hour and a half. The forecast still says rain all day, all night. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 7, 2023

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I Don’t Know

 

I Don’t Know

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I don’t. Truly, I don’t know.

Life is so much more interesting when I don’t know. When I “know”, I limit myself to where it is difficult for new and different information to filter into my brain. Hey, because I already know! A closed door. Right?

Take something simple, like tortillas. What is there not to know about tortillas?

I feel pretty puffed up that I can make decent corn tortillas. I seldom make flour tortillas because they always come out looking like amoebas.

I had leftover sweet potatoes, so on a whim, I decided to invent sweet potato-flour tortillas. Okay, I borrowed the idea from rotis. Flat bread is flat bread, I figured. If it works in India, it should work in Mexico.

My Grandma taught me to cook, and even her written recipes called for things such as “butter the size of a walnut” or a pinch of this and a handful of that. So when confronted with a recipe, I look over the list of ingredient, frequently substitute, add or subtract: kitchen chemistry.

Though I use a Mexican foods cookbook I’ve had since 1975, with recipes from various regions of the country, I tend to use recipes as, well, suggestions. The other day I decided that maybe I don’t know, so I read the directions. Knead the dough? Let it rest in a cool place before rolling? Who would have thunk it? I didn’t know.

In my usual fashion, I mixed my sweet potato and flour, salt, shortening in proportions that seemed right to me, drizzled water, kneaded the dough and put it in the refrigerator to rest.

All my life I’ve made pies. I roll out a mean pie dough, perfect every time. I allow myself a sweet burst of pride over my pie dough. So rolling tortillas should be a slam dunk, right?

Wrong. I mean, I’ve nothing against amoebas, but an amoeba doesn’t hold fillings the same way a perfect round tortilla holds them. For those of you not keen on reading all the directions, in case there is another of us, form the ball, flatten it with your hand, roll once, quarter turn, roll once, quarter turn, roll, turn until your beautiful round of dough is the thinness you desire.

Pretty slick, eh? See what I mean? I could have been making my own glorious flour tortillas all these years, but I already “knew”, thus limiting myself.

That’s a pitiful small example, but, believe me, it works on a larger scale with important stuff.

Dreaded winter is here. During late November, December, January and early February I am an icicle. This year I did something different. I spent money. I bought a different kind of space heater with hope. Hope that it might work warmly. Then I went all out and blew my limited budget on a posh, thick, men’s extra-large bathrobe. Men’s because men’s are better made, and larger to double drape over my legs.

The day after Thanksgiving I pulled my heater out from behind the chair in the corner and read the directions. See, one can teach an old dog new tricks. Plugged it in and within two minutes, I knew my heater was worth every hard-scrabbled peso. See me smile?

Last night, after my shower, I pulled my bathrobe on and fell in love. I felt like I was held in warm, cuddly arms.

Speaking of love, I have fallen head over heels in love with a real man.

My morning routine includes short readings, from poets, other writers. They make me feel good, make me think, give me something to chew on throughout the day. A few months ago I added Gerald Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, English poet and Jesuit priest, to my list, simply because so many writers referred to him, a stranger to me. My degree was in History. I missed a lot of Literature.

For weeks and weeks, I wondered, why am I reading GMH? What was so brilliant about him? But gamely, I kept going, until one morning I had an on-the-road-to-Damascus experience.

I got it! How could I not see it? How could I not know? How could I be so ignorant? The man is beautiful, brilliant, genius, full of love and light and life. I’m his. Now I can hardly wait for our morning tryst.

So, see. Every day now I try to remind myself that I just don’t know. If I don’t know, incredible gifts tend to fall in my lap, like love.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December? Already?

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