Incarcerated by Dude and the Domestic Gene

 

               Incarcerated by Dude and the Domestic Gene

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Not really, not incarcerated. Looks a little like Ft. Knox with my muchly reinforced boundary fence to keep Dude out of my patio. I am not Dude’s keeper. Ana’s brother Lito is Dude’s keeper while Ana is gone on holiday.

The first couple of days that my friend have been gone, Dude, the dog with a neurological disease plus dementia, chewed through several feet of chicken wire. Lito soon reinforced those vulnerable areas. A little like Ft. Knox. Without any gold. No razor wire.

I discovered something about myself. While I battled to keep Dude in her own space, battled mainly out of concern for my new screen doors, which to Dude would be dessert, I found that pushing her out with a broom handle for forty-five minutes made me physically sick to my stomach and psychically ill.

I cannot fight Dude. It doesn’t help her. It makes me sick.

After consultation with my daughter, who knows more about behavior modification than I ever knew, I quit force-feeding Dude her “relax” pills. I had to teach Dude that I am no longer a source of goodies. I had been blithely stuffing them in the same mouth that chews wire. I really wanted to stuff them into my own mouth. R-e-l-a-x!

I decided the screen doors were not that important if she eats the screens, she is the one who must digest them, not me.

I closed my doors and opened the windows for sun and air flow and determined to stay inside my house, out of Dude’s sight lines.  This is not forever. Next week we will revert to normal, whatever that is.

Fortunately, this decision to stay inside my house activated my long dormant Stepford Wife Domestic Gene.

The first day of self-jail I whipped up a piecework tablecloth. Quite nice, I say.

I found my blouse pieces I had cut out back in September, made some modifications, and shall have that finished tomorrow. The blouse is piecework, patchwork.

I whipped up two batches of bread-and-butter pickles and a batch of dills. That filled all my empty pint jars. I’m grateful that I can order things such as cucumbers, fresh, and the size I want, from my local fruteria.

Today I jammed a batch of mangos, jars now cooling on my kitchen island.

Stepford or not, I’m not without diversions.

Leo took me out for a big shopping trip one day. We ate out. I stocked up with food from the Pepe’s Fruteria, the Mini-Super, the herb and seed shop, the cremeria, the dulceria and the Bodega. My larder is full. I also bought an assortment of threads to feed my sewing machine.

Kathy, Lani and Nancie and I had lunch another day at the new taqueria at the entrance to Oconahua. What a fun time, good food, lots of stories and catching up.

My friends who are exploring pyramids, swimming in cenotes and riding the Mayan Tren, will soon be home.

Then I’ll be spending my days in sloth, puttering with my plants, reading on the patio, wondering what happened to the Domestic Dynamo.

Just call me Sally Allie Apron.

Looking out my back door

February 6, 2025

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Dude, the Dementia Dog

 

Dude, the Dementia Dog

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Poor thing. She’s elderly, has hip pain, a neurological disease and dementia, which is also neurological, I’m told.

Who knows what goes on in a dog’s brain. As if the above were not enough, Dude thinks I’m hers. I wonder who I was in her past life, or who she thinks I was.

She is a large dog. In size, comparable to a Labrador or German Shepard. This gal is long-bodied and blonde. Perhaps blondes do have more fun. She would be happy if she could sit in my lap all day. I shudder to think.

Most of the time this is not a problem. My area is private, a “one-dog yard”. My fence is a clever blending of various discarded sections of wrought iron rescued from a junk yard, painted white.

I share a common area with my neighbors and landladies in which their dogs, Dude, Paco and Monkey, run and play with my dog, Lola. Lola lives with me. Not on my lap, but in her doghouse on the patio. Lola goes back and forth, from home ground to the common area.

The first time Dude breached my fence, she squeezed between openings in the wrought iron, through space logically impossible. (Open space is X wide. Dude is XYZ in width. Do the math.)

Once in my patio, getting Dude to move out was logically impossible. Dude is impervious to pain, curses, pushes, pulls, ropes, cajoling, pleading and prayer. She simply splayed herself onto the ground as if locked in with Gorilla Glue, looked up with big brown eyes and said in dawg, “I wuff you.”

A generous application of chicken wire secured the breached section of fence.

At the time of day when Sundowner Syndrome takes over Dude’s brain, I am usually on the patio, relaxing with a book. Back and forth, back and forth, Dude paces, just outside my fence, with an occasional whimper rcombined with gazes of adoration. I harden my heart.

One day she discovered that if I sat in a certain chair and if she stretched her neck to the ultimate length, salad-plate paws atop that section of fence, she could lay her head on my shoulder. Think 1950s love songs. Dude is not Paul Anka.

Dude, being a dog of little brain, took a couple weeks to figure out that if she scrabbled one hind leg up just enough to imbed her claws in chicken wire, this section of fence also being reinforced, and, remember, she is impervious to pain, the fourth leg would eventually follow. Up, up and over. Once, twice, thrice. Easy.

Ordinarily, Dude would not dominate our lives. However, Ana and Michelle have planned a needed vacation, a Mayan Train tour up the Yucatan, with friends. They don’t want me to have to lap sit Dude the whole time they are gone.

Hence, extraordinary activity these past days has included reinforcing my privacy fence with tall sections of heavy wire-grid panels. The panels do the trick while enhancing the look of the place.

Raising the fence necessitated moving my rotary clothesline, which had been wired to a fence post. Not a problem. Back to my Plan A which was to imbed the post in a large trash can filled with concrete. Works like a dream.

Changing location of the clothesline also meant changing location of several of my potted herbs and mini-garden. The entire arrangement is more pleasing to the eye, which is more pleasing to me. Wins all around.

One more positive thing out of this whole emotional mess is that we have discovered that Lola has therapy dog qualities. When Dude is anxious, Lola helps settle her down.

My friends and guests are off on a Train adventure. I’m not Dude’s caretaker. Laundry is hanging on the line. I’m listening to Paul Anka sing the lyrics to “Put your head on my shoulder.”  What could possibly go wrong?

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

January 30, 2025

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It’s not on the map!

 

                                             It’s not on the map!

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Kathy is my friend who first introduced me to Mexico. I am Kathy’s friend who first introduced her to Etzatlan. Beware introductions. We both ended up moving to Etzatlan.

Kathy and I have known one another twenty plus years. Those years translate into frequent opportunities to share experiences, get lost, explore places we should not have poked our noses. In other words, we know how to have fun.

Since mid-November I’ve been settling into my new casita in Oconahua, enjoying exploring the country ‘round and about.

Kathy drove over for a visit with a purpose. We were going to head into the center of this little town to see just what is available in the many little tiendas. I was almost out of toothpaste and needed tomatoes and bananas. Purpose.

We turned left instead of right. No, we were not lost. The property on which I live ends at an arroyo, deep and wide. Directly across this canyon is San Rafael, not a city, but a hacienda, private property on which so many people have built homes that it has become its own small community.

I wanted to show Kathy the tiny, beautiful church as well as the smallest schoolhouse I’ve ever seen. Surely not more than a dozen students could crowd inside. But it is the prettiest little school you’d ever want to see.

“Where does this road go?” asked Kathy.

“I don’t know. I suspect it dead ends at a rancho. I’ve never been further than this. But I know that past San Rafael we leave Jalisco and enter Nayarit.”

That’s all it took. We had to know. The street became a narrow highway, mostly paved, mostly pitted, but not too severely. Narrow, winding, up hill and down dale. Through the loveliest country, ever higher. We wandered along slowly, entranced, taking in the ever-changing vegetation, colors, bushes and trees, winding ever higher and higher. We wended through corn fields, meadows with cattle, and climbed high mountain vistas.

We reached the top of the pass and way, way, way down there, nestled like a chick in its nest, an impossible tiny village, a fairy land of forty or fifty buildings.

There was no decision to make. We had to go see.

(In the interests of full disclosure, if you are going to make this trip, be sure to take water and strong stomachs. Motion sickness possible.)

At the bottom of the road, and I do mean the bottom, with trepidation we crossed an ancient stone bridge over a dry river bed, smack into the middle of town. We drove every street, short streets, most of which ended in someone’s yard or field. We saw the plaza, the school, the health center, the church. That was it, this tiny town out in what we deemed the middle of nowhere in Nayarit.

“Let’s find a tienda de abarrotes. I need a drink.”

“I need a snack.”

The tienda, closed, that we first drove past coming into town, several minutes previously, now had an open door. An open door is like an open road, right? One must go inside.

All the sidewalks (here and in most towns) have impossibly high steps up from the street. When the rain comes, the streets become fast-running waterways.

I indicated to the gentleman who came out the door to greet us that I needed help. He gave me his hand, helped me up the step, and introduced himself.

Senor Moses Gomez quickly scoped out the we are gringos. He spoke impeccable English, had worked construction in the US for thirty-five years. This man said to us, “People are good.” In his actions he demonstrated that yes, indeed, “People are good.” I needed to hear that.

We had a delightful conversation, bought our unhealthy drinks and equally unhealthy snacks and inquired if there might be an alternate route back we could explore.

Senor Gomez hesitantly told us we could go to Amitlan de Cana and back to Oconahua. He poked his head out the door to see what we drove. “Return the way you came. The other road is not passable. Nobody uses it.” We assured him we treasured his advice, said our “adios” and back tracked across the stone bridge and up the mountain.

The little town of about 200 folks at the end of the road is named Jesus Maria. If you want to go, you won’t find it on the map. But Kathy and I are delighted to be your tour guides.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

January 23, 2025

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How We See Ourselves

 

               How We See Ourselves

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Every time I thought of my cousin, who had just had heart surgery, I found myself angry. I mean spitting angry, upset, because it seemed the man was not taking care of himself, was ignoring the sensible cautions, being a he-man gorilla, invincible.

Finally, after a full couple of weeks of growling, I asked myself, “Why so angry?”

Well, that question stopped me in my tracks. After some deep digging through my own rubble heap of rationalizations, I realized that I was afraid. I don’t want to lose my cousin. We all go sometime, but, please, not to foolishness, not when a little care might mean years of good life.

You know what? My cousin’s decisions are none of my business. I can care and do care. But maybe my cousin has his reasons. I realized that my anger was a cover for grieving.

I was reminded of my feeble attempts half my lifetime ago to present myself as always calm, serene, at peace. I wanted others to see me in this perfect picture but even more, this is the way I wanted to see myself. I was devouring self-help books back then, one after another. Ommm.

The truth was that I was a mere breath away from a panic attack most of that time. I was trying to cover up, to bury my real feelings. I was a right wringing mess.

A perceptive doctor, a good counselor and a circle of friends not afraid to laugh at me and with me pulled me through that foolishness. Not overnight, mind you. It took years. Obviously, I’m not done yet.

I pretty much no longer care how other people view me. Pretty much. I do care that I view myself with honesty, no matter what. That pretty, perfect picture I used to dream flew out the door long ago. You might have seen my shadow fly over!

Over the years I’ve learned we seldom see ourselves as others see us. Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hunter, I do remember the poem. I always loved Robert Burns. He had a sense of humor.

“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us,

An’ foolish notion.”

This last year particularly, I have lost too many good and true friends.

Grief. Anger. Self pity. Tears. Shocking language. Along with compassion and love. I wear it all, for anybody to see, to hear.

So, yes, I’ve lost a lot of friends. But, mercy me, look at the friends around me. They still love me or at least, tolerate me.

Just yesterday Jim came over to hang doors on my kitchen cupboard. I waited and waited and waited for the young local workman to do it when finally I realized he was being Mexican polite, saying yes, not to offend me, putting me last on his “maybe” list.

Jim shooed me out onto the patio, out of his way and got to work. Within an hour I had the rare chance to ask, “How they hangin’, Jim?”

Today John and Carol are coming over, bringing a pot of bean soup. They want to visit before taking off for Pacific beaches. I’ll make a salad. Michelle and Ana from next door will bring tortillas and some other delight.

Tomorrow, Kathy and I are going to explore some of the wee grocery stores here in Oconahua. She and I have long history and experience for making fun with mundane chores. I simply want to know what I can get here and what I need to put on my list for Etzatlan.

I hate to run off but I need to sweep the leaves off the patio and set the table. See you next week, my most tolerant friends.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

January 16, 2025

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