It’s Just Another Circus Day

Do your days ever have an element of surprise?

You know, the best way to make God laugh is to tell Him your plan for the day. My days, more often than not, just take off in all directions like a speeding car with no driver and no breaks anyway. But the good thing is they end without catastrophy and I get up the next morning to start all over again.

It’s Thursday. Here are some of the highlights since Monday.

I’ve been fighting allergies, the itchy and watery eyes and sneezes kind since the beginning of rainy season. Benedryl just puts me to sleep and i hate taking man made meds. When we had a pause in the daily rain for 2 days, the itching stopped. Aha! That tells me that wet ground is the likely culprit, unfortunately it’s not something i can get away from. So, straight to Google, I start studying how to increase the antihistimines in my body naturally. A long list of foods to either add to my intake or increase the amounts was easy to accumulate.

But then i ran across ginger, which is good for so many things. It seems that ginger is like a super boost and I had a jar in the cabinet of candied ginger for stomach upsets. I grabbed a good sized piece and chomped on it. Within ten minutes the itching and watering stopped. I was gobsmacked! It was a full ten hours before it started again but much more mildly. I ate another piece and the itching stopped again. Twice is not a coincidence but I decided to wait to try it once more to make sure. In the early morning I woke and my eyes began to itch. This time I ate a piece half the size. There was a bit of relief but not completely, so I ate more. Once again the itch left.

OK, so I found a recipe for candied ginger and it’s on my list of things to make. Maybe I’ll do a video of that too. But in the meantime, use ginger for tea if you suffer with allergies. Who knows if it will help but it can’t hurt! And go to Google and search for foods high in antihistimines. You probably already eat several but you need more.

Now lets talk coffee. I have been buying Mexican mountain coffee for several years here and have never had a problem but this time it is very bitter. I don’t enjoy strong coffee and bitter coffee is awful. I also noticed this bag was really finely ground where all others had been more coarse. Once again I went to Google. Here’s what I learned, the more finely it’s ground, the more bitter it will be, and the longer it needs to brew. Hmmm. OK. I could take it back to the coffee man but I chose to delve deeper to see if I could remedy the situation. Yes! I can add a tiny pinch of salt to fool my tastebuds into not tasting the bitterness. The first time I added too much and tasted the salt, and it was too strong. So, I backed the coffee amount to 1/4 of my normal scoop and use seasalt, literally only about 4 grains, in the coffee maker. It came out very good this morning. Great! Now this bag of coffee should last 4 times as long.

So this week I was doing a video on a DIY weed killer recipe. I did mixing, mowing, weeding, spraying, and got the filming done but hurt all over from the labor. I couldn’t get the mower started by myself, the weed eater had to go into the shop, and the first sprayer I pulled from the shed had a cracked something and wouldn’t hold pressure. It took 3 days to complete it because I had to wait in between sprayings to see if any obvious results appeared. Time and energy well spent. With one tweak, the recipe works and I am finally in an even fight with the weeds.

A couple of lakeside ladies posted that a mother duck had abandoned 5 babies and they needed to be raised by someone who knew ducks. Through two days of trying to negotiate transport and hand off, I picked them up today, not something I’d planned for in my daily schedule. We will apply all we’ve learned about domestic ducklings and give these babies a chance to learn survival skills. Once again, a plastic bin full of baby quackers is occupying space in my laundry room.

My calendar told me yesterday to get ready for 3 litters of bunnies due. That requires moving bunny mamas to appropriately safe cages for tiny wiggly creatures that look like mice. It’s amazing how these things can escape a nest and squirm through the tiny grid of cage bottoms and sides if you’re not prepared. So the nests got cleaned and a padding of hay installed. This morning one mama had made her fur nursery which hides 4 little pink squeekers. Still waiting on the others.

Started my morning with some weeding again. Took two huge wheelbarrow loads to the goats who are always happy recipients. Now my back hurts and there are so many weeds I don’t think I made a dent.

I went with Dan to a meeting he had with some men from the Legion this morning that was supposd to be short. It was at a bakery, how I hated that, so I got an apple muffin and coffee and waited in the car answering messages on my phone. I managed to pop the cup lid twice and spill painfully hot coffee on myself, my clothes, my purse, and all over the jeep. Got it wiped up but no longer enjoyed the muffin treat. Ended up leaving him there while I went on some errands. One turned out to be a major score!

My errand path took me past my favorite vivero (nursery) so I had to stop, of course. There is a tree I read about and I really want to have one. The woman who owns the vivero speaks some English and is wonderful about helping. I showed her the picture on my phone and she led me right to 5 or 6 plants in pots that were over 5 ft tall. Thrilled, I chose one and now have to figure out where to plant it. I always take into consideration the root invasivness, the toxicity of leaves and flowers to my animals, the mature size, and growth rate in making a location decision. What is the tree you ask? A Mimosa, aka a Silk Tree. Yes, they are invasive with the pods they drop turning into tiny tree starts, but keeping the area around them mowed will stop those little wanna be trees before they go crazy. Why do I want a Mimosa you ask? Ahhh, that will be the subject of a future blog or video.

And on top of all you’ve just read, I’m trying to get the farrier to come trim my goats hooves. One of the challenges of living in Mexico. No one really cares about being on time, and I don’t just mean the time of the day scheduled. So if he says 1:30, you might see him by 6pm …. or not. But occasionally he will message to say he’s running late and will see you at 6 …. or not. Then he says tomorrow morning, and you message at 11am to ask when. Then he says soon so you say you have to go out and will be home by 1pm. So he says after 1:30. Bottom line is you can be fairly ceertain your goats will get their hooves trimmed sometime withing the next week. Just got another message and he says 5:30. We’ll see.

If you are someone who requires punctuality, don’t move here. Don’t even visit, it will drive you nuts. One must learn to live on Mexican time. It really will give you less stress and ulcers if you go with the flow.

I started this blog out saying it’s just another circus day because this is how it goes all the time. It’s never boring. I learn new things constantly. My path is a loose zig zag pattern with many unanticipated curves. And my house never gets fully cleaned. If I manage to get the floor swept, it’s dirty again before I can mop. When I manage to get the kitchen sparkly clean, it means it’s time to bake again and make more mess. This life is mine and I chose it. And I choose it again every day.

But it certainly isn’t for the fainthearted.

Blessings!