Life Continues in Paradise

One of our storms

Four months have passed by since my last post, and people are beginning to contact me to ask if we are OK. We are both well and have never been busier! Low season, which is supposed to be the “slow” season, didn’t exist this past summer. Typically, when the snowbirds leave for the north, things calm down, and there aren’t as many events and dinners. This year the heat, humidity and daily thunderstorms didn’t slow anyone down at all. We still had as many dinners and activities.

Lake getting ready

Friends from the US visited in June, and it was great being with them and catching up after a few years. Stef and our two grandsons arrived in July and spent ten days with us. We didn’t do the all-out 24/7 activities that we did last December, but we still managed to pack every day with snorkeling, swimming, parasailing, and shopping. Lake has become quite the negotiator, and he loves to bargain with the locals. Fynn wanted almost everything he saw, and Lake jumped right in to see how low he could get the price. He even gave Fynn some of his own money because he had so much fun bargaining.

We eventually managed to get rooms painted and ceiling fans installed. We have an air conditioner in our TV viewing room that wasn’t working when we moved in. One night in July we had a fierce thunder and electrical storm. Lightning must have struck close by and all of a sudden, our air conditioner started working. We have no idea why. It continued to work throughout the rest of July and into August. Then we had another violent storm, and it stopped working. Now, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Someone is supposed to fix it tomorrow, but we’ve heard that before, several times.

Wendy and I share birthdays

Scotty's beautiful table

We threw a house warming party for 30 of our friends in September and we planned it to coincide with our anniversary and my birthday. One of our friends who is a chef catered it and provided a bar tender so we didn’t have to do anything but enjoy. And we certainly did that! It was so much fun. About 12 of our friends were traveling so couldn’t be with us and they’ve decided that we need to host another one just for them when they are all back. I have a feeling that we probably will.

Carlos cleaning up after flooding

Things are continuing with our charity work. There haven’t been tours to the cat shelter, but other things have come up, so we’ve made special trips to visit. A couple donated money to have a building rebuilt, so Steve had to go out to meet with the contractor and get plans in place. I went along to cuddle the cats and to check on the new buildings. Visitors from Minnesota wanted to visit the shelter, so Steve and I went along with the group. They ended up taking five cats back with them. A productive visit! During one of our storms, three buildings were flooded, but our caretaker was on top of things and made sure the cats were all dry. We’ve built in high places for them to go to so they were all high and dry. But we then had to build a water barrier around all 3 buildings so that we won’t have that problem again.

The little ones school packets

Some of our back to school shopping

We have started a new group to support local families who have children with cancer. These families have absolutely nothing so our group puts food donations together so that every month we can give each family a considerably large food package along with necessary supplies like soap, shampoo, and toothpaste. One little girl in a wheelchair didn’t have a bed; she was sleeping on a cement floor and we were able to get her a bed. Three families didn’t have fridges so Costco donated fridges. Then in August, when it was time to go back to school, they didn’t have money for back to school supplies. We quickly got donations together, and Steve, a friend and I went shopping for 20 back to school packages. Then we put them all together. The kids were so excited to have their very own school packs fully stocked.

 Some of the kids have to travel to Guadalajara (5-hour road trip each way) for treatments, so we are now looking at ways to cover the cost of some of their treatments, plus the travel and accommodation for one of their parents to go with them.

Good friend and volunteer colleague

We are continuing with our spay and neuter clinic work with the number of animals increasing as word spreads. Yesterday there were 101 surgeries, and we had to turn 30 animals away because we just didn’t have the resources. It was our biggest clinic so far. We usually like to do around 70 to 75 because that’s a comfortable number for our three regular vets and volunteers. Yesterday we had to add a 4th vet. The Facebook page that I host and have to keep monitoring has been very active, so the word is spreading. The posts have to be in both Spanish and English, so that’s requiring extra time. Information is also spreading through people who have been very happy with the aftercare that we provide for the animals, so they tell their friends and families about our clinic.

The increased number of animals tends to create a bit of chaos for our volunteers because it’s intensive work for long periods without a break. We only have a small number of people who can take the vitals, and the animals have to have heartbeat, respiratory and temperature taken every 15 minutes. When you have fifty plus cats to work on for five to six hours, it’s quite tiring. The dogs usually come around sooner, so it’s a two-hour watch. We put together a list of protocols, and I started up some training sessions for our volunteers so that everyone can be working from the same page during the clinics. We’ve had 3 in English and 1 in Spanish, and so far, everyone who has attended loves them. And I put out a call on the Facebook page for local volunteers. We’ve had a great response, so I need to plan some more sessions in both languages.

In addition to those tasks, Steve has taken over the finances for the clinic and I’m working on sponsorships and making sure that we cover all expenses plus a contingency.

The last two months I’ve been working on a conference that will start this week in Denver. I will fly out on the 9th, which happens to be Steve’s birthday. But I’m giving him a whole week to himself without my nagging (oops – reminding) him of anything so what better present could I give him? Plus I'm bringing him back some techie toys! The conference has 10,500 registered, and the topic is supercomputing. They have spent the last month building a supercomputer in the exhibit hall. You can imagine how complex the logistics are for that many people. I’ve mainly been working on the off-site parties, so that’s been a lot of fun. I went to Denver the first week of October to meet with some of the committee members, and also to walk through the venues and meet with the caterers. I’ve also done some work on a meeting that this same group will have in Tucson in January plus have started working on a conference that will be held in Baltimore the 3rd week of January. I’m not working all day every day, but it’s still keeping me busy with all my other interests and activities.

I just wanted to get in touch to let people know that we are well and just very busy. We are located several hundreds of miles away from where the earthquakes took place but thank you to all of you who checked in on us. Thanksgiving is almost here and we’ve not made any plans. Several friends will be meeting at various restaurants but we can’t decide what we want to do. I just know that I want some real stuffing! I miss having stuffing!!