New neighbors

I have been home for almost a month now, wow time sure does fly! Jose went and picked me, Enrique, and my mom up in Tucson a few weeks ago which was really nice because we were going to have to take the bus do to our car situation. So I arrived home to a stopped up drain in the backyard which makes washing the dog pee off the cement extremely difficult. Wait, I what I meant to say was impossible! Hang in there, it gets more exciting. Socrates (the dog) was skinny as a rail and infested with ticks, Stanley (the cat) was near starvation, his kittens were on the verge of becoming feral, my car was still broken and had a flat tire, my phone was off the hook, so was the internet, and my Mom's sink stopped working altogether. Bienvenida a casa!!
So one by one we got to work trying to solve each problem from my house because we had no other way to get around. My good friend and vet Karla came and got Socrates, fixed his tick issue, and messengered over some high quality cat and dog food. Animals- check.
Next, getting in touch with Jehu my plumber. Well, I lost his card and he is not in the phone book so I started calling different hardware stores and finally one had him on file. So I call and he says he will be here tomorrow (a very common phrase here in Navojoa). Three days pass and I still can't clean the patio so I send him a message and he calls back saying that he is sorry but he has had lots of work and hadn't been able to get away but he will try for this afternoon. This afternoon comes and goes, so do two more days. At this point I am half thinking about calling another plumber but Jehu knows my house and I really do like the way he works. So I decide to call him and ask him if he has any friends he can send me. Well he either felt really sorry for me or didn't want to lose me as a customer because he was here in 30 minutes. Plumbing- check.

Next step the modem, now, it is 100 degrees here at 8 in the morning and Jose is in a 1980 something pickup truck with no air so I understand that he does not want to be making extraneous stops to Telmex or wherever else but I NEED the internet. Sometimes I feel like it is my only link to the outside world ;) That may sound a bit dramatic but it is how I get news from the US (like the all important day and time that Lindsay Lohan got released from jail jajajaja), video chat with my parents and brother, see how my friends are doing via facebook, and of course read all the fun blogs written by other americans living in Mexcio. So the procedure for getting a new modem is to call telmex and after they go through the whole unplug your modem, reset your modem, plug your modem in to a different outlet, wait, what? it still doesn't work? routine, they send a report to your hometown telmex where you can wait 3-5 business days for them to messenger it over or you can go pick it up instantly. I opted for instant, or so I thought. I forgot about Jose not doing ANYTHING instantly (it is part of his charm, I have to look at it that way). It only took him a little more than a week to go pick up the new modem but; Internet-check!

Last step the car. It sat in my garage almost the entire time my mom was here but finally a couple days before she left our mechanic Daniel came and got it. This only happened because the night before we wanted to go out for dinner and the truck wouldn't start and then Enrique got bit by a huge red ant and screamed for an hour. Jose finally got fed up and decided to call Daniel (who by the way proved to be very prompt). Supposedly the car will be done this Thursday which I am inclined to believe it when I see it. I have become a little bit hesitant to believe what people tell me here but I am also much more relaxed. We are making due without the car so it will be a huge surprise and very exciting when it does get fixed.

Now on to the title of this post. When I got home and stopped crying ;) I realized that we had new neighbors. I husband and wife and weenie dog had moved in across the street. I was ssssooo excited because the way my house is situated I really have no neighbors which can be a good thing sometimes but other times I feel quite isolated. So yesterday Enrique and I baked some banana pineapple bread and decided to take it over to them. As soon as we got all set I saw that they had the exterminators over so I decided to wait because banana bread and chemicals don't really go together ;) We went over this morning and presented ourselves to Pamela and weenie (husband was at work) and she is really sweet. I hope they will be here for a while.

I really am glad to be home and it felt really good to be able to vent a little bit. I will say that I have been able to find positives in just about everything that has happened since I returned from the other side and as always the trials have helped me grow.
Thanks for reading!