Livingthedreamwithdiana.com

To the US Embassy.

It’s that time of year.

Every year at this time I have to let the SSA know that nothing has changed in my life; I am still alive, and I’m still living in the same place.

I receive the form every year, around the 6th of July, noting that it was sent the 6th of June, and have until the 6th of August to complete, and return, the form to Pennsylvania.

Seriously?

As we’ve not mailed anything, much, to the US, we have no idea how long it takes to get a letter of such significance delivered to the appropriate authorities. Therefore, we make our annual pilgrimage to the Embassy, handing the form directly to the Embassy representative at the entrance of the Embassy building.

Last year it cost us $280MXN, total, for the round trip, via taxi, so I’ll include the cost this year, round trip, as a comparison.

This time we asked the driver if he would wait, and return us to our apartment, and told him we would pay him a bit more if he could/would wait a moment. All I had to do was hand in the forms to someone at the gate at the entrance to the Embassy.

As the intelligent man he was, he drove around the block, Ivan in the back seat, and came back for me as promised.

I have to tell you, though, that from the moment I gave the young lady our papers, I felt several moments of fear, and abandonment.

I went back to where Ivan, and the driver said they would be waiting but

They were gone.

They weren’t there.

They weren’t over there, across the street.

They were no where.

Where were they?

The driver said “we” were to meet him the next block over, turn left, and we’ll meet on that corner.

When I was standing there, I felt confused; which way was the way I was supposed to go? This block? The block over there?

Ivan wouldn’t leave me here, alone. He wouldn’t do that.

Calm yourself.

Ivan won’t leave you. He/they will come around the block soon, and find you.

They aren’t here because the policía said they needed to move from the spot, where they left you off, so that’s what they did. They drove around the block.

I walked to the area where they dropped me off, and waited where they could see me.

Within minutes, we saw each other.

It took less than 30 minutes to get home.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: the taxi ride, with the wait, was, in reality, $158 MXN each direction; totaling $316MXN/$16.68USD. We parted ways having given him $400 MXN/$21 MXN. A good transaction done.

The building is moving in that horrible way it does just after all of my Apple products scream at me that there’s been an earthquake detected.

I don’t know if you remember me saying during prior quakes, but the movement of the building, from the onset to the final seconds, makes me so nauseous that I feel very close to vomiting.

As I do now, as I’m typing this.

The dogs in the buildings combined, are all howling, but everything else is dead silent.

Ok. It’s over. It’s done.

For now. Going back to what I was doing.

Have a great day!

I feel compelled to confess that, a few weeks ago, when buying our monthly groceries from Costco, I added a stray potato to one of our bags.

I did. I’m only marginally ashamed, but, there you have it.

The russet potatoes we have been receiving are huge. Nothing like we used to get in the States. Let me show you.

That is a salad plate, for sure, and you can also see the peeler. These 2 bags of potatoes are all like that.

In the bin, where the potatoes were being stored for sale, there were several stray, neglected, lonely potatoes, just sitting on top of the bags. I picked a few up, put them in bags that were obviously of less weight, and repositioned the plastic tie attempting to hold the bags closed.

After having done several of these, there was one left, so I put it in one of our bags, as compensation for all of someone else’s work I had just done.

Great rationalization, don’t you think?

The 2 bags are home with us, and I just made hamburgers, and fries with the one in the above photo. Believe me, it was big enough for both of us to be full.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: on one of the French chateau renovation channels I watch on YT, mom sent her 2 daughters to the US to visit family for a couple of weeks. Just before the flight from France, she, and her oldest daughter developed CoVid. They were both sick, in bed, for 10 days. Don’t give up your vigilance. It’s still out there, just waiting for the unsuspecting, and undisciplined.

I made my first, ever, pot of homemade roasted red pepper, and tomato soup a few weeks ago now.

Ok, so mine didn’t look exactly like that.

It was delicious though, as we both agreed. The recipe was so easy to follow, though I did do just a touch of tweaking. After blending everything once cooked, I passed it through a sieve to give it a creamier texture, and added a swirl of cream to the top just before serving, leaving off the basil. We didn’t have any fresh.

After roasting the tomatoes, and onions, which were in imminent danger of spoiling, due to the extreme heat, I roasted chicken parts for some chicken soup to be made in the next few days.

FYI- If you ever make chicken soup from scratch, be sure to roast your chicken pieces first. The depth of flavor is completely different. I season them just as I would if we were eating them as the main protein of our dinner. Then, I remove the skin, (and eat it; cooks treats), before adding the shredded chicken to the soup.

I have to tell you that “cooking by the seat of my pants”, as my husband likes to say, is getting much easier these days. I’m fairly sure it’s because I’m not hungover all of the time, and having a bit more educated palate.

I’m doing my best to teach my tastebuds different, yet tasty combinations, and trying to keep them in the forefront of my memory.

We’ll see.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Has any company in the US begun using biodegradable bags for their bread?

As much bread as is sold every day in the US, the outer bags should be able to biologically degrade normally, not fill up the landfills.

Here, the country of México has been separating organics from everything else, plastic, glass, paper for well over 45 years. When we came down here in the early 70’s, there were already 3 separate bins at every socially significant place we went; glass, plastic, and organic.

At that time, paper was included in the organic, and why not? It is organic. It took a bit more education, on the government’s part, and a bit more money, to collect paper separately from organics.

Let me show you 2 examples of what I mean.

You may laugh at the name Bimbo, but, here, it is synonymous with WonderBread, with none of the degrading connotation of the US. Also, it is pronounced as BEAM-boh.

I should have shown you the front of the full bread bag on the left as I have, temporarily, switched to Artesano Bread instead of the multigrain that you can see. The seeds of the multigrain look exactly like the little bugs, (I think it’s some sort of beetle), that is in our kitchen.

We are both doing better every day. There are marginal changes, but changes nonetheless. We’re taking any change as a win.

Actually, today I actually tasted a bit of V8, peanut butter, and honey, and a bit of Valentina, a spicy condiment. Yay!!

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. WASH, (it’s really the only thing that works), cover, (not helpful really), and protect yourselves.

Post script: normally I have 2-3 weeks worth of subject matter scheduled to post. As we/I have been ill recently, there may be a bit of a lag in content. Please bear with me. I put up content as I’m able.

Short, not sweet.

Not much new to say except that I pray for anyone having gone through this, and everyone yet to come. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

Am still with a heavy chest, somewhat productive cough, but still no appetite, or senses of smell, or taste. I eat because I know I must in order to survive but it’s only a portion of baked potato, or an English muffin. No point in wasting tasty food when one has no sense of taste. Am I right?

I have used up 2 small bottles of cough syrup, one box/20 tablets of a Tylenol/Paracetamol combo, and have more coming. We haven’t had cold/flu meds. in our home in years. No I don’t ever want to be without them.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Of being tired.

Actually, since I got sick last week, I am amazed at how I have no sense of smell, or taste, and absolutely no energy. As I said a moment ago, I’m tired of being tired. Exhausted really.

I don’t even have enough energy to comment on the political machinations going on in the US. That aught to tell you something. Right now, it’s all about me.

I can be incredibly lazy at times, but this is 180º from that. This is internal batteries at 10%, without ability to recharge. I felt pretty decent last night, able to go to bed, to lie down for a while, and rest. Then my nose stuffed up, again, and I was up for another 2 hours. Got to bed about I can’t recall what time, and was awakened at 5:30 am. with yet again a stuffed nose.

The cough medicine I am using does a bit to help with that, temporarily, then, like clockwork, stuffy nose is back. Since suffocation is my arch nemesis, this is very concerning to me. I have minor panic attacks when I put on the nasal mask of my CPAP machine, and can’t move the air in, or out of my nose. Switch to mouth breathing.

All well, and good when one’s throat isn’t being shredded with glass shards, as it was all of last week. My lips are peeling, though I now have a tube of medicated Chap Stick.

I think once I get to feeling better, I’m going to stock a bit of medicinals; cough syrup, lip balms, Vicks VapoRub, in ANY form, etc. Maybe having them around will stave off anything like that again.

Unless you read to the contrary, know that I’m getting better, and should be back to rights by the end of this week.

Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: I thought I’d Google this, just as a guide. Turns out I have had every symptom. Who needs a test!

I have to tell you that I didn’t actually believe it, or even know of what I was speaking.

The other evening, I went to the kitchen to make Ivan a bowl of oatmeal, when I looked up into one of the cupboards, and on the shelf was one of my kombucha bottles that had a dark amber liquid in it. I thought, at first, maybe I had put away a 1/2 cup of Ivan’s brandy so I’d have it the next time I made carnitas. I took it down, off the shelf, opened it up, and smelled it.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I couldn’t believe it. What was going on? I put the cap back on it, and looked at the bottom of the jar. It was foggy with the “mother” of our apple cider vinegar. It was apple cider vinegar I was smelling, but had no idea. I took the bottle of white vinegar off the same shelf, opened it, and again, nothing.

I put that aside, and finished making the oatmeal, but as it was cooking, I took a small taste on the tip of my spoon. Nothing again. No sweet, no oatmeal, no butter, no nothing.

I have never had a time in my life that I was completely without taste, or smell, never. When I would get sick, as a child, and later as an adult, there was always a hint of what I was given to eat.

Not anymore. I had heard, and read that people that have/had CoVid lose those senses for a while, but I never expected that I really had CoVid. Others had it, but not me. I wash my hands every time we go anywhere, but I haven’t worn my mask.

Too late.

I’m pushing through this, and will, as I said, hopefully be done with all of it soon. Don’t wait until it’s too late to wear a mask indoors. I can’t imagine how else I would have gotten it.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves. Please. This has been horrible. I would hate to hear that it got you too.

It’s actually funnier now that it’s past, and neither of us is in jail, than when it was at its apex.

You see, our water bill comes every 2 months, or it’s supposed to. However, we haven’t received a bill, looking back on it, since July of 2021. Duh!

The bill, when we did receive it, it was in a prior occupants name, not Ivan’s. I remember, quite some time ago, that we went to the water department to inquire about changing the name, but we needed this form, and that bit of whatever, and we never followed through with it.

Alas. We received a letter informing us that the matter needed to be corrected immediately, so we collected the folder containing the water bills that we had paid in the past, and off we went to the department of all things water. I will include that down here, you must save every receipt for every utility company forever. Not sure why, but that’s what we do; we save everything.

As there were only 3 other people in the office, we were taken right up to window #3, where a very nice young lady helped us. As water is a necessity here, the cost of it is very inexpensive. In fact, our bills have been about $100 MXN every 2 months, or about $5.00 USD. Our total outstanding bill comes to $7556 MXN, or about $428 USD, depending on the rate of exchange. Not too bad for 3 years worth of unpaid usage.

Suffice it to say, we are gathering all of the paperwork needed to prove we are who we say we are, and that we do, indeed, own the apartment that is declared on the bill. In fact, we even have to take a copy of the purchase agreement for the apartment.

That’s all I have for today folks. Hopefully all will be taken care of by the time you are reading this.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: in case you have some interest, I actually made it to 69 years old yesterday. I’m hoping for about 25 more birthdays. We’ll see.

No better, really, but no worse either.

I pray to God that whatever this is it doesn’t last much longer. I am exhausted.

I did get a few hours of sleep last night, finally. It was alcohol induced but sleep none the less.

Until Monday,

I don’t have enough energy to finish it. You know what I would say.