Three months ago, if you’d have asked me if I’d have been content to drive around in a stuffy, weird-smelling pickup truck listening to nothing but Mexican oompa music on a spotty radio station, I would have said hell no.

I love the amazing jade green color when the sunlight hits the waves just so.

But due to the circumstances that are my life (and certainly my choosing, at least in concept. See: Life is like a box of chocolates for the potential depth of that statement), there’s only one station that comes in – AM or FM – on the truck radio, and that’s all it plays – jangly, lively Mexican music that is almost exclusively about amor or  ’don’t forget me’ or ‘kiss me’ or ‘remember me.’ This, in turn, is dotted with the very occasional WTF offering like George Michael’s “Father Figure” or The Backstreet Boy’s “I Want It That Way”.

Those are the moments that I find particularly thrilling, in that memory lane/clash of cultures kind of way. Yay English! And – seeing as I went through a George Michael phase in Middle School (who didn’t???) – yay Father Figure, a song to which I actually know the words. Truthfully, to my shock, I know a surprising amount of Backstreet Boys lyrics. That I can’t explain so well. Collective unconscious?

Anyway, mostly it’s just me and the truck and the dust and the loud noise of the not-so-awesome power steering and the cranked up strains of Mexican music.

And so it is.

Me before my hamstring-destroying deep sand run yesterday.

Well, except at 6pm when they do the news. In Spanish. And I catch every tenth word. Which is roughly the same as understanding absolutely nothing.

So in contrast – and although I wouldn’t exactly say I enjoy said Mexi tunes –  on a sunny day when it’s warm out and the light hits the ocean just right and you feel kind of free and independent and generally good about life – there is a certain infectious, exuberant ebullience to the liberal (if not excessive) use of brass instruments and accordions and words about love and loss.

And it’s kind of growing on me.

Or maybe that’s just the tequila talking?

All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone

- Blaise Pascal

Channeling my inner Holly Golightly.

In the last week and two days I have proven – in spades and in excess – that I am capable of sitting quietly in a room alone.

Hell, I thrive quietly in a room alone.

I’m like a low-maintenance houseplant.

Or a cat with access to a dripping faucet and an open feedbag.

Go about your business and don’t worry about little old me. Just leave a light on and let a neighbor know I exist, okay?

All the same, I’m kind of appalled at my own absence.

Five days?
How did five days get by me?

Well, for starters, I’m sitting quietly – minus the ticky tacky tapping of Macbook keys – in a room alone all the livelong day (and night).

I could be on Mars for all I (or you) know.

Secondarily, I’m writing a chapter a day.

I should be proud of this, but the thing of it is, my (overly, I now realize) aggressive schedule had me writing two a day.

Two!?!?

Who do I think I am?

Joyce Carol Oates?

(I once read that on a real roll she writes 40 pages a day, so she is my Parthenon of big-time page quota writing)

Doing my laundry old school. Feeling very salt of the earth and wondering to myself, "Do I own any clothes that aren't gray?"

Anywho, I’ve been writing a chapter a day, which honestly isn’t easy, and due to my own strange (inspired?) idea to have the first ten chapters be parallel and modern-day retellings of the life of Christ ages 30 to 32, they’re tedious as well. In addition to the time spent doing said writing, I spend about two hours a day reading Biblical interpretations.

Which I kind of hate.

Okay, I hate it a lot.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hate Jesus…but when you’re dreaming about the man in a scholarly kind of way, you’ve possibly/probably/definitely gone too far.

Anyway, I’m working like a dog and making daily progress. Despite this, I’ve been growing increasingly despairing.

“Why?” you ask.

Well, if you’d been paying attention, you’d know I’m growing increasingly despairing because I thought I could write two chapters a day, and it just ain’t happening.

So self-admonition and “mañana, mañana” kick in until today, when the landlord sneeringly asks me, “So are you getting any writing done? Or do you have writers’ block?”

“No,” I told him, “I’ve written nine chapters.”

The sheer look of shock was enough to make me realize that although I may not be JCO (see above for secret decoder ring), but I am doing pretty darn good.

And then he stammered, “Wow. You’re a disciplined writer.”

I only buy cereal that's at least four times the size of my head. And yes, the house really is as round and pink and freakishly fluorescent light lit as it seems here. I've grown accustomed...

And THEN he went and made my day (sort of) by adding that he’s happy if he writes a chapter a month.

I don’t have any clue what it is that he’s writing, but whatever.

Doing some quick math, I calculated that on his ‘aggressive’ plan, it would take me three years to write this book. So two or three months instead of one ain’t too shabby.

And it certainly isn’t three years.

So yay me.

In other news:

• The first day I got a funky tan from my ever-present necklaces, but I have hence removed now-not-so-much-ever-present necklaces and evened that mess out.

• Last night, in a fit of “I’m sick of corn tortillas and beans” I made cabbage rolls (any of you with any kind of Eastern European or Russian heritage know what I”m talking about), and they were wonderful. And I ate more for breakfast. And more again tonight for dinner. And there are still five left. Happiness…

• I was trying to trim an errant hair with oversized scissors and cut a chunk out of my eyebrow. Oh well. It’s hair. It’ll grow back.

• I have a girl crush on Ellie, the fast-talking Mexican maid. Not my maid, mind you. I do my own laundry and dishes and sweeping and cleaning. Not that I mind. It’s kind of a simplified, hand-hewn Little House on the Prairie-type existence. Anyway, back to Ellie, she’s so sweet and doesn’t seem to care a lick that I only understand about 30% of what she says. And she’s willing to try all kinds of words until she stumbles into some vocabulary I recognize. The same cannot be said for everyone…  Enough said.

• I miss TV. A lot.

• I am really damn tired (it’s a little after midnight here) due in large part to the aggressive ray of sun that shines directly on my face every morning at 7:00am and my persistent very late night bedtimes. In other words, I couldn’t let another day go by without posting something, but in just a few more words that’s all there is to say. Be good. More soon.

Not to be confused with the Marvin Gaye song of a similar but slightly different title, I am obsessed with the Amos Lee tune (particularly the live version) “What’s Been Going On.” I can do a decent job with the guitar, but I can’t sing that low to save my soul. Which is fine in general, seeing as I’m a woman, but a bummer in that I really love the hell out of that tune. Oh well. Download’s Amos’ version. It’s worth the $.99.

Writing. What else would I be doing?

Anyway, I’m just sitting here watching Old School and drinking some horribly sweet, overly dyed apple soda (Just a small bottle. I couldn’t help myself. I had to know…) and thinking about anarchy.

Not really.

I just threw that last part in to see if you were paying attention.

So anyway, as is often the case with me when I get myself into remote locales with very little human contact and even less English, I have been wallowing in my own habits and taking an excessive amount of self-portraits. Luckily, my habits tend to be pretty healthy and self-driven and I’m rather photogenic, but then again maybe I’ve already been alone too long to judge?

Me in front of tonight's sunset

So here’s a random smattering of stuff in my life circa 9:48pm Mountain Time:

My back hurts

I’ve been brushing my teeth with tap water since I got here on Thursday. I suppose I just like to tempt fate. Or prove that I have a superior immune system. Or lose five pounds the painful way. Time will tell…

I’m already sick of corn tortillas.

Random horses.

I was sitting out front today and four horses just came randomly sauntering by.

My only tie to the modern world is a super flakey dial up 3G connection that occasionally makes the touch pad on my MacBook freeze up and stop working and which delays incoming emails as much as two days and isn’t even powerful enough to run a YouTube clip. I am completely cut off. With 25 days to go. But I’m still sane. Mostly.

I’ve written five chapters of the new book. It’s going pretty smoothly, which either means it’s inspired gold or total drivel. Time will tell here as well…

Tonight's sunset all by itself.

I don’t like the American landlord and his Mexican wife is really unfriendly. I could bitch about this at length, but a) who wants to hear me bitch and b) he knows about this blog, and I hate to be a jerk. Sufficed to say, he went to Stanford 25 years ago, and works it into EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION. Whateves, dude. It’s ancient history now.

There’s a mosquito on my thigh.

I tried to take a bath last night, and got about two inches of hottish water into the giant tub before it started to come out of the spigot cold. So basically it was like splashing in a hot puddle. Not so much…

Me in front of the only walls in this joint that aren't pink.

Special K is different down here than it is at home. It’s somehow kind of corn flakey or something. It’s not bad. Just different.

Topes are those giant, unexpected bumps in the road and totopos are what they call tortilla chips.

The ocean is literally 50 yards away (over a sand dune covered with some seriously prickly stuff), and I can hear it roaring all the time, which is super awesome.

It’s been cloudy and raining all weekend and barely 10 degrees warmer than back home…but tomorrow all that changes when the sun comes back out! (The sun had better come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’d damn well better be sun…)

I’m driving around in a 2000 Nissan Frontier with plates from South Dakota and expired tags. I’m basically begging to get pulled over. See “not so keen on the landlord” above.

The beach here in Todos Santos by day

I am definitely in the early stages of Carpal Tunnel or some other forearm overuse problem, which totally sucks. I actually woke up in the middle of the night last night my right arm hurt so much. This happened when I was writing my graduate thesis a few years ago. And when I was finishing the first book. Basically, it’s like an overuse injury I’m still using. Ow.

I bought some bagels at the corner store and despite the fact that they were frozen, every last goddamned one of them was molding, and I just threw them away rather than drive them back and fight about it, because I don’t know enough Spanish to explain that “These bagels are molding, and I don’t want a replacement because I am now afraid of your food. Please just give me back my 550 pesos, thank you very much.”

Getting all artsy.

Will Ferrell just said my favorite line of the movie, “I think I see Blue. He looks glorious!”

As mentioned above, there are 25 more days to my literary experiment.

And there ain’t much going on but me, my daily workouts, my writing, and trips to buy overpriced spoiled foodstuffs.

Happily, I have yet to go totally Ernest Hemingway, but I am pretty isolated, so I guess we’ll see what happens. I am half-Irish, you know.

Da da da da da da dum dum

Da da da da da da dum

Tequila!

(The alternate title for this post was “Listening to the youth of today, I’m pretty sure we’re all doomed,” but once I realized that the subjects of said title were en route to a vacation in the Middle East, I realized that their shock and awe display of stupidity had the potential to break wide open and spawn an international incident.

Thus the new title.

See you during a hostage negotiation, boys.)

So, to catch you up, I’m sitting here listening to these two (American) guys in their early 20s talking in the seat next to me on the plane.

And I use the word ‘talking’ lightly.

Basically one is edifying the other on the glorious diversifications of alcohols and their varying and sundry drinkability.

Clearly, a young alcoholic in the making, he is also a poet and a scholar, as you will soon learn.

His traveling companion doesn’t say much, preferring instead to giggle his responses.

Only they were both overweight and the real Beavis had chin-length hair. Otherwise? Exactly.

The two of them first caught my attention as my ears picked up on the sound of the Wizened One (let’s call him Butthead) instructing the Giggling One (Beavis) on the best bang for their airplane-sized mini-liquor $7.00 buck. Butthead went on a lengthy discourse about how awesome Courvosier is (which Beavis seemed to have never heard of. Obviously he doesn’t listen to much rap) and became notably upset that it was only available on trans-Atlantic flights.

It’s a common stereotype – the hard-drinking, brain-dead young man from the States – but you rarely encounter them in the wild. Usually, you have to go to frat houses and sports bars and keggers and the weightlifting section of the gym or lay a trap with a copy of Guitar Hero.

However, today is your lucky day. No such field trip is required. Sit back, pour a glass of your favorite 90-proof whatever, and enjoy:

“My favorite alcohol is probably cognac. And brandy is not the same thing as cognac.”

——-

“It’s called Scotch because it’s made in Scotland.”

——-

“I don’t drink American beer at all. I hate American beer. American beer is gross.

Mexican beer is good.”

***Five second pause***

“Alaskan Amber is probably my favorite beer.”

———-

Me working on, well, this actually here in Todos Santos, Mexico.

“What? Jungle juice?

Oh yeah, that’s fruit juice and 150 rum.

They call it jungle juice.

Do it in a five gallon bucket.”

———-

“I had sake once. It was disgusting.

It gave me an alcohol fever.

Any alcohol hot is gross. And it gives you an alcohol fever.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I loved the conviction with which he said it.

——

“There’s a big difference between Canadian whisky and bourbon. Yep. A big difference. There didn’t used to be. But there is now.”

———

“Spanish Fly is really good.

Especially with Thai food.”

Is Spanish Fly even real? I thought it was an urban legend or made up aphrodisiac like Funky Cold Medina?

————

Again, these guys were not remotely this thin. In truth, they were chunky monkeys.

Butthead: “A Mai Tai is like Chai tea.”

Beavis: “I don’t like that creamy stuff.”

Butthead: “Chai tea isn’t creamy. It’s like black tea with honey. And then you put rum with it.”

——–

“Me and my buddies get a big old water bottle and put Everclear in it. Everclear’s like really strong alcohol. And pineapple. It’s really good. Strong. It’s REALLY good.”

——-

And in the end, (despite the fact it was eight o’clock in the morning) and after much discussion about how to spend their $14.00, they ordered rum and Cokes. Hold the Coke.

So just rum.

Like pirates.

Ahoy, matey!

Shiver me timbers!

After deciding to save their mini liquor bottles as souvenirs, the rum kicked in and the deep thoughts really started flowing:

“There are plasma guns too. It’s the same stuff that’s in the TV. Plasma.”

——-

Beavis: “What day is this?”

Butthead: “Thursday. But it will be Friday when we get there.”

Beavis: “So today never happened?”

Butthead: “Right.”

——-

People were actually turning around in their seats in the rows in front of us to get a look at these jackasses.

——-

Butthead: “I heard Japan is very expensive.”

Beavis: “I think to fly there, but once you’re there, it’s cheap.”

Thus proving the old adage that birds of a feather do indeed fly together. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, Beavis was every bit as misinformed as his pal.

As for Japan. Yeah. Good luck with that.

——-

“Time is relative.

What that means is there’s only time with life. In heaven there’s no time.

And that’s just the beginning, if you can grasp it, that there’s going to be different flavors you’ve never tasted. And colors you’ve never seen.”

And – although he didn’t say it explicitly – booze you have yet to get stupid drunk on. Not  that God endorses that. He thinks you’re perfectly stupid just the way you are.

Eight pairs of shorts, three pairs of jeans, one pair of yoga pants, four dresses, and probably some other miscellanea I forgot?

Check.

A ridiculous number of tops and a sweater and a sweatshirt and a leather jacket although less than I originally started with and without the sweater boots I really wanted to bring?

(Although I may remedy that in just a second by purging some shorts or jeans or something in exchange)

Check.

Something like eight swimsuits?

Check.

A guitar I’ve become rather concerned they’re going to forbid me to bring onto the plane?

Check.

Sunblock and shampoo and all kinds of stuff I could probably get down there but apparently think I can’t get down there and am thus pushing the limits of the accuracy of my bathroom scale and upping the odds that I’m going to be throwing out .4 pounds of something at the airport in order to get under 50 pounds?

Check.

Three-hours of anxiety ridden sleep that now has me thinking I know what it must be like to be insane?

Check.

Knowing that I’m taking precious time to peck out a quick update to remind you that I will be in Mexico from now through March 31st writing the new book and hopefully with a reliable wifi connection – but we all know how those things work out (or don’t) sometimes – despite the fact that I have to leave for the airport in half an hour and wanted to work out at least a little bit and now obviously won’t?

Priceless.