Different vs Exotic

This picture is from a post that never quite got posted.
Iris kept beating me at Candy Land which made me want to beat her.

That picture was taken in my obnoxiously green kitchen which is no longer MY obnoxiously green kitchen. The packing company is at this moment packing the last of our belongings. I didn't quite get to say goodbye to our home bc everything was so rushed. David came home, and when David comes home, it's go time. Although I won't miss the apartment, I will miss the apartment's location and views and neighbors terribly.
And here I am in Guadalajara. The kids are swimming with David and I'm sitting on the roll-away bed while My Master sleeps in the other room. We will go to a beach town outside of Puerta Vallarta tomorrow for a few days and then say...
Goodbye to Mexico.
Again.
But this time it's more likely that it's forever, at least from a residential standpoint. I've been thinking a lot lately about whether I've liked to be the odd woman: the accented woman with blonde hair who wears flip flops and shorts (although not as often as I used to). My brain has been dancing around the difference between being different and being exotic. Being different can be a bummer. Feeling exotic and living in an exotic environment is amazing. When I visited AZ this summer, we went to a bounce house. It was infested (in a good way) with Mormon women in knee-length cut-offs with their litters of children screaming and swarming around them. And there I was. In my cut-offs. And flip flops. With my swarming, screaming children. And my hair in a messy ponytail, just like everyone else, having the same conversations as everyone else. Not exotic nor different than anyone else.
Eccentricities are necessary, at least for me.
So...
What will set me apart in AZ?
Maybe I'll have to take up a new habit.
What if I became like My Master and scratched out my eyeballs when I got tired, or spit on people when I don't like what they are doing. I'm quite sure there is nobody in AZ above the age of 2 who has taken those up yet.

AND
one more thing
That last post was my 400th post.
Wow. Can I just say wow?
I heard blogging is now out of style.
Hallelujah!

A circus hobbit

Happy belated Mexican Independence day! The kids went crazy with the face paint after this pic.

Goodbye party #2: saying goodbye to the neighbors. We showed what any classy family would: Home Alone 3 and served whatever I have remaining in the cupboards. Ironically, the kids' best friends where we live, and the ones they hang out with the most, prefer to speak English. 

Jean Jaques and Nacho: 

Lucianne and Anaise

That evening our friends, the Morales, brought over the typical Independence Day soup, Pozole accompanied by panbazos. Yummy!

 

As soon as I found out we were moving, I had this dress chopped.

 

But first we played princess.

 

Before these were made. The picture doesn't do them justice.

When I was looking for my wedding dress picture, I came upon a gem...

 This was from the directory of our first ward as a married couple. I hid this picture for some time and was ashamed. Now I'm quite proud: A hobbit in a circus display. I'd take the job any day.

David was pinching me.

3 Events

3 big things this weekend:
1) First round of goobyes: School friends' farewell. The kids invited their best friends to go to Kidzania with them. Iris' very best friend, Emma, wasn't able to come bc her parents are in jail. They sued a school. The school's headmaster is married to a judge. They were arrested while they were Christmas shopping last December and the grandma has had to come from Columbia to take care of the 3 children and is afraid to let them out of her sight (with good reason). It makes me feel helpless and teary-eyed every time I think about it.
Anyway, here's the rest of the group. Isa, on the right, lost her first tooth at the celebration. Lucas is on the left.

David picked up the bigger kids from school and met us there. Eugenio, Guillermo, Rodrigo.

The un-tied-shoelaces boy is very sad to leave his friends. I am too. They are such quality boys, so respectful and good.

 

Claire's besties are Dasha and Sofia.

The painters

Saturday night we went to El Estadio Azteca to watch Club America vs Los Tigres. The blasphemy from the stands was almost as entertaining as the acting on the field. It's amazing what soccer players get away with: both the fake injuries and the dirty playing. Sybil experienced beer for the first time. We were splashed after 2 red cards were given to the home team within 5 minutes.

 

3) The Mexico City temple dedication was wonderful

My first embroidery project:

The best birthday present I can give is...

EMBARRASSMENT!!!

Here are some pictures of the birthday boy that I didn't ask him to pose for. It's all his own genius.

NO MAN ALIVE CAN ROCK A 

FLUORESCENT ORANGE TANK TOP 

AND TALL HAIR 

AS WELL AS DAVID

EXCEPT MAYBE ONE MAN

 TIME TO STEP UP THE GAME, DAVID

Here we go again

Last school year, I went to the kids' school to see them in a presentation. When I got there, I found Elijah on the stairs crying. He was so distressed that it took him a while to talk. It ended up being the result of some kerfuffle on the soccer field. After he was all cried out, his solution to the problem was what grabbed and twisted my heart.

He said, "It doesn't matter mom, because I'm not even going to be at this school next year."

After moving 15-20 times in my 12 years of marriage, I have that same attitude about my kerfuffles:

the pesky neighbor
the fluorescent white walls
the one-sided friendships
the teacher who doesn't appreciate my child's brilliance
the toilet handle that spits water every time it flushes
the drama between the youth in the ward that I can't quite wrap my brain around nor alleviate
the language I so desperately want to master, but mainly just feel like a fumbling fool
the dilemma of do I really have to kiss you every time I see you and say goodbye? even if I don't know you and I have horrible halitosis?

The good news is that there's a solution. A proven remedy. It erases all of my problems. Not just a few. It wipes them all clean. 100% Mr Clean approved. And it happens every 1-2 years:

I MOVE.

Then I don't have to solve any of the problems. I just leave them. Of course I inherit a new set of problems in my new location, but it takes me a few months to discover them, a few months for them to settle in and tickle the fringes of my nerves, and maybe only a month or 2 when they really nag me. And then **WHALA**, they disappear, because

I MOVE.

That last week or two before I leave, I drive down the road (because that's what I'll miss the least) thinking, I'm not going to miss this challenge or that problem or that butthead over there who drives like a blind grandma who has spent her life as a privileged, overdosed druglord because

I'M MOVING.

So, I've come to the conclusion that I'm a wimp.
I'm not a problem solver, I'm a problem escaper.
It works for me.

BECAUSE HERE WE GO AGAIN...

Ocotal: the Oak Alley of Mexico

I think I've mentioned the Ocotal before. It's were we like to go running, just 10 to 1,000,000 minutes from our house (depending on traffic, of course). I took pictures today. Below is my favorite part. It's a long alley of ocote pine trees that goes on for at least a half mile. I'm not sure why they were planted that way, but it makes me imagine there might have been a grand hacienda at the end of it at some time and women in big skirts and hair pranced along this beautiful corridor.

 David is on the bottom left side. He is definitely the only one who runs shirtless in the Ocotal, and maybe in all of Mexico

The Popycan and other such junk

Friday night, David took the 3 older kids camping. I stayed at home with the baby so she wouldn't get frostbite. Saturday afternoon we had invited all of the youth and youth leaders to our place for a BBQ. Saturday, when the party was about to start, David was on his way home from the campsite and I was sitting on the couch reading my scriptures.
This is where the story begins.

Version 1: A version of faith (from my perspective at home)
I get a frantic call from Elijah, "Mom, Dad was stopped and is getting a ticket."
I hear David yelling in the background, "Caroline, they are taking the car to the pound because I won't pay a bribe."
Hangup.
I read me scriptures more furiously and pray fervently.
I text David, "Don't get mad. Stay calm. I love you."
David calls, "I forgot my license so this could get bad for me when they find out."
I think, why the heck didn't they ask for your license before anything else? Shouldn't that be the first order of business?
More prayers, bc taking 3 kids and a carfull of camping gear to the pound could get sticky.
David calls,"It's done now. He took me to another cop who wrote me up."
SALVATION!!!
Lots of prayers of thanks.

Version 2: A version of horror. 
After the squall dies, David showers, and we greet all of our guests. Then I get the real, horrifying story.
The cop stops David and asks for a bribe bc our registry sticker is overdue. David refuses and gives him a Donald-Trump-esque lecture. Cop threatens. We find out later that cars can't be taken to the pound for that infraction and a cop suggesting otherwise is punishable by law. Ok, David's next move is quite possibly the stupidest thing he's ever done...maybe except for beating up a big black man on a Manhattan subway, or maybe the dancing sock, or then again, there's throwing the bikes in the canal, and the car crash on the Huey P. Long, or flipping the borrowed truck several times, oh dangit, this is getting out of hand! Lets just say that if there was a news helicopter above them, they would have been filming.
David put the pedal to the metal. He tried to escape from the cop! The problem is that David was in a Honda Pilot and the cop was not. Hello! I'm not sure how long this went on, but can we just keep in mind that there were children in the backseat? My children.
So the cop catches up to him and says, "What are you doing?"
David, "We're going to the pound right? Let's go."
The cop leads him to another cop who pretends he needs 1500 pesos for the multa. David gives him 1300, comes home, tells me the story, and I become physically ill.

This is where I want to put those cops and this story and bribes and dog crap:

PS. In case you were wondering, we now have to pay the real, actual, genuine fine in addition to the "I'm a filthy, lying cop so give me all you have" fine we already paid.
PPS. I still love David a whole lot, even though he's a bit jumpy and makes me physically ill at times.