Week 10

I believe in my lackadaisical/overworked/confused state this is in reality week 11 for us, we have never been that good with time in regards to passing of the moons. Ask anybody and they will tell you we have been dating for eight years, because that is what we have been telling everyone for the last two and a half years. I think we actually just caught up with our actual eight year anniversary. It is our own fault in trying to celebrate based on the Lunar New Year, one year it is in January the next February, is it a rabbit or is it a tiger anniversary?
This last week was amazing, we did practically nothing, but we did it on the same work schedule. Our schedules aren't completely in sync but that is for the best as regards to our tiny hot water heater trying to supply showers for two, which is four times the amount it can deliver in one go. Previously our days together were spent kissing one another good morning, goodbye, hello, and goodnight. Now we have time for smooches, regarding 'that was a nice walk', 'what a nice day', or one of my favorites 'I am actually coherent enough to know what you are talking about' so here is a kiss.
I have been on and off with a cold for the last two weeks, one of those annoying ones that just gets you sick enough that you feel like the crud on the bottom of a boot by the end of the day but the morning brings false hope of recovery. Steph's immune system (knock on wood) has been sturdy and the only nicks in its defenses has been allergies, something we were hoping would be alleviated here as our previous forays into Mexico had abolished nasal irritations.
We both ended up with two days off in a row this week, which didn't line up with each other, because of a Mexican holiday we were owed. Like icicles after a long freeze it felt good to shed some of that extra weight and let ourselves melt a little. This job builds a shell around you, it works you to the bone. But it is also fantastic in that it is easy, everyday is challenging in regards that you are an actor on stage for 56 hours a week. You act to everyone, customers, coworkers, managers and so on but those hours fly, they soar. I get to the end of Tuesday and often am psyched that I only have four days left to my week. This island allows you to cultivate the time you have off and treat it like taffy. You can pull it, stretch it, and fold it back over on itself. The only time you regret it is when you realize you didn't take full advantage of it. More importantly the masks you wear at work never stop the beauty of Cozumel from coming in, they just block the people who try to make you forget about it. And don't get me wrong, we work with a lot of people who wear much brighter and beautiful masks than us and we spend a lot of our time looking each other in the eye garnished with knowing winks.
Speaking of masks it is Carnaval in this neck of the woods, it aint no Rio, but last Sunday I went to the square to see the first performances, a kind of sneak peak.

Week 9

Shrimp scampi with risotto and sauteed zucchini with leeks, chicken and tomatoes over penne with a mushroom sauce, sauteed calamari and potatoes in a Mediterranean tomato sauce. This has been our menu for the last three nights, I am especially proud of it in that my stove is a hot plate with one temperature, hot. My kitchen knifes have found a substitute, my pocket knife. My cutting board is a plastic plate, and I only have one large spoon that acts as every handled implement one would normally reach for in the progression of raw ingredients to a finished meal. I could change all of this in a brief trip to the market, but I am not going to. I have no reason to, honestly these are some of the best half hour meals I have produced, ever. My limitations in preparation  and cooking have made me hone my sights on flavor in the supermarket and timing in the kitchen. Through my limitations I have learned to make individual flavors sing yet marry everything else found on the plate. Additionally my wallet has only released on average $8 a day for the two of us.
A day off, a wonderful day off finally found us on Sunday. Everyday we have had off together wounded hand or no has been cloudy and cold enough to think twice about going for a dip. This Sunday did an about face and mustered up all of its regiments of sun, warmth, sandy beaches and transportation. Our access to the ocean, though we live one block from it, is actually quite limited. Sure we could set up a towel on the main road and dodge fishing boats, local ferries, and behemoth cruise ships but that scenario errs on the side of a miserable time. What we needed was a vehicle and one came in the friendship of a coworker, Moises. Moises owns not just a car but a big old cadillac. After a quick trip to the super market for cervesas, rotisserie chicken, tortillas and salsa fresca, we found ourselves cruising to the wild side of the island.

The eastern shore is beautiful, it is dotted with tourist and local traps alike but it also has the remarkable bends in the road where one wouldn't know modern civilization set foot upon this island since the Mayans were here. The geology was scrubbed clean in 2005 by hurricane Wilma leaving petite palm trees and fallen cement lifeguard towers along the shoreline. The rocks were frightful, the eroded limestone structures looked liked human sized cheese graters, though the local families and the teetering toddlers made me look like an 90 year old man trying to find footing on a escalator.

I brought my goggles and found amazing fish but the most remarkable aspect was the sea and the sky. If Picasso lived here his blue period would have been completely different. Between the sea and the sky the blue takes hold over the landscape and is only cut through by the white beaches, rocks, and reflection of the sun across the surf.
Moises delivered on the following Sunday with a trip to a great snorkeling site. The snorkeling here is incredible and has me begging for the SCUBA experience. We found ourselves at a somewhat tourist/local location that as a US American I was expecting the landscape and wildlife to be a spoiled by the constant transients ruining what is natural. The truth is that when my toes hit the shore line I could have gone limp fallen straight down and when I opened my eyes aquatic life would be there to dazzle me. Two inches from shore small fish were picking off the scraps from land, 12 inches small barracuda were waiting for the petite fish to break from their schools. A few kicks with the flippers we found ourselves in a forest of purple sea fans. From there we become the stalkers of whatever fish entertains us the most, and the tens of thousands of them all have a show to put on. The queen trigger fish was the most imaginative swimmer while the multiple species of grunts and their curiosity of ourselves lent us the constant puppyish enjoyment of scampering away whenever within reach. I found crabs, sea urchins, fish making nests by picking up rocks in their mouths and carrying them great distances, and scuba divers. The most fascinating aquatic spectacles were the fish who changed color. I found these fish who I thought were puffer fish because of there bulbous heads and their diminutive tails, but when I descended to hopefully put a fright into them instead of puffing they changed from tan with black spots to azure with black spots. And they were not the only ones, I found species of parrot fish also displaying the same characteristics. I can probably go on forever but for now I promise you I will get a cheap underwater camera so pictures can replace my thousands of words.

Week 7 and Most of 8

 I apologize for this post's tardiness, I have been trying to retire early to bed and I tend not to write while I am with Steph. Stephanie has been home for the last week and a half as a result of her encounter with our front gate. She returned to work on Wednesday and seems to be managing with arrested digits, I think she has the hardest time with concerns of what her customers think might be wrong with her. People have the oddest preconceptions about the sterility, health, and well being of the people living in Mexico. Parts of downtown Portland are dirtier than anything I have encountered here in Cozumel. Her finger and palm has avoided infection nicely and she removed her stitches on Tuesday, something I am a little bummed I was not in attendance for, I would have liked to pull a thread myself as I have never had stitches.
The dual posting of this blog is also a direct result in the fact that I have not had a respite from work for the previous thirteen days. I have reached the point of where it is questionable if my mind is following my body or the reverse is true. The days were full of up and downs, rain clouds followed us around last week and I was once again let down by the lack of thunderclaps in this tropical climate. It is what I thought would be one of the additional perks on our adventure down here, tropical rain equals lightning, Zeus has let me down.

The rain cloud followed me into work and last weeks sales were miserable, this week though the sun showed its face and as the fog evaporated sales seemed to condense to my being. On Wednesday I made more in commissions in four hours than a two week pay period at my previous job could produce. It makes being here that much more enjoyable knowing that a job well done is achievable while being able to bask in paradise. My extended work schedule has been arduous and my mental capacities to put black pixels on white screen have been drained, I have been using the islands resources for contemplation and looking inward to think about what to put in these paragraphs. For it was only friday I floated in the ocean for an hour and a half contemplating this very posting.
The most pleasing of the creature comforts that has transpired from my last posting is that I have my computer up and running again. In Portland my computer screen was my television, my parents inherited that and my hard drive came with us. All of my internet connectivity has been through my iPad and has served me well to an extent. After my profitable day last week my first order of business was to buy a new computer screen. Though it is not as large as my previous screen it more than fits the bill, I bought something inexpensive, light and portable so I should be able to transport it to Alaska without incident. And those reading this blog will also benefit with pictorial representations of some of the beauty I find with the relief of not having to read a thousand words.
(Aaaah the internet has been down sense Saturday!!!)
I will wrap this blog up as I am afraid at this point I will not get this post up until next week.

Week 6

What transpired last night trumps the previous seven days in such a magnificent way that it wiped my slate clean. Unfortunately I believe my slate had some entertaining things inscribed upon it, but the raw torn flesh of Stephanie's finger white washed it away.
Let's step back from the dramatic. We were invited to a nice party at a very European bar over looking a very Caribbean ocean. The party started at ten which  was about two hours past our bedtime for the entire previous week, both of us had been up or restless for the last seventeen hours. Steph wanted to leave around eleven-thirty and I was, as always, still interested in being embroiled in one-upsman-ship, pointless, flirtatious, poignant, political and such conversations that revolve around a party. She departed and I found myself at the only table where ladies were sitting, it honestly was the only chair open in the entire bar. After striking up a conversation with the the only blond, blue eyed, Israelie I have ever met Steph showed back up. My first thoughts were "Great, why couldn't my open chair have been found next to Ari, Devir, Ronen, Uvlav, another Ronen, Sagi, or Pedro?" I quickly saw in the washed out expression on Steph's face and knew something was amiss.
On her initial departure from the party Steph found herself staring at our front gate of our apartment with no keys to receive entry. Her immediate decision was to climb the fence. Honestly this is a problem that has plagued our household for years now. The two of us leave our domicile as one and return as two. The both of us have been trespassing, breaking and entering in our own homes, more times than we can add on our digits combined. Unfortunately Steph didn't make it through this challenge unharmed. I still don't have the full account of what transpired between her and that gate but it is obvious the gate won in their dispute, and one of her digits was mauled.
After a very attentive and concerned taxi driver made her get in his cab as to abscond me to make flight to the nearest urgent care, Steph was the recipient of two new stitches.
I think the doctor was younger than I by four years, and his vibrating hands made me sit down to collect my wit out of the ethereal fog that came crashing down around me. I believe it was the same fog that I watched said doctor inject directly in to Steph's flayed finger  multiple times. It looked like a chef trying to inject brine into a raw, torn chicken thigh so it would not dry out during roasting.

Today she is on the mend, I think she will be fine in a weeks time. There is going to be a gnarly scar but it will just add to our story of how we up and moved to Mexico.
Oh yeah one of the details that wasn't completely erased from my brain. On the way home I saw an entire trunk full of assorted Mexican wrestling masks being unloaded. Literally a car trunk full, there must have been at least five hundred Mexican wrestlers staring at me.

Week 5

I am taking the advice of my mother and brother, I am making this a weekly blog. For two reasons this makes sense, one being that I can't write coherent sentences after work, and two being if I sat every night to put my thoughts down day after day my blog would become accounts of annoying customers and what time I went to sleep. A seven day recap should be a more intriguing read. I hope...
Week two-ish of work has been about the same as week one-ish, my schedule is consistent in that it fluctuates between morning and evening shifts, or more accurately early morning and morning. I have now worked both and the early morning is far superior. As I write this my visage is  in the dappled light of a giant lime tree that has a beautiful cluster of orchids in the hollow of a long lost limb. You, as the reader do not know this but I am going to have to recess as a bounty of fish, tortillas, chicken soup, with chips and salsa is being spread before me. Sadly Steph and I are not playing footsie, we have been dealt a hand where our schedules do not coincide. In fact today I got home from work as she was leaving for the day. We will be talking to HR about it shortly, we moved knowing home is where the heart is and our hearts can't be in orbit around our schedules hoping for collisions. 
I am back, it was delicious. We had our first rain on Thursday, even though I got caught walking home in it I enjoyed it to some extent. It was the first rain I felt in over a month, it felt good in that it was a hard, real, rain which I had not been caught in for an indisguindishable amount of time. The only thing at all vexing about it was my worry over losing the creases in my pants, and Steph worrying over my soggy condition when I got home. The precipitous weather is so ineffectual on my psyche as compared to Portland it confirms many of my decisions to move down here. I had all but forgotten that the skies had been dark when the next morning I found two of the island's Scottish Terriers playing in the surf on my way to work. I know my mother is reading this not believing the words I just wrote, but yes two Scottish Terriers playing fetch in the ocean. 
The sun is setting now, it as beautiful as ever but it always disorients me. From our apartment I can look at the sea, and looking on a map it looks like the sea is directly west, but we are on an ever so gradual outcropping of the island. My East Portland/ Oregonian ingrained compass tells me if my toes are touching a body of water the sun is going to set somewhere in front of me. I have developed the unfortunate habit of wandering in the wrong direction here, Steph usually trusts me to know where I am going but the sun sets in my compass' south. So I find myself circling blocks as I amble about, luckily San Miguel is small and I don't ever actually get lost, just tardy.
My personal categorization of ecology has also changed, the vulture has replaced the crow, the melodious black bird stands in place of the starling, skinks and geckos are substituting the common house spider, and pigeons are pigeons. I can't figure out what the pelican has replaced but they crack me up as they take lumbering dives into the ocean. Compared to the other sea birds they look like they are doing belly flops, but they often pop up rewarded with fresh sashimi. My other favorite comical avian that I happen along frequently is the sandpiper, they are the Prefontaine of birds. On my early morning commutes I will happen upon a flock in the middle of the street and they will run ahead of me for up to a block before they realize they have the ability of flight. It is absurd to watch them work their tiny legs trying to keep pace ahead of me like I am a tidal wave only for them to lift off the ground and find themselves out of harms way with flutter of their wings.
As we start to relax out of our little macroville I can't wait to happen upon iguanas, boas, and other large creatures that the Caribbean has to offer. Speaking of which, I recently learned that one of my friends, and coworkers, is a certified instructor of scuba and her boyfriend runs a local dive shop. So we will be partaking in some good discount dive opportunities as soon as our commission pay checks come in. Steph will need a little bit of coaxing but I am sure that as soon as she is face to face with a sea turtle she will transform into a mermaid every opportunity she gets. 

Day 22-27

Sorry I have been a bad blogger, writing doesn't come naturally to me and as the flow of work has increased the words have ebbed. I can already tell that my blog will be directly affected by when sleep takes place and along with the duration. If we are opening the shop then we are waking up at times roughly lining up when the bars are closing in Portland, (with the time change considered of course) and we are going to bed when stump town is coming home from work. So adjustments are needed in watching the sun set in winter and thinking that we need to be laying our heads down in an hour or so.
So far our schedules have not been sinking up to the best of our liking but we are still managing to figure it out, it is nice to actually work for a company that has HR where we can have them try and sort it out for us.
On the sales floor Steph and I are slowly figuring out. Between the two of us we have sold around $37,000 in the last week. We are both really happy with that, it is a weird draw of luck kind of environment. It just depends on who walks through the door when you are at the front of the line. The big sales will always add to your totals but we need to learn how to make the small sales frequent and bountiful.
The most difficult part of our jobs is the abuse our feet are taking. We are on our feet for at least 9 hours a day on hard tile floors. Today we were standing for at least 10, I know some theories of Chinese Iron Body training will began to kick in over time and we will won't feel the pain anymore, but for now the bottoms of our feet beg to be elevated and pampered by the end of the night. As the day comes to a close I beg for a customer not for the commission but just so I have somebody to take my mind off how loud my dogs are barking. We have both noticed some healthy weight loss in this first week in response to our highly mobile status in the work place.

Christmas was un-Christmasy but we enjoyed ourselves none the less. After dinner we had many choices for entertaining ourselves out and about on the town but our neighbors impromptu pizza and beer social hour on the roof won out on our socializing priorities list. A highlight as always was the calls home to the parents.
Food: Thursday we went out for lunch at a 'restaurant' a half a block from us, I use quotations in describing it as a 'restaurant' because it also is somebody's home. Not in the way that there are two parts to the house but that in the evening when they close up shop their dining room / living room is their domicile again and not the place you had lunch a few hours previous. They have a beautiful backyard though so you can escape the the portraits of relatives in which you have no relationship with beyond you both know someone who cooks up some really amazing Mexican food. For about $5 a piece we had a bowl of  chicken and rice soup and a well proportioned plate of our choice of protein with beans rice and veggies, and tortillas. I was in heaven.
Friday was my first big sale so we went to celebrate and had dinner at Le Chef again, and again it was delicious, Del Surs was closed.
For Christmas I made paella with chorizo, clams, and crab. Considering I made it on a hot plate it came out amazing.
Sunday we tried El Foco, a taco joint that is down the street, tasty!
Tonight I had a tuna sandwich, yes as we work more the delicacies will become less interesting.

Day 20 & 21

Sorry I missed a day of blogging, I was so incoherent after work nothing I wrote would have made a lick of sense. 
Our first day was mostly boring, I sold very little and Steph had no people come through her shop. I think this will probably be the routine we will have to get use to, the beginning of the week will be slow and it will only get busier towards Friday. 
Day two was more memorable, in that I could remember it. I love my walk to work, I watched the full moon make it's run towards the horizon, after a half an hour the clouds took on pinkish glow from the rise of the sun from the opposite horizon. Oh, did I mention that when I have down time I just stand at the store front and stare at the Caribbean ocean? Because that is what I do, and it is encouraged because it is where we greet customers. 
Work did start at a 5:30 AM so don't be totally jealous, okay be a little jealous. I sold $19,000 worth of jewelry today, with a 2% commission you can do the math. Steph had 9 people come into her store during her shift, so, yeah, do the math...
But on a positive note, Steph is getting along great with her co-workers, and when the cruise ships come into port, she'll have plenty of help navigating sales. The difference between my store and Steph's store, is that my store is more of a destination location. Steph's store is a shop that gets busy when a cruise ship with onboard promotions for her shop comes to port. So some days are crazy busy, others are VERY slow. She has only experienced very slow days so far.
Dinners: Left over chicken noodle soup, still yummy.
We had a late lunch or something, our days all are all messed up right now. Most people eat dinner about 2 hours after they get off from work, that falls around 3:30 for us so timing in our world is a little strange but anyways we ate dinner at Le Chef again. I didn't order the chicken breast so the prices were a little better. We both got sandwiches which we will finish the other halves tomorrow. We got a Caprese salad too, the fresh vegetables were greatly appreciated.