What if this has to be okay.

Leaning into being out of everything

last week of May 24, being okay with just fine

Audio read by me…here.

People always say to me: “I sure hope you’re writing a book about all of this!” and well, I’m not. I mean, I might, but right now I’m too IN IT to want to retell the story.

The pics above are just the okay nothing special things that happened this week and one pic at the bottom to remind me that having the big property and all the green rolling hills and grass and privacy and silence and blueberries and herbs and an address for deliveries? Often came at a huge cost financially and physically. The bottom photo of my workers digging by hand to find a broken terra cotta pipe for a drain of a second septic tank I didn’t know I had.

I wouldn’t allow the backhoe because I didn’t want to ruin the roots on a 50 year old Japanese Maple. Learned how to use dowsing rods to find the water source from an old dude named Danny who said stuff like “this summer is hotter than a Billy goat with two dicks in a pepper patch” who drank diet Mountain Dew, warm, in the front seat of his truck.

Issues were monthly in a big old house with a lot of land. I added to it with chickens and ducks and having to be organic and dogs and cabins and projects of every shape for 14 years. Tenants both long term, short term and Airbnb, I hated all of that. Just a bunch of laundry and a cleaning job you give yourself while not having privacy.

While cleaning out more of my photos this week I decided to make a file called OH NO YOU DON’T so I can glance at that when I think I’d be better off buying or having more, I dunno, something. I’ll tuck in all the renovations, all the rotted flooring, all the re-roofs, all the landscaping fails (gravel with underlayment! it’ll never grow weeds! and other lies) and plumbing NIGHTMARES. The perennial flower beds that were some English gardener’s dream but required a full time gardener to manage and my endless love/hate with zoysia grass and un-mowing fields, left to go wild and listening to a neighbor 7 acres away tell me that I’d be eaten up with snakes. False, but there is an eco system that establishes itself when things aren’t sprayed and shorn on a weekly. Hawks eat the snakes that eat the mice and there’s enough for everyone but then you find that you’re not getting many blueberries because you’re such a haven for songbirds. On and on.

Yes, I learned a lot. Also, lost a ton of money. The End.

Do I need to know any of that stuff? Am I or will I ever use any of that knowledge again? I think not. I fancy myself living in a small Italian village in a rented flat above a bakery. I’m not going to farm again. It’s the way I felt after my folks died and I was in charge of closing the Estate and selling houses and sending money to older siblings I don’t even know (and don’t like). You don’t know what you don’t know and once you know you won’t need the info again because you only have one set of dead parents. A testing of your improv skills with no laughs.

Sad Clown College.

It’s like that with this dog rescuing I’m doing in this unplanned, unpaid, unfun Mission from Dog. I learned in the first year that I cannot go over 12. I used to say 7. But there’s too many dogs in this town who need help to have the luxury of just 7. Sometimes when there’s only 5 in the bed I feel like the gate is open or something is wrong… and where IS EVERYBODY?? It’s weird what you get used to. I can’t help everyone, nor can I feed them all, but I help where I can.

Some guy came by yesterday to see if I’d help with a dog who had eaten poison who was sick and hadn’t died. Yea, they let their dogs roam. There are monsters out there that put poison in hotdogs and put it near the trash bins. It’s the barbaric ‘euthanasia’ they do in Mexican towns when there’s no animal control. But frankly, people who drop off a family dog at a kill shelter are no different, they just don’t want to do the hard part.

All I could offer was charcoal and prayer.

None of my pack died this week. Everyone is happy and healthy. River doesn’t want to share the sofa with Cookie and Mattie and Brindy are unsatisfied with the kibble this week and Border got stuck in vacant lot where she shouldn’t have been, but mostly, pretty okay. Only one migraine.

I did laundry in a bucket and hung it on the line in perfect sunny 86 degree weather in my lawn-less back yard of sand. There were no weather events. They were out of chicken legs but had ground beef at the tienda. The bones were big for the dogs this week and that made them happy. I made a soup.

My fridge is empty but I find that I eat less and don’t look at all for comfort in food anymore. That’s huge. It’s simply not available here. The Comfort. Unless you like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and blue Taki chips with Jarritos soda. Even the tacos are bad. And I’m in Mexico.

It’s really unfair. But in the scheme of things in the world, I will survive this indignity. I’m either at peace with awful or I’ve given up.

I go back through my mental files of all the transcendent meals I’ve had in my culinary life. The cheese courses in Southern France, the audacity of wine pairings with each course, the tapas and vermouth in Spain, the late night pizza in NYC, the fried chicken in the US South, the Italian food literally anywhere.

I’m exhausted looking for that greener pasture. Partly because I know better than to go back to what I miss. Even if I had a way to get there (I don’t) or could afford it still (I cannot). I left solid comfort that had morphed into complacency for a different experience. This isn’t how I pictured it of course but we never do. This is just temporary (Day 1012) and some weeks you have to just be thankful that they had oranges in stock and that nothing blew up. And in May 2024, that’s where I’m at.

Thanks for reading! I’d love it if you’d subscribe or share this. If you’d like to check out the dogs or the rescue I’m on Instagram @ lolasdogrescue or for a tee-shirt or ways to donate to help me help the dogs linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue