May 2008

This is a post I drafted a few weeks ago, before my blogging break. I figured pulling out some drafts would be a good way to ease back into it.

I’ve fallen out of the habit of listening to music regularly since we moved to Mexico. It’s partly because I don’t listen to the radio in the car anymore (Mexican music isn’t really to my taste) and fiddling around with the iPod and iTrip for short journeys just isn’t worth it.

Because of this I’d forgotten the power of music to really affect my mood and evoke memories. Some songs remind of a certain place or person or time in my life, like “Oh What a Night” always make me think of University parties in the early 90s, or an Everclear song which was on high rotation when Rocky and I drove around the US in 1996, or Groove is in the Heart that G & I danced to endlessly in our youthful night-clubbing days.

More than that, the ability of music to change my mood and make me feel sad, homesick, nostalgic, romantic or joyful is pretty powerful.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling really cranky. From memory it was about something silly like being forced to buy 8 tickets to Guerita’s ballet concert, even though we only needed 3. It actually wasn’t a big deal, but for whatever reason it made me cranky. Steam-coming-out-my-ears cranky and I thought “I’ve got to snap out of this!” so I searched my music collection for something “feel-good”. I always seem to come back to the classics at times like these, so I cranked this up on the stereo:

The subject matter actually isn’t particularly joyful but wow, the beat and the way Aretha sings just makes me want to sing at the top of my lungs and dance with reckless abandon!

It certainly got me out of my funk very quickly and the girls loved it too. One of my favourite mother-daughter moments is when the three of us are flinging ourselves around the family room with the music cranked.

So Think has been on fairly high rotation in our house lately. Chiq claps her hands and wiggles her hips and Guerita’s choreographed the whole thing!

It even snapped Chiq out of her whingy bad mood on our recent road trip. In my opinion anything that calms a screaming baby on a 4 hour car ride is GOLD.

What about you? Does music affect your mood? What songs make the biggest difference?

P.S. I was having a bit of fun learning about blending in Photoshop with that photo. If you want to know how to make something like this, check out this tutorial.

…where I’ve been for the last 2 weeks, well I’m still alive but needed to take a bit of a break from the blog.

The truth is, I’ve been dealing with some personal issues that I didn’t feel I could or wanted to share with the world in such a public way as blogging about it. Even though this is a personal blog, and I feel like the people who read and, more importantly, comment on my posts are friends, the thought of “complete strangers” knowing all my personal dramas was not something I felt comfortable with. At the same time these issues have been pretty all-consuming, leaving me little energy or focus to blog about frivolous day-to-day life stuff.

My apologies for such a cryptic post. I hope you understand that I’m not quite ready to talk about what’s going on here just yet. Maybe I’d be better off just spelling it all out rather than spark your curiosity and speculation (its alright, I would be curious too!). Perhaps I will soon, but for now I guess I need to deal with this offline.

I’m sorry I haven’t been commenting on your blogs either. I am reading them as much as I can and they are a welcome distraction!

Thanks to those of you who emailed or commented to see if everything was OK. I really appreciate your concern and it means a lot to me that you were thinking of me. I don’t want to lose the community I have found through this blog so I will try to keep blogging about our daily lives, as I have been doing. I think posting will be a bit light for a while though, so I hope that you will bear with me (and stay with me) until I can get back to some kind of normal.

My Mother’s Day started with a serenade from Guerita.

I woke at 6am to find her sitting in bed next to me singing “You are my Sunshine”, a song she’d learnt at school. It was so sweet and she was so heartfelt about it. It ranks right up there as one of the best ways to wake up. A little bit later than 6am would have been quite nice, but oh well. A sleep in was never going to be on the cards since Rocky was away for work and not due back till 9am this morning.

As well as the song, I received a number of beautiful pieces of artwork

and this one made at school

It says “Happy Mother’s Day! I give you this and much love. I love you.”

I had to laugh though because apparently they were told to cut out a picture from a magazine of something they would give us as a gift and stick the picture in the card. Guerita chose a jar of wrinkle cream to stick in my card! Do you think she’s trying to tell me something??

As well as the card, the school made a CD of the kids singing a few songs, including my morning’s serenade and a few songs in Spanish. It was pretty impressive! It reminded of when I was in primary school and our school choir made a recording (for a fundraiser, I think). From memory one of the songs we sang was Feeling Groovy and it was recorded on 45s!!

Perhaps I do need that wrinkle cream after all.

After we collected Rocky from the airport we went straight out for breakfast and then spent the rest of the day lazing round playing Junior Scrabble and splashing in the paddle pool.

Of course, we couldn’t forget the Grandma’s but had to call them the night before because of the time difference. I’ve never really gone for the purchased Mother’s Day present, either to give or receive. I’d rather I or the kids produce a craft or specially made card and given our distance from the Grandmas, we opted for a digital greeting. The obvious choice for me was a photo gift so I made these up in Photoshop for my Mum and Mother in Law. We’ll print them for them if they want, or they can just enjoy them on the computer. A new screensaver perhaps?

I hope all the Mothers out there had a great Mother’s Day too!

May Day (1st May) is a holiday in Mexico, as is Cinco de Mayo (5th May) so we decided to use the extra long weekend to take a short trip to Alamos, a colonial town a few hours south of us. We have been wanting to go for a while and since time was running out we seized the opportunity.

The drive down was a fairly straight and flat one, passing through a few small towns, but mostly the view was a lot of this:

which was quite nice and peaceful to look out at for a few hours, when the kids weren’t screeching or asking for food.

The traffic was fairly light, but there were a few trucks on the road. We followed this open truck for a while before I realised what was inside

So, after the obligatory ice-cream stop we made it Alamos.

Alamos, founded in the 1600s was once a bustling metropolis, fuelled by silver mines in the region and it used to be the capital of the large province (now 2 states) in the 19th century. It fell into disrepair in the early 1900s following the Mexican revolution but was revived in the late 20th century by American investors who restored many of the old colonial buildings and turned them into museums, hotels and restaurants. It has since become a popular tourist town and an American enclave, many of whom run the tourist industry establishments.

Its a small, quaint town with a large cathedral overlooking the main plaza, cobblestone streets and many, many beautiful haciendas. The houses sit right on the street with arched, full-length windows secured with wrought iron, and open up into gorgeous interior courtyards often with lovely gardens and little pools.

We stayed in a 150 old converted house now operating as a B & B, eclectically decorated and serving yummy breakfasts. (I’ve put some pictures of the food over at my kitchen blog)

We only stayed a few nights so we mostly wandered the cobblestone streets, gawked at the pretty houses and ate. We also spent a fair bit of time in the little pool at the B&B. The weather was milder than at home, but it was still over 35°C every day.

When you’ve been living in a place for a while, you get used to a lot of things that were so noticeable to begin with. Going on holidays in Mexico has often reminded me of some of these things and walking through the Main Plaza and market area of Alamos I noticed again how colourful and alive everything is here. Businesses and families and life in general spill out onto the streets and interact with passers-by, unlike at home where so much happens behind closed doors. People are friendly; they talk to you and smile, and for us in particular, comment on our blonde hair. It’s nice to soak a bit of that up before we leave.

Going to Alamos ticks off another one of the places we wanted to see before we left. Last year we managed to get to Veracruz, Mexico City and Cancun, but I don’t think there’ll be any more holidays now. Of course, there’s loads more places we would have like to visit in Mexico; the train ride in Copper Canyon (said to rival the Grand Canyon) was one we missed out on, but you can’t do everything, I guess.

On the drive home we stopped at the beach for lunch and a dip in the Sea of Cortés. The scenery is always nice there, but after growing up on Perth beaches, we have pretty high coastal standards. A pebbly beach doesn’t rate that high, but the water was refreshing nonetheless. Being in the sheltered Gulf of California, there’s not much in the way of waves, which is great for the kids.

It may well be our last trip to the beach before we leave, so I took the opportunity to visit my favourite Mexican pottery shop to stock up on Talavera, the iconic colourful glazed ceramics that decorate so many houses here (and the house of every tourist who’s visited Mexico).

Apart from the obvious - a lie in, some quiet time, no cooking or dishes (this last one is probably the only one I will get), what I would love for Mother’s Day…

Is to win this competition from Upstart Blogger and Big Arena Records for a free iPhone. I have real gadget envy for these phones.

To enter you need to link to Big Arena Records which is a new independent record label set up by three musicians.

I am always amazed by some of the incredible giveaways on some blogs out there. The cynic in me wonders if they are all legit, but you know, it’s not costing me anything to link to the blog and actually, I’ve discovered some interesting new blogs this way.

Of course, I am one of those people who never wins anything. Not a chook raffle or lotto or the door prize. But, you never know - maybe this time??!