The patio gets a little slimy after a few days when there is some rain, so Lowe took it upon himself to get out there and give it a scrub. It’s funny, we always feel like we are rough on places, even without trying to be, but we always get reviews (this is an AirBnB) after we leave that say things like, “Thanks so much for taking such great care of our house! It looks even better than when you arrived.” So maybe we’re not as bad as I think. Certainly helps that Ali is a clean freak, and the kids are getting a little of that rubbed off on them.

We’ve made a lot of great friends through the years because of Bumfuzzle. One of those is a wonderful lady who sends the kids stacks of books every year, and this year included a bunch of sewing needles and yarn. We get little “Christmas presents” like this every now and then and they always bring a smile. Thank you to “The Book Lady” for this latest gift!

This is our favorite window. It’s hard to see, but that’s a shower head hanging there just inside the window.

Craziest thing. A few years ago Guatemala just lost postal service. We didn’t know this in Guatemala City and thought it was hilarious when we went to the historic Post Office building and were told they didn’t have stamps. We didn’t understand at the time that they literally did not have stamps for us to mail some post cards to the United States. Took us a while, but we eventually found the UPS store in town, and they handle postcards.

Me and the kids were out running around town when we found the UPS store and got the postcards mailed. When we got home Ouest told Ali that there was no post office so we had to go the “Ups store.” She does not find that (Ups versus UPS) to be nearly as funny as we do.

Note, the tape on this sign is about three years old now.

How fun would that job be? Never know what you’re going to uncover. I think I see the word “Movie” in there on the pink.

Testing out the skills. I don’t know why Ouest didn’t fully expect to get a blade in the eye here. And I don’t know how she managed to avoid it.

Ouest got new jeans when Grandma showed up but they were about twelve inches too long. Ali took the scissors to them, but somehow managed to completely screw that up. And then Ouest made me so happy. She was like, “I look like Pippi Longstocking.” And she totally does. And now those are my favorite jeans of all time.

After a few days away, and a few snips below the belt, Chavo came back to stay with us. Wow, can a dog look any more sad and pathetic than after getting fixed? The vet also took x-rays of his hips which confirmed that he had a fracture that was healing up. Poor Chavo, like so many other dogs, had most likely been hit by a car at some point. He gets sore, and he limps around a bit after getting up out of bed, but for the most part he’ll be fine. He doesn’t like walking down the sidewalk when a loud car comes roaring past, though.

Laughing at his shame.

Feels good to help out this little guy. I grew up with dogs, but “dog people” have, for the most part, turned me off of dogs later in life.

Come on, you know exactly what I mean by that.

But hey, I still have a heart. A dog like this doesn’t stand much of a chance in a place like this. So it feels pretty good to be able to do something to help. Ali did all the work (along with some incredibly helpful animal rescue gringos in town), and I really did nothing, but I’ll still take some credit—Chavo will soon be in Minnesota where he’s damn sure going to live the easy life. If he could have a ten-year reunion with his pals in 2029, I’m sure he’d be the envy of the class. Best of all, Ouest and Lowe are totally cool with it. They understand that a dog doesn’t fit our lifestyle so well, but that we can still do what we can to help out as many animals as we can. They’ve been doing it for years. I lost track of how many dogs we fed and got fixed in Mexico through the years. Fortunately, we named them all Brownie, so it’s easy for me to pretend like I remember and I know what they are talking about when they bring them up.

“Oh yeah, Brownie II, he was a nice one.”

“Papa! Brownie II was a girl!”

“I know that, I was just testing you.”