a little bit more home

The New York Times did not arrive this morning, just as it didn't arrive so many Sunday mornings before. We regret to inform you that the New York Times, even just Sunday's edition, will not be arriving in the foreseeable future. You didn't read it when you lived there, in fact you mostly just haphazardly flipped through it at a cafe and then only when you had a hot coffee in hand and no friends in sight. Now you can't get it, regardless of what kind of promises of fidelity you might make. You live 9 miles from Mexico in a town of 14,768 (in 2000, but with no reason to believe its any bigger now). The New York Times will not be delivered, ever!

Donna itself has no known Sunday paper but I've also stopped reading her weekly wednesday drop which usually contains story with more heart and earnest reporting than I have read in awhile. Like since the high school paper, the one I got in such trouble in for my scathing letters to the editor. Anyways, here is the local news report:

It was a busy weekend in Donna. A girl had no plans and yet the weekend turned out to be perfectly full when it finally came around.

On Friday I saw the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees take on the...the red team. I fell in love #39, Banga. He looked at me a couple times where I sat with my friend in the 2nd row, so I think he realizes it true love too. While there I made friends with some Winter Texans sitting next to me. A "Winter Texan" is a phenomenon as regular as snow and ice in the heartland and actually is precipitated by that occurence. The clever midwesterners who get tired of their neighbors picked out Texas as an alternative to Florida, and come October they start showing up filling up their trailer parks and clogging up the roadways and the restaurants just over the river in Mexico. While most South Texas dreads their arrival, the annual migration is a treat to me as exciting as watching the cranes migrate through northern indiana. I've been a little lonely lately and confused. One because I'm not up north where all my friends are, but also, I'm not up north where the chilly air and colored leaves are. So when the retired Midwesterners migrate down, I have some buddies, not unlike family that I know. And I'm the girl whose not afraid to pick up strange grandparents in public - and so I did. I failed to get their number when we left the stadium, but walking way out in the parking lot to our car, someone honked at us. It was Mary and Dave! So I said hey, you don't need any extra granddaughters down here do you?

I'm so odd sometimes, but its so entertaining.

Saturday morning met me early - when the cat pulled down the curtains at 7:30 (Dunk! Dunk!). I rushed out to see who was at the door but it was just Tom Morrissey the Cat. He asked if, while I was up, I wouldn't spoon him out some wet cat food. Then there was some house sweeping, dog walking, cruising past houses for sale, football watching, pet store shopping, porch sitting, book store browing, pet store shopping, and general ADLs (activities of daily living) accomplished before i finally settled home at the end of the night to make dinner and watch a movie.

Except then the neighbors invited me over for their barbeque. Something about how Marco did up the pork ribs and beef ribs and fajita meat and sausages and chicken gave me the feelings that I had never been to a real barbeque before--That here in South Texas was a whole 'nother world of barbeque and implications for humankind (and their hearts). We sat around drinking and talking until late, late in the night.

This morning, Sunday, was not as early but meant a trip to the grocery to buy Mr. Morrissey his wet food and me my milk (I guess I don't like dry cereal either). Yard spraying for ticks, dog walking, coffee drinking, pet acclimating...

I know people always think I'm crazy for demanding pets around. "I want a pony" is not something i ever actually said but something my brothers used to tease out the fact that I've always had scores of them. I counted and I've had 20 in my life, if you don't count the goldfish because honestly who could count the goldfish? Tom Morrisey the cat and greta Garbot the terrier are 19 and 20, respectively.

But for the first time this week when I brought Garbot home from the vet I got lost in just enjoying my evening. For the time the hours between 5:30 pm and 7:30 am were not just a long break from work. It was my life, and I was at my home, enjoying it, and not even thinking about it. I feel infinitely more sane having some little ones around to focus my attentions outward, away from myself, and into something positive. And today, after a weekend that had no plans and thus planned itself, I feel happy, and at home. Its hard, I still get lonely, but I'm working really, really hard at it.

The fall in south texas is about windows and doors opening, cooler air coming in, the hope of turning the air conditioning off, of sitting on the porch in the evening without sweating, of birds in the trees, of returning to nature, not bundling up from it. So I'm excited to see what its like in a place where people say "Its going to get cold!" And they mean "Its about to drop below 80!" But I am glad my midwestern supports are coming down to help cope with a warm winter too.

I'm going to call Mary and Dave this afternoon and see if I can't get invited over to their retirement community trailer park for dinner, or some shuffleboard. I'm also going to go to the gym, and the take dog to the beach for the sandcastle show and to eat some ceviche (me, not her, ceviche is like mexican sushi, raw fish, but you wouldn't know it) And when I get home I"m going to set up my sewing machine.

Thats it. Thats my busy life in Donna Texas. I feel better now, don't you?