Horrified and fascinated

The flooding in Tabasco has been a ghost hovering about my days but my mind has turned ADD since we landed; hopping from one idea to the next, distracted by billboards and books. I almost always drive in Mexico and Jamie has been doing a lot of driving here in the US. I realized today, that while I have been downgraded to a simple passenger, there is so much that distracts me, here in the very urban SF Bay Area, that I would be a horrific driver. I don’t remember this much distraction when we lived here before and I can only surmise that my eyes have become accustomed to seeing jungle on each side of a two lane “highway”. The two lanes of trucks plus 2-3 lanes of car traffic on EACH SIDE of the highway here is overwhelming and I’m constantly staring at all the other cars, staring at the masses of billboards, staring at the hills chock FULL of house upon house, staring at the cities of industry, staring at the downtown following downtown of highrises, staring at the shiny tranquil water of the bay, staring at what is new and what has changed and not able to watch, for a slow moment, quite simply the car in front of me. Because there is a car next to it and a car a lane or two over and a truck coming up and we’re simply SURROUNDED by masses of cars and I’m not even thinking about the opposite flow of traffic. Yeesh!

Tabasco (state) and Villahermosa (city) have experienced the worst flooding in recent history. I don’t know if it makes the news in your part of the world, but the flooding has been compared to Katrina. The Mexican army responded to New Orleans and Katrina and so far, there has been no sign of US aid in stricken Tabasco. Ellen has a very good write-up on her blog at Yucatan Living. The rains are still coming, the flooding continues, and hundreds of thousands of Tabascans are without home, clean water or food. On a selfish note, we get all our bananas from Chiapas and Tabasco and a lot of our food. Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatan states will be hit by the flooding also.

The kids are having a wonderful time with their cousins and good friends. It might be hard to take them away, but Ellen has admitted to being homesick and I could go home in a moment’s notice. The heat of Quintana Roo has seeped into my blood and I cannot get warm here in frigid California. I’m so glad our family is not any further to the north or I might never come back. I hear from PaaMul neighbors that our kitchen has been outfitted with cabinets and I’m DYING to get pictures. It will be so lovely to have a place to put crap.

I’ve been spending the last few days completely absorbed in obtaining books for the kids. Spelling, Grammar, Vocabulary, Math, History, you pick a subject, I’ve got a book. We have always relied quite heavily on the plethora of amazing libraries we’ve found all over the US but they are quite few and far between in Mexico, so my only option is to try and anticipate what the kids might become interested in and provide that to them. The boys have been wanting more spelling resources and are always interested in Math. For the junkies, I took my base from Sonlight (cores 1&2 combined and 5), added History Odyssey, some Singapore Math, Learning through History and Michael Clay Thompson. I might have forgotten one of two; my brain almost burst with the selection and pricing. I checked prices with Amazon, Half.com, Powell’s, Ebay, Reading Resouce, CEM, Addall, the WTM swap board and then checked the local (and affiliated) libraries to see if I could see the product before ordering. I started ordering late last night and it should only take another day to finalize the math and LA selections. I sure hope the kids like the books; if nothing else, I’m going to have a BLAST learning about the Eastern Hemisphere this year.

Halloween was an AMAZING success for the kids and I’m hoping that we’re just about at the end of day after unending day of kids strung out on sugar. The girls decided to leave the candy they didn’t eat the night of Halloween for the Sugar Sprite, who, being a VERY FRUGAL Sugar Sprite indeed, utilized two of her Polly Pocket coupons and left a couple lead-filled Pollies for the girls. The boys have decided to gorge themselves into endless days of sugar stupor and I do believe they have actually killed off braincells in the process. Tomorrow we take the kiddos to a building full of trampolines and I’ll see what kind of photos I can come up with. I’m just killing time, waiting for the plane to go home. I love my friends and family, don’t love the cold, don’t like the traffic and pace of life, and really miss our house on the Caribbean. Oh, and that hot and heavy air. I’ve come to LOVE the heat and humidity. Never thought that would be a remote possibility, but there you have it.