We’re such sheeple…

For over a year, ever since we bought here in Quintana Roo, we’ve been looking at Merida as a place we’d like to live.  Mostly it was the architecture and the colonial feel and the prospect of real estate investments.  After spending almost 2 weeks in that city we found ourselves falling head over heels.  It didn’t hurt that the weather is cool (cool being relative – ask Jamie) compared to the heat of summer, but our dear friends Jonna and Mimi have installed a weather thingie on their blog and it sure looks like the weather in Merida and Playa is very comparable.  I’d always thought the summers were too hot for reason but I guess we’ll see what happens.  We found Merida to be amazingly forward looking.  Pedestrians have the right of way in many areas and there are huge signs to that effect.  The city puts on performances and pays for singers and musicians each and every night of the week in one or another plazita throughout the centro.  There are numerous cultural events – we can’t even begin to start.  Many many museum offerings at low cost or free.  Many art galleries.  A lovely park just outside centro with a running track and swimming pool.  All free.  Many plazitas have their own mercadito.  We would be 6-8 (can’t remember) blocks from the Plaza Santiago which is known for its good market.  Makes it so much easier than having to go to the central market always.  Narco violence is really just beginning there so it seems so much safer there and at a minimum the police presence is incredibly preventative.  Much much more than any place we’ve been.

Our medical issues have turned out to be totally fine – Jamie has either a fatty mass or a cyst but since it has completely disappeared they can’t even investigate it until he makes it grown again.  One problem solved.  Jamie’s back is much much better and he has a list of exercises to do.  Maybe if you all bug him and harass him, he’ll actually do the exercises.  He can be found at jamie dot s dot jam at gmail dot com.  I’m sure he will love me eternally for the help I’m giving him here.  I’m done trying to figure out the source of my non-vertigo.  Each and every one of the specialists told me I don’t have vertigo but I’m thinking it is a non-standard case and while I don’t comply with the definition it certainly isn’t anything really bad.  I’m going to take the blood work results to our hyperbaric chamber doc and let him look them over and I’m going to stick with his advice.  I’m also going to start up the vertigo exercises again.  I had two days in Merida that the “vertigo” was almost completely gone and it is so infrequent that it gets to the point that I can’t walk that I’ll take all the clean test results and stop persuing this for now.

So after we got the medical stuff taken care of we thought we’d try to fit in a little house-hunting.  We’d been already looking online for over a year and knew the market and where we wanted to look (location location location) but also knew our original budget had dropped from over a year ago and we’d have to be really lucky or really stupid to get a piece of property in Centro.  Well, I’m not sure which one we are, and we won’t know for a while yet, and we’re not even sure that the house is ours, AND I’ve read people 1-2 years into a rennovation JUST getting title, but it looks like we have a house in Merida!  We haven’t signed a contract or put down money but we have agreed on a price.  We skipped town on our poor realtor (I knew if we stayed longer each kid, one by one would get sick and keep us there at the $750MN a night hotel, so we got Pike to the point he wanted to and could travel and hightailed it out of Merida for the comforts of home.

Jesse fell ill last night with the Merida ick so I’m pretty sure we made the right decision.  The ick seems to be a horrific headache, fever (or not, in Jesse’s case), horrible awful no good very bad chest cough, and stomach something.  So far just the boys are down and I’m hoping it was a case of too much clima (air conditioning).

It is kind of difficult to work the purchase contract from afar, and this being a Friday and the fact that I have 2nd degree burns on my foot from spilling boiling water on it makes it even harder, but I’m hoping we can do some stuff here and then we’ll probably go back to Merida within the week to do other stuff.  I’ve already opened a sort of bank account except I’m not exactly sure if it is a bank or not, but they have quite a bit of our money and we’re either happy or stupid enough to be content with that.  I need to finish up that account and then fax our purchase contract today.  Then I need to figure out where to start with all the other stuff.  And as you can imagine, there is a LOT of other stuff.  And once we find that other stuff I’m sure we’ll find other other stuff.  And the beat goes on…

We’ve already had Jonna and Mimi’s architect come check our property and after going through their house yet again have decided we want to make a mini version of their house.  Our lot size is smaller but the layout is really basically the same.  So we’ll just have to scale it down.  But we don’t even have a signed purchase agreement so I’m guessing we’re jumping the gun a bit.  And we’ll be doing the renovation VERY slowly as finances allow.  But still, we have a house from the early 1800’s (we’re purposely ignoring the architect who placed the time period as the early 1900’s because we don’t want a house that new so we’re just going to subtract a century from his estimate) and we may or may not become owners.  We already have a few names in the running.  Casa Hundido (street floods so badly we have waves against the front door coming under it and into the livingroom), Casa Diesel (there is a mechanic across the street), Casa Iguana (Sissy loves the Iguanas), Casa Gecko (I should use the Spanish term), and another I can’t remember at the moment.  So we’re sheeple in buying (like Jonna and Mimi) in Quintana Roo, then sheeple for following them to Merida and now we’re going to copy their house.    I just hope they don’t decide to have a kid because I’m SO DONE having babies.