Michael & Liz are Bloggable

It's been a week since our garden building adventure began and a lot of progress has been made. Last Sunday we had just started digging and today we have a wall...a tall wall too! Michael has been going to Lowe's after work the past few days to pick up 30 or so stones at a time because that is all that will fit in his car without being completely overloaded. So today, we took both of our cars and filled them up with stones to finish it off. The first 2 pictures show the progress of the week, and the last 2 pictures show what it looks like now. Next step is to line the fence with wood and finish the end stones and toppers. Then, we fill it up with dirt!

Last week before my parents left our house, my Mom gave me 3 of her Rascal Flatts CDs. Recently (the last 6 months) I have been on a Country music kick and I firmly believe it's some of the best music out there. I'm no longer ashamed of it. It's pure, clean, and well written music. My favorite artists are Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, and I'm very sad to admit, Taylor Swift. I guess not being ashamed of that goes along the lines of this post. Go out on a ledge and live life for all that it's worth. So I was VERY excited to see my Mom had some Rascal Flatts CDs and I took advantage of it.

There have been several blog posts in the past where I talk about changing myself for the better and doing things that challenge myself so that I use my body and mind to its fullest extent. Well when listening to one of the Rascal Flatts CDs, one song really hit me along that theme and one line in that song really moved me and made me say "I really hope that's me".

Here is a link to the song on youtube. Ignore the video. I couldn't find a normal one and the video is stupid, just listen to the music.

The line that I love in it is "Here lies a man who lived life for all that it's worth" but the whole song tells a really good story.

Here are the full lyrics:

I spent the morning at an old friend's grave
Flowers and 'Amazing Grace', he was a good man
He spent his whole life spinning his wheels
Never knowing how the real thing feels
He never took a chance or took the time to dance
And I stood there thinking, as I said goodbye
Today is the first day of the rest of my life

I'm gonna stop looking back and start moving on
Learn how to face my fears
Love with all of my heart, make my mark
I wanna leave something here
Go out on a ledge, without any net
That's what I'm gonna be about
Yeah, I wanna be running
When the sand runs out

Cause people do it everyday
Promise themselves they're gonna change
I've been there, but I'm changing from the inside out
That was then and this is now
I'm a new man, yeah, I'm a brand new man
And when they carve my stone, they'll write these words
"Here lies a man who lived life for all that it's worth"

I'm gonna stop looking back and start moving on
And learn how to face my fears
Love with all of my heart, make my mark
I wanna leave something here
Go out on a ledge, without any net
That's what I'm gonna be about
Yeah, I wanna be running
When the sand runs out

And as the cold wind blows across the graveyard
I think I hear the voice of my old friend, whisper in my ear

I'm gonna stop looking back and start moving on
And learn how to face my fears
Love with all of my heart and make my mark
I wanna leave something here
Go out on a ledge, without any net
That's what I'm gonna be about
Yeah, I wanna be running
When the sand runs out
I wanna be running
When the sand runs out
Yes I do, mmm

I realize I'm blogging a TON lately, I hope at least a few people are enjoying it. I just asked Liz if she is reading my blogs about Mexico and she said no. If she's not reading this, I can't imagine I have a huge audience. Here is the last email I sent to my parents before we left Mexico:

well today is the last day of our trip. it'll be cool to get back to our normal schedule but I am definitely going to miss all the experiences here. I personally have LOVED using my Spanish here. I feel like I have retained so much from High School Spanish. The other day at the girls school festival, I bought Callie a balloon. Most of the balloons said that it was Valentines day with the writing "dia de amor y amistad" which says "day of love and friendship". But Callie's didn't have writing on it. As we walked away, I said to Callie, "is it OK that it doesn't have writing on it?" and she said "yeah" kind of in a sad tone. I persisted and she said, "I want the writing but I don't know how to ask?" and I said "it's OK" and I walked up to the lady with the balloon and said "no escriba?", which is roughly translated to mean "no writing?" and she immediately gave us a balloon with the writing. There were several times where I have surprised myself that I actually remembered my Spanish.

Last night we went down to the beach just to walk around and ended up seeing the turtles again. There is an organization that works on saving the turtle population and every 3rd day at sunset they let the hatched baby turtles out in the water. We were lucky enough to see them twice on our trip. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing those baby turtles released into the water. I just love animals so much and to see them being taken care of in that way is really awesome. It pains me to see all the stray dogs around here and to hear the stories of how they are treated. It's almost just as common to see a dog hopping with 3 legs as it is to see a dog walking on all 4's. I told Hillary today "it seems like it would be advantageous for dogs to be passive around here as opposed to aggressive". Passive dogs get in less fights and get hurt less often and are more likely to receive food from the locals. It's just not in me to not do anything to help any of them, but we're only here for a week.

today was a little more lazy, we went down to the beach and walked up and down. we ended up walking 2 miles total in the sand. It was certainly a work out on my ankle, but i can feel it getting stronger, which is good. i dont think running will be a problem when we get home. the walk was really enjoyable as the waves were the largest I have ever seen. We've been to the north shore in Oahu and these waves were much bigger than those. It legitimately sounded like thunder was hitting the shore and we just stood there in amazement of the size and power of the water. I really have never seen waves like that before. You couldn't have paid me to go out there. I really will never forget how massive they were. Libby, Scott & Hillary's dog, went out in the water where the waves hit the shore, and to feel the power of the water rushing up and down the shore, even Libby going out that far worried me.

We then went to Sayulita to Burrito Revolucion to have "gringo burritos", which are just American style burritos, which is to say that they are HUGE and have lots of stuff in them. Mexican style burritos are small and are a normal portion with just a little bit of stuff in them. I got a "burrito de camarones" which is a burrito with shrimp. It was delicious. I think I can make a similar burrito at home so I may try sometime in the next few weeks. It was definitely delicious.

In the afternoon we did some reading and hanging out and just enjoying our last afternoon here. I constantly got distracted by the number of loud trucks passing by selling things. We then played with the girls building castles with blocks and building train tracks out of the blocks. We also played "go fish", and seeing them play so sweet with each other really made having children that much more appealing. I hope our kids are that sweet some day. We had tostadas for dinner (flat hard shells topped with stuff on it) and that was of course delicious. I went out today and finally caught the donut man and got 10 donuts for dessert and breakfast tomorrow. The last time I caught him, it was 4 pesos a donut (which is about 30 cents a donut), and this time it was 5 pesos. This caused a problem though because I already asked for 10 donuts of all different kinds and was standing there holding 40 pesos. My Spanish isn't good enough to try and say "sorry i only want 8 donuts then", so i ran in the house and begged for 10 more pesos from Hillary. I guess I blended right in with the girls, who wanted ice cream from the truck twice today. But unlike the girls, my request for 10 more pesos was granted. :)

We're starting to pack now and will probably watch a couple episodes of The Office on the computer before we go to bed. It's so sad to be leaving because it really has been a vacation from everything. I have stayed in touch with you over email but this place really is totally an escape from everything we know. Also leaving here means having to go back to work, which is less fun.

By the way, our pictures are all posted now, check them out here.

Here's the email to my Mom from a week ago:

We're going hiking in Sayulita and I don't think there are any plans after that. We might just hang out and chill which I would then take advantage of the "palapa" upstairs and do some readin.

The roads here are crazy. They are kinda like the roads around Indian Hill in Cincinnati. Where the trees are all hanging over making a tunnel of forest. It's also funny because they sometimes have random speed bumps in the middle of a 40mph road just to slow people down. To make left hand turns, you pull off the side of the road on the right, wait for traffic to pass, and then cross the road. There are a bunch of unwritten rules that people have to follow, I'd have a tough time driving around here. There's also a place in Puerto Vallarta where they make the speed limit 15 mph on a road where everyone is going 50 or 60. We think the police specifically racially profile the gringos and pull them over and give them tickets (or just make the gringos give the cops money) for speeding when it's almost impossible to slow down to the actual speed limit. That's the only place where cops have been around down here. Scott & Hillary say they need to take the front U.S license plate off their car so it's more difficult to be spotted as a gringo. So far though, they have only gotten pulled over once.

I was up early this morning because I was trying to catch the donut truck outside. In this town, there are tons of trucks that come by delivering things from water cans to natural gas canisters to donuts. You can almost get anything delivered on a truck. Someone yesterday drove by selling mattresses. We have only stopped the donut guy once but the donuts are delicious, really similar to Dunkin Donuts actually. Mexicans don't eat donuts for breakfast though, they eat them as desserts after dinner so to hear it in the morning made my mouth water. The other funny thing is that the trucks have no regard for time of day. The donut guy was blaring his music at 6:30AM and drove by our house. I got up and was hoping he'd come back by, but he didn't.

Time to shower up and get ready for some hiking. This trip has gone so fast :(.

A few weeks ago I (Liz, yes I'm blogging) was reading an article that interviewed Michael Pollan and had an inspiring moment to start a vegetable garden. Yes, me...the one that can't keep most plants alive. I don't know why I got this crazy idea in my head, but it just seemed to make sense. We have an area in our backyard that is just screaming to be turned into a garden, so we decided to just go for it. 2010 is the year that I will start growing my own vegetables. Planting season in NC starts in April, so we have a little time to get the backyard ready for seeds. Today was a gorgeous 60 degree day and it would have been a shame to stay inside...so we got out the shovels and got to work!

This is the before picture. Since moving in 3 years ago, it's been the corner where piles of leftover dirt were tossed and has been known as Mt. Daisy, since she is always running around up there. Looking at this picture now, it's sad that this area of the yard has been neglected for so long.
The first step was to clear out the leaves, and Michael started to dig along the fence. The plan is to build a wooden frame around the fence walls, and then put a stone wall around the front. These next pictures show the digging around the wall and how Mt. Daisy kept getting taller and taller!
Then we were able to outline where the stone wall would go with stakes and twine and Michael started digging around the outline.


Once we knew where the stones would be placed, the dirt was moved around enough so it wasn't a huge pile.
The next step is to level out the ground enough to put the stones down, and the wood along the fence. Then we'll need to till the soil so it isn't completely hard clay and put the top soil down.

In our house, Michael is the lawn guy...it's his territory. Since thinking of this crazy idea a few weeks ago, I've made it very clear that I will do the planting, watering, weeding, etc...I just need help with the actual building of the garden bed, which is really hard work! So thank you to my helper!
I've never gardened before, so I plan to blog along the way asking for any advice you can give me. For the next few weeks I'll keep you updated on the progress of the garden bed...from now on being called Daisy's Garden...don't worry, we have a plan to incorporate Gryffin into it too!

Last Sunday we went over to Hillary's Dad's condo in Punta de Mita. It's a small town on a peninsula and her Dad has the sweetest condo. After spending a little time there, Liz says "we have a new retirement plan". Their condo is on the second floor with a sliding glass door that spans the entire back of the condo, where if you open it, the entire wall is gone for a view of the ocean. They had all custom furniture like a 15 foot long couch, and a 5 feet by 5 feet coffee table. That's an ENORMOUS coffee table, fit for a king! We hung out there and watched a little Olympics on Canadian TV and played in the pool and warmed up some tostadas. It was super relaxing.

We then went to the movie theater again to see if we could see Avatar in 3D in the Puerto Vallarta mall. This time we had the time right. I really didn't like the 3D version better than just a normal movie and for so many reasons. The glasses dim the movie so it's no longer bright and crisp the way it should be. The sides and corner of the movie are blurry because of the 3D, and when there is fast action, the 3D makes the images blurry. Also it's really tough to take almost 3 hours of 3D images. I had a slight headache at the end. It just felt like a distraction, cuz Avatar is such an awesome movie. I would probably chalk it up to it being the theater but I felt the same way after seeing Superman in 3D a few years ago. We then headed back to the condo where the girls stayed while we caught the movie and Gilly made the greatest spaghetti and caesar salad. After days of new and different Mexican food, it was nice to have something familiar.

We stayed there watching the men's mogul event and figure skating until about 10, and then headed home.

Friday morning we went down and got some breakfast at a nice little place in town here. I didn't want any eggs or breakfast stuff so I got lunch (a torta) at 9AM. I'm silly like that. We then went down to the beach and threw the football and played sand volleyball with a few of Scott & Hillary's gringo friends down here. They said it was nice to finally have a full game of volleyball. We also went down into the ocean afterward, and don't worry, I didn't go out too far seeing as I'm back and writing this email. But the waves were huge, very fun.

We then headed back, got showered up and went to lunch in a town called Sayulita. We had fish tacos from a place that Scott said was his favorite fish tacos and I gotta say, they were AMAZING. They are basically strips of fried fish, like maybe tilapia, with cabbage, onions, and some chipotle mayonnaise type sauce. I told Scott I want to have it again before we leave.

The plan for the afternoon was to go to the big mall in Puerto Vallarta to see Avatar in 3D but when we got there, we found out that we had read the times wrong on their website and just didn't have time to wait around for a 6PM movie. It's funny going from a town where it's dirt roads, stray dogs, and chickens running all over, to a big massive mall with marble floors and nice stadium seated theaters. The saying here is that Sayulita and towns like that are the real Mexico, Puerto Vallarta is not. So instead we drove down to the touristy areas of the city and walked on the boardwalk and walked through the shops and stuff. We got a magnet for the fridge as we always do on our big trips and Liz got a ceramic bowl for salsa.

The reason we couldn't wait around for the 6PM movie was because we had to pick up a dog named Alondra at the Vet in Puerto Vallarta. The long story is, when they moved here back in July, they had 3 dogs attach immediately to their family. One was named Petunia that they were able to adopt to a man who lives out in the country with a lot of land and he loves Petunia. The other is named Bubbles and they still have Bubbles here. She is basically like a 35 pound, brown dog that to me looks like a miniature Great Dane. Very very sweet and very tempting to take home with us. If Scott and Hillary offered, I would probably take them up on it! She is maybe 8 months old and full grown and just full of fun and energy and plays with their dog Libby just like Daisy & Gryffin play with each other. There is this Canadian non-profit group that finds relatively smaller dogs in Mexico, gets them healthy and then sends them to families in Canada that want a dog. Apprently the dogs in Canada are huge and small dogs are a rarity. So for families that would like a small dog and also save a dog from a life of hardship, they get dogs from Mexico and send them to Canada. The organization is called Mexi Mutt and I included a link here. Bubbles is heading on a flight at the beginning of March to go to a Canadian family in British Columbia. There's a lot of regulation too as far as finding the right family, so Bubbles would be well taken care of. A happy ending indeed!

The third dog Alondra doesn't have a happy ending. Alondra was just like Bubbles when they got here. Very energetic and happy. She is owned by a family across the street who should NEVER EVER own dogs. They don't care about their dogs at all. And around August-ish Alondra was hit by a car in the street here and broke her leg. Hillary saw Alondra just laying on the sidewalk and when she said "Hi", Alondra didn't move and that's when she found the broken leg. Hillary tried to tell the family that Alondra was hurt, but they didn't care. Hillary then took her to the Vet. Alondra got a rod put in her leg and tried to get it healed. Fortunately surgeries for that type of thing are super cheap, maybe $20? Crazy cheap! Sometime in November or so, the rod slipped out of place and was just poking through Alondra's leg like a tent. Hillary took her back and got it fixed again. And the same thing happened only this time the rod was pulled out of place by the owning family in January, and only a couple days before it would have been removed anyway. She asked the vet if they should just take the leg off, because by now it had atrophied and was useless, and the Vet said that would be best. So yesterday we were scheduled to go pick up the 3 legged Alondra at 6:30 after our movie. When we got there the Vet started telling Hillary how the surgery went and drew the situation on a piece of paper. It turns out Alondra had a massive tumor on her hip as well as all up and down her leg, which might be why the rod wasn't being taken well. The cancer had spread to Alondra's lungs and when Alondra tried to get up from after the surgery, she couldn't breathe and died yesterday. It was extremely tough to hear and very difficult on Hillary who started to connect the dots as to why Alondra was always so drowsy and inactive the last few months. Alondra wouldn't even eat the last few weeks and had gotten super skinny. It's somewhat of a consolation to know that it wasn't her leg that caused her death. Hillary is going to have the Vet send her an email with the explanation of what happened to Alondra and then give that printed email to the family to explain what happened. We all are guessing the family won't care.

I don't know if I told you this before or not, that same family had a dog a couple weeks ago that the kids would abuse and throw in the air (without then catching it). It was a small dachshund type dog that Hillary said looked like a brown Gryffin and was just as sweet and kind as Daisy. The Dad in the family had even asked Brynn at one point if they wanted the dog. A couple weeks ago Hillary had noticed the dog wasn't around and the kids said the dog died. Turns out the dog had eaten rat poison and died from that. There's no way of knowing whether the dog was fed poison or had eaten it on his own, but it was gone nonetheless. You can imagine how the family would have reacted to a 3 legged dog so maybe Alondra's situation was a blessing in disguise.

Anyway, the whole day, Hillary's dad and Gilly had been taking care of the girls so we came back and hung out with them a little. Scott, Liz and I walked up the street to a local taco shop that had some delicious tacos. They were so good that I ate 6. That was probably too many, but hey, it's vacation. We then came back and went to bed a little early just from the all day exercising we had done.

Today's plan is we're going back to Sayulita for breakfast and hanging out there a bit, and then coming back here to make some brownies for a festival in the "plaza" of the town. Their school is putting on the festival and Scott and I working the ring toss and Liz and Hillary are working another booth (I can't remember which one). Even though there are kids there, the festival goes until the wee hours of the morning (it starts at 5PM). Scott told me that and I said "you let Brynn and Callie stay up that late?" and he said "oh, we don't stay, but all the locals and their kids do."

The only downside of our trip so far? Those stupid roosters. It feels to me like God's way of setting an alarm clock for us, but man I despise those roosters. I sleep until 4AM, listened to roosters until 5:30, and then sleep again until 7 or 8. I call it first and second sleep. This morning, I got no second sleep.

So for the next week I'll be writing out what I did the week before. For anyone who doesn't know, we went to Mexico for a week to visit Liz's brother Scott's family. Every day I wrote a letter to my Mom for two reasons, to keep the family up to date on all our different experiences and to also document what we did. That letter will be used as a basis for my posts. Once we have pictures to go with the stories, I will include those as well. Here is what I wrote last Thursday:

We've had a great day. i was woken up by a rooster that was crowing at 4AM and it kept me awake until 5:30, then i fell back asleep until 7. Since it's a two hour time difference, technically it was 9 eastern time, so I think that's pretty good. We took a walk in the morning to the beach and walked up and down there with the dogs running around. They have their dog named Libby and then a stray they took in named Bubbles. They are trying to adopt Bubbles right now so they are taking care of her until then. She is super super sweet and makes me want to take her home and take good care of her, but the same is true for most of the dogs on the street here. They are treated so poorly by the locals. Hillary told us about a dog that looked IDENTICAL to Gryffin and said "had that dog still been here when you came, I might have told you take her." But unfortunately the family that "owned" her, poisoned her because they got tired of her (or so we all suspect). The fact that she was poisoned is not in question, it's just a matter of the circumstances. It happened two weeks ago, just breaks my heart. They're just animals to them.

After our walk, we headed out to a town called Sayulita where the Vet is located where we donated all the dog supplies. The woman who works there was super appreciative, so that was pretty awesome.

We then went to another town called Penita and we went to a market where they have tons of shops and stands of people selling things. that was fun to get the local food and see the local people. We definitely had some down home mexican food. I had a torta which was delicious. We then went back home and walked to the girls school to pick them up.

We came home tonight and I did a little reading on the second floor porch type area in the front of their house that they call the "palapa". It's called that for the straw type roof that covers the room. I can already tell I'm going to miss being up there. It's so open and breezy and relaxing. Ugh, LOVED it.

Hillary's Dad and his wife Gilly came by and we then went down to the beach again where a conservation group releases turtles every third night. We got lucky and got to see it tonight. It was so adorable seeing the little turtles trying to crawl their way into the water and then getting swept away. It was a little bit of a shame though, because it is somewhat of an attraction, so all these children and Gringos (white people) were getting in the way and picking up the babies and moving them closer to the water. It's important that the turtles make it themselves so the woman in charge was trying really hard to keep order of the situation.

Anyway, Hillary is making some authentic "Tomales" for us for dinner and I gotta go, I'm anxious to try these! She took a Mexican class to find out how to do it.

We're having an awesome time. It's going to be sad to leave here despite the fact that it is such a different culture and environment. I'm loving being engulfed in it and trying to speak the language. Who knew my high school Spanish classes would be so handy? I knew enough to talk to people in the Mexico City airport and get us where we needed to go.

Why do I have such negativity about vacations? Every time I look forward to a vacation by saying "oh man I can't wait until blah blah", I always follow it up by saying "it's going to suck when it ends, I'm really dreading that".

Just now, a few minutes ago, I tweeted the following line: "I can't believe in one week we'll be in San Pancho, Mexico. I'm already sad about the fact that it'll end... and it hasn't even started." I know how awesome our week there will be there, and yet I'm focusing on the negative that it will come to an end.

It's such a glass half empty attitude and I hate it. Maybe it's because it makes me readily aware of how quickly life passes us by with out our even knowing. It puts a start time and and an end time on our life events. Instead of focusing on the time in between, I focus on the time after the end.

There is something I started doing when Liz and I went on our honeymoon to Hawaii. We had gotten champagne and we took it up to the top deck and drank it as our cruise ship passed by the most beautiful scenery Hawaii has to offer, The Na Pali Coast on the western said of Kauai (the most western island). We sat there for a while and at one point I got up and stood at the railing. I feel like it was yesterday. I can remember the moment because I was doing my absolute best to stop time. Standing there, I was trying so hard to stop my mind, to try and stop time, to take in the moment, to never ever EVER forget it. I keep thinking that maybe, if just for an instant, if I'm able to take myself and allow the roots of the moment to grab hold of my mind, to make a conscious and concerted effort to never forget where I was and what I was doing, then maybe the time we spent will never be lost. Remove the start time and remove the end time because that moment has no start or end. It stands alone in itself.

I love thinking back to those time-stopping moments. My natural inclination with vacations is to dread the end just as much as I anticipate the beginning. Trying to stop time and ingrain those moments in my mind is my way of overcoming that.

I went back through our picture archives and found this picture of our champagne toast taken right before my time-stopping moment. (In case it's not obvious, this is from July 2007):

I recently had a revelation about books. I can't read novels. I just can't do it. The last one I can remember reading all the way through was The Hobbit. I was only able to finish that because I was able to visualize all the characters based on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I tried reading "Pillars of the Earth" and I stopped after roughly 100 pages because my desire to save myself 40 hours of time (900 more pages at ~25 pages/hour) was far greater than my desire to know what happens. So I find that novels are (for the most part) pointless and I'll explain why.

Too Much Time Spent

Jerry Seinfeld said it best when he described why he will never make movies. "You go to a bad movie, it's two hours; you're in a bad movie, it's two years." This is how I feel about reading novels. It takes far too long to tell a story that you could probably see on TV in two hours. I average about 2 pages every minute when I read. I know I'm not a super fast reader but a 200 page book would take me almost 7 hours to finish. And that's probably on the short side of most novels. I'm sure they average at least 300 pages. I'm just not willing to spend 7 hours of my life reading a story that would offer me no applicable benefits.

You Don't Learn Anything

I say this in comparison with books in which you do learn something. I'm sure if all you read were novels, you would develop over time a better vocabulary but that's really about it. Now by comparison, lets say that instead of spending 7 hours reading about Harry and Sally and their notebook they made in Rodanthe, you spent 7 hours reading about how our political system works? Or how to install kitchen cabinets? Or how to program in Ruby? Which would honestly be time better spent? I'm not saying a story can't be contained in a book where you are meant to learn something (like "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years"), as long as the book isn't dedicated to the story itself.

Entertainment Factor

A lot of people's response to my post here would be "But you like movies?! Isn't that just as pointless?" Yeah true, it's probably on par with being just as pointless, but why do people scoff when a movie is 3 hours long? It's because 3 hours is far too long to tell a story. But I think there is another difference between movies and novels. Movies entertain you without any effort on your part, but it takes effort in order for a novel to be entertaining. There is a certain amount of concentration that is required in order to digest the words on the page. I can't tell you the number of times my mind has wandered and I entirely missed a whole important page. That doesn't really happen with movies. When you watch a movie, you just have to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

I have to give a warning, the opinion of this post is *NOT* shared by Liz. She loves novels and reads them constantly and thinks my opinion is ridiculous. But I just can't do it. I'd say from this point forward, after this recent revelation, there is not a lot of novels I'd be willing to read.

The funny thing is about this post, for the longest time, one of my favorite books in the world was "Ender's Game", which is a novel. I can't imagine how amazing it would be as a movie, now THAT would be time well spent!