Troubles in Paradise (only minor ones)

Roger here...  You all know the song that goes:  "Trouble....., trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble...."  You know! The song from the insurance commercial with the dog.  Well, despite all the good things here, we have had a few minor troubles.  The opening picture is the highlight of our troubles, but we'll get to that later.

Let's start with the Texas clover in our yard.  It has been raining frequently here, and with that rain comes broadleaf weeds in the lawn.  Overnight, the clover took over a large portion of our very green lawn.  The resident horticultural manager, Victor, told us that we would need to pull it by hand before applying fertilizer and herbicide.  He also showed us that Texas clover, unlike Indiana clover, has THORNS.  Everything in Texas seems to have thorns.  So, we spent a day pulling clover out of the yard.  It really wasn't that big a job.  But wow, the clover here, if that's what it is, does indeed have burr-like thorns!

One of my responsibilities in our community is to oversee the many and varied activities.  An event that I did not organize, but have been looking forward to for a while is our Pirate Party.  It was scheduled for Saturday.  The weather prediction for Saturday included cloudy conditions with a 40% chance of rain and a high in the low 60s.  Pretty yucky for an all-day and evening event to be held outside.  The event has been postponed for a few days.  So, in the mean-time our forlorn pirate flag hangs quietly in the window, and the ingredients for serving grog to 100 people sit on our coach house floor.  (Fortunately, grog ingredients do not spoil.)  More about the Pirate Party in the next post.

The next event was only troublesome to our dogs.  Dianne and I thought it was a hoot.  Our normally quiet evening walk with the dogs turned into a spectator event (lots of neighbors gathered) when a very large tarantula crossed the street in front of us.  Bandido and Tequila were indignant because we would not let them play with it. 

The next item is really more of a solution than a problem.  Remember the trouble we had with Dianne's beloved birds pecking at her beloved tomatoes?  I recently made a cage out of PVC pipe and netting that will hopefully solve the problem.  All but a couple of our tomatoes are gone, but amazingly there are new yellow flowers.  I think we are going to have another crop.

For the last couple of months, my tongue has been finding sharp places behind my upper front teeth that did not used to be there.  Not good news.  I was afraid that my smile would soon be turning into a snaggle-toothed spectacle.  I investigated the cost of capping those teeth in Indiana.  Even with insurance, it was more than we could comfortably afford. I carefully investigated the cost, quality and risks of having the work done in Progreso, Mexico.  After getting recommendations from several of my friends, I set up an appointment across the border --- just a walk across a bridge.  The recommended dentist was trained in the United States and actually lives in the United States.  He confirmed the need for capping my front teeth.  He guaranteed a cost that was 20% of the cost in Indiana.  His office was sterile.  His equipment was up-to-date.  He did the initial work during my first visit while I watched people crossing the border through the window.  Check out my new temporary front teeth.  The final caps are being crafted in the U.S., and will be in place before the end of the month.


Our biggest trouble of late involved insects.  Dianne is horribly afraid of roaches.  I think their size scares her,  but that is not the problem.  The problem is a colony of teeny, tiny fire ants.  A few days ago, while walking the dogs, Tequila decided to take a, ahem, dump in a vacant lot.  While Dianne was cleaning up the poop, I noticed that she had stepped into an ant colony.  I recognized that they were fire ants and urged her to, "GET OUT OF THERE!"  She did move away, and then removed her shoes and began flicking off the ants.  When I told her they were fire ants, she informed me that fire ants were bigger.  I countered with, "No they're not, I know what they look like." After a brief, "sure you do" look, we moved on.  Ten yards down the road, she said, "OMG, I need to go back to the coach house, my feet are on fire." Sometimes being right is not the best thing.

So the opening picture is of  Dianne's feet in a vinegar bath, covered with baking soda.  (Check out the cool pajamas in this picture.)  The next day, one of her ankles was swollen so much that her ankle bone was not visible.  Helpful blog searches resulted in other remedies:  pennies taped to the bites, rubbing the bites with aloe from our aloe plant in the back yard, Benedryl, Neosporin......   Days have passed and the bites are still an issue, but less so.  So far, the thing that has worked best involved popping the blisters with a needle, then spraying them with peroxide, then scrubbing them with alcohol, then applying more Neosporin and bandaids.  They are getting better each day, but what an unexpected ordeal.


Despite a few irritations, good things have happened here since the last post.


Yesterday, Dianne's feet felt good enough for us to take the dogs for a four-mile walk at Bentsen Rio Grande State Park, next door.  The weather cleared and we had a great walk.  (Tequila made it the entire 4 1/2 miles this time without laying down in protest.  -- D.)  It is amazing how quickly mother nature recovers from adverse situations.  The picture below shows a shot into the jungle.  Two years ago, all of the ground cover was dead due to flooding from a hurricane.  If you look closely, you can still see some of the dead, black stems that have not yet decomposed.

We stopped at the hawk tower and saw a significant increase in the water level in the resaca (ox-bow lake).  It has not fully recovered from the drought (the two bodies of water are normally connected), but it is considerably better.  Everything is green again.

Today, I attended a class at the McAllen Medical Center to be certified in CPR with the use of an AED.  I have had CPR training several times in the past, but never with the corresponding use of an AED.  Glad I did this.


The pet picture of the day is a recent picture of Bandido --- maybe my favorite picture of my buddy.

New Experiences on Our Last Day at Retama

Roger here....    Well, the kids have gone back to their lives.  Dianne and I have been working like dogs to get ready for new travels.  Lots to do to get the coach house and motor home ready for our departure -- most of it done :-).


On our last day at Retama Village, we decided to experience a couple of new things before leaving civilization and traveling to the wilderness of West Texas.  


Our first new adventure involved getting our teeth cleaned.  Oh, we have gotten our teeth cleaned before (twice a year for many years), but this time it was in Mexico!  Lots of Winter Texans do this, so.... with some encouragement from new friends, we decided to give it a try.  It was a good experience.

The first step was traveling to Progreso, TX and parking on the U.S. side of the border.
Love the sign and the laid-back attitude.  (We did pay the $2 :-)


Dianne took a picture of the bridge over the Rio Grande and we walked across to Nuevo Progreso, Mexico (a safe haven in a dangerous area) after dropping a quarter into the turnstile.

There are literally dozens of dentists in Nuevo Progreso.  Friends gave us several recommendations.  We chose Dr. Mustre, whose office was a half a block from the bridge.  See the sign on the right side of the photo?

Our teeth are now sparkling and for only $20 per person.  Please don't tell our dentist (and good friend) back home.  No appointment, up-to-date equipment, and the wait was only five minutes.

After the cleaning, we wandered across the street and made a couple of purchases.  The first was a set of Talavera tequila/cordial glasses.

The second was an impulse buy by Dianne, the stoic, "don't-buy-anything-we-don't-need" person.  She saw a Mexican pottery Nativity Scene for only $14.  So cool.  

Clean teeth, Mexican tequila glasses, a new Nativity scene -- time to celebrate.  No better place than the Happy Dentist Plaza, where Dianne and I had the best margaritas ever (for three dollars).

The friendly (everyone here is friendly) couple at the bar were waiting to see their dentist.  The guy, with a smile, told me that the margaritas looked "dangerous."  

We enjoyed our drinks while watching a stream of cars crossing the border.

Time to move on to the second new experience...  We have bought phones before, but they were evidently dumb phones.  Our two daughters (and our granddaughter) have been cajoling us to move into the next century.  Since my dumb phone has been turning itself off (without any prompting from me -- evidently, it is also a lazy phone), the time arrived to upgrade.  After a quick drive to McAllen, and some advice from the Verizon salesman, Carlos, we are now the proud owners of a new pair of iPhones.  G-4's, no less (whatever that means.)

The learning curve will be steep (probably not for Dianne), but our kids are s-o-o-o-o proud.  Can't wait to figure out what an "app" is!  

The pet picture of the day shows Bandido, who has now mastered the ramps at the agility course.  Makes a dad so proud!

Stick with us as we leave the comforts of Retama Village and move on to the wilds of West Texas;  hopefully, avoiding the WILDFIRES.

Nuevo Progreso, Mexico

Hi all -- Dianne here. We finally took a day trip across the border to Progreso, Mexico on Monday. It was about a 45-minute drive from our campground to the international bridge. We parked ($2 for all day) on the U.S. side (along with hundreds of other "Winter Texans"), put 25 cents into a turnstile, and walked across the bridge.

That's all there is to it, to enter Mexico here from the U.S. (Coming back to the U.S. we had to show our passports and answer questions from the border agent about our purchases.)

It looks like Roger is in jail, but this is just a shot of him looking out at the river from the bridge.

Once across the bridge it is like a cruise port, with hundreds of people crowding the sidewalks, and shops catering to tourists all up and down the streets. The main difference is that at least half, if not more, of the shops were dental offices, pharmacias, optometrist offices, barber/beauty shops, even shoe shine entrepreneurs right on the sidewalk. Of course, there are people everywhere hawking merchandise as you walk along and handing out business cards for the many dentists and other services.

We didn't take advantage of these services this trip over, because we wanted to do a little shopping and have margaritas and lunch. We'll probably go back and at least get our teeth cleaned (I hear it's only $15 with no appointment necessary!) Many people have extensive dental work done and come here just for that. From all reports we have from talking to people who have done it, the dentists there do beautiful work and have all been trained in the U.S. Some even live in the U.S. and do business in Mexico. It's economically beneficial to them to do this, because they can avoid paying malpractice insurance and can therefore charge lower prices.

We had a delicious lunch at Arturo's, with white linen tablecloths, attentive wait staff, and delicious food. We each had a margarita; mine frozen and Roger's on the rocks. The fresh salsa was especially tasty.

I took a quick photo before we finished if off, to give you an idea of how fresh it was. The warm baked tortilla chips were also especially good.

Roger had beef tacos

and I had something called Arturo's torta, which was soft bread rolls with beef and peppers inside, smothered with a spicy sauce.

We split some caramel cheesecake for dessert.

Kaia, when we see you next month, we'll give you the little bracelet we had made for you with your name on it. Here is a photo of the young man

making the bracelet for us as we watched. Kaia is an unusual name, so it was fun to be able to get this custom made so quickly. Of course, it's always fun to buy trinkets for our granddaughter!