I have this friend. We’ll call her Melissa.

I’ve known her for a bunch of years, decades even. Mostly in and around the restaurant industry. Weird name “industry” but I am too old to say “space”. Someone said I was in the Wellness Space the other day and I felt queasy. I’m not in anything. I just use saltwater and vinegar for everything because it works. Oh and soap and hot water because money.

So, Melissa retired/sold her business/stepped down this year. She’s still on the younger side of things maybe 60, but as someone who got out when I had an offer and not when I planned it…close ENOUGH. She was a big publicist in a big city. She’s a Libra, so it was quiet, private, mysterious and moved on from. She really is the coolest. And I say that as an over sharer.

I sent her a little Instagram reel yesterday of a hidden “gem” bistro in a gorgeous spooky house in New Orleans. Not sure why. She doesn’t live there and as far as I know she doesn’t have any travel plans there and literally knows everyone in the world of restaurants, how am I, twenty years out of the business and 5 years in the middle of the damn Mexican desert with street dogs going to show her anything she hasn’t seen? But it was so darling!

I dunno why we share reels, it’s a lifeline of sorts I guess. I don’t have anyone with a shared experience here. Or English. Or anyone who would have an interest in New Orleans though they should, they play a lot of squeeze box music here too.

She wrote back only, Good grief!

She’s fast on return messages but brief. She says a lot in few words. I admire this. She doesn’t ghost you, because that’s rude and she’s a proper (albeit modernized) Southern lady. Also grown ups know it takes 2 seconds to at least acknowledge something *(saying this for my millennial acquaintances who take more time telling you why they didn’t have time to respond than they could have just given you a heart or a damn thumbs up, shut up with the “crazy bizzy”, GenX has had it with your baloney, it’s not that deep)

I went to bed wondering, what good grief meant. Besides Charlie Brown. I watched it again. Through her eyes in promotion, not my nostalgic, I used to cook for the love of it haze. And it is a haze, if it’s a business, you’re grinding. If you’re popular, you’re shortening your life. Anyway, back to the secret restaurant.

Twee. Secret. Hard to find. If you know you know. Complicated multi course little plates. Charming glassware and little chairs and candlelight. Reinvented takes on classic dishes

In a nutshell, nah. GOOD GRIEF!

I’ve so been there done that I even had a secret supper club for ten years and sold it 20 years ago! I was caught up in the romance and I shouldn’t even be scrolling on Instagram, I snapped out of it. We’ve moved on.

But sometimes I can’t look at one more dog butt.

Melissa doesn’t want to know about one more secret place with tiny plates or over sauced tomato salads or hidden doorways.

I haven’t eaten in a restaurant for over 5 years and despite being in Mexico it’s only hotdogs in this town. Oddly not even any tacos. It’s a sad place for a former chef but maybe God put me here because you have to cook your own food if you want to eat anything besides hot Cheetos. And also, I’ve had every amazing food experience ever from France to Florence to yes, Louisiana. I hope to have food again one day. But for I eat a lot of beans and cook soup for dogs. Notice I didn’t say BONE BROTH? I’m unbranding everything.

Melissa knows who she is and often has good advice for me if I ask. She does not waste her time offering and that’s also smart and probably a huge time saver. I’ve taken on tons of morons over the years who weren’t interested in solving their own problems and I should have funneled that into my own life. Caught up on sleep, made better real estate investments etc.

Melissa changed her lawn a few years ago to turf grass. Loves it. Yard looks like a park. Fired all those irritated mow blow and go goons. Perfect for her. I probably wouldn’t do it but I did spend years rewilding my former Georgia acreage into wildflowers and cutting pathways into grasslands. We’re different but I like both approaches. Now I have nothing but desert dust and admittedly it’s ugly but I don’t miss hearing leaf blowers.

I’m past all that, she said. If anyone had a George Jetson style meal plan where they could get a pellet from pushing a lever and get on with the day it would be her.

I started thinking about all the things that I don’t care about anymore and that aren’t worth my attention or things I did already and will not be doing again. Vanlife for example. When people share Vanlife YouTubers my eyes glaze over. Why are we trying to figure out how to turn a paint bucket into a toilet unless it literally is End Times. It’s uncomfortable, low key dangerous, not any cheaper and I’m happy to have a roof over my head.

Another? Coffee.

After 5 years here in a town that doesn’t sell or serve brewed coffee of any sort, only instant, I finally just gave in and sometimes have a cup of instant. It really is easy. Last month they were out in the entire pueblo and someone brought in some Sam’s Club coffees and besides it being insanely expensive I was irritated that I’d have to get the pour over thing out. Find filters or use a sock as is customary here. Boil water. Clean all that shit out and toss the grounds in the compost to start anew each day. And I don’t give a DINGALING about coffee. I get no zip, I can use the toilet without it and frankly think it’s a scam.

So, here’s to you Melissa. I’ve started my own GOOD GRIEF list. Some of it is because I live in a desolate place, and much of it is just DUMB and expensive. But I wish those secret supper kids in New Orleans well.

GOOD GRIEF and GOOD BYE

Fancy cheese, at home printers, Paleo/carnivore/vegan/organic call out diets, Cleanses, filtering and obsessing about drinking water, leafy green vegetables, elixirs, Elizabeth Gilbert books or interviews, Day of the Dead celebrations, podcasts, home decor and decorating seasonally, Fixer Upper Houses, houses over 1000 sq ft, restaurants and meals in general just grab and go please, discovering new music, new books, new supplements, worrying about politics, trying to wake other people up, tenth year without a TV never going back to that, hacking or optimizing anything, dressing for anything besides comfort and dog wrangling, make up, hair color even highlights, travel. Expensive vacuums. Kitchen gadgets. Car ownership. Curb appeal. Dating. Wine. Yoga. Fancy Mattresses. Smart anything, phones included. I’m just getting started!

People really express themselves here via their Whats profile. Exotic photos, or no names only emojis. Most of the women are unrecognizable of course because they post a fully made up glamour shot. The Pie Lady “La Repugnante” as Jesus calls her has a body like a gallina (hen) but posts photos of herself in deep recline on her bed. I don’t feel bad listening and giggling to gossip about her because I still remember the day she kicked Frasier for lifting his leg on her door mat, the black Chihuahua (before he was liberated to Tucson) and told me she’d call the police and have all of my dogs euthanized. She even looks mean in her profile pic.

I cried like a 3rd grader that day in the road because I didn’t know that she was La Repugnante , the daughter of the hotel owner and a general monster in town. No one’s calling anybody about dogs. If anyone, they’d probably call me. There is no animal control or other authority. There are hundreds of dogs all over the streets and Frasier who had climbed the fence to follow me to the store? The least of worries. If they had a resource for the stray dogs they would scoop them all up in a back hoe, I’m certain. Luckily that’s illegal. Not that that matters either, but theoretically, someone would snitch.

I laugh now when I see her stout frame waddle into the tienda just like a hen and squawk to her kids in the car. I note how apt Mexicans are at nicknames. She doesn’t afford that car with the pie, says Jesus, that’s her retired husband’s money.

She’s married?

Si. And that pie is disgusting.

Agreed.

I’m sitting outside eating a muffin from a Sam’s Club Variety Pack that was on the counter at the convenience store. How many hands have been in that plastic carrier God only knows. They will sell one of anything in Mexico. Sometimes a store owner will bring back a Little Caesar’s pizza and sell by the slice at room temperature and beyond after the 3 hour drive from The City. There are three pizza places in town that are at least as good as left over Little Caesars. People like a brand name.

I decide how many hands have touched something before I grab it. It can’t be any grosser than the bulk dry goods section at an American store. I’ve seen kids running their hands through seeds and rice before at a Kroger. Just say a prayer and boost your immune system. Here it’s like Dad went to Sam’s Club in Hermosillo and brought some muffins home, they’re on the counter.

The Can Lady has stopped wearing a surgical mask now that it’s 2026 but still has enough capes and odd costumes on to get the dogs riled up. The sack of beer cans and the early dark walks up and down the roads give me pause sometimes too. She has a high pitched gravely voice and sometimes has her teeth out. She will ask me “are you not cold?” if the temperature goes below 80.

I wonder how and why she has a bustier for sale. Maybe it’s Halloween gear. But still. She likes fashion. I see lots of colorful scarves on her clothes line.

The ice cream store /cake lady left her Chihuahua on the roof over the weekend and he was down front wandering around on Sunday. A brave jump, he was trying to hide his limp.

The lady who buys Whatever You Need at Costco has the busiest page on Whats. Unreal markups on items deemed American, which are mostly Keurig coffee pods, basic Ninja blenders for $400usd (!) bed pillows and dryer sheets which thankfully no one can use because no one has a dryer. She offers layaway so expensive that you could buy an actual vehicle of your own to pick up your stuff at Costco. Options? Nil. Stuff that doesn’t sell is on a permanent yard sale knock on the door for the teenage son to come outside kind of thing. There’s no stock rotation. It’s out until it’s gone. Like the ugly fruit store.

No one has a great business model here but extortion is always recognized. The fish girl steals a few bags of frozen fish from her job at the ice factory and pescado cleaning tables. I’ll buy once on a whim but like a stray she’ll show up at my gate daily with something else she’s “found” and I don’t like that cycle, nor do I keep cash. She’ll offer to leave it anyway to answer my no tengo efectivo response (I don’t have cash) like a drug dealer. She’ll be back later to collect.

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I mean it’s no surprise of course anything on socials is open to the world and web scrapers are busy creating hybrids of us all. Our stories, our sunset photos, our meals. It’s violating. Of COURSE.

As I age out of most things (happily) I am mostly just bored by the retelling of my story. And of scrolling. I know no one cares and adding to the noise doesn’t sit well with me. We’re buried by nonsense of all sorts and I’m just in a float on the raft phase of life, not a swim like crazy against the tide phase. And like coffee or TV, I just don’t find it interesting enough to bother with.

I used to look at PetFinder and cry about the dogs in my 30s. In my 40s it was dudes on Match or whatever…it was brief. I found it a waste of time and just slept with the gardener on the farm. There’s a lot of work running a big property, you can get very sentimental on the guys who help you dig out broken water pipes or secure the roof at 2am.

Then it was Zillow. Still can be Zillow. Sometimes Instagram but what a time vacuum and bad habit it all is. Sometimes funny but algorithm feeds repeat habits which I really don’t get into. I’ve connected with some really great people but mostly I’m consuming and not creating. Caring for all these dogs and the cleaning and feeding and praying for donations and helping those still on the outside is a 24/7 life. Making it into content is…how to say. A cute hobby. I’m in Mexico, I don’t have brand deals. We have some good friends and we’re lucky to have what we do. The end.

Social Media is a huge drain on my creativity and mostly my writing. The biggest of which is this platform and now with the Notes being the focus because it keeps the product (you) scrolling and making quicky posts like FB of yesteryear, it feels like I’m eating out of the trash. Oh, that’s not that moldly is it? Yes. Yes it is.

Worse is that it’s ads for selling whatever. I feel gutted like when Etsy turned on us all. I think the best plan is going back to my own website. Just put it all there.

I’m not playing the game right on Notes and that weighs on me. And if you don’t play the game you don’t get the eyeballs and that weighs on me. I feel bad enough about not being able to find a ride to get to the vet 3 hours away for Suzy the Lab or to trap Streetgirl Sunny for a spay clinic. I shouldn’t be worried about if I got any new paid subs on the Stack. Or getting shadow banned for posting links to FB. I’m tired, boss. Another dog with its head caved in on the highway this morning, I can’t be bothered with algorithm silliness. That pays NONE of us, mostly. Some of us, yes. But mostly we’re toiling for nada.

NADA.

At best it’s a newsletter for Aunt Carol in Iowa. And you could easily just email your friends and family what you’ve been up to. And I may just do that. If I had mail service I’d send you a postcard, seriously. I love mail!

And I feel splintered. And unrewarded. And since Meta feels okay about telling us that by using their platforms we’re giving them the rights to all of our words, images, ideas. Like panning for gold, your entire life just shakes out and they take the nuggets. And I figure well, that’s why they’re successful. There’s nothing stopping me from keeping my OWN nuggets and putting them into one place, so I’m going to do that. Work on putting all these stories together and so I’ll be recycling some of my own work and reposting. Some folks are new here. Welcome.

Plus there are some really great essays on My Mission from Dog. Passionate pleas from a stranded woman in Mexico trying to save all the dogs in an unserviced pueblo after a car accident. And I’m still here. And I urge you to read them if you’re in the mood for something, but I’m pretty sure you have your own pile of unread essays in the corner. I have them grouped by year at the top of the page.

Thanks for reading and thanks for helping with the dogs of course linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue

it’s a 3 hour drive for him and this is the Sunday he comes.

I’m preparing to put Suzy to rest as I know she’s super uncomfortable and the blood loss and all the rest but she’s a fat lab that’s been here since puppy hood and it’s sad of course but she’s still goofy and looking for treats. She still looks for dropped food behind the sofa and has only missed one meal in 4 plus years. Skin lesions and allergies and bleeding and all the rest, but hey. You gonna eat that?

No one (good) wants adopted dogs here and so when I rescue a dog they stay forever and that was never my plan but really what is? I’m committed to these animals and that includes holding them all night and cleaning up their barf and wiping their noodle as it bleeds and pulling grass knots of poo out of their butts. For 11 dogs, five years, 24/7. It was 13, But my actual dog Brady died June 2025 and big feral Andie came by to say she was leaving (Rocky’s mama) and disappeared forever. The rest are rescued from the street but we are family now. Better than family, what am I saying. My family was always the worst. RIP bozos.

This vet mostly gets called here to the pueblo for the Big Sleep. He’s brought a few dogs back from the brink for me and who knows, maybe he’ll have a magic idea for Suzy although he said last year, you’ll have to put her down in a few months if the chemo injections don’t work. We already tried a surgery. She’s been on tons of meds over the years. We’re all exhausted.

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Dog rescue is nothing but bookends of tears. Tears when I scrape them off the street and hopeful when I bring them back to life and then I’m gutted when I have to put them down but glee when they finish their first bowls of chicken soup and flattened again when they die on their own from puppy parvo or for being 16.

Suzy took forever to come into the gates. She was so scared and living in a pile of tires at a motel. I could barely see her in the black. She had a brown sister who knew a lunch lady when she saw one and over time she convinced her sister to come in. The sister was adopted by some choir singers at a nearby church who didn’t have adequate fencing (or common sense) and Debbie didn’t last there a month before she was run over. They came back to me looking for another dog and I said I didn’t have any.

Suzy hates the heat and like me wonders why can’t we just go sit in a river in Montana or something? This place is ROUGH.

So I sit and wait and I cry. The worst part about that is that Suzy is worried about the tears and trying to comfort me. She plops her fatty likely inflamed chest on my knee. I’m wishing I knew if she's saying, it’s okay if he comes and has to give me the Sleep. I’m ready.

Dogs are both the biggest joy and the biggest sadness in life. You’re a good girl, Suze.

No.

Can I figure out a substitute or go without?

Usually.

Will there be gas? Can I get to the station? Is there dog food? Is the reading on the gas meter at 1/4 really empty?

Maybe. Possibly. Yes.

Will my Internet connection stay on long enough to post this?

Yet to be determined. It’s cycled off 8 times in the last paragraph. Customer service has stopped answering texts and phone calls. It was a really good company for a couple years, not sure what’s up but it’s making this lousy experience unforgivable.

Today I was determined. I’m making it a full time job on top of the other things I do full time like running a dog rescue, that I’m calling on rentals, looking for agents, combing the overpriced US market or upgrading to a town with at least a vet in Mexico which is now overpriced and the dollar is falling. But I have to push through. This place is crushing my soul.

I’ve been without a car all week and without Internet for as long. Back to the Stone Age. I need gas, air in my tires, last week I replaced a tire with a used tire from the junkyard, it’s just not ever fun. Or delicious. Or friendly. I hate to complain but the end of this brutal summer and everything else, I’m just OVER IT ALL. Forgive me. We’ve had two sandstorms in a week and temps over 105 f for months.

The gas tank says 1/4 and so I say a prayer and slowly drive to the one gas station in town at 715am. I took Mattie the cattle dog/Heeler he’s good security in case I have to walk back from a break down. Rough dogs over on the east side. I am unknown over there by a lot of big scrappers so I don’t walk alone. Definitely more respect with a dog pack. River and I were stalked by some trouble makers tipping trash the other night near my house. Delicate and fussy she doesn’t intimidate anyone. Best traits are that she’s fast and cranky.

No flip flops, I wear the actual sorta sneakers. It’s only a mile and a half. I’m preparing like I’m in the Congo, I know. But Plan B is never good here. It’s down a sand hill and if there’s been any rain or big waves the shore comes over the beach and washes out the “road” and you’ll have to off road to get around it or turn around. Or die.

I remember when I used to just run errands in rural Georgia. Joyful and efficient. Swiping my card at the pump, going inside for roller food. Cleaning my windshield. Maybe run through the car wash I’ve got the points! And now, it’s like Thunderdome.

I’m not the kind of person who gives up, I’ve opened restaurants with no money! just tenacity and the gall to navigate the city of Atlanta for a liquor license. Renovated houses! 13 in fact! I ran an AI search of myself on Gemini the other night and said, Holy Shit, literally what have I done to her?

I’m older now by a lot and lack of a good diet, hormones or much incentive coupled with pure heat and exhaustion, I’m soft.

That’s how the devil gets you under the quick sand. You’ll be so beat down you’ll never get out of here! Don’t go to sleep Don’t go to sleep! says the voice in my head

So I’ve had to breathe through some “Mexican” things like noise and slowness and apathy and deal with small town assholery of ignorant inbred (truth, many haven’t gotten off the pueblo in generations and it shows) indigent and just lack of care, it’s REALLY hard to motivate people here. Even with money.

One guy I call Brownie always gives me back half of his pay because he says if he has money he’ll buy meth and so actually employment = relapse. Anyone else who has a job at the electric company or the asphalt crew works like a chain gang for $165 a week and unless they’re actually doing meth won’t have the energy to help me with my 3 hour project no matter what I pay on the weekend.

Sometimes I can get my neighbor in between benders. His relative lack of skill from spending 14 years in prison from age 29 forward is a hindrance unless I need a hitman. I am used to working with low skill guys with promise in the US so I can usually show a YouTube and assist and we’ll get it done. He would benefit from trade school but he’s got it in his mind that he is meant for better things despite having no tech experience or relevant training for anything. And spoiler alert, plumbers will be the new kings.

Also, I’ll say it, he’s pretty lazy. Lives at his mom’s, drinks and watches his sister make money selling gross refried beans to the tiendas and not working for his big brother in Baja who has many apartment buildings. I’m aware that most of these things are likely fronts for contraband. Especially the beans. There’s NO WAY she built that house or bought that Dodge truck with bean money.

Anyway, the gas station.

They legally have to pump your gas here, there’s no self serve. I used to tip at PEMEX but everyone says not to here. They don’t clean your windshield or anything and I’m usually only getting 200 pesos which is 13 dollars and so like 2 gallons. yea. So cry everyone a river about the price of gas in the US. it’s expensive literally everywhere. Especially where the daily wage is $30.

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So these two women sit on chairs and reluctantly pump my gas once a month when I go by and I’m usually really nice but I noticed that even with the tipping and the friendly platicando (chat) they would sooner push me into a shallow grave with the rest of the people on the wall of Desparacidos (missing) flyers.

Do you have air? I need to fill my tire.

Yea. There’s a tank over there.

Oh great! Thanks! Is it free or does it take coins?

No it’s free.

MUY BIEN.

My day is shaping up. Got gas, didn’t break down, getting air in the tires. Looks like only 96 for the high today. 5 minutes worth of DIY chores in the US. Not remarkable. But here? WINNING.

No air comes out when I put the compressor hose on my tire. Some air sounds but the tire is still flat. Excuse me does this work? Or am I doing it wrong?

It doesn’t work she said.

Oh but didn’t you just tell me it did? And like send me over to it and say it was free? Just making sure I didn’t misunderstand.

We have the machine, she said. But it doesn’t work.

She commented to her friend, what is she mad at me for?

It’s the Millennial Stare but in Mexican. A shitty paying job, a boss who doesn’t give them the tools they need (cartel owned surely but insert corporate overlord name here, it’s the same except here you probably have to count fent pills at night or pack cocaine in the fish ice or get murdered) and they couldn’t care less about a customer. What. I’m not going to come back to the only gas station in town? Piss off Gringa

Suddenly my day of gettin after it was just another bummer. But I’m trying really hard to not let external things ruin my internal compass. Stay on task. I don’t know this chick’s life. I’m sure it sucks in a million ways. Sorry. And it’s pretty clear that they hate Americans and no amount of dog saving and feeding and spay clinics will ever change that. Is it everyone? Wellllll, probably not if they make enough money off you in a tourist town or you give them legacy wealth jobs in construction and restaurants like I did in the US, then yes, they’ll name their kid after you and invite you to the carne asada. But here? Nah. I’m just the white lady who had a car accident and got stuck here and won’t leave and likes gross dogs. If I had money I wouldn’t be here so they figure I’m worthless.

The only ones who see an opportunity in me are dudes who think if I marry one of them they’ll get to spring over the border for a million dollar job as a landscaper or a TikTok influencer. It’s all so delusional.

I look over to see the view of the Sea of Cortez in front of the gas station and a welcome breeze gives promise that October may cool off five degrees. I imagine a day when a developer comes in and bulldozes the entire coastline and puts up highrises next to the boardwalk built by the Chinese who are dredging a pipeline for refrigerated natural gas. Or maybe they’ll just let it die on the vine. Thus far, it appears to be the latter. And I don’t care.

I’ll be long gone of course. I used to not think this way. I used to think, Oh those awful greedy developers will take this coastline for their own colonizing or whatever you think when you aren’t really boots on the ground and you visit Tulum, or Oaxaca or Sayulita on the edges of the country that don’t look as feral as mainland Mexico where our US politics and bans and their own corrupt government makes the lives of every day folks just lousy. Even for the people who aren’t making poison pills in the bodega, it’s just real bad vibes, yo.

Sadly, here the residents trash the coastline, disrespect their fisheries, rip skates and stingrays out of the water to sell a wing for a few pesos and toss the rest of their body on the shore for more flies and stench. Schools of cazon sharks are beheaded and sold for taco meat in Tijuana. They dump all kinds of who knows what into the bay, trash and broken glass and dead dogs up and down the shore for dozens of miles. Potholed roads in or out are un-driveable and dangerous. If you’re here you’re stuck and if you’re not here, you’ll keep away. It’s why I’m the only foreigner. No one would come here by choice. If it wasn’t for a total loss car wreck I wouldn’t be here for sure. And I stayed for the dogs. And now, what.

We have the machine, but it doesn’t work.

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Click the heart and share my page or restack! For more info on the dog rescue or to contribute to help me (and the dogs) get out of here, SUBSCRIBE or make a donation at linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue follow us on Instagram at lolasdogrescue. I had a roll over car accident near here in 2021 and I stayed to help the suffering and overpopulation of abandoned dogs.

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It’s still dark at 5am in the Sonoran desert, on my street anyway. Then it’s 98 degrees and so bright I can’t sweep the patio at 6:15.

I have been without Internet for a week. I have had spots of service, and last week had some data to send WhatsApp messages but mostly, my schedule and relatively low use of wifi is zero. But I’m lost and it makes me feel like a crack head. No music, no social media, no YouTube. How will I sleep without my ten year habit of listening to a podcast or even further back, This American Life to snooze? But it was one and done long ago. Now I can leave YouTube on a loop all night long or dive into a 4 hour podcast. I’m sure it’s bad for my brain.

My mother before me, when my dad died, listened to a tiny clock radio in a wooden cabinet with flip numbers, all night long. Coast to Coast AM with George Noory was her show of choice. She’d tell me some half remembered far flung stories from Art Bell over coffee in the morning and I was always a little surprised that my mom was into conspiracies and alien abduction lore. And yet, now, here I am.

About ten years in, she found that she couldn’t sleep without the clock radio on and I honed my habit especially after traveling alone by van and on a ground floor dark and remote town in Mexico, I don’t sleep at all if we’re factual. I have small lights on everywhere so I don’t step on dogs, I get up often, I have no blankets or sheets on unless it’s below 30 degrees, and I don’t sleep nude and always know where my shoes are. I lie on my back and cross my legs and stare at the ceiling and cat nap. Even with the lull of some vaguely British AI voice of a Midnight Monk story time. Very soothing but I always have one eye open.

A week without music, meditation apps, tin foil hat stories or podcasts I’m ready to get up at 4am. My usual is 5 and I can’t explain it but in the heat of this place I’m temporarily stuck in, I’d rather be up at dawn. I step onto the patio today to see the entire corner lot on fire.

What the fu…? The dogs started howling, I looked at Pedro, the night watchman old Yeller lab and asked, Porque nothing? We had to come out here? The crackling, the 20 ft flames and the shadow of a guy tossing in branches and poking at the flame seemed menacing. Like one of the vagabundos went haywire and decided to, I dunno. Clear the brush?

That part didn’t make sense. It’s a vacant lot full of litter and a few piles of dead branches that some stray cows go in and eat. Hardly a priority in a town with a to do list that goes unchecked as long as I’ve been here. And why in the cloak of darkness? And with all respect to our vagabonds, they really don’t do much because if you do, you get dealt with. Also they’re face down in some sand somewhere they’re not setting palm trees on fire.

So without signal, no phone. No data. No nothing. I can’t call anyone. This drives the Prepper in me insane. They’ve pushed us into a total reliant corner you know. I fought getting rid of my landline at my farm for a decade. They finally made it too expensive to keep.

At least for power you can cobble together solar panels or have a battery bank or generator. But communication, you’ve got nothing. Tin foil hat or not, I feel it’s by design. That infrastructure was solid and in place from Ma Bell. Cells were for emergencies and cars. And now we’re all talking on cb radios in 2026 and it sucks.

I worry about the gal with the tiny car and the tiny dog who live right next to the blaze. I can see her tiny green hatchback in the hot orange. I should go bang on her door. I don’t want to walk in front of this guy though. What’s the plan there? Will I get grabbed and tossed in the pyre? Do I go Paul Revere style just run and yell?

I’ll call Jesus, the assassin. I can run down to his house.

I try one more time and the phone switches to cell and I hear him answer sorta groggy but not really.

Que Paso, Michele.

There’s a big fire on the corner at the lot where the cows…

Me voy por alla (I’ll be right there) he says that to everything because my janky Spanish on a spotty cell connection is dumb. And I don’t call unless it’s necessary. Like for real.

He called me back and said it’s the husband of MariCruz or something and he’s cleaning it up for the owner.

At 5am? Dangerous.

It hasn’t rained here in a year, it never rains here and yet is humid like Miami. Everything is built of pallets and someone thinks it’s a good idea to have a burning man sized bonfire in the dark with no available water? Seems fishy but if you wanted to have a sneaky fire to get rid of evidence you’d do it in your back yard or a burn barrel. I think this is just incompetence. But who knows.

There’s a wall near the Tacos de Cabeza shack with over 60 posters of missing teenage boys. About half from here the rest out of Hermosillo and Caborca, well known cartel strongholds. Desparacidos

They’re putting them somewhere these missing boys. The photos all show them with some cryptic tattoos and throwing gang signs in their pics and I know I know, kids will be kids but I also think that if someone was paying attention they would have known that they were being fed into the wood chipper. Many times the families know and just hope for the best. It’s not always, oh but Juanito was such a promising cellist and then he disappeared!

*Now that I think of it, the Tacos de Cabeza shack makes no pitch that the cabezas in question are from cattle.

So this was a No Pasa Nada nothing burger/taco? Seeing this will not be helping my insomnia I’ll tell you that much.

The second night I was here in 2021 there was an explosion. I lived in a different house over near the shore. It sounds nice but it was undeveloped and scary after sundown. Dark and shadowy with people who emerge at nightfall like hermit crabs. There was the explosion and a horrible diesel smell at 11pm and the smoke was so dark I can see it even in the night sky. The cartel blew up the gas station. I had no cell service or Internet there either, and no phone numbers of anyone to call if I had. Nor did I have a car (I have a town clunker now but it only starts 40% of the time), my beloved Toyota van towed away days before on a wrecker after I was pulled out of it. The same thing went through my head.

Now what? (and also how does anyone live in this shit hole?)

I decided the plan then was walking into the Sea of Cortez and hoping the dogs would follow. And now I’m five blocks further up the road and five years later in this vortex with many more dogs. This is still my only plan.

*I’m writing this in a mini spiral notebook I got at the tienda because it’s back to school so they had some paper products. It says Sonrie Mas on the cover in pink (smile more) I will type this in should I get Internet service back and if I type fast maybe I can get it out before it shuts off again. I pretend like anyone is reading and wondering of my whereabouts. Did she get eaten by the dragon?

The customer service has suggested I call tech support and of course I cannot, and they’re not answering texts because the lines are saturated. I have been told though that my account is active and current, so they don’t see the problem.

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Pruning forces growth, you’d say

I make an arrangement of pink and double bloom white azaleas. The petals fall off before the first guest arrives.

There’s a flower in the guacamole dip that is turning brown like swamp water.

As predicted, someone says.

There are people pouring through the door, loud talking, bar dashers and buffet grabbers. The shrimp and tortellini skewers disappear first.

Are you the caterer?

There are handshakes and lively chats. Complaints about only having domestic beer. Someone asks me if there is mascara running on her face. I shake my head and bring some fresh tortilla chips to the table. I stir the guacamole, the fickle friend, so she’ll stay green.

Do you have any Tabasco?

I nod and head to the kitchen. Give this to the fat guy in the ugly sweater I say to one of the waiters. I head out back near the trash cans and look at the platform you’ve built and the fancy slate on the base. It looks great but isn’t slippery, you said. You have to wash this area daily or it’s gross. No reason it should look gross or be unsafe.

I pet the Golden Retriever tied to a tree in the back corner. She’ll just bother everyone or steal food, put her outside.

Hi, Penny.

I flick my cigarette at your triathlon gear near the outdoor shower. The TREK aluminum titanium diamond geared 40 speed million dollar bike that you rode in the race last month. Seat narrow like a saw blade.

That’s what makes me fast, you’d say. Discomfort. That’s why you’re fat. Comfort.

With a sign that reads DNR over your head, I say who’s comfy now? you talk about the key to the final push in triathlons and life with a nurse. Never give up and never look over your shoulder.

You’re in a gown with teddy bears on it. This is the pediatric ward, they have kid stuff everywhere but this is where the gamma knife doctors are. Only the best. I’m gonna beat this.

Head shaved and stapled in a baseball pattern, you look like a kid despite turning 53 last month.

Knock, knock. I’m the hospital administrator. Who has power of attorney here?

Clip boards and pens clicking and I hear prognosis. glio blast o ma, inoperable cranial best case scenario, not covered, notarize. She smells like Mexican laundry soap and doubt.

After 30 years of your marriage, I am seeing your wife in a different light. I do not like her from this moment forward. From this day in April 2004 when you looked over your shoulder, I guess, and lost the race. A week from today when there will be an estate sale of all your collectibles and cars and guitars you never learned how to play.

All the azalea blooms are off. The guacamole gave up. There’s one green and one red tortellini skewer hanging on to the tablecloth. Sundried tomato and pesto. Someone untied the dog.

I wonder how you know the fat man with the ugly sweater. He seems nice, though. Thanks for everything, I’m really going to miss your brother.

Yea. Me too.

++++++++++++++++++++

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In 2004, my triathlete, super healthy, vegetarian, landscape architect brother died from a brain tumor he didn’t know he had. This is from a collection of stories I published back then that won a Pushcart Prize in literary non fiction.

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I was in Atlanta before that and did good restaurant business for 15 years. Stressful, money chasing, robotic business.

I moved to the country woods at the foot of the Appalachia and far away from good food stores, fresh markets, wine shops, coffee bars, sushi. They didn’t have any restaurants really. There was a McDonald’s at the interstate maybe a Waffle/Huddle House? I was a fancy time maybe a “bougie” cook since the 90s. I have been wary of liquid “butter” and seed oils poured on griddles for decades. Insufferable even, but I carved a niche for myself in a good food era that I swear wasn’t preachy. Grass fed beef, local pork, real European butter, sourdough, Biodynamic wines, Oh! the bacchanal! But no, I will not meet you at Waffle House.

I sold everything and went to grow my own food and have chickens and do what seems to be a natural trajectory for big city chefs. Beg for your big break, get break, nearly kill yourself trying to stay competitive, have well earned nervous breakdown, sell everything, take a bag of money to some pin dropped on a map where you will lay in the grass and name your chickens Phylis and Banana Face

But you’re rural now so you’ll eat at the gas station and buy jug wine at the bait shop and it will feel like the most uncivilized back water mistake you’ve ever made. You’ll start taking the 90 minute drive back to the city to collect wines and meats and then arrange for delivery of fish and then you’ll figure out that paying retail civilian prices is really cutting into your farm house renovation budget (because you paid too much for the house because you’re an idiot) and slowly you start to make your own cheese and pick tomatoes out of the garden and stop drinking so much wine because it’s just not worth it. You go to bed earlier and stop trying to find someone to share it with. You can’t go back to your old life.

Your parents get old and die and you spend time in the town where you grew up and sell their piles of collected “treasure” and find you’re more minimalist by the hour. You break up with friends and lovers and the border collie doesn’t greet you at the door any more and then she dies too after staying too long at the party, it got sad at the end. You try to enjoy Florida but realize you never really did. Grief accumulates, it never really leaves. You can’t go back to your old life.

You learn to grieve and be alone and talk to the trees on your farm and you’ll decide that you can’t keep up with events and weddings and all the things necessary to keep a farmy casually fabulous estate running and IG worthy for brides you’ve never met. You’ll hate your Airbnb guests for not eating the garden grown pumpkin muffins you made for them and equally mad that you need so much validation over a literal muffin.

You’ll drop the wine habit and the pour over coffee with organic beans from Ethiopia because it’s $40/lb and you know that’s all going to the guy who created the “brand” and not the farmer pulling the beans. You start calling out your bullshit.

You’ll make natural shampoo and laundry soap and start chewing broad leaf plantain to make a poultice for all your bug bites. You’ll distill mugwort and make cleaning products from rosemary water because your compost and organic soils have grown rosemary bushes the size of a hatchback. You’ll feed your dogs whole rabbits because they’re hunting terriers and that’s their diet. You’ll stop mowing the lawn and get a push mower to cut little walking paths through the wildflowers. You like the land, not the house. You’ll run out of money.

You’ll start selling your botanicals and natural cleaners and decide to take that online business on the road and you sell your beloved casually fabulous farm for not as much money as you should but 2019 is a weird time. The world will shut down over a virus and politics and you’re in your van on the way to your new life with your dogs and herbs and distiller but no place to live and nothing is open except for a Whataburger in Tulsa.

So you make a left and drive to Mexico in your mid 50s alone.

You can’t go back to the old life. Nothing works.

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After driving from Veracruz to Oaxaca and up through Sinaloa, I was having a fine time. Cops are still a menace, the cartel mostly leaves you alone if you mind your own business, gas is expensive here and hard to find but it was exciting. Then on a searing August afternoon much like today where I sit and sweat and type with my tank top on and pants off like Winnie the Pooh, in 109 degrees, I got broadsided and flipped and rolled into a ditch in my van with my two sweet doggos and my life changed. We all lived. But I have no stuff. And now, not even the van.

I live with all these dogs in this dusty town because they just die on the street here and no one gives a shit and I couldn’t just not do something. I wear the same flip flops and shitty tshirts and shorts that aren’t doing me any favors and I wonder why they eat so many God damned hot dogs in this pueblo. There are no markets or coffee or organics or vets or doctors. Four hours in any dangerous drive direction there are all the things.

I fill the water tanks with water from the spigot from the town most days and then tend to a pump that pushes the water into the house with a series of hoses. The handle thing on the toilet broke 6 months ago and I just leave the lid up and pull the flapper by hand. I talk to the spiders in the shower because I’m sick of killing them and I’m hoping they’ll help with the mosquitoes because I got Dengue last year.

.

I talk to my friends in the US and they are complaining about their high paying jobs and property taxes and the stock market and wondering why the Amazon delivery is late or the medical system is fucked and the vet office charges $698 to give a $1 antibiotic for a cough that would go away with honey and time.

They fret about politics, gripe about airplane travel and don’t seem to have food in the house despite having access to a dozen grocery stores at all times. They have laundry delivery services and new cars that start and good air conditioning and a mailing address. There’s all kinds of cheese at the store that isn’t orange.

Truth? I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want a $3000month housing situation.

I don’t want a dryer. I do not want a 9 cycle washing machine. I don’t want to register or insure a car. I never wanted a dishwasher outside of a commercial kitchen. I’ve been cooking for 20 dogs and myself on one hotplate and a toaster oven for five years. I don’t need 6 burners. I use baking soda, salt, vinegar and enzyme castile soap for everything. Even the dogs. Even my teeth.

When we’re sick we fast. Dogs and me too. Sometimes I skip meals because the food didn’t come into the tiendas because the road is out. I haven’t had a TV or watched a streaming service or paid for “entertainment” for 10 years and guess what happens when you don’t watch that? Absolutely nothing.

I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.

I am ungovernable. Everyone thinks money and insurance makes you untouchable. It’s the opposite. If you don’t have money you’re mostly left alone. I’m not paying you “pet rent” or buying a fixer upper that will cost $200,000 to repair and then get taxed into oblivion and have my insurance canceled while you put a data center next door. I’m done with all of it. And you might be too.

I’ll bet you’ve gotten soft. Ignored your instincts. Rely too much on grocery stores. Amazon. Government. Lousy friends who don’t deserve you.

Skip the doctors for every hiccup. Gargle with saltwater. Rest. Skip dinner. You’ll step out of the skin that doesn’t fit you anyway. Be open to what’s next. It may be uncomfortable in a whole new way, but you might surprise yourself.

++++++++++++++++++++++

I started Lola’s Dog Rescue in 2021 after a roll over car accident in an abandoned town full of street dogs far from services and conveniences. To follow our journey you can of course subscribe here, I post for free then the pay wall goes up after a couple weeks. Follow on Instagram at lolasdogrescue and to donate for street feed kibble, beef bone day or Street Spay campaigns there are donation links at linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue

I have a couple of books about being a chef and starting a restaurant that I wrote a Decade ago called— Decade of Dish https://www.blurb.com/ebooks/464465

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A handful of drunk party goers, the dudes with Gila Monster logo shirts on dune buggies headed back to Hermosillo and her.

I’m pretty tall. Not interestingly so, but usually in Mexico, I’m tall. Sonora has some tall Yaqui Indigenous and I’ve long since lost any novelty, but as the only American, I stand out. But five years in, I look just as sweaty, disheveled and dusty as everyone else wearing whatever we can find at pop up yard sales down by the basketball courts. Like ladies who use the showers at homeless shelters, we come out with random corporate tees, PJ pants and flip flops. Clean, but we’re not turning heads.

She was in line, taller than me by inches. A 40 inch inseam at least, she smiled and I saw her dimples and gorgeous (natural looking) teeth. Cheekbones, pretty brown eyes, natural medium long light brown hair in a loose ponytail, not too pale not dark skin.

Who the hell is this?

A stunning woman by all accounts I tug the belly of my Yankees tee-shirt. A boy shirt I got at a yard sale because some Mexicans still say Yankee for Americans and it makes me laugh. I don’t care about baseball to be sure but it was cotton and soft and medium blue so I grabbed it for $2. It’s one of my better tops.

It does me no favors like most boy tee shirts or I dunno, most clothing. Late 50s does things to a body. I was always built like a narrow cinder block and now I’m morphing into an olive jug. I need a tailor, something cut on the bias and a good quality jersey knit in a rich chocolate brown.

It doesn’t matter really, I’m not going anywhere. Obviously. But just to feel good in my own skin. No one’s looking, I’m not looking to see who is looking and I’m so off the radar I could literally rob a store and no one would even know I was inside. Desert August heat in menopause stranded in Sonoran desert dustiness doesn’t give me the energy to rob the store but definitely the mindset.

Even my dogs were outside the hardware store the other night waiting for some “white lady” Gringa they saw. I was across the road at the pharmacy watching them. She did look a little like me and after some inquiry I found out she’s the other American who lives in another dustbowl no services town with indigenous people down the shoreline.

She looked to be with her man so I feel like she was coerced into this. I’m just a big accident all the way around and for sure no one chooses to live here if you’re not from here. If I had a friend with a boat or someone else to go and haul 60# bags of kibble would I be interested? I’ll get back to you.

I whistled for the dogs and they looked at her and back to me and finally someone thought, Use our NOSES and they followed me.

The Pretty Lady at the Tienda was like running into Cindy Crawford in 1995 at a rest stop in Arkansas. A mirage. I wanted to say WHO ARE YOU?? And take me with you because clearly you are LOST. I stood up a little straighter and poked around in the soap aisle wishing there would be something new or natural but it’s Leche de Burra (donkey milk) or the motel soap of Mexico, Rosa Venus. The shop keepers here don’t even try. After a full year of demands I got them to carry real butter and now they sell cases. They still sell disgusting margarine too but can we not cater to all the different types of peeps? Same old men retailers for years and always the same, oh no one around here will buy that. Bollocks. Lots of us do.

Anyway, She wasn’t buying anything. Just getting cash. She had a look of oh, there’s food things here? Sigh. I used to have that look. Now I’m clear on my options. Lower your standards or starve.

Wearing jeans with a wide leg and a white blouse, linen? cropped but not midriff. Wedges in espadrille canvas. In other words, exactly the kind of outfit you should be wearing in this desert climate. She spoke to the cashier about getting some cash from a debit card and her voice was a lovely rolling Spanish. Mexican but not Sonoran and no slang. A proper educated, polite woman. Tall. Not jug shaped. Elegant.

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This place where I am van shipwrecked is a fisherman village. I remember my mom saying that when I cursed or yelled- I sounded like a “fish wife” and now I know what that means. A little coarse, the area. Not quite Naples, Italy but if there were food stalls, maybe. Everyone is sun beaten. Like the striped upholstery on patio chairs you left outside in Florida for ten years.

It’s a rough bunch of cowboys and fish guys and their old ladies, some old timers who work at the geo thermal plant and those who work in mines in Northern Mexico. A heavy handed make up area, eyebrows tattooed with a Sharpie it appears and no one leaves the house without fake eyelashes for some reason. Deeply lined lips, a little Chola south Texas except the brows are full. Everyone looks the same because that one prima went to beauty school for night class. Lots of blinged out press on nails like Easter eggs.

Most women are portly from stress, tamales, fake Manteca, trash beer and 2 liter soda habits. The men aren’t worth mentioning. I said it.

A medium tank top on an XGrande torta bod? No one cares. No judgement, audacious confidence and zero apologies on young women. Post menopausal abuelas gave up long ago, are cutting their own hair and walking slowly to the market in 110 degrees. Some middle aged moms in town for work contracts are starting to buy shiny polyester yoga pants and other toxic athleisure from a TJMaxx haul circa 2015 with evidence of MedSpa treatments and butt implants in their underwear. I’m want none of these things. I have some travel worn shorts and flip flops hanging on for dear life. I haven’t had a spa treatment, hair cut, color or worn makeup or purchased anything for 5 years. I have a Burt’s Bees balm in Berry. I feel like my skin needs to go through a carwash.

But this lady. THIS 40 year old? specimen. Wasn’t trying too hard, hadn’t given up, wasn’t full of herself, woke up looking like that her whole life or married a very subtle plastic surgeon. It was only 7am and made me buck up and say,

You Gotta Get Your Shit Together and Get Outta Here. At least find a dog sitter for two days and take a bus somewhere, buy some natural fiber clothing and a brow pencil.

My inner voice said OH please, you didn’t look like that on your best day 30 years ago. Long neck and a jawline? she’s top shelf. Just get your mandarinas and go walk the dogs, goofy. Don’t forget the soap.

But I thought about her all week. Where was she going? Why did she stop here? Do I still care about beauty? Do we need to see beauty to emulate beauty? I do, clearly but it’s in a reinvented say. Alone in Mexico you don’t want to stand out so I’ve found a way to just fade in with the sand. I’ll buff out later.

*I found out later after seeing her photo in my newsfeed that she was the governor of a neighboring state. Being investigated for some leaked something, allegedly! if I had to guess why she was here I’d say it was for privacy. If nothing else this pueblo has lots of castaways, hidden contraband and the forgotten. Not a bad place to have a conversation.

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Don’t look down, I tell myself. I know what’s coming.

I’m raking poo which is part of life with a dozen dogs. It’s a daily Zen garden raking meditation. The dust bins with long handles made from epoxy cans cut on a diagonal make easy work of sweeping. I must say that Mexico has some of the best old school brooms, mops and dustpans. $5 will go far for cleaning supplies. Inflation has hit everything else.

This week I got a chance to use the dustpan in the bathroom as it flooded in a once a year out of nowhere crazy razzle dazzle roads washed out, people washed out storm. One street underwater, another merely inconvenienced. I was lucky with just a flooded bathroom from the foundation leaks. Beyond towels which I don’t really have any more of… and are at a premium here (a mid grade body towel will run you $17) so the sweeping can it was. You find a rhythm. Slow and steady dump in toilet. Worked well and then the mop. Lost only 2 rolls of toilet paper in the mess. I saved and dried outside. Which, I know. Sounds insane.

Kirkland. Unscented. If you’ve lived in Mexico you know. Also, like the towels, I’m paying premium prices because someone with a better car and more patience drove to Hermosillo 3.5 hours away in 110 degrees to go to Costco. So you pay. And you guard.

Back outside scooping the poo with the same dustpan it occurred to me, hey, maybe get TWO dust pans? so you’re not using the poo one in the house and stuff? And there they were, 1000 tiny needles poking my feet. Fire ants. Don’t ask me what I was wearing. You know what I was wearing. The same thing I’ve been wearing for five years.

*Did you know it was my 5 year anniversary of being trapped/ here last week? Anyway, flip flops. All season, flip flops. I don’t wear shoes in the house, everything else is too hot. Sometimes I’ll put on a Skecher but it’s rare. I went feral fashion way before I got here and this place seems to reward it. Also, no one cares. Which is nice. We’re all shipwrecked in one way or another.

Don’t look down!

I panic when I see the swarming attack of a fire ant pile. I try to get to a hose before looking. Most recently living on a rural property in Georgia there was no bug in the biosphere that didn’t visit me. Anthills announced themselves like the caves of Jordan. The beetles were an entomologist’s dream. The giant murder hornets with nests as big as a tractor, the stink bugs that could get into every crevice and not just ruin your squash harvest, they’d ruin your day. Nothing common like fleas and roaches, it was prehistoric multi colored transformers. And 12 foot rat snakes who often surprised me.

Here it’s scorpion, spiders and roaches who are VERY bold (for context I’m from Florida, so I know of these) ticks, mites and ants. I don’t have sugar ants like they do in the Yucatan. I’ve have 2x a year come out of the ground after a rain to get busy doing whatever they do underground crossing the house and into the shower like a military invasion ants. And some of them bite like hell when disturbed. And me standing there thinking about another $5 investment in dustpans was a disturbance. I ran to the hose and sprayed and will live with the teeny red dots and their helpful venom.

I’ve been grabbing mangoes that fall in the road from a neighbor’s tree as Rocky, the big baby bear Rottweiler loves mangoes. August is indeed an embarrassment of mangoes. Rocky Peels and removes the pits and all. I toss the peels in the back yard and the ants come in record time. I love trying to attract wildlife to my compost pile in theory. I do. And I love birds. But sometimes in August and maybe September, I just want to lock the doors blast AC unaffordably and look at mountain range Wyoming videos on YouTube. I’m tired of stuff dropping on my head and getting tangled in my corkscrew curls that only come out in this kind of humidity. Spiders, lots of spiders.

The mini split ACs can’t keep up with the muggy bog temps and I get it. That’s not what they signed up for. Is this the desert or not?? Water drips all over the floor and the first couple years I panicked and now I blow on the condensate hose, dislodge some gunk and put a bucket on the floor (used to be towels but not at $17!) and I wait until October. I mutter to myself. UNBOTHERED!

There are fewer things at the fruit store but a guy with good cheap grapes drives around and I buy those while sliding milk jug bottoms full of kibble and water under cars where hungry, dehydrated dogs lie.

I used to be a Patch the Hole in the Boat First then bail water pragmatist. But now I’m just bailing water. we can’t really do much more in this heat and apathy besides wait until it’s over and then make some different sorts of progress. Hibernation in reverse. The best part of August is the variety of crap that disallows you to focus on one thing for too long. Out of water? Pump needs replacing? floods? Termite swarms? Empty shop shelves? Car won’t start? 100 degrees and the power is out? Dogs with blossoming hot spots?

Pick your favorite and move on! See you soon.

============================

Thanks for reading. I’m in the Sonoran desert of Mexico after a roll over car accident that sort of stranded me for a time. I began helping the feral abandoned dogs here in 2021 and I have a small rescue and foster home called Lola’s Dog Rescue. You can visit us on Instagram and other places linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue

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I love to swim. I’m not a YMCA lap swimmer but I love to float, do some breast strokes in someone’s pool and be outside and in clear ocean water. Like the Caribbean. Where I do not live and from what I hear is full of Sargassum seaweed snarls from Cancun to Belize right now. I used to go there all the time. I’m likely priced out and would be irritated by the hipsters and ravers who have taken up residence.

I went in this Sea here on the mainland Mexico side of the Sea of Cortez not the dreamy Baja side. This is like the industrial side until you go out in the fisherman boats and go to Tiburon Island. I went in once when I first got here and something bit me and my leg got numb and I wrote it off forever more. But I was so freaked out when I first got here I had no business getting in the ocean. Alone. Hey let’s roll your van and lose everything then get dropped off here and go in the ocean!

There’s NEVER anyone out there. Some daredevil clam free diver guy who is like Tarzan and some kids on the weekend but little boys will do literally anything. I don’t trust it.

Churned up, hot, murky Gulf or Atlantic water has always been a hard pass. This is mostly a bay and quiet but pebbled and super soft sand that will suck your foot down to your shins in 10 seconds.

Today my older neighbors who I call The Italians because they are super tan and have silver hair and wear Fedoras, said they just went swimming. They were drying off and said had I been? And I said.

No. I’m SCARED.

They asked of what? You don’t know how to swim? And I said no actually I’m a good swimmer. Grew up in Florida on the coast and used to have a pool and stuff.

So what then?

I said something bit me 5 years ago.

We stared at each other.

I heard me too. And I felt RIDICULOUS.

All the things I’ve done that got me here, just driving alone all over Mexico for months and doing whatever and now working with street dogs and abandoned tick infested strange animals and crawling on my belly over cactus and living alone in the pueblo and hoping the cartel doesn’t blow anything up, and I won’t go swim in calm waters on a bay off the Sea of Cortez? When the 75 year olds look at you like awww Pobrecita, you’re walking a fine line to pathetic.

I went inside and grabbed Big Rocky and his harness. If anything happens he can pull me out of the water and hitch up to a boat. I got a silly fushia pull up dress at a yard sale yesterday because it was cotton stretch and no one sells anything here but middle management office wear out of polyester or kids clothes and it had pockets and was $5. Gimme.

I want to wear shoes in the water. It sucks my flip flops off. I put on some elastic sneakers I have in the car in case my car gets tricky and I need to walk home. My Prepper side is just a front for my Neurosis. I understand this.

Rocky and I both went in and his eyes were glued to mine and I said let’s do it. I can’t keep dorking around like this. There’s no food, no coffee, no cute guys, no shops, no vet, the one thing it has is a salt water body of water 5 blocks from my cheap rental house.

There’s a little shelf that drops off after the shore break. But it’s not a cliff. Get your shit together. The less you do these things the LESS YOU’LL BE ABLE TO DO THESE THINGS.

I went in backwards watching Rocky and acting like I was helping him get over his fear of this ocean, not mine. However you have to psyche yourself up at a certain age, or after some unrelated trauma—just do it.

I remembered all the times in my past when I got 4 margaritas in and swam out to a shipwreck off the coast of Tulum. And way more than 4 margs in to swim AT NIGHT in Playa del Carmen in the 90s with a waiter from the resort who would pull me back in, noooo there’s sharks out here at night, let’s go back into the bar.

You couldn’t keep me out of the water, like a Labrador I was. Even when I wasn’t boozing, which I don’t do anymore. But I’m noticing that most of the things I’ve done in my life were because I had a little Liquid Courage. And fine. But you’re a big girl now and we can do things sober, yes? Don’t let menopause steal all your joy. Because it can.

I feel like parts of my soul got fragmented when my van rolled over that day. Asustar is the word in Spanish. The Big Scare. I need the evil eye limpia con huevo with a bruja. They don’t even sell sage here. When your soul is scared from something it’s said to be trapped in that place. I’ve been Lucy Liminal since I got pulled through that windshield.

I’m not in that part of Mexico however. I’m in the Amish and Jehovah’s Witness churchy part and I need to get back to the hills of Oaxaca or Veracruz for someone to put the smoke and eucalyptus leaves on me. Give me some micro doses of mushrooms like Maria Sabina. They do the toad venom DMT trips near here but I feel like I’ve met some folks who poked through the wrong veil on that and are still there. Bufa something. It’s too next level for me. I can’t even take cold medicine. I’m not ready to talk to the man in the hat.

Everyone acts like it’s enough when you don’t die in a car crash. Or it could have been worse or yes you lost all your things but you can replace those (no you can’t) and even though I know better—you can get stuck. When people say all that shit that people say because they’re just trying to be nice and listen to your BIG STORY and they likely have their own BIG STORY that is 5x worse and they still carry on and mop the floors or whatever and you’re afraid to ride in a car after 40 years of driving? It doesn’t invalidate your experience just because someone else was tied up in a basement for 3 years and you just rolled your van because some dumb ass hit you in the middle of nowhere desert town.

Your journey is your journey.

And you got scared. There, just say it. I’ve been so busy being GRATEFUL that I’ve been embarrassed to say that frankly, this is NOT how I want to live. I want a chair and my own kind of mattress and some shoes and organic fucking yogurt, okay? I miss my herbs, my incense, having an address to ship things to. I miss refinishing furniture and making body oil and walking in parks and seeing grass and trees and flowers. I miss Chinese medicine tea and my acupuncturist.

I’ve been rhetorically treading water pretty well for 5 years but I’m not really thriving. it’s not all this town, it’s aging. it’s losing all your hormones and being off your special bougie diet of perfect proteins from happy cows and triple filtered water with amethyst dust in it. It’s not having a bathtub and running out of money because you spend all you had on stray dogs. it’s cumulative the sad things. It’s not having a hug for 5 years.

I can SNAP OUT OF IT or go down the drain. And I’m sure they don’t even sell drains here.

Anyway, I’ve felt less and less like myself over the years that I’ve been here. Not electively here I might add but there seems to be few options that make sense for dogs, economics and safety, so here I am. I don’t feel creative. I don’t feel cute. I don’t like any of the things they offer here (hotdogs and drinking Bud Lite) They don’t sell paint, or craft stuff or have a thrift store or a regular store and the food sucks I know I say it all the time but it’s remarkably lame for Mexico.

Go swimming, girl! it’ll be nicer than sitting in 104 degrees and holding your breath until October. It’s RIGHT THERE! it’s fine. it’s not Bora Bora but you don’t even know where that is. And your depression and ugly wardrobe and lack of a dog sitting option or funds makes this your next best ocean. Baptize thyself.

I did it. We did it. Went up to my neck and Rocky whined but paddled and we both said, Ohhh, this is nice! And we didn’t push it, got out on a high note and got in the car wet dress and all.

At home I went through my suitcase and found my bathing suit that I bought back in 2019 that I’ve never worn and hung it on the door. Next time I go in I’ll take fat Suzy the Labrador and not wear a dress.

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for more info on my efforts to alleviate suffering of abandoned dogs in the desert check out linktr.ee/lolasdogrescu

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I have him check my water tanks because I’m afraid to get on the roof and I don’t think the pump is working. I had him change the pump because it was, in fact, not working. I can handle chores in normal weather but the Swamp Desert that is July in Sonora, Mexico is beyond reproach.

The power’s been off again and yesterday I had to resign that this would just be how I would die. There’s no reprieve. Even Tucson goes down to 76 overnight. You can flip your schedule and do things when Satan goes to lunch. Here will be 96 overnight. A 4 degree cold snap. I said last summer I wouldn’t do another here.

Still, I can’t stop walking the hounds, even if we just go around the block, they too think better of it after we start moving. And everyone just likes a little sniff to see what’s happening and where the band of rogue cows have been eating. It actually made the news, the cows. It used to be 2 and now there’s a herd. No one knows who they belong to and people are concerned. It’s a traffic menace.

Today the Sicario’s mom was walking toward me slowly with her safari hat, carrying 6 bags of groceries. I was just giving in to the heat and heading home but she’s 80 and where is her goon son by the way? I grabbed the bags from her left hand and we walked together. I’ve been feeling old, sloppy and sweaty lately, this was just the ego boost I needed. Oh you’re so young and strong she said.

She was beside herself with grace and much gracias-ing. She insisted I come inside and she’d lock up her teacup Chihuahua and I could bring in Rocky and tie him on the patio. We talked about her avocado tree that took 12 years to grow but gives her 78 avocados a year. She speaks slowly and not with slang so I can understand her Spanish/Mexican even though it is gravely. She said, you’ve been here a long time. I cried a lot when I first arrived here. I hated it and then my husband died and I was stuck. it’s been 45 years.

My heart sank.

I don’t want to go inside. Not for the reasons I’m not supposed to go inside that the carne asada guy warns me about, (no second location, no going inside where doors can shut and you’ll be kidnapped) but because I need to walk two other dogs and it’s nearly 9 and I spent a bunch of time trying to coax out the sweet runt dog from a truck undercarriage. Also I’m aware that I smell like a ripe goat. I have no business standing in this lady’s kitchen.

Sientate! (sit)

She proceeds to unbag a bunch of bones that I recognize because I buy them for the dogs, neck bones, the rollo Norteno. Sometimes I get lucky with lots of meat on them, yes she says it’s her son’s favorite. I am aware that I don’t have anything to talk about besides dogs.

She continues to wash the bones, salt the bones, fill another stock pot with water from the tap which makes me wonder if we’re all using bottled water for cooking because we’re idiots.

She dumps a bunch of strawberries in a bowl and tells me how in all her years she’s only had diarrhea once and I find that a random comment. I start thinking about all the news from the US about some poo parasite that has taken over the produce market and other scare tactics. More washing and cutting meat with a butter knife. Washing of meat and not of berries My life as a kitchen professional has me a little uneasy about all of this. Just relax.

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I don’t eat berries unless I grow them myself and even if these are Mexican berries they’re totally covered in pesticide and poo water. I pull at my shirt collar. I see a plate of over ripe mangos on the table that will definitely give me a rash so I push it away slowly. Rocky is high pitched mama’s boy whining outside. For such a big dog with a Rottweiler head he yells like a parrot if he’s left out of activities. A girl parrot.

I’m starting to fidget as she turns on the gas stove with no vent hood and windows closed. The diarrhea talk, the poison berries she didn’t soak and the itchy mangos…I blurt out “I always soak my produce in baking soda and water for 15 minutes to get rid of parasites and pesticides!” and I hate myself for saying anything. In her kitchen I’m going to tell this Mexican grandma what’s up. Rude.

She says, “Oh I splash them all with bleach it’s fine. I’m going to make us some licuados sit, sit!”

My nerves and my nose smelling the propane and thinking that I was going to die in the heat yesterday but actually I’m going to die in this lady’s not terribly clean kitchen. The daughter has a business making beans and somehow that has built her a house and an SUV even though no one ever buys the beans. Is she putting bleach in there?

I jump up like I was stung by a hornet. Me voy!

You don’t want a licuado?

Oh, thank you so much but I don’t like fruit really, to be honest, senora. And I’m allergic. And I have to go before it gets too hot.

Way too many excuses for a smoothie bail out. Why am I like this?

Because I don’t like sitting, I don’t like consuming foods around other people unless I know them REALLY really well. I don’t like unplanned meal service and propane smell and it’s all just enough that I’m speaking Spanish and now there’s talk of bleaching the fruit and I just cannot. My neighbor in a small town in Veracruz used to knock on the door and say, lets go get Bolis! and she was so nice but I hated sucking on dirty random hand touched plastic bags filled with fruit water.

Like the street dogs I give space to run, I always look for an escape route in case shit gets weird. I head to the door which goes to the hall which goes to the patio and there’s big Rocky thank God and muchas gracias and I’ll see you again, I must finish my chores before the heat is too high and I can’t stop talking and she can’t stop saying but I was making us SMOOTHIES! Are you sure?

And I know she’s lonely and I feel bad but not bad enough to stick around literally anywhere for very long, my entire life. I hope she lets the Chihuahua out of the bathroom.

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*I’ve decided to list the highlights in the title so I can catalog them and I got the idea from Joy on Earth who wondered out loud about our existence on Substack too.

I just don’t care. I feel that you don’t care. So why bother.

Have I aged out of the time that I feel the need to tell my story? Any story? You’d think living alone with a bunch of street dogs in the Mexican desert where I talk to no one unless it’s a cashier at the tienda, I’d have tons to say and I’d be in here typing away.

The caged bird doesn’t sing.

In 2 weeks it will be 5 years that I’m here by accident, temporarily, without my car or my things or friends or my native tongue or an address or mail or a hug or a restaurant. Five. Years.

Maybe the bird is tired of singing into the void. Maybe when I open this platform it takes me to Notes which looks just like any other time wasting social media scroll with orange trim. At least on FB some of those people actually know me. I’m not interested in buying what is being sold in this or any scroll. But when did this get political? Angry? A sales tool??? Gross.

I can’t find anyone I want to read save for a few I literally stumbled on and no one can find me either. They don’t even have a category for Non-Fiction writers so how can this platform be for writers at all?

Anyway I hate it.

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In other news the power was off in 104 degrees in the Sonoran desert on Saturday after a Friday night sandstorm that blew over some poles. Not the first time in summers past but always makes my life flash before my eyes. it was 8 hours this time and back on after dark, while I was setting up my solar lights. These little block houses heat up during the day like a pizza oven. It took hours to cool down. I have to go to a meditative place in my mind, I am not a hot weather girl.

The first year it cut off (2022) I was in the middle of spay clinic with the vet and outside for light and I remember he said we’d only have to be worried about flies and then rain started and flooded everywhere. We were under a carport shed and I already had the dogs, he had driven the 3.5 hours, we operate!

Speaking of dogs the guy with the hardware store asked me to come vaccinate the puppy his shop guy got. I had seen the white Husky and tried to bite my tongue on why he’s buying dogs from these shit head backyard breeders when there’s homeless dogs everywhere. Oh but this one has blue eyes….literally who cares?! I don’t vaccinate but the vet will be here Sunday I can hook you guys up. Sunday came, the dog had diarrhea, the vet said let’s give antibiotics and if he’s better she (as in me) will give him the vaccine on Wednesday. Okay and off they all went to watch the World Cup and drink beer and left the dog in the shop. Alone. And I saw the water bowl stare. Usually means Parvo. Nearly dead by morning and they wanted me to come and check him.

If I could, I’d tell them that it breaks me to see so much needless dying of dogs and I’d prefer not to be the death doula, but here we are. My calloused soul. They had left Coco out on the sidewalk! Monsters. If he doesn’t get better I guess we’ll take him to the dump and get another one.

I wrapped him in a towel and put him in a box and kept him under a shade tree until the guy got home. He was already dead. I still have the vaccine in my fridge.

I found a street corner Saturday where there was breeze coming from two directions a block away with shade and remembered this musician I met in Veracruz which is equally muggy but less hot. Maybe just as hot but green and tropical and a different swampy vibe. He used to say that he wrote his music at sunset at the corner of Ave Libertad and Benito Juarez. Always get a cross breeze, Gringa. That’s how we survive.

I heard he died last year, at 60. He was trying to get back to Amsterdam to play with his Cuban band. He looked Cuban, like many in Veracruz. Talked a lot about the genre of Son Jarocho and was an interesting guy but said his life sucked after living in Europe. Mexico was just not cutting it for him artistically. Also he was sober after much time in the bottle. And he said that sucked too. Despite how I’m making him sound he was hilarious to hang out with and had a great sense of humor and a funny accent in English. That may be the last time I spoke in English.

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Like a lot of folks he found you can’t go home again. His elderly mother and sister still lived in town and all the people he went to school with and all his stories of his past lived in that small town on the river. He would have been a great music teacher albeit a little dark. Anyway, I always look for the breeze on the corner. RIP, amigo.

July 12, 2026

I spent Sunday rehydrating the dogs and myself and blasting the AC and laying around. It rained a little on Saturday and the water mixed with the sand and weird local dust and made cement that blocked my gate from opening and I filed that in my Rolodex of Horrors.

I had to drag water buckets from the AC drip pipe to soften the rock and chisel out because for whatever reason the water at the llave at the street wasn’t on. There is no secondary exit and that makes me hyperventilate. No ladder either. I think the other part of the fencing opens to be a sloped car park, I’ll need to move some lumber and try some keys and open that up. I like a LOT of exits.

When my friend’s dad died she found his travel diaries and he had been on a trek that included this area in Mexico. He wrote only one line.

Northern Mexico is a hell scape. Nothing much of interest and will be moving on at day break.

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Thanks for reading. I write about an accidental life where I rescue dogs in a nowhere town in Sonora Mexico where I got stranded after totaling my van. Subscribing is nice and if you’d like to see more about the rescue linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue has info and we’re on IG and I have 11 dogs in residence and street feed and spay dozens more strays.

If you know of a nice property where I can have my dogs and some trees and grass literally ANYWHERE in the world that’s safe with an address and a farmers market, and would like to rent it to me, or sell it owner finance, please get in touch.

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Calico came with the house next door when I moved into this place. She was living under a car and then one day the car was gone and she just sat on the sidewalk. She waited for weeks. No one came.

I brought her food and a water bowl and she mostly moved down the wall and ate when I walked away. I brought Rocky with me or Mattie because it’s always better with a dog buddy. Some times I just sit with dogs and talk to them and walk away. No expectations. No touching.

The laundry lady two doors down said the pinche people moved out and left the dog. The house looked too gross to occupy for people to be fair, I don’t blame them for leaving, and like furniture in most of these Mexican households, they don’t take anything. Even the pets.

As someone who has wrapped my entire life in acres of bubble wrap and spent all of my money moving from one place to the other with all my trinkets and all the pets, it’s weird. But no judgement, maybe there was an emergency and they had to go.

*(Turns out they moved just a few blocks away and they’re just irresponsible pendejos, so now I judge a little.)

I’m not here to rehab people, (I tried) I’m here to help abandoned dogs. Self appointed, I’m not here by royal decree or anything. How did I get here? Origin story if you’re new. August will be FIVE YEARS in this dustbowl, all due respect to dustbowls. I cried for a month about being stuck here without ride, my wrecked car, a way to get out. Sometimes I still cry about it. But in lieu of being a big fat old baby about it, I pour myself into the perros sin duenos wandering everywhere.

Sad, broken, limping, missing eyeballs. A real cliche moment, I complained I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet. Service is really the only way to get over your bullshit. I’m no saint, trust this. I would have left 40x over if given a destination that even had a grocery store and a way to get there. Now I’m in too deep. I have to move all of us now. It’s even less easy now. Oh the choices we make.

Calico spent a chilly winter looking for sun on that sidewalk wall next door and then someone said she looks pregnant. Crap. She had found a space under a gate at the abandoned house where a drippy water line made the dirt soft and diggable and was in there being broody. This is why people leave the females when they move. No way to spay in town without effort and planning. Not worth it and vamos! Calico was from an accidental litter too. No particular breed of course, the Peanut Butter Dog is the usual street fare, but the brindle is seen a lot and here in ranch country there’s a little nippy cattle dog in most.

Calico’s face tells me everything I need to know.

She had the puppies in a mud hole in that yard and I had to break in to get them out of there. I’ll admit my days of crawling on my belly and breaking in places is coming to a close. The usual litter of 6 born, 2 died in a rain storm face down, two got run over, the male got adopted and one I call Border remained.

I spayed them both after snaring them with the lady on the corner who is a little touched in the head but will catch a wild animal with her bare hands. Sonoran/Indigenous women are no joke. Who knows what her story is. I sort of think it’s not an easy one. She tied them both up with rope and got bitten but the vet was ready with the sedation and we did surgery immediately. I’m post op and assistant at these triage clinics I set up. Calico and Border woke up on blankets and had a snack and ran off happy as clams. No cones needed, no sleepiness, just rough and ready.

They’re both still feral but I bring them inside my patio each night so they don’t chase cars or get beaten by the Can Man with the machete. Border is super affectionate but you can only pet her head. She yelps at everything and always has. Born with a nervous system that feels like it’s on the outside of her skin. As a hypervigilant sensitive person myself, I get it. Border would really like to sleep inside and I let her but her sense of obligation to her mama takes over. There’s a lot of opening the gate and closing the gate here. It’s been little by little for over 2 years.

On the patio Calico destroys the curtain panels, digs holes that are impossible to fill without a back hoe. Out in the wild, she robs tiendas, chases cars, bikes, kids, steals meat scrap from the butcher, jumps a fence to try to catch chickens at old Jose’s house and gets chased by his dog pack which she deserves. She eats twice a day here but still tips trash cans. She lays under my car until I leave the house and she follows me on foot or behind the car to wherever I go which is never too far…only a 2 mile radius but they’ll both run to the bank on the highway. It’s not ideal.

She is an opportunist and a survivor and I cannot fault her for any of this. She’s unadoptable. If she was on a big grassy farm and had a family and a soft place to lay or a tractor to get under and a job chasing goats she may relax, or she may not, it’s hard to tell. It was a big deal that Andie started coming in for supper but she was antsy and crazy to leave if she was inside too long.

She’d sleep like the dead and visit her baby Rocky and then flip out at 1am and come get me out of bed to let her out. Baby Rocky has been coming INSIDE the gate for 4 years since he was born, I have no idea why, and is a big giant lap dog despite his mom. But Andie brought him to me, like she wanted him to have a better chance at things. Somewhere there’s a mama’s boy Rottweiler who shares his DNA.

Andie died last year and if I say It’s Your Mama! too loud to Border, Rocky comes running and I remember how these dogs are paying attention to everything and have big feelings. He looks back and forth out the gate and I hate that I got his hopes up.

Calico is misunderstood but the rest of the pack lets her come inside little by little (River prefers she stay at the front entrance, thank you, she knows she’s going to steal food or dump trash) and I mostly let them work things out in dog world with supervision. I live more like a dog than ask them to live like people, but I was never too cut out for People Life before so it’s fine.

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Buenas noches!

Buenas NOCHES!

BUENAS NOCHES!!

Two female voices, this was serious. Mom and little girl, 8, their dog had been hit by a car and can I check him and see if he’s okay? Do you have medicines?

I lead with I’m Not a Vet, always. Yea, but here you are, said the mom. I’ve never seen these people before. Also I’m an early bird despite a lifetime of hospitality restaurant work. 930pm is me in the house dress getting ready to put the olive oil on my face and hunker down with a conspiracy podcast or true crime. You know who you are.

I wondered which medicine cured a hit and run.

Can you come over? And of course I said nuh uh. A perfect trap. Late, dog lover, little kid, emergency. BAM! Kidnapped.

I was just reading about a new serial killer in Puerto Vallarta. Gringos love to say it’s Soooo safe. Targeting women. I thought of the 20 something yoga girlies doing a LIVE on Instagram walking down some private beach giving their location and saying they loved Sayulita and PV especially the Matcha…

Take a dog! pepper spray! Stop giving your exact location!

Anyway, I told this lady I’d follow her in my own car.

Kiko is a young male cattle dog ish and looked like Betty who I spayed and rehomed back in 2021 and think of often. He wagged his tail but wouldn’t move. I asked if they could get a cushion or a blankie? The Mexican need for comfort is very low, I’ve witnessed over the years and if you’ve ever slept on a Mexican mattress, you know. I had a Mavicam anti inflammatory in my bag. Dog safe. I asked for my go to, warm water towel, ice in plastic bag, t-shirt and a sausage.

I told them I wasn’t a vet. You get buenas vibras and wash cloths.

Most of his paralyzed behavior was pain and shock. A swelling shoulder and whines had the little girl worried and I had her get a big plastic syringe and give him water on the side of his muzzle. He liked that and it distracted her. An abuelo shuffled out in slippers, said Pobrecito and went back inside.

Mom presented spicy chorizo and I had no problem getting Kiko to take his medicine. I think he’s going to be okay, I said.

Mande?

Oh, Creo que va estar bien.

I don’t talk much here and I really don’t talk after 8pm and for sure my Spanish is not happening this late.

The little girl asked a dozen questions and I thought of Uncle Buck, why are you here? Are you American? Do you work? How do you feed all these dogs? She then wanted to see if I’d help with this puppy that was crying in the distance and offered her hand for me to step down off the cluttered patio step. Awww, sweet. Wait a minute, she thinks I’m an old lady!

I’m getting rid of this house dress.

Climbing around in piles of nylon nets from the fishing boats some 8 week old baby was in there strangling himself with each effort to get out.

And this is why we bring our own car and why I have kitchen shears and a knife in the hatchback. I’d wished I wasn’t wearing flip flops but this deep into the mission I know there’s not much I haven’t done in flippers. And I do keep sneakers in the car but this was dire, my feet are fine. Don’t think of scorpions.

I released the puppy and in my mind I had untangled a dolphin and he was cresting the horizon at sunset and I had saved the day. The puppy was very grateful and Margarita (the kid) and I fed the strays at the end of her block and I went home. Muchas gracias! I imagined the parade in my honor they would all plan one day. She wasn’t a vet but she made everything better! I adjusted my cape.

I went by yesterday afternoon and Margarita cocked her head and squinted at me like she wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing there or who I was. Eight year olds cannot play poker. The pile of puppies laying next door in the shade lifted their heads and went back to sleep. It was only 1pm to be fair. Not much happens here until after 5pm. And the kids I notice don’t do shit until they’ve polished off a liter of Coke at 3pm.

I was there for Kiko though, who had pulled himself into the shade and had figured out how to get up without the dislocated shoulder leg. Yay!!! Okay just wanted to check on him, you okay?

Si.

I realized in the energetic light of day in my straw cowboy hat, work shirt, sorta cargo shorts and normal shoes she maybe didn’t recognize me. No one ever does really. Which is fine. Oh and the tinted lip balm, definitely next level. One of my many disguises. Cheap sunglasses and WineBerry from Burt’s Bees.

I don’t drink so any doddering I was doing the night before was because they don’t have patio lights and I get up at 4am. Or maybe I am an old lady. I’ve got 50 years on her but when they asked if I needed help getting up from where I kneeled over the dog, I ignored them like the cranky old bat I plan to be one day.

This old street dog likes his freedom but he also likes a solid meal 2x a day and has been doing so for 4 years. Sleeping on the sofa. Finding a cozy blanket to cozy up on the floor. Getting a bone.

Two days now. Sleeping in dusty sandy road near my car. Doesn’t follow on walks. Won’t come inside the patio. I know what this means.

Usually it means I’m not the lunch lady anymore but I’m about to be the Hospice Nurse. Or the Undertaker.

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The older street dogs seem to prefer to wander off and die like Andie did. Pedro is on the fence about his indoor outdoor life. I’m not sure about his dying preference.

He was old when he got here. He could be 13? He could have eaten poison. Or taken the raw fish from goddamnpaco the fish guy who shows up later and drunker with more fillet trash in buckets with knives and goo than I can handle at 10pm.

Last night I shooed Paco off. Pedro followed him. He could be digesting that wormy mass. And to that end, please, stay outside. I do enough laundry as it is. None of it wearable.

I’ve seen him knock over trash cans and take out a dirty diaper or a greasy bag of rotten and eat it whole. Right after a big fancy breakfast and in the middle of a walk. I find digested plastic bags in his poo all the time. How these dogs are alive is something I’ll never get over. I see

Domestic dogs with fancy delivery of organic food and treadmills in the US are getting chemo at 6 years old and limping from memory foam bed to elevated food bowl. Meanwhile, these street dogs are eating bags of actual shit and living with very little comfort or intervention. Mostly because we don’t have comfort or intervention to buy here. I’m both. Saltwater, bone broth and the occasional antibiotic, sleep it off. Some of the dogs on the street look like the zombie apocalypse already.

Seems if they make it past Parvo and the creep with the ice pick, they can survive. The streets are cruelest for females but the ones I spay and release, who live behind taco carts or tiendas with produce trash seem happy to follow the trash truck a couple times a week and sleep on the beach. Or maybe that’s what I tell myself? If I had more room, I’d take them all in. But this 12 number is about capacity for adults. I remember saying that at 7. Okay it’s past capacity but they’ve all got a sleeping space and a private bowl, the only one who gets a little over the Groundhog Day of it all is me.

Walk, launder, feed, walk, prep, shop, rake poo, wash patios, launder, feed, ear clean, walk, feed, shop, lug kibble, launder, comb, tick search, mop, mop, mop

.

I try not to take it personally when these dogs start to distance themselves from me when they’re sick. Because I didn’t choose this role as much as it chose me, I adapt to what’s asked of me in the moment. That sort of makes me feel like I haven’t really been making any choices for my life that have anything to do with me and the day I decided to open my self and heart and home up to rescue these animals, that Me took a back seat. It’s like swapping out a breaker on an electrical panel that’s too small. You want the fridge? or the water heater.

I feel Me getting a little fidgety

.

The aging matriarch at the tienda laughs nervously and says, I can’t carry that, it’s 55 lbs! Her son at the register, weighing in at 300 lbs and easily 6.4 gives her the shoo shoo hands.

I feel bad for her, but to be fair she’s worthless on the register. She doesn’t know any of the prices, nothing is marked and she’s only worked there under her femme cowboy husband for 40 years.

My eyes dart back and forth like a kid who grew up in an argumentative household even though I just celebrated a birthday which will be the last one before I’m 60. Sticking myself with my fingernail to avoid saying NO I’LL DO IT. She shuffles off to the back.

All the food stores are owned by one family with none of them having any skills or talent in merchandising, stock rotation, fresh foods or management. Unlike Italian Mafia families, who still do a nice job and take pride in the culinary arts and can do extortion and source proper veal. A small town like this without competition breeds a lousy shopping experience.

None of the stores employ stock men. Teen girls and grandmas. All of them burnt all the way down on their jobs or just listless and phone scrolling. I’m still used to driving up to the side of the feed store in Georgia and asking the strapping corn fed boys to put 5 bags of feed in the truck and then going inside to peruse the tomato seeds or look at baby chicks inside.

One tienda has a 10 year old boy who bags groceries for tips who really wants to have more responsibility. I don’t buy kibble there because all the bags have mouse holes in them. The third store keeps kibble on a top shelf in the closet in the back of the store with 20 inch aisles. Mostly out of stock. I have noticed no delivery days or a pattern even after 5 years. The beer store carries kibble but it’s a merry go round of off brand imposters and other spoiled trash the dogs won’t eat. All the bags smell like Axe body spray and I feel like it’s an over the road trucking foil for sniffer dogs at check points. Allegedly!

I guess teenagers are in school but seriously where are all the men? Down near the shore a few rough and ready dudes are unloading boats with fish and “fish”. Middle aged drunks sit on the wall and drink out of paper bags. I try to stay low key and not be obvious in my curiosity about boats coming in and out. There’s an ice factory and lots of people in hip waders and rubber boots. I always make the silent air quotes when I drive by. Oh, the “ice factory” in the desert.

A lot of actual seafood does go out to Hermosillo and the remaining school shark and cochito stays here for some household ceviche but I thought I’d be eating more fish than I am. I see a lot of people advertising “fresh shrimp” but I see boxes all over the roads with Sam’s Club frozen shrimp. Street dogs dumping trash keep people honest. Dog walking ladies who notice patterns know what’s up and consequently I eat a lot of beans. One young guy always says he drives fish to Tijuana where they clearly can’t get fish locally in the entire Pacific Ocean. They’re all too stupid to lie with credibility. I keep sunglasses on mostly to hide my eye rolls. No one is driving 10 hours to TJ with fish on ice at $7/gallon. Logistics morons, maybe. Or someone who’s figured out how to stuff fish with ice. His career will be short, he talks too much.

I see Tony the dog over there and that’s where they adopted him when I was still hopeful about people in town being able to have dogs, but he seems to free range a lot lately and has a rear leg limp like most dogs. I wonder about Betty, she was a great dog, another spotted cattle border collieish. I pass Cupcake and see she has another litter. Going to the beach is always a sad affair.

I feel like the younger men have been recruited into the Marines, the crooked cops or most probably abducted by cartels who are having a banner week of fallen middle management and politicians who are stepping down and fleeing to the United States to turn themselves in and sing like canaries. Fingers have been pointed at “supply chains” as diverse as African pill mills with Mexican chemists (mostly women) and the SKIMS line of lingerie run by K with millions in nose sugar tucked inside each tummy smoother. Another nod to poor Kanye who is right like Alex Jones but no one believes either one of them because their claims are unhinged sounding and they have bad PR coaching. (Are all the frogs gay from Atrizine run off? well it turns out yes)

There’s a vacuum in leadership. The way they idolize the cartels here I’m pretty sure slinging kibble and fish ice is only temporary work until you can hitch a ride to Caborca or Culiacan. No one blames them.

The President (who would like to be called Presidenta thank you) is hosting rock bands U2 and the KPop idols BTS on the balcony of the National Palace to 50,000 screaming fans so she’s busy. The 50k was for BTS, not U2. I’ll call it early on the South Korean alliance with Mexico. They’re already making cars here and happily avoiding US tariffs like China and others.

I watch as worlds collide and the US is doing whatever it’s called up there in the burning circus tent and remember what the carne asada guy says, Trust No One and See Less. And this is all just a humorist’s essay. What do I know.

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If you want a screen door you can put a screen door but it has to be custom made by welding steel no one sells doors here. Call this guy, the other guy is too expensive, says the landlord.

I call the This Guy who is the son I never knew about of the lady who used to do my laundry who is less interested in me now that I have a washing machine. He came by, drew up a pic and gave a price and was off on his bike. He looked just like the laundry lady if she was a cowboy.

3800mxn/200us

That’s a good price but that’s not included in the rental price of the house said the landlord

*aka he’s not paying for it.

OK I said. That makes sense. In a previous life I was a landlord too and although I rented a different sort of place, I could see that a convenience that wasn’t a repair was an immediate no. But he thinks it’s a good price and for a custom welded door, likely is. But I’m not in a custom welded door kind of life chapter and also, this isn’t my house. What am I doing? Anything I can’t sell when I leave needs to be under $40 and that competes with bags of kibble and bones and that’s where any and all money goes.

Will I rig up some screen and just hang it from sticky tape? Yea, probably.

I hate the asking and the rejection on top of being a lousy sales person, I can’t really think of why this house should have an iron screen door so I didn’t even counter. Some folks have tarps as doors. Some aspire to tarps.

I had to sit and think about the steel door with a mesh screen for $200. I haven’t even found a pair of shorts to buy in the last five years, why am I upgrading a rental? Project Polly wants to make the house cute.

I went to the future in my mind and saw Big Rocky getting his morning run and wrestle with the rest of the dogs and breaking it down in less than a week. I know how hard it is to get outside of one door and a gate without a pile of dogs adding another door to the mix and metal that will be 500 degrees in summer sounds super dumb. I have to use an oven mitt to grab the knob by August. Yesterday Rocky jumped after a bee and moved the fridge about 2 feet and opened the doors and knocked all the stuff off the top. Accidentally, but he’s a big strong boy.

.

The whole thing, impractical.

Now I feel the weight of having to tell the welder guy that it’s a pass and worrying he’ll be disappointed. Then I realize that I’m really overvaluing my attendance to the party. He may in fact be relieved, what do I know?

I really try to help the community and wish they’d like me more but they don’t care about dogs and that’s all I do is save dogs so I’m just the crazy dog lady and even if I give a paying gig, they only like me until the money stops. A little like the street dogs really. Opportunists who are happy if you have a bag full of treats but when the treats are gone the best you can expect is not getting bitten. I understand that too.

Life has been throwing me remnants from my past life lately and I can see a LESSON now for what it offers. Getting stuck here has been like that kink in the hose when the water is on but it’s not flowing. Pay attention and you can get out of the corn maze. You cannot take your short comings with you.

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Nine months ago the landlord (the real owner El Papa, not the cheap we’ll call him shrewd son) said he was going to fix the plaster out front and paint the house, did I want cream or white? He said he’d have to go to Hermosillo to get paint because they only sell one color here and it’s “como leche” (like milk)

Last week some guys showed up and started scraping plaster. No text, no call. Just, we’re here to paint the house.

I’m not surprised it took nine months, because that’s how long it takes to round up a competent worker. Get the paint in that 8 hour round trip shopping journey. Get distracted by other projects, forget about the tenant who never asks for anything and pays on time.

Can you trim that lime tree? and get those cisterns they store over here out? Yep. Gone. Mostly cleaned up.

The house is not cream but I quite like the new color, Rose Pastelito from Sherwin Williams!? Finished in 3 days. I mostly stayed out of the work area which was hard for Project Polly. Half my life has been pointing and directing and supervising and paint swatching. I gave a stern talk about using the drop cloths I provided but other than that and some salty language to clean out all the plaster scraped into the washing machine (no mames puta madre a la verga) I minded my own business.

I was proud of myself. No micromanaging, no worrying. Not my house. Better than it was. Not my money. Only got hit up by the helper guy the day after saying he needed $5 for diapers or whatever…it’s common. If you don’t tip the workers they’ll show up after getting shorted by the Boss and hit up the Gringa. I gave him $10 and bought him soda. The other guy yelled at me for paying him. I shrugged. If he only knew how much I’ve overpaid and over tipped in the past. This was a win and those lime branches are brutally thorny.

The Landlord has a cafe in his cheap motel where he feeds his workers and then his beer store keeps a mostly alcoholic crew pacified. I watch how they have low day rates and although it’s not always the feel good Win/Win for everyone involved that I romanticize, I admire their style. I know for sure he’s never worried about hurting the feelings of someone who bid a project. I roll my own eyes at my own self for that one. No one is overpaid for sure but everyone shows up and no one tells them ahorita. They are respected. They are definitely unbothered, the landlords.

I’ve installed a half screen with dog view window with used landscape shade cloth and it will be fine. I’m confident I’ll be moving out of here to something better any day now.

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My Mission from Dog is a collection of stories about my life after a car accident left me stranded in a nowhere town in desert Mexico where I’m the only American. I started rescuing dogs and you can read more about the rescue linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue or follow us on Instagram. We’d love for you to subscribe, all proceeds from this Substack support the spay, feeding and housing of abandoned dogs. Thanks for reading. Feel free to share.

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We know now as adults (and I’m more adult than her by 12 years and tired of lame excuses people used as children) she is just lousy at time management or careless, and makes little effort to change the behavior. Meh.

When you live in the same town for a lifetime and work the same job and have no kids or money problems, not having time isn’t the issue. It’s you.

But that’s a heavy thing to say to someone and still be friends so I’ve decided it’s not my job. Not to hear about it. Not to fix. So I don’t say anything.

Being here in the desert that I did not choose but chose to not break the bank or my back to get out of to nowhere in particular has taught me some things.

Mostly that I hold being Unbothered above all else.

It helps that no one speaks English here and my Spanish is fine for shopping, counting, buying food, walking dogs and getting a spay clinic in my living room…but I don’t have deep conversational Spanish. Get your shit together Spanish. Clean up your own yard Spanish. Stop breeding dogs Spanish (okay I have that one…why are you buying a dog from a breeder when there are 200 dogs in the road in front of your house starving you monster…like that)

I notice in the States that everyone still has an opinion they think useful. I used to think I had good ones! Don’t we all?

I think it was part of the AA mantras, assholes are like opinions everyone has one. I grew up with an alcoholic parent and had to go to Alanon meetings with my mom. They had lots of little sayings that didn’t really stick until I was older. I see that a lot of folks are co dependent enablers, dry drunks with stinkin’ thinkin’. bless our hearts.

I like information and research. Too much probably. And that can mutate into opinions. But I’m keeping them in my head or turning them into recipes for body oils or muffins

I listen to this YouTube Monk channel through the night and hear these little nuggets of clarity. This morning the one that stuck from 2am was The Heavy Apparatus of Opinions.

I have a lot of opinions, as one does, as one approaches six decades of life. But I’m also tired of everyone and I see things loop on repeat a lot so I dunno, I don’t feel like mustering up energy for stuff that does not matter. Like me sharing my opinion, acting like politics isn’t bad theater or trying to convince anyone of anything. Even sharing my stories and observations here as I type type type like a fat pigeon, who cares?

I write for me, if you read it and like it then that’s cool. If you toss money at the pigeon even better because I’m feeding a lot of dogs that no one else will.

I have no idea what makes people tick, lofting my opinion unasked is just weird. I’ve done it. A LOT. I laugh.

I give the head nod when walking the pack. Maybe a wave. Definitely buen dia and gracias. But for sure I dip out when things get personal. 98% of the time with women, it’s why no husband and kids. Dudes used to ask but now it’s just where are the dogs? Have you gone back to America yet? Did you vote for Tru mp?

hahahahahahaha. pass on all topics. do not break stride.

When people say my dogs only speak English I laugh. I don’t say really anything. Ever. In any language. You can tell the people who are still enamored by the sound of their own voice. I left that party long ago. And dogs read the room better than anyone.

Yesterday Border dog came inside and pulled down the spoon rest in the kitchen and broke it like only Japanese porcelain can. I have very few things left from my previous life but those don’t matter either anymore. I would trade all of them for a cotton T-shirt dress in navy blue please. All I said was Ohhhhhh. And all 11 dogs ran out to the patio with big eyes and stared back at me.

Anyway, observations welcomed. Epiphanies even! Stories and cleverness or a Haiku also. But it’s so much easier, I highly recommend going Opinion Free. If anyone has a direct question they can ask. If anyone has a good story, I will listen. Everything else is just noise and it turns out I really don’t have time.

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It’s rare here and now I’m used to not hearing them.

When I do hear sirens, I go and stand on the front patio with the dogs and we all cock our heads.

Uh oh. Sirens. What does it mean?

There’s a couple reasons I’ve heard sirens in the last five years and usually it’s a parade announcement. Some lead car runs a police siren for a minute and then the bands start playing on the floats. For a town with about 1000 people, most of them teenagers or younger, there are lots of floats. This siren isn’t a parade.

They don’t use sirens for police cars. There are two. I’m not sure what they do.

I’ve seen some fires and smelled some fires but I’ve never heard a siren regarding the fires. There’s just a group of guys who are part time bomberos and they gather and somehow get a rehabbed truck that kinda resembles a fire truck and bring one of those water things and neighbors grab hoses in the land where you’re on your own. No one has much hope for fires that start here, they usually just let it burn and get folks out of the little wooden shack.

My rental house is block. I still sleep with my clothes on since the gas station exploded.

This pueblo and most in Sonora are just little satellite pop up taco stands. Little groups of people where life goes on. This side of the paved road has water that comes from the street side into a spigot and then you pump it into the tinaco on top of your roof when it’s on and the hours and days are random and inconsistent. I leave my spray nozzle cracked open and on my tree and notice it when there’s a puddle. That’s a tank filling day.

The other side does not have this luxury of water on random demand. Nor electricity even though there are several solar plants nearby and the one industry within 3 hours is the CFE power plant. Power lines crackle like a metal bowl in the microwave as it rushes power to cities far away. Clever dudes climb poles and annex this available power, some connect normally with a meter, some just don’t bother because they can’t afford it and if bills aren’t paid after months or years a bucket truck comes and cuts the cables and live wires dangle over the road and you walk around it because well, this is Mexico.

Mind your own business and watch your step.

Dusty the old brown Xolo/Shepherd pushes on my leg. Time to clean his ears. Iodine. Saltwater. DMSO on a cotton ball. He moans but seems to know it’s necessary.

On my dog walk at 630am I see 4 military trucks from the Marines (MX) driving past. 18 wheelers hauling trailers in the back. Unknown cargo. Tanks? Submarines? Those Rambo trucks they use to run gates and fight cartels but the cartel tanks are bigger? I dunno. I do know that recent big arrests and CIA (on both sides of the border) have been infiltrating each other and working together. Or not. The President “demands” answers.

4 agents drove off a cliff (2 Americans 2 Mexicans) during a sting operation in Chihuahua last week and the governor of Sinaloa has been indicted but is in New York. And another melon headed “king pin” called El Jardinero (the gardener) was arrested and so they’re burning Nayarit this time instead of Jalisco. The crying Canadians from Puerto Vallarta last month has the arsons moved north a bit. Send a message, just not the message about how it’s dangerous to travel.

Things are always spicy, I’ll not pretend to know all the details, I just follow a few independent journalists in Mexico and things are afoot. But who knows really what anyone is doing? I laugh when I see people get their knickers in a twist over the 86 47 seashells to arrest that former FBI guy. They’re not going to tell you what they’re really up to. Even though I do see a lot of Congress “oversight committees” asking “hard questions” but nothing happens. They’re just rattling keys to distract the baby from crying.

Everyone just repeating lines on cue and taking a bag of money on the way out. Don’t forget to close the Straight of Hormuz. Or open it. Depending on where the stock market is. Reminds me of Brazilian steak house restaurants where you flip the disk on your table from red to green if you want more meat.

There’s a puppy face looking at me from the Taco Mechanic’s house where no one has been for over a week. I’ve seen him looking out of the carport and just now he came out of a trash can to present himself and wag a tail front and center. Hello, buddy.

The Lola Rescue Dogs all stare with their heads poked out of the gate like muppets. I want this puppy to live in their carport not mine. He looks a little fat, it’s possible there’s a food giver somewhere. Sure was friendly. I raked the street and gave him a bowl of puppy chow I keep in my car because there’s puppies everywhere. I gave him some water, he wasn’t interested.

Taco Mechanic’s wife is a nurse, so when they come back in town surely they can figure this out. Not every battle requires my sword. The more I do here the more they’ll have me do and that’s probably been the story of my life. I’ll bet I’ve made lazy employees, slacker boyfriends and do the minimum friends my whole life by being Johnny on the Spot. My new motto is, if it benefits me, I’ll get after it. If it’s just another free chore with zero returns? Leave it alone. Mexican’s desire to remain Unbothered is unmatched. I hate it but sometimes I’m jealous.

Even the dogs. I’ve started doing scatter dinner a few nights a week so they don’t lose their hunt ability and survival instincts. I hang tortillas in trees and put meat scraps under the chairs. Also it cuts down on having a dog that paws my leg (or 11 dogs) at 5pm each night. You create the pattern. Remember that. They have big handmade fancy breakfasts. Dinner I think, is optional for all of us.

Another siren. I see someone walking by they don’t seem to care. I continue raking the street. It’s trash day. I think.

There are huge covert operations going on all around me and I wonder sometimes how all of my neighbors are literally gone for weeks at a time especially during cartel upheavals. We don’t talk. No one talks. It’s so quiet this week that I can hear birds. A Mexican pueblo rarity. I’ll bet they’re all spies if not smugglers. My neighbors, not the birds. Not sure I know the difference anymore.

Would anyone here tell me if there was something incoming? Probably not. I always check on my landlord to see if his beer store is open. It’s the Waffle House of this town, closes for nothing. If I can go to the ugly fruit store and buy carrots and there’s still milk, it’s not the Apocalypse.

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For more info on Lola’s Dog Rescue go to linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue