Looking back on 2013 it was a good year, for the most part. There were a lot of bumps along the way and at times I was very frustrated about not selling the boat and having the threat of losing the house to someone who could buy it. Overlooking all that----we live in paradise and love it here and I have always felt we belonged here. So now that the New Year is upon us we are looking forward to what it has in store for us.
We joined our neighbors, Lynn and Tom, with their family that is visiting from the states, and our other neighbors Mary and George, for a lox and bagel brunch. That is bagels with cream cheese with salmon. You make your own sandwich sort of and she had tomatoes, red onion and capers to add to it if you wanted. Mary brought coffee cake and we brought smoked fish. Of course there was champagne and orange juice and sparkling cider for the non drinkers. We had a wonderful morning and when we got home I worked on the cross stitch and just took it easy. The day is beautiful with some breeze which is nice.
We have dolphins, whales, and seals in the bay right now which is fun to watch. Most of the time we have to use the binoculars to see and watch them but it is cool. Unfortunately the fishermen are back with their nets which mean we are seeing baby seals and turtles dead on the beach as they get caught in the nets and die and are washed ashore.
In the December blog I forgot to tell about the turtle eggs. Usually when the turtles come to shore to lay their eggs the coyote gets the mom and eggs. This time a turtle made it; buried her eggs and our gate guard secured the area so animals and birds couldn’t get them. About 3 times a week our guard would ride his quad down to the eggs to see if there was any sign of hatching, but we had some high tides and he thinks they got covered. So unfortunately they didn’t make it. The incubation time is anywhere from 45 to 72 days if the conditions are right. The area where the nest is needs to be warm and water free. For the first time I got to see what a turtle egg looks like which was pretty cool. Not much different than any other egg, but just knowing they could have been turtles made it exciting. It is sad when they don’t hatch but there will be more. They come back to the place they were born to lay their eggs, which is amazing. The eggs our guard dug up went on display at the museum in town.
The down payment for the house went into our checking account so we notified Larry and Lois that they could cash our check. So now we keep paying rent and are responsible in paying the land lease when it comes due in March. We have 5 years to pay for the house and when the boat sells it will be paid off sooner. So the next goal is to sell the boat.
I have been busy making more earrings and trying different designs with wire, sea glass, and shells. I have made a few ornaments to ready myself for Novembers Art and Craft show.
It has been pretty quiet around here since most everyone is back in the states. In a week or two a lot of them will be back until summer.
Happy 1st Birthday to our grandson, Jonathan Jr. Wow time does fly. We called yesterday and I talked to him but there wasn’t a response, which is typical, but he was listening. I got to talk to Jon which was nice but missed talking to his wife Susannah. She was catching up on some needed sleep. By the time I see Jonathan Jr. he will be running around and talking up a storm. He will be so much fun!!!!!
My neighbor Mary invited myself and 2 other women to her house this morning to play a game of hand and foot. We had a good time and got to visit a little. Wednesday another friend of mine is having craft time at her house so I will attend and bring the afghan I am making to work on.
Tom and Lynn have passed on their colds to me. I have been taking Emergen-C night and day to ward it off and for the most part it is working. It has slowed me down a bit and I don’t want anyone else to get it so I am not going to the craft time at my friends. Thank goodness Dave never got it. I made him take Emergen-C too. That stuff really works.
The boat that has been sitting here for years is going to be worked on. Dave has a project now. Larry, our landlord never wanted us to touch the boat so it got filled with sand and water and hornet nests. When we made the down payment on the house the boat and truck became ours so Dave pumped up the tires and pulled the boat from under the carport. He worked on getting the sand out and then inspected it closely. There are a few things that need to be replaced, but it is only a 21 foot Trophy Bayliner so the items won’t be super expensive. A long time ago Dave said it was the wrong kind of boat for these waters, but after he took a good look at it he said it will make a good fishing boat and it has a cutty cab so we can do overnighters and tour the islands that are close to us. There is just a bed forward so we will have to ‘camp out’, bringing water, stove, lantern, etc. But it will be fun. We could possibly have it running by next year. I helped vacuum the inside cabin and cushions along with the walls and ceiling. Once that was done it looked pretty good. I also wiped down the control panel and tried to get rid of all the sand. Dave rinsed the boat off and when it dried we covered it with a large tarp and moved it back under the carport. It’s a cute little boat and Dave will have fun fishing in it. I don’t fish so he can drop me on a beach while he is trolling for dinner and I gather shells and other interesting stuff.
Our friends, Tom and Lynn had to leave to go back to the states. Tom is still working and Lynn arranges trips to Baja to see the whales. They will be back in May. Tom is retiring at the end of April and then they will be able to spend more time down here. The night before they had to leave we had them and our neighbor Mary and George over for dinner. I made a Cajun Chicken and Shrimp Creole for dinner. It was the first time I had made it and it turned out great. We had a fun evening.
There was a pile of dirt at our neighbors house, left over from when she had a cement pad put in so we asked her if we could have it and she said yes. So Dave made 3 trips to get all of it and we dumped it on the north side of our electrical room. The drive there needs building up as a lot of the soil got washed away when there were torrential down pours. That was before we got there. Dave wants to build that side up again so it will be even. We have plans to get a dump truck load of dirt and borrow a friend’s earth mover to even it all out. That will be a start in what we need to do here.
We are hoping to make a trip to Ensenada in March to buy paint and flooring before to get started on the house. But it all depends on whether we have the funds to do that or not. So we shall see.
The other day it rained all day. That was kind of neat. It was a fine mist for quite a while and then it started to get serious, so we backed the jeep out of the garage and let it sit in the rain all afternoon to wash some of the dirt off. It didn’t rain real hard but the amount it rained was helpful. When there was a break in the rain Dave and I wiped it down and put it back in the garage. It looks much better. Just after we did that it rained harder and I had wished I left it out a little longer. The dirt down here, when it gets wet, turns to clay that sticks to everything and takes months to get off, if you can. It does stain.
The weather has been nice without much wind. It seems to be getting warmer now that we are heading for February. December and January are the colder months. It’s nice the winters don’t last long here.
I walked the beach the other day at a low tide and found some paper nautilus which surprised me. But Dave reminded me it was last January last year when a bunch showed up on the beach. I managed to find 4 good ones.
I took another walk on a different day when the tide was even lower and found some spiral shaped shells and sea glass. It is fun to walk on the sand spits. There usually isn’t anything to find on them as most of the waves have washed everything to shore, but it is fun! I am planning on going on another hike to the mountains behind the house to explore. Maybe Dave will go with me, but if not, I will take my camera and hopefully get some nice shots of the scenery. I am wearing longer pants this time and not going near the Cholla cactus!!! If I don’t do it before the 1st, I will do it after we get back from Santa Rosalia. We have to go down and check the boat.
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