Tuesday, November 3, 2009

10 Reasons to forget last week!

I wanted to show you pictures of our trip to Mazatlan, but I can't -- no pictures on my computer.

Let's go back a few weeks...my hard drive crashed again on this laptop for the 2nd time, so I lost all my bookmarked pages (again) and Roy had to reinstall Windows (again). I have no sound on my computer so I can't hear videos, or my aquarium or my farm animals (that's another story). Very frustrating.

So, just now, I was going to write about our trip to Mazatlan and add some of our beautiful pictures and now I find I am not connected to our home network and cannot access our shared pictures file. Another frustration. So I'll tell post pictures later.

First off, we were leaving on Sunday morning around 3:45 and Lupe was going to pick us up at 3:30 to take us to the bus. I waited until Saturday afternoon to do laundry and during this process the dryer decided to stop working (#1). Roy is a master fixer -- so he fooled around and it started again so I could finish doing laundry before we left on our trip.

On Tuesday, our trip coordinator Marta (Lupe is her husband), came to Roy and asked for a favor. He said, of course, which he always does. It seems the hotel where we were staying had gotten our reservations wrong and only had our group confirmed for 2 nights and not 3 so Roy whipped out his good 'ole AMEX (don't leave home without it) and he put 1 more night for our entire group (about 40 people) on his credit card $29,000 pesos (#2)!! We're going to get the money back, not a problem with that -- we were just the only ones there with a credit card with a large enough credit limit to help her out.

We were scheduled to leave on Wed afternoon around 1:00pm. At 2:30 am on Wed. Roy woke me up complaining (which he never does) about severe pain in his lower belly. We called for the hotel doctor who came to our room and by 3:30 am he was on his way, via ambulance, to the hospital in Mazatlan to figure out what was going on. He (we) stayed in the hospital for 2 nights and he was diagnosed with a kidney stone and had surgery to break up a 1cm stone in his kidney that would not pass! (#3). We have insurance here in Mexico, but there is a one year waiting period so this expense comes out of our pocket too (#4). The hospital, urologist, cardiologist, GM, hotel doctor, meds, nurses, etc was about $50,000 pesos.

We now have to get home another way because our return trip was to be by bus with our group. On to the Mazatlan airport and tickets on Mexicana Air (#5) for both of us -- $1500 pesos. After a 5 hour wait at the airport -- we arrive back at the Guadalajara airport and our friend, Tom Faloon, is waiting for us to bring us to Ajijic.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, that while Roy is in the hospital, we receive word from our friend, Tom, that Beau is near death (#6)! Beau has been Roy's big, black, dog for more than 16 years! He is part black lab, part chow and has the sweetest disposition and temperment of all our dogs combined. When we get back to the house, Beau is laying on a pallet outside our bedroom covered with blankets and not moving. Roy, who is just out of surgery and hospital, lies on the floor with Beau for several hours because we both think he won't be with us for much longer.

Monday, I have a dentist appointment at 9:30am. I go out to leave and the car won't start (#7). It's the battery, of course it is! So we call our mechanic and he buys and installs a new battery (#8) for $2000 pesos but it's not taking a charge when the car is running -- it's the alternator (#9). We give our mechanic $3000 pesos to buy parts in Guad so he can repair our alternator. No car Monday or Tuesday (#10).

Today is Tuesday. I am without a car and low on cash! LOL The total for our trip to Mazatlan and the car so far has been about including refills on prescriptions here $58,800

The good news is that we are home, Roy is healing, and the dogs got groomed this morning $350 pesos.

Our trip to the beach was not what we had planned for it to be. However, the hotel was wonderful, the weather was perfect, we had a balcony with a magnificent view of the ocean and sunsets. The food was good, the pools were beautiful and Lauren, Joseph and Forrest were a delight to spend time with. We all had fun (except maybe for Roy because he admitted to me this morning that he'd been feeling poorly and had back pains for 2 weeks before we left). That's my husband, suffer in silence. Very frustrating, but I think he's gotten the hint that he needs to take better care of himself -- if he wants to be around to take of all of us. Even while Roy was in the hospital he was worrying about Lauren, me, and Keith, his business partner! That's what I love about him the most -- and find it to be very frustrating too!

When I have access to our pictures I'll post some of them -- Mazatlan is a great place for a vacation.

No comments: