It’s ironic, because for years I yearned to be able to dine at midday.  It seemed (it still seems) so much healthier to consume your biggest meal when you have some chance of burning it off, rather than a couple hours before falling into bed.

But I just haven’t been able to do it.

Well, that’s not totally true.  It’s no problem if I’m not doing the cooking.  When the Mexigringo was fixing up our casita in Yucatan, we ate every day at a cocina economica around 2 p.m., and had either nothing or takeout pizza in the evening, having no cooking facilities where we were staying.  I lost 14 pounds in six weeks.  I was overjoyed to say the least.

Eating at midday is fine.  Cooking at midday is the problem.  In order to serve dinner by 2 p.m., I need to start preparations at noon, and that’s assuming I’ve managed to take out some meat to defrost at the crack of dawn, an hour at which the only foodstuffs I care to contemplate are coffee and bread.  It’s really hard for me to work up the necessary enthusiasm so early in the day.  Conditioned by years of minimal lunches while working, and having breakfasted at 8 or 9, not 5 a.m., motivation is severely lacking.  Also, being vegetarian by inclination (though no longer in practice being married to the Mexican carnivore), dealing with raw meat that early in the day grosses me out entirely.

I’ve also found that eating at midday trashes my productivity, if trying to accomplish anything other than cooking and housework.  When I was painting, I worked best painting steadily from breakfast until 5 or 6 p.m., with a couple of quick dashes to the kitchen for some fruit or chocolate.  Having to drop everything between noon and 3 is fatal, and chances of returning to work afterward are slim at best.  After eating a big meal in the middle of the day, what I most want is a siesta, preferably in a hammock.  Failing that, I crave the forbidden pleasure of strong coffee to carry on.

And then, we’ve found that half the time we get hungry again in the evening, having given the old stomach a workout at noon.  It’s the road to ruin for sure.

And so we continue to dine at 6 or 7, four years on.  It’s hardly ideal.  Our health probably suffers.  And, worse, people who are going to drop in tend to do so around 5 p.m.  Fortunately for us, this doesn’t happen very often, but even so.  Every so often — usually after an unexpected run of these ill-timed social calls — I resolve to mend my ways, and get with the local program.   But it never lasts.  And in the end, I’ve decided that maybe some things are just not worth changing.  I’m never going to be at ease pounding cutlets at noon, or walking on cobblestone streets in three-inch heels.  And you know, it’s ok.  So be it.

The Black Dress, oil on canvas

What with the chronic scarcity of books here in casa shoestring, I spend lots of time reading on the internet.  One group of blogs I follow is by women who write about personal style, with a subset of women my age (let’s say older) writing about personal style.  They often discuss clothing, but also life in general, what used to be called in former times the art of living:  what this consists of, why so few people seem to either care about it or achieve it nowadays, cultural conflicts surrounding the pursuit of it, why Europeans seem to do it so much better, and what makes it so ironically, maddeningly elusive in the good old consumer-goods-saturated USA.

It’s been nice to find some like-minded souls out there interested in creating beauty in their lives, and I click through their blogs with interest every morning.   We have things in common, at least we seem to have read a lot of the same books.   Although that genre of books, on reflection, seems more focused on avoiding affronts to aesthetics than creating beauty… but I digress.   The books contain some helpful rules and principles, which we’ve all imbibed dutifully.

When it comes to the practical achievement of our shared ideals, however, I must part company with my cyber-sisters, what with living in Mexico and all.  For example, one dictum to be found in all the how-to books and a favorite among the faithful:  Edit your wardrobe ruthlessly.  If you have not worn it in the last year (or two), throw it out!

Oops, can’t do that!  Here in Mexico, we dare not get rid of anything, ever, from used mayonnaise jars to old tires.  These things — all things –  are not so easy to come by, and once their original purpose is done with, sooner or later they’ll surely come in useful for something else.  I think Mexico must be the recycling capital of the world.  Nothing ever gets wasted here.  I’ve always found this highly admirable; apart from the obvious virtue of avoiding waste,  the creativity which results appeals to the artist in me.

So, clothes.  I don’t get rid of them, unless they’re really in shreds, and then they get a decent funeral.  This doesn’t mean to say I use the entire stash at any given time; far from it.  What I do is, at each change of season, go through it all and pick out whatever looks interesting for the upcoming months.  Sometimes I might remodel a piece or dye it a different color.  Despite the fact I’ve had most of the stuff for years, there are always delightful surprises waiting, items whose existence I’ve totally forgotten (memory loss does have its uses).  Once sorted, the rest goes back into the footlocker with a couple of mothballs, to lie fallow for another year.  The clothes of the season currently ending are stored in a separate box.

Using these pieces as a foundation, I can fill in any gaps with a few new items, usually basics like worn-out t-shirts, or some accessory to pull things together.  My side of our tiny clothes rack and my clothes drawers remain organized and uncrowded, my mind uncluttered by extraneous stuff.  But reassured all the same by the knowledge it will be there the day I or someone else needs it, a day as easy to imagine as mañana here in Mexico.

You’ll find this same attitude when hiring people to perform services for you, from building a house to catering a party.  What typically happens is something like this:  You describe the project in detail, then ask what the person would charge for it.  Instead of naming a price, they’ll tell you something like, “Oh, don’t worry about it, it won’t be much.”

If you allow yourself to be put off by this evasion out of a misguided sense of politeness, lack of assertiveness, fear of making a cultural misstep, or any other reason, I guarantee you will regret it.   If it’s a one-shot deal, like a car repair, you can write it off to experience, but failing to establish a price on larger projects can prove extremely costly both financially and emotionally.  ALWAYS AGREE ON A PRICE FIRST!

In hiring people for construction work, there are two approaches to payment: contract or wage.  Some workers prefer one or the other, others are flexible.  Under the contract plan, the maestro bids a price for the completed job.  Some amount of the total will be required up front to get the job going, and the rest at determined intervals.  An advantage to this is the work may be completed quickly, so the contractor can move on to the next job.  On the other hand, if the contractor is a flake, you may never see him again, or the job could take forever.   Another disadvantage is that the work might be hurried or slipshod, or materials may be skimped on if the bid was unrealistically low.  Also, you can’t make any significant changes without renegotiating the price.  Consider too that your helpful/supervising presence is less likely to be welcomed by a maestro racing to finish the project than one being paid a fixed wage.  If you want to be closely involved with the job and be able to make creative decisions as you go along, the wage basis is probably preferable.  A wage arrangement is likely to take longer than a contract, but you’re more likely to get exactly what you want.

Overall, contract arrangements are probably riskier, especially for larger jobs.  Always try to find people with excellent personal recommendations from someone you trust.  In addition, do not hesitate to fire anyone whose work is not satisfactory; you can always find someone will do the job properly.

Obviously there are situations where quoting an exact price will not be possible (as in car repairs where the extent of the problem is not known), in which case you should ask for an estimate including the worst-case price.

If a person absolutely will not name a price for you, walk away.  Even if they’re the greatest cook/mechanic/architect/friend of yours in all of Mexico, even if it took you weeks of searching to find them.  There’s always somebody else, and you’ll avoid a world of heartache, misunderstandings, and financial losses by taking the time to find them.

Mexicans as a group seem to be very fond of noise. Celebrations are often observed by shooting off fireworks, and music tends to be played at high volume. Most restaurants will have a TV blaring in a corner somewhere. Some supermarkets set up giant speakers on the premises and blast music and ads at the hapless shoppers. For an interesting examination of this aspect of Mexican character see Octavio Paz’ classic The Labyrinth of Solitude.

There is really not a whole lot of defense possible against much of the ambient noise assault. With time one adjusts somewhat. Sometimes restaurant staff will comply with a request to turn down the volume. The main thing I would advise is to be very alert to the noise factor when choosing housing. A street which is tranquil at midday when you are shown the house may come alive in the evening, or for several weeks or months at a time if you live in a vacation spot. We lived for awhile in a small beach town which was inundated with holidaymakers during Semana Santa (Easter Week) and the months of July and August. During those times our unglazed windows let in a 24-hour barrage of traffic noise, blasting car stereo music, and exhaust fumes, and left us longing for the slow season.

Here’s a hot TIP if you do end up with a noisy living room. Hearing your own TV can be a real problem in the ebb and flow of traffic din; if you are playing DVDs, you can select English subtitles and rely on them to fill in the blanks when those trucks rumble by.

The tech revolution in Mexico has mainly accomplished two things that I can see: (1) Enabling the population to do what it loves best, which is to chat with one another, more often, and (2) enriching the providers. In terms of making information available, it hasn’t done a whole lot. Getting information is not the easy walk through the Yellow Pages we gringos are accustomed to, and I’ve personally found this more frustrating than shopping problems.

I used to get really irritated with the Mexigringo, in the early days of our relationship, when we needed to shop for some specific item. He’d jump in the car and drive to the nearest likely store, get out of the car, wander all over the store, finally find a clerk only to learn that they didn’t have such an item, then get back in the car and drive on to the next store. We lived in L.A., by the way, where there are lots of stores. I found his approach to shopping the biggest waste of time I’d ever seen, and thought it was some kind of character defect on his part. With time, I convinced him of the superiority of looking in the Yellow Pages and calling around first. Well, twenty years later, I now know why he did it that way. It’s the only way you can ever find anything in Mexico.

It’s not that Yellow Pages don’t exist in Mexico, they do; you’ll usually be given a copy when you get a new phone, and you can also obtain them just by asking in any TelMex office. And they look just like the ones in the states, from the outside. It’s once you try to use them that you realize you’re not in Kansas anymore.

One big problem is that only a miniscule portion of businesses advertises in them. It’s way beyond the means of most small businesses here. So you’re less likely to find a good price even if you manage to find the item or service in question.

If you do find a place in there, don’t expect their business hours to be noted, that’s rare indeed. Sometimes even the address will be lacking, you’ll need to call and ask for it. Good luck if you don’t speak Spanish!

The rationale behind the categories used in the Mexican Yellow Pages is obscure, nay mysterious, in the extreme. One of my favorites is the long series beginning with the designation “Artículos” (things). You have things for beauty, things for photography, things for the home, things for engineering and architecture, things for publicity and promotion, religious and church things, things for industrial cleaning and maintenance, and things for regular cleaning. Some, but not nearly enough, of these are cross-indexed to the more useful word (i.e. the non-thing word). Another great category is “Materiales,” which encompasses teaching materials, electric materials, first aid materials, materials for laboratories, schools, and industries (huh?), materials for hospitals and clinics, iron materials, construction materials, decorating materials, packing materials, raw materials, raw materials for the food industry, and raw materials for the rubber industry. Oh and, not wishing to belabor the subject, but I can’t neglect to mention the eminently helpful “Tiendas” (stores) category.

The White Pages are not much better. An amazing number of really large concerns are nowhere to be found in them. (I remember spending half a day once trying to locate the number of the beauty salon at Liverpool, a huge upscale department store in Merida. The MG finally found it by calling directory assistance). And just FORGET trying to find the number of a government office or anything like that.

Lots of big places, like banks, have websites now. Beautifully designed, great graphics, a button to click for all the bank’s branch locations which you’re looking for – and no locations listed behind the link. Lots of style. No links.

You can try finding stuff through the newspaper classifieds too, but these have their own special annoyance: They almost never specify a price in the ad. People are very coy about stating prices in Mexico. So, you have to call in order to find out if you’re even interested in the item.

The real information network in Mexico is the person-to-person one, as it has always been. This involves asking anyone you can corner where to find the desired item or service, following up on their suggestion, and repeating the process (also known as the wild goose chase) until you either find what you need or decide you really didn’t need it after all.

Yes folks, I was mightily shocked (dismayed too!) to realize what a TOTAL CONSUMER CULTURE CREATURE I really was. I’d always thought of myself and the MG as decidedly unmaterialistic, what with driving old cars, eschewing furniture, wearing clothes until they fell off our backs, etc. I guess you could call us cheap, be it from sour grapes, making a virtue of a necessity, or whatever. In any case, we’ve definitely never been what you’d call big spenders.

So imagine my surprise at suffering — yes suffering! Total Shopping Withdrawal soon after arriving in Mexico. Me! Who always said I “hated shopping.” Who believed that sincerely.

Mexico can be a mirror. Sometimes it lets you see yourself. Some mirrors (like those department store ones when you’re trying on bathing suits) are not very flattering.

See, when you live north of the Rio Grande, shopping is akin to breathing – you don’t even notice you’re doing it, it’s an autonomic function. It isn’t a part of your reality, it IS reality. The sheer variety of goods available for purchase everywhere you look induces a kind of permanent and self-perpetuating trance state in the citizenry, who do their bit to hold up the whole system up by duly working, working, working, and buying, buying, buying. Nobody seems to question this state of affairs. It just is. And I’m here to tell you, it’s surprisingly painful when it suddenly isn’t.

I simply never realized how much entertainment value I used to derive from my most complained-about domestic chore, the food shopping. Even though I could do it in my sleep, indeed often did it semi-comatose after 12-hour night shifts, there was always the diversion of choosing (oooh, should I buy slices or dices, oil- or water-packed, red ones or green ones, this brand or that?). All the while seduced into a familiar daze by the lights and the colors of aisles of endless packages all clamoring for my attention, never mind that most of that stuff I don’t even consider food.

In addition to this weekly entertainment (which I of course didn’t appreciate at the time) there was the soothing background awareness that almost any annoyance, inconvenience, or whim that might arise could be instantly resolved by dashing to a store — at any hour of the day or night — and purchasing something, and I was moreover in the habit of doing so.

Overnight, these familiar comforts vanished. Not only that, but countless items I’d heretofore believed indispensable to my existence, were suddenly unavailable at any price. They had simply dropped off the screen, out of the picture — poof! No more prosciutto, no more volumizing shampoo for fine hair, no more homeopathic-compatible toothpaste, no more rayon batik fabrics, no more nada.

The whole experience has forced me to conclude that the so-called consumer lifestyle, to which we are all so well trained from birth, is a form of addiction, and like any addiction, leaving it behind (even willingly) is painful.

So how does one cope? Two things spring to mind, one active, one passive.

Wish lists can be helpful. Just write it all down for the next time you go to the big city or to the states. You can make categories, prioritize, organize according to types of stores for more efficient shopping — there’s no end to the fun you can have playing with your lists of consumer cravings. You’ll find out how much you really need it when finally in the store and faced with the prospect of parting with actual cash for it. Some items will disappear without a trace. Others you’ll realize you really don’t want to live without. Priorities while wishing can differ noticeably from priorities while paying.

And then there’s good old Time, the passive approach. You eventually adapt and change. You find many of those “needs” diminishing, and look back in wonder on what you thought so necessary a few short months ago. “Stuff” becomes less important. The itch to buy something — anything — as a knee-jerk reaction to the slightest fleeting emotion, recedes. On the other hand, you learn what is really important to you and figure out the least expensive and burdensome way to get it. I’ve come to see, on the far side of fifty, that my fond fantasy of a life of Zen simplicity ain’t gonna happen: I’ve been too well-trained. But my buying habits have become more conscious, and more limited. Getting stuff in Mexico is usually such a hassle that consumption for its own sake finally loses its appeal. Life becomes simpler, willy-nilly.

How sociable are you? If you depend heavily on the company of others for your well-being, and your Spanish is less than adequate, again, better keep to areas with a good supply of potential friends/drinking buddies/backgammon partners, or whatever.

Moving to a foreign country can be isolating, even if your language skills are okay. If you move with a spouse or partner, you’ll be thrown together far more (especially at first) than you ever were in your former life when you both had jobs, buddies, yoga classes, etc. It can be stressful on the relationship. Having ready access to some new buddies can be helpful.

If you’re engaged in absorbing work and used to spending lots of time alone, then access to social resources is not such a big issue. I usually spend the day painting (or more recently, writing this). We’ve made friends here, but don’t see them very often — much like when we lived in the states — because everybody is working.

The advent of the internet has been a huge boon to wanderers everywhere, allowing people to stay connected to friends, information, reading, and entertainment from just about anyplace in the world. It can really take the edge off living in an otherwise isolated situation.

A big advantage of living in a gringo-rich area, possibly even more important than the gringos themselves, is the resources that tend to collect around them. The thing that springs foremost to my mind is English-language libraries. (I really miss the Public Library!) There was one in Merida and I understand there’s one in the Lake Chapala area. There is also, I understand, a big organic vegetable gardening enterprise there. Things like professional pet-sitters, English-language bookstores, and English-speaking doctors are also more likely to be found in expatriate areas.

The big, obvious disadvantage of choosing an area with a large gringo population is the inflated prices you’ll find there. Most of the expatriates from the US or Canada that I’ve encountered are pretty prosperous (at least compared to us), and they tend to drive up housing prices disastrously. This was occurring in Merida when we were there, and has long been true of places like Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende. So, if you’re operating on a shoestring, you will have to go further afield (and speak Spanish) to encounter affordable housing either to rent or to buy. In a large city, like Guadalajara say, you could just explore the non-gringo areas, but smaller places are likely to be expensive across the board. We didn’t even bother checking out San Miguel when we were looking for a new location, because I just assumed it would be too expensive.

It is of course possible, with enough money, to live in a gringo enclave so insular you can’t even tell you’re in Mexico, but that’s not the kind of life we’re talking about here in shoestring-land. In order to taste the delights of the real Mexico, and also to cope with day-to-day life, it is necessary to acquire a decent amount of Spanish (it doesn’t need to be fabulous, just usable). Then you will be free to establish your other priorities and pick and choose accordingly.