Continuing in Mexico

The good news? I haven't had a cigarette in four weeks and Kathleen's up to nine days or so. The bad news? We've been fighting, the stress unbearable.

I talked to the Mexican D.A. today and he opined that we should be done in two weeks, max. Heard that before. Because it if takes longer, we gotta move. We live in a crappy upstairs room along a main central bus route where the choice is between diesel poisoning and a heat sauna by closing the windows against it.

I often wake up and throw up. It's been better since I quit smoking, but I still wonder, in my doctor's way, if I don't have some chronic cancer irritating the diaphragmatic nerve and making me cough and then throw up in the AM. Then I haven't been losing weight, which is a good sign, and I've let my hair go a bit and almost have a comb-over.

Being in limbo on a toxic street in a foreign country where we know our stuff and dog are being held for ransom roughly three doors down is no fun. If we go to pet Kenyon under the locked, opaque metal gate he whines and cries. Better no contact, I guess. And how much of our stuff is still there? We won't know until the police check. Today the DA said Monday, providing we get two more declarations from the guys who helped move our stuff in there.

Private attorneys won't help. The process proceeds. Later plans to pay police or brigands or breach the castle 0urselves must be put on hold for now. I don't want to end up in a Mexican jail.

Though you could say I am in one now.

Poor Kathleen. Every day we check to see if her hearing mold and tube have arrived; maybe today. I'm here at the mail place waiting for them to unpack all today's boxes. She is shut out socially without her aid; she needs the volume to match to the lips. I never knew how much it helped before. And naturally this puts a strain, along with everything else, on our relationship, as it's hard for me not to reflect some exasperation when I must repeat something four or five times before she gets it. Writing on paper is preferable I think, and we should do more of it. It's just so damn inconvenient.

But she is being more and more marginalized and isolated and I fear is at the end of her tether. I'm nearly at mine, fighting the onset of depression, haven't entirely succumbed yet, don't want to go down in the black hole, do have medications for prevention, but hey, I am a third-generation manic-depressive and if enough stress accumulates I'm going to go up or down. The disease can always override the medications.

I have not tried to be humorous today. I can't seem to summon enough perspective to let the famous Chaffin black humor shine.

Every dog has its day. Let's pray Kenyon gets his.

All for now, Dog!

CE