Did You Hear My Head Explode?

There is a great line in the novel "The Help" that is a piece of advice from an experienced writer/editor to an aspiring writer - it goes something like this: Write about the things that disturb you, especially if they don't seem to disturb anyone else.

Well, I have been plenty disturbed these past 24 hours since my internet service provider took my website down through some oversight (on their part) in renewing my website domain. Well, they supposedly put it back up, but nothing about it works, at least not from Mexico. And isn't that exactly the point of the World Wide Web - your business can been seen/accessed globally?

Right now the internet connection to my website does not work, you cannot Google "recalibrate" and have it come up, nor does it come up under my lisamallett.com domain (that supposedly links directly to recalibrate). They have really screwed something up - including my business e-mail which no longer receives, and sending notes is a 50/50 crapshoot. And I am in the middle of a very busy week with Canadian clients and need all this stuff to be working.

Then there is the never-ending pool chemical saga. Our idiot pool guy here in Mexico (he truly is a moron) keeps the chlorine levels sky-high (for 4 years now that we are aware of). This is so NO algae will grow and he won't have anything to clean because nothing could live in that TOXIC water! Mind you - humans can't tolerate it either and one person has already had hives in reaction to the chlorine, and we're experiencing skin irritation from the pool water even though we shower as soon as we get out. We've complained AND had him professionally trained in Spanish - to NO AVAIL. We have now actually resorted to hiding the chlorine on him so he can't keep adding it! He is a chlorine addict and we are making him go cold turkey.

The lock on the front gate of our Mexican condo building broke and we tried very hrd to get it replaced so that the new lock would be set up to fit the existing keys that all the owners have. No - of course that didn't happen. We now have a new lock, that barely works better than the old broken one, and a bunch of new keys to somehow distribute to people who are back in Canada.

Then there's the fingerprint scanner at the gym that is the worst piece of technocrap ever invented. Day after day, it does not scan our index fingers and there is all kinds of angst at reception as to whether or not we will be admitted! When the high tech stuff fails, what gets us in is the little scrap of paper on which our first names and membership numbers were scrawled the day we signed up. Low tech carries the day each time.

So, I have to stop and remind myself why we are here. Why ARE we here? We are here mainly because of the weather - which is perfection (in our view) fron December to March. We are HERE, because we can't stand the "Wet Coast" at this time of year with all the clouds, rain, cold and wind. Okay, so chalk one up for Mexican weather. As to other things, like frustrations over faulty goods and shoddy services, well Canada ain't much better. The only thing is I can argue in English in Canada!

Todo bien. (It's all good.)