Snakes are really very helpful to keeping the rodent population down. We have snakes, geckos, cockroaches, ants, you name it, living in our palapa. It is just a fact of life living here. We watched a snake wind its way up a post and into the roof (palm leaves) of the kitchen the other day. I dont like snakes but I also don't kill them unless they are poisonous and threatening. We also have coral and 4-nose poisonous snakes. If they come into the palapa (so far they haven't, but the 4-nose is agressive) they will be dispached with a machete.

I would SO love to be able to respect their need for privacy and have so far, but if I found their journal, I'd have to RUN and give it to them to stop the temptation from snooping. I treat my kids the way I would want to be treated and that includes respecting their privacy.

I started losing weight (food portions and exercise) last May. I've lost 13 kilos so far and have another 11 to go. Before I started running (about a month ago) I would exercise 45-70 minutes 6-7x/week. Now that I'm running, I do running 4x/week and Ashtanga Yoga (an hour) 3x/week. I need to add strength exercises in there too but right now I'm about to start Hal's Spring training and I think he adds that in with running/cross days. I'm thinking that 30min/day alternating jogging/heavy cardio and lighter strength/stretch on alternate days is going to be my lifetime schedule. Oh, and I'm 48.

Hey, it's been 39 here too lately! What a coincidence! Wait...I'm guessing you're using hte F'ing scale and I'm definitely Celcified. :)

I find I have to agree with Colleen. If this unschooling athiest doesn't find SL inflexible, I wonder what you have to be to find it inflexible. :)

oops - nevermind. should have read to the end. good to see ds9 will be hs'd, but i'm more concerned about your stress level and decision dynamic.

Congratulations, Colleen! Sounds like a great race!

A Mexican street dog. They have been through hell and will adore and obey you for life. Very little hair and they are beautiful. We'll be in the US this summer and can even bring one up. :) http://peanutpetshelter.org/adoptions.html

Here in Mexico we're super friendly but you have to know how it works. If you just have your blinker on, no-one will let you cut into their lane, but if you catch a driver's eye and point to the lane, they will nod their head and you can cut in front of them. That is also how we change lanes in heavy traffic. But sitting there with your blinker on will not work. We do not merge here. When traffic comes to a "Canadian/US" merge point, they have to make sure it is clear before they come onto the roadway. Those of us going fast along the road may move over to allow them in, but generally they wait for traffic to clear. When making a left turn, you generally pull way over to the right and wait for all traffic behind you to clear - then you make your left. Very considerate to those behind you. When you want to pass someone, wait for them to signal you. They'll put on their left turn blinker when it is safe to pass them. When you find danger in the road, flash your lights at oncoming traffic to warn them. People very frequently pull over when someone is having car trouble. Just SOP here.

wouldn't own one even if it was legal here.

I agree with this but also I found that I needed the calorie counting and other informational articles (Sparkpeople put you on a level or step thing and part of moving through the steps is reading different articles) about portion size, etc. Last May I was sick and tired of being fat. I got fat after baby #3 and it just got worse. I'm not sure what I was at my highest weight but it was definitely over 200 with room to spare (maybe 210). My scale is in kilos now, but I'll try to convert. So last May I was sick of it. I joined Sparkpeople and just started seeing what I was eating. My diet was purely whole foods but even too much of a good thing adds weight. The sparkpeople program helped me to see how much I was putting in, how much was going out (basal rate + exercise) and what I had to eat to lose weight. And I did. As of last December (I'm still at the same weight point as last December) I had lost 13 kilos. Converting, I started at 90 kilos (198#) and am now 77 kilos (169.4#). I'm trying to get to 67 kilos (147.4#). I started just by tracking my food intake - I made no changes at all and was shocked at how much I'd been eating. All whole foods, but even whole wheat homemade banana bread will put weight on if you eat 4 pieces at a sitting. I also refused to follow any diet plan. I wanted a lifestyle change - not a diet. So, basically, information from Sparkpeople (I don't do any tracking of anything anymore - I know what a calorie-heavy day feels like and what a normal day feels like - but those first 6 months or so of daily stuff with sparkpeople was essential to my long-term weight loss. I'm running every other day and doing Ashtanga (cardio) Yoga on my days off running. I started by just walking (and SLOOOOOWLY) and am now bringing my jogging speed to about a 10min/mile. It really is basically a deficet of calories (burn more than you ingest) but getting there, having the knowledge of how to manage that for the rest of your life in your life is something that isn't the same for everyone. And that's the part you need to figure out.

Oh yes. Not Elaine, but taking off my running bra is almost as much exercise as running. :) Yoga does help. As does double jointedness. :)

Where we live, it is the Coke (Cristal) and Pepsi (Electropura) waters. Both are used for making their drinks so the water has to be good, otherwise the cans/bottles would explode. That's how we pick our drinking water. We buy our cooking water at the local water plant for over 1/2 the price of Cristal/Electropura.

You know how long it took me to recover from my calf tear, right? I would TOTALLY find a race later in the season and I think I would probably make it a 1/2. You need to let your body heal (and even though I'm not a serious runner it KILLED me to hold myself back) and that takes time. Can you find a race later in the season?

Good for you Tara! The C25K program is great for building success because you start really slowly and you're RUNNING from day one, but you're not beat into the ground. I think it is really good for taking you from 0 to whatever you want. After i tore my muscle, even though I'd gotten up to week 6 previously, I started way back with week 1 and even with week 2 i took extra rest. The payoff was skipping weeks 6, 7, 8 and jumping right into 30 minute runs. How often are you running? I'll check in daily for your thread to encourage you - I run every other day (so either 3 or 4 days/week).

Aw c'mon. YouTube isn't forcing you to watch anything. Personally, I would never have YouTube as a startup page. Just too much "stuff" out there. And honestly, I don't really care too much what my kids watch. Change your startup page to google or blank or something. You Tube is really a very poor choice if you're trying to shelter your kids.

Last time we were in the US I stocked up on running bras - I get the shirt/bra thing - and got all mine at thriftstores. It really isn't necessary to spend a lot on clothes. I got all my shorts and thriftstores also (but honestly, there is very little I would NOT buy at a thriftstore). AFter 5 months of running in sandals I invested in shoes. I was watching the sales and Adidas had their SuperNova $95 shoe on sale for $30 and I snapped it up. Husbandito is in the US right now and I'm going to have him pick up a Nike Pegasus if I can get it on sale. The Adidas are great, but I'd like to try the Pegasus. I haven't found a shoe store down here so there is no way to get advice that way. So it is definitely possible to get quality shoes at a good price - you just have to keep a sharp eye out. I also highly recommend the C25K program at coolrunning - I got to week 6 last year and tore my calf muscle and got back to week 6 this year (but I bastardize the program with extra walking and running) and have been running 3-4 times a week for 30 min for the last week. I'm now on the One Hour Runner (OHR) program as it melds nicely with the C25K. If you have running experience or are not a couch potato you can still use C25K - I would add 30 mintues of brisk (14-15 min/mile) walking and always did either twice as much running or at least another set of what they stated each session. Good luck and enjoy!

Tecnu!

I tried duct tape but I don't remember how diligent I was. Maybe a week? Anyway, a couple years of barefoot at the beach and now mine have been gone for good.

I've been reading your reports since you started your cancer journey and I've never responded to any of your posts until now. I really hope this doesn't upset you and please understand that I'm not trying to insult or hurt or do anything negative here. I don't believe in any deity but always have you in the back of my mind and think good thoughts for you. I hope this isn't upsetting - especially since you're really into religion and your god, but if it helps at all, you have an atheist in Mexico thinking good thoughts for you frequently.

Using your logic... As someone who was raped at 11, I am in a position to say to the child rape victims, "suck it up". Yeah. That makes perfect sense and moreover, raising a child with this mentality provides for a nation of people who know how to treat others with respect. (/sarcasm)

Well, my daughter wants to play with her girls - mostly with their toys. They have an enormous collection of toys we don't have any hope of having and she loves playing with both the toys and the girls. These are the only girls her age, speaking her language in a minimum of 6 km. They will be closely supervised in that I will always be within earshot and listening to each and every word spoken. I won't be hovering over them, but I will be listening very closely and if they move too far away from me I'll have to find something to do closer to their play so I can continue to monitor what is being said. I do not trust this woman not to instruct her children to do her bidding and since she has already shown she doesn't know right from wrong I can't expect her children to either. But my daughter has had no playmates for years until this family showed up, and she is very hungry for playmates. Plus they have a bevvy of toys. :) As for shutting down the mom - She managed to not only apologise for putting the post on her blog but also refused to apologise for her actions. So she definitely had the opportunity to talk. What I shut down in communication were her attempts to justify her actions and lie that she did nothing. I did not go there to talk about what she had done - I went over to establish an enormous line in the road so she would know that what she had done was wrong. I told her I understood she wanted to share a message (her god's love yadda yadda) but coercing the youngest child in the family behind the backs of the parents is the WRONG way to go about sharing that message. If she truly wanted to share her message, the right thing would have gone straight to the parents. Even if it was all her children (and in her blog post she bragged about stuff SHE PERSONALLY had done, so either she lied to my face or lied on the blog post) she should have recognized that it is WRONG to coerce another person into changing their personal religious views. Especially when this person is a 7yo. I was really too angry with her to be able to talk about WHAT she had done calmly. So I was not interested in going there with her - I just wanted to establsh boundaries for my family. She says she will respect those boundaries, but I have to assume she won't - therefore I need to be very aware of what her kids are saying to mine. Lastly, because she decided that coercing a 7yo into saying she believed in a god (when she didn't) was such a good idea, I now have to figure out how to encourage my daughter to believe in a god if she wants to, without trying to encourage her to believe in a god. The last thing I want my daughter to get out of this is that believing in a god=bad (even though no-one in our family does believe in any god) IF SHE DECIDES SHE WANTS TO. Oh, this woman also told her there is no tooth fairy or Santa Claus.

Ok - I confronted her and she was definitely expecting me. I guess she took down her blog post (but I had already saved a screenshot - not sure why). She said she didn't do ANYTHING that it was all the kids. I told her that she apparently didn't understand right from wrong because even if she didn't do anything (then she apparently lied on her blog) she allowed her children to do it and that showed very poor judgement and was wrong. I told her that she was an unsafe person and that the children felt that way also. I told her that she was not allowed to talk to the children about any belief system. I said her children were not allowed to talk to my children about any belief system. I said her children would be CLOSELY supervised on any visits to our house and our children would NOT be at their house at any time in the forseeable future. I told her that she betrayed my trust and coerced a child into a belief system which should be a personal journey. I told her my child felt so coerced that she made up a lie (the toothbrush) so they would leave her alone about her belief system. There was probably more but each and every time she tried to justify or answer I immediately shut her down and told her I wasn't interested in what she had to say, I was there ONLY to let her know she had crossed an ENORMOUS line and to let her know our boundaries. She said she would respect our boundaries. She apologized for making the post private. She said she is not sorry for what happened.

I've been up since 3am (DH's mother is dying) and I'm going to post this and go to bed. I never in a million years imagined that people would go to her blog and post anything there but I have to be honest and say now that it has happened, I'm not sorry. Maybe it will make her think a little. Maybe in the morning I'll feel sorry for her. Who knows. I did not post here trying to converse with her or post online instead of talking to her - I was too angry this morning to converse with her in person (and I'd never post on her blog) and came here to see if anyone could help me understand what was going on in her head. Aubrey and others helped me to see that. i'm still quite angry but not as much but still need to get my thoughts together before I confront her. I don't know. I'm overtired and not thinking all that clearly tonight. I honestly thought that when I posted I'd get a lot of posts showing me how her actions could be "right" and really never imagined so many would be alligned with my POV. Hence the title "HELP ME UNDERSTAND THIS MOM" (and not, "Help my demonize this mom"). Ok?

My neighbor alerted me.