Spring Cleaning

 Our normal housekeeper (also neighbor/friend which is not a good situation since you can't make a fuss over too much if you want to live peacefully) is in Sinaloa visiting family. Today is the normal day we pay $1700 ($100) for her to clean the house and sweep the yard.

Well...we decided to give someone else a chance since she's gone and we don't want to go without housekeeping for a whole month.  And I do not clean my own house.  I had a once a month housekeeper in the USA (all I could afford) and I have a once every 2 weeks housekeeper here in Mexico. 

I'm not housewife material.  I cook. My mom does the dishes. I provide. My mom does laundry.  I do all the driving, my mom does cat litters. And the rest of the housekeeping I pay someone else for.  I work 10-12 hours a day and I'm not going to spend 30 minutes cleaning a bathroom when I literally have multiple women competing for the gig.

We figured, let's get a DEEP CLEAN.  Let's go all out, because a lot of stuff, like scrubbing my balcony, cleaning the refrigerator, cleaning the windows, are not things our normal housekeeper will do.  

Well...as the only gringas in the neighborhood we have multiple neighbors competing for the housekeeping gig.  Like the woman who owns the salon at the end of the street (one of three in the neighborhood).  

This is the woman who does my mom's pedicures, because my mom can't cut her own toenails and I've been banned from the job after drawing blood too many times.  She is always asking if we need other services.  She'll drive her to appointments or clean her house, etc.  

So, we decided to give her a chance to clean for us while our regular housekeeper is away.  I sent her a Whatsapp asking if she wanted to spend 5 hours deep-cleaning our house.  She didn't answer.  She SHOWED UP AT THE DOOR.

She was like:  I have not had a customer for two damn days and I have four kids (one new born). 

Imagine having a salon and not having ANY customers a whole day.  That's regularly the situation for them.  People can't afford $400 ($25usd) for a pedicure or $600 ($38) for a manicure, etc.  She gets a few appointments a week, and it's enough, but it's tough. 

There are three salons in walking distance and the two that do pedicures will approach my mom when they see her walking to ask if she needs one.  (We were taking turns between the two of them, but one of them was willing to walk to our house and walk my mom to the salon and then walk her home because she gets lost, she won the monthly pedicure gig.)

The deep cleaned the whole house for 5 hours including cutting the vines choking the usability of my balcony.  It was a huge job and she brought her teenage son to help. 

House is sparkling clean.  Refrigerator sparkling and organized.  Microwave cleaned.  Everything scrubbed.  We definitely need to do this at least once a year.  @-@

Tramadol Troubles

One of the reasons I moved to Mexico was because the painkiller I take for my leg was available without a prescription here.  In the USA I had to pay $250 a month and pee in front of someone twice a year with humiliating Q&As just so I could get my script.  Then every pharmacy stopped carrying it except for weird mail-order ones that seem to be run out of a person's house.

In Mexico tramadol was an over-the-counter drug, and I got complacent.  As of tomorrow you have to have a prescription for it.  A 'illicit drug' type prescription.  I'm pissed.

I've weaned myself down to 100mg a day from a high of 400mg/day in the USA.  My leg is killing me.  My hip has started to hurt on the opposite side because I'm walking stupid because my leg hurts so much.   

But whatever.  I don't want go back to begging the system for the medication I need.  I'm trying to wean myself completely off of it from the horde I horded when this news broke.  It's miserable.

My one hope is that my neurologist will prescribe it the same way he did my Ambien.  Because being in pain makes it harder to think.  We'll see.  In the meantime, my plan is to just get off the shit.

I still want a supply for emergencies however.  Sometimes we travel and I literally can't walk due to the pain of walking so much.  Same with my mom, who has a twisted spine and sometimes needs serious pain meds.  I don't ever want her to not be able to have a pill if she needs it.

FML.  Stupid anti-drug bullshit from the USA has invaded Mexico.  I hate this.

In other news, I want to go see the Toy Story 5 movie, since they're usually pretty good, but they don't put out subtitled versions of kids movies here.  Just the dubbed in Spanish version.  So I have to wait for Streaming.

I don't know if I covered this before, but when a USA movie comes to Mexico they usually have subtitled or dubbed options.  I just saw Backrooms a month ago and it was in English with Mexican subtitles.  I also saw the newish Superman movie in English with Spanish subtitles.  

I mean, it's great that I can still see movies in Mexico, but when a character is talking in a 3rd language on screen, like if they have Russian spies speaking in Russian the captions will be in Spanish, and I have to use my Spanish brain since I do technically speak Spanish now.  But I like to just be lazy at the movies.

Anyway, the images in this post are from my game Dragon Riders.  The supposed 'big one' for my game company.  The game that's going to make $7 million dollars so I can take care of my staff and my family.  It's a gacha game without microtransactions I say as if that means anything to anyone who actually reads this.  We'll see...

If I make my goal, then...

1. I can buy a new house for my graphic designer Anna in Brazil so she stops losing everything every time it floods there.

2. I can give my programmer a $50,000 bonus...something I've always dreamed of.

3. I can give bonuses to my other workers at great and shocking amounts.

4. I can pay my cousin Diana to be a trustee in a corporation I set up in Puerto Rico to look after my cousin Danalee and aunt Gisela who both need to go into full time care.  And I can buy a condo for her and another for my other cousin Yassier.  Diana is probably needing a new car too...

5.  I can have wealth for my niece and nephews in the USA so that if they ever need it I'm there, and when I'm gone they'll inherit it.

6. And when ALL THAT is done...I can buy a better home in Mexico with an American-Style kitchen with a fricking dishwasher and no more bus-sized cucarachas!

Well...that's the dream anyway.