Bleat & Skitter

October 5, 2011

Our next door neighbor, Maria has been here for around six weeks. Maria (who is an Ecuadorian/married to an American, and lives in the Seattle area most of the time) is a blunt, no-nonsense kind of gal. The eight Jardines de Olon homeowners haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on some of our neighborhood community issues; we don’t have a “homeowners” association, per se, (there are actually very few common areas, but those projects include gardening maintenance of a small road median strip and the archways over the two entrances, repairs to gates & lights, etc. – and none of us residents has yet to enthusiastically embrace what to do about our seen-better-days tennis court).

The great thing about Maria is that we can generally resolve our differences of opinion during frank and friendly conversations in person, and we enjoy having her around.

Last week, Maria “rented” a goat to eat/trim the median road strip….Which was a pretty good idea, but the dumb goat did nothing but bleat and skitter around on her leash, and didn’t eat a lick of grass that I noticed.

The goat did not go over so well with our dog Daisy either, though we tried to assure her/work with her that THIS goat was okay. It was hilarious to watch those two circle around each other. Daisy’s nature is to bark at all the beach donkeys, cows, wild horses, stray dogs, and GOATS that come into her territory.  I think it was a good idea of Maria’s, but ultimately not very successful, and the goat was returned back to the owner after a few days.

Daisy has been our dog for over a year now. She was a 7-8 month old beach stray when we adopted her (and all credit about encouraging us to take this step goes to our South Carolina-based neighbor, Elizabeth Anderson who is passionate about animal rescue and sterilization).

Daisy just entered her third pseudo “heat” cycle (she has been fixed, but the vet here basically tied her tubes, left enough of her “apparatus” in to still attract the boys a couple of times a year). I will not go into a lot of detail on this, since I’ve already written about this in “Doggy Style”, but suffice to say that Todd and I always dread these annual twice/thrice horny seasons. Thankfully, with each new season, Daisy seems less enthusiastic and more able to fend off better the unwanted suitors, but that still does not stop the crowd of wannabe town-dog novios from hanging around our ‘hood, pissing and marking, and fighting for a couple of weeks…Still, Daisy is not exactly objecting to all the attention (even on this third time round)..

Shameless Hussy

Rest my case.....

Based on my observations:

Generally the first week she takes them all on, and never shows up to eat. By the second week, she tiptoes back home now and then for food and our attention, and by the third week she is so exhausted all she wants to do is sleep without interruption, which is one of the few times we let her “stay in” our downstairs bedroom for a few days.

Lydia & family

A few nights ago, I attended the memorial service for our friend and neighbor, Juan, who died a year ago ("Going, Going…Juan"). It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since Juan died. His wife Lydia is a sweetheart, and we are glad that she has such a supportive and close family.  Her kids have been great since Juan died.  Since then, her kids have provided a cell phone for her (which I think initially intimidated her, but now she works it like a texting-pro...sorta of incongruous (perhaps like how many of us remember our older parents learning how to do e-mail ten years ago).

At least one or the other(s) in her family is always there to give her moral support, and recently they just installed Direct TV for her.

Juan was a very respected member of this community and his hour-long Wednesday night memorial service was crowded (I understood about every tenth word—usually the word “Dios”). Still, it was very special.

A young, new, passionate priest gave the sermon….but in the middle of his inspirational homily, about 5 dogs got into a very loud and vociferous misbehavior fight just outside the church, which drowned out most of the rest of the earnest priest’s message.

I did my best to stifle a laugh, and I felt bad about that, until I realized that many of my pew neighbors were trying to do the same.

After service, I made a beeline for Leila’s restaurant (next to our park) to get dinner to go/ “para llevar” to get ahead of the crowd ….Only the priests (now in plain clothes) beat me there.  After that dog fiasco, can’t say I blamed them.

Leila's
One of the places
Where we all go to eat often.
Leila stirring the pot.