I'm Back...Again

Its actually been a few years since I have posted here but I want to give this a shot...again.

So much has changed in the last few years.  We left Roatan and moved back "home" to the Dallas area where our families live.  Hunter will be turning 5 next week and starting kindergarten.  I have been working from home as a search engine evaluator for 2 years now and love the work and the flexibility.

I feel like I have a lot to offer on this blog and plan to write about some of my favorite topics and hobbies:

• Travel
• Being a mom
• Cooking
• Working from home
• Anything else that I care about!

Blog Update - Oops Its been awhile

It turns out that I wasnt as motivated to blog as I had thought.  I still have tons of ideas for posts but they just dont seem to make it out of my head.  The good news is that it is mostly for good reasons and only a bit because of my serious addiction to playing on my phone.   Since my last post, everything has changed for me.  To be honest, my first 2 months or so here were some of the most difficult times in a long time.  It was dreadfully hot and I was having a terrible time meeting people.  I was lonely and depressed.  I was feeling like I had made a terrible mistake moving here.  Hunter started school and I was feeling so hopeful that I could meet some of the other parents but it turned out that the rush to drop off and pick up our kids did not offer many opportunities to talk to other parents and honestly, they weren't very friendly.  I was starting to think that the other families on this island already had all the friends that they needed and that there was no place for me.

So what has changed?  First of all, the weather!  In what seemed like an instant, we changed from hot and humid to perfect!  The temperature hovers between 75 and 80.  It is either beautifully sunny or rainy with very few all day rainstorms (besides today).  That has helped a lot but the best thing that happened is that I have made some friends.  Not just any friends but other moms! Not just other moms, but moms of kids the same age as Hunter.  Not just other mom's with kids Hunter's age but actually cool people.  There were lots of other mom's at the mine but first, very few had kids the same age as Hunter and second, as good as my Spanish had gotten, it was such a challenge to really communicate on a deeper level.  As a bonus, 2 of Hunter's new friends will be in his class when he goes back after the holiday break.

So I'm terribly sorry for not posting more but know that it is because I am happy.  

More Laundry Woes or Why I Need To Stop Listening to My 2 Year Old

So Hunter and have been spending a not-so-quiet day at home.  Its been drizzling on and off all morning.  I worked out and tackled a big cooking project while Hunter played in various rooms of the house.  At one point he played on my bed while I put my head down and rested.   After a while I went to grab a cup of coffee while Hunter continued to play on my bed.  After about 15 minutes, I heard some words that no parent wants to hear in the same sentence:  "peepee" and "mommy's bed". 

First mistake:  Ok, so I panicked a bit.  I grabbed the quilt off my bed and some sheets from Hunter's bed from yesterday and threw them in the washing machine. 

Second mistake:  I generally try to do the laundry first thing in the morning so that it has plenty of time to dry.  It was already after 11 at this point.  It had been drizzling on and off all morning but it looked vaguely like the sun was going to burn off the clouds.  Well, the sun didn't come out.  Since then there has just been more drizzle.

The real kicker, was when I came in from the laundry room and tried to change Hunter's underwear only to find it bone dry.  Wait a minute...what happened?  I walked back through the previous events and realized that what Hunter thought was pee, was just water from my wet, post-shower hair.  Now I'm just hoping for sun tomorrow so I can dry our blanket and get it back on the bed.

Adjusting to Roatan Life

I'll warn you now, I'm not super-inspired to write this morning, I'm just trying to take advantage of Hunter calmly laying on the couch watching Curious George.  I think I will write about how my adjustment is going.

On the home front, things are going well.  The house isn't 100% unpacked and settled yet, but I would say that we are at 95%.  I've lost most of my motivation so until we get a visitor and need that 3rd bedroom, things are going to be like this.  As far as I can tell, we have everything we need.  I'm not as happy with this house as I was when we first saw it, which, I think, is typical with a rental house.  There are so many things we would do differently if it was our house.

My biggest fear in moving here was how I would adjust to the heat without central air conditioning.  It really hasn't been as bad as I had feared.  I think that in the 2 weeks that I've been living here, we have entered into a new season.  The seasonal changes are subtle here but I feel a distinct difference.  At first, we had almost no rain, but in the last week, we have had almost daily rain.  Its not nightly rain, like when we lived on the mainland.  This rain seems to come whenever and with no warning.  Last night, Rob had to run an errand and the sky opened up as soon as he left the house.  It also seems to rain as soon as I hang any laundry on the line to dry.  The rain has brought some much better weather.  What I've really noticed is that the afternoons have become much more tolerable with lower humidity.  According to our trusty little home weather station, the temperatures are generally in the mid-80's  with humidity over 80%.  The past few days, the humidity has gone down to about 70% in the afternoons which seems to make a huge difference.  Its really not too bad, especially if I lay low rather then running around the house cleaning and chasing the 2 year old.  I think the trick to living here comfortably is to take a nice cool shower whenever I'm getting ready to relax.

Things are going slowly for me on the friends front.  I'm anxious to meet some other mommies but there isn't really a place to meet them.  I assume most of the mommy-types are all working during the day and there doesn't appear to be a playground or anything like that where I can take him.  Hopefully, we will get Hunter into the little preschool down the road soon.  I'm sure that is a good place to meet some other parents.  I have been volunteering at the library which has been great.  The lady who runs it has been here for decades and knows everything about life here as a gringa.  I will report more on the library in future posts.

I have 3 huge frustrations here.

First is my kitchen.  Its horrible.  I love to cook and since I've been staying at home for the last 2 years, cooking has been my favorite hobby.  The kitchen is awful.  Using the stove or oven heat that room up to unbearable temperatures.  There is a nice big door but no screen so if I open the door, I'm inviting in every mosquito in the area to feast on us.  Just thinking about this makes my blood boil.  Obviously, the home owner never cooked a real meal here.

Second are the mosquitoes.  Honestly, we haven't had a huge problem with bugs here.  Our house is far enough from the beach that the dreaded sand fleas aren't around us.  They only seem to be an issue if we are at the beach in the evening, which doesn't happen much. The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are pretty hungry.  It seems like every evening, a single hungry mosquito will come in a devour Hunter or I.  Its amazing that the landlord had the sense to put new screens everywhere but left spaces around the screens where the mosquitoes can fly right in.  Rob brought me house some painter's tape yesterday, though, to seal up these holes.  Its not pretty but it will do.

Finally, my biggest annoyance here is nothing new new for me here in Honduras.  At our house at the mine, this was a bit of an obsession of mine.  Its these stupid, tiny ants.  I know they are worse for us with a toddler constantly dropping food.  They don't bite or anything but they are anywhere where there is food and drive me up the wall.  My normal solution to them is to keep as much food as possible in the fridge and freezer but our fridge is so small here, that is a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, I'm not spending much time in the kitchen so for the most part, they are out of sight.  As far as I know, there is nothing I can do about them.

I had more to write today but Hunter has just let me know that he is ready to play!  Maybe we will head to the beach!

Line Dried Laundry Woes

So far one of the biggest changes in my life is related to laundry.  Our house has a great new washing machine but no dryer.  I, personally, love my clothes fresh from the dryer.  I love how soft and warm they are but mostly I love how DRY they are.  Here we have a clothes line.  It is more economical and environmental.  People keep telling me how much they love hang drying their clothes.  I suspect that these people all have dryers and have forgotten the reasons why they bought that dryer in the first place.

This is what I love about doing laundry in my island home:

Here are my top issues with hanging dry my clothes:

1.  Rain - I feel like I need to do my laundry first thing in the morning so that it has plenty of time to dry.  Granted, when the sun is out, most of it dries in about an hour with only some thick shorts and towels taking longer.  So far, I've done about 4 loads of laundry and despite the fact that we have been told that its the rainy season, it has been amazingly dry here (that is without rain...not without humidity), it has rained twice while I had clothes hanging to dry.  The first time was just a brief shower but today was torrential rain all morning and it still looks pretty dreary.  My clothesline looks like this:

And my laundry looks like this:

 Needless to say, it is not drying like I had hoped.

2.  My second issue with hanging laundry is the crunch.  No matter what I try, my laundry ends up lacking in softness.  Google had a few suggestions for remedying this situation.  I've tried them with a slight improvement but I still think my laundry is not nearly as soft as from the dryer.  Some of the suggestions that I've been trying:

1. Use less detergent
2. Add some white vinegar
3. Shake out the laundry before hanging it

There were some other suggestions that I have no control over like hanging them only on windy days.

3.  One of my favorite thigs about clothes from the dryer is how the fabric becomes tighter and everything fits like it did when I bought it.  When I hang my clothes, they seem to keep getting a little looser and more stretched out.

4.  I've realized that I have limited space on my clothes line.  I cannot hang a full load at one time, especially when that load contains a dozen tiny pairs of underwear and a dozen more tiny shirts.  This leave me 2 choices, I can try to hang it in shifts, which only works when it is really sunny or I have to do laundry more frequently in smaller loads.  The problem is that electricity here is extremely expensive and it seems so inefficient.

I would welcome any suggestions on how to make my line-dried clothes soft and fresh like the ones I see on TV and hear about in people's memories.


As I am finishing up this post, I realize that my Roatan posts are more negative than positive.  I try to be a "glass-is-half-full" type of person.  I also don't ever want my friends and family to worry that I am unhappy.  Please keep in mind that I live on a tropical, Caribbean island.  This is paradise.  This has been our dream for years.  As with most dreams, the reality is not exactly the same as the dream.  A week and a half into living our dream, I am still experiencing some culture shock in learning how to live here.  Most importantly, if I only made posts about how beautiful it is to live on this wonderfully green, lush island that is ringed in white sand beaches and surrounded by the clearest, bluest water in the world, populated by colorful and delicious fish, everyone would hate and resent me.  I save that stuff for facebook.

I started this post last week.  I was feeling horribly low and very much regretting our decision to move here.  I was hot, tired, lonely and overwhelmed with organizing our house and the new and different challenges of life here.  Since I posted this, a lot has changed.  First of all, I went to check out the library that is just down the road.  I suspect that this library will be the subject of many posts in the future.  I have also visited the preschool down the street and have hope that Hunter might be spending his mornings there, giving me more time for myself, my projects and maybe even some paying work.  3rd, we finally got our cable tv and internet.  Finally, the heat has broken a bit.  Its pouring rain today and even almost cool.  I'm feeling excited about our future here

**********  Written October 1, 2013  *********

Thank goodness, Hunter and I got here on Saturday.  Sadly, Rob has been expecting the cable and internet to be hooked up since Thursday.  The guys is supposed to come today....this will be my first lesson on living on a tropical island.  Therefore, I am writing this offline.

It looks like I will be busy all week cleaning and organizing our house.  I have a game plan, though.  My goal is to unpack every box.  I am finding locations for everything that we will be using and repacking things that we will not be using.  I've already repacked a box of Hunter's baby stuff and have started packing us each a suitcase of winter stuff so we know where to go when we pack for somewhere wintry.  In the mean time, I don't even want to look at sweaters, jeans, long-sleeve shirts, gloves, jackets, socks or anything else of the sort because, guess what????  Its hot here.

This brings me to lesson number 2 for living on a tropical island:  Its hot AND humid.  Due to the high price of electricity here, we are only running the AC at night.  During the day, its fans and sweat.  Honestly, its not terrible.  I'm showering 3 times a day and we are saving a ton of money since our water heater is off and completely unnecessary here. I'm hoping the sweating will burn a lot of calories because there is no way in hell that I will be working out here.

Back to lesson 1.  The cable guy just came and left and what a surprise, even though the lady in the office scheduled us for installation and took our money, it turns out that there isnt service to our house.  That was the best option for cable TV and we are still without internet.  Back to square one.

I suspect that my expectation for my first world life is impossibly high.  At the moment, I am feeling pretty frustrated and negative.

On a positive note, our house is really coming together and our view is breathtaking.  Hunter is as happy as any 2 year old can be, as long as I don't try to feed him anything he doesn't want or make him stop doing things that I don't want him to do.  So far this morning, he threw tantrums over the following:
- I tried to feed him yogurt with his cereal instead of milk.
- I took away his wooden machete because he kept slapping me with it.
- I dragged him out of my bathroom for wasting toilet paper.
- Finally, I tried to put a diaper on him before his nap.

Top lessons learned so far about life on Roatan:
a.  Nothing, it seems, will get done when a person says it will
b.  Its hot and sticky

Another new beginning

I'm writing from sunny and warm Montreal.  2 year old Hunter is napping peacefully and Rob is finishing up his first week of work at his new job and getting ready to start a busy weekend moving us into our new house.  Nope, its not here in Montreal nor in Dallas.  We are really excited to finally be trying out life....drumroll please.....in ROATAN!  For anyone who doesnt know, Roatan is a little island in the Caribbean right off the coast of Honduras.  The truth is that Roatan is where it all began for us.  The story goes that we had just returned from an amazing little vacation with some dear friends to Jamaica.  As usual, we agreed that one week (or 10 days, I can barely remember at this point) just wasn't enough.  We started dreaming up details to remedy this "too short vacation problem".  One year seemed like it might be enough.  (I love hindsight....almost 4 years later we still haven't returned). 
We thought it would be fun to live in the Caribbean for a year so I googled "cheap caribbean island" which somehow led me to Roatan.  I'd certainly never heard of it but I liked what I saw online.  We started to talk seriously about spending a year there.  Many discussions later, my mother, who was probably terrified that if we did that, we would never come back, suggested that we travel for a year. (See robanddebourway.blogspot.com).

Lets fast forward now, throughout central america lugging our backpacks fromone town to the next, 3 more months living at the D &D brewery, 2 1/2 years living at the El Mochito mine in Honduras which included the birth of our son and countless long weekends back to Roatan which in no way resembled our backpacking year.  With Rob employed and baby in tow, we got to know the fancy resorts.  We swam in fancy pools and sat around in comfy suites through many naps.  Our love of Roatan grew.  White sand, clear blue water, lush green foliage and a population that always made us feel welcome.  Well, our time at the mine ended and this new opportunity appeared...an interesting new job for Rob, where else but our favorite tropical paradise.

I think that pretty much brings this blog up to date. 

I have a new plan for this blog.  My life is so different than when I started blogging.  I am 100% domestic.  I have a new name....Mommy and it sounds like mommmmyyyyyyyy.  I cook and clean and search for play dates and toddler friendly restaurants and activities.  I carry a backpack almost as big as the one that i lived out of for a year but this time just for a morning outing.  My new life will have new challanges.  Our skin is not island brown and I will need to be vigilant with sun screen (or sour cream as Hunter says it).  Electricity is really expensive so I will be using completely different cooking techniques than at the mine where we didn't even have an electric bill.  We have a few friends already on the island but I need mommy friends and fast.  I need to get into bathing suit shape.  I need to get my little guy potty trained because in the last 2 months of insanity, he keeps asking to poopoo potty.  I want to blog about all of this.   Welcome back.