All Work - No Play

Two full weeks of hardly any play time at all - but there is a chance that everything slows down a bit next week. I have one more job to finish and one more waiting in the queue, another big one, 27 pages. I miss going swimming or running around in town a bit - at the moment its just errands and grocery shopping and right back home to the computer.
But no, I am not complaining. I really like my work a lot and we need the money for a lot of projects coming up at the farm, so I just do what is necessary.
Robbie is still busy with the football club. Last weeks game was cancelled, however, due to the threat of Hurricane Emily hovering at the coast. Well, it passed, but Mexico got hit pretty bad, especially the area around Cancun and Tulum. The next one in line is Franklin, but it's too far away from us. We do watch the little news we get more closely at the moment.
So the next game tomorrow should be ok as scheduled. Let's hope the Dragon Ladies of Santa Familia win that one, as well. I promised them a barbecue if they did:-) David came over this moment and told us we could buy fresh pork from someone in the village, so Robbie got us some fresh ribs and a roast. They were just finished butchering the pig ... you can't get it any fresher. We don't eat that much meat any more, sometimes not even once a week, but every now and then we do like a bite of a roast or some bacon for breakfast. I feel a lot better without it and Robbie doesn't miss it so much either. My favorite at the moment is tomato salad with lots of onions and some green pepper (they call it "sweet pepper" here, most probably to distinguish it from the amazingly hot "habanero pepper", which they call just "pepper"). People here buy mostly the Mary Sharp Sauces (excerpt): Produced in the fertile paradise of Belize, her red habanero is considered to be the hottest variety of pepper known to man. Marie has spent many years cultivating an habanero wothy of her recipe. She has suceeded. Or of course any homemade stuff, which is really easy to make as the peppers just grow in the backyards. I really got used to the taste of it, but don't like the really superhot versions, such as "No Wimps Allowed" ("nicht für Feiglinge") oder "Beware" ("Achtung!"), which both have an amount of capsicum oil way above my tolerance level. When my eyes start to water and I can't speak properly any more - that is simply too hot :-)
I also got used to the herb Cilantro ("Blätter der Korianderpflanze"), which was very alien to my tongue at first. But the Belizeans put it into almost every dish, so I got myself accustomed to it. Took me a while, though...
We completed the move of all of Robbie's things out of the "townhouse" into her art studio. Now we need to build some shelves and work spaces for it, because we don't know where to empty all the boxes to. We do know what we do with the empty boxes, though! Sharane will use them all to pack her stuff and move, maybe into our ex-townhouse. Her landlady ("Vermieterin") wants to sell her house, so Sharane has to move out. Sharane just came back from the US and brought a friend with her - at the moment, she is on a island, vacationing.
Our new friend Marion came a couple of times and we saw her at her house in San Ignacio as well, which I think is beautiful, but she doesn't like it because the mosquitoes eat her up so bad. It's up on the hills next to Cahal Pech, in the very exclusive Maya Vista area, with views over the hills and the town. Marion cooks really great, she makes wonderful salsa, bakes her own bread, and last week she made a very tasty pasta dish. We taught her how to play Quiddler, the word game I mentioned earlier in the blog, and she is a lot of fun to play with. You would never believe her age (73) because she is so full of energy and agility. It's nice to have her around and we invite her whenever it is possible.
David is going to work for her once a week, we don't have so much for him at the moment anyhow and she needs someone reliable for her yardwork, so we "networked" the two:-)
Rotary work has slowed down considerably, which is good, because I needed a bit of rest after the two years as the club secretary. But I am still active, helping Johnny R. with his Club Service. I am responsible for the website and I did the weekly bulletin twice, which was fun.
OK, what else is new ... can't think of anything else at the moment, but will surely write as soon as it comes into my mind! Ahhh, I think the rats are all dead now - those ugly roof rats we had! They kept dropping dead during the last week, so I assume the poison helped. We just had to make sure the dogs don't get them before we do!
The duck pond had to be redone a bit, because there were some leaks, but David put a new layer of cement on top and we hope to be able to let them swim around in it in a couple of days.
They will be sooo happy!