ImPastaBle!

Mal wanted plain pasta or ramen (NOT MAC AND CHEESE) and we don't have any, so I decided to make pasta from scratch.

It's not difficult, per se, just it has to sit a while so it takes some time. AND I don't have my pasta roller anymore (when I moved into the trailer, I had to let some stuff go), so I had to roll them out by hand and it is DIFFICULT.

My noodles ended up being thicker than ideal, but whatever. It was fine and Mal said they were "okay" (meaning he's eating them).

When I explained that maybe I'll get a pasta roller again (I can get one to fit onto my Kitchenaid mixer) so the pasta will be easier to roll out, he said, "Now you know what it's like to be an Olive Garden worker."

So I guess he thinks Olive Garden is hand-making all of their noodles??

One more thing I just thought of about Mexico City that I LOVED!

When we're traveling, we try to take public transit. Even if we drove to the location! When we were in New Orleans, we parked our car in a garage and took buses and ride shares when buses weren't a timely choice (or it was raining and walking to a bus stop would have been miserable).

We did this in Mexico City, as well. I'd hoped to take the metro more often than we did, but going up and down stairs is a challenge for James, who was on the tail end of a gout attack and we did not want to add an Achilles tendonitis flare-up to that, so...

We did take quite a few buses (including trolley buses that operate on an overhead power grid, which is neat; and some buses with their own lanes so that traffic only sort of impedes their progress).

A couple of times, the drivers managed to get food in ways that just delighted me. 

The first time, we were heading out of CDMX to Teotihuacán. After picking up at all of the stops, the driver rounded a corner in a neighborhood, got out, ran to a stall, and they had a bag waiting for him. He hopped right back in the bus and we kept going.

Another time, we were heading down a main thoroughfare and got stopped at a light. The driver motioned to a vendor, and at first I just thought she knew the other woman. But before the light changed, the vendor hopped on board, gave the driver some food, and the driver handed her payment.

These moments and other times of people recognizing each other at a crosswalk with 200 people waiting for the light to change helped Mexico City feel less like a sprawling metropolis and more like a series of small towns whose borders are murky. It was very charming,

First time for everything, and how I'm saving money now that it looks like this financial situation is permanent

About a year ago, our local library was hiring a part-time library aide. I applied, the process took months, and I never even got an interview, even though several people acted like I was going to.

Unfortunately, that employee did not work out and got fired just before the holidays. 

I'd learned that he apparently had gotten the job because he was able to do tech support and explain computer stuff to the library patrons. Knowing that, I brushed up my resume to include a WAY BACK job from more than 25 years ago where I... provided tech support to casinos and other clients in Las Vegas.

This time, at least, I got an interview. I hadn't heard anything when we left on vacation (two months after I'd applied, and several weeks after my interview), but when we got back, I saw a social media post and knew immediately that someone had been hired.

I feel like this person is a better fit, but I'm kind of bummed because we could have used the money, part time as it was. Plus, I could walk to work. I am not ready to get a job where I'd need to 1) buy a car and 2) leave Mal in a town alone. 1431 closes down too often, and I am not ready to make an 11-year-old responsible for navigating a forest fire or no electricity when it's 100 degrees out.

Incidentally, I might never have had this worry but in 2021 when we had a bad freeze, there was a guy from across the highway who ran into Cedar Park to check on his jewelry storefront and by the time he tried to get back home, the road was closed and troopers would not let him through, even though he explained that his 10-year-old was home alone. Our electricity went out and the roads were impassable for days. I have no idea how that turned out but I would like to avoid that situation.

So, the "first time for everything": I have gotten every job I have ever really wanted. I have even been told no, they weren't going to go with me and then came back to them with something my dad (an HR specialist) mentioned they did wrong in the interview and rather than deal with a lawsuit, they did end up hiring me. They also tried to frame me for theft, but I outsmarted them (on accident, which I guess isn't "smart" per se but just fortunate that I was as pragmatic as I was and didn't use or take home the key they gave me one day because I never needed it).

For an overachiever like me, a job rejection hurts. I can't imagine the dozens of times James went through it over the past two years. Ugh.

NOW. 

I've been poor before, and while we're not in crisis yet, I want to avoid that. Our expenses outpace what James makes by quite a bit. So here are some things I'm scaling back on that I've done before when money wasn't plentiful:

1) We're back to Supercuts or Great Clips. I'm very lucky that my hair got wavy because it's easier to cut and style now! So it's $25 cuts instead of $60-80 cuts for me. James never gets his hair (except that time I had a mystery shop specifically for a man's salon where they do face massages and stuff; it was cool!) and D pays their own stylist, so it's just Mal and me, and we both get our hair trimmed about every 9 months. 

2) No more boutique food splurges. Piroshky Piroshky is a fabulous bakery out of Seattle. They travel down to Austin once a year or so, and we used to order $100ish worth of items from them to enjoy for a week or so. No more. Same thing with Doughees (which seems to be closed, anyway, but from which I used to order once or twice a year), Fat and Weird Cookies, and any food subscription period. Instead, I try recipes I find online and have recently made conchas for the first time, and a big old cookie with chocolate chunks and caramel chunks. I'm thinking about making an Easter basket cake for Easter. We're not buying expensive treats anymore.

3) I'm not getting energy drinks, even as a splurge. They're $1-2 per can (more usually, but I only got them on sale even when I was buying them). Instead, I get Great Value Energy Drink Mix, which is just under $.20 per serving. What's crazy is that Celsius sells a powdered drink mix but it's still over $1 per serving! Stop!

4) I would grab take-out for the whole family once a week or so, and I have just stopped doing that. Maybe once a month now? But usually, I'm just cooking... unless Domino's has half price pizza and then only Mal and I are usually at all excited about that. With James and D often working full days, I'm having to do lunches, too. D would just suffer without at-work calories, but James works near a bunch of food options, so we're trying to prevent temptation (it helps that his lunch is only half an hour and honestly, it's hit or miss whether you can get a full meal from Whataburger in that time frame).

5) We're definitely cutting back on our trips now that we're back from Mexico. We can't make up the $20k a year I'd have made if I'd gotten the library job, but we can recover a chunk of it by reining this in for a while. I'll be on the lookout for sales and deals, of course. But we'll be staying closer to home for a bit.

One good thing in that regard is that one of Mal's friends moved into our neighborhood earlier this year, and they're having a great time running around being big kids. Yesterday, they'd gone on a walk and when they came back, I was surprised to see a third friend with them... she lives on the other side of the lake, and I was very confused about how she'd joined them, but apparently her parents had driven her over. Having home and the 'hood be a social outlet makes staying home even more appealing.

6) I stopped taking Minoxidil a few months ago. I'd started it when I was losing a LOT of hair, I thought because of perimenopause? I was just going to take it until I'd gotten through to menopause. But what I realized is that I was probably losing hair because of hyperparathyroidism, which I don't have anymore, thanks to surgery 2 years ago.

I went through this whole cycle of when I started taking it, my hair barely shedded! I started having baby hair, and that was a drama. Then after about a year, my hair started falling out at what I'd say was a "normal" rate, and I wondered about whether the meds were still working. I changed to a topical rather than a pill, and I was still losing some hair. So I decided that I could save $175 every 5 months by just stopping and see if maybe now that my hair is wavy, I could absorb some hair loss without it being so shocking. 

I had what I think was an extinction burst where I lost A LOT of hair but now it's stabilized and it's fine. Plus, I've had a lot of talks with myself about how I got to a place of body neutrality where I don't feel like I need to do anything about my weight. I don't wear much makeup (saw a video of me from a few years ago yesterday and it seemed weird that I had eye shadow on!). I dress how I want to. So why was I so caught up in the hair loss, which is also a normal part of aging? I guess I'm just a hypocrite.

Ha ha. Here's a picture of money. I posted it because I was trying to think of something to go with this theme, which is... money. And also, last night Mal was showing James something on his iPad and accidentally dropped it on his face, knocking a baby tooth loose that wasn't ready to come out before. But it's probably going to happen pretty soon! He's currently trying to save money to buy a $80-ish LEGO Star Wars set. This is another change; he's going to have to save up for it on his own because he has so many LEGOs already and we just can't chip in this time. Wish him luck!

More CDMX!

Continuing with random observations:

8) The kids are working! Lots of people have little stalls or stands or they just take up space on the sidewalk selling things. I've seen kids playing around their parents while they work, but I've also seen them trying to get people's attention, helping display stuff, and just now we saw a small child carrying a mop bucket down the stairs of our hotel to help his parent, too.

The metro here has separate cars for women and children, and recently I saw a lady asking if when she visited the city, her 15-year-old son would be able to ride in the women/children car with her. People were incredulous. One person said, "That car is for unaccompanied women. You'll have a man with you." It helps me see how much "younger" 15-year-olds are in the US than here.

9) Wash cloths aren't really a thing. We had to ask for a couple, and the gentleman at the front desk took a minute to understand what we were talking about. We did get a couple, but when they were dirtied, they weren't replaced like the towels and shower mat.

10) People walking their dogs in Centro Historico seem to carry a large plastic bag with several pieces of half-sheet paper in the bag. When their dog does their business, they use a piece of paper to pick it up and put it in the bag. That way, no matter how many poops your dog(s) has, you only have one plastic bag!

11) Hot carrots are awesome.

12) Shoes get really dirty. The hotel where we're staying now even provided shoe mitts and little sponges to buff our shoes. We need them! I walk at home, outside and off-road, and it's not the same thing. I guess it's a combination of the pollution falling to the ground and just a lot of outside life?

13) I had read before we came that if you don't speak any Spanish, to stay in the touristy areas and you'll be able to get by okay... but I don't see how! We have toddler-level Spanish and have made it with effort... but there has been only once that we were even offered an English menu (which we declined), and maybe three or four times in over a week so far, someone has switched to English when talking to us. Overwhelmingly, everything we've done has relied on Spanish, including Uber drivers asking exactly where we were going even though it's literally in the app. I'd say that if you're traveling to Mexico City, study Spanish for a while first! 

James started Duolingo about a year before I did, and I started with French just to hit the ground running. After we got back from Montreal in May 2024, I switched over to Duolingo. After about a year of just that, I started listening to the Duolingo Spanish podcast, then other beginner and intermediate Spanish podcasts. Some were lessons proper, and others were just people talking or telling stories.

If I'm having to rack my brain to order for Mal at Subway, I don't see how someone having no Spanish could really have a good time without much frustration on the part of both the visitor and the vendor or customer service professional.

More later! 

CDMX!

I had a whole thing written up about our travel from Jonestown to Ciudad de México, but let's get real: No one cares.

We're having a great time. We've already seen so much and eaten such good food. We've found the people to be kind and forgiving of our meager attempts to communicate in Spanish. 

I'm too tired to do a whole round-up, but here are a few random thoughts I've had:

1) WOW, these people know how to drive. A lot of streets have no lines. Many intersections are crosspoint of 5 different streets. Traffic lights seem to be suggestions. However... everyone seems to be getting where they're going pretty safely as far as we've seen. I'm GLAD we didn't try to rent a car!

2) I feel like I'm seeing a lot more people walking with canes than I usually do, even in densely-packed urban areas. Thinking about that made me realize that Biblioteca Vasconcelos has some of the most overt and neat accessibility infrastructure I've ever seen in a public building like that. There are tactile "rows" on the floor that show where to go for someone with limited vision using a cane. They have ridges but when there's an intersection or turn, there is a tile with bubbles instead of rows. They go throughout the library including into the restrooms. Outside of the braille room, they have a gorgeous tactile sculpture of a seaside beach with very delightful detailing. Yay for accessibility. 

3) Nacho cheese Doritos in Mexico are more peppery than nacho cheese Doritos in the US. Mal thinks they're more spicy, James said he tastes a bite. I only ate one and what hit me was that it tasted more like a pepper tastes.

4) I was prepared not to be able to find public restrooms (at least for free use) but I think it's even harder to find public trash cans! I've located a few, but mostly we just carry our trash until we get home.

5) It's interesting to see how many buildings and homes have their own roof-mounted water "towers" to deal with the inconsistent water availability here. 

6) I don't understand how Uber drivers make any money when the price of gas is more than twice what it is in the US, and the rides are less than half the cost the same rides would be in the US.

7) The Health Ministry isn't playing. 

We got some room snacks and they have big old health warnings about excessive calories, sugar, salt, and saturated fats. Doesn't stop us from eating them, but it is interesting.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts but that's it for now. Que tanga un buen dia!