Island Paradise Day 14

Today we had a very lazy day. The perfect time to do that yoga on the deck.

Unfortunately I was too busy reading the news and drinking coffee. The highlight of the day was doing laundry. It was the sort of day that Stephane loves: read the news for a few hours in the morning over coffee, a nice brunch in the screen room while listening to waves, a couple of hours of snorkeling, laundry, then hanging in the hammock reading a good book...all of his favorite things! These are the days he lives for. Seriously - he loves doing laundry. I am the sort of person who says, "If it doesn't stink and there are no really obvious dirty marks - keep wearing it!" Steph on the other hand uses a towel once and cannot wait to wash it! When he is not looking, I grab the towel back, fold it and he never misses it.

Laundry has been a challenge ever since we left Canada. Everywhere we go the machines are old and rusty, (though we did have a few good ones in Bucerias) and now pretty much everything I own has either rust stains on it or several holes in it from over agitation and harsh soaps. I finally took to washing my clothes by hand with hand soap.

Today I had to creatively “decorate” one of my new dresses with bleach and water in a spray bottle to try to camouflage the area of whitening in the middle (the dress is dark blue). Maybe no one will notice??? Not that clothes matter much here. The "style" here is flip flops and shorts; suits me just fine.

One of the down sides to living on the sea is the amount of corrosion on anything metal. The salt is like acid – constantly eating away fridges, stoves, door knobs, hinges, and washers and dryers. People have to replace these things regularly (another thing realtors are not likely to tell you when house shopping). Steph says if he lived here he would sew pretty covers for all the appliances. Seriously – he said that! I can picture it now…my ultra-modern kitchen with gingham fridge and stove coasies. Salt water not only plays havoc on the metal – it really messes up your windows and glass doors…so all those beautiful views are constantly smudged with a salt water film that needs to be wiped constantly. These are the things you never really know about when you stay somewhere for just a week or two.

Maintenance, according to Mike our neighbor, is ongoing when you live on the sea and in the tropics. He uses a special oil to coat his door hinges and metal things. And things grow so fast here there are always things that need pruning, and dead leaves that need picking up. Our little house here has a huge tree in the middle of the deck…pretty, but annoying. Every night it drops about 6000 pounds of needles on the deck, and it also drops these little hard balls…which when they hit the metal roof clink, and wake me up.

Other must do chores are bug bombs and spraying around the foundation of your house, and raking away dead plant matter so as to keep the bugs at bay. Some people tell me they only fumigate once every five years – others tell me it needs to be done every month. This is why being a renter is often better than being an owner: because while we are having a lazy day – others have to worry about the house maintenance.