day 44: hot damn

Neen has been here since Saturday, and in that time I've learned more than I want to know about occult blood, spinsters and shrimps. She's a curious girl, that Neen. And she's learning all about child puke, since M caught the flu just as soon as we got to the beach.

Needless to say we are having a fantastic time. No seriously, we are.

We went to the Cayes and swam in the Caribbean and ate way too much food. We've drank beers and climbed pyramids and watched monkeys and talked. She even witnessed a neighbor dye my hair jungle style, over a railing using river water with dogs and cats and kids climbing all over us. And the hair turned out pretty good. It's been good having a friend here, a woman to talk with, to commiserate with, to see some of the ridiculous things I am struggling to figure out and to offer suggestions of her own that are pretty damn good. She's leaving all too soon but it's been so good to have her here. But before she'll go I'm taking her to visit my mystic friends and on a canoe trip through a cave. Gotta send her off clapping, right?

In other news, it's really fucking hot. It wasn't really hot until this past week, but now I know what people here fear and what everyone complains about during the dry season, this endless blistering heat that grinds on and on for months. The beach helped us escape it for a few days but now we are back in the jungle and it's hot from the moment we wake up till long after we've fallen asleep. I'm too sissy for heat. And for bugs. In fact, I whine all about that at my BlogHer post today. If there are two things I'm not woman enough for, it's heat and bugs. And yet those two things are on full display here, this chosen place of mine.

There's a lesson here, one I haven't yet figured out.