“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” Maya Angelou

It would have been a very quiet week Lakeside if not for two events . . .

After suffering through nine months of Telmex “TelHell” Internet with speeds resembling the days of AOL dial-up and with constant TV buffering of Netflix and Amazon Prime shows … well, as of this Thursday we have FiberOptics from a third party service and with speeds up to 50 mph, we are playing with fire. Now David’s complaining that his computer is too fast ~ his eyes are spinning! He got used to looking outside at the birds while waiting for his downloads/uploads to happen.

We started hearing about this service upon moving here and in March they finally opened a local office. I was there the second day to sign up and told that it will take approximately 3-6 months to establish service. About six weeks ago I started noticing their trucks in our neighborhood … so I started dropping by their office every other week to light a fire under them. It paid off this Monday when the gracious señorita finally got tired of my ugly mug … placed her magic fingers on the keyboard and before Cinderella’s fairy godmother could say “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” … an appointment materialized from thin air.

During the summer rainy season, we get these strong thunder, lightning, and high winds storms. Consequently, the power will sometimes go out. What I was not aware of was that the power comes back slowly and in stages. The electric company returns to power in segments with low voltage instead of all at once. That’s why we were experiencing half of the house at full voltage and a half at low voltage and there are brownouts throughout the house. I’ve never experienced this phenomenon before.

My worrywart meter went off the charts … with concerns of an electrical fire, explosions … the scenarios went on and off like light switches in my head. I fired off a few emails to our landlord and management company alerting them of the problem; talked to our housekeeper and our next door neighbor and all came to the same conclusion “…it’s Mexico!”

Fortunately for me, I got to horseback ride twice this week and wear my shining, new boots that fit like a glove. The greening Lakeside landscape is a wonder to behold.

David has been enjoying taking pictures of the ever-changing flora and fauna found throughout our property … with a sharp eye and plain ol’ patience, he never knows what he’s going to discover out there: bananas growing, succulents wildly blooming, lizards, really odd looking bugs, even dead opossums(sorry no pix), etc.

This Week on the Menu: Happily, David is finally getting his sweet act together … with a tweak here, tweak there … his baking mojo’s back with deliciously moist chocolate brownies from Katharine Hepburn’s recipe. Teriyaki marinated steel trout served over a mashed combination of my own making: potatoes, cauliflower, spinach, corn, Parmesan cheese, butter, and cream; served with roasted asparagus and vine-ripened tomatoes.

Dinner out at our favorite restaurant now two weekends in a row … introducing it to our friends, Donna her husband, Dan, and Donna’s lovely mother, Anita. All favorite meal repeats, but dessert was a new flavored goat milk strawberry ice cream.

On Wednesday my oldest nephew Eddie and his lovely wife Susie celebrated the arrival of their third child a little girl named Havana Sky…….I’m calling her The Empress because she is going to rule over her two older brothers.