Happy Sweltering 30th Anniversary, Sweetheart

Tuesday, May 23rd was our 30th Anniversary. Let me tell you, that's a long time to be married to one person. It deserves some special attention. We had decided Monday evening that we would get up and go to Progreso and spend the day on the beach then spend the night at this cute and quaint little posada we had found one block back from the malecon. We were going to have drinks on the beach, go out for dinner and make our day special. By Tuesday morning the plan had changed. We decided to just hang in town on our anniversary, but go buy bus tickets to Playa del Carmen and spend some time on the beach and celebrate there instead. But we would leave out on Wednesday.

Herberto, the Albañile, showed up early in the morning to begin some work on the house. The balaustradas for the front exterior got delivered and were the perfect size. Work was beginning and we were taking a trip. Life was good! We walked over to the ADO bus station to buy our tickets and got back to the house about 10 in the morning. I was in the kitchen and it just seemed to get hotter and hotter. That's when I realized the ceiling fans weren't turning. None of them. The electricity was off. That's the thing about Mexico. There is something about the hotter the temperatures the more likely there will be an outage. Temperatures had steadily been climbing since we had arrived at the casa and temps were in the 105-110 range. You know, May weather in Merida. Before the summer rainy season begins and starts cooling things off.

So we spent our anniversary sweltering in the heat. At some point Terry reached over and hugged me and I think my exact words to him were "Don't touch me!". 

It was so sweltering hot we couldn't even comfortably lie down. The mattress was too hot. Terry couldn't use his computer because it would automatically cut off because it got too hot. I tried painting to sweat kept dripping on my painting so I stopped. We spent the day lying in the hammocks rocking back and forth trying to make our own breeze. At some point, a guy came by and knocked on the front gate. He was selling hand-made flowers out of corn husks. Little did he know it was our anniversary and he would make a sale when Terry went to the gate to talk with him. But that just seems to work out that way down here.

We laughed and made jokes about the heat. City workers from next door were outside trying to get cool and they pretty much had a free day to just hang out. They were ok with it all. What else could we do? We wouldn't dare open the refrigerator or freezer door because we wanted to at least have our ice last for a good, cool cocktail around 6 or 7, just in case electricity didn't come back on. I was really worried about how in the heck we were going to sleep in the sweltering heat. And it seemed a good part of the city was experiencing the outage so to try and find a place with fans or a/c wasn't going to happen.

The one thing that kept us going was hearing Herberto up on the roof building the forms, mixing the concrete, carrying it up the stairs, and pouring it in the forms. He worked tirelessly all day long. He stopped long enough for a 30 minute lunch break then was at it again. No afternoon siesta even on this sweltering day. Every time I heard the sounds of him working up in the sun on the rooftop, I would just think about how much hotter it was up there compared to inside the house.

We did manage to have enough ice for cocktails around 6 and when we came back in the kitchen to mix up round 2, we realized the fans were turning. We had made it! We made it to 30 years and we made it through the sweltering day. And, we would be going to Playa del Carmen mañana   . Seriously, do I have anything to gripe about?! Much of Merida didn't even know the electricity was off. It didn't make any difference to Herberto for one. Seriously, Happy Sweltering 30th Anniversary, Sweetheart!