After a busy day running all my domestic errands came home, and checked the news…. turns out there were narcoblockades today all over Guadalajara’s main roads, blocking traffic in and out of the city with burning vehicles, even some sort of incident on the carretera to Chapala not too far from where we live.  Supposedly the federales just arrested two guys who worked — fairly high up in the structure, one gathers — for Chapo and this madness today was the cartels’ revenge. They blockaded every artery going into or out of the city. The folks who analyze these things say “this is their way of waving a red flag in front of a bull, saying to the government, “See, we can shut down the second largest city in Mexico in a matter of hours, don’t mess with us…” Glad I wasn’t in town today! I feel sorry for the people who did go in for some reason or another. No expat hurt or assaulted or anything like that, but it’s so stressful having to deal with it when these things happen; the expat webboards are lit up with what’s going on and rumors are flying. We’re an hour away from Guadalajara and we don’t go often (Costco runs mostly), but when we do, we have to take one of the main highways in, and both the roads we customarily take had various incidents this afternoon. It IS getting worse here, but as Arnold says “okay, great, but what are we supposed to do?” Our lives are here now, at least for the moment, and mostly it’s beautiful, warm and tranquil. But not today.

We are supposed to go to a cocktail party tomorrow night, but at right now I’m thinking maybe I don’t want to be out on the main drag into the village after dark till things settle down.  Fortunately I did all my shopping today and we have enough in the house so I can enjoy the garden and the gorgeous weather, which has suddenly turned warm after a couple of cold spells. As part of my ongoing battle to manage my weight and attain some degree of physical fitness, I recently bought some weights and took out some dog-eared “weight training for senior women” books from the local English-language library. With our personal trainer gone on a three-week cruise with his partner, I’m bound and determined not to lose ground while he is away. So perhaps I will spend the weekend flailing around with an exercise book in one hand and a dumbbell in the other trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do. It’s so much easier when someone says “go to this machine and do so many sets and so many reps” — and you go into this mindless place where you just obey and get your hour workout over with. When you are trying to figure it out for yourself, you have to figure out which limbs you’ve moved and which you haven’t and all that. No wonder I never could get the exercise thing happening until I saw my mother go blind and become permanently bedridden from diabetes. That has made it crystal clear that I may flail around and maybe do some things not-quite-correctly, but flail, in some form or fashion, I must. Maybe this will occupy my attention till the news from the outside world is a little less disturbing, if it ever will be again in my lifetime.

It’s March, when it always starts to warm up around here. We have oranges on our tree, tons of bananas, limones, and we even have a mango tree too – usually the worms and the tlacuaches (opossums) get them before we do, but now I am wondering if I should go out to the garden and see if ours are ready….