learning my abzzzzzzzzz

Felipe calls her "an old Mexican school marm hidden behind the mountains" -- the regulator of Mexico's rainy season.


Four months on. Eight months off. As if the rain guys belonged to a very good fireman's union.


If he is correct, that school marm should be investigated for dipping into the bucket -- Mexico simply is not getting the rain it should these days. This summer is leaving man and beast panting for one last drop of water before we shuffle off to that Sahara in the sky.


If it were not for the humidity in my little fishing village, I would suspect that David Lean had slipped into town while everyone was busy sweating and had started a remake of Lawrence of Arabia.


I am doing as well as I thought I would in the heat (and that translates to "not very"), but Jiggs has been having a far more difficult time. Nights are worst for him. I think that is true because our bedroom is very hot -- and the ocean breezes stop when the sun starts setting. Regulated, I suspected, by the same school marm who controls the rain. She may even run the teachers' union.


I have mentioned that the woman who owns the house purchased a portable air conditioner for the bedroom. I have tried not to use it most nights because I knew how expensive electricity is in Mexico. I was also reluctant to use it because it does not reduce the temperature in the room by any more than a couple of degrees -- running all night.


But, for Jiggs's sake, I have turned it on to create a bit of cool breeze for him whenever the bedroom temperature gets over 90 degrees.


Over the weekend the electric bill arrived. For our extravagant occasional use of electricity, we were charged the equivalent of $100 for the past two months.


To me, that initially seemed high. This house usually has an electric bill of about $10 a month.


But air conditioning is expensive everywhere. My house in Salem had an electric bill this month of over $100 -- and Oregon has relatively inexpensive electrical rates (thanks to subsidies from the generous American taxpayer).


I played with the idea of cutting back on using the air conditioner. That lasted just long enough for me to watch Jiggs's pleading eyes.


But Felipe's school marm intervened. Maybe the federales were closing in on her, but she decided to give us a nice soft rain for two days. The furious hurricane that is building in the Pacific probably had something to do with the rain, along with an extremely brisk wind and some amazing wave activity.


The greatest gift, though, was two nights with temperatures in the 70s. I actually turned off the fans in the bedroom. Both of us had the first full night of sleep since we arrived in April. By "full," I mean that we did not roll out of our respective sleeping arrangements until 8:45.


Maybe Hypnos gave the school marm a micky. However it happened, two full nights of sleep has put both of us in high spirits.