Before I forget anything else that happened in Mexico, I wanted to at least recount my birthday there.

We all woke up, and there was a complimentary brunch at the hotel. Free tacos. They would later give us huge stomach problems for over a week, but that’s something I would rather forget.

Paul & Tim were gone for awhile. I pretended that I didn’t notice and sat around the pool with everyone. It was hot and humid, but it was a most welcome weather; something we’d been waiting for. It had been raining for 3 days straight.

I remember sitting at the edge of the pool, kicking my feet. Some people jumped in the pool. Most everyone was talking at the table. Time passed. They got back. I went upstairs, and when I came down, everyone started singing.

Paul was holding out an entire plate of mini cheesecakes, all stacked together. He knows they’re my favorite. I made a wish. I wished that we all would have safe plane rides back home. It came true.

I sat down at the table and opened my card. His “To: Jen” handwriting was the best I’ve ever seen from him. He told me he tried, and my heart smiled. It was a handmade card of deep green. Inside, he surprised me by getting Legion, the upcoming WoW expansion and a glamour set for Final Fantasy XIV.

Expansions, especially pre-orders, are not cheap. I wondered how many hours of gold farming he had to do to pull it off just for me.

And the glamour set for FFXIV. It was the Thavnairian pieces that cost nearly an arm and a leg in gil. Not to mention, you’d need someone to craft it for you. I remember falling in love with it when I first saw, but I slowly let it go as I knew it was nearly unattainable.

My character has been wearing it ever since we got home and I logged on.

I knew then that even without much in our lives, he somehow always manages to give me something thoughtful. But it’s a different kind of thoughtful that women have. It’s a powerful, warm love that I don’t even possess. I must imagine that every man possesses this within themselves, made only available to the right person. And it was then that I was reminded of how lucky I have been.

The day went on. We roamed the street vendors, eyeing souvenirs to bring back home.  I practiced my Spanish with them, Tim was focused on handmade fabric dyed with insects, and Paul found a man that made pieces out of coconuts.

We had Armando’s tacos for dinner. This was the third and final time we went over. I knew now to order the taco combo with only shrimp tacos. Those were the best shrimp tacos I’d ever had. The salsa was refreshing, too.

9:30PM came around, and Paul gathered everyone to celebrate at a local bar – the Drunken Duck. I kept mistaking it for the Drunken Clam.

The drinks were strong. The strawberry margarita was better than anything I’d had in the US. And the live music had people dancing on top of the bar. We spoke about many inappropriate things, and it was wonderful.

We ended the night by walking back to the beach near the hotel. The boys didn’t hesitate to skinny dip. The girls on the other hand, the three of us, stood in the sand looking at each other. We cheered every guy as they ran in, into the ocean, into the dark as we wondered if we were going to join in.

Me and Jess looked at each other, “Fuck it” we said. We gave one reassuring glance, shrugged our shoulders, and ran with laughter. Paul yelled “who is that?!” in the darkness and we found our way to the group. Rick went back to help Adrienne, and thus began one of my favorite memories in life.

The water was warm, the stars were painted in every corner of the sky, and I was with people that I loved. The waves would pull us in and bring us back to different parts of Mexico, and I loved it all. No camera, no video, no picture could ever do that night justice.

So, now, on nights when the winter cold seeps into the doorway of our room, I remember the warmth of Mexico and it holds me close until I fall asleep.

 

“One star in the sky leads sailors home. A butterfly can start a hurricane. A grain of sand starts a landslide. You are important, and the universe would be empty without you.”

This message sums up my anger, my disappointment, and my sadness about the recent tragedy. Over 100 beautiful lives have been lost. I am speechless. Not even writing can help me comprehend or even accept that this is our reality.

How do families and friends of lost loved ones even begin to find peace? I wish I had more to say, but it’s difficult to write about exactly how this is all so wrong. My heart goes out to France and to the world; may we somehow, by some miracle, see a better future, a better tomorrow.

Starting this Monday, not only did I catch a fever, but the next day I started getting mosquito bites. Today, I counted a total of at least 9 bites, and it’s been so hard not to scratch them. If you put me in a room of 10 people with mosquitoes, not only would I probably the only one to get bitten, but I would also start swelling. It’s one of the many reasons why I prefer winter over summer.

Thankfully, I’ve only had to go to the doctor once because the swelling was so bad. Most people seemed really surprised that this even existed, so I thought blogging about it would not only be useful but it would also occupy my fingers so I would stop scratching myself.

Usually, at-home treatment for Skeeter Syndrome is all you’ll ever need. You know you have Skeeter Syndrome if you have swelling around the bites and it’s sometimes accompanied with bruising and blistering. I actually have a few blisters on my arms right now.

I use hydrocortisone cream to help relieve itching and swelling. Then, I’ll take a benadryl if it’s that bad. If there’s one thing you need to avoid at all costs, it’s scratching the bites. It makes it 100x worse than it already is. It can make the swelling even worse and the bite may become infected. Thankfully, the bites should only last a few days if you haven’t been scratching them.

Unfortunately, there are times where that’s not the case. I’ve had a couple of instances where the bites were large even though I hadn’t scratched them at all. In the two photos below, these bites took about 5-6 days to completely heal.

I woke up like this and almost freaked out when I looked in the mirror.

It looks like I have double knees.

I’ll be going to Mexico for a week in November, so if there’s one thing I’ll be packing, it’s bug repellent. One last tip: make sure to close your windows and doors as it gets darker. The few times that we’ve accidentally left our door open, I instantly had bites the next morning.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written down any of my dreams. If there’s one thing that I like about myself, it’s my ability to always remember my dreams upon waking, even if they were terrible. It makes me feel like my sleep didn’t go to waste.

Anyway… this dream I can only remember in broken fragments, so I’m not entirely sure where one part ends and another one starts.

• I was stuck on an elevator. There were at least 5 other guys in the elevator that I didn’t know. One of them had taken my phone. I was apparently their hostage, but thankfully the elevator broke. It kept going up and down again, with no signs of stopping. We could hear something over the loud speaker about how we needed to try and get out because they didn’t know how to stop it. Then, in an instant, I was outside the elevator. The guy with my phone was watching me and monitoring my text messages to make sure I didn’t contact anyone. I saw an older lady who called out to me, showing me how to fix the elevator. There were these double doors that you had to open to get to the elevator. She told me I needed to pry open those doors first and stick some chairs behind the door handle. Then it would be fixed. I later realized that I should’ve told her my problem was that I was stuck inside the elevator so her method was impossible. I never got to tell her.

• There was a random hotel pool party with really random people. There was a girl from my former work place there, too. They were talking about how we should all go to the pool or to the beach to have fun. My dream didn’t push forward from there.

• It was getting dark on a random, open street. It looked like I had just finished volunteering at an event. There was a group of fellow volunteers near me. But everyone was getting picked up by their parents. Before we knew it, there were only less than a handful of us left. But we had to get out, we had to leave. They said that nightfall brings out dangerous things and we’d never make it out. Our parents were over an hour late. We had to find an Uber. We walked around until we found this grassy, dark hill. There was a sign “Uber Pool” but you could barely see it. Thankfully, a couple people were already standing next to it, waiting, as if it was a bus stop. It ended there.

• Saving this part for last… This is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. Although it was in my head, it felt 100% real, and it was absolutely amazing. I was in a spaceship of some sort. A really small one. But before I knew it, it transformed and twisted into some weird shape, and I was suddenly outside of it. Some device was holding onto me so that my body was also flying over everything. The world was zooming past me so fast. I remember laughing and almost crying at how free I felt. At some points, when I was going over the ocean, I could feel the mist, and the ship would dip low enough for me to actually feel the water. The different shades of blue and white foam. The sun rays dancing in the water. The air that felt like freedom in my lungs.

Year 2007 & 2008. My first attempts at taking pictures on a simple point & shoot.