Author: CarolynRelei

We love cats!

We love cats! We built a home, raised children, chickens, parrots, bunnies, and cats. When the last of our four beautiful and beloved felines died a few years ago, we decided to travel. Sometimes we visit cat shelters on our travels. Below is a photo from inside the shelter in Mazatlan, Mexico.

Four cats were with us from 1998 through 2021. When they were young, we had cat-sitters care for them when when we took short vacations. But when they got older, after the age 15 or so, we knew they wouldn’t thrive with strangers. Because their ages were within a few years of each other, they became “old” one-by-one. Robert felt he was almost running a care home for cats. In reality, the aging process gave both of us a glimpse into the human aging process, the gradual weakening, slowing down, problems with digestion and all the other stuff that embodied beings experience toward the end of life. Which, hopefully, will give us patience with our own processes.

A Feral Cat Family Adopted Us

For Carolyn, the love of cats started in her childhood. For Robert, it started later, when we built the house in Valley Springs, California. A feral cat gave birth to kittens while our home was under construction. Robert placed the mother and the kittens in a cloth-lined cardboard box and placed it under the porch. The mother cat was so appreciative that she followed us around our property whenever we went on walks. That family of cats was the start. We took walks every day. The cats lined up to follow us down the hill, to the spring, and back again. Dali, the Siamese pictured above, was one of many kittens born on that property. The cats and kittens formed a feral family. Their behaviors left us in wonder, sometimes. The old feral male, kind of rough looking, and not a all tame, sometimes sat on a log next to his son, our own loving outdoor pet. Their bond was evident.

Cat Parenting

When the son, the cat we named Mr. Meow, became a father to Dali’s kittens, he always groomed them and lay down near the box where they slept. When they were old enough to eat solid food, he stood by their bowl until they all had their fill. It was only then, when they were satiated, that he would eat the remainder.

These behaviors endeared these beings to us. It was by watching them as a family group that we could see their loving interactions. I’ve written more about the cat family in my blog post here.

Baby Meow was with us for 18 years. We love cats and especially loved this gentle tuxedo.

Dali, the tiny Siamese kitten in the photo, was nineteen years old when she crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2021. Without a pet, the house didn’t seem like a home. We sold our house. Since then we’ve traveled in many parts of Mexico and the Southwest of the USA. We are available for inquiries for house and cat-sitting your home in Mexico or the American Southwest. We are between houses now. As soon as we settle more permanently we know a beautiful cat or two will wander into our lives, purring. And our traveling days will probably be over.

Cat, House and Plant Sitting

Before we settle down again in our own home, we are offering our expertise as house and cat sitters. And yes, our experience as home owners even includes care of house plants and gardens, including lush greenery and desertscapes.

In the 1990s, We Built Our Own Home

For Carolyn the love started in her childhood. For Robert, it started later, when we built our house in Valley Springs, California. A feral cat gave birth to kittens while our home was under construction. Robert placed the mother and the kittens in a cloth-lined cardboard box and placed it under the porch. The mother cat was so appreciative that she followed us around our property whenever we went on walks. That family of cats was the start. We took walks every day. The cats lined up to follow us down the hill, to the spring, and back again. The house we built is pictured here- it was very beautiful, we were meticulous to get every detail right, but by the time construction was finished we were ready for a change of scenery!

Our background in house care includes remodeling, upgrading, and maintaining of several houses over the years as well as completing a Victorian-style country home, from the bare land to the finished project.

Available for House and Pet Sitting 2024

We are open to house sitting in the Coachella Valley in the summer months of this year, 2024 and in Mexico, the Chapala-Ajijic area, Mexico City or La Paz, Baja California.

We have references available and are happy to do a zoom or whatsapp call or two to see if we are a good fit.

Contact me via whatsapp at +529992588366

Recently I spent two and a half weeks visiting Antigua, Guatemala, the old capital of the Spanish kingdom of Guatemala. The city of Antigua,Guatemala, is a UNESCO world heritage site because of its history and beautiful architecture. I first visited there in 1963. Subsequent visits to Guatemala took me to the Mayan “capital” of Xela (Quetzaltenango), Chichicastenango, Tikal, and many other towns and sites.

Fears, generated by reports of the civil war that raged for two decades, kept me away until the 1990s, when I spent a few weeks in Antigua, learning Spanish one-on-one at a language school there (now defunct). I returned again a couple of years later. My recent visit was after a 25 year hiatus and I was very surprised by both the changed and the not-changed that I saw. This post will address some of the changes I noticed.

Brilliant Textiles

In 1963, brilliant textiles caught my eyes and I loved them. That hasn’t changed. Guatemalan still produce brilliantly colored hand crafted textiles. Vendors still wear the beautiful traditional Mayan garments. The women, wearing long skirts, intricately decorated woven belts, blouses which are called huipiles, fabric headgear, and shawls, carry baskets, laden with their wares, often on their heads.

Everyday clothing in the for most people in the region is now a mix of traditional and manufactured goods. People wear what they want to wear and what is affordable. Traditional Mayan garments are extremely time consuming to weave, therefore expensive, compared to manufactured clothing. Take a look at a Maya woman weaving in this video that Robert recorded at the museum of textiles in San Antonio Aguas Calientes. She is using a traditional backstrap loom.

Colonial Ruins

The earthquake of 1976 had a big effect on Antigua. While I visited in the 1990s, I didn’t pay much attention to architecture, as I was in Spanish class all day until nightfall. But on this recent trip, I visited some of the landmarks and old churches. Since returning home, I compared my old photos from 1963 to my new ones. Some of the ruins that were easily accessible are now gated or fenced off. On my next trip, I will chase down some of the ruins and find out more about their stories. On this trip, a two week visit, I developed a fever a few days after arriving, so I lost a few days of sightseeing. Hopefully,  I will return soon to catch up with my original plans.

This courtyard photo with Volcan Agua was taken in 1963.

Food

Antigua has many restaurants that feature the cuisine of far off places, German, French, Italian and so forth. Because of its status as a world heritage destination, it has an international flavor.  But my goal was to find a restaurant that featured a breakfast of fried plantains, beans, fruit, eggs, tortillas, and coffee, the traditional breakfast that I remembered from the 1960s. And, yes, I found restaurants that still serve just that type of breakfast.

Prices are a lot higher now than in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s. The food is delicious, the fruit and vegetables succulently flavorful.

Visiting Antigua, Guatemala, gives many options for dining!  I was not disappointed.

Shoes and Water Jugs

In the highland areas outside of Antigua, in 1963, none of the Maya women I saw had shoes. The women carried water in a round jug made of clay on their heads. By 1964, many of the women were still carrying water, but in plastic jugs, the same color and shape as the clay jugs. Too, shoes had been introduced. They were a type of plastic in bright colors. I think they were imported from China. Now, 60 years later, almost every person I saw had some type of shoe. However, I didn’t stray very far from Antigua, so I can’t write about the highland villages.

In Antigua, where water comes to a public central location, water now is piped to residences. You can see the women washing in the photos at a 2012 article on Antigua here.

Cooking Fires

Women I saw in 1963 made meals over charcoal or wood fires and inhaled a lot of smoke. I didn’t really pay attention to that in 1963, but during my visit in 1970, I realized that it would be a very difficult life if I had to cook over such a smoky hearth. I know that women still cook over smoky fires in many parts of Guatemala. Though other forms of stoves are available, for reasons of  tradition or cost, many women have not given up their centuries old cooking techniques and tools.

Cell Phones

Cell phones are common in and around Antigua. This could have surprised me, but it didn’t. I wasn’t surprised, because of the conversation I had with a fellow American during lunch while in Antigua in 1997.

The lady I met over lunch worked for AT&T. She was in Guatemala, working on a project to bring cell phones to Guatemala. I expressed surprise. After all, many people in the USA did not have cell phones at that time. She told me that mobile or cell phone technology was a no-brainer for developing countries, as the in-ground phone infrastructure was dilapidated and inefficient. It would be costly and almost impossible to bring it into the 21st Century. So, her company planned for cell phone technology to  bypass all the old infrastructure.  The new towers would bring Guatemala and other third world countries into the modern era of communications. And so it is! Cell phones are everywhere. Sim cards are available at the airport and at little shops all around Antigua.  I bought one immediately and put it in my dual SIM phone and  had cell service, data and phone calls.

I introduced yoga (Hatha) classes in Mt. Shasta

My life took a special turn in 1968, when I moved to Mt. Shasta. The special and amazing gift to me of teaching and demonstrating yoga came “by chance”.

Here I relate my preparation for teaching Yoga, demonstrating yoga and explaining yoga to people to whom it was really foreign. (I know it is hard to imagine, now, that yoga was an unusual practice in the USA in the 1960s.)

My introduction to yoga was in my high school gym class around 1962. My training as a dancer since three years old had given me a dancer’s grace and flexibility. Yoga seemed a good fit. By 1966, convinced by my reading of Autobiography of a Yogi and several books on Hatha Yoga from the library, I dedicated myself to the practice. Practicing on my own several hours a day, I also took classes from Sivaram and other teachers in San Francisco.

Avid Reader

As an avid reader, I then devoured books about yoga, yogis, yogic, mystic and “Hindu” traditions. Browsing the library shelves, I focused on the shelves in the 180-200s of the Dewey Decimal System, the books on ancient, medieval, and eastern philosophy. At that time, the main library in San Francisco had open stacks. There was access to arcane and obscure books decades old. It was a time of great opportunity for me to learn.

This study was full time and intense, I had no other work. I lived on savings and proceeds from the sale of the stock that my grandmother had bought me when I was a baby.

A Beautiful Practice

The classes, books, and the four hours of practice every day, coupled with the graceful training of 16 years of dance bestowed a beautiful practice, which was private to me. It showed in my body, though, and in my face, my countenance.

One of the books I brought home from the library was an “I AM” book, published by the St. Germaine society based in Mt. Shasta. Unbeknownst to me, this book and others in the series were normally available only to the members of the I AM organization based in Mt. Shasta.

A believer in miracles at that time, I avidly read this book about sightings of high spiritual figures on Mt. Shasta and the superconscious that is accessible to humans who focus on the I AM presence above the human frame.

On the last page of the book was an image of Mt. Shasta. The book had activated a desire in me to go to this mountain, which, a few years before, I had passed on the way to Seattle without much of a second look.

I focused on that little picture in the book and strongly said to myself “Oh how much I want to go to Mt. Shasta”.

Whether weeks or months passed, I don’t remember. But one day, my brother, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, came by with a woman I hadn’t met. He said to me: “I want you to meet my new woman. Her name is Vera. We got jobs in Mt. Shasta. Do you want to come with us?”

My brother did not know anything about my desire to go to Mt. Shasta. Nobody knew. It was just a strong thought that came to me at the close of the book. The miracle was right there in my brother’s question, though. My brother had never moved out of the Bay Area. He had never had a “new woman” but had been married for 13 years. Separating from his wife, getting a new partner, and moving 300 miles away was really out of his normal context.

Of course I moved to Mt. Shasta, staying with my brother for a few months with snow piled up everywhere that winter.

I continued my yoga practices. At the time I was somewhat oblivious to the cold. Taking cold showers toughened me. I slept with the windows open. In the mornings, icicles hung past the opening. I stood on my head outside. If anyone was paying attention to me, I didn’t notice. Like a drunk passed out on on a sidewalk, I was drunk with the power of yoga. But my brother was noticing. And soon he talked to people about his sister, who was freezing out his home with open windows and standing on her head.

I introduced yoga classes

As a result, people wanted to learn what I was doing. My own teacher, Sivaram, told me to go ahead and teach. I gave demonstrations and taught classes in various homes and in my own rented cabin in City Park.

The energy of the sacred mountain permeated my life there. There was no doubt that I was blessed, that my “overself” or spiritual consciousness was accessible there. I reached people who later taught yoga themselves, an ever widening circle of spiritual and physical well being.

Mundane, but joyful

Moving from Mt. Shasta in 1970 began a different period of my life, a life of responsibility, which was unfamiliar and difficult at first. Gradually, this, too, transformed into a life creative and joyful. Wherever I lived, I taught yoga. Like a tiny pebble thrown into a calm pond, ripples made their way to shores far from their source. Many of my friends and students reached farther than I could have ever dreamed.

Although I’ve taken classes and workshops from many teachers over the years, some quite famous, the path of yoga practice and teaching that captivated my students was that of Sivaram, my first real “in person” teacher. I might add, I find no web presence for him, no bio or any information. Funny that. The most influential and powerful people may often be quite unknown.