Is life really beachy keen?

If you follow me or Andy on Facebook,  you may have noticed that during our first week here, I have been posting a lot of photos of us relaxing at the beach.  You might ask if we ever get bored going to the beach everyday.  I thought I’d give you a better picture of our day-to-day life for the next five weeks so you know that while life is awesome…it’s not beachy keen 24/7.

First, we lucked into a house sitting gig courtesy of my mom. She saw on a a Zihuatanejo board that two people were looking for dog sitters/housesitters in May/June so we reached out.  That’s how we met Steve and Janet two local residents. Janet is now back in BC where she is from and Steve is driving a truck in the Bay Area.  When they are here, Steve is a local musician and singer and Janet is retired.

They live in a very lovely middle class neighborhood between the beach and the center of town, El Centro. I’ll talk more about ZIhuatanejo and how the city is laid out in future posts, but for now, here’s what you need to know.

We are house sitting two very well behaved dogs, Sierra and Maggie. They are both medium sized rescue dogs and we’ve instantly fallen in love with them.  While Andy and I both had dogs as kids, we haven’t been primary caretakers for dogs. Learning the ropes has been challenging. They are a lot of work, and a huge responsibility. In exchange for house sitting we are getting free rent, and the use of a car so it seems like a fair trade, but our time is not our own.

Here’s what our daily schedule looks like.

8:15 AM- Wake-up

8:30 AM-Take the dogs for a 45 minute walk, sometimes we stop for coffee with them  in tow, as they like to people watch. Andy picks up after them when they do their business and I am in charge of two daily feedings.

9:45 AM- Return home and clean the house for 30-45 minutes. In the USA, we would never spend so much time cleaning our house. I don’t even think I spent 10 minutes a day, but there is something about living in a third world country that makes order essential.  And, the dogs shed like crazy!  It’s shedding season and one dog in particular, drops hair everyplace. The house has lovely tiled floors and I hate seeing dog hair on them, so I sweep 3-4 times a day to ensure a hairless house. Truthfully, it’s a fools game because they shed so much — the house will never be hairless, but the sweeping is  keeping it tidy enough for our liking.

10:15 AM- Eat breakfast (yogurt for Andy, vegetables for me) and do the dishes all by hand. No dishwashers in most Mexican houses!

10:35 AM-  First shower of the day

12:30 AM- Prepare lunch

1:15 PM- Take the bus to the beach (it’s about 60 cents and a five minute bus ride)

4:30 PM- Pack up and take the bus home

6:30 PM- Walk our furry friends for 30 minutes

7:00 PM- Feed the dogs

7:15 PM-  Sweep, and tidy up our stuff from the beach

7:45 PM- Start cooking dinner

8:15 PM- Eat dinner

9:30 PM-12:15 AM- Watch old Twilight Zones or Old Westerns. They have a great DVD collection here!

12:15 AM- Second shower of the day to cool off before bed.

On Monday’s and Tuesday’s Andy works a full seven hour shift, and that’s when I work on the blog, or I do non-profit consulting.

So yes, life is kinda beachy keen, but we still have responsibilities and we are taking them quite seriously. We don’t get to the beach every single day. And, we spend a lot of time worrying about Maggie and Sierra. Are they eating enough? Do they have fleas?  What’s that red spot?  Why are they panting so much? We want to do a really good job watching them. Perhaps we might get recommended to others who need house sitting/dog sitting services in the future and this is a great way to build our resume!

All in all, we’re really happy we took this dog sitting gig.  We like being here without so many tourists. It’s really different from what we are used to. And, we are really enjoying staying a bit closer to town that we usually stay.

Stay tuned for more. I’ve got a lot more to share.

If you want to sign up for the blog, you should be able to find a sign up page somewhere.