We’re sitting there eating our lunch and talking about the overdue library book we just finished and a dozen mariachis walk in and sit at the next table. It totally made my day.

Hiram took this photo of me getting a shave at the shop "Famous" near where we are staying in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood. This is the first time I have gotten a shave at a barber shop. I don’t think the barber, Diego, believed I speak Spanish because we both had to repeat ourselves a lot. Or perhaps this being my first shave in Spanish, I was speaking Spanish but not the Spanish you use when getting a shave. Perhaps because I didn’t understand what he was asking me to do or perhaps because I continue to be haunted by the beautiful film Roma, when Diego put the chair down and told me to stretch out, I tried to put legs up like the film’s protagonist Cleo at her OB Gyn appointment. It was a good shave.

I'm concerned some of you still may not have seen tonight's sunset.

You know, if you're a friend or family member who keeps your social media free of politics and stays out of the fray, I understand and respect that. 

On the other hand, if you're among the friends and family members who remain silent about the fear, hatred, and violence manifesting around us while abundantly posting Stars and Stripes memes, sentimental soldier and veteran imagery, blue lives memes, and — if the shoe fits — racist and sexist cartoons, homophobic and transphobic jokes, judgement calls about the poor person ahead of you in line at the supermarket (like you never bought beer and smokes when you didn't know how you were going to pay the rent) or even if you just let the ugly items on that list go unchallenged on your own feed because... because... actually I don't have a because. Why would anyone ever want to host comments like “Tell the fags to bake their own wedding cake.” on a document with their name on it? 

When you remain silent about these and other things that matter — say, when the president time and again stokes fears about people who don't look, love or pray like you do and then when people who do look like you start killing, you still remain silent about it or join in blaming the victims — Why wouldn’t a Holocaust survivor want to have an armed guard standing over her? — it says to me those things don't matter to you. 

If other people's safety doesn't matter to you, then you shouldn't be surprised when people don't feel safe around you. 

The way what is happening is dividing people saddens me. The way what is happening is hurting and killing people breaks my heart and terrifies me. I’d like to think people can somehow come together, but when you demonstrate a sense of civics and exercise tolerance only when it benefits you and don't fret over those things otherwise, it isn't reassuring even if we have known each other since way back when or how strongly you say you believe in family. 

Add to that the knowledge that if your house is anything like how you'd have people believe what is important enough to you to post on the internet, it's full of fear, guns and poor judgement and that really just makes me want to stay as far away as possible.

October. The temperature drops below 100 for a few days here and there and weeknights sing.

I have been to two Mexican weddings in the past year. Both times I have agonized over what shirt to wear.

Last night my sister-in-law married her sweetheart in a cozy ceremony in the garden of a hotel in Hermosillo. As I was putting on a tie I had brought to wear with the white shirt and black slacks I had bought earlier in the week, Hiram asked if I didn't have another shirt.

"I'm afraid people will think you are a waiter."

So I lost the tie and wore the other shirt — the one with the tiny polka dots. 

On the way to the hotel, we passed a pair of missionaries dressed in exactly the same clothes I was going to wear originally.

Ho hum.

It's hot in the summer in Hermosillo and it's just as well I didn't wear the tie, which I had only retrieved in the first place from a box from the nineties in the closet because I felt guilty for not wearing a blazer I don't own.

At the wedding I took some photos because I can't not take photos. Later, looking at Hiram's brothers in the pictures I had a thought.

Light bulb.

What they are wearing is what English speakers call Mexican wedding shirts. They are for sale in many places in Tucson in many colors and styles, new and vintage, expensive and not.

The answer to my question of what shirt to wear was sewn into the shirt I could have worn. 

We were looking for something to do and Ken suggested bowling. I don't remember the last time I went bowling. I think this was maybe the fourth time ever. Golden Pin Lanes, the last non-chain bowling center in town will close sometime in the next year. We decided to go there. 

How effortlessly we forget the Spanish word for sprouts.

The owner of the market was cashiering and couldn't remember how to ring things up. He said, "This is my store, but every time I have to work the register it's like groundhog day."

People have really warmed up to this analogy. I hear it a lot anymore.

A rainy day and riding my bike to work are two things I love but prefer to love not at the same time.

I love that song. Go ahead, rickroll me.

You form a prototype in your mind, based on your first exposure, and anything that deviates from that is an abomination. — Leela Punyaratabandhu

She's talking about stir fry, but it's a thought applicable in many other contexts.