Don't Have To Live Like a Refugee

At some point in my younger life I heard that song, really heard it, and attempted to apply it to my life.  I tend to live in a mess.  Too much stuff for the room I have.  I keep moving into smaller and smaller places as I get rid of the stuff.  So, the level of clutter stays the same.  I hit a tipping point lately.  It is time to clean up.  The fact that my winter neighbors are neat freaks is a part of this.  Like I've heard the Germans and Swiss do, they actually sweep the sidewalk in front of their mobile homes, which I tend to find a bit odd.  However, it does tend to make my place stand out. 

I've started at the front of the mobile home, inside, and am putting away clutter.  It is to the point now that I need to shift everything as I'm running out of 'other' places to put things.  So, today I'll take the large empty cardboard boxes to the dumpster bins back in the corner of the park.  I'd like to recycle them, but they don't fit in my recycle container, and since the containers are emptied automatically by an arm that reaches out from the truck as it stops, there is no allowance for anything outside of the container.  This will allow me to then finish moving the empty large plastic storage containers sitting outside of the storage room behind my carport into the storage room.  Which then lets me take the empty ones on my screened porch and (hopefully) put them inside there as well.  Which makes room on the screened porch.  Which gives me someplace to put some of the stuff sitting around that I unpacked from all those containers.  I'll sweep out the carport and sidewalk someplace in there.  I also hope to clean out the Jeep while I'm at it.  Right.

The trip to Mexico and Dr. Rubio's office went without a hitch.  It was different than I expected.  No judgement either way, just different.  I was nervous about the border crossing, and I need not have been.  Park, walk down a sidewalk and through a one-way gate, and I was in Mexico.  The clinic was right where I was given directions to find it.  I got my teeth cleaned for $30.  I was not a good patient, as I was nervous and edgy and the vibrating(?) metal pick he used didn't help my attitude, rather than the US version with an ultrasonic water pic.  He did what I'd asked the US dentist to do, which is just get what you can cleaned while my nerves allow it.  I'll go back soon and get more done, although this was a big improvement.  The US dentist gave me a look of disgust when I suggested that and I was assured that she would do NOTHING else until I had a complete scaling (which they really need to rename...).  In between these visits was the whole Honduran dental work, so that my have helped.  At any rate, that was the good.  The part I will reserve judgement on is that it was very much a 'clinic' atmosphere in that I was shown in in a timely manner to a chair, my teeth cleaned, and I paid my $30.  I didn't have any real discussion or overview, other than to be told that to have all the x-rays and such to determine if I can get the implant is $150.00 and is in another room of the clinic, presumably with a different doctor.  No sense of on-going relationship (or not).  I went in, got what I came for, paid for it, and left.  No x-rays as part of the checkup, although he did two at my request to check a couple of my crowns.  He showed them to me, and I had to ask if it looked ok.  He shrugged and said yeah.  So, unlike in the US (what few times I've been) where you give them enough information to almost become family, and sign up to give them large chunks of your income for the foreseeable future before even seeing the dentist, here you go in, tell them what you want, they give it to you, you pay, and leave.  Better?  Worse?  I'll have to get used to it.