Has it been two months?

The lemon trees have been good to us
(I don't know what happened to those freaky ones in the back)

Has it really been two months since I posted? Yikes, almost three months. Is anybody still out there?

Hello?
Hellooooo! Hellooooo! Hellooooo!
And La Gringa stands back to listen to the words echo in the empty room.

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I feel that I owe you an explanation but I'm not sure that I can explain my absence except that most bloggers get burned out after a time. It is really hard to get back into the habit of posting regularly once you stop; there are millions of defunct blogs cluttering up the blogosphere as proof of that statement. In my case, I think I depressed myself by trying to keep up with all the crime and criminal cops info. Things — and by that I mean crime and the system in general — are much worse than most people living in the first world can ever imagine.

Remember that I was keeping up with all the news articles about cops committing crimes? I should say trying to keep up. It was just beyond belief how many were reported, especially when you consider that most of them don't get caught and even fewer get convicted because everyone is afraid to testify, and rightly so. A couple of girls that El Jefe knew turned up in a clandestine grave in La Ceiba among the other bodies of people thought to have been murdered by police. They supposedly removed and replaced all of the police in La Ceiba, but that is usually a big fat lie. Then there are the congress, courts, and president talking the talk but not walking the walk — having meetings, setting up phony commissions, passing worthless laws that will never be enforced anyway, making false promises that they know they have no intention of keeping, etc., etc., etc. I figured that everyone was tired of hearing about that.

So I just shut down. I quit reading the online news completely, cancelled the newspaper, and stopped watching the news. I didn't have anything to tweet about. I went cold turkey from a complete news junkie to nada. I have over 600 unread emails in my main account and about 70 in my blog account. Most of those are news alerts from the various sources I subscribe to. I don't know why I saved them -- I guess thinking that I would get back into it and might need them for reference. But even still, I would catch tidbits, see a headline, or overhear the news when El Jefe was watching. Aaaack! Nothing changes; it only gets worse.

I decided that I would just blog about 'light' things but didn't get very far with that either. When it rains, it pours, you know? First there was a month long headache-inducing pounding and chiseling of concrete inside the house when another huge section of our tile floors exploded. Not much fun to write about that, and besides, I already did the last time. Then there were other disappointments and sad things that I can't really go into for security reasons or because they involve other people. I'll have to think on that to see if I can write about some of it in generalities in the future. Oh, and El Jefe is fine, in case you were wondering about him.

I'm sitting here typing this in my text program and I see at least 30 articles spread across the top of the screen that I started since the beginning of the year and never finished. I wish I could understand why I didn't finish them! What a waste of time! I must have hundreds of hours of work in those and now they aren't 'news' anymore anyway. I'm feeling like a failure. I'm also feeling hugely guilty about all the emails of concern that I received and didn't reply to. Even El Jefe has been saying, "You NEED to write SOMETHING!"

It has been so long that when I sat down determined to finally post something here, I first found that I had forgotten my password and then found that Blogger had completely changed the interface and I was totally lost. How long was I gone?! I feel like a new blogger all over again.

I'll try to do better. I have some photos that I'm sure I can write a few words about to try to get me back into the blogging groove again. (A few words? When have you ever known me to write a few words?)

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So, dear readers, I hope you've been well? What has been up with you these past couple of months? Tell me about it in the comments, please. Please make me laugh if you can. ;-) I need some of that. If you are reading this from the subscription email, let me hear from you, too. Click the blue article title in the email to be whisked away to the Blogicito! You could also give me a 'like' or a '+1' or a tweet to let me know you are still out there.

I've missed you all. I'm going to go read your emails now if I can find them among all the dreck.