What's something like that going to run?

If someone breaks something valuable when I'm around, or spills their coffee on the rug or puts a dent in my car, I usually don't feel upset at all about the loss. The first thing that usually crosses my mind at that instant is one of relief. It is a wordless feeling that translates to: "Whew, that could easily have been me."

I forgot to mention something that happened yesterday. The coffee table in the living room of our villa, had a wooden frame and a leather surface. On top of the coffee table was a Mayan-style sculpture about 10 inches tall. He was made of terracotta and had a headdress that was painted blue on alternating sections.

When we came back from our morning errands, Shelly got some water and a snack and then went over to the sofa and sat down. She put her feet up on the coffee table in front of the sofa as she might do at home, but there was a surprise in store. The top of the coffee table wasn't actually attached to the base, so the "Maya man" as we had taken to calling him, flipped off and broke into pieces on the tile floor.

We had seen similar Maya men at our favorite vendor along the east-west highway, so we decided to see if we could replace the item without bothering to report it. We weren't charged a deposit, so we didn't want any bad feelings with Sarah and Bob, the owners.

Today was Sunday and we didn't know if we could expect our bakery to be open today, or what shops might be open or when, but we left Casa Colonial early and headed out for breakfast at La Choza, some quick shopping to find Shelly a "visor" and then straight to snorkeling.

I don't know if it was because we were early, but the fish today were outstanding. There was a much bigger variety of them than we had seen before. They were also swimming up closer and in much larger numbers than before as well. Things on shore weren't quite as optimal. By the time we were ready to eat, our choices were down to either "chips and salsa" or "salsa and chips." They were out of guacamole, cheese and several other key ingredients. Fortunately, I wasn't suffering from malnutrition.

On my last trip out into the water, I was getting ready to go in, standing on a rock that was covered in some sort of mossy plant life. A wave came up and washed me right off the rock. I went down and hit my elbow on the aforementioned rock and sort of crushed my foot beneath me when I hit the ground. "Great," I thought "this time it is going to be me who need the ambulance."

After I fell, I sat there in the surf and began to take inventory. The elbow obviously hurt, but it still moved OK. I got up off of my foot and I didn't see any problems with it, but I could tell it was going to bother me later. I went ahead and put my snorkel on and floated out away from the rocks.

I was swimming in circles a little because my left foot was doing a kind of aquatic limping, but I figured that as long as my ankle could move, it was probably going to be all right. My elbow was bleeding, but I didn't think I would be attracting any sharks out there. The important thing was that I was swimming OK so the Mexican Red Cross would not be needed today.

I had pocketed some tortilla chips on my way into the water thinking I could feed them to the fish. This worked quite well. The fish were swarming me as I tossed little snacks to them. In all it was really a great day in the water.

That night, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Prima. The food was OK, but the service really was excellent. After dinner we went to the town square. We picked up some bracelets from a woman and her two kids. Then we bought a book with lots of picures of tropical fish to help us remember what we saw earlier today. A while later, Jillian got henna tattoo and we bought a couple of paintings by the same artist who was featured in our villa at Casa Colonial. The artist was standing outside with a lot of her work. I really like her water colors so we got two of them - not really knowing how we were going to get them home.

By then there was music playing and a lot of people were gathered in the square to watch the gringo tourists dance. Shelly and I have never been "dancing", but it looked like people were having fun. I really did like the music and asked her if she wanted to join the dancers. She asked me if *I* wanted to, and I must have sputtered something that didn't sound like an unqualified endorsement of the idea because we decided not to.

After a little while of listening to the music we took our treasures and headed back for the night. By that time, my foot felt pretty good.