Monterrey

The day starts the same. I wake at 8:00, check the email from. Work was quiet over the holiday, no emails from China. Then I notice they have been blowing up my phone since 7:00 am. All hell is breaking loose--again. Documents need to be signed unfortunately I am leaving for Mexico in a few hours and will be gone for several days on a business trip I don't expect to be worth the cost.

The ex starts texting me next. Max was with me this weekend. He had a fever and complained about a sore throat. I gave him medicines and watched him but apparently I am a bad father because I didn't rush him off to the urgent care. She accused me of being to bus with #1's child to take care of my own. I told her she doesn't know what the f**k she is talking about.

So I go to the grocery store to pick up some last minute items for me trip. As I am getting back into my car, the ex's twenty-one year old boyfriend is storming over toward me accusing me of gods knows what. As if MY kids are his? As if he even has kids? I shut the door in his face. I get a text later from the ex saying I need to grow up and I am being defensive? I don't get it.

So I get back home. #1 is trying to get out the door. She needs to take her son to his dad's and is running late. She asks me to start her car. I do. I make sure the doors are unlocked. Then she ask me to put some boxes into her car. I do that too. When I shut the door the car locks. She doesn't have a spare. She panics. We start yelling at each other. she is pointing fingers at me. I am blaming it all on the car. $55 and 45 minutes later a tow company opens the door.

By now I am running later then I'd like. I head off for the airport, speeding through a thick snow fall. I make it in decent time, or so I thought. They make me check my duffle bag. I try to convince them I can squeeze it smaller. The stewardess isn't buying it. I don't have time to argue the point so I hand over the bag.

Four hours later and a half hour behind schedule I arrive in Monterrey Mexico. My bag doesn't. I am in a foreign country with the clothes on my back and my computer. I am told my bag will arrive Wednesday, the same day I will be leaving--great. So at 10:30 at night I am running around the Mexican equivalent of Wal-Mart picking up deodorant, underwear, shirts and socks. When I get to the checkout I have exactly the right amount of pacso 583-- twenty three of it in change.

And my trip has just begun- it gets worse.