At times I’m totally disappointed in myself. I tend to think of myself as creative, analytical and yet an “outside the box” thinker (you know, adaptable and all the great things). Yet I suffer consistently from a closed mind. When “you-know-who” heard me say that she collapsed in a fit of howling laughter (I didn’t think it was that funny).

Yesterday I narrowed the search for brown lunch sacks (bolsas de papel). I had looked in all the grocery stores assuming the logic of groceries being food and food being lunch and a bolsa to carry lunch would associate the two, but I failed yet again to take into account the Mexican logic, food is in the food store, bolsas are containers and they’re at the container store – makes sense I guess?

In desperation I posted on the forum and someone kindly told me to try the Container Store on the Carretera just before you get to Colon St. Now first of all, we had a Container Store in Austin, a huge flashy place with enough containers of various sorts to package the entire annual agricultural output of MX, so right away I have a mental vision of what this place should look like. But the caution flag in my mental processes kicked in and downsized it to what I should be looking for here in MX, something a bit less grandiose and pretentious.

I jumped into the Jeep and headed west into the village. Fortunately there was a parking space less than a block from the expected destination, I careened into it. I walked west toward Colon looking for this perceived store and found nothing. I (actually) stopped in a couple of shops and (actually) asked, but no bolsas, I headed back to the car, disappointed once again (this happens a lot with me).

As I drove on west just past Colon I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, so I did a returno and parked and sure enough, about 3 shops from Colon is this tiny hole in the wall “container store” with Styrofoam cups, plates, some containers etc. – not exactly what I had envisioned in my mind. I presented my request and she came up with exactly what I needed, we negotiated my usual deal (they key in the amount on a calculator and I pay it) my day was fulfilled.

Now, the obvious things here are “why do I consistently envision stores which I know darn good and well don’t exist here?” And – talk about a “duh for the day” – why did it never occur to me the person giving directions might be coming from the west end going east and to them the store was “just before Colon”? I just closed my thought processes and figured on coming from the east.

The greatest survival tools here are to learn tolerance and acceptance and I guess I need to add "open mindedness" to the list (although that sounds awfully Liberal to me).

Oh well, at least I got my bolsas and now today I’m reviewing maps for the trip to TX tomorrow. Coming down last Oct I was pretty stressed out and don’t remember a whole lot about the trip, maybe this time I’ll be a bit more relaxed and take in some detail.