elainebenis

I love this show, but it drives me nuts every time Offred clomps through the darkened house to the Commander's study. Take off the boots, girlfriend.

Ugh. Brian's mom is a piece of work. Toxic. Guessing that might be a contributing factor wrt his issues.

Colorado to San Carlos: I got a weird Stepford-ish vibe off of the wife. She def wasn't thrilled about Mexico. Rockin' bod for having birthed 10 kids, though. I would've used the casita for the adults and office and bunked all the kids in the house. Awkward to have his office in the girls room. What was that bit about "My customer would help me grow my business if we moved to MX; would shrink my business if I didn't." The way he worded it made it sound like a threat. San Carlos is an odd place to move a manufacturing business. It's a tourist/sportfishing town and hugely popular (ie overrun) with north-of-the-border snowbirds/retirees. The closest large city is Hermosillo, 2 hours away and it's not the easiest commute. Curious. Santa Barbara to Belize: Did I hear right? The realtor's name was Sandy Beach?

We're a retired couple who travel and winter in Mexico (we recently took the plunge and bought our own casa in paradise! whoo hoo!) so I can give you my experience/perspective: The various municipal water systems are very hit or miss - some are good, some bad, so it's best to drink only purified water. Most households use big 5 gallon jugs of purified water for drinking. Trucks roam the neighborhoods selling the jugs for about $2US each. Some homes, such as ours, have built-in purification systems. Big resorts always have purified water from the taps. By Mexican law, all ice used in commercial establishments must be made from purified water. Everyone - commercial cooks and home cooks - routinely sanitizes their produce before using. I use a product called Mycrodyne. It's basically iodine drops you put in water then soak your veggies and fruit for 12 minutes. (Funny that when I'm home in the US and buy Safeway strawberries GROWN IN MEXICO I only rinse them!) As far as food, 1) avoid tourist traps. I've been sick twice in all these years and both were at restaurants catering to the tourist crowd. The high turnover in staff and the transient clientele leads to less care in the kitchen and problems often don't get reported and corrected. Go for places popular with the locals...they are sickened by the same bugs as foreigners are, so the restaurants reputation is on the line. I think there's a perception that Mexican nationals are not up to speed with food safety but by in large they are - and have to be to stay in business. Another thing about local places is that often you can watch your food being prepared, unlike at Mega Resort or Senior Frogs. See a street taco stand with a long line of neighborhood workers? A tiny but busy mom-and-pop restaurant? Go there, the food will be fabulous and safe. 2) Use common sense. Hot food should be hot; cold, cold. Skip the salad and raw fruit if you're nervous. Bring Immodium just in case! Side note: Earlier this year, right after we started the process of buying our house, there was this posted on a local message board: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings! My name is Andrea and I am an casting producer for Left/Right TV, a New York City-based television production company. We are currently casting for a new season of Mexico Life. Once again we will be searching across the best Mexico beach locations to highlight excellent locales and affordable real estate. Casting has officially begun and we’d love to work with you to hopefully film in Mexico. CRITERIA FOR CLIENTS: -Purchasing (not renting) a property -The homebuyers CAN be purchasing the property as a second home or vacation home (they do NOT need to be permanently relocating to the island, though we still LOVE those stories) -Young families/individuals/couples. -Purchasing for less than $1 million - our show highlights AFFORDABLE real estate, so the more relatable the budgets, the better. $1 - 2 million may work for a great family. -We prefer people from the US who are from somewhere else and are moving to Mexico, OR natives who lived elsewhere for a while and are now choosing to move back for a reason. -They can have closed on the property within the past 9 months (preferable), OR they can be actively looking, ready to put down an offer ASAP. Left/Right is a nonfiction television production company that specializes in telling real stories about extraordinary people. If you are interested in learning more about Left/Right, we encourage you to visit our website. You can also watch episodes of Mexico Life: GO TO: http://www.leftright.tv CLICK ON: "Client Login" USERNAME: MLife PASSWORD: Eps Thanks! ANDREA HARRIS | LEFT/RIGHT Casting Producer 39 West 19th Street, 9th Floor | New York, NY 10011 212.604.3699 | aharris@leftright.tv | www.leftright.tv Left/Right Left/Right creates unscripted television and film projects that illuminate the drama and comedy of real life. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll watch. leftright.tv ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DH and I briefly discussed then quickly discarded the idea - we don't have it in us to fake shop for a house, fake fight over counter tops, throw a fake housewarming for fake friends, etc etc. LOL. A few weeks ago a locally famous drag queen posted on FB that he had to cancel a performance because he was filming a 'reality tv show' - very top secret. I'm thinking that he got drafted to be the 'local color' or the BFF of the house hunter. (The cute blonde that was a friend of the LA PR poodle guy in a recent HHI Puerto Vallarta episode is a cabaret singer here in town). We shall see. Good news is that there will be new ML episodes!

Wow. My heart broke for her mother. And I didn't know about Donna's mental issues either.

I can't wrap my head around spending time, effort and money moving that rickety pile of crap. Doesn't make more sense to demolish it on site, salvaging the good bits? Then rebuild the floorplan from scratch on the new site? They altered the original so much - took off the roof, raised ceilings, added the loft etc. so it's not like it was a historic preservation. Maybe I'm missing something. Chip needs to lay off the hair gel.

Damn. I feel bad about this but I thought for sure she was trans. 'That's a MAN, baby!' Bodybuilder? Yeah, I can see that possibility as well.

Khloe picking the crud out from under those nasty claws - ugh.

I can't even anymore with their endless "we'll starve this winter if I don't get a deer/moose/fish!!!1!" fraudulent bullshit.

Yeah, fillers like Juvederm and Restylan last about a year. Fillers being injected hurts like a bitch, I can't even imagine the pain involved in ballooning lips up like that.

Add me to the "Corey is a creeper" list. Especially WRT the youngest girls. Gross.

I'm currently living outside the US in a country where tall walls (sometimes topped with decorative wrought iron spikes, sometimes with broken glass embedded on top) and wrought iron gates and window grills are the norm. I just had a relative visit from the States who was appalled by this - maybe even terrified - and was convinced that my area must be a crime-ridden hellhole. I pointed out that he had a fenced-in yard and an electronic home security system back home in Portland Oregon. Does that mean his neighborhood is a crime-ridden hellhole as well? No it does not. These measures are, as you stated, simply to prevent crimes of opportunity. Though not third world, my locale is poorer and less developed than the US. We do not have ready access to home security monitoring companies. Walls and gates and grills are what we have available and what we can afford. Those things are also an architectural style in this culture. We are tropical and our homes are open-air year-round and walls/gates/grills help keep out critters as well as humans. (I smell a faint whiff of skunk outside as I write this!) TBH, I feel much, much safer here than back home in the US.

She looks Amazonian. And WTF is on the boyfriends head? It looks like he's got a rat perched up there?!

My schadenfreude-meter just pegged. I hope Josh 'Get A Job, Moochers" Dugger gets six months of toilet duty.

So they're setting up her (criminal and public) defense: Poor Kim doesn't remember anything that happened at Target, therefor she's not *really* responsible for shoplifting. How convenient. And enabling.

That, my friends, is the face of a soon-to-be-dead person. Increasingly severe mental illness + prescribed medications + illicit drugs + alcohol + years of being enabled. A disastrous stew, and toxic as hell. ETA: Jezebel just had an article on wealthy people who shoplift. Mentioned Kim. Some of the comments were eye-opening. There's a long time media person here who's one of the pillars of the community, etc. There's been a rumor for years that she shoplifts from high end stores and boutiques. (There's never any proof, however.)

I didn't like anyone in this episode, they were all annoying. And the rub-on fork and spoon stencil on the kitchen wall made me irrationally rage-y. :-)

A couple of responses to my previous post were deleted. Speaking of which, asserting that your "border town" is representative of Morelia is like asserting that your "border town" representative of Tahoe. I'll stop there. I wish this family well - my experiences living and traveling in Mexico are overwhelmingly positive and I hope for the same for them. Carry on.

She spent the night in jail? Good. Monty is straight-up delusional.

For once I'm gonna be the voice of dissent LOL. I thought this episode was fine. Caveat: I didn't read their blog and I'm no expert on TBI. However, my husband and I winter every year in Mexico.... In our area (Puerto Vallarta) there is great, affordable medical care available. I know a gringo RN there who runs a popular service pairing expats and tourists with doctors and hospitals. For super-serious medical issues, there are world-class hospitals/teaching universities nearby (4 hours by car, BC/BS accepted) in Guadalajara and of course in Mexico City. Guadalajara (specifically the Lake Chapala area) has a HUGE expat population of American/Canadian retirees and they get their health care needs taken care of quite nicely and cheaply....it's one of the draws, along with the temperate mountain weather. Morelia is nearby, between Guad and Mexico City. While it's true that Medicare is a no-go in MX, the reality is that doctor’s visits and prescriptions are often less than co-pays back home. Ex: I recently took an American friend suffering an earache to a local clinic. She was treated promptly and professionally by a young, English-speaking doctor. No paperwork. The visit cost the equivalent of $20 USD and that included prescription antibiotics. Additionally, Mexico has 1) IMSS (sort of like Medicare for all workers) and 2) Seguro Popular (a modestly-priced nation-wide healthcare program that is designed as a safety net to cover citizens who are not enrolled or otherwise covered by the IMSS). If the House Hunters get the right visa (permanent resident, I believe) they can avail themselves of these programs. As for foreign nationals working in Mexico, you have to jump through hoops to get the proper visa and be legal, but it's quite doable. Ex: I'm friends with a Canadian & American couple who run a popular pizza joint in downtown PV, another American friend owns a seasonal restaurant in a small beach village. Our non-touristy, dirt street little town (pop. 3,000) has four restaurants owned and operated by non-Mexicans.There's also a metric shit-ton of gringos in PV working as real estate agents/timeshare sales/property managers. Then, of course, you can work under the table - I regularly see gringos at farmers markets selling homemade clothing, soaps, baked goods, etc. Mexico attracts lots of entrepreneurs from north of the border. Renting a place and then putting some work into it in exchange for rent reduction is not uncommon in Mexico. I've lived in similar houses and IMHO, the bathroom infrastructure (ie plumbing and electrical) appeared to be in place and the finish work needed is fairly simple. Every Mexican male over the age of 12 knows how to lay tile and do concrete work so you can hire someone pretty inexpensively to tile the bathroom/shower. Drop in a sink and toilet. Boom! done. And even if they choose not to fix that second bathroom, they'll survive. I grew up a family of five in a three bedroom, one bath home. It can be done. As far as the couple, she didn't bug me. In fact, I was sort of impressed that she was the budget-minded one. More often than not, the wife is the one who blows the budget over some shiny thing (granite!). And she seemed more than willing to help with any reno. I do wonder what the husband will do with himself all day, every day. Most non-working gringos get involved volunteering in their community, so maybe he'll eventually go that route. I thought it was refreshing to see the HH go for something more typically Mexican rather than the usual McVilla on the beach or condo in a gated gringo community.

Am I the only one who heard "I looked on the ground and saw two tiny half margaritas..." and interpreted that to mean she gulped down someone else's abandoned, half-drunk cocktail(s)??

I expect the family to fragment, maybe not next week but eventually. I think money (or lack thereof, to be precise) will be their primary downfall. Educated speculation says that TLC paid the family one check that went into the Duggar Trust to be divvied up and doled out by JB. (Those engaged/married get their own TLC contracts/checks). What's a mystery is how JB doles out the pot o' TLC cash. Equally between all family members? Based on screen time? Based on fan popularity and ratings? According to need? Allowances? Do Duggar males earn more than females? Have JB + M been sucking off 'management' fees a la Kris Jenner? So, so, SO many ways to feel resentful and shortchanged in hindsight, once, as you say, scarcity sets in.

This. The police report was a public record at the point in time that it was requested. Period. Had everything but the absolute bare minimum - date, charge, adult's names - been redacted, we'd still be able to figure out that something went down. And that 'something' was alleged molestation of minors involving JB + M Duggar, who happen to have 19 kids and a TV show. Throw in those years-old internet rumors and stir. The Duggars would be facing the same questions and backlash - perhaps more. Ultimately, the blame lies on the Duggers who, for whatever reason, did not bother to get the police record sealed until too late.

From their Facts page: •We specialize in Depression, Bipolar and Trauma-based Disorders •The program is typically scheduled as a four week program with the option to extend if clinically indicated

Yeah, my read is that Bridges is a straight-up mental health facility that incorporates some light addiction therapy. Hmm.