Six months in Mexico wasn’t all just carefree fun, though the bodysurfing and inviting friends to come visit for a week sure helped. I was in charge of building a second beach house on the vacant parcel that my dad just bought next to our first house, so there were building chores to occupy me on a regular basis. Meanwhile, Melody passed the time creating several stained glass windows for the new house and baking bread. It was 1988, and my dad and I were at the height of our developer thinking ways, so our plan was to build this [...]

Sometimes I think I could become a guy who spends his days building houses by the beach in Mexico. It’s not that life in Benicia isn’t working. I’m just fantasizing about a parallel universe where I took a different path.  (Like you don’t do this sort of thing?) It’s actually pretty easy for me to entertain this idea, because twenty years ago I actually was that guy. For six months (until my tourist card ran out) in my pre-kids, pre-house payments phase. It came about when my parents became deeply enamored of Mexico and bought some beach property in La [...]