Not So Silent Night

Have I mentioned that Mexico is kinda noisy?  We repeat that bit of intelligence to each other every time the neighborhood is noisier than we were accustomed to NoB. ['NoB', not 'back home' because that raises another series of questions: Which 'back home'? Los Angeles, a particular part of greater Los Angeles, southern Indiana - or for Michael, Upper Michigan, Minneapolis/St Paul?]

Christmas Eve brought it all rushing back.  It is a custom in Mexico to celebrate with fireworks.  Not the fancy aerial displays (which are lovely but usually centered around the Jardin), but the aerial bombs.  The big bombs are used for saints' days and that sort of event but frequently, in the neighborhoods, with smaller, hand thrown bombs. This includes saints' days, a family birthday, an historical celebration (we were glad to be out of the country during the actual dates of the Bicentennial), or even a party. Christmas Eve was not an exception, except our neighborhood took it to the next level.

Fireworks exploded pretty regularly from about midnight til after 2 AM. And it's not the fireworks, particularly, so much as the result of the fireworks on our dogs.  They are all sensitive to loud noises in varying degrees, but one in particular nearly barks herself silly if the noise is insistent and nearby. The question is: How to stop them?

Nothing works. Speaking calmly to them; speaking sternly to them; yelling at them; holding them; petting them; telling them it will be alright; explaining the neighbors are Neanderthals; shutting them in their crates in a back bedroom; covering the crates; bribing them with food; nothing.  Sleep is impossible - unless you've really been celebrating yourself, but then one of us eventually wakes up, anyway, and must deal with the barking. [We don't want to disturb the neighbors on the other side of the house, who are remarkably at quiet most times.]

Christmas Eve's celebration was particularly exuberant and the kids on our block eventually tossed a few of the fireworks up onto our second floor terrace, right outside our bedroom.  Those were particularly lovely! Of course, the adults in the families were nowhere to be seen!  We can only surmise that they were inside, partying in their own way.

I had already tried the tack of taking the dogs downstairs to watch television together in the more secluded living room and had eventually returned to the warm bedroom (dogs in tow).  Watching television had had its normal effect and I, at least, was falling asleep.  So it was Michael who was the one awake at that time and went out onto the terrace to have a few choice words for the little darlings who were preparing to toss even more fireworks onto the terrace.  They didn't.

Christmas Day has been remarkably quiet in the ole neighborhood.  No one has been out and about on the street.  The music they play next door has been absent or subdued. We're once again looking at real estate ads for homes out in the campo.

Michael tells me that last night was pretty quiet (that magnum of 1999 vintage champagne at the gathering of ex-pats for Christmas dinner was very tasty) though the dogs were a bit sensitive to even more distant noises.

We're booking them into the doggie B-and-B out in the country for New Years Eve!