Lakeside doesn’t actually have a dress code but it wouldn’t hurt visitors and foreigners living here to be more sensitive to what’s acceptable to the local Mexican community.

Those of you who think you are getting away with driving your dogs to other people’s neighborhoods so that they can run on someone else’s lawn, irrigate every hedge and leave fecal calling cards all over the place should be warned — you are not going unnoticed. Others are watching and some have taken videos.

Even here, where we don’t have to endure snow and slush, below freezing temperatures, scraping ice off the windshield before leaving for work in the morning and skidding sideways down crowded freeways, the first signs of spring are exciting. Here it isn’t crocuses just sticking their purple petals up out of the snow, or evidence (water) of ice melting off of the frozen mounds of snow that have been there at the end of the driveway since last fall; but we do have changes in our seasons (no matter what visitors may think). A sure sign that we’ll make it through this chilling and desolate six-week winter (well, it’s chilling and desolate for us weenies) is (drum roll here) the sweet screeching sounds of our returning parrots. They are here after a couple of months at the beach and are showing signs of cleaning out their condo in the old palm tree stump and getting ready to make some more parrots. Ya gotta love this place!