My Vegetative Foreign State

By the time I boarded the plane to return home, basics such as subject-verb agreement had been lost. The finer points, distinguishing between that and which were long gone, at the bottom of a private pool or swallowed whole by Guardo the South American sea lion like a handful of baitfish. If a vacation is an exercise in relaxing, a recent trip to Bucerias, graciously bankrolled in part by our neighbors' five-bedroom home there that sits a block from the beach, was an assault on intellect. My brain quickly became a plotted plant wilting in the 90-degree afternoon heat. In seven nights, I'd nearly slipped into a vegetative state.

What a small price to pay for the privilege of lounging by a pool that's surroundings had better landscaping than my own home inside a property that saw care of a pool boy, maid and gardner multiple times each week. My work extended no further and no deeper than fetching errant pistachio fruit from the pool's not so deep end. Handstands often followed, but rarely for long. Bucerias, a small town north of Puerto Vallarta, both not infected and very affected by the oink flu, wasn't so much a place to escape as it was a locale to flick off reasoning skills required beyond decisions between pico de gallo and guacamole.

If not for Guardo the sea lion, there's a good chance I would have had nothing to offer about the week in Mexico if only for the fact I would have been incapable of expressing it. But Guardo demanded a keen intellect if you were to receive a kiss on the cheek or a ride from this 350-pound water dwelling mammal. Fortunately, I could deliver in between scuba diving at Las Marietas islands, which is Spanish for "smells like sea gull feces." The adventurous heroine of this blog jumped in the water first in full wetsuit, likely giving her the look of a curvy in all the right places sea lion with aligned teeth and no whiskers. She quickly swam to Guardo, who kissed her on the cheek and received a smooch right back. Guardo feigned embarrassment, raising a flipper to his forehead to hide blushing.

After a few more kisses to other divers, Guardo moved on to rides, jumps and clapping. Without a care for his leash, Guardo proved to be a genuine entertainer. He had no self-consciousness about his six gnarly canine teeth that had a classic stalactite and stalagmite look. Finally, Guardo called it an afternoon, hopped back up onto his boat (nearly flipping it in the process) and returned to port. Blog heroine and I returned to our dive boat, ready to search for eels and pufferfish. Fortunately, neither required the level of brain power necessary for a sea lion encounter.

Our remaining time in Bucerias was much less adventurous, an assortment of sleeping, reading, eating and drinking. It proved to be a collection of IQ depleting activities, aside from runs through Malcolm Gladwell and Barack Obama's books, the perfect tonic to our billable hour and message board lifestyle at home. Now if only my cognitive processes would return to their pre-Mexican state.