Senor......in trouble again!

Buen dia.

We are in Tucson and it is very cold. My trip to Starbucks this morning at 7 am was done in 26 degree temperatures. The sprinklers at the hotel must have come on during the night and ice covered the parking lot, but after a quick trip up the road, I had a hot peppermint mocha in hand. By noon, after completing all my errands, it was 36 degrees.

We had planned to head south today, cross the border and get close to home. But it looks like we will be staying another night here in Tucson in order to load up and completely close out the storage unit. That means we will look like an IKEA truck once we get on the road. Mexicanos driving IKEA trucks is perfectly acceptable, Americanos? Suspicious.

Our Thanksgiving in Texas was wonderful. It was great to be with my family and the weather covered all of its bases, hot and cold, sunny and rainy, windy and calm.

But, Senor is in trouble.................again. He broke a few of my mother's favorite plates.

Here is the last remaining plate below. My parents are in love with loons.

You may have seen my post several years ago, showing my father carving loons. Here are a few in a box below. He sells these all over the country. Maybe you have one?They love loons; carved loons, stuffed loons, loon towels, loon napkins, loon shirts, loon watercolors, loon cups, loon trivets and................. loon plates.

As Senor was loading up his plate one afternoon with left over Thanksgiving Day goodies, he accidentally hit the shelf the microwave sits on. That caused him to jump, which caused him to drop his plate and the chain reaction sent his plate down on another plate and that one on another, all to the tune of 3 broken loon plates.

My mom is so sweet. She didn't say anything, just dropped them casually in the trash.

You can imagine how Senor felt. I think he went and took a nap.

I went online to look for the plates even though my mom insisted it was not neccessary. Of course, it was neccessary, and I discovered the plates come from Loon lake, Minnesota, a place that is very dear to my parents. They have spent a lot of time at that lake!

The plates come with the loons facing left, they come with them facing right, they come with a duck in the background. They come in 3 different sizes, with 3 different trims on the plate rim and with 3 different backgrounds. It was an interesting search for 3 matching plates, 8 1/2 inches, blue rim, gray background and loons facing right.

I now belong to 6 auction houses, 3 dish replacement companies and a restoration dinnerware company. But, I found 3 plates and as I speak they are on their way to a new shelf in my mother's house.

It made me think of a time when Senor and I took KD to a friend's house for an elegant dinner. KD was all of 3 months and one of her little swinging feet knocked over a beautiful stemmed crystal glass that was used at the hostesses mother's wedding dinner. I offered to pay for it, I offered to replace it. I could never find a match and our friend would never accept any amount of money for it. I later discovered the glass was probably worth several hundred dollars and I can't help but wonder why we had our small daughter at such an elegant event?

This morning Senor handed me a $50 and said he hoped that covered it. I gave him a nickel in change..........................

Ah me, what a nice sunny afternoon. adios, linda lou

Beautiful Moon

Hola!!!!

What a moon last night. Cookies hung around outside a lot, dogs howled, roosters crowed, donkeys brayed, birds sang. It may as well have been daylight. It was so bright!

We are in the US, holed up in a hotel near the Tucson airport, resting after a pretty good trip north and an easy border crossing.

The weather is fair and sunny, and manana we will fly to Dallas and visit my parents and siblings for Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to our family being together for Thanksgiving for the first time since the late seventies. It will be a wonderful event!

So that is all I have to tell you this afternoon. I may be offline for awhile, so here's wishing everyone, wherever you are, a wonderful Thanksgiving!

linda lou

Revolution Parade Photos

As we walked to the Alameda, the floats lined up on the caraterra heading into town.

At the Alameda the food stalls lined up for business.

The crowd lined up for the parade.

This is a very long and colorful parade. It is much bigger than the Independence Day parade and the children are all in beautiful costumes and not their school uniforms.

It is impossible to show you everything, so I have chosen my favorites.

This is the parade of the pryamids, the cheerleaders, the dancers, the aristocrats, the school athletic teams, the revolutionists, the bands, the musicians, the cowboys, the horses and many, many children.

OMG! What a music fest last night at Las Palmeras here in Alamos. The large room where we sang was packed, the portal outside was packed, and so was the central courtyard. The owners had to run and locate more tables and chairs.

We had a great time! I saw a lot of people taking photographs. Please send me some of the pictures! Please! Please!

I would do it all again, in a heartbeat!

So before I close and get back to my cards, I have to give a special thank you to the man below for letting me be part of a real great group of singers and players last night!

adios, linda lou

Wish You Could be Here

Buen dia!

I am happy to say the bees have left the yard and the sticky tape did its job because the ants left also. The bees are swarming up the street around the old entrance to the tequila factory. Who knows where the ants went. I am sure we will find out soon enough.

The woodpeckers are furious that I took down the feeders. They have been flying in that area all day, chirping madly, but the hummingbirds are happy with the red blossoms.

We have had several visits from a flock of green parrots. Senor caught them here as they were leaving one of our trees for places unknown. They come in fast, with great screeching for such little birds, sit for a few seconds and then, they are off again. They are really a brilliant green and great fun to watch. This morning I lit a fire in the bathroom fireplace and worked on my Christmas cards. If you have been following the blog for awhile you may remember these. If you are new to our tales, you can see that these are made of fabric and then, layered together on cardstock. They are my Christmas gift each year to both sides of the family.

Each year I used to make hundreds of these. I sold them in holiday craft fairs and used to sell them online as well. This year I will be making them for the family and selling them, along with the glass pendants and earrings, at a holiday craft fair I will be going to in San Carlos.

I just polished my most prized possession, my Camp Fire Girl Wohelo bracelet. Do you have one? It was the reward I got in the sixth grade for making an Indian princess outfit that was covered with beads and fringe. Then you had to wear it and do a dance. Good grief, all I wanted was the bracelet.

Then we moved. My sister did not get to make the dress, do the dance or get the bracelet. I lost the bracelet.

A few years ago, back in Washington, it arrived in the mail, from my sister........I am sure she was just keeping it safe for me all these years.

I always thought Wohelo was a special Indian word. I just looked it up. Camp Fire made it up. It stands for work, health and love, the first two letters of each word. I guess I didn't pay any attention to that part. Again, I just wanted the bracelet.

Well, I am happy to have it, and it is almost always on my wrist. I panic if I have misplaced it.

So, I have it on now and am getting ready to walk down to Las Palmeras for the big music fest tonight. Last night's practice was wonderful and some new songs were added. It will be great fun.

This evening will also begin the celebration of the Revolution and in the morning I will get to town and take photos of the parade. There is another traditional festival all weekend back at La Aduana.........so a very busy weekend is about to begin.
Wish you could be here!

que le vaya bien! linda lou

Battle With the Creatures

Hola.

These things are driving me crazy. I hate interfering with Mother Nature, but they make life difficult.

So, I am unafraid to continue to try and destroy them before they destroy our Fuego trees and our Yellow Bell trees and anything else they decide to take home to add to their fungus.

They are mesmerizing, and of course, very, very smart, so this will surely be a long battle. As I have said before, their huge colony is probably under all of Alamos.

I just went out and wrapped all the Fuegos with fresh new tape and I watched for awhile.

It surprised me to see them working so feverishly this time of the day. They prefer to come out at night and practically suck everything green right into the ground. So, I think by wrapping the trees I have a jump start on the activities they will perform tonight under the cloak of darkness.

The last time I tried to get video footage of their activities during the day, they tricked me and some ants on the ground crawled up my legs and bit me before I could say.........jimminy cricket....................so I was very careful today. I kept looking down at my legs while I filmed, isn't that smart? It explains the quality of the video I included below......

It's obvious they are not pleased. But I think it is a matter of hours, maybe minutes before they find a different route.

As I came back around the corner of the casa I saw that the hummingbird feeders are just covered with bees. Then I went in the kitchen tool room and noticed there were a few bees in there. When night comes I will take down the feeders. And with a flashlight I will look for sleeping bees.

This happened last year and by the end of the day, the bees seemed to get drugged on the sugar water and bunch up in a ball right below the feeders, on the cool ground. They can't stay here, this is not a hotel, so when it is dark and they ball up, I will spray them. It is really not like I can pick them up and throw them over the fence.

The woodpeckers and the butterflies have been enjoying the feeders until the bees arrived today. So they will have to find some other nectar.

The hummingbirds are after the red flowers now and the bees do not seem interested in those, nor do the ants, thank goodness.

Other than these small nuisances, it is a beautiful day here, brilliant blue and cloudless sky, good breeze blowing the wind chimes around.



The days are quite short, with the dark settling in around five-thirty and by then tonight, I will be rehearsing some good music with five very talented people for what promises to be an excellent music fest Friday evening at a local restaurant.
Until I was invited to join in with this amazing group of musicians and asked to sing with them, I had not performed in public in over thirty years. So, this is very exciting, it is a renewal of something long passed, something I used to do and loved so much. I am pretty happy to be part of it all.



Senor will be finishing up an afternoon of bridge and will meet me and listen to the practice.



Then we will come home in the dark and I will be ready for a Battle With the Creatures.

Senor is in Trouble Today

Buen dia. I am finally calming down.
Senor called through the window to tell me was leaving for bridge.
I came out of the laundry room where I had been setting the kiln up for a fire.
The screen doors to the kitchen tool room and the bedroom were locked.

And I was not happy one bit.
When Senor leaves the house for bridge he is on a bridge mission and he doesn't always even tell me goodbye. He is already totally focused on his next hand which he does not even have yet.
He always locks me in from the outside of the gate, so it always looks like whoever is home is not really home at all.

I looked through the bedroom screen door. My keys were there, laying on the desk and my book, which I had planned to finish while he was gone, was there on the bed, next to the cat who was looking at me suspiciously because his food bowl was empty.

I called him a lot of bad names.

Then, in my pocket, I found the loose gate key that has been missing for three days, along with my drivers license and my coin purse. After turning myself into a pretzel, dropping the loose gate key twice, retrieving it with a stick, I finally got the outside lock free. Then I went to the bridge house on new old bike.

I stood and yelled for him and rang the bell cord. Finally he showed up.
Goodness.............he said......the wind must have blown the doors shut.

I know good and well he was not thinking about me because I had been cutting glass all morning in the laundry room. Even though he called goodbye, I think out of habit he locked both doors. Don't misunderstand, it is a good habit, but only if he makes sure I have my keys in my pocket.
While working in the laundry room, anyone could still walk right into the kitchen tool room and I would never know it.

He will hear about this when he returns from bridge. And he will probably say,once he acknowledges he probably did lock the doors out of habit..............i thought for sure you had your keys with you.Now this is really what I had planned to tell you about today. They are starting the columns that will hold the head beams that will carry the next new ceiling. This is pretty exciting because Senor sees this as 'Phase Two'. And even though we have not really finished 'Phase One", it is nice to be saying to people......oh and we are working on 'Phase Two' of the casa now. It sounds good, doesn't it?

A column will be visible to the left of where Umberto is working. There will be a column where Senor is holding the rebar, but we won't see it.

The visible column will look just like the two in the background of the photo. In between will be three sets of french doors, or bi fold metal doors. We are in grumbles over this, I want the metal bi fold and he wants the french doors. But as Senor likes to remind me..................that is a long way off. So there is plenty of time to convince him I am right.

They are also filling in the form above the ladder with concrete. There will be a column where you see the rebar on the right of the photo below and a beam that will then hold all the vigas that run from one side to the other. Does that make sense to you? I am finally understanding and once that stuff is done, they can begin putting up the roof there. But as Senor says about this, too.......that's a long ways off.

I think it is his plan to begin working soon on the floors of the four rooms that are just about completed. He SAYS we might be sleeping in the true bedroom early in the new year. Everything is on 'Mexico Time'. I am not holding my breath...................but the floors will be beautiful when he is done. He is an artist of cement, in case you have not noticed.

Last night I slept under three blankets, still cold from yesterday's events, but still thinking about them and so thankful my friends had asked me to join them.

The book I am finishing is Touch the Top of the World, written by Eric Weihenmayer. After losing his sight at thirteen, he challenged himself to climb the Seven Summits, the highest peak on each of the seven continents.

This book covers his climbs of Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua and McKinley.

Yesterday when we were in the dark arroyo, and I found myself stumbling over rocks, I thought about his book and said..............oh, so that's how it feels. Of course, it is nothing really like what he feels, but I felt that sensation that comes with not being able to see what is in front of you, a little fear, a little trepidation, tension. Once my friends and I locked arms, I no longer felt that way. I still could not see well, but I felt support, togetherness, a camaraderie that I will never forget.

So I am off to finish his book. By now, he is married, he and his wife are having a baby and he is
realizing he can't do what he does without support. And he speaks so highly of his climbing partners.

After I finish the book, I will lay in bed, under the covers, thinking up ways of getting back at Senor for absentmindedly locking the doors. Maybe just right before he is due home I will go out and lock the gate from the inside..................

que tengas buen dia!!!!!!!!!!! linda lou