We Took a Little Trip

We have been gone, we took a little trip.

Now I would have a contest of some sort to have you guess where we went, but I think everyone would say Tucson.

And I would not have enough prizes because you would all win.

We drove up last Sunday and met KD, who flew down. We spent five days there with her. How good is that? If you recall, one of the reasons we chose Alamos to live was the close proximity of the states and the opportunities to see family. I would say it has been a good choice.

Before we left for Tucson, Umberto started this below. It is the east wall of the kitchen to be. It will be a long time before it is completed but I was excited to see it begin. Senor and KD.

We jam packed our week. I am going to only show you just a few highlights.

As you know by now, Senor is probably the better photographer of the two of us. But we like very different subjects. I find landscapes a little boring, but he seems to be able to see the composition and the lighting.

He took these shots in Sabino Canyon, outside of Tucson, in the Catalina Mountains. A tram takes you to the top. We walked the hour and a half down. It is a gorgeous canyon.

Here are a few of the things we did: we went to Karchner Caverns, to the picture show, shopped at the mall, got the window repaired by the car dealer, got all the car paperwork notarized in AMERICA because the Washington Department of Motorized Vehicles would not accept a Mexican notary, got all of Senor's building and construction needs taken care of, went out to eat, cooked at the hotel in the kitchenette, went to the downtown Post Office and collected some general delivery mail, went and got the other chair we had left at Pier One, went to the bookstore......only a sampling.

We went a lot. We were in the car a lot.

And I made a discovery. Senor is hard of hearing. I know he will not admit to that, just like he will not admit to needing glasses even when he is wearing them.

KD rode shotgun. Senor drove. I sat in the little back seat. I had the map.

mom,....... says senor (he always calls me mom when we are with KD and Ian)...............mom, he says, where is the road to the caverns, which way do i go......................you go east on irvington and then turn south on country club....................(driving now)................why are we still going west, i say to senor..............you said go west...............i said go east, make a u turn.......................(driving, driving, driving and i am reading the map)..............wait!........ i said.............. make a u turn and go east, you are still going west, isn't this west?.............well, if you would look you would see the sun sets ahead and that is west, says senor.........i said, go east on irvington, you are still going the wrong way, i told you that a long time ago...............no you said go west........................i did not! you have driven us way far west from our turn, i said make a u turn.....................GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!................yells KD......quit yelling, talk in a normal voice, please. Talk about payback from your kid.

Anyway, this sort of interaction happened several times. I only have half the hearing in my left ear and I think I have Senor beat. I will have to stay on top of this and make sure, but believe me I am pretty sure.

We went to the Tucson Rodeo. Now this is my kind of photography. I like people shots and I like them to be fast. Of course, I get very few good photos, but it is what I like.

I took two hundred and forty six shots of bulls and horses and cowboys . I actually got about fifty good shots, but here are my favorites. I would put the rest on flickr and send you there, but I think I let my flickr account go bust. I will check into that, too, one of these days.

So now here we are back home. Umberto has the wall going. It looks good. Above the wall will be a bank of windows, over the counter and the sink.

In the corner above will be a small fireplace, same shape as the others in the bath and bedroom to be, only smaller and at kitchen counter level. I think you can get the idea. The wall does a nice job of hiding all those mounds of dirt on the other side.

So, I miss 'Cactus Kissing KD' a lot already. There is a chance that she and a friend will come down in late April or early May. Wouldn't that be wonderful? There are absolutely no plans for going NOB anytime soon. We are hoping the Washington license plates for new old car can be DHL'd to Navajoa and that will complete all of the car activities.

que tengas buen dia!

linda lou

Drip, drip, drip.............

Buenos dias! Wow, what gorgeous weather here, very breezy, layered clouds floating gently across the sky. Not too hot because of the breeze, just perfect.

I am enjoying being home alone, listening to the windchimes. Senor is away at bridge. How nice!

Before he left, a young friend of ours came by the house with his collection of wine bottles. It was a morning planned for getting out the bottle cutter to make some drink glasses for his home. My bottle cutter is a new one and so, I read all the instructions before he came and hoped that I could easily recall that set of drink glasses I made out of beer bottles back in the seventies. It took us about five tries, during which we split the glass and had vertical cuts up and down the bottles, but we finally got four decent glasses and a few candle holders.

A pair of pretty green glassses.

One beautiful blue glass for a candle.

Below, Raphael is grinding the rim of the glass into a powder that will smooth out the edge.

He is now on a mission, saving more types of bottle, so we can continue cutting sometime in the future for a set of six glasses.

After he and Senor both left, I walked around the yard, checking out Senor's recent project.

Since receiving about sixty bouganvilla starts from a friend, he has been working on the drip irrigation system.

I suggested to Senor that I should not be the water girl for all these new little plants because the ground is rough and hilly, there are so many holes and trenches, and big piles of dirt that Umberto has laying around.

He agreed I would probably hurt myself.

And right away, all work on the casa came to a screeching halt and the water drip system began to go in.

It all starts here in this little box at the edge of the stable.

He did not like the direction of the old trench, so Umberto filled that one in and dug several new ones. Now they traverse all across the back yard and along the fence and up to the north side of the house. A second pipe is right along the fence to the right and then along the fence as it continues above. There is a lot of pipe.
There were 3 lines of pipe in this area, all covered up now, that go out to each little plant with a little drip. Senor has a lot of experience with drips.
So it probably won't be long before this system is all hooked up and working. The bouganvillas cannot go long without water. Until it is turned on, Senor has been watering with hose and bucket.

When the bouganvilla are larger and in full bloom, this will be such a pretty yard.

But, while I am accepting of the drip system's importance, I want things to happen on the house. I am quietly waiting for the system timer to be turned on and for us to get back to working on the house. I guess I should have agreed to just water the bouganvillas.

And this is what happens when I get out my Sunsets and Traditional Homes and Verandas and Mi Casa Viejo magazines and start thinking about decorating and getting ideas and thoughts and feeling colors and textures and making designs and notes on paper...............I tend to get impatient. OMG, gotta go. Cookies just waltzed in here with a little iguana looking thing hanging out of the side of his mouth and dropped it, have to find the broom, get the cat out, iguana out...........

que le vaya bien!

linda lou

The Ladies are Back Home

Buenos tardes!
The ladies and I have just returned from the Las Comadres luncheon. Raffles, door prizes, auctions, a fashion show, lunch on the portal of a beautiful old hotel and mingling with friends old and new, both foreign and mexicano make this a fun event.

Las Comadres is a Mexican charity which provides emergency assistance to families in the Alamos municipality. In addition to the food baskets the charity dispenses at Christmas and Easter, financial assistance is available for medicine and medical treatment. Transportation for receiving medical treatment and maintenance of a year round food bank is also provided. In addition, Las Comadres maintains a wonderful little thrift shop in town, filled with books and clothing and a vast assortment of treasures.

The ladies had a great time, they were well received and all the oohing and ahhing over them has sent them directly to siesta.

Below is the central courtyard of Los Tesoros Hotel and restaurant, where the event is held. I took these photos this morning before the event, when I took the ladies down to become one of the table centerpieces. Everyone was setting up and rushing around keeping busy.



This is the table holding all of the incredible door prizes.



Here is one of the Glasspondstudio pendants, donated to be a door prize.







The ladies, waiting patiently on the table, for people to visit them.





Many of the centerpieces were beautiful floral arrangements.

Several friends and I ended up sitting here, with a few Mexican friends and I was so excited when the gorgeous Mexican young woman next to me won my pendant. She is very voluptuos and curvy and was wearing a lowcut blouse. Against her deep brown skin the pendant shone brilliantly. She quickly became the star of the event. She looked so beautiful and I was kicking myself for not having my camera with me.

Once in awhile, I will get a big surprise as I see not only foreigners wearing my work, but women in the Mexican community as well. I am always thrilled to see that they enjoy the pendants and earrings so much. So, this is will be something I will remember for a long time.

Now I need to follow the ladies in suit, and seek siesta.

adios, linda lou

FAOT, Over and Out!

Hola!
Well, FAOT has been over for over a week. Thank God! I am seriously glad it is done. I am so glad that I was just going to not show you any more photos, but I took these shots during the happier moments of the last night and they are cool to look at, so enjoy them.

Above, the Palacio is covered in the vivid reds and greens and whites of Mexico and below, the line is beginning to form for the last opera performance.

Senor and I did venture out that last night and all was going well until we got seperated.

It was really a nightmare!

I cried. If you saw me that night standing alone on one end of the Plaza, with little teary eyes, it was because I could not find Senor and it was really bad. The streets were so packed you could hardly move.

The one night we finally decide to go out late! We had been walking along, laughing, and we joked that it was worse than the crowds at Disneyworld. Senor joked that if we got lost there was no lost and found and we should just meet at the 9:30pm cafe Havana Show.

Sometime around 7:30pm, as we were trying to decide where to eat, a large group of teens broke through, in between us, and Senor vanished.

I searched forward thinking he had gone on ahead with the surge. He actually went backward. I stayed put on the west corner of the Plaza square.

Around 9pm I went to the staging area for the show and not long after I saw Senor in the distance. I burst through a couple of teens holding hands, just about took out an old abuelita and her grandbabies and grabbed Senor's hand. He had been on the east corner of the Plaza square the entire time. We were so upset.

As we hightailed it out of the Plaza, pushing and shoving through the 'Kissing Alley' to get to what we hoped would be a quieter Alameda, things got even more hectic. There were hundreds of people walking into town for the last night. We could hardly wait to get on our quiet little street. Senor says no night time stuff for him next year. I agreed and silently promised to get to the IMSS clinic this week and get some medication for my high blood pressure.

As soon as FAOT left, the Mexican Televinisa rolled in so they could close off half the streets in town and film their very popular telenova (soap opera). So now we are inundated with Mexican tourists who want to see their favorite stars and American and Canadian tourists who are realizing it really is okay to come to Mexico.

We rarely went out during the day last week because of all the road closures and these roads are still closed this week as the filming continues. Then a cold snap kept us in at night.

During FAOT I received some custom glass orders and I cannot justify running the kiln for only seven pieces, so I spent much of last week cutting over seventy pieces and just finished firing them today. What a relief!

Below are two of the custom pendants, and the colors are as brilliant as ever. I may be tired of cutting and firing, but the end result is almost always magnificient!

Senor took off the form on the bottom half of the column today. Then he and Umberto placed the form on the top half and began filling it. Remember, the walls to the left and right of Senor will both come down and open to the sala, which will be one room housing the living room, dining room, kitchen and small library. That window behind Senor will be the front door and the column will pretty much be in the center of the room, helping to hold up the roof.

A sweet friend gave us about twenty starts of bouganvillia and Umberto has been busy planting them against the coyote fence. I will be busy watering for a long time.

This morning I began working on the centerpiece I made last year for one of the tables for the Las Comadres luncheon. The three dolls, made of wire, just need a little touching up and they will be good to go to the luncheon. They just need new flowers and jewels and a good cleaning.

I don't have time to make a brand new centerpiece, so I said as long as it can be the same one from last year, sure I will bring a centerpiece. Perhaps no one will notice the ladies were even there last year.

Maybe a little later Senor and I will go down to the video store for a movie.

But for the moment, there is a little breeze blowing and the sound of the windchimes will lull me to siesta........

Que levaya bien.

Linda Lou