May I Have the Envelope, Please?

Buenas tardes ,hey, is this your boat? We saw it on day one of our four day Tucson trip. Pretty.

We are totally pooped out.
I can't even remember what I told you in the post from Tucson, well, I remember the tv, of course. My sister tells me I am lucky it didn't fall on my foot. She makes a good point.

The trip was just insane. Senor has been doing an epoxy patch job on our radiator for a few months and thought he had it all under control, but he didn't, although the shop guy who repaired it to the tune of $350 USD told him he did a pretty good job. Stuff like that just does not last forever.

I want to back track to Monday, when I thought we were leaving on Tuesday. I was slowly getting myself ready to go, watering, cleaning, packing........slowly, when you know who burst through the bedroom door and said............hey!!!........ how fast can you get ready, let's go today!.................okay, i said, i guess i can do that.................Well, i chop chopped and got myself ready to go in about an hour.

Beautiful travel day, slightly overcast, and we got to Santa Ana and because we had left a little late, we got a room and when I went to pay, I could not find my peso envelope. Before we go on a trip I always keep enough pesos for up and back, or emergencies, and I use it. So, we had to find an ATM and take our some money, no problem, money in the bank, no big deal at all.

Ready for bed, watching some soccer, whootiehootie, need to take my blood pressure medication now that the US of A scored a goal, get the new medicine box I just got from the clinic, open it up, and it is empty. Go back to the ATM the following morning, take out money for medicine and go to the pharmacy, no problem, money in the bank, no big deal at all.

Real sweet Nogales border crossing on Tuesday, now we're into US dollars, good stuff, money in the bank, get my Phoenix Home and Garden magazine, but here is another whootiehootie, May is on the rack and so is June. Nice drive up, we do the Goodwill tv story which believe me, I know I don't need to repeat.

All the good crap is on tv at the hotel and we watch the raunchiest reality stuff we have ever seen. I am so excited.
Wednesday is awesome, we spend hours at Lowes because I am fixing to do a chalk paint project and I have a million questions for Maya, the paint lady. In fact for the very first time ever Senor gets bored and sits in the outdoor furniture area reading a magazine. I get stuff.

On the way back to the hotel, the car overheats and the rest of that story is totally bad news.

Senor is on the phone for hours trying to find a repair place that will install a new radiator for under $500 US dollars, no I am not kidding.
And this is tricky because there is actually a second envelope, the one with the emergency US dollars. I can't seem to find that one either. I decide neither one got packed, but it's all good, the money is in the bank.

We finally find a place near the hotel that will do the car for $350 and we can walk back and forth. This is really good.
We hang around the hotel and wait after we have delivered the car. I am so bored. Senor says we can walk to the shopping center and window shop. Ha, I can not window shop. I am a buyer.

It sprinkles, that's nice, it is cloudy, that's nice, walk is okay, not too far. But I am bored with that plan, too, so Senor suggests we return to the hotel which we do, where we just hang around and wait and wait and wait. Senor leaves the building.

When he comes back.............hey!!! the car is ready......i paid for the work but went to buy something else and the card has been declined.....
He calls the bank...............sir, are you traveling.................yes, i am.......................are you traveling in virginia...............no, i am in tucson, arizona.......................

The bank guy tells us they are organized and so we go get just enough US dollars, and a teeny extra, to get across the border and we are outta there at daybreak this Friday morning.
Across the border, once again, very sweet crossing, good as gold and we wish we had some because we stop to get pesos out of the ATM.............nada.

Now to re cap, remember the peso envelope? It is still nowhere to be found, there is no back up.
Once again we find ourselves in Santa Ana but this time, we have no money.

We manage to find a parking space and Senor starts to wander. From ATM to ATM to bank to bank.
card read error.
card decline.
card read error.
incorrect pin.
and so the story goes on and on. He returns to the car several times........................take these last US dollars, i say, (we have $25), exchange them to pesos and he leaves with the money and comes back 30 minutes later.................no one is exchanging money today, he says. I give him a look and he leaves again.
The sun has shifted to my side of the car. We are parked in front of a yellow curb and we really have no idea what kind of ticket that would be.

30 minutes later and we have $1,000.00 pesos...............i went back to all the same places and #8 gave me this........., and he smiles that cute little smile of his.
SWEET!
So we are back home and there they are, sitting right on top of the desk, the two pretty white emergency envelopes, one with US dollars and one with pesos.
Life is awesome!!!!

I am an Easy Person to Please

And that is a 2008, photo of our truck and Uhaul which we loaded up in Carnation, Washington, on Memorial Day weekend. Just an old photo, no need to get excited, we are not returning to the states. What an amazing weekend that was. I can hardly believe it was six years ago. If you read that post, posted in June of 2008, we drove forty five minutes up to Snoqualmie Pass and crashed, total burn out, then the following day we began working our way down to Mexico. What an incredible six years. And no, the novelty of it all has absolutely not worn off........

So we did not purposely decide to take a trip to celebrate those six years, but we are up in Tucson, to get a few things we need for the casa. I needed a tv.
We are not anti tv, not anti cable, not anti dish, we just know that is something we don't need right now otherwise we would probably spend too much time watching it. And after all, we are supposed to be working on this house.

But, the World Cup is coming. Four years ago, during the last one, we were able to watch almost all  of it on the internet. Well, there has been a crack down on that and we can hardly get any soccer now.
So, I decided to go to Goodwill while we are up here and buy an old tv which will work in Mexico. My friends assure me they watched a gazillion games televised by Mexico, from South Africa four years ago, on their regular old tv's.

Believe me, there are lots and lots of old tv's in Alamos, but the vendors want around four hundred pesos for the little teeny ones. I am too thrifty to pay that for an old used tv. Maybe that is the wrong word, I am too cheap to pay so much for something so cheap........ yes, that sounds better.

So, it was 'senior discount day' at the Tucson Ina Road Goodwill. I made Senor go with me. He hates that place. I don't why, I always find some cool stuff in there. I found the tv, he checked it out at the electrical station, good static, volume and channel buttons works fine. Check out, $3.50, good deal and Senor goes and loads it in the back end and waits while I do a little more shopping.

He's bored, and I take him to the hotel and plan to go back to Goodwill which is very close to the hotel. I love Ina Road, everything I need is within a five mile trip.

Back at Goodwill, I find a nice crystal ashtray, they make great little bird feeders out in the garden. I open the back end of the car to put it in and new old tv falls out, crashes on the asphalt, splits it's side and scratches up the front so badly that we would never see the USA play Mexico.   I confess I almost left it there, it is after all the near the donation door, but I struggle to shove it up and back into the car. I go back into Goodwill and look at the other tv's. I decide we don't have room for two, besides I have not even gone over to the second hand store yet on Speedway where I hope to score a couple of chairs that I want to chalk paint.

But I want a new old tv that works. I can't miss the World Cup. The Goodwill helper boy checks out a new, new old tv for me. Good static, channel and volume buttons work. I take it, $2.50 and I drive up to the donation door and donate the new old tv that is possibly now busted and the helper boy loads the other one. I am happy.

Senor and I drive back to Goodwill to look at something I saw on my second trip there that I am interested in buying and refinishing. Normally  I would not ask his opinion about that, I would just buy it. On the drive the car overheats, the radiator is busted.

So, there is no more shopping on my horizon, thankfully we got the other important items right before the radiator decided to go.
We only got here yesterday.
So here we are, in the hotel, unable to drive new old car, watching soccer on the tv.
We are getting some things fixed and then, coming home.
But we coming home with a new old tv. I am an easy person to please.
hasta la vista!!

Lonely Bricks

 

Look at these ladrillos. Senor got them yesterday, aren't they beautiful? Funny how excited I can get over a brick, but well, it symbolizes so much. There is the creative process. It is an art, and it is back breaking work. There is the cost, these are around three pesos a piece. There is the space it takes up in the yard. But above all, the brick signifies progress.

Yep, that is really what I see in a brick.

 PROGRESS.

So we have these new bricks. Take a look at the casa in the photo below. It is the casa behind new old Jesus's place and it has a nice brick cornice. That is what Senor plans to put on top of our casa with these new bricks. And this is exciting.............he does not think it will take long to do it. You can see our roof line in the next photo and that is where the cornice will go. I was happy to know this would begin today.

 Only Humberto did not show up for work.We got conflicting reports, but bottom line was, no work today. I should know by now to not get excited about planned work beginning when it is planned.

So, we went downtown for a burger. The street below runs along the mercado. It was deserted, almost one hundred degrees and very little wind and no people.

 LONELY. 

 QUIET, LONELY, DESERTED, HOT street..................................

 

 

We went home after we ate. And our bricks were still there, lonely, quiet, waiting in our deserted yard for someone to come and do something to them.

I should know better than to get excited about a brick.

If you have bricks in your yard this weekend I hope you are ready to work and that they will go wherever you take them.

Que tengas un buen fin de semana!