Good2go2Mexico

It's All About the Boots Now

2012-01-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

Buen dia!
I have been home for four days and am loving the balmy Mexico weather after a week in Breckenridge, Colorado with KD.
Below is this morning's gorgeous sunrise.

Breckenridge is not only a snow covered little fairy land covered with thousands of tiny white lights, it is also a ten thousand foot wonder land of lodge pole pines, cedar, fir and aspen. The photo below is what I woke to each morning. It is both breath taking and breathless. The scenery is magical but I was out of breath the moment I hit Denver. By Day Four I was somewhat acclimated, but it was often a real effort to get out of the car and into Starbucks.

Here is the Breckenridge Starbucks. Like most of the businesses, it is an older Victorian house with fireplaces and wood floors. I loved going in here every morning with KD, plugging in her lap top and making wedding plans. There were also a few nights when she went to the gym and I hunkered down in an overstuffed chair by the fire with a few other late night regulars. I don't think they came to know me by my drink though, instead it was my 1980's dark green Columbia jacket which really stood out against all the beautiful snug and sexy ski parkas in there.When we weren't busy discovering how to make paper flowers, looking at table top arrangements, or reading about baking a high altitude four level cake, an idea we decided to ditch by the way, we were taking in the sights. Below we are on the gondola which got stuck on the cable for about half an hour. KD joked about the unlucky person at the top who could not make it out the gondola door in time, until I reminded her of the day she could not get off the lift at Whistler and rode the chair around the turn and had to jump off into snow over her seven year old head. Then we laughed and the gondola suddenly lurched forward on its merry way.

We shopped all the Main Street stores where I fell in love with cowboy boots but wisely decided against paying four hundred for a pair when I live in leather country and can get a smart green pair for less than fifty.

We made several trips to the outdoor church where KD and Darin will get married in July. Nestled under the tall evergreen trees, a small wooden platform seems to float in the ankle deep snow. Concrete benches curve into an amphitheater covered in marshmallow white drifts and a bubbling creek runs through the bowl and under the platform to the sparkling river. It is a lovely setting in the winter and I look forward to seeing it in summer, too.

On Saturday, late in the afternoon and half way through the third appointment in Denver, she said yes to the dress. When she came out of the dressing room (and by now everyone was watching her on her fifth dress), not an eye was dry. It was pretty obvious the dress was made just for her and her own sparkling eyes left no doubt.

I can tell you this much. Yes, she is wearing those cowboy boots with her dress and yes, her bridesmaids are wearing their cowboy boots and I am still on the fence, thinking yes, I can wear cowboy boots, no I can't, yes, I can. I will let you know which way I fall..........

Que le vaya bien!!!!!
Linda lou

Have Dramamine, Will Travel.................

2012-01-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

It's official! KD and Darin are planning a Rocky Mountain July wedding.

We are so excited for them and what a new adventure for us.............in-laws, wow. There must be a book on how to be an in-law. I will check in to it.

On their Facebook pages they have hundreds of photos that show them dressed up and so handsome and beautiful, smiling and kissing and laughing, and I tried to load them here and blogger said, huh, huh.

So here are a few wet photos I took of them in Mazatlan. Wet, but happy.

Meanwhile, next week I will most likely have some terrific photos of them to share with you.
Because?
Because I am going to do something I said I would never, ever, ever do again.

Yep, I bought a bus ticket. I leave manana for Tucson and then, a flight to Denver, where KD and I will spend the week wedding planning and wedding dress shopping.

So, I am leaving Senor and the cat behind with a loaf of bread the neighbor baked and a large jar of peanut butter.

I have tucked a tube of dramamine in my back pack and am ready to roll!
Hasta la vista, baby.......................linda lou

Alamos, Just a Nice Place to Come Home To

2012-01-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

Hola.
It has been awhile! It took me a moment to remember my blog password. It took even longer to recall all the blog steps for uploading photos.

Our road trip was long, but it was very scenic. We traveled through western Arizona and southern California, where we had not been before. Most eventful was being able to take a different border crossing at Lukeville, where we went straight onto a peaceful two lane highway through the Organ Pipe Cactus National Park.

It was certainly worth it to go and see Ian and his three pound mini cat who is a little replica of Cookies. It was also wonderful to see good friends.

While in the Seattle area, we discovered a lack of connection. Maybe it was the traffic, or all the people rushing around, or could it have been the snarly sales clerks. We said hello to people we did not know and got vacant stares. We smiled at strangers and saw no response. So we quickly came to realize, it isn't home anymore. We have outgrown it.

That does not mean we won't go back and visit again. If that is where Ian is, that is where we will go.

While we were gone, Humberto took down the wall beneath the big beam and put it out in the yard.

These ladrillos are around eighty years old. You can see the straw and sticks and rocks that were mixed in with the dirt. I flipped over a few here and there looking for coins or anything exciting that whoever made them might have decided to include, but nada, nada thing. Senor says the first big rain will take care of all this mess and these ladrillos will sink right into the ground. That really just means they will be here until next summer.

We have been home for a week, just long enough to walk in our barrio and see people taking their time, laughing, smiling, enjoying themselves. Nothing too fast paced, just warm, simple days filled with children playing, roosters crowing, dogs barking.

The new year was filled with fiestas. Senor and I took it all in from the portal, listening to the sounds. There were fiestas for several days before and fiestas for several days after. Fireworks, music, and dancing, all over town. Last night things finally calmed down.

Perhaps town will remain quiet until FAOT arrives on the twentieth. If you don't have plans, you may just want to put this on your January to do.

http://www.festivalortiztirado.gob.mx/

Even though it will mean a new round of fiestas, I really can't think of a nicer place to come home to.
Que le vaya bien.................linda lou

A Little Road Trip

2011-12-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

Hola!

There is a flock of about forty little fat, fast flying green parakeets that make Alamos their home. I have always been envious when I hear people say...............oh, the parakeets were in my trees yesterday........or.................the parakeets flew over my house this morning.

I was fortunate to be at a friend's casa one afternoon, swimming with her in her huge pool which overlooks the town of Alamos and we could hear the parakeets coming. They are loud, raucous, unafraid to let their presence be known. They flew about very low right over the pool and my eyes were as big as dinner plates.

Well, they are now living in the empty field next to us, they are snoozing in our amapa, they are dining on the asador and we are not the only ones delighted. Cookies hears them flying and tweeting in the field next door and sits quietly, waiting for them to swoosh down for a bite of corn or a quick siesta in the trees. Of course, they are very, very fast, and there is absolutely no way a twenty-three pound Cookies could ever harm one. They fly much like a flock of teals, weaving in and out, turning upside down and rolling during flight. In the photo above I caught a few of them being still for about five seconds, then they were in flight again, back to the trees of new old Jesus' place, over to the grill, out into the field, up into the mesquite, a non stop blur of bright green feathers. Look closely and you may see at least three of them.

Who knows how long they will stay, but I consider them ours, for awhile.

Hopefully they will still be around in late December, when we return from our road trip.
Yes! Our road trip. We are going to Seattle to visit Ian for his birthday and Christmas. And there is no way to describe my feelings. We have not seen him in a year.

Yes, I think it will be a little strange, we might feel a little awkward on our first trip back to the land we came from three and a half years ago, the place where we lived for over thirty years, had our home, our jobs, raised KD and Ian, fished and played soccer, hunted for ducks, had our Christmas party, picked our strawberries and pumpkins. I expect to be somewhat melancholy, but not much. They are such wonderful memories, but we have moved on. And when we are done, I will look forward to coming home.

So, Senor and I will do this by car. A little road trip adventure, up into Arizona and then, we will head west to California and Highway 5, where we will continue north to visit what is one of the most beautiful places on earth, the Pacific Northwest.

In Phoenix, I will feel like Santa Claus as I rush to the post office to ship a lot of packages free for people who have been shopping with me at the Glasspondstudio. There is still time, if there is a beautiful glass jewel you want to purchase for yourself or as a last minute stocking stuffer for someone else. Just take the etsy link http://glasspondstudio.etsy.com/ and shop. Thank you to all of you who did purchase glass jewels from me this week for the holidays.

We are looking forward to this fun little road trip adventure and hopefully will find time to post about it as we go.
And while we are gone we will leave Cookies to babysit the little green parakeets.........
Que le vaya bien and Feliz Navidad! Linda lou

Thank you, Trinidad

2011-12-03T12:58:00.000-08:00

Hola. I went to the Post Office this morning.

There was a Christmas card in our box. It has made my day. If you recall, each year I ask people to send us a Christmas card. Perhaps I do this because Christmases have been tough. I miss the kids, I miss our tree, I miss our Christmas party, I could go on and on. Well I am not going to bore you with that now. I promise I will save it for another day.

But I have been working hard on new traditions. One has been asking for cards.
And people actually do send cards. I think we get most of them, but for some reason I never get my mother's.

For two years we have received a card from a lady we don't know, but she sends a long letter and photos of her family, very nice. I like that. Her son is trying to choose colleges in Georgia. She is worried, the family lives in Maine.

My friend, Anne, whom we have received a card from for over twenty years, will hopefully send her fourth card to Mexico this year. Her family is grown and I am jealous they still get together, with their animals, and take a family photo.
Last year someone sent a photo of a dog. Postmarked Pennsylvania, nothing but the photo, a chihuahua. That was nice. I am not particular. Just don't send me anything I would not want to see.

I have not even put out the call for cards this year. But there it was, the single envelope in our box. It comes from Trinidad, who blogs from Nayarit, where she lives with her husband, Beto. She remembered that I always ask for Christmas cards and sent one to us. Thank you, Trinidad! You can see her blog at www.livinginnayarit.blogspot.com/

We returned from our US Thanksgiving trip late Wednesday night, after fourteen hours on the return bus which was also not the express bus. Our seats were in the middle of the bus and around Hermosillo, I was wishing I had some dramamine. After a full recovery day I have concluded that I don't really like riding the bus. So, no need to do that again. Besides we like our little car. We like stopping when we want, turning right instead of left if it feels good and turning around if we think we missed something extraordinary.

While we were gone Humberto dug a trench in a half circle outside the portal. A little ladrillo retaining wall will be built here, just a small, low extension of the portal floor. It will be retaining all the adobe that will come down with this wall.

I am hoping this happens soon. I need to have this wall down.
Senor asks............where do you want the electrical plugs in here and for what......................i say............ i need the wall down so i can experience the vast roominess of the room in order to make those decisions.
So I am hoping Humberto takes a huge hammer to that wall very soon, then scoops the mess right off the floor and into the little half circle. Nice.

Tomorrow I am going to make a little card holder in expectations of all our Christmas cards. Thank you, Trinidad, for sending us our first Christmas card!

Hats and Hair

2011-11-20T12:06:00.000-08:00

Hola! Buenas tardes!
Now, don't remind me if it is buenas or buenos. Regardless, I am never going to remember. What I do know is it is the afternoon............

And this morning was not quiet. Horses were going down our street before dawn and while it was a beautiful sound, that is what kept me awake.

The horses were coming down, with their riders, from the ranch country. Beyond the Chalaton barrio is ranch land and the campo, countryside. Many people in town keep their horses up there, so they spent a great deal of time getting up there and back down to town for the Dia de Revolucion parade.

I always enjoy going to this parade, and as I have said many times, it's the ninos who are the most fun to photograph. Since this will my be fourth time to post photos from the parade I have decide to just do something different. If you want to see every school banner and the children marching in their uniforms, every sports team, all the drill teams, the military, the bands, the cannon, all the pyramids, the dancing children, the karate wood block choppers, the cyclists AND the ten teams of cheerleaders, you can re visit the past posts from the Day of the Revolution, November twentieth, or look in the labels to the right where you should find them under events or celebrations, but today you will see.............................. hats and hair.

and there was a lot of it..................
The hats, of course, that everyone goes to the parade to see are those of the vaqueros and their caballos. The photo above is only a small sampling of the sea of white hats that continues down the street. They always bring up the end of a parade with a dramatic entrance. This is what people go to the parade for. Well, aside from seeing their friends and being seen, this is what they go to see, the cowboys and their horses..

It was good to find out they were holding the celebration today. I was very afraid they would go US on us and have it tomorrow so they could have a three day weekend. It turns out tomorrow will be a holiday, so there will be a three day weekend after all. The Tecate store was stacking tables and chairs into trucks and beer cases were going out the door at a rapid speed. Fireworks are going off through out town and I expect a full blown fiesta night since many people will take tomorrow off.

We will also take tomorrow off and head north. Our first trip to the states in almost a year. We are going up by bus to Tucson and then flying to Dallas.

We went to Navajoa last week and got Senor a senior card. When you turn sixty in Mexico, you are considered a senior and a special card can get you a good discount on a bus ride.

Supposedly, the card is easy to get, maybe so if you are better prepared. We thought we had all the necessary items, but we forgot to make copies, so after several trips for copies, and lots of paper work, fingerprints, a break so the worker behind the desk could have lunch, Senor got his card.

A quick trip over to the TUFESA bus line to buy tickets for the express bus, reading the ticket closely on the way home, wishing we could return and exchange them for the express bus, well, it took all day.

So we are taking the not so express bus to Tucson and will probably have to wait at the border for all the folks who do not have any paperwork to be removed from the bus and told, no, you do not get to go to the United States today, but our flight does not leave Tucson until Tuesday, plenty of time to hang out at the border, no problema.

I am patiently waiting for Senor to get his laundry out of the washing machine so I can put mine in. Then I am going to pack. Bag packing will be done last minute by Senor, I am sure just right before the taxi pulls up at five thirty to take us down to the bus station.

So here is wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!
Que le vaya bien! Linda lou

Bells and Roosters

2011-11-19T13:41:00.000-08:00

Day is breaking around 6am now and most mornings the temperature is right below 50 at that time.
I am still an early riser, but not ready to go out into the cold morning at 4:30am.

So I stay in bed for awhile and listen to the sounds around me. Depending upon the day there may still be a party happening and the sounds of the music float across town on the breeze, or maybe the lone bongo is playing far away in the distance, a dog barks next door, someone whistles softly out on the street, a horse goes clopping by. And if it is Sunday, the church bells call for mass and the roosters send messages to one another across the barrios.

The Long Walk

2011-11-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

Buen dia.

It is 4 in the morning here in Alamos, Mexico, and after a late night with friends and fellow musicians, I am dragging myself from the warmth of a pile of quilts to go on a pilgrimage with my Mexicana amigas.

I was awake most of last night in fear of missing the meeting spot. Eager anticipation and fond memories of last year's walk also kept me from sleep.

The bells of our own Alamos church woke me at 3:00, calling to me slowly, beckoning me out into the cold.

The walk to the old silver mining town of La Aduana to visit the church there, begins a week of holy vows for some people who walk from all corners of Sonora to arrive by dawn on this morning. For others it means party for three days straight, with no work and no vows, punctuated with a lot of tequila.

It is the long walk that keeps me coming back.

Under a moon struck sky, my friends and I link arms as we make our way across the rock studded dirt arroyo. One of us will trip and fall, and arms will reach out to help. The language barrier is no longer noticeable as we attempt to converse in Spanish about children, parents, siblings and inevitably, our husbands. For much of the time we will walk quietly, thinking and wondering to ourselves, solving problems, not solving problems, and then, not thinking at all.

The air around us breathes with shooting stars and mysterious shadows dance across the sand. Along the way, several small fires light the path, their embers fleeing the heat, reaching out to the velvet sky.

For two hours we follow this seemingly never ending path, a path that has been followed before by many steps. We will breathe in a bountiful supply of cold air and relish this time of being together and yet, being alone.

At La Aduana, our faces glowing in the pink and golden sunrise, we sit in the church. Open to the elements of nature, Nuestra Senora de la Balvanera, is small and the wind gathers inside, bringing with it the tantalizing smells from the vendor's pots outside.

We sit quietly, nodding and then standing to kiss the cheeks of friends we see. We watch the long procession of people lay their flowers at the altar, cross themselves and kiss the statues of the Lady of Balvanera.

Back outside, on cobblestone streets we pause to watch La Danza del Venado, the Dance of the Deer, and listen to the mystifying notes of the rattles, flutes and guitars that accompany this ancient Yaqui Indian ritual.

Finally, after warming ourselves with cups of creamed corn, laden with butter and lime juice and hot sauce, we will slowly give up this magic, each of us returning to our homes, leaving a small, but significant amount of ourselves in La Aduana until next year.

A Different Little Panteon

2011-11-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

Buen dia.
Finally got Senor to the IMSS clinic yesterday, after listening to him cough all night long.
Like a good little boy, he took his note with him, translated into Spanish in case he got sent to the doctor who speaks Spanish only..........ant bite, swollen foot, closed throat, fever, sweats, sleeping lots, not eating, no voice, coughing.

His little translation got him ten minutes in the Room with the Spanish speaking doctor, five boxes of medicine and a jar of liquid. After taking all of this twice yesterday and once this morning he is a new person. I am a happy person. And next time we will not wait so long for me to get happy.

Above is a photo of Levant Alcorn, the man the History Club altar was dedicated to this year. I won't repeat how the altar comes about. You can read that in the post before this one. However, below is a link to a marvelous interview that was done with him in 1989. It is really fascinating to learn how he ended up in Alamos.

And below is the altar. I meant for it to be very educational and included a lot of information about him that I had translated into Spanish. The Catrina was not part of the altar, but she adds a little more interest.

http://www.alamosportfolio.com/historyclub/Interviews_Conversations_Levant_Alcorn.htm

I went to the Panteon around 3pm on Wednesday and lit the candles on the graves we have adopted. The Panteon was just packed with people and I limited my picture taking. I seemed to know so many of the people sitting with their graves that I was not comfortable photographing anyone or any graves.

So I am going to show you photographs of different type of Panteon instead.

The local primary school children were asked to make small scale graves of their deceased relatives. They did this and I happened to be setting up the History Club altar on Tuesday, as the children brought in their altars to the museum. Several large groups of children each walked in over the course of an hour and each child took a turn placing their altar on the courtyard floor of the museum. They were so quiet, I could hear them breathing and the starched skirts of the little girls rustled as they walked. After the altars were placed they were given time to walk around and look at them and other than an occasional ooh and ahh, or other intake of breath, they were silent. It was obviously a moving experience for them.........

Equally as moving for me....................adios, linda lou

Jitomates!

2011-10-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

Buen dia.

It is Senor's birthday and this afternoon we will make a trip into Navajoa. I hope to sneak a little cake into the shopping cart. I also hope he will feel well enough to grill a steak tonight.

He is still sleeping a lot and coughing, but his voice is stronger.
A friend in town gave him some tablets and told him that this is what he should take if he gets an ant bite. It is called Virlix. I researched it and it is just an antihistamine. Senor is not taking it, but something tells me Virlix is not what he would need if he ever gets another bite like that one.

Several months ago we found a jitomate (tomato) plant growing in a concrete crack outside the bedroom. Senor then found another and planted that one in a pot. Now we have two big leggy tomato plants that are already putting out. I hope these are heirloom tomatoes. The fruit has ruffled bottoms and tops. Aren't heirloom tomatoes usually ruffly?

The pop bottles are over the rebar because the water spigot for the house is right behind the plant. Did I remember to tell you we have a water leak somewhere under the concrete outside the fake kitchen and our current bedroom? So we have to keep the water turned off all the time. When we want water we have to reach in behind the jitomate and turn it on. I kept cutting myself on the rebar that Senor staked the plant with, so enter pop bottles on the tops of the rebar.

Below is the second plant.See the ruffles? maybe that's not what they are called. Ridges? Swirly things?
This morning I will be setting up the History Club altar for the Day of the Dead. Each year we dedicate a decorated altar to a foreigner who made a strong impact on the community and has since passed away.

This year's altar is dedicated to Levant Alcorn. He is the American who rediscovered Alamos, in the fifties, as it was in its ghost town stages. He was so enamored with this beautiful old colonial town even though it was practically deserted, that he decided to buy an old 'ruin' and repair it and make it livable. At that time few people were living in the community, but those who did had clear land and home titles to properties. Alcorn gave two thousand dollars to a Mexican family for his first ruin.

Before long, friends of Alcorn's and friends of friends came to do the same thing. Word began to spread in the United States about this quaint old cobblestone place up in the mountains, a place that was not very easy to get to, but one that was filled with mystery, charm and almost full abandon of glorious old colonial homes. As foreigners began to purchase ruins, Mexicano workers returned with their families and Alamos became a thriving community, much as it had been in the 1800's when it was one of the largest silver mining towns in the world. Old historical homes were restored to their original conditions and Mexican families with strong heritage began to return.

Today Alamos is a strong Mexican community with almost ten thousand residents. There are over four hundred foreign landowners here, although some never come to town, it is the winter season when many homeowners do return to enjoy the charm, the beauty and romance of the town. The forty or so of us who live here year round feel very fortunate to call this community our home.

So thanks to Mr. Alcorn, who in search of a little adventure, decided to travel into the mountains of Sonora so long ago, we are really able to be here.

When the altar is done, I will share the photos of Levant with you.

First, I am off on new old bike to the Panteon to finish painting one headstone. The cemetery has been filled with people working on grave sites, repairing them, painting them. They are very proud here in Alamos, of their ancestry.
Que le vaya bien! linda lou

King Ant Killer

2011-10-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

Hola.

There is good news. Senor feels better.

Now here is the bad news story. He was stung by a nasty red and black ant one morning. In the beginning, after he depleted a vocabulary that should not be heard by any ears other than his own, it just hurt. He iced it immediately and I made him a baking soda paste.

Then it turned bright red. Then it swelled.
Then he went to sleep for hours and hours and I began to worry. He slept through dinner. He did not feel like getting up the next morning. But he did stay awake and said he was fine, just tired. He went back to sleep.

That afternoon he read for awhile. Then he went back to sleep and slept again through dinner. He did not have any interest in watching Monday Night Football on the computer.

The following day, he was very tired, but able to eat something and complain that the ant bite really did hurt, and he thought he was probably having a slight reaction to it. He ignored all my pleas to go over to the hospital to get checked out. He went to sleep again. In the afternoon he asked for a thermometer. One hundred and two....................... hospital, i said................no, he said...............yes, i said. Well, you know what happened. We did not go. But he agreed that if he still felt bad and had a temperature the following day, yes, he would go. He went back to sleep.

In the morning he could barely talk. Raspy and quiet, but temperature was gone.................... what's wrong with your voice, i asked.......................my throat swelled up during the night and now i can't speak, he whispered back.................good, lord, hospital, i said.....................no!....but if it is not better later today then i will go...........
It got better. Last night he ate well, but he lost a few pounds during this five day ordeal. Today he still has a raspy voice but he had a good lunch and it's Thursday, so he is over with the ladies playing bridge.

If you recall, I am the ant killer. I am the one who searches high and low for the nest, for the leaf cutter path, for the sugar ant hill, for the parasol hole. I am the one that goes out in the middle of the night with the powder and the flashlight because earlier I saw signs of something chomping on the lime tree. I am the executioner of any ant I see.

This morning Senor was out early copy catting me, looking for ant holes, hills, nest, pathways, any signs he could find. When he found them he poured the borax and water mixture on or into their home. This is a mixture he keeps for an occasional spray on the varro blancos. Little critters get their feet in it and then rub it on their face and then, they fall over dead. Senor decided that if it could work on little winged critters, then why wouldn't it work on ants. So far he is working on two nests and he hopes it will at least drive them farther out into the yard and hopefully, out of the yard. He is a dedicated man.

I am happy that he is well enough to begin such a crusade. I think I should have called the clinic and asked them to send a doctor over and now that we know Senor obviously has had an allergic reaction to an ant bite, should it happen again, that is exactly what I will be doing. House calls are a highly accepted practice here in Alamos and I will not hesitate.

Before the ant attack, lights went in under the portal roof and they glow in the evening with soft yellow bulbs. This beautiful iron one which is larger and different from the others marks the center of the portal. There will be four more lights going to the north once that end of the portal is completed.

We also took the tarps off the couches and are now able to sit out and enjoy the evenings again. It looks pretty primitive, but one of these days I will dress it up and do a photo shoot. The roof does not completely cover the sitting area, so it is almost impossible to keep the area clean. I need to add a rug, some flowers, a table runner. You get the picture. The important thing is Cookies like it.............

So I am thinking that I have been dethroned and am no longer the Queen Ant Killer. There is now a King Ant Killer who is convinced he can and will do away with them.
And all it took was one little bite.
Oh, me, oh, my, siesta calls my name......linda lou.

GEM, Gringo in Mexico

2011-10-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

Buenas tardes!

We returned home on Tuesday and are settling back in to some gorgeous autumn weather and the golden glow of the afternoon sun as it falls even farther to the south.

For those of you who might recall that we would then be making a second turn around trip from Mazatlan to Alamos and back with our son, Ian, he was not able to make it. This works fine because one round trip here and back was enough. I am not sure we could have done two. We hope to see him in the new year, maybe for FAOT.

We did so many wonderful things with KD and the novio. It was great fun. One of the special events that occurred during the week was meeting GEM, Gringo in Mexico, and attending a callejoneada led by La Estudiantina.

If you are not familiar with GEM, he is a fun loving gringo who travels around Mexico, enjoying himself immensely as he fights bulls, eats grasshoppers and bares his body on nude beaches. He does a terrific job of promoting all the wonderful and exciting things this country has to offer, all the while being filmed by Televista, the Mexico television company. GEM is then seen in over forty countries by satellite.

KD and novio and I were walking near our street and suddenly, there was GEM, whose real name is Robert. We received an introduction from the promotional assistant and a personal invitation to a callejoneada the following night.

A callejoneada is a street procession that winds its way through narrow streets and alleyways while being led by La Estudiantina. A group of students dressed in thirteenth century Spanish costume, La Estuduantina plays a variety of musical instruments and sings traditional songs.
They are very dramatic, mysterious and extremely good musicians and singers. Usually when they arrive, it is from a dark alley and their entrance can be breath taking, their cloaks swaying in the breeze, the serious looks upon their faces.

In the photo below I managed to walk behind them on their entrance from a narrow street near the church. The ribbons signify their order in the troupe.

Below is GEM.

The curator of the museum introduced him and the crowd went wild. In the you tube clip below you can see that evening's event. There are several times where KD and I are in the clip, especially around the three minute mark. I don't know Robert Kalish who made the you tube, but he did a great job of capturing the excitement of the crowd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vUcMZrCBZA

The burro follows the callejoneada and carries bottles of red wine in the plastic bins.

I think seeing La Estudiantina perform is one of my favorite events in Alamos, and I hope you enjoy seeing the photos and the Kalish you tube. I don't know what satellite network GEM comes on in the states but I am sure if you want to see the episode of his visit to Alamos, you can find it.

Senor is playing bridge and talkzone cut off my twilight zone. They said either pay up for new episodes or you can just listen to ring a ding girl over and over again. I thought, okay, looking for something new to do now on bridge day.....................siesta is my answer.

We are Busy Hanging Out

2011-10-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hola, buen dia, a quick post to let you know we are busy hanging out.
We had a lot of adventures in Mazatlan and have been back in Alamos for a week. Manana we return for a few more adventures on Stone Island. The area had received a lot of rain and the road in and out was tricky in new old car which rides low to the ground. We hope the water is gone when we are once again on the Stone Island road tomorrow. On the other hand the hurricane could have sent new rain that way and the puddles may be deeper.

The photo above is of the beautiful coconut plantations on the island, hundreds of acres of palms.

Below KD and novio are trekking up the walkway to the Mirador in Alamos.

Not much time, we have a lot to do. Hope everyone is well. I will post again next week!
Que tengas un buen dia! linda lou

Little Leopard Frogs

2011-10-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

Hola. Here is a quick report. We leave manana for Mazatlan and will get KD and novio at the airport on Wednesday.

See the little guy above? We have been taken over by little leopard frogs. They are everywhere. And you cannot lock them out. They are mini contortionists, able to flatten themselves paper thin and one leg at a time, go right under the door. I have tried towels and they are strong enough fellows to keep shoving and pushing against cloth to get where they want to go. Now why they want to go where they go, I don't know. Lights do not seem to attract them and I have not researched them to find out what it is they are looking for. I do know, and this is good, they don't smell when they are dead. So after they have been locked in novio's bedroom, the main bathroom to be, for several days and they are stiff, they really are not a nuisance. Ants don't seem to be attracted to them either.

They don't like KD's bedroom, the master bedroom to be, for whatever reasons, maybe they just sense that someone new is coming to the territory and are marking out the space.

I shop vac'd two days ago and found three this morning. Now I should really hope he does not read the blog and that he loves frogs................dead or alive.
Que le vaya bien.................linda lou

Ring a Ding Girl Today and Next Year

2011-09-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hola, it is Thursday! That spells B-R-I-D-G-E.

I love hanging out with Senor, but lately by Thursday mid morning, I am counting the minutes................till he leaves, waiting for him to get out of here.

It's because I have a new habit. As soon as he is out the gate, I am tuned into Talk Zone on the Internet.
Then I can access the Twilight Zone.
So I turn the mini split on high, get under a little fleece throw and listen all afternoon.

I was three quarters through 'The Road to Somewhere' last week and he came home early.
................hmmm, what are you listening to...................aren't you home early...............yea, so what are you listening to..................Just about then the break occurred before Act Three and the little jingle came on..........oh, that's cool, he said. So he laid down and read his book, and I finished Act Three.

This afternoon I am going to listen to 'Ring a Ding Girl', one of my favorites. Small town girl makes it to the big screen, has a sort of out of body experience and saves her small home town from total destruction.

Now Senor is pretty computer smart, much more than I am. He gets all the major football games live online, although sometimes the screen will go blank during a commercial, especially if the game is being broadcast through the Netherlands or Germany. When we get commercials many of them are in Dutch. But game coverage is good.

Saturdays are best for him. He can often get four college games at once and can open and shut screens on the computer faster than a restaurant pancake flipper can flip pancakes. He does not miss a throw, a catch, a score, an injury, a punt. I enjoy the games, but I like one game at a time, so I usually set up a bank of projects while he is screen flipping. But he is also very particular. If the game is not good enough to keep his interest, he will not watch it.

He gets live BBC and Al Jezeera news and listens late in the day. This is when I get out the big projects. He can find just about anything online.

In the heat of the afternoons, when we are not reading, it is fun to see what he finds. The other afternoon we watched Julia Child cook eight different egg dishes, in black and white, over an electric GE stove top burner. There is no need for a tv. Although with all these electrical cords and plugs going in around here, I am sure Humberto thinks we will be having a tv in every room.

A big project is in the works here. Do you remember the eight feet I have been talking about? Here it is below, outside the West Wing.

Two feet between each viga. There will be skylights in the open squares. And on the other side of the wall, (which will eventually come down) are the vigas for the other side. Another eight feet.

The two photos below show the eight feet before it was mortared in. Now it has been mortared, and the styrafoam insulation has been laid and tomorrow we are supposed to have a couple of extra guys over here to help pour cement. The last time that was supposed to happen, the guys were no shows for several days, but it eventually got done.

Senor says it will be smooth sailing from here on out. Almost all the structural stuff is in place and that took up a lot of the last two and a half years.

A friend was over the other day and she had not seen the house since last April.
She asked me how much longer, I am sure I looked confused as I certainly try not to ASK THAT question, and then, Senor answered.............a year tops, and it will be easy because all this structural stuff is about done. I am going to hold him to that year.

A year from now, say October, 2012, Senor will be at bridge on Thursday. I will be sitting in the living room that will be all pretty and painted and decorated with all our pretty stuff. I will be sitting in one of the Pier One chairs, over in the corner where the computer will be. The chimes on our German clock will be working and at chime number three I will suddenly glance up from my book and say...............oh, I think 'Ring a Ding Girl' is on Twilight Zone today.

Hey, gotta start act one.

Que le vaya bien. linda lou

An Alamos Autumn Day

2011-09-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

Buen dia. It is just a beautiful day here in Alamos. There is a strong breeze and the air is dry and smells like sweet jasmine. It is definitely an autumn day.

The Sierra de Alamos are filled with color as the tropical deciduous thorn forest begins to change. Some of the more prolific trees are the kapok, with its brilliant red and gold leaves, the yellow leaves of the elephant tree and the orange of the octillo. The hills are also home to oak and pine forests. As we get closer to the dry season, which usually begins mid to late October, most of these trees will lose their leaves, and the Sonoran Desert will take over with its enormous Etcho, a cactus similar to the saguaro, standing like soldiers against the brown hillsides.

Fall has always been my favorite season and it remains true, even in Mexico. We are waking up to sixty degree mornings and the air is cool and fresh, tinged with wood smoke. Days are still warming up into the nineties, but the humidity has dropped and the light has changed.

Clouds continue to billow, especially to the north and east, but we have not had rain in well over a week. With hurricane season lasting through November, it is posssible we will still get more rain, but hopefully all hurricanes will stay at bay.

The birds are out in big numbers today, enjoying the change in the weather. A hawk has been passing back and forth across the field next door. The cardinal family has been at the water dish most of the morning, leaving only to hide in a tecoma tree when the white winged dove swoop in for a visit. All of my wind chimes are tinkling merrily, swaying in the breeze alongside Senor's electrical tubing. Cookies is stretched out on the floor. Senor is stretched out on the bed.
It is just a very nice Alamos autumn day.

To Ask Senor or Not......That is the Question

2011-09-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

Buen dia!
Yesterday morning I rode new old bike out to the arches and beyond. I don't think that's more than a round trip of eight miles but when I got home I had to take a long siesta. That route is all about up and down and finally the bike shop has installed two new handle bar shifter thingies that activate the derailers. I just went out and asked Senor what those things are called..........are they called something special, i asked. He was up on the ladder, not happy with my question..............oh, are you thinking........i asked. Not happy again.....well, can I just call them gear shifter thingies...............sure, can i get back to work now, he asked. When Senor is working, especially up on the ladder with a tool in his hand, and I know this, he does not like being distracted.

I try not to bother Senor when he is working, but well, sometimes it is hard not to, even if it a dumb question about new old bike. This does not mean we don't talk to each other during the day, of course we do, I am referring in particular to critical times when it is obvious he is immersed in his work. But sometimes those times are not so obvious to me. Besides, by nature, I am a multi tasker. I can talk any subject Senor wants, answer any question thoroughly while totally concentrating on an entirely different topic. Easy as making an apple pie and thinking about which plates to serve it on, whether or not to serve whipped cream and coffee, and yes, dear, I got your laundry from the cleaners and don't forget we have dinner with Harry and Sarah on Tuesday and teacher's conferences tomorrow at two.

I should have learned my lesson long, long ago when we bought our very first house, a small little craftsman bungalow on the edge of a ravine. He was building a rock wall. I was sitting on the grass, waiting for him to assign me my part of rock wall building. I began talking to him about the other things I thought we should do to the yard as he carried huge gorst rocks by wheelbarrow from the alleyway to the wall. Oh, I thought a fence on top of the wall would be nice, a grape arbor, a few new rhododendrons here and there, oh, and could you make us a bird feeder and when are we going to drive out to the lake and get that old wooden hot tub our friend said we could have..................

If my memory serves me correctly, he stopped working, went inside the house and turned on a football game. He just left me sitting there in the grass.

Later, while we were playing a game of croquet, I mentioned how he left me in the grass there................so, he said, this is my only complaint, when I am working on a project, I am really concentrating on my work, it is hard to talk when I am carrying huge heavy rocks..............

So the shifter thingies work and I was able to get up in that gear............is it high or low that gets you up hills? I would go and ask Senor but, ouch. It must be high.

The bike man went to Tucson for over a week and came back with boxes and boxes of stuff, all new looking. I am pretty certain my shifters were in that box and I was very worried about what it was going to cost me. Forty-five pesos, that's what it cost, not even four dollars. So after my siesta, I rode to town. Then again, later in the day, I went out again. New old bike is working like new. On one of my trips I went to buy bird seed at the feed store over in La Capilla barrio and saw this little calf. There were some men sitting on the wall there and they said they were waiting for a key to the courtyard of this casa so they could graze the calf. They asked me to stay and have coffee, but I told them I was off to town.

I took the long route to town and crossed over the new bridge. It has been completed now for over six months, but we still call it new. The two pictures following this one will show you what happened to the original bridge when Hurricane Norbert hit. That will be three years ago on October 11. If you want to refresh your memory about Norbert, you can see the posts and photos by clicking on the Norbert tags to the right. It's still pretty clear in my mind, so I only pulled up the two bridge photos and did not look at anything else. I find that I cannot look at too many photos of Norbert, it's certainly still very clear in my mind.
So, this morning I left new old bike alone to rest and mowed the lawn. I was able to complete it in one hour and forty three minutes and two tankfuls of gasoline. I swear I will have this whole yard covered someday in concrete. I had to take a siesta when I was done and I would have slept for two hours, I am sure, except Senor started using his saw and that woke me up. See the freshly mowed lawn below.

More vigas and beams are going up on the portal. Every day I think this portal is bigger and bigger and I wonder how I will ever fill it up to make it look lived in. Sixty feet, I think that is correct. I would go and ask, but................
Of course, we are still planning on the dipping pool and that will be under the portal, or would that be called on the portal. Not going to go find out.

Below you can see some of the electrical tubing Senor has up there. He has a map of all that, what is in each tube, where it goes, the location of it in the wall and what it goes to. Yesterday he was studying that and I asked him if he would buy me a topochico mineral water next time he went out and could he also get me some pesos from the bank so I could pay the electricity...............and do you want shrimp or turkey for dinner................... Evil eye.
Senor is using his saw. I am going to go take a picture, be right back.

He is cutting barro blanco for the roof top.

The other day I was reading through one of my house magazines. This particular magazine is one I purchased several years ago at El Nicho, an antique store here in Alamos. I flipped through an article about remodels and how romantic it can be if approached correctly. The author clearly stated it is important to communicate as you work. The wife should consider staying on top of making sure she is doing the job given her correctly. Especially if there is no general contractor and a couple might be doing their project together. Asking questions of the person, husband, in charge is critical to the continuation of the project and the author went so far as to suggest that contrary to what one might think, bedtime is a very good time to bring up thoughts and ideas about your project, for example, try snuggling and then tell him how you think the refrigerator should go on the wall opposite the one where the electrical wiring was installed. Woman's Housekeeping, 1969.

Oh, one of these days I suppose I might discover that I have learned not to talk to Senor when it is obvious he is concentrating on his project. I might stop and think to myself, is this a good time or a bad time to ask that question. Or maybe I will never learn because after all, if that's his only complaint.....................

On This Day After the Day

2011-09-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Buen dia.
I woke early on Independence Day to check out the parties. The music woke me at five and when I stepped outside I could hear the sounds of fiesta from all directions. Once on foot, I discovered the party goers still going were young, in their mid twenties hanging out at their cars, music blaring, hanging out at the bus stop, hanging out on the portals of various hotels, again, all listening to music and the music, I was delighted to hear, was all Mexicano. Some romantic, some ranchero, ballads, rock, quite a variety and all good. I am a lover of Mexican music, there is no bad music here.
I continued my walk and saw very few people other than all of the young people still hanging on, very unwilling to give up what must have been an eventful night for them.

We were awakened the night before the day by the fireworks and shouting and screaming which seemed to last for hours. Finally, after watching bursts of gigantic flowering red, white and green fireworks for half an hour we were back in bed drifting off to the sounds of Ivan's party back at new old Jesus's casa.

Senor and I made it down town early for the parade. This year instead of standing in the hot sun at the Alameda, we chose to follow the back of the parade for awhile and then hurry around to catch the beginning while standing in the shade near the Paulita school.

Below are a few of the men and horses from the Ganadera, the Cattlemens' Association waiting for their turn to enter the Plaza. I think that the photos which connect me most to Alamos are the faces of the children. Their beautiful expressions make me wonder what they are thinking. The little girl below does that to me. I cannot help but wonder what she wonders.

And what must he be thinking..................
Soon he will grow up and march with one of the schools.

One day he might march with the military.
This was the first time we have seen the military march in a parade.
Most of the young children were on the floats this year.
As always, the boys play the trumpet and the girls play the drums.

The twins below have carried their school flag for four years now. Another set of willowy twins has carried their flag as well. We have watched them grow taller. We see some of our friends' children marching with their schools. We wave, they nod and smile and keep marching in the dreadful heat because it is their duty. By the time they reach Calle Madero, friends and family will be tossing them water bottles and they will have time to rest in the shade.

I recognize the young girl on the right. A quick smile breaks her serious march and just as quickly her head snaps straight ahead and she marches to the sound of her teacher.............uno, dos, uno, dos...one, two, one, two.....and at a pause when it is time to salute the flag as it waves from the Mirador...........izquierda, izquierda, izquierda, left, left, left..............
When the Ganadera brings up the last of the parade, a sea of floating and bobbing white hats capture our attention. They are very handsome men on their huge horses and many of their children ride with them. They are beaming, smiling, all very proud.

Back at the Plaza, the ladies bring out their tres leche cakes, the three milk cakes, bags of snacks and cotton candy and balloons are on every corner.

At the arroya, empty soda bottles have been placed on the exposed rebar of the new stone wall to prevent accidents and the grand stand is up. When evening comes, there will music on the bandstand, dancing, and horse racing, and horse dancing in the arroyo.
It's never too early for a vaquero and his caballo, a cowboy and his horse, to get in line at the Tecate or Pacifico Light tent.

After a carne asada lunch on the Alameda and an new assessment of how hot the day was getting, we marched home and turned on the mini split and did not go back outside until six pm. Senor grilled our favorite chomorro, which is shank, and the evening turned nice and cool and the air was filled with music from the arroyo. We stayed up late listening to the sounds of the fiesta, but not once wanting to join the crowds.

This morning, the day after the day, Senor was downtown early to buy a coca cola. When he came back he said he saw only three people on the streets and they were all under the age of six................it is very quiet this morning.

On This Day Before the Day

2011-09-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's storm came late in the day with these beautiful clouds billowing against the setting sun. I had to pull out the fleece again. It was cozy and warm against the cold wind of the storm.

This is the day before the Day of Independence. I went downtown around noon to see what activity I could find. And there was nothing. You could have heard a pin drop in the Plaza....no people, no cars, no wind, nothing. The big wooden doors to the Palacio were closed tight.

I drove up to the Mirador. There was enough breeze there to keep the flag waving.

The roof tops of all the houses below are gleaming white, all freshly impermeabled, coated with rubber sealant to keep out the summer rains.

You can see the Palacio in the center of the photo, big and brown, silent, taking a siesta before it awakens to welcome its loving people later tonight.

Below I could see the distant clouds churning to the west, but not too threatening and the sun was bright and hot.

Back inside new old car, a quick check on the time told me I had twenty minutes before Senor would need the car so he could get to the ladies for bridge.

I drove west, past the Tecate store, where I finally saw people and activity. Men stood, laughing and talking, waiting their turn to buy. I stopped in the OXXO and stood in line for five minutes to get a frozen coffee drink. The shop keepers were bringing in huge bins filled with ice and Tecate and the Tecate was going out the door as fast as they could get it in. Farther up the street school kids were walking, blowing trumpets and banging drums. Dogs were running in and out between their legs. A few girls watched the boys playing basketball at the sports complex. A girl sat at the bus stop waving her plastic Mexican flag.

A quick turn around, speeding for home, a toss of the keys to Senor and a retreat to the coolness of the bedroom. After relaxing for a few minutes under the mini split, trying to decide how to spend the afternoon, the power went out for over an hour and a half. I moved outdoors to the portal where a cool wind picked up, thunder roared and a heavy rain began to fall.

I went and got my fleece.

Now I hear town coming alive. The delivery trucks are rambling up and down the street. Ivan, new old Jesus' nephew, who inherited the little casa, is trying out some new opera tunes on his stereo, the kid several streets over is playing his pan flute, still only one song, El Condor. The cow bells are tinkling over in Rancho Colorada and it is almost time for Senor to return.

We will be wide awake when the activity begins at midnight, listening from the portal to the excitement from the 'grito' and the fireworks and then, on the streets for the parade in the morning. Until then, on this day before the day, adios.......

More Sunlight, More Firewood, More View

2011-09-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias. In the night we woke to a huge windstorm, the sounds were very reminiscent of the ones we heard almost three years ago during Hurricane Norbert. The only thing missing was the constant wail of the sirens. Several times I said to Senor...........what's zat....... Senor, not having being raised in the south, said several times.......what in the hell was that. When I went out at the crack of dawn I saw that all of our ladders which had been leaning against the portal had fallen, all of our plastic furniture was out in the back of the yard, the plastic white tables legs flung like broken stilts to the side, the gleaming flat tops leaning against the coyote fence. The yard was littered with branches and several ten foot tops of tecoma bell trees. And we had a new view of the mountains because most of the plumeria trees were on top of the asador.

Humberto spent four hours this morning sawing the plumeria trunks into firewood which he says need to age for a year. As the morning heated up we realized just how much shade we actually lost. In return, our mountain view which has always been spectacular, is even more spectacular. With Norbert, Mt Alamos got eleven inches of rain in two hours, we only got one half an inch with last night's storm. Thank goodness, the thing we never want to see again are any of his relatives.

I was very worried about downtown and all the banners and flags and pendants and drapes, but a quick tour of town on new old bike showed everything looked normal and one of the city workers told me there was very little wind in town. Soon the kids were on their way to and from school, delivery trucks were at the Mercado, the vendors were setting up their food stalls and the newspaper guys were on the corner. Just normal as can be.

The city worker was busy filling the cans with kerosene and inserting long wicks. The blackened cans will go out on the tops of the homes and businesses on the fifteenth, and will be lighted before the grigo at midnight. More shop owners were busy hanging drapes and flags. The Oaxcan artisans were coming out of their tents after a restful sleep, the music man was putting on a good mix and the shoeshine stand was ready for customers. Yes, just normal as can be.After talking with a few people about the storm, I have learned that the hill tops are the ones that really got hit and that would include us. A few folks out farther in more open barrios also lost a few tree limbs here and there. But overall, no real serious damage anywhere.

Next year when the hot summer sun beats down on us, we will not miss the thick lush plumeria trunks that were broken off last night because the portal will give us shade. The birds who had their homes in the tecoma bell tree tops will find new places to live and as the long hot summer fades into autumn and then to winter, we will most likely toss an aged plumeria trunk into the outdoor fireplace, and sit back and enjoy the view.
adios.............

Preparing for Independence Day in Alamos

2011-09-07T14:30:00.000-07:00


Hola............... just a few photos today. I want you to see how Alamos is preparing for Independence day which is on the 16th.

September 16th, marks the anniversary of the day the War for Independence from Spain began. The parade will be grand but the real activity begins on the 15th, when the Mayor, on the second story balcony of the Palacio, gives the cry, or grito for independence, at midnight. It is the reenactment of the proclamation of war, given in 1810, by Father Hidalgo, in the state of Guanajuato, that everyone wants to hear.

That is, everyone who can stay up that late and make their way to town to hear it. We have never been and I understand it is a huge crowd that gathers and in order to get near the Palacio you need to be on your way there several hours early. We have always chosen the luxury of staying home and listening to the crowd break out in waves and waves of accelerated whooping and hollering and screaming and yelling and then, boom, the fireworks light up the sky. While we do not get to hear the proclamation, we can hear the aftermath just fine and we also see the fireworks from our casa.

Senor is snoozing, Cookies is snoozing. Time for me to join them.

que le vaya bien! linda lou

It is So Senor

2011-09-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

Hola, hola, hola and all that good stuff. I am so excited to tell you that my wonderful friend, Trish, who reads the blog, emailed me over my photo distress and informed me that Blogger is updating its format and I should read all about it to figure it out. I did that and decided at the risk of not figuring it out on my own, I will just keep the old blogger.

However, she sent four emails of fabulous, inventive ways of solving my problem. In one she suggested copy and paste and just move the photos that way. Good grief, it worked!
Thank you, Trish! And thanks to everyone else who commented or personally emailed me to solve the problem or like Senor who can be So Senor, suggested "does this really matter in the grand scheme of things?"

I loaded the four photos below, and you know, for me, four is dinky. I usually have many more, especially if Senor is giving me great photo opportunities. I mean, the hair dryer? Priceless........ Poking on the beach........Priceless, again. I could go on and on, but in case I get to 'publish post' and the copy and paste should turn out to be fake, and that would be a real catastrophe, I will have not sat here tediously uploading many photos for no purpose.

Plus, I have major things to accomplish this afternoon while Senor is bridging a few streets over with the ladies. I am in a serious cleaning mode.
Company is coming........KD and Novio.
We are going to meet Novio.

I am dusting the ceilings, sweeping the Glasspondstudio workshop, painting the vigas in the West Wing (for the second time), washing the Obregon Wal Mart sheets with the new Ace soap that smells like lime and rinsing with the newest Svuarte, called Elegance. Squishing all the mealy bugs in the fake kitchen's cupboards and tossing the bad flour, keeping the coffee can lid on the shower drains so the pinacates can't come up the pipes, ordering Cookie's flea medicine from El Coyote, mowing the yard (for the third time this week) and looking for my friend, Martin, to come and help me weed. He comes by every week looking for work we don't have and now, when I need him, he is not to be found.

I measured the beds. Seventy-four inches. Novio is six-two. In case you don't know, that's seventy-four inches. KD is five-two on a good top knot hair day. At first I did not think that is such a big difference in size. But if you release one foot out on your tape measure and hold it straight up in front of your eyes, a foot is a lot taller than you'd think. I guess I can put my newly covered bench at the foot of the bed, for his toes.

The doors that enter the West Wing are seventy-four inches. He isn't going to fit, especially not with shoes on. He will duck or go barefoot. Then I will worry about tarantulas and scorpions under foot, spiders over head. I am really not a worrier, but I am worried I may become one.

Senor and Humberto have their own projects to complete. Their goal is to get the eight feet of roof done, varro blanco'd in, cemented and impermeabled over, so we can have a dry place to sit and eat meals providing the wind is not blowing over ten miles an hour in which case we will just need to grab the cat and all go sit in new old car, where I doubt Novio is going to fit. I want to be able to eat under the dry portal, but Senor is just being So Senor. He says that is a work zone, not a dining zone. I plan to go into whine mode and see if there can't be a small space cleared and cleaned out for dining for four.

The final columns for the north end of the portal have been poured. Humberto had to take out most of the left half of the big tree there so the last column would fit. We have lost our shade from the tree, but gained a considerable amount of mountain view that we usually only have in winter since the tree is deciduous.

I have weeded this three times this week and the space, which was thigh high with grass several weeks ago, is looking good.

The plan is exciting. We will drive to Mazatlan, where KD and Novio will fly. We will lay around on the beach for a few days and then drive north to Alamos. Senor says it can be done in six hours. We dilly dallied last time and it took seven. I really do think Novio is barely going to fit in new old car, so I hope it will not seem like six hours to him. We will be in Alamos for a week and then drive again to Mazatlan where surprise! we will hook up with Ian and his friend!!!

We will lay around on the beach for several days with Ian and Friend and KD and Novio. Then KD and Novio are off to Denver, and we will drive with Ian and Friend, six hours north to Alamos, where we will stay for a week. Then, back to Mazatlan, to lay around the beach for a few days and then see them off to Seattle. I told this to someone and she said............jeez, just put them on the bus, that's too much..............i replied, the bus ride from Mazatlan is almost twelve hours................i would self destruct just waiting for them to get here. Besides I like to go and I am pretty excited to be going south instead of north.

KD and Ian could not get the same days off from work, but the overlap of several days in Mazatlan is a great surprise and I can hardly wait to see them all.

It is thundering outside and Radio Sonora is playing Lady Gaga tunes. Time for me to hustle back to check my list and find out what I am doing next.

Before I go, I want to show you my favorite photo. I am planning to blow it up and frame it and hang it in a very prominent place in the casa. It is So Senor.

Que le vaya bien! Linda lou

I Need Help with Blogger

2011-08-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

Buenos tardes. A very cool and mysterious morning. Shrouded in fog, none of the mountains were visible. A little breeze for my walk and by the time I got back home at six thirty, I was highly motivated to weed the lily garden. It remained cloudy most of the morning and I was further motivated to mow and weed around some of the palm trees.
Now, late in the day, the sun is out and as it stretches across the sky, the mountains are green and bright as sparkling emeralds.

I put turkey tom on top of the dead eucalyptus trunk that sits in the lily garden. I know he will rust, but it is much better to have him here than inside the West Wing where I have received a fair number of cuts by backing up into his sharp tin feathers.

The lilies are night bloomers, pink and white with speckled rosy centers, on long thick stalks that fall over first thing in the morning. They are also very fragrant, but you have to be out at midnight to catch the scent.

Senor and Humberto switched gears this morning and began working on the columns again for the portal. The wood form is filled with cement. They need to do four more of these and the portal columns will be done.

I am very frustrated with blogger, again. I posted on this once before and I am hoping someone has discovered a solution to the problem by now and can fill me in. Blogger simply will not let me move my photos around. It makes it difficult to connect word content with the photos. Even when I try to upload them in precisely the correct sequence I need, blogger changes it on its own.
The last time I brought this up almost all the comments were from folks who said they had given up on blogger and were switching to wordpress. I am not sure I could move this whole blog to wordpress. I would be pressed for the knowledge to do it and I am not sure my mom, HI MOM! would ever find me again.
So I hope someone has found a solution and can tell me about it so I can stay here with blogger. I have tried accessing the blog through numerous browsers and same problem each time.

So, Help is what I need! All information received will be considered.

I am off to the fake kitchen. I cooked a mango meatloaf this morning, just a regular old meatloaf with a cup of chopped mango added. I will slice it for dinner and top it with a cold sauce of brown sugar, ketchup and one minced habanero chili and another half a cup of mango. I think Barcelona is playing tonight and we might sit in the bedroom, in the Pier One chairs and watch a little soccer.
Que le vaya bien! linda lou

It Will Still be There Tomorrow

2011-08-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hola. Days are getting shorter here already and the sun has taken a swift dip to the south bringing small shadows to areas of the casa where the sun has beaten now for months. Days are almost unbearably hot this past week as the humidity rises and we are spending longer hours in the bedroom with air conditioning and piles of unread books and magazines.

Often we hear the 'chute, chute' and short whistle of the mama quail outside our window. She paces the top of the ladrillo wall and looks cautiously down the other side and into the field. Over the spinning of the ceiling fan and the soft whir of the mini split, we hear little 'chute, chute's' and peeps from the other side of the wall, as the babies follow on the ground in the field. Often she hides herself in the lacy green branches of the fuego tree and calls to them. We wonder what she must be teaching them.

The rains continue to make gardening a chore and I tend to only mow what is in the shade in the morning and then, yet another section later in the day when it is shaded. The result is a very lop sided looking lawn with huge sections of closely mowed grass next to patches of weed that are two feet tall because there is never shade there. I spend a great deal of time visualizing how the lawn will look when it is covered with flagstone.

It is too hot for anything to bloom but the pink vine. It covers the stable and thrives in the heat. The ground below it is dusted with tiny pink petals.

I do most of my cooking early in the morning, creating all kinds of interesting meals that we will then eat cold later in the evening after it has cooled off. We will sit under the portal, watching the lightning in the east and eat cold chayotes, a Mexican squash, that I have baked with garlic and butter. Sometimes a little smoked chuleta, pork, will get sprinkled on top with onion and black olives and capers. If it is too hot outside, we might watch a soccer match inside on the computer and feast on sliced cold chicken dipped in sour cream mixed with a little sugar and hot sauce. Ancho chili marinated cold meats with sharp cheeses. Barbequed oysters and buttered toast. Jicama and beet salads. I am becoming an expert at preparing food that will be eaten cold.

Once in awhile Senor will cook at the asador. This always seems to happen when rain is not expected but comes anyway. A few nights ago, I thought the scene looked suspicious and worthy of being investigated. I saw him fanning the dying coals................that is my new hair dryer, i said, what are you doing.............. He tried to explain that there is so much humidity in the air he can't get the flames going. I unplugged the dryer, took it from him and put it back inside in a new hiding place. I have not even used it yet. I have an old hair dryer. I gave him that one to put in his asador cooking collection.

The vigas continue to go up outside the West Wing, on both sides of the big beam. Senor claims that the roof will be up there by October.

The days are so hot, I cannot imagine he will be able to continue working at this pace to have eight feet of roof on by then. I am not pushing it. They start at seven. Senor works for an hour and takes a break, puts in more time, another short break. Humberto starts and does not stop. Senor says Humberto is used to the heat, used to working in it. I watch Humberto's water pitcher and fill it at least twice every morning.

I am watching the grass grow in the driveway. One day soon I will get out the weed eater and take care of it. I am too busy cooking to do it this week.
These grasshoppers are all over the yard. This is one of the smaller ones. If I could keep the grass down I think there would be less of them. There are crickets all over the place. They love the grass. Walking sticks are on the screen doors. Scorpions and tarantulas on the portal highway. Eerie iridescent green frogs lumber through the rain when it falls, their slow long legs shovel their bodies along. Bats fly low, under the portal, scooping up mosquitoes and fireflies light up like Christmas lights in the plumerias.

There is a snake in here. I like to think it spends more time at Iban's new old Jesus's casa than in our yard. There are caterpillars on the yellow belled tecoma trees, a dirty white and gray cat under the fig tree in the mornings watching the cardinals peck at the seed on the asador.I want to go out and mow this now. It is going into the shade and even though it is hot out, I think I could get most of it. I will think it over.

Last night we went to a party, and after an hour or so, the wind suddenly picked up and the thunder hit and the lightning struck and we scrambled home to find the power was out. We are ill prepared for power outages here. We have no batteries, no lanterns, few candles. We sat in the dark, under the portal and watched the storm. I left my lawn mowing sneakers out in the storm. They are still wet, too much humidity in the air for them to dry. I suppose I could go and get the new old hair dryer I gave Senor and try and dry them out. But there is that new book I picked up at the youth hostel the other day. I need to add all this new fired glass to my online Etsy shop. I talavera'd some wooden napkin ring holders and they need one clear coat of varnish. I still have my on going embroidery projects. I can think of a lot of reasons reason to let the grass have its way today. It will still be there tomorrow.

Speechless in Alamos

2011-08-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Hola!

Waiting for rain here. The rain count for our yard is around 17 1/2 inches for the season and we expect a lot more. A good 4 month season should get us close to 40.

I suggested to Senor that we leave open the lid to the cistern and collect all this rain water. He said, no need, the drainage system off the roof is working great. I said.........what drainage system, we don't have a system, yet...............he laughed, sure we do, the one that has been there for two years, you have a terrible memory!..................haha, i said, we have not had a system working there for 2 years...............we have a system, he said....................but, it doesn't work, i said...................does, too, he said.................does not.........does, too.

Well this went on and on for about 10 minutes and finally, I got him to admit the system has been there for 2 years and he just got it all hooked up the other day and it is now catching rain water. With the sloping roof completed over the south west end of the casa, the rain water now runs down the slope, into the big pvc pipes that are inside the wall, down through the outside pipe and into the cistern. Then he just sighed and said....... okay, i guess you will want to blog that, but try and be nice about it. I was speechless. I just frowned at him.

Below you can see the big pipe the rain water comes down.

Now Senor is probably the smartest person I know, but Senor is not always consistently smart. He was so proud of himself and the fact that the water run off was being collected, he announced he was going to turn off the city water. Ah, ha! You know where I am going with this one! After all of our water problems in June and July, I was speechless when I opened the lid to the cistern. Water off, no rain for a few days, no water in the cistern............see what I mean, it's the consistency part I am worried about........do you have to blog that............he asked.

Recently I have had the good luck to get caught out in the rain and even better luck finding interesting places to get out of it. I love being in the museum when it rains. There is a huge screen covered portal in the center of the building. The screen shields the portal from the sun, but when it rains, the portal fills with water very quickly. Of course, there is drainage that filters to the street, but it is really something to see as it pours into the courtyard.

Below is the entrance to the museum.

Here is the open portal. The art celebration was on this day and everyone was hoping it would not rain. Eventually the mueum was so packed with people I was hoping for rain just to cool off.

Below are my 2 maskaras. The first one broke in the firing, thank goodness. It looks better broken than it did when it was in one piece. I might convince Senor to hang that one on the front door when we get a front door.

The second one fired with permanent wood ash and I think it is an improvement as well.

Last week I got caught in the rain near the library. It is the first door on the left, next to the post office. The motorcycle is how mail is delivered in Sonora. Every town has one.

They were having a kids' art camp that day. The rain had stopped and the air was fresh and cool.

The pretty little girl in the left foreground is in a lot of my photos. I don't see her when I am taking the photo. It is later when I look through the shots, I see her. The little boys below got into a pencil fight which resulted in silence. None of them would speak to each other.

The inside of the library is bright and smells like freshly polished wood and old books. All the classics are there, in Spanish, of course. In addition, there are huge numbers of books on biology, mathematics and the theories of the old astronomers. There are some old 'National Geographics' from the eighties and they are the only English reading materials in the library, with the exception of 'Learning English' workbooks and dictionaries.

While I was reading about the possibilty of zebras becoming extinct by the year 2001, a huge clap of thunder made every kid jump and scream and a heavy rainfall filled the library portal with streaming water. Then everyone was up against the long wall and speechless as the water streamed into the courtyard.

Later, back home, right before the next storm hit, Senor and I took a little walk back to the Chalaton Arroyo.

Senor saw these little guys up on the bridge.

Senor yelled.........hola, my amigos!.............Then he started beating his chest like a wild man.................what are you doing, i asked.....................hey! You are my Zapata friends, he yelled to them..................what Zapata friends, i asked...................By now Senor is really drumming on his chest and the small boy has a wooden stick gun pointed down at Senor's head..................you know, the kids that sold me the little bottle that belonged to Pancho Villa, oh yea!........guys, I mean Pancho Villa...............And he starts beating his chest again......................bring me more bottles that belonged to Pancho Villa, bring me the rusted chain, he yelled. By now the big kid has the wooden stick gun pointed at Senor...............hmmm, maybe they want their bottle back, i said to Senor.

The kids just stared at Senor. Now that's an honest, common mistake I am sure many people would make, calling Pancho Villa, Zapata. We can only hope the young boys understood his English words and they were simply so surprised that Senor wanted more of their merchandise, they were speechless.

Senor looked and me and winced................well, i suppose you are going to want to blog that, too.............I just stared at him, speechless. It started to rain and we went home......................

Senor Goes Poking

2011-08-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

Buenos tardes. It is raining, nice and gentle, just a little chipichipi.

Good grief, have you wondered where we were? where we are? why we have not posted?

Very simple, very busy.

Senor has been up on the roof. And last week he hired two additional workers to help out. Imagine that!

Humberto got to stand around and mix concrete and get it into the wheelbarrow, while the other two workers got it from the wheelbarrow into buckets and carted it up to the portal roof, where they poured it and Senor smoothed it out. Fortunately, it was somewhat overcast those days. I have been in the laundry room/work room. In the last two weeks I received several custom glass orders. I cannot just fire five pieces of glass. I have to cut, grind, cold work, and file and prepare enough to fill the kiln. I have mentioned this before, so in order to get the custom orders done in as short amount of time as possible, I have been going pretty much non stop.

The little thermometer in there has been reading around one hundred, so I had to set up a couple of portable fans in order to work.

So, now the kiln is full and it is firing as I write. And it will fire for twelve hours each day for five days. HOT in that room. I will not even go in there but to peek around the corner so I can read the digital screen and make sure everything is on schedule.

So, we took a little break a few days ago and left town for the day. The roadsides are covered with wildflowers, yellow and orange buttercups and the pink vine the bees love so much.

The hills are jungly and emerald green. Someday I will learn how to photo shop telephone cables out of the photos, but you should get all fuzzy just looking at the green hillsides.

And we ended up here.

I am a shell collector. There were very few shells this trip.

Senor is a poker. There was a lot to poke this trip.

If I get too near and in his way or ask him about what it is he is poking at, he will poke at me.
Above, he is poking at the blue eyed crab in the photo below. That crab kept flipping over, trying to scurry away from the poker.

Here Senor is poking at a dead seahorse. I wanted to pick it up and keep it. He poked it and smelled it and said............no.

Here he is just fixing to poke something else. He needs to study it for awhile before he pokes it though. It was just a little blue jelly fish that he flipped back into the waves before I could get close enough for a photo.

Then he poked at a dead fish he called a rooster fish. He poked at a bottle filled with sand. He poked at some ring pop tops from a can. He poked at sea weed. He poked at a broken beer bottle. He poked at a buried rope. Then he walked on down the beach.......walked on down the beach looking for more things to poke. He is such an easy person to go to the beach with.

What a lovely day at the beach.

adios, linda lou

No Cool Title, Just Stuff..............

2011-08-03T07:33:00.000-07:00

Buen dia! We are seeing brilliant sunsets at night. After the sunsets and late into the evening we have been getting chipichipi rains and bright displays of lightning.

And we are paying dearly now during the day. The humidity this week has been hovering around eighty to ninety percent and the temperatures have been well over a hundred. Now this would not be so bad if we only had some wind, but there is not any at all.

I have received a number of custom glass orders and as soon as I return from my walk or ride in the morning, I have been retreating to the laundry room to cut glass. It is stifling in there and we are down to one small working fan. There are no ceiling fans in that room. I have been working with a wet rag around my head, but I don't think that helps at all. When I cold work, or grind glass, I use a face mask and goggles, now that is suffocating as well. I look like the creature from the black lagoon with a towel around its head.

Both Senor and Humberto continue to put in a good four hours and Senor retreats to the bedroom and the mini split for short little breaks while Humberto hides briefly under the mesquite.

Below you can see Senor up on the roof where the beams are now in and ready for the vigas. The first section of vigas will come out above the door for about eight feet.

In the second photo, from last year, you can see how far the original roof extended and then, you can see the Hilton Garden Room, which was under the old roof. I am hoping to recreate the garden room, temporarily of course, once the vigas and the roof are in. Oh, you know, Senor may have other plans, but I hope to win out.In addition to cutting glass, I did make it to the clay sculpting class at the museum. There were only a handful of us for the four day class. The fellow in the blue and white shirt is the instructor. This class was the mask sculpting class and the calaca katrina class will be in the fall.
The instructor, Jorge Mendevil, is a very talented sculptor and Ana, next to him, is a clay artist as well.

Across from our class, young teens were sculpting clay jewelry.

And down the hall, the violin class was being held. A little screechy, but some very determined kids were there every day.

In the mornings, the kids come for clay class and their work is spread out to dry on the museum floor. This will all be fired soon out at the Uvalama kiln and I believe you can look back through my labels to see the actual firing we did last year.

Here is my first mask below. I put it on the floor in the kids' section, had a look around and realized that most of their work was so much better than mine. So I picked it up again and moved it away from all that professional looking stuff. Then the ears fell off my guy and I wondered why in the world I even put ears on him to begin with. Maybe I can glue them back on after the fire or maybe they will get lost in the kiln, which might be a good thing.

Well, the rest of the mascaras I made were really no better. I hope they will look better after they are fired, so I will show them to you at a later date. However, Jorge did say all my eyes have good, soulful expressions. Do you see that? A soulful expression? I studied it for quite a while, but I don't see it.

I am just glad the kids are not in my class. Their work is incredibly creative and mine is just well, created.

Okie dokie, I am off to Navajoa to buy a new floor fan for the laundry room work shop. The problem with custom orders is I cannot just put six or seven pieces in the kiln. I have to keep cutting and cutting to get around sixty items, which is what fits in the kiln and justifies a fire. So, a new fan will help cool down the room a little. Maybe a pretty head towel, too, something with flowers on it.

Air conditioning in new old car, a K freeze for the drive, a lovely morning.

Que tengas buen dia! linda lou

Gracias, Thank You For Coming, and Adios

2011-07-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

Hola!

I feel like I am living in a jungle here. The coyote fence is covered with thick green vines. I did finally get the yard mowed and the weed eater devoured what I could not cut. I slashed one of Senor's bouganvillea, so that is what I get for calling him a name under my breath. I will try not to do that again. Now I have to baby this little plant and try and convince it to live.

Talk about feeling guilty, whooo-wheeee. I should have been more careful.

When I told him about it, and believe me, I pondered that one..............tell, do not tell, tell, do not tell.................he looked so sad. He inspects those vines daily, in the evening. I don't watch him, but I suspect he pets them and talks to them.

All this rain, and I calculate by my gauge slightly over twelve inches, continues to bring out all the wildlife. We are seeing so many birds, many of them babies, like the little male cardinal below. I even saw a small covey of baby quail yesterday morning, running under the portal. They were on a mission and scurried through before I could grab the camera. Cookies was quickly on their tail, but they made the highway crossing easily. Now I do think I would have really felt guilt had he caught one and I had not tried to prevent that. Here is the little guy again against the backdrop of Senor's socks on the line. The laundry was there for three days. I now have a lot of photos of birds and socks.

Yellow bellied sapsuckers were around Sunday morning as well as the Gila woodpeckers, warblers, mockingbirds, house sparrows, flycatchers and magpies. Hummingbirds, a couple of frogs. I saw all of these yesterday.

But, come with me. I want to take you somewhere...............

We are going out to the big palm.

I was out here the other day and standing near the palm I heard what sounded like a rushing stream. Certain that one of Senor's drippers had broken and was gushing water, I checked the hoses and found nothing. I stood under the palm. Stand under it with me. Can you hear that noise? Rushing water, swooshing sounds, rustling.

Now look straight up into the palm branches. That is the sound of hundreds of baby birds, chirping, hopping, rustling, fluttering, flittering, cooing, shooing. They sound like a rushing stream. I have never heard anything like it.

The monkey man comes around once in awhile. He cuts the palms in town so they look nice and pretty like the one below.

A few people have asked us why we don't cut our palm. And indeed, we did have Monkey Man cut it our first year here.

Look below.

In the middle and right half of the photo are three gray -white objects. Two are along the tree line and a third is right in the middle of that bushy business in the center. Multiply those three objects many, many times and you will have hundreds of bats that come out of that palm at dusk. It is fascinating and a little frightening at the same time. But we know they are eating all of our mosquitoes.

I just make sure the bedroom doors are closed and try and sit very still. The air is thick with them. For around half an hour, they fly under the portal and in and out of the columns and right around our chairs.

I am getting more and more used to their neighborly visits, and they are good neighbors because they keep their visits short.

Of course, there is a lot more going on at night. Thankfully, most of it I do not see. I found what look like raccoon prints the other morning. A snake was rustling in the grass between our place and new old Jesus'. I know there are skunks and opossums next door.

And we are seeing tarantulas and scorpions as they have again taken to their well travelled highway under the portal. Now these guys are my least favorite and I have made many posts about them. I just cannot seem to get used to them coming around to visit. And I especially do not like it when they just come right on in and don't even take the time to announce their arrival. They are really just bad neighbors. They come and sit and hang around, look at your stuff, eat your food and blow their nose in your bathroom.

Senor has adjusted quite well, with his feet over the rebar bridge. I drag my chair as far away from the route as possible. I want Senor to keep the shovel close by. I just don't know if I can be neighborly toward them and leave them alone.

Cookies on the other hand, the perfect host, comes out from under the chair only after the bats go home to the palm and if a fast moving tarantula or scorpion comes along, he turns his back on it and walks away. He is a very smart cat.....oh, did we have guests?..............gracias, thank you for coming and adios is his attitude.

Last night he could have cared less about any creatures on the little highway, as he had knocked himself out earlier in the day by first eating the little mouse and then, the lizard for dessert.

Several months ago, two men came by, one with an important red metal box and the other with a hook with a noose on one end. They were giving rabies shots to animals. After much hesitation, and discussion about their jobs and equipment for doing their jobs, we finally caught Cookies, who had seen them coming, and allowed them to give him the shot. Cookies was not happy, but it was over quickly. Before he jetted around the corner of the casa, Cookies turned and glared at them and then, us...........gracias, adios and now, get the %#*^ out of here, is what he said in cat language. True to himself, again a nice host.

I am glad we let them shot needle him. Sometimes I think I need to grab him and get him away from the little things he likes to chew up and eat, and sometimes after the feast, he looks pretty drained for hours. But I never do. That's his thing. Besides, some day, he may protect us from something really, really big.

So now that I have whet your appetite with Cookies' delectable menu, I will show you those crab cakes. On top is sour cream mixed with a little sugar and Sonoran hot sauce and huge caperberries. Martha Stewart oven fries and Navajoa grapes add some crunch.

Oh me, oh my, it is almost three-thirty and Senor and Humberto are still pouring cement into the first viga that will go across the space outside the West Wing. I might show you that tomorrow.

I feel kind of guilty that I did not remember that Humberto's water jug went empty and he came to ask me twice for water and I did not remember to fill it for two hours after he asked. I had an ice cold topochico.

Senor is just drenched with sweat, my t shirt is all nice and clean and smells like Suave soap. The tamale kid did not show up this morning and I don't think either of them has eaten anything. I had a nice bowl of rice mixed with salsa verde and red tomato.

It's only ninety-six degrees out there, but they have been up on the roof all morning. I should feel guilt, but cannot make up my mind if I do or not, it is just so nice and cool in the bedroom where Cookies and I are. I really need to take a siesta and wake up all refreshed so I can decide just how neighborly I will be tonight.............gracias, thank you for coming and adios. linda lou

Name That Casa

2011-07-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias. We got over two inches of rain last night. Quite a grand storm, lots of trelampagosa, lightning and truenos, thunder, right over our bedroom. It lasted for hours and hours.

Poor Cookies got caught out in it and during one brief lull, I was able to coax him inside, but before I could dry him off, he jumped up onto one of the beautiful yellow Pier One cushioned chairs, well, you can only imagine what that looks like now.

The good news is we used several very thick towels at the doorway and as a result we did not have any pinacates, the stinky, black beetle type bugs, in bed with us last night.

Even with all that racket through out the night, I slept well and was out on the street at five-thirty.
All of the arroyos are running. Here is La Aduana below. If you recall, during the last big storm the Chalaton and Escondida arroyos were running, but the Aduana was not. There was evidently enough water last night to kick the Aduana into high gear.These guys below just did not want the hassle of going up and over the bridge. Yet for the longest time they could not commit, bridge? water? bridge? water? Finally the one in the plaid shirt just walked through and the water was up to his knees. The other one shook his head, laughed and took the bridge. Almost all of the vehicles did not skip a beat and just plunged ahead.The dozer kept shoveling dirt into the arroyo, for what purpose I am not sure.

Here along the left bank, in the photo below, the city is building a tall stone wall and a lighted malecon that will go for quite some distance along the arroyo. It will be nice walking when there is water in the arroyo. I keep hoping they might find a river to divert. When the water is gone, I will go over and take a photo of what the finished malecon will look like. There is a construction board near the workers showing an artist's rendition.

My purpose for going out this morning was to get a few more photos of some of the lovely wall plaques around town. Many of these plaques just show the street address of the casa, but quite a few of the creative ones tell the name the owners have chosen for their casa.

Now I tried several years ago to convince Senor we should name our casa. We had a little turtle in the stable at that time. I suggested La Tortuga, House of the Turtle............no, he said..................Casa de los Quatros Vientos, House of the Four Winds, because we are one of the windiest spots in town.................absolutely not, he said.....................Casa de Las Campanas, House of the Bells, because we have so many dollar store wind chimes....................NO, he said.................Casa de los Limones, House of the Limes, three lime trees......how about Casa de Construccion, no need to say more about that.............no, he said, we don't need to name our house, we know what it is called, it is called our house..................Okay, I just let that go. No big deal, we do not need to name our casa.

Below are some of my favorite plaques, some I like because the name is pretty, others because they are more creative in style and even others because of where the owner chose to place the plaque.

House of the Tangerine or Mandarin Orange......................

The Beautiful House.....................

Robert's House.................

House of the Fourteen Little Angels......................

The Lovely House........................

I believe this is the House of the 'family name'.................

The Chocolate House........................

The Hummingbird House..................

The House of another family name.....................

And the House of Sucess or Victory.................

Imagine our surprise just a few days ago when we returned home to find that the telephone pole outside our gate had been named.................9.............and below it Humberto (I now know I have been misspelling Umberto's name).................next to the large H in smaller letters is umberto. So we are Durango 9, House of Humberto.....................jajajaja...............trust me, Senor is a funny guy but he found absolutely no humor in that at all. I am surprised he has not been at that already with a can of black paint.

No, I am not bored! I really thought you might like to see the wall plaques.

All right I am fixing to go and make crab cakes. Did I tell you the fish lady came by with bags of fresh crab? OMG, unbelievable, a kilogram for under fifty pesos. That is two and a half pounds for a little over four USD and it is all cleaned and perfectly good2go.

Then I am going to the bike shop. The gear shifter contraption thingy on the right handle bar fell completely off new old bike this morning. Plop, just like that in the street in front of the Palacio. The guard was not there to see it, thank goodness no one was there to see it. I got off and picked it up and threw it in the basket.

It will be my last visit to this bike shop. A friend sent me a link to fixing it all myself. He said I would probably need to read it through a couple of times. Well, after reading it for the 5th time, I said to myself........there is no way in heck i can do that............... but Senor can, he can do anything............except name a casa................gee whiz..............

Below is a very early in the morning photo of the church steeple, the fresh water covered streets and the green hillside beyond, very picturesque morning. Not many folks out and about, but the street workers were everywhere, sweeping up dirt and garbage that came with the rain. The vendors were wiping down chairs and putting up their tarps. The sweet smell of pastries cooking was on the air. Someone was whistling over here and someone singing over there, very nice. Que tengas buen dia! linda lou

A Pondering I Will Go

2011-07-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Hola, Buen dia.
Look at this. This is crazy. It happened while I was napping. And look at this. This is at the back of the yard, near new old Jesus' place which has been taken over by his nephew, Ivan. This is where Senor has his little orchard and you cannot even see any of the fruit trees back there. Umberto had piled big hills of sand, dirt and adobe chunks back there. Even a mower will not help.

So, we went to Obregon to buy a weed eater. Senor says I broke the other one. Well, I think he broke it. He bought one that does not have to be tapped on the ground to extend the line, which is how the first one broke.
He took it out of the box, showed me all the details, showed me the brand name, showed me which extention cord will work best to get myself out to the fence line, told me how to tie off the cord so I will not lose power, told me not to accidentally cut down any of his little trees. I called him a name. But it's okay, I have noticed his hearing is a little off lately.

I went and tried it out. It took a long time to get it all set up. I got hot, so I quit. I put on a ball cap, put a wet towel around my neck and tried again. Still hot. I walked around to Allende to my favorite little store and bought a frozen Snickers bar. They are very big on two American candy bar names here. Snickers and Milky Way are what you get. I walked home.

I tried again and by now, it was cloudy and around five. I thought it would be a little cooler. Not. I read a Phoenix Home and Garden that I picked up at the thrift store. I tried again. It started to rain. I stopped and took a little siesta. During a lull in the rain I went and took a look. The grass was even thicker and higher. I put the weed eater in the laundry room.

Just looking for something more exciting to do I interneted myself. I put in my first and maiden names. I did this about ten years ago and got, my name, just me. I have a very unusual maiden name.

I would never put in Senor's last name. I know there are hundreds of me. In King County, where we used to live, I finally returned my library card to the library because I was so tired of getting late book fines that belonged to all those other Linda's.

But my maiden name, now we're talking, it has always belonged to a special select few of us. Not.

Now there are five of me. Really no information on any of me, I am from Ohio, I am from Florida. I am in Louisiana and Montana. I can get more information on me if I pay a monthly fee to the people finder company.

So I interneted my maiden name alone. Jeez, the country is over run with us. But again, everyone wants money to tell me about us. I could easily spend a fortune to find out about me and my kinfolk.

Today Senor is playing bridge. I get to do anything I want to do. But sometimes, I just make trouble for myself, especially now that it is like an oven outside and I am cooped up in the bedroom with the mini split on high, looking for ways to entertain myself.

So, I entertained myself by facebooking me. At least that's free. There are four of me. In the profile photo of one of me, I have a black eye. In another I look like I am ready to give a black eye to somebody. In the third of me I am a different color. And then, there was the real me. Well, I think it's the real me.

Then I facebooked my maiden name. I saw my siblings and relatives and a lot of potential aunts, uncles and cousins I never even knew about. From all over the world. I never knew we were so many and it really surprised me. I can hardly believe it. This, a last name that came as if from a fairy tale, but truly attached to a castle in far away Scotland, maybe to royalty, my Big Mama used to say. I want to ask all these people if they really belong to my name and how did they get it.

My parents and I went to new York City once to a Yankees baseball game. I looked in the New York City phone book. Two of us. Two of us living in New York. Now there are more than forty of us. Where is our original special select group? I could have called up both those New York City guys then and said, hey, my great grandfather's name was so and so, you ever hear of him, and they most likely would have said yea. I want to set up my people finder account. Everyone is scrambling to get my maiden name for some reason.

You know what? I should let it go. It's just a name. I have ownership in it, but it's just a name. But, I could just friend them all. Slowly, of course, slowly. Otherwise who knows what they might think, who is this nut. But maybe I will find out things I don't want to know. I mean, who is this me who looks ready for a fight? How did I get that black eye?

Okay, this is good, I need something to ponder so I will not be bugging Senor about all this construction mess and believe me, it is a whopping mess after last night's big storm. And don't even get me started about these little black stink bugs that crawled under our door last night to get out of the rain and ended up in bed with us.

Before I start to ponder, I am going to get outside and I am going to walk around to Allende and get a frozen Snickers bar, come back home, put on my hat and wet towel and plug in my new weed eater and go and weed eat that grass back by new old Jesus' nephew Ivan's little casa. Then I might pick a lemon off one of Senor's trees.

Que le vaya bien and I hope it's good! linda lou

Even Four Gears Can't Spoil a Magic Morning

2011-07-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Hola! What a beautiful day yesterday here in Alamos. In the morning I set off at dawn on new old bike and headed for the hills. I went out to the archway to test out the new tune job that was done on the bike the previous day. Getting a tune up meant I should be able to get up two hills and out to the archway, in high gear and no time flat.
WRONG.

I still only have four gears and they are all for long hauling, nothing at all for a hill. In fact I had to get off new old bike and foot it several times. I really hate to give up on the bike repair shop, but I think I will look for someone else to fix these gears. By the time I got home I could not even adjust any gears on the right handle.

Complaining is not really what this is about. Most of the Mexicanos do not have any bike gears. I would just really like to pay for a bike tune up and get a bike tune up. I know it is the bike repairman's nature to please and I think he can't fix the gears and does not have the heart to tell me so.

But the morning was almost magical, quiet, secretive. Because I was out and on the move so early, the yellow light filled the sky and it followed me out to the arches where I caught this great view of Mt Cacharamba. I was mezmerized by the color of the forests in the foreground and those just over the crest of some small hills. On my ride back home, the magic intensified as the light was coming on in a different way. Finally the sun had risen in the east and the reflecting light on the montanas to the west was just as brilliant, almost a profusion of chartreuse.
You can see how the deciduous tropical forest has come to life just in these two weeks of rain and it is filled with color.And then, even another lighting change as I rode down into the historic district where the sun had not hit yet in the streets, but the top of the Mirador hillside was beginning to glisten. On Calle Commercio, near the old Black Cat Market, the green parrots came roaring down the street, almost at head level. I could hear their chatter before I saw them and their striking green wings flashed in the sunlight. They swished back up the street and left as quickly as they had come. A bright yellow and black warbler hid on a fig tree branch and watched. A fat green Sonoran frog sat on a doorstep and as soon as I raised my camera to take his photo he hopped under the door and into a place I could not see.

The rain has brought on not only the green tropical forest in the mountains, and scurrying traveling guests, it has caused the jasmine to flower and fill the air with an overwhelmingly wonderful sweetness and it has made the lime and naranjita trees burst with tiny white flowers that emit their fruity scents in the early morning and late evenings. The breeze is steady and the smells drift along from hidden garden to street and back into hiding again. The scents yesterday morning were as notable as the light and on Calle Obregon I rode up and down twice because it smelled so wonderful.

It is a great time of movement, forests going brown to green, creatures in transit, floral scents beckoning from secret places, drifting on the wind, morning skies filled with a light that changes from yellow to pink to chartreuse, afternoon clouds that billow huge white mushrooms only to darken like night just as quickly. A lot of movement, changes and all very magical, of course.

I may only have four gears but they sure got me right where I needed to be yesterday, right smack in the middle of another magical morning in Alamos.

Pancho Villa is Alive and Free and He Rides Again

2011-07-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

Buenas tardes. It is a muggy hot one.

The sunrise was beautiful this morning and a slight breeze was coming in.

I almost did not get up for my walk. I took the photo and laid back down for a few minutes, just long enough to remember my dream from last night. A friend and I were riding horses in the arroyo. A storm hit and the water came rushing down the arroyo. But we were very lucky because our horses were special horses. They could fly, so naturally they flew us out of the arroyo and up to the top of Mt. Alamos.

Okay, so I got out of bed wondering where that came from and set out on my walk around five am, but by the time I got down into the centro district I actually started jogging to get out. There is very little wind down there and mornings are getting so humid even at that early hour. I have to continue getting up as early as I can to get in a walk, just need to change my direction back out to the soccer field where the wind is. When I got back home I walked by the mesquite tree and smelled something very faint and sweet. Look what I discovered, hidden among all the bromeliads and asparagus ferns.

The sweet little lily is behind the stacked rocks in the photo below. It reminded me so much of finding the first spring trillium in the woods back in the Northwest. Such a nice surprise.

Off to the side of the fake kitchen is a bathroom. There is a shower stall that only gets cleaned out when KD and Ian are coming so they can use the shower. I tend to store stuff in there and forget about it. I was in the shower stall this morning and smelled a very unpleasant odor, not faint or sweet like the lily. Upon investigation I found a bag of bottles I had picked up in the street about two months ago.

I had not realized there was garbage with the bottles. So I took out the bottles and threw away the garbage. Made in Mexico, these are bottled drinks made of vodka and citrus. I have not had one, it doesn't really sound tasty to me, but the bottles are beautiful. Deep, cobalt blue.

I have never had to scrub so hard to get labels off a bottle, but it was well worth it. I am now on a Skyy bottle hunt because I would like to see how the glass would turn out after being fired in the kiln. For now, these four help make a pretty table setting.

Senor has a new old bottle, too.

Soneone rang the bell this morning and Senor went to answer. I will translate into English for you the following conversation:

At the gate, Senor found four little ninos about seven or eight selling antiquities.......................very old, they said................what is it, asked senor.......this bottle belonged to pancho villa, they said.......................really, said senor...............really, said the ninos...............

.................and we have the chain that he was tied up in, too, they said.................. Two of them held up what looked like an old bike chain that had a broken link in it......................this is how strong pancho villa is, they said, he broke this chain in two pieces and then he escaped from jail and rode his horse into the hills where he is right now....................really, said senor....................really, said the ninos..................well, i will take his bottle, said senor, but not his chain, that looks too expensive.................

Fifteen pesos later, Senor gave me the story and the bottle. Where else in the world could a person buy a real bottle used by Pancho Villa for fifteen pesos. What a wonderful little town. What a wonderful life.

I am listening to thunder. And this is what is rolling in across the sky. Wait, someone is honking their horn non stop outside in the street. I will be right back.

The asparagus man came by. Today he is too expensive. Forty pesos for a bunch of asparagus. Good grief, I would buy a real antique bottle that belonged to Pancho Villa for forty pesos before I will pay that for a single bunch of asparagus.

Okay, I have to get ready to go out. Senor is playing bridge and when he returns we are going to a friend's for dinner. I think the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning are going to follow us over there and back. We will have to cross the arroyo.

Through the pouring rain, I will be looking for Pancho Villa, riding his black stallion across the arroyo. The wind will ruffle his silver studded cape behind him and the raindrops will glisten on his heavy mustache. In the flash of lightning I can see he is draped in a broken rusted bicycle chain. With one hand he holds tight to the reins as the water swirls around the stallion's hooves and in the other hand, he is carrying a little bottle. As we drive by him, he will throw the bottle to me and I will quickly catch it in one hand. Que le vaya bien!.............he will yell as he heads for the hills.

Wow, where else but Mexico can you get that?

Three More Inches make Nine Total

2011-07-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

Hola, Buen dia to a lovely sunny and bright morning here in Alamos. Everything smells fresh and clean except the fake kitchen where Senor fixed himself a sauerkraut hot dog 2 days ago.

The mountains are already greening up a little and both the Chalaton and Escondido arroyos are running.

I went at daybreak this morning because I knew at least one arroyo was running and I wanted to get photos. I found two running arroyos, both the Chalaton and Escondido, but the largest, the de la Aduana which runs on the norther side of the shops across from the Alameda, was dry.

Yesterday's storm began in the afternoon and by 6, our power was out and the bedroom was flooded. Rain continued to pour in under the door. We were due at 6:30pm at an Americano 4th of July celebration and we decided we did not want to miss it. So we threw down as many towels as we could, made sure we had the lantern accessible for our return in the dark, locked the cat in and ran for the car. The rain was blowing sideways, we could see the arroyo running, and we knew many of the party guests would not be able to cross. About a dozen of us celebrated, and we feasted on a typical July 4th meal of hot dogs, potato salad, cole slaw, and ambrosia salad, along with slow cooked pulled pork and guacamole and chips. We stayed nice and dry under the hostess's enormous portal as we watched the rain pour.

Back home, as I held an umbrella with one hand, over Senor's head, and a flashlight with the other, he fumbled with inserting wet keys into wet locks and click! the power came on.

Inside the bedroom we discovered the towels had done a fairly decent job and while they were sopping wet, the furniture was pretty dry.

Yesterday, Umberto and Senor spent the entire morning impermeabling, waterproofing, the roof again. Upon a thorough investigation, it looked like it did dry in time and there were no leaks in the laundry room and only a couple in the entire West Wing. So we will just continue with the permeabling. Yesterday's storm gave us another 3 inches. That is a total of 9 inches since Friday night. That is really amazing. I am glad to see that there is not much damage around town, other than lots and lots of dirt, much of which is in front of the Palacio, after having washed down from the Volantin Barrio. Fortunately, all the homes up there are good and solid and dirt is all we expect to ever see.

Umberto dropped a note by for us this morning saying he could not work today because all of his roofs are leaking and he did not get any sleep because his wife kept him up all night. Then we could not understand the rest, either he is going to repair his goteos, leaks, or he is going to sleep all day.

Senor is out working on extending the copper tubing from the propane tank to the area of the casa where it will eventually go over the roof and to the oven. That means he is using a blow torch.............

I am on my way to pay the water bill which is around $7 USD since we got very little water last month. Then I will go to the IMSS clinic. I have learned that here in Mexico, you do not get your blood pressure medication for any extended period of time. You get it for a month and then you have to see the doctor in order to get more. So I have an appointment at 9.

After that I will return home and begin a cleaning and drying out process. All the towels are laying out in the sun, getting nice and dry and warm. I will not be washing them, there is no point, they will just all go back down on the floor when the next rain comes. Senor says that will not be today. But when I was out on new old bike this morning, every Mexicano I talked with said the rain would come again this afternoon, I asked them.......what time? Justino said 4pm, Maria said 5. Antonio said 4pm and Chuyita said 5. Trini, or Candy Joe, as he is known, said 5 and Chayo, who speakes English, said 6:15. I wanted to ask all of them to be more specific and give me seconds in addition to the minutes, but Chayo laughed and said......what! are you having a contest or something!

I will leave you with a couple of videos. Que tengas buen dia! linda lou

Good Sweet Rain

2011-07-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

Buenas Tardes. We really got the rain yesterday. Friday was nice but the rain began again yesterday and the rain gauge was at 3 1/2 this morning. The mountains were fogged over and the breeze was still good this morning and we had a steady mist.

Last night's rain told us that we are not prepared for monsoon season. During yesterday's morning rain, I forgot to get out the towels that we always put on the insides of the doorways of the fake kitchen and the bedroom to keep the rain from flooding those two rooms. I forgot to have an umbrella under the portal and Cookies and I were stuck out there for over an hour while everything around us flooded. I forgot to wear my flip flops and my good leather sandals became covered in mud when I stepped out from under the portal and sank into the mud. The wind blew apart our white plastic table and I had to run out in the rain to get the legs.

I forgot and left out two magazines. The roof leaked in the laundry room and water logged a lot of boxes. And the power went out. Right at dusk.

We had to search in the dark for our flashlights which were not where they were supposed to be. Had to find new batteries for the two lamps we have. Had to rush out into the rain and dark and over into the West Wing for candles and matches. While I tried to decide how to finish dinner up without electricity, Senor rushed up the street to an elderly neighbor's house to make sure she was okay in the dark storm. He rushed back only to say she had her candles and flashlights blazing and was sitting nice and cozy, drinking a glass of whiskey. What is our problem, I kept thinking..............

But this morning things were fresh and lovely and the plumeria filled the air with vanilla and cinnamon. We walked up to the Chalaton Arroyo to see how much water might be flowing there.

This is how much there was................nada droplet. So as the day progresses and I see clouds billowing on the horizon and the wind picks up, I am asking myself, did I do today what I said yesterday I would do today.......................did I get more candles, did I situate the furniture so we will not trip over it as we scamble from place to place in the dark...............did I dry out last night's towels to go inside the doors tonight................did I get all the flashlights back in their right places...................did I put an umbrella out under the portal, move the white table, get all the magazines inside, get some buckets out for the laundry room...........

I will be honest. No, I did not do a thing. But, we watched a lot of soccer online today! We love this business of watching the Womens' World Cup, the U17 Boys World Cup, the Copa America, the Sunday MLS games. It's good that games are short.

There are 3 hours till sundown. I think I can get us prepared for another good sweet rain while Senor puts a nice big turkey thigh on the grill.

While Cookies and I were stranded under the portal I watched all the wildlife come out, the birds, the lizards, the frogs. Oh, they were everywhere, having a good old time in all the rain. So, below is a little video for you to see.

Now I am off to prepare in case anything happens tonight. Enjoy the video! linda lou

Rain

2011-07-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Buen dia!

We got our rain. The clouds burst around eight last night, with a lot of thunder, lightning and rain. This morning's gauge told us we got one quarter of an inch. That may not sound like much but when you have not had rain in over eight months, anything is good. Because it started so late in the evening we were up until almost midnight under the portal enjoying the sights and sounds and the coolness that came with it.

The lovely pendant was won by Paula M. of Fall City, Washington, who guessed the rain would come yesterday at five-thirty pm. She was pretty darn close. There were over sixty entries in the contest. Thanks to everyone who entered, either here on the blog or in one of the other venues. Maybe we will have another contest soon. I will have to think of a reason!

This afternoon the clouds are rolling back in and there is thunder. We look surrounded by dark clouds but no rain yet. In the photo below you can see the clouds are thickening to the south. You can also see something else. Here is one more photo. Do you see it?
It is the beam. After thirty days of sitting up there, curing away in its wooden form, the form has been removed. This beam is huge. Soon Umberto will begin taking down the wall beneath it and I think we will all have a better perspective on how this area will look.Senor says I better get off this computer and shut it down because he sees lightning to the north and it is starting to rain. Okie dokie. But, first, more fountains.
The one below is at the new sports complex. There are two of them actually.

These fountains which are big enough to swim in are on either side of the walkway here as you go down into the complex.

Below is the new one at the hospital. There are about six stone columns surrounding this fountain, not sure what they are for, but they are very pretty.

Okay, okay, gotta run before this hits. New old bike is sitting out there and I do not need it to get all wet and rusty and lose the three gears I have. The wind chimes are singing. The palms are leaning sideways. Cookies is meowing non stop. Senor is snoozing. Thunder is getting closer...............adios, linda lou

New Waters in Town

2011-06-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

Hola. No water on the official day that begins the rainy season, not a single drop. To fool the palms and reassure them that yes there will be rain, I treated them all to a good drenching with the spray nozzle on the hose. They seemed real perky after that and slept well through the night.

We are still getting water in the mornings and Senor cleverly installed a couple of float valves in the eljibe, so we no longer have to turn the water on or off from the city. The valves take care of all of that for us, so no chance that 'one of us' can leave the hose on and accidentally over run the cistern and waste water.

Just to show you how lush the watered, shaded things are, here is the planting area around the mesquite. If you recall, this was thick with beautiful trailing nasturtiums from October to May. Of course, then it got too hot for them to stick around. There is now a lot of asparagus fern, little areca palms, succulents, marigolds and mothers in law tongues among other things. Most of these were in other places in the yard and because of the water shortage I tried to consolidate them into one area. The water shortage remains a mystery to many people. Four casas up the street from us there is no water coming in. The homes on the hillside leading to the mirador are still not receiving water. There are few homes on Loma Guadalupe that are not receiving water. No one has any idea what determines who has it and who doesn't. But most people would probably agree that the situation is much, much better than several months ago.

Which brings me to an observation. In the past few months three new fountains have been erected locally and they all have running water. So there are certainly funds available for fountains and city beautification. It also makes me think that the city may have been, and still is, just drastically conserving water in certain areas out of real neccessity and not because water lines were missing or pumps were stolen. Because if those scenarios had been true then surely the city would have spent funds on new pipes and pumps instead of the fountains. Okay, that makes sense to me, but maybe not in Mexico...............

I am excited about these new fountains. These fountains are absolutely gorgeous and this beautification of Alamos project, whatever it may actually be, is wonderful. Alamos is becoming more and more popular, especially with the Telenovella planning to continue filming its series here indefinitely. School is out. Summer is here, and soon, Alamos will be filled with Mexican summer tourists who all want to see the historical places where the filming has occurred. Town will look gorgeous to them because it is.

Below is the new fountain at the airport............... beautiful.

I talked to one of the workers this morning and he said the water works and will be turned on permanently next week. He also told me that he is doing three other new fountains in town, but I didn't understand where they were going to be. I don't believe he makes these stone fountains, just installs them.

Here is the new fountain at the old 'Black Cat Market'. This is right across the street from the IMSS (medical clinic).

Many years ago, the two arroyos, La Aduana and Escondido met in front of this old place. It was the commercial center of town and the mercado was here. The iron black cat sculpture is above the second story door.

The fountain below and courtyard are several kilometers outside of Alamos, but when coming in by bus or car, you would certainly see it. Built by the Municipio of Alamos, it is in a small town called Minas Nuevas.

When I was here, the workers had just turned off the water to make an adjustment. I went by there the other day and the two fountains are gushing beautiful cool water and the cottonwoods planted nearby are already offering shade to this beautiful new park. It is much greener and prettier now than in the photo.

Again, I don't know where the other fountains will be, but I would love to see the fountain in the Alameda working again. Fountains in the Plaza would be wonderful.

Okay time for me to get busy. We watched the U17 Boys World Cup soccer match on the computer yesterday, and Mexico beat Netherlands. The Cup is being played in Mexico, and this game was at the huge stadium in Monterrey. Today the U17 US team plays and we hope to pull that up on the computer as well around two or three pm. So lots to get done before that......got to feed the cat.

Que tengas buen dia!

Old Friends

2011-06-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

Buen dia. It is a wonderful breezy day here and we are hoping for a good storm. If you entered the 'Big Rain' Contest, I can report, we have not had it. However, we had a little chipichipi, which is a light rain, on both Wednesday and Thursday, late in the evening. We may have received around fifty raindrops at our house. It is the start of something big and that is what we are waiting for. Not to minimize the chipichipi, but the contest is about the big stuff.

Today is the twenty fourth, the official day the rains begin in the state of Sonora. It is known as Dia de San Juan Bautista.
Below is a photo of last night's brilliant sunset. When the horizon starts to get cloudy, the sunsets are remarkable.

We woke to a cool and cloudy morning. I am still going out early in the mornings. Day is breaking a little later, around four forty-five and I am usually out on the road by five. There's a place I like to go. The street is heavily cobblestoned and hard on new old bike so I usually make it part of my walking route. Two old friends. One on one side of the cobbles and one on the other side. They are like bookends that have been there for over a hundred years, separated only by a narrow cobblestone street.

Looking into the front door of Number 23, I can see the old vigas, the wood beams that are still remaining, varro blanco in horizontal patterns between the rotting wood.

Old iron scroll work and ladrillos, unfired bricks, still cover and outline the open windows.

A large overgrown yard backs up to the casa where the ladrillos have caved in after years of exposure to the elements and graffiti has covered what is intact.

Across the street, the friend sits still and quiet.

On the outside wall, triangles offer small glimpses into the casa and looking inside the wood framed window, there is evidence of this being a fine casa at one time. Lovely arched doorways lead from room to room and while the vigas have since fallen or rotted, their square openings can still be seen.

It is surrounded by crumbling walls. Its jardin, or garden, is filled with tall palms and mesquite trees and flowering bouganvillea.

Back inside, a newer brick wall was erected at some time.

When I stand near each of the casas I can feel the old energy, and I have my own story. Maybe these two little casas were once part of the the large hacienda next door. I think maybe ranch casa, like ours which was once a ranch house for the old tequila factory.

Two sisters and their large families. Children playing together in the cobblestone street, chasing dogs and chickens, tossing rocks and cans. The smell of wood smoke coming from the old ladrillo asador, the cooking grill, in the back yard of twenty-three. Young girls grinding corn and chopping onions, old grandmothers, in flowered aprons, frying tortillas on a comal, the griddle. Fathers and grandfathers coming home from working on the hacienda, training horses, feeding livestock, gathering water from the main well at the alameda.

Can you see it?

I love this walk, love standing in the street beween the two casas, letting my imagination go. Alamos is old, and it is full of stories and secrets. It just opens itself to imagination.

I still have time for a little siesta and maybe a nice dream about those two casas and what it might have been like long ago.

So, que le vaya bien, linda lou

Stuff

2011-06-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

Hola, hola, hola. Here are the pillows I glue gunned up yesterday. They are the pillows on the backs of the chairs and are gold and rust. I know you have seen the chairs, perhaps even the fabric, but now the pillows are completed and they make the chairs nice and comfy. We keep the chairs in the fake kitchen, across from the Belgium chest, where we have the DVD player and the flat screen TV.

It has been too hot to watch a movie in there, so we are trying to figure out how to get the flat screen into the bedroom where the air conditioning is. Here is the chest and the covered flat screen and as expected, Senor is reflected in the mirror, back there, in one of his tool closets.

Another beautiful overcast morning and lots of fog in the foothills, but it is all burning off and we are fixing to have a very hot day. We are getting so close to Dia de San Juan Bautista and the official day of rain, and I have my fingers crossed.

We are still getting city water, every day, for several hours and it is enough to keep the tinnaco, the new junior tinnaco and the eljibe all full, enough to water everything we want, but I promise you, I am still selective and careful.

The mesquite man came yesterday. He comes and rakes up as much of the mesquite pods as he can. They are constantly dropping from the tree. Then he takes it in huge bags to his fields and feeds his cows. Not only do his cows like the seed pod, they like the leaves and branches as well.Below is a field down the street where piles of mesquite branches, leaves and pods feed the cows.If you liked my bench, you might like two of my new pendants I have put in my Etsy shop. I have to cut and fire again soon, as I said before. I will have a couple of bazaars this fall to attend as well as a few Open Houses here in Alamos and I need to get ready.

No, I am not so bored that I have to keep finding things to do. I have always been like this, I love to just make stuff. My sister is like this also, but she is the talented one. She can take a stick and turn it into something incredibly creative and decorative.

The nice thing about making stuff now is I can make all the fun stuff I want, and because I am so limited in the types of supplies I have here, it makes it that much more creative and fun.

In fact, now the pillows are done, I have something new to work on and I will show you soon.

I really need to get going though, get myself to the mercado before it gets to hot to put a foot out the door. Then this afternoon I plan to try and give up the nappie and work on my new project!

Hope you are having a great day today, doing whatever it is you are doing! linda lou

Working Right Along

2011-06-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

Buenos tardes.

Sorry, I have left you in the dark for a week, haven't I? I have been busy and so has Senor.
I have been very busy napping a lot. In fact, I just woke up from a two hour nap. Lately this has been the pattern and I am vowing to break the habit soon. It's just so darn hot in the afternoon. I start out with a nice book and think to myself..............i will read for an hour and then post to the blog....................soon, I am out like a light. Then it will take me an hour to actually wake up and snap back to life.

We had a good trip to Guaymas last Monday. Once there, it took them about thirty minutes to decide our Visas were ready. Only they were not really ready because it took another hour for them to do all the paperwork and copy all the paperwork and stamp all the paperwork and get our fingerprints and get our signatures, and attach our photos to the Visas and laminate them.
But, they were the nicest people we have dealt with yet in an immigration office, so we will go back next year and hope to have another nice experience.

Senor and Umberto spent this last week extending the beams of the portal. I hope you can tell by the photos how much progress they made. You can also see, I hope, what a gorgeous portal this is going to be. Long, long, long, sixty five feet long and twelve and a half feet deep. Lots of room for lots of stuff. Lots of places to stay dry when it rains and they even put in the foundation for the fireplace when it is cold.....nice, really nice.

Beyond where they are working, (and looking north) there is still about twenty five feet to finish. Looking to the south in the second photo, you can see the concrete sections (that will eventually become the floor) have been finished and filled in with dirt. Much easier to walk on now.

I have been busy in the mornings. Etsy has taken up a lot of my time and I now have over one hundred glass pieces listed in the shop. I keep saying I need to cut and fire again, but the room warms up pretty quickly in the mornings. I may temporarily move all my glass to another room and get some work done and then, fire at night.

I tackled the recovering of an old bench that I bought at a bazaar here in town. I paid about fifty pesos for it (less than four dollars). The fabric is old and torn and the wood is scraped and scuffed. The seat is a little crunchy when you sit down, but the wire underneath is heavy and strong.I added new fabric which was actually a roller shade I bought up in Tucson at Goodwill. I used my favorite tool, my heavy duty glue gun, to do the work.

I think it is an old bench and written on one of the boards when I ripped off some fabric was a signature and a date. As I worked I told myself, I have to go get a pencil and write this information down. Then something happened, and I forgot about it. I covered it right up. But still visible is a faded old tag with the number of the job order, the product order and a line for naming the finish is blank. So at least I have that.

I have yet another bench and am trying to decide what to do with it. I will show it to you soon and maybe you will have an idea.

In the meantime, I plan to finish up two pillows this afternoon as soon as my dead head wakes up and yes, the glue gun is heating up. I sewed three sides on each pillow and then decided it would be easier to finish it off with the glue gun. I am sure it will work fine.

Surely Senor shakes his head in disbelief as he toils out in the hot sun with heavy hot cement while I work away inside with nothing more important than a glue gun.....hmmmmm.

There are clouds billowing on the horizon and it is fairly windy, but otherwise we are getting nothing from the hurricane south near La Manzanillo. The mornings are cool and fresh around five when I go out on new old bike or for a walk, but it heats up fast.

Speaking of heating up, the glue pistola is ready and it is cool enough under the finished portal section to get to work on the pillows.

We are working right along, linda lou

Now, Does That Make Sense?

2011-06-12T15:32:00.000-07:00

Hola, this is what the locals are talking about. This is the little cloud that sits on top of Mt. Alamos before it should rain. This was on Thursday. I thought it would rain for sure. It smelled like rain.

The wind picked up and blew it away.

We did, however, get water all day Thursday from the city pipes. Then we got it all day Friday. I got out of control and watered everything twice. We had to turn off the water because the cistern overflowed twice. Then, absolutely no water on Saturday. Again, water all day today. It makes no sense, but I am just so grateful to have water on some days and I hope it keeps up this way.

Tomorrow we return to Guaymas for our FM3s and we hope they are ready. It will have been a two week waiting period. The status can be checked online, but it doesn't make too much sense. It says, translated, our documents have been presented in the office and if changes are needed they can be done online. So, does that mean they are ready or not ready?

There is a telephone number you can call, but it just rings and rings and rings. That doesn't make any sense either. The day we were there we saw at least seven people working. A few of them were not really even working and I could hear the phone ringing. So, in the past we have returned in two weeks and decided to wait two weeks this time as well.

We were asked to supply a new and interesting document. A formal bank cover letter, called a Resumen de Cuenta. Fortunately she supplied it and did it at her own computer, but said we would need to do it next year. It is a paper with formatted boxes and columns and has our bank name on it, our names, address of the bank (this is our bank in the states), email and how much money was in our account during the months of January through April. I have no clue how to do that format. It makes no sense.

Of course, now that Calderon has signed a new immigration law, we probably will not need it next year. Now that is the good news and that is what is starting to make sense. Every year there will be a change and there is just no need to worry about whether what we did this year made sense or not. Now, does that make sense?

So, we are good, good to go up to Guaymas, at daybreak manana, have a K freeze on the way, enjoy the scenery and have a good time.

They Just Didn't Understand my Spanish

2011-06-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

Hola, hola, hola.

I visited with a Mexicano friend this morning and told him I had asked the city to bring water and they did not come.

He came over to the house and made a phone call.
The city came right away with a big truck and we have a full tinaca and a full eljibe. I just can't begin to tell you how good that feels. The man that brought the water said the Senoras in the water oficina did not understand my Spanish. #**# #**# ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I just did two loads of colorful laundry. I was surprised to see it barely made a dent in the water level. So, after Senor does a load, I think I will do another.........we have not had enough water for laundry in about 2 months. I did a lot of washing last week in the hotel sink. There were no clouds last evening. A lot of wind, but nothing in the sky. We did go and fill our car tinaca twice, but most of the water went for cement mixing and watering and then, up to the house tinaca before the water man came.

I see the first Eastern Pacific hurricane is in route way down near Central America and that the forecast for Alamos is hot and dry.

The locals say that as soon as we see a significant cloud on the top of Mt. Alamos, it will rain. Here is the mountain this afternoon. Hot and dry, no little rain hat up there.
That photo is taken from the street, right outside our gate and to the south, so it is pretty easy for me to run and check the mountain throughout the day. We can also see it from inside the casa, but the spectacular view is at the gate.

We lost three small palm trees, but they were on their way out before we lost water. I think they were just getting too much sun and we couldn't save them from that. Everything else looks pretty good and I have only been watering twice a week, with the exception of potted palms and the roses and the fig. That is an every day event.

I have not watered the El Fuego trees in over a month and still they are blooming, opening outlandish, oversized bright orange flowers against the baby blue sky. The Plumerias are still blooming, their vanilla cinnamon scent is most powerful in the morning and evening, but the largest one is desparate for water.

So, Senor and the cat and I are hanging out inside the bedroom, waiting for the day to cool. Then we will make our evening trek over to the pump station and fill our car tinaca.

Wherever you are, I hope your water situation is good and if you are getting rain, try and save it in some big garbage cans or barrels, something....... I think when the rain gets here, we will be setting the car tinaca outside and just letting it fill. Maybe even buying a few large plastic garbage cans as well, five gallon buckets, whatever I can get my hands on..........

Okay, mi amigos, que tengas buen noche! linda lou

Water

2011-06-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Hola. Here is late yesterday's sky, right before twilight. The breeze really kicked in, the palms swayed and the clouds rolled.

Around this time we went to the pump station on Calle Chihuahua. I have no reason to be nervous, the city said we could get water as long as we could transport it. I guess the problem is, do I believe that? I just don't know. So, we went when it was cooler and when I thought less people would see us.

While we were pumping a government ruck went by. A water truck went by. No one stopped.

I showed you the station yesterday. Here is the switch.

The pump below and then, the opening to the well.

A truck with a really small tinaca pulled up behind us.

Senor positioned the hose. It would not fit through the back, so he put it through the window. Turn on the switch, he yelled............turn off the switch he yelled.

He had forgotten to close the little valve he constructed and attached to the tinaca. So I was already trying to take photos and ran to the switch as water came out into the car. The lady waiting in the truck behind us came running to help and then I guess she just liked holding the hose because when I asked if she wanted me to take over, she said no.Meanwhile, her esposo was leaning against his truck, laughing a little, I don't know, at her? At us?

I asked her if she had water at her casa. Not for three months she said.

We made two trips.

Back home, Senor is so proud of himself even though I am the one who discovered we can use this well and pump station.

He is proud that he thought to buy a little tinaca and that he hooked up the system needed to get the water from the car to the cistern.

So, while the sun set behind us over beautiful Mt Cacharamba, water poured into the cistern.

We stayed up way too late in the evening, pleased as punch with our succes.

We we saw lightning flare in the eastern sky, but it never worked its way very close to us. The wind stayed steady and calm.

I think in a few hours we will make another trip to the pump station. It would be wonderful to get enough water to do some laundry manana.............

adios, linda lou

Taking Matters into our Own Hands

2011-06-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

Buenos tardes! Wow, did it get hot here fast. Around one we lock everything up and hide out in the bedroom with the mini split that really is not a mini split, but thank goodness it is the air conditioning unit and not just a heater. It is hard to even come back out around five pm because the bedroom is so wonderfully cool.

By five the heat has subsided a little and when we came out yesterday, this is what we saw. Beautiful, dark, billowing clouds. By nightfall, the wind had blown them off to the north over into the Copper Canyon. But it was a brief glimpse of what is coming.Last Tuesday, I went to the Palacio to pay the fifty peso water bill. Roughly three something in US dollars. Hey, city, i said.............hey, i have not had a single drop of water at my house for three whole weeks now.............where do you live? she asked................well, she had the water bill and address in her hand, but i told her anyway...............we will bring you water on Lunas....................free, gratis agua? i asked.....................si, gratis, Lunas.

I got up at five am this morning, I wanted to be ready in case they came that early. Well, it is now almost noon and I have yet to see the water truck. I knew she was lying to me. I knew it, but I really did want to believe her. I am pretty sure we are not going to get any water from the city.

I have noticed that there are a few trucks now and then at the water station on Calle Chihuahua. Ordinary people like Senor and me seem to be in waiting lines to get water. I asked city water lady about this and she told me that as long as we can transport it, we can go there and get water.

Senor and I missed the truck so bad, but decided we could transport water in the car, with a very small tinnaca, so he bought one. If the city does not bring the water by six pm, we will be taking matters into our own hands and driving to the little station. Here is the station. Inside that little black box is a small switch. A Mexicano friend told me you just flip the switch and get all the water you want. My guess is we will be testing out that switch later today. If we have to keep buying tinnacas full of water from our friend, Ramon, who has a never ending water supply from three wells, we will go broke before too long.The 'Rain Contest' is in full swing, on both the Glasspondstudio Facebook page and my personal page. It just better rain soon or I will go absolutely mad.

I am keeping busy, lots of beautiful new glass is listed in my Etsy shop. http://glasspondstudio.etsy.com/ and even more fun, is all this ridiculous talavera painting I am doing. Here is the bread box. I am liking it a lot, but have no place to put it. Guess I will put it away in a box with the talavera papier mache' cake cover I made.

Senor just finally came in from working out all morning in the hot sun. Time for cold air and a good book.

If you haven't guessed a day and time for the rain to start, go ahead and do it. I will keep the contest open for a few more days.

I will try and get photos later of our water gathering and let you know how it went.

siesta............

The Rain Contest Begins

2011-06-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

Hola, hola, bahola.

Got back from Guaymas yesterday in time for Senor to go play bridge and I enjoyed a nice lazy afternoon with Cookies.

We have to return to Guaymas next week to get the visas. Good grief. At least it is only a 4 hour drive.

They asked us for something we have never been asked for. They wanted a cover letter of our bank statement, translated fully into Spanish. Fortunately, they said they would do this for us this time. We would not know how to format the letter with all of its columns and boxes. They told us we would need to supply it next year....blah, blah, blah. I am going to pretty much play ignorance with that. If they want a translated bank statement from me, they can figure out how to get it just like they did the other day.

As always I was a nervous fool and wanted to throw up before we got to the office. This was our 4th time but it doesn't get any easier. We were 1st in line and an American couple from San Carlos came up behind us. She was all happy and relaxed and I though, jeez, that must be nice until Senor pointed out she was drinking a Coors light, right there in the INM office, in plain sight, at 8am in the morning. She didn't even bat at eye when she and her husband were told they would need to return in 15 days even though there they were just that morning, SUV all packed in the parking lot, ready to drive north to their home in the US.

Well, I am done worrying and no, I would never consider going to the INM with a beer in hand at 8am. I am not going to concern myself too much because Presidente Calderon signed a new Immigracion Law on May 25, changing everything we have been doing since the last change in May, 2010. Although this new law deals directly with changes for immigration over the southern borders of Mexico, it will definitely affect those of us with Visas. You can check out the new law, if you are so inclined at the link below, otherwise, like me, keep your blood pressure low and just pretend it does not exist ................

http://yucalandia.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/new-immigration-law-published/

Now we can get on to a more important topic!

Dia de San Juan is an actual Mexican calendar day. It is the day of the rain of Saint San Juan, or the day the monsoon season is supposed to begin. I think it is June 22 and Senor says June 24. We cannot find our Mexico calendar to confirm. But not to worry.

Here is how it will work.

The person guessing closest to the day and time the rains begin will win the pendant below.

Choose one day and one time on that day. I am also listing the contest on my personal facebook page and on the Glasspondstudio facebook page, which you can access, if you want, through the Glasspondstudio page.

I will keep track of it all and when it rains, I will let you know the winner. You can choose any day. You don't need to wait and choose the 22nd or the 24th. Think positively. You could pick manana, although I wouldn't. It is dry as an old bleached bone around here even though the Weatherunderground predicted a 25% chance of rain last night. Blah, blah, blah.............

Tomorrow I hope to update you on the water situation, what Umberto did while we were gone, and I will show you the breadbox. For now, siesta.............linda lou

Remember This Day?

2011-05-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

Hola!
Remember this day?
This is how we looked three years ago on this Memorial Day weekend. Loading the truck and the U haul, under a gray and cloudy sky. As a last minute thought that afternoon Senor slipped his fake plastic doves in the back of the truck and how did I miss seeing them until we were just about to go across the border? Imagine my horror at what looked like dead doves fixing to be transported into Mexico.Some days this all seems like yesterday and then, somedays it seems so long ago.
Either way, I can truly report we are still having fun.

And it's been a busy week. Without boring you too much, we have had no water from the city, not counting the days anymore. There is a new rumor that part of the water pipeline that services the city from out near Sabino Lake is missing............whatever.

Senor and Umberto spent the week working on the huge beam that will span the center of the house. Below they are laying the rebar and the electrical cables that will be inside the cement beam.Here the form is up and extra help has arrived and after ten hours the cement has been loaded, bucket by bucket into the wood form. Now I was very excited about this because once that beam is up, the vigas can be laid going west to east and after that, the roof goes on. I say I was excited until Senor said it takes twenty-eight days for the beam to cure. I started to complain and he said to watch it or he would let it just sit there for longer. So I closed my mouth and just went about my business.

And my business has been painting a bread box. I will show you that a different day because I am busy today getting paperwork ready. We are heading up to Guaymus manana to renew our Visas. We generally go to Hermosillo to do this, but we are tired of going there. It is not our favorite town, so we will try going to Guaymus.

Everyone has an opinion about something and we have had folks tell us that you have to always go to the same office to renew. Well that does not make any sense so we will try Guaymus and see what happens. I am more interested in going to the beach for a couple of days. So in between renewing the visas, we are going to take a mini vacation.

So here we are, Memorial Day weekend and once again, we will be on the road and I am sure I will spend a bit of time, thinking about the day we left the Pacific Northwest and set a southerly course.
What a wonderful and exciting adventure. Que le vaya bien, linda lou

Water Stealers

2011-05-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias!
Well, on the fifteenth, I was excited, woke early, energectic, thought for sure we would have a blast of water from the city, nada.

Then, foolishly, on the twentieth, I repeated that routine, nada. So, I do understand now, the water department was just trying to make me happy.

We got in new old car to take a drive and without really planning it, we ended up at the Rio Cuchujaqui.

The water is beautiful there, shimmering in the sunlight, but you can see how dry everything else is. The only green things anywhere are the mesquite trees.

In the photo above you can see the long narrow bridge that we had to drive over. It is fairly steep, with a hairpin turn at the very bottom, but worth it to see the quiet flowing river. I don't know exactly where it is flowing, but not to my house for sure.

There are so many rumors in town about the water situation and they keep getting more and more ridiculous, and while I am not into spreading rumors, these are worth repeating. People now say that the city had a huge brand new pump, ready to be installed in the well out past the cemetery, the pump was left unwatched overnight, it was stolen and there is no more money to replace it. Senor thinks it would have taken a big forklift to get a pump that size out of town and surely, Policia or someone would have seen it going down the street in the middle of the night.

Personally, I like another rumor better. The mesquite trees are lush and full, a deep brilliant green. You can see them as they work their way up the dry brown mountainsides and wind through the dusty valleys. Their roots can go several hundred feet undergound or so it is said. The mesquites are stealing all of our water!

Soon we are going to have Umberto dig down into our well a little ways and see what's up. We would like to see if it is even lined with bricks or perhaps it has crumbled in or maybe there is something in there that should not be in there. Maybe our mesquite roots have spread there and they are constantly slurping up that surging water below.

Until 'Soon' happens, Umberto and Senor are just fixing to pour the biggest beam of the roof top. They have finally completed the wood form and the rebar square for the center. Any minute they will be starting.

In the meanwhile, there is NO water today, but it is a beautiful day, very breezy, not too hot.

I think next week I will start the contest, as I did last year, for guessing the day the big rains will start here. I will look through the glasspondstudio and choose a beautiful prize. Check back soon for all the details on that.

So the flies are swarming, the mesquites are stealing all our water and the dry hillsides are turning drier, this big beam is going up and the beautiful breeze is tinkling the windchimes, wow, what's not to love!

...........................wherever you are, que tengas buen dia! linda lou

Decorating Little Houses

2011-05-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

Buenas tardes!

Below is the update on the newest cute little house. This one has been cemented, so I believe it is permanent.

To the left you can see our neighbor's little house. We definitely have a cute and unique little roof. We will eventually have a total of five of these little houses on top of the casa.

I am already thinking well beyond Senor. I could probably send a strand of Christmas lights up there and light up the roofs of the little houses for the Posada. You know me by now, and I would definitely do that. Wouldn't it look cute? Should I do white or colored lights?

And I would have to do it while Senor is at bridge so he will not have the opportunity to say............. nope, no way, ABSOLUTELY NOT.............well, where is his holiday spirit?

Speaking of bridge he is out at it again and this is the third time this week. When he does that he comes home and can't function, says his brain is completely fried, so I do not know what he is thinking. I cannot tell a lie, I like some afternoons to myself, so I don't mind, well, you know, as long as the work gets done in the mornings.

Occasionally, at History Club or when I am out and about and run into someone, a lovely older lady, she will say to me.......oh, your husband is so nice.......he has excellent bridge etiquette...............he deals very well..............he is so proper........he is very, very meticulous (I hear this one a lot)..............i so enjoy playing bridge with your husband.

Well this is very sweet and he really enjoys playing with all the ladies, both young and older. I am very happy they enjoy playing with him. And once in awhile another man will play, but more often than not, it is Senor and the ladies.

I know he must have good bridge etiquette and good card etiquette in general, and he learned that from his mother. He also passed that etiquette on to our children who are great card players and very patient and understanding even with their mother who has to be reminded how to play gin rummy. People ask me why I don't learn bridge so he and I can play together......HA! I would rather stay home and swing from the chandeliers, well, if we had any.

I do, however, have creative cooking skills and this also part of the reason I could never play bridge. I can't follow a recipe. I always speed read (thank you Dad, for teaching all of us kids how to speed read) right through the recipe and almost always leave out something, so I am sure I could never follow the recipes and rules for bridge.

As I write I am braising ribs over the mesquite fire at the asador. I saute'd a bunch of scallions, garlic, onion and peppers, made a nice white wine roux and added browned ribs. The electric bill will come in about five days and I am sure I braised us into a high bill bracket with all of the hot plate braising I did in February, March and April. So this is my third asador fire braising and so far, it's worked well. I just have to keep the fire going for at least three hours, hard to do on a hot day like today. But I go out, put on a log and rush back in to the bedroom where I have the air conditioning on.

Tomorrow is a big day, it is the fifteenth. Remember? More water, Senora, on the fifteenth or twentieth of May! That is what they said and maybe we will find out manana what it might mean.
I think I will take a short siesta before I need to run out and throw another log on the fire. I am on Hour #TWO!
I also need some time to think about my holiday light decorating. I can easily put an extention cord up on the outside of the big house and decorate those little houses. But I still think I could not have a fire, unless, maybe the lights could go up the sides and on top and not near the openings? Do you think the little house would be too hot? For instance, if I were gone and Senor lit a fire...... He may have excellent bridge etiquette, but his response to little surprises like that is not very proper............

Little House

2011-05-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

Buen dia! Good grief, blogger is being in complete control today as I cannot move any photos.
So just go with the flow.

I thought maybe I could get through this post without mentioning the W word, water that is. But, nope, sorry, no can do. The W word is always on my mind. We are getting 3 hours of water at a fine tiny trickle. We got more water in an hour and a half three weeks ago than we are getting now.

I went down to the Palacio and took a risk................we have muy poco agua in mi casa I said with a big smile on my face.

I have been hearing all kinds of stories about people in water distress, unhappy people who really need their water. Apparently if you pay your bill, and you can prove you are not getting water, the city is obligated to deliver water. Unfortunately we don't fall in that category because we are getting a few inches every day. But I thought I would just politely mention that there is a problem at my house, too. You know, conversational stuff, oh, by the way............

The lady at the cashier's window gave me a huge smile, she is always very nice, but she seemed truly surprised that we were not getting much water. She called in the boss from the next room. The boss looked at my bill and said (and I am translating here)......you are not getting any water...........no, i am getting some water, not much...............you should be getting lots of water, he said....well, i am not, i said with a really big smile.......he left the small room and returned shortly.......you will get a lot of water on the fifteenth or the twentieth of the month, he smiled and she smiled and i smiled and i said gracias and que la vaya bien and they smiled even bigger and said...........a usted. And I left. I am not the confrontational sort.

So we will just see what all that was about. Does it mean we will get a lot of water on one of those days or a lot of water, all the time, starting on one of those days. Or does it just mean, ahh, gringa is not getting the amount of water she wants, let's just tell her she will get more to make her happy. Well, they did smile a lot and that made me happy.

All right enough about the W word even though I walk, eat and sleep it.

Take a look again at the photo above and I will fill you in. You can see the unfinished portal in the foreground, the ladrillo wall of the 'kitchen to be' behind that. The white wall of the existing casa behind that will be coming down (with the exception of the far right door) and will all be the one big room. Is that clear? The completed portal ends where the ladder is leaning against the portal.
You can also see how DRY everything looks.

This morning Senor and Umberto are up on the roof trying to create one of these things you will see in the photo below. I call these little houses, but they are the top of the chimney. This one belongs to our neighbor.

Now Senor is very creative and so is Umberto and Senor tried to explain to Umberto that this is what he wants, but he wants a different roof. Then Senor made the mistake of letting Umberto work for awhile alone while he cut bricks and when he went back up on the roof he discovered Umberto had gotten a little too creative.

So Senor made him tear down the little house (it had not been set in concrete yet) and they got in the car and drove around town looking for the kind of little house Senor wants. Now Umberto is back on the roof and Senor is cutting more bricks. I asked Senor if he knew what he was doing and he said no. I asked him if Umberto had a clue and he said no, but they were more confident after their drive through town.

This is the little house before the drive. Look at that beautiful, DRY, mountain.
Later today I will get up there and take a better photo of what the little house looks like now. Then the following two photos are just of the completed section of the portal. I think it will give you a good perspective of where construction is.

Some days blogger seems to cooperate and others, there is practically no controlling it and it does just what it wants. In fact I just previewed this post and it's all in Spanish. Good grief again. Usually when it does this I find it always post in English, but I guess you never know.

This afternoon I am off to a music practice, working on some new songs with my good mandolin playing friend. One of the COBASH students, who is a excellent guitarist, will join us and hopefully before too long we will have a music fest.

I suppose Senor would like to get on the internet and research the little houses because I just went out to check up on the progress. He is walking around up there, shaking his head, and I think they have taken down the whole little house now.

Funny how Senor has no problem constructing a big house but when it comes to a little house.........

que tengas buen dia! linda lou

Hot Mexican Legends

2011-05-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Buenas tardes.
Now just look at this picture. Senor with a blowtorch. Of course, this is not unusual, but it is the first blowtorching he has done since he blowtorched his thumb and spent the afternoon at the hospital.
If you look closely the flame is going and he could easily become distracted and blowtorch himself again. He is blowtorching a copper water pipe.
I kept looking at this one spot on the ground thinking, I didn't put water there. I didn't water anything near that spot. Still, every day it was wet. So I dug my fingers down in there and water just oozed up out of the ground and we discovered a leak in the pipe. All water proceeded to be shut down and off for about a day until Senor repaired the pipe.

A few other water related things happened this week. Of course it would be exciting news if I could tell you we have had lots of water, but I know you want the truth. We are getting a few inches in the cistern each day. And I have to keep reminding myself every day that water gets rationed in the US, too.

Then while Senor was taking a shower one day, the water shut off completely. After I supplied him with a few buckets of water so he could get the soap out of his eyes, he was able to figure out the drains were clogged up with silt sand and adobe dirt.

Then the pump broke. We had no running water inside or out for about four days. Both Senor and Jovito, the man who drives the little red tourist train, worked on it and the pump was finally fixed.

I am always looking for the bright side and while it was just on the outskirts of my mind, I did get away without having to do dishes for several days. The down side was I still had to cook.

We have had four or five loads of water brought in. I forget now, but we never seem to catch up.

There are a lot of flies around town, seems to me more than usual, and a friend's gardener says Mexican legend says excess flies in May, means a good rainy season. Normally I am swatting them left and right, but suddenly I welcome them, they have become sacred little rascals to me. I hope they bring all their friends to town, they can camp in my yard, as long as they bring rain.

I asked the gardener a block over about this. He says...............ah, si', flies means a wet summer, little black flies means a wet summer and lots of wind and rain and storms............we needs to feed dees flies, so they will stay around especially because it is so hot now....................

Whooweee and has it been hot. Dry and hot. Hot and dry.

The Cinco de Mayo parade was hot. Not too dry as many of the kids on the back street where we watched the parade were throwing water on each other and vying for positions in the shade.

Overall, whether the kids really wanted to be there or not, because of the heat, they all seemed happy. I am showing you only a few of my parade photos, my favorites.

I do love these little girls.

too hot to march..............

too hot to play............notice the heavy wool coats............

this is dedication.................

giggling boys, second row back................

and what must be one hot iguana............

So, it was hot...............blah blah blah. We are not really into the hottest days yet. And that's because it is dry. We should be relishing this weather, eating it up like candy, like there is no room for anything else but this weather. Yet it is just a little taste of what is yet to come.

So, I went to town. I bought Zukar, the Mexican sugar that turns brown when it is boiled with water. It is what I feed the hummingbirds.

But tonight! A special dinner! I am putting out little silver bowls of cooled boiled sugar water to attract the flies. Sugar water because I am sure they will want to stick around after they eat. Silver because I want them to feel special and loved.

Then, we will cross our fingers that Mexican legends hold true.

Que tengas buen dia!

More Little Water Woes

2011-04-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

Hola.

The water situation has become worse, not better. We did end up purchasing a tankload of water and I would sure like to know where it came from, smelly stuff in my opinion. Not something I will want to brush my teeth with really.

We have had more than a few days without any water at all coming from the city. When we do get it we are still getting only about an hour's worth. The stories I hear from other barrios are not good. A few barrios without any water at all. So we are lucky to be getting our hour share. The water sanitization companies that sell the garaphones are doing a booming business!

I wish we had thought to ask Senor Franciso Ortiz Soto, from whom we bought our casa, why this old well was filled in with dirt. A number of our neighbors have good deep working wells. I wonder what happened to this one?

It's nice to have flowers blooming there, but I would rather have water blooming. One of these days, months or years, I think we will have to investigate and find out what is down there.

In the meantime, we have what we have.

And one thing we now have is a partially completed portal roof. With the exception of the one little odd shaped placa up there at the top, the portal is finished out to the south end. I still have to paint a few vigas. But that's okay.

Senor says that before long the roof, on the other side of the big beam, will be done out to eight feet, (right about to the edge of the little table), a fan and light will be up and it will be like we have half of the hilton garden room back. Nice. Ho, hum, we will see how long before long is.

The photo above is interesting. Those may be sun spots, but I was well out of the sun when I took the photo. Local Alamenses believe anytime spots like these show up in a photo, it means spirits are nearby. My Mexicana friend insists this photo says we have lots of spirits around our house. They are most likely trying to get used to the portal.

She also told me to look out of the corners of my eyes and not directly ahead and I may see them. I tried that the other night and it isn't easy to do, but she says I should keep trying especially since part of our casa is very old.

Senor came home with a big bag of aloe vera plants yesterday. A friend gave them to him to put on his wounded thumb. I reminded him that we have about six of these plants so he has an endless supply of fresh aloe and no excuse for not getting perfectly back to normal. So today he is at bridge and he is shuffling and dealing.

I have been on glass order fast forward and after this next fire I just might not cut any more glass for a long time. I have a lot of other things I need to get going. This is only one of twenty new pendants and after tomorrow night's fire there should be about thirty more.

So,I am on Antibiotic Round #Three for this kidney infection. But trying not to let it slow me down. The care I have been getting at the IMSS clinic has been great.

This afternoon I will be experimenting on the asador (our grill). I plan to build a fire and braise chomboros, which are shanks, and chilis in a big pot over the fire. I have been cooking these a bit in the past and they are excellent, but on the hot plate for three hours? I think that is raising our electricity bill higher than the kiln. So, first a siesta with Cookies, and then, I will light the carbon and toss the shanks in the pot.

Hoooweee, in the high nineties with a good breeze blowing, keeping the heat at bay.

Perfect afternoon for a hot fire!

Que tengas buen dia! linda lou

Water

2011-04-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias.

I thought you might like to see Senor's big hand. I took this on the day of the accident. Now several days later it is not that big 'looking'. He definitely has a good burn there and is using an antibiotic ointment. He has had to miss bridge twice because he thinks he cannot shuffle.

Word is certainly out about this inconvenience and he has received a number of calls from his bridge friends inquiring about his condition. It has been decided that Saturday he will play and someone will shuffle for him.We are really experiencing a terrible water shortage here. We did not even get any water at all on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Not one drop. This morning we got twenty two minutes.

We were not able to get any more water up to our tinnaca and it is just about empty.

We are looking at our plants and determining which ones we may have to let go. I hope this will not happen, but if more water does not come soon, some of the plants will die. We will get another large garaphon, the water jug, and we will go down to Dolisa and fill it and water the most critical plants. And probably use it for a back up inside the house.

I thought the whole town would most likely be on the same ration routine, but now I am hearing of people receiving water at other times of the day. So just like everyone else we are now leaving our hose open to the cistern all day and night and hoping to get a little more water.
The rainy season does not begin until late June and this is not looking very good.

Another problem created by this shortage is Senor is not mixing any concrete because there is no water to mix it with. So all the lovely beams and vigas are on hold and I am busy thinking we need a larger cistern.

We know people who have sixty thousand gallon cisterns. Can you imagine! Ours holds six hundred! Maybe we just need another tinnaca. Now that is a reasonable possibility.

For almost ten years prior to our moving here, the state of Sonora experienced a terrible drought. I hope we are going to have another.

Wherever you are, give thanks for your water!!
Que le vaya bien! linda lou

Goodnight, Senor

2011-04-18T10:04:00.001-07:00

Hola. Here is last night's beautiful full moon coming up in the east. It was a pretty one. And the silhouetted Mt Cacharumba in the west. Our days are getting warm, Saturday was in the nineties, but it has been very breezy and that is keeping the heat in check. Dawn is coming around five fifteen in the morning and dusk, around seven ten. The evenings are very nice and it cools down quickly and I still need my fleece when I am out early on new old bike or old feet. I am still having these blogger problems, it is sort of ridiculous. It is amazing to me that things go so smoothly for so long and then, poof! Someone Somewhere makes a decision that things would be better IF we did this or that, but most of us just will not really know how to do this or that. I switched back to the basic loader and am now able to move my photos around by clicking and dragging, but who knows how long that will last? Ahha! Something new! A new adventure! And speaking of new things, we woke to no water in the casa.

This is true, no water in the casa. Senor is working on the problem. He says there is not enough pressure in the city pump to get water up to the tinnaca. Now maybe this explains why everyone has a hose inserted in their tinnaca. That is how they are filling them.

It's just like blogger technology. I don't understand any of this stuff. By the way, farther down you will get to some dead space which I cannot get rid of, so scroll down and read on.

What I do know is, no running water in the casa means I don't have to dishes, don't have to cook. I can just be lazy.

But first I had to go around this morning to the little aborettes, grocery store, over on Allende. It is a short walk or bike ride. I love this little store. He has everything I need and if he does not have it, he tells me.....come back in an hour............. and poof! It is on the shelf, like magic. His prices are not any higher and the young owner is practicing his English and hoping he can sell enough to stay in business. I am trying to get my staples from him now and he carries dairy, vegetables and fruit, hot dogs, breads and toiletries and has a coke waiting for Senor every morning, nice. Below is beautiful and inviting Calle Allende.

Butter, Senor's coke and a topochico for me.

Umberto decided to not come to work today. He stopped by and told Senor he had a toothache.

I saw him on his bike, carrying on an animated conversation with someone and he did not look to be in any pain, nice. Maybe he will be here manana? He has been working on the ladrillo wall here. If you look at the columns you can actually get an idea of where the bi fold metal and glass doors will be. A set will be in between each column and with this wall coming up, I can really get a feel for what this might look like? Have I said that before?

I started this post around four hours ago and I was just fixing to tell you something important and Senor came into the room and said....................now, I don't want to alarm you, but I need to go to the hospital and will you drive me there........well, I was a little alarmed as he had his hands spread out in front of him and I looked and all of his fingers were there.....what happened?................i burned myself with the blow torch...............go get in the car, i said.

We had not been to the hospital before and Senor made light of it and said that this would just be another new adventure. So, we went to the hospital and Senor walked quickly right past all the pregnant girls, right past all the old coughing Senoras and the hunched over little grandfathers and through the emergency room waiting doors and I did not see him again for about an hour. I assumed he was alive or surely someone would have let me know. I tried to explain to the other people waiting why Senor's health was more important than theirs and that in the United States this is not what we call cut the butter. It is simply called emergency. I mean none of the young girls looked like they were on the edge of giving birth and everyone else was upright.

Senor came out with a huge bandaged hand, and I took him home, then returned to the pharmacy for salve and medication. Some friends were expecting us at their home, so I drove us there and Senor proceeded to have a couple of castillo rums and finally told the truth. In the daylight he could not see the flame of the torch and thought the nozzle was pointing one way, when in fact, it was pointing the other way, right over his thumb. Bet that hurt.

So we are back home and he finally has a little food in his stomach and is pretending to be reading a book, but I think this rum will put him to sleep.

Oh, oh, I remember what I was fixing to tell you. Last Tuesday something bit Senor on the ankle and his ankle swelled up as big as the thick end of a baseball bat. He could not flex it and could not walk on it until early Saturday. I kept saying...............maybe we should go over to the clinic or...............maybe we should get you to the hospital. But no, he would not go. I guess he was destined to get over there to have a new adventure.

He tells me now that he is sure we will have water tomorrrow............................goodnight, Senor.

My Friend Flicka

2011-04-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

Buen dia.
It is a sultry overcast day here in Alamos. There is not a lot of breeze and there is a little poof of darkness over Mt Alamos. For days it has felt like rain. It has smelled like rain. No rain.

Water is still being rationed, but in the same manner as I mentioned before. We have it for only a few hours every morning. I went to La Capilla on new old bike the other morning. La Capilla is a pretty little barrio on the other side of the Arroyo Aduana. I saw so many overflowing tinnacas. I was very surprised. But I believe people have figured out how to beat the water system. They are leaving their hoses on all the time. So, once the tinnaca is filled, they may already be gone for the morning or maybe they are still sleeping. And the water just runs and runs and runs. Into the street. Into the arroyo. I do not think we are saving any water, possibly only using more.

Here is my new little friend. I call him Flicka. He, I say he is a he, makes a flicka sound, over and over, all day long. He is a Gila Woodpecker and he has taken over both hummingbird feeders. The hummingbirds were beginning to come around and he chased them all away. They would be sipping away quietly and he would dive bomb them, force them off the feeder and take it all for himself.

I filled the second feeder which is on the adobe wall side. He took that one over as well. The good news is the hummingbirds are very smart. When he is busy at the feeder on the east side, they zip over to the west side. But, Flicka is also very smart. He watches them from the Plumeria tree. Wherever they zip, he zips as soon as possible after them. He wants to claim both feeders for himself. Spoiled little thing.

So I considered giving up the feeders, but last night I noticed Flicka has an early bedtime. So the hummingbirds are getting to the feeders late in the day and he is tucked away by his mommy in one of the yucca tree branches.

The feeders will stay up and Flicka will soon get too fat to fly and the hummingbirds will all fly with glee and drink nectar until they can drink no more.
Okie dokie, end of story. I have to water the palms. lindalou

Thanks for the Suggestions

2011-04-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

Buen dia! I received some very interesting suggestions in response to my last post and the difficulty I am having moving pictures around in the post. I then went and messed around with a pretend post and discovered that I can actually move pictures by moving the ones I want to reposition to the far right, all others to the far left and slowly drag the ones on the right to their new positions. Headache! No wonder a few folks suggested switching to Wordpress. But, for all I know I will have some other silly roadblock there, so we will move along and see how things evolve here.

Imagine my surprise when I returned home yesterday to see both water jugs empty......hmmm, and Senor off having lunch and playing bridge with the ladies........when he got home he suggested that we might need water............might? might need water?

Senor has played bridge three times this week. Like I said, I do not mind as long as he gets work done on the casa in the mornings. However, when he has done three days in a week before, after day three he has told me, Never, never, never again. I think this is only the third time he has done it, again.

He and Umberto did work non stop this morning and I really liked that. I was gone most of the morning, but I saw changes when I returned. They were working away on all this electrical stuff and pouring concrete. The electrical wires will go through all of those orange tubes. I think we will have a lot of electrical outlets.

There are a bunch of them right there. I can't imagine what kind of switch plate cover will take care of all that mess. I have already decided a big bushy palm tree will go there, or a pretty carved and hinged box to cover all of it up. We will be opening, shutting, opening, shutting. I think a palm will be easier.

Below they are putting the wood form against the ladrillo wall and will fill it with concrete.

They put wires through holes in the wood, attach triangle pieces of rebar which they twist tightly to keep the boards secure and in place.

I am just happy to see stuff happen, it tells me SOMEDAY, this might be done.

New old bike and I have been hanging around town a lot lately. We went to the clinic on Wednesday where I learned the results of the urine test and started a whole new round of antibiotics, so you can guess the results of that test. Again, I saw way too many Mexicanos I know there, I am sure I am supplying them with plenty of gossip.

Yesterday we were off to History Club which will soon wind down for the summer with so many people leaving town. New old bike took a little topple when the tequila delivery truck got a little too close. By the way, tequila is delivered to the restaurant there, and not to History Club.The conversation was very relaxed and casual, with people just remembering wonderful old things about Alamos, things like ghost sightings.

New old bike and I left the house at dawn this morning for a ride out to the new sports complex and a long walk around the soccer track. After a fruit snack and people watch at the Alameda, we went out to La Capilla to the little bazaar there. I bought a lace curtain and a swirly long wood thing that you hang outside. It rotates when the wind blows. Riding back to town I tried braking and holding onto it and it fell out of new old bike's basket. A few wood pieces flew off but I was able to retrieve them all while traffic stopped.

Then we were off to my friend Dolores's home where her maid, Armida and I toasted her with a Starbucks bottled frappuccino. Dolores, who was in her mid eighties and had lived year round in her beautiful casa in the historic district for over twenty years, passed away at Christmas. She and I enjoyed many coffees at her table

under her lovely, flowery portal. For our little party Armida served banana bread and arranged a shrine for Dolores. We raised our glasses and said......Salud, Senora!

I am happy to say Armida and I sat and talked in Spanish for almost an hour and I am pretty sure we understood each other. It was nice to share that time with her.

There are definitely some strange things going on with blogger. I am now unable to move any text. I am a fairly flexible person, but when it comes to the computer, I do not like change. I can't handle it, it causes me too many problems. You can laugh but I don't even know what a tab is. I don't even know how to make a file. It is a wonder that I can even post to this blog and keep four online glass shops operating.

I guess it is a real good thing I went on the blood pressure medicine.

Well, sweet Cookies has something brown in his mouth. The screen door is closed so he can't come in with it, but definitely time for me to investigate.

Que le vaya bien! linda lou

Need Help

2011-04-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias!
I need blog help. I can no longer move my photos and adjust them to where I want them to be in the text. I can't click on the picture and move it nor can I move it when editing the Html.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. We recently had someone work on our computer and not much has been the same since. Many of my pages pop up in Spanish and I have tried to correct this to no avail. A number of things I used to be able to do just can't be done anymore.

Moving photos around is very important to a blog post and it is annoying because there is so much I want to show you and now, it will really be the quite the jumbled up mess. So stay with me and maybe someone will tell me how to solve this problem and my next post will then be more organized and you will be able to follow it more easily.

We are having a very dry spell. Water rationing is going on big time. Since I am the water girl, it is important to stay on top of the rationing and keep everything from dying off. Some of our established plants, like the beautiful old plumeria above don't need much water, but our new palms and younger plants need it often.

Days have been warm and windy, with some cloud cover and that helps the water situation, but last week there were so many times when I went out to water only to discover, there was no city water coming in and not much water left in the cistern, which only holds about 600 gallons.

Since I am an early riser, I put myself in detective mode and began to figure out the city system for turning on the water. This must be for the entire city because I imagine one valve somewhere, at some building somewhere, where one person goes and just opens it or shuts it, water on, water off.

The water is coming on very early, maybe before five am. It is turning off around nine am. So, if you have a cistern and the city water feeds automatically, you are good to go. Like us, if it does not feed automatically, you have got to be on top of it in order to turn on your connection to the city water to fill your cistern. If you don't have a cistern or a tinnaco, you are only getting water straight into your house during those hours.

So, I am up early every morning to turn on the city water and fill the cistern so we have plant water and water for concrete or other construction purposes. I am not a water waster, so this all makes me appreciate the way Senor is constructing the roof to catch rain water......someday.

I am also glad we have our washing machine set up as it is to send the gray water to many of the plants between the casa and the adobe street wall. For example, the plants below are flourishing because they get the run off and I seldom water them.

Now this is the snarly part about the photographs. Here below you will see Umberto is chipping away at the ladrillos so Senor can put in all of the electrical outlets for the kitchen to be............this photo does not go here.................
Then here you will see the pretty clouds from yesterday.....................
Then here is the cistern again. That white pipe connects to the drain from the washing machine, so it pretty much turns into a small pond in this area when we do laundry.

And here you will see how nice all of this looks. You can see Senor at the gate and by the way, he is playing bridge three times this week. He said...........is that ok? Well I say as long as you are working on the house in the mornings that is fine. So, here he is busy, very hard at work, buying tamales from the little boys who come around every morning.
Oh, and now you will see a beautiful palm frond. That photo of a new shoot signifies that even though we are on water rationing, we are managing to keep our plants healthy and happy.
And here you can see into the cistern which I am filling as I write. And now what I have to say is I hope someone else is experiencing this blogger problem and can help me get back to being able to move my photos around or I will go crazy.
So enough for now. I welcome all advice. Saber es poder...............knowledge is power............over the blogpost.

Such is Everyday Life

2011-04-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

Hola. The other day I went to town.

When I left the house Cookies did not even bother to say goodbye, have a nice time, bring me a treat. So I just left.

I went on new old bike to meet a friend at a lovely little new bistro, Teresita's.
Calle Galeana was completely blocked off due to filming of the Telenovella, but I got through just fine.

Teresita's is a wonderful little bakery and coffee shop. She serves super cappuccinos and lattes. I am so hooked. Her music is good, too, she is bordering strong competition with Starbucks.
Below are a few photos of Teresita's. Huge windows, beautiful tiles, lots of ovens, espresso machines and sticky buns.

On my ride back home I noticed a parade of cars and trucks coming up our street. It turns out that our street became a major thoroughfare for Alamos drivers because of the street closure over on Galeana. It was a huge mess, especially when one of the TBC bus drivers decided he could make the sharp turn at the top of our street. He finally did, after about twenty minutes of backing up and adjusting this way and that. The long line of cars behind him had to back up, in turn, to allow the driver to make amends.

Cookies did not seem to mind. He snoozed through the whole mess.............didn't even say, oh, hi, you're back.......... have a nice time??

Just when I thought Galeana would surely open, Jesus, from down the street, brought his bulls up to a different field. His little boys, riding their burros, swinging their coiled ropes in their hands, herded the bulls in and out of the line of pick ups and explorers, as if they did this every day. I was so in awe of the sight I could not break away for the camera.

Twilight came and the trees and the sky over Galeana were lit up with huge lights for the cameras and the traffic on our street got worse. Another TBC driver attempted the turn in the dark and had to back down and try again. Motorcyclists and bicyclists moved in and out of the cars. Then the little red tourist train decided to come up the street.

Shown below in a rainy photo from last year, the train normally runs every twenty minutes and its route is up Galeana, among other streets, but never ours. The conductor blows the train whistle every few minutes and from our house we can hear it all over town.

The little red train ran until eleven that night.
That's a lot of train whistle.............. right outside our window.

The Telenovella finished early this week and has taken its huge trucks and equipment and directors and actors away for awhile. But this is something they have been doing regularly and I am sure they will be back soon as they have decided to continue filming the show here indefinitely.

I am really hoping they will be done on our side of town.
Ah, well, such is every day life in this small beautiful town in Mexico. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.
Brazos.........linda lou