Subtitled Blog........

GATE RAISING........



Today we had a gate raising. Our new gate went up between the new brick wall and now we will have more privacy...the only problem is I do not have a photo to show you because I did not know I was coming to the internet cafe today. And I didn't bring my camera adapter to be able to upload the gate raising photos.



We are in Navajoa and I have been practically shoved out of the truck and into the internet cafe because I was making things difficult in the hardware store.

Hardware stores here are not like home depot or even small Ace hardwares. The main room is very small and you have to know what you want because all of the tools and things are either hidden in the back room or hanging on the walls upstairs....where the customers don't get to go.



Now in Alamos, the hardware senors already know Bill very well, they just let him roam around all over the place. They know him in Navajoa also, but their rules are stricter.

So, after watching the guys work behind the counter and the little bugs on the concrete floor go one way and then another, and appearing terribly bored, I have been dropped off to blog...

I have so much more to tell you before he comes back to pick me up!



Our new gate was made by the local iron worker, Daniel. It is made of chino wood (sort of like mesquite) and beautiful iron. It has two open iron grill windows in it and a big latch to keep people and things out. Lots of senors came up the street to watch our gate being raised.



You will never know how much it means to have this gate up.

because.....all kinds of things have been coming into our yard. For instance, Dumb Dog. He lives across the road out in the agave ranchland. But he loves our cat food and since day one he has been coming to try and get it. He will do anything to try and get that food. And we throw everything but the kitchen sink at him to try and get him to go away. If we had a kitchen sink we would throw that too.

We aren't inhumane, we don't throw on him, just at him. And he LOVES it, he rolls over, he wags his tail and tongue. One of our workers said he is ours. Over my dead body is he ours.....so now, the gate will hopefully keep out dumb dog.



And it should keep out people as well. One afternoon I was in the back bedroom napping and I woke up to an elderly senor sitting at the foot of my bed. He started taking woven baskets out of his burlap sack. He was a basket vendor...that was very startling for me.....no problemo for him...no gate, just walk right on in.

Another time I was cutting vegies in the back and a whole family showed up to try and sell me their wooden carved birds.....And before the wall went up a man saw me in the window and wanted me to buy his used mexican cookbooks. He kept trying to shove them through the iron grill window. I just kept pushing them right back through again.

I am thrilled to have this gate.



This should also keep out little girls who are scared of Dumb Dog. One afternoon we came home and our neightbor told us she saw a little girl up on our roof. Dumb dog chased her up there. Do not ask us how she got on the roof or how she got down. Our neighbor went to call for help for her and when she came back, both dumb dog and the little girl were gone........



BEDROOM

This is the before photo of one of the two livable rooms of our casa. Here is the after photo. It took me two days to hand sew the curtains....(Bill just came back from the hardware store and I told him to go away). We bought the bed and base here in Navajoa and they delivered it one afternoon right before the rains came. Sheets are from the local grocery store.......A few added things that we brought across the border and voila!

very cozy.......not long after this Bill got alot of our electricity up and running and we now have ceiling fans going in both rooms.
Now in the photo below you can see where we spend alot our time. It's where we go to get out of the sun, where I have coffee in the mornings, where Senor Bill works on his architectural drawings of what he is doing to the house, where we eat our lunch or dinner, where we sit and throw things at Dumb Dog.....note there is a fan above, which Bill installed. It is great and really helps to keep out the gnats.......




GNATS...
are terrible here right now.

We have been told they are worse in August when the no seeums arrive to help them feast on all of us who are here in Alamos. We also understand that the gnats and no seeums, along with the scorching days and high humidity, are the main reasons foreignors return to their homelands for the summer. Well, see, we were told there was very little humidity here, up in the mountains of the sonoran desert, in the fact the guide books will tell you that. They could be talking about a different desert. We also thought the rains rolled in every afternoon, with thunder and lightning and cooled everything down and made it very pleasant.....
The exciting thing about that statement being wrong, is the rains come any time they very well please and thunder and lightning are sooo exciting here, it is beautiful. Often there is lightning all night and no rain.....When it rains, it absolutely pours. And it makes everything very humid.......
and makes lots of new baby gnats be born......
So what I have quickly learned is that you have to have rags...you can see my current assortment below.

I have have some pretty pink and purple ones that aren't shown in this photo..

The point of having a rag is to swat gnats. And swatting gnats takes talent. I have spent alot of time watching Mexican women swat gnats. Some swat very slowly and some very quickly. I have actually developed a gnat swatting rhythm to different songs. If it is a fast gnat day, I flip my rag to the tune of Clapton's Layla, a medium gnat swatting day might be Hotel California, a very slow day could be Nat Cole's Unforgettable. You just really have to get a song.

Once we began sleeping at our casa, I started getting up and walking to the soccer field track about 5am, 3 mornings a week. Alot of Mexicans are there, walking the track and swatting gnats with their rags. It is there, on the track, that I really leaned the art of gnat swatting and as I watched the people, especially the women, I realized how important it is to have an assortment of rags. Now when I am shopping I always am looking for new rags and styles.

well, you know who has pulled up in the parking lot and I think it's time to go. I have blogged myself out. BUT, still have alot to tell you about, so next time..hasta luego.....

Streets, Rain, Wall and Sunset

Today we are getting the leftovers of the Texas gulf hurricane. Heavy, heavy rains are pelting the outside. The thunder and lightning have subsided for awhile and I think I am safe on the second floor of the internet cafe down near the Alamos alameda.

I also think I am safe in here because for some reason the cafe is full of federales, with their big guns and all that other stuff they have..... They are standing around eating grilled chicken and a few are using the internet. They don't seem too concerned about anything but their chicken and whatever they are viewing on the computer screens....downstairs is a video store and Monsters, INC, is playing in Espanol. That is one of my favorite movies and I know alot of the lines by heart, so between the movie and the federales I am somewhat DISTRACTED!

Here is a photo of the rain rushing down our street toward the alameda. That water is about 6 inches deep. Our street, Calle Durango, was only paved last year and it actually has fairly nice even pavers. But that is rare here. The norm is cobblestone..everywhere. It is not real easy to walk on. I have to watch every footstep I make..which is hard to do sometimes, because there is soooo much to see here. Especially in the evening, when people open their windows and like any small town, they sit outside and watch people walk by and call hello, buenes tardes, com esta....walking here is great fun....
the pavers below are on our street and only a few others......
most of the streets are like the one above......
I took the above photo from the truck, but if you don't watch where you walk, you will walk right into one of these......

There has been alot of activity at our casa over the last three weeks. In the photo below, we have begun our grill area.
We are laying the concrete below....we will not have a kitchen for quite awhile, but we'll be grilling....now we are grilling on top of three bricks...the two photos above show the wall is almost done and the photos below are across the street and the sunset across the street from the house....

PHOTOS

Laying the foundation for our BBQ in the photo below....

Running of the bulls through our yard.....
Laying the foundation of cement and rocks for the brick wall....
more later....

Unable to post a few blogs

Hola...
I have not been able to post a few blogs lately. The error message reads:
Your HTML cannot be accepted, your tag is not closed....I have tried to fix the issue and can't...
So I am going to just give this post a try and see what happens.
There is so much to tell you.........so many projects going on, so many pictures to show you..we have lizards in our yard that are bigger than Ashes, our smallest cat.
We have had cows and bulls in our yard.

Lots of work is going on.
Eduardo and his boys are building the brick wall in front of the house. Bill and I are building the bbq grill where we are going to do most of our cooking. We have water, but no electricity.
we have rented a small casita on top of a hill, but hope to be in one of our bedrooms in the middle of next week.
The monsoon rains have begun. We walked across the cobblestone street to our neighbors last night through a foot of running water.
That's all for now, until I can see if this post will go through.

Policia Magnets

We are magnets for policia........
The first time we were stopped I probably accused Bill, under my breath, of going too fast, even though I knew he wasn't. We were behind a slow moving truck, overflowing with pigs.

Twenty year old policia came to the window of the driver's side and displayed what looked like an old cattle prod ....and a huge grin that said, "gotcha".
The cattle prod looking device had a plexi cover and a number on it...97.
"97 " policia said, "tu (en espanol and broken english) drive cambion 97. Es 60 aqui."
"Impossible" Bill said, "I voy (en english and broken espanol) behind that puerco (pig) truck. 60 KM, no more. No way I going 97. NO NADA WAY."

So this went on and on and on, back and forth between the two of them. I was actually surprised...Bill would not back down......I was sweating more than the pigs in the truck...Bill refused to say he was going that fast, but it scared me. In my mind I saw us at the policia station and it was place I did not want to be, maybe we would be jailed, lose our papers....omg, have to go back to Seattle.....

Policia took Bill's license and would not give it back and told us we had to drive to the sherrif to pay the fine. There are no sherrifs in Navajoa.
We asked for the license back. We tried to explain that we could not drive with out the license.....after 20 minutes of chitter chatter, I said to both of them, "Allright, vamanos to officina. Let's all go together and nosotros pagamos el fine. Tu vamos con nosotros. You go with us in our truck."

As I turn around and look at the back seat, I am thinking... do I clean the back seat......or should I offer him the front seat????
He shook his head.....He said,"ok, bueno, no ticket. Es bueno. No ticket."
We said, "No ticket?"
He said no and I told Bill to get going....then we realized we were in a shake down and somehow we got out of it.

We drove by the policia station, memorized the route and streets, expecting it might happen again. We would know how to drive to get there, we would tell the officer that. We discussed using our cell phones to 'pretend call' the policia station to tell them we were coming. We decided to pretend to even know less spanish than we know.....we decided there would be no way we would give our license to the next policia, if this should happen again.

I said we were a driving target for them. We are up and down the main highway through town constantly, shopping, going to the market, exploring this or that, going to Alamos every morning and coming back in the afternoon. They know our truck, for pete's sake, it is a big four door chevy with a canopy on the back and WA state plates. We need to get the canopy off, muddy up the plates and put a big unsecured load of something in the back is what I tell Bill.

We continued to discuss how to prevent getting stopped again, when one morning at 6am on our way through town to Alamos, Bill ran the only stop sign in town.
"Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!" A big, burly policia standing on the corner came running down the street after us.
"Bill! You ran the stop sign," I yelled and then I said something I can't repeat. Then Bill said other things I can't repeat and then, he said, "You were talking. "Was not!" I said back.

"License, por favor...please..."
We both hesitated. This was exactly what we had discussed.
DO NOT GIVE HIM THE LICENSE.
So Bill gave him his license.......
THEN he wanted the car registration. THEN he wanted us to go to the station and pay the fine, without the license or the registration...... Then I said lets all go together.....
He gave us back the license and car registration and said have a nice day.

Yesterday we stopped at the stop sign, made a point of sitting there for a few seconds, looked over at the corner and the same policia was there. He gave us a huge smile and waved. We smiled and vigorously waved back.....and drove on down the road to Alamos.

But, Bill and I have had a briefly serious discussion this afternoon on our way to the beach which we never found.. Everytime I see policia now, I tell Bill they are nearby, but I have a tendency to first go, "aauuhh, policia..or aauuhh, it's yellow, yellow! the light's gonna turn...Bill, the stop sign, it is exactly 3 blocks up...aauuh! slow down!".....aauuh, stop, stop at the railroad tracks....AAUUHHHHHH!!!!STOP! STOP!...aauuhh...Federales in truck , right lane, two cars back......It's a sound that is hard to write, sort of like taking in your breath and saying a sound at the same time. I am trying to warn Bill that these things are going on. Honestly he does not always see the traffic lights, they are located in very strange places and he has gone through a few red traffic lights....and that was NOT the first time he has run the stop sign.....
I am trying to be helpful.....

However, it has become evident that when I try to warn him with this sound, it gets his adrenalin going and makes him very nervous. So I am going to relax and I am not going to make any warning sounds of any kind and if he happens to back up and hit the car behind him, like he did the other day the the alley, well, so be it....

Is This Your Donkey?

Last week we met at the Navojoa Notary Public and signed the papers and paid for our casa. We met Senor Soto, the owner and I gave him a hug and kiss when we parted. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and squeezed my hand...... it is hard to sell the home where you have raised a family and lived FOREVER...His wife passed away a year ago and that made it even more difficult, I think...his sons were there to help him......I liked Senor Soto very much. He is going to take our money and go on a very long vacation, he said....








We are staying in Navajoa, where we aren't supposed to have the cats, but they know we have them and we are here still anyway, after a week. We are waiting for the deed to the casa. Once we have the deed we will be able to get our utilities turned on and have some fans going and get a mattress and stay all the time in the casa while we begin to work on it.
In the meantime, we are up at 5am and driving the 50 km to Alamos and working on various things or just sitting around..we have one camp chair and a bucket to sit on....
The cats have hiding places within the casa, and they are getting used to being left alone as we walk to town for lunch or to shop or do business.

We have started to work on the casa. We are knocking out walls, having trash removed. We are getting bids for having a brick wall built around the property.

This bricked in window below is in the kitchen which will become a bathroom.


Bill is getting rid of the bricked in window....
Bricked in window is now gone. Towel covers the fireplace where the cats are hiding as we work....


So, we don't like this bricked in stuff either, so it is going away and we plan to re do this area with a style more traditional to other structures in Alamos.....

Brick is gone in the photo below. Eventually much of this will be adobe walled and then a portal will be attached.
Today we went to see the bricks being made. It is late now in the evening and I will not go into great detail about how they are made. Maybe the photos will speak for themselves????
Mixing the dirt below and filling the form.......
removing the form and there you have.....bricks which would be adobe if they were not fired. bricks laying in the sun for about 2 days to dry....
below, the bricks are stacked and in between the stacks the fires are built. More importantly, a donkey has been living in our casa. We have been cleaning up after him for several days now. Today I patched the broken fence with chicken wire which will be temporary until the adobe wall is built. In the meantime, if this is your donkey, will you please come and get him??????

Ok...about this Raton pass issue.......

It can't rest. It's been a few weeks, but I can't let it go without comment.

Way back when, almost to the beginning of time (for us, this refers to "before packing the U-HAUL trailer; ie: just trying to get out!), the topic of "let's look WAYYY into the future; way beyond Taro cards and palm reading". [footnote: readers of my previous/first entry (both of you) will know who raised this issue as I was busy getting the house ready for sale and the woman I love was busy getting us ready to cross the border].

Our route south was preordained: we have a daughter in Colorado whom we wanted to visit on our way to our new home {ok, so its an extra bizzillion miles and days of travel; gas is still $2 less that in europe (maybe, depending on euro/dollar and gallon/liter conversion rates; I haven't done the math because it doesn't matter (we are going anyways) and this way I can delude myself that this is alot cheaper (well, she could be living in Germany...)

I digress. So, the topic raised in ancient history (by you know whom) was: "If we are going through Colorado, which route do you propose we take?" "Why?" I ignorantly reply. "Well, because I've gone the south route before and I WILL NEVER GO OVER RATON PASS EVER AGAIN!!!!"

Geez!! Where did that come from?? I quickly try to process. [footnote: Linda lived in Colorado in the early 70's and I did my undergraduate work in that state at about the same time. I made many trips to New Mexico during those years and I have NO recollection of any big passes to cross to get there]. I replied that I had made countless trips from Colorado to New Mexico and had never encountered a problem pass, although I almost always cut off the freeway before the border and took the state route south to Taos and Santa Fe. [Had I ever been over Raton Pass, I wondered: I have no recollection of a bad pass from one state to the other?]

We haven't been together this long and still love each other without learning the primordial lesson early on: dont fight any battles not worth it (are any even worth it?).

So, I calmly reply: "No problem, we'll go another route: west to Utah and then south."

[You know whats coming; I admit I was blind sided]

"Oh!! How big are the passes that way; thats over the Rockies!! Wolf Creek Pass isn't on that route isn't it???"

[but, I know when to let a stew simmer]

Once we left our daughter and started heading via the west/Utah route (I presumed given the fear of RATON PASS!), Linda surprised me with: "Is it shorter to go south on the Interstate (notice no mention of RATON PASS). I replied that it would save a lot of time and gas. Like fishing, you never know when: with a few miles until the turn off to the westerly route to avoid RATON PASS, I hear: "Lets just go over the pass: I want to get to Mexico as soon as possible!" [read: I haven';t worked on these LISTS for so long just to.......].

We passed the turn west to the "safe" route. The signs for "RATON PASS" loomed closer.
The highway here is two lanes each way with a grass divider. Oh, oh...we are beginning to climb....[I have NO recollection of this "scary" pass?!]. I glance at Linda ...she isn't digging her nails into either cat (who are calmly looking at the scenery [ok: poetic license going too far].

Before I had a chance to check my rearview mirrors to see if someone is trying to pass us up hill, I saw a sign that read " Raton Pass" (I cant recall the elevation, but I think it was less than our house in Washington. Tolt Hill up to our house in Washington is steeper and has more curves than Raton Pass. It's almost as long. That's ok; we all have some scary memories from th 70's.

On the way down, I seem to recall comments about how long ago that was...they must have revised the road........... We were now im New Mexico and a step closer.