Getting Ready for Norbert

this is the soccer field and track where I walk every morning. It looks more like a scene out of the Andean Mountains. It is absolutely gorgeous. When you are down on the track, the mountains are just right in your face. I think I may have mentioned that on Friday evenings we like to go and watch the soccer games that are played here...very, very good games. Lots of people. Usually the gnats drive us away by half time, but we miss soccer alot and so it is fun to watch.

I have made a few mexican acquaintances at the track, we speak in tongues as we walk around the track....some spanish, some english, some spanglish, and a bunch of stuff none of us understands, but the fun part is, we laugh at ourselves alot. It is very nice to have those types of acquaintances.

This morning there was a cool, strong wind at the track and it was very cloudy.

I asked one of my friends if she knew about Norbert. I think she said her Uncle (Tio) is Norbert...se', se', conosco Norbert, mi' Tio.......i said, no, the hurricane......she said no comprende ( did not understand)...finally.............. ahhh, Hooreecan! Se', la television, miramos y domingo aqui, mas tarde, no problemo, esta es poquito, poquito... (something like..hurricane, yes, I see it on television, it will be here late sunday and it isn't a problem, it is little, little).........i think I said okay...

I asked another of my chica friends about it...Norbert?...... posible' manana y no deal big, she said in English.

Umbierto is here this morning. He asked us if we knew about Norbert and said posible' poco lluvia (rain). He shrugged his shoulders and went back to work.

Good grief, Bill is up on the roof, prepping the roof with a water seal. He went to the hardware store for something, probably wood to cover the windows. Last night we started taking in anything that looked like it could be damaged or blown away.

Are we nuts??? This is a huge hurricane headed over BAJA and directly toward Huatabampito, according to the weather maps we have seen. This is potentially big stuff! Huatabampito is an hour and a half due west of us.

We are talking a hurricane here, folks! Let's get busy here!

And it is supposed to hit OUR coast around 2pm on Saturday.....

But, lets remember, that we are the newcomers here. My chicas have lived here their entire lives, they are the experienced ones. This is, afterall, not the first Norbert to be headed their direction.

We have noticed a change in the night sky. It is full of splotchy clouds and there is a cooler, stronger wind. Then in the early morning there is a slight haze.

Bill says it is the leading edge of the storm.

We went to Navajoa and Obregon yesterday, both towns, by the way, had temperatures of 105. It was very hot, and hazy and unusually gnatty everywhere. Bill said...yep, leading edge of the storm.

Coming back up to the mountains, to Alamos, it began to get cooler and was 85 by the time we got home......leading edge of the storm.

Nice breeze last evening, more splotchy clouds, a faded milky way......leading edge of the storm.

The cats are meowing alot, what's up with that?......leading edge of the storm.

Bill is usually right about these sorts of things. It is why I call him Senor Sabe le Todo.....

In the night I thought of all the things I need to do today:

the wash before the storm hits, get the stereo and cds under shelter, plant the new fuego (fiery orange blossoms on these) trees before the wind starts, get to the Palacio and the mercado, walk up to the Casa de la Cultura to fund out about the class I want to take (hope it does not get cancelled), cover everything out in the stable, start eating lots of the stuff we bought in Obregon in case there are power outages, check all the flashlight batteries..........omg, I have alot to do.

I asked one of my chica friends what she would do today when she got home from walking the track. I think she said she was going to cook some pinto beans and take her hijos to Parque de Chalaton.................

It Takes Two to Tango

Last night's sky over Mt. Cacharumba.
People say a storm is coming our way, one that is currently moving toward Baja. I only hope it gets here soon and drops the temperature a little........there is a nice breeze today.

Wow, I just made some blue corn tortilla chips, boy, are they good.

I use blue corn flour and water to make the dough. I don't have a tortilla press so I flatten out a small ball inside a plastic baggie, peel the tortilla off the bag, take the tortilla out, cut it in pie shapes with a pizza cutter and fry them. There is nothing better than a blue corn totopo, sprinkled with a little salt and served with a mix of cream cheese, avocado and red chiles...very good stuff.

Unless you happen to be a cat and prefer other types of food. Like the tasty critter food Cookies has in the photo below.........

This lizard is only a sampling of the creatures that suddenly are traveling through our yard on their little ways, I hope, to someone else's yard.

Umbierto speared three giant scorpions yesterday. Two were black, but the biggest one, which he found in the stack of ladrillos that I have been carting to the asadero, was white. Those, according to the mexicans here, are the BAD ones.

There is a 24 hour hospital in Alamos, so I'm trying not to worry very much about it, they're just little wingless bug things, right?I think the hospital gives you a painfull anti venom shot.

Bill and I have discussed it, maybe it's a seasonal thing, you know, after the rains, some crawly things just come around for awhile to see what's going on...who's dating who..the latest fashion..whatdya do last Saturday night...

but, you would think it's raining tarantulas now around this place. Everytime we turn around, there is a hairy pin cushion with legs, coming up to the Hilton Garden Room.

We were watching a movie the other night (our kids reminded us we CAN watch dvd's on the laptop) and suddenly a pin cushion came walking across the floor..... he stopped and appeared to be looking around, maybe for a bed for the night, I don't know.

I said to Bill.....oh, darn it, look at that tarantula, could you please get it, dear...

(well, that is sort of what I said, but just in case there are any younger people following the blog...)

Bill calmly stopped the movie and got the broom and swept the tarantula off the floor and into the yard. And that is the truth.

I was not pleased.

You CANNOT just sweep that sort of thing off and into the yard!...it knows where it wants to go and it's just going to come right back up here....you HAVE to kill it....

So, Bill started the movie again and told me that I can be in charge of all the tarantulas that from here on out make themselves visible to us.

But, good grief, if you have the chance to kill a tarantula, you have to do it. He killed a baby scorpion yesterday, for Pete's Sake, you HAVE to kill a tarantula.

I would certainly kill it.

When we lived in the northwest, I would rarely kill a spider. In fact, I would pick it up in a paper towel and then walk out the door and throw it in the yard. KD is the same way. She doesn't like to hurt a spider.

Ian, on the other hand, is scared to death of even baby spiders. I have seen him physically jump fly out of a Mexican motel once when we requested to see the room. He said the spider in there was as big as a pie pan.

So, I really hate to sound as if I am picking on tarantulas, or Bill for that matter, but when was the last time you looked down because your husband said...don't move....to see a huge hairy pin cushion walking across YOUR shoe???

I bet NEVER!!!

So, if that should happen to you, I promise you will not ever want it to happen again, so you pick up a shovel, or if you don't happen to just have a shovel laying around your living room like I do.....you grab anything, the fireplace poker, the broom, rip down the curtain rod if you must and whack!.......you cut that pin cushion right in two....which is exactly what I did this morning and I don't have any regrets about it.

I just don't think Bill understands. If one comes, they ALL come. It's like they are having parties in our yard. And it takes two to tango.

Surely you have seen the National Geographic photos of the fighting scorpions? and they call that dancing.....you don't know what might happen if their parties get out of control. And, god forbid, the tangoing tarantulas try and crash a scorpion salsa party..can you imagine the amount of noise that could produce....eight wingless mariachi musicians playing till all hours of the night..and they expect me to clean up after them???

I can barely walk around the yard in the evening without thinking every little tickle or brush against my leg is a...something.

When the cats heads pop straight up at night, so does mine....is there something in the room? is there something crawling across the sheets? what are cookies and ashes looking at?

So, it is only my hope that these creatures who seem to have a new found love for our yard will soon find the assortment of party foods better next door...

Let's Go For a Walk

When I left the casa early this morning, Ashes was lying in a nice and cool dirt hole, bathing herself. This early morning routine of mine does not phase her. She doesn't care where I am going at 5:30am as long as I have filled the cat dish with food before I close the gate behind me.

This morning I am going to look for Parque el Chalaton. It is a private park up on the hillside. It is private, but for 10 pesos a family can enter and stay all day. It isn't a long walk from the house, but it is all uphill. In the photo below I am looking down the street I have just come up. I am now in Barrio el Chalaton. Alamos is made up of its downtown Alameda and Plaza areas and about 20 barrios (or neighborhoods). Some of the barrios are in town while others stretch far out into the hills. They have names like Barrio La Isla De Cuba, Barrio Del Rastro, Barrio De La Cuevita Santa, and Barrio La Colorado (which is where we live).

At the Parque El Chalaton, there are young men working, hauling garbage, raking debris. It's very early so the park is locked and I can't see too much because there are alot of trees. I do see benches and asaderos for grilling and what looks like structures for children to climb on. I am a meek and mild photographer and the workers see me peering through the fence so I don't take photos. I decide to come back one day when the parque is open.

So I have come back across the Arroyo El Chalaton, where the water is running across the road, and started climbing up to Barrio Las Higueras. It gets a little steeper here and when the road ends I climb over the boulders and walk a little higher to see the views in the photos below.

I think I am walking above the Arroya El Chalaton, but there are so many arroyos here, it is hard to tell. Below I see people filling jugs with water from the arroyo and carrying them away.

From the top I can the Sierra Madres and where the Copper Canyon begins.


Back down I take another right and go up into Barrio Altos De Tacubaya. The dirt roads are rocky and take me up into the hills again. There is a huge truck ahead of me. It is the OOMPASS water truck. It stops at at every casa and fills either lots of large cans or tinacos or rubbermaid containers with water. So I am understanding that city water doesn't come up this high, but there is electricity. And tv antennas.
The views from here are beautiful, lots of chickens are running around, childern are sitting on their roof tops and everyone I see waves and calls Buen Dia to me before I can even open my mouth. Even the water truck man say hola, hola, hola, how you be today...... From Tacubaya I can see the Mirador and again, the Sierras. This is a beautiful place.

On my walk back down the hills I decide to go and drop by the Palacio where the huge meeting of the govenors has just ended recently. I want to check my apartado box...maybe we have mail......
The Palacio is a beautiful building and inside are all of the municipality and government offices. We pay our water bill here and collect our mail.

It has received a new paint job for the meetings and a huge table has been installed for all the governors to sit around and discuss whatever it is they were supposed to discuss. President Calderon was supposed to be here as well, but there were rumors that he went to the US instead......

The open roof was covered for this event and air conditioning was pumped down through the tubes on each side of the roof. On one table I see the placards with the names of the states and governors and the state seal. There are only maids around, sweeping, disposing of cigarette butts, and polishing the huge table which appears to come apart in sections. I think that no one will notice if I take the Quintana Roo placard, after all a few placards are just lying on the floor. On my way out there are two federales standing guard at the door and I don't remember seeing them when I went in. One of them shakes his head and takes the placard out of my hands, but he smiles and says adios when I walk sheepishly down the steps and back to Barrio La Colorado....

After I walk in the gate and turn around the corner of the casa someone pulls on the swirly shells that are hanging outside the gate. They are attached to a long string that is attached to a fulcrum that has a long string of bells hanging from it. We collected the shells on a trip to Huatabampito (the beach an hour and a half away) and the bells belonged to Bill's mother.



My neighbor from across the street calls out to me, there is a big turtle coming up the road. It really looks tired and like it needs some water....i am on my way to town and in a hurry...can you get it some water.

Sure, I say.....and not knowing how big the turtle is or how much water to get, I look out the gate real quick and see a monster tortoise creeping slowly up the street. I grab a huge bowl of water and go out to the street. He has stopped along my neighbor's wall and I sit down and start sprinkling water over its head. At first, it pulls its head in and hides, then slowly as I pour more water, its head comes out again and his look says...man, I have been traveling a long distance...can i please have more of that water.....the tortoise has a name written on its back, so I decide it is someone's pet....not knowing what else to do I sit there with it and after awhile my neighbor's husband comes home and we decide to put the tortoise in their yard and let his wife decide what to do with it.

Finally I get back inside my gate to my casa and realize I have been gone for five hours.....i have travelled a long distance, too, today.

Let's Try This Again

I am having a long moment of frustration. I just spent over an hour posting and then, was unable to publish. I know it's because I don't close a picture tab or something, but knowing that doesn't really matter because I don't know how to close it in order to fix the problem.


Now that makes sense to me.


There's a nice breeze this afternoon and some clouds rolling between us and the sun. It truely feels like fall here, but it is hotter than heck.
I just want to show you some stuff quickly and then try and publish this if it will work.....

This is street side, and of course, the new wall. About the 3rd brick section down will be our front pedestrian gate and our front door will be directly across, about where the 2nd window from the right is now.
Why not put in a gate while building the wall? don't ask....

Umberto, our helper has dug a long trench along the wall, to keep rainwater from eroding the bricks. Eventually a pipe will carry rainwater away and around the house to a new 12,000 gallon cistern where the dead tree is. ( later photo)

I am desperate for fast growing, tall trees and vines here. It is very hot on this west side....any suggestions? The front door will have a covered walk which will connect to the gate. Ladrillo pathways will be laid (sidewalk will be gone) and a small fountain will go in here as well.

working on the asadero..the barbeque grill....why a barbeque grill?....we will not have a cocina for at least a year. Bill likes to grill....you will have to come for grilled shrimp.I say WE are building this asadero...it is my job to bring the ladrillos from the area near the gate to this location. I hand carried 20 ladrillos before I remembered we own a dollie.....Ijust realized there is my lost sock, hanging on the clothesline. Look at all those ladrillos I have brought over here. There are 150 of them to complete this asadero.
Now we are at the Hilton Garden Room. Palms.... chairs and coffee table from the storage unit and free mosquito spray come with rental.....

This morning I made limonada with limes from our tree. I also made lime and chile drop cookies..very tasty stuff.....I sent Umberto home with a bag of them..he brought us a bag of peppinos ( the hottest peppers you will EVER taste in your life...do not even think a habanero comes close). He also brought us a squash from his garden that weighs as much as fat Cookies does.
Then I cut some 96 COE glass. I'll fuse these pieces together and they will be flat. Then I'll slump them downward and the piece will become a bowl...more of this later after it gets fired.
Then I made chilie and avacodo peanut butter...also very tasty stuff. I crushed the peanuts with the mortar, which I almost GAVE away at our garage sale and then thought, maybe I will actually use that for something other than potpourri.....yes, that is a plastic pumpkin. As long as we can all remember we have kept the cats' food in this pumpkin. Of course, it had to come with us.Here you can see the dead eucalyptus tree........where the other cistern will go.

Bill is not peeing on the tree, he actually has the chain saw going and is almost completely through the trunk.
But, it would not fall, so he tied a rope from the truck to the tree...tree came down but Bill almost drove through the fence on that side of the house.....
Umberto, who is deaf, but communicates greatly with Bill by hand gestures (Bill loves hand gestures, you always want to be on his charades team), is digging trenches for electricity. We will run it out to the stable, we will run it out to the asadero and will hang some lanterns in the trees as well. Bill is playing with the water hose. But, see the cement mixer??? It is great!!!

Around the mesquite tree I have planted small rose bushes. You can't see the flowers, but remember this and we will look at the roses again in the spring time.

This was a late night visitor................Bill said, don't move, be very quiet, but look down at your shoe. The little guy was traveling along my shoelace........on his way to the screen door.....
Good Night....

This Post is For You

Good Morning! Buen Dia!

I took the following two photos right before I left to go down to the soccer field track...at 5:30am. The sun was still behind the hills, but the sky was beginning to disclose that beautiful vermillion, pink and yellow glow. It's not unlike the pre sun sky back in Washington State, when we could see it...and that is the true difference, this glow can be seen every morning.

I took the top photo through the branches of our limon (lime) tree, which is so full of limes, we cannot make limonada fast enough to use them all. In the photo below are some of the silhouettes of the gorgeous palm trees here and of course, a tv antenna.

I want to start this post by saying thank you to all of you who have been following this blog....patiently....and not so patiently...

I want to say thank you to my friend, Emily, who continues to click and check for a new post daily even though she emailed me and said... your blog sucks! you never post anything.

I want to say thank you to my little brother, Paul, who said on the phone the other day, well, it is sorely lacking...

Thank you to Jim who checks it in the morning and evening and said, have you moved again?

Thank you, Mom, I know the last time I posted was September 12th.

Thank you, Carol, no, we are not just sitting around drinking margaritas all day and as a result are unable to find the computer and post new information....

And I could go on and on. And, if you're wondering how to get my email so you can email me about this also, it is on the glasspond studio website.

BUT, STOP!!! Don't email me about my duties as a blogger or the fact that you aren't getting as much information as you would like about what we are doing.

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE!

AND, guess what!!!!! We now have internet in our casa!!! at least yesterday and today we have it.....

So, now, I will be able to post more often, unless our internet goes away and aren't you excited? I am so excited, I can't tell you how excited I am to be connected to the world again.

So, I want to tell you how this came to be and then afterward, you can check out the photos from the Independence Day celebration in Alamos.

Back in late June, when Eduardo and Perricio began construction on the adobe wall (which, if you recall, is made of ladrillo bricks (fired adobe bricks, not solely adobe, because adobe must be plastered or it will break down in the weather), we had to have water. In particular, to mix with the cement to make the brick mortar. And so Eduardo and Perricio could have something to drink.

So Carlos, who had helped us clear the brush from our property took us down to the Palacio and told them we needed our water turned on.

PRESTO!!! we came back to our casa to find city water running all over the yard.

When it began to get very hot in July, we could not stay here unless we had electricity that would enable us to install some ceiling fans where there weren't any and get the old fans working in other rooms of the casa. Ignacio called CFE (the electric company) and PRESTO!!!! we had electricity.

We wanted to begin receiving our mail from the Earth Class Mail system we had been using in the States. We went to the post office in the Palacio and asked for a postal box and PRESTO! in seconds we had a box and our very own number and a key for it.

At home, I realized that Earth Class Mail had shipped our mail DHL. We new the closest DHL office was in Navajoa and we were told by several people that DHL would not deliver to Alamos. We decided we would never see all that mail from the IRS and the banks and other assorted places like the college the kids attend, the housing they are in, the last bill the doctor's office sent, the refund from Comcast. What the heck, we don't need that stuff, do we?

On one of our many trips to check our postal apartido for mail, there they were! PRESTO!!!! Two huge fat packets from the northwest delivered DHL from the US all the way to Alamos.

After receiving a few Cingular wireless bills it became imperative, in August, to get a local landline telephone. So, we drove to Navajoa, went to Telmex, paid $300 pesos (roughly $30 US) and were given a phone number and told that our service would be on in ocho (8) hours.

So, boy, were we excited. All I could think about on the drive home was how I could call KD and give her our home phone number and tell her to use Cingular for emergencies only.

We went to Koppell ( a large furniture and appliance store in Navajoa) and bought a $400 peso phone, went home and charged it up and got the jack down off the roof and made sure all the wires were connected correctly and waited for the dial tone.

And waited..and waited...and waited...and waited.

Two weeks later we returned to Telmex and were told that service would be connected on September 1st.

Two weeks later our neighbor, who speaks fluent Spanish, went with me to Telmex. She explained the situation to the office manager, Ricardo, who told us Telmex would come to the casa on Saturday, or on Monday, to connect the lines, and we would need to be home to let them inside the casa. I stayed home Saturday....I stayed home Monday.....I even stayed home Tuesday.

On Wednesday, a huge storm came and rain got inside the room where the phone was charging and shorted out the base charger. Bill went back to Koppell on Thursday and paid another $400 pesos for a new phone.....our neighbor called Ricardo and said, where is Telmex? He said, they came, but could not find the house.....they will come again next Saturday or Monday. Our neighbor suggested we put out a sign with our casa number since we do not have one. Not only did I do that, but I put out a huge sign that read...TELMEX....ALTO AQUI.....we waited and waited.

On Wednesday, my neighbor happened to be near the Palacio when she saw a Telmex truck drive by. She flagged down the driver and he agreed to come to the house. He strung a new phone line from the telephone post across the street and put the line down through a hole he drilled in the roof and then attached the line to a phone jack he installed in our bedroom.

And we had a dial tone.

It was very exciting. Right away I called KD and the phone actually worked. Once the phone was up and running we were told by Ricardo to return to Telmex and get our prodigy internet modem and all that other stuff that goes with it. We did that and brought it home and had alot of difficulty installing it. We have free wireless for up to four phones, which we don't really have because it won't work. We have DSL which is what I am on now...and today it is working.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Returning now, mom, to my last post of September 12th. We were coming home from a storage unit trip across the border, if you recall, and we were excited because of the huge upcoming celebration across Mexico on September 15...Independence Day (from Spain).

We were up early to get to the alameda to watch the parade. This was a more serious parade, in that it showcased the municipal workers of Alamos and every child in town. Children in Alamos go to school either in the mornings or the afternoons and they wear a class uniform. Every uniform is different in color, or style or plaid. In the parade, each grade marched in uniform, silently and proudly, with the exception of the drummers, who were obviously proud and loud.

It was just very exciting to see hundreds of school kids of all ages, involved in the parade. The first line of walkers held large, decorated banners describing their class and grade. Many of them also carried large Mexican flags. And there were alot of proud families standing on the sidewalks. In fact, this parade was so popular, it went around town twice. After the parade, crowds of onlookers gathered at the Plaza de Armas, to watch the Municipal employees have photo sessions and then, to watch the horse dancing begin. If you have not seen this before, it is fascinating to watch the riders use body and reign signals to make their horses dance through the streets. And when the mariachi bands strikes up, the dancing gets faster and more exciting.
In the above photo, the crowds have opened up to give room to the band and the horse dancers.

The municipal workers, below, are wearing red on this day.

After the dancing is over in the streets, everyone moves out to the arroyo. Because it is filled with running water now, the dirt roads along the arroyo are blocked off and there are music stages and grandstands along the road. Later in the day, riders will parade their horses in front of the grandstand, the music will begin and the horse dancing will begin again for hours and hours. There are Tecate stands everywhere and long, long lines of men waiting to get their celebration beers. There is alot of drinking on this day. Someone told us that the horse dancing that goes on into the long hours of the night is done by some of the men who can barely stay on their horses. We didn't see this, but from our casa we could still hear the music and loud whooping noises at 2am......

For the families and folks who don't sit in the grandstands to watch the dancing, there are trampolines to romp on, games to play, typical parade souvenirs to buy, tons and tons of food to eat. Kids played in the running water of the arroyo, lots of Tecate drinking drivers of pickup trucks got stuck trying to drive through the arroyo water and lots of Tecate drinking drivers of other trucks spent hours trying to pull or push these stuck trucks out of the muddy waters. It was very entertaining........

You can just barely see the arroyo flowing in the foreground of this photo. Lots and lots of families gathered along the arroyo for food and drinks. In the photo below you can see one of many foot bridges that have been built across the arroyos. This allows for foot traffic during the rainy season. You can see Bill in this photo. He and others on the foot bridge are watching a truck try to pull another truck out of the water.

This a fairly easily crossed section of the arroyo. Cars and trucks do not tend to get stuck here. It is where the water gathers momentum and rushes down (lower left) into the muddy bottom of the arroyo where trucks and cars get stuck. For many people, crossing the arroyo in their vehicle is the only way out of their barrio to get to town or the homes of other family members or friends.So, with this last photo I will say adios...and thanks to everyone who is still reading the blog.

Tomorrow I am going to catch you up on the things that have been happening here around the casa.........