The End Of An Era

It seems that the new year is going to bring drastic changes to my neighborhood.
For days, around the houses and at the entrance to the big hotel, I have seen homemade banners and signs decrying the government and asking for help.
The citizens of my shantytown are sent packing.
For many, many years now, the good folks down the hill have built a most eclectic village, unfortunately on somebody else's land and now they are being evicted.
The lady at my tienda said that she has lived nearly thirty years here.
From what I hear, they are being removed to make space for new condos and hotels.
On one hand I feel sorry for them, even though they knew they were living on borrowed time.
On the other I wonder what that will do to me and my-oh so quiet- neighborhood. Will all this construction scare away the animals I see on occasion and will it, maybe, make it easier to sell the house.
We shall see in the new year.

Rapaciuos Rodents

The mornings are getting cold here, well, cold for an elderly gent such as I, with thinning hair and even thinner blood.
So I decided to get out my sweats and
behold.
The rapacious rodents had chewed a big hole in my Dracula sweat shirt, a treasured item from the time we did Dracula for the first time in San Diego, and some enterprising person had these sweats made up and sold them.
So the question is, do I wear it with the hole, or can I find a smart way to repair this sizable hole.
Throwing it out is not an option.
The other-not so favorite sweat shirt- is of course unscathed.
One can fault the rodents for many things, but to my regret, they do have excellent taste.

The 24th

It is the 24th, and I had hoped to spend the day in Halbyhoffburg a.k.a. Ajijic but, due to the vagaries of fortune, what with the death of Antonio my friend and house-and-doggie sitter and snowstorms in the NW, I am celebrating this day, surrounded by some of the Worthless Ones, roasting a chicken in the oven and drinking too much cheap red wine.
By myself.
I have no decorations, no mistletoe nor ordinary pine branches decorated with baubles and lights. Nothing.
I, at this time of my life, do not much like Christmas.
I always liked to be with my family, to hear what was happening to all of the wonderful and wacky girls and boy, and James and Kathy delighted in telling me.
This time they are not here.
I shall eat my chicken,drink my wine, yell at the Worthless Ones and eventually go to bed and wake up to yet another day.
Merry Christmas to all
Love and kind thoughts
Me.

In loving Memory

In Mismaloya, at the dining table where we spent so many ours talking. Erik took this picture.

Farewell

I was expecting a call from Antonio this Saturday so we could spend the day, his day off from work, together.
I got a call, but not a nice one.
Antonio had died form a heart attack, alone in his apartment on Thursday.
Farewell my good friend, and I shall miss you and all the wonderful times we had together, more than I can say.
Farewell.

The Last Goodbye

An article on the BBC made me think of my father who died from cancer of the lungs.
The doctors at the hospital decided that, towards the end, he would be more comfortable at home.
Later my mother told me that when he died she, and one of my sisters, got him ready for his final journey.
What to some may sound like a quaint, even barbaric rite, now sounds to me like the final show of love to one you have shared a lifetime with.
Chuck died in a hospital, and I saw him being wheeled out on a gurney.
But I still had the time with him as he drew his last breath.
Is there ever a right way to say goodbye, I wonder.
My mother did it her way, and I did it the best way I could.
I guess we all do the best we can.

Treats ?

Yesterday, after my fifth visit to Immigration, I finally got my coveted visa, and I decided for a treat to celebrate.
I bought a big bag of dog food ( I was almost out anyway )
I bought a big bottle of dish washing liquid
and I bought a new mop....

I've got to get a life.

Nativity Ducks

A Change I Can Believe In.

Another One

The worthless Ones, particularly Piggy, have a special bark for things out of the ordinary. It can be anything from a garbage can left in the street to creepy crawlies on the floor whilst watching the tely, so when I heard this bark I set out to check and see what might be the cause.
It came from the spare room, and I checked and found nothing and went back to doing whatever I was doing .
But the bark persisted, so I returned and checked more thoroughly and there, under the bed, on some rolled up carpets , was the cause.
A snake.
I went to get my trusty cleaver and a broom, but by the time I got my snake killing equipment together, the snake had hidden in one of the rolled up carpets.
Now, doing nothing was not an option. I would never be able to sleep again, knowing that a snake was hiding under the bed, even if it was in another room.
So I dragged the rolled-up carpets out on the deck and unfurled them over the fence that faces the jungle and watched as with a thump and a mighty squiggle the snake fell out of one the carpets and landed in the undergrowth.
Out of the house.
And it was a sizable one, this snake. Compared to the one I killed the other night, this was easily twice the length and twice the girth. Big one.
All this snakery makes you check twice before you sit down on the couch and be sure the lights are on before the in-the-middle-of-the- night trip to the loo for a pee.
I hope it is temporary.

My House

I was expecting James and Kathy to show up, so Sunday night when I heard the car door slam, I jumped up to go and turn on the outside lights for them and stopped in my tracks for there, in the middle of the hallway, was a snake, right in my path.
I yelled at the mutts to back off, which they didn't
I yelled at James and Kathy to remain outside, which they did
And rushed to the kitchen to grab my snakekilling cleaver and hack the serpent to many and squiggly pieces.
Then, and only then did I open the door, knowing Kathy's intense dislike for snakes, particularly
live ones.
I scooped the still moving parts in to a plastic bag to be disposed of later and sat down to have a pleasant visit with James and Kathy.
With the mutts, the rodents, the bats and now snakes, it is getting to be a bit crowded in my house.

La Migra , again.

Today was the third trip to immigration in my yearly quest for the renewal of my visa.
And I dutifully arrived early to stand in line outside and wait for the office to open so we- others were there before me - could be given a number and herded inside like cattle to slaughter where we got to wait some more.
And then my number was called and a nice lady took my number and papers and I got to wait some more.
She got back and smiled sweetly and said there was a problem; I had been late in starting the process so I had to pay a fine. To pay this fine, the nice lady said, I had to go to a bank with a form she would give me, pay the amount and return with receipt and two copies of same.
So I did.
I jumped a bus and fought a recalcitrant ATM machine ( it won ) found another and got the money to pay the fine, rushed to the bank to wait in line and then to pay and catch another bus back to immigration to wait in line to present my very own " Mission Accomplished ".
And the nice lady smiled sweetly and took my papers, disappeared and I got to wait some more.
She came back and pointed at my papers and said
This is the wrong amount. You have to go back to the bank and pay the correct amount and get a receipt for the that. Only the correct amount. Nothing else will be acceptable.
So, due to a clerical error, I had to return to the bank and battle bank bureaucracy to pay the missing amount and get a spanking new receipt.
And I persevered and I returned, triumphantly, to immigration with the new receipt and the the requisite copies and got to wait again till the nice lady took my papers and smiled sweetly at me and told me to wait a while.
And she came back and sweetly told me that now everything was fine and I should come back in about ten days.
To Be Continued..........

Batty

I fear that, amongst the many wel- and - unwelcome critters that I share my house with, I need to add ......bats.
For days I have found droppings on the floor under one of the chandeliers, and wings and legs and other indigestible parts of grasshoppers.
Now the geckos are too small to tackle these locust looking insects and when one of the mutts catches one of the big, green grasshoppers, it is only to kill it; then they loose interest and leave the whole carcass around.
This is something different. This is not only a kill of the insect, but also a devouring of same, except of course for the wings and such.
And all I can think of is bats since they are nocturnal and carnivorous and they can most likely hang from some part of the chandelier and do their thing.
Welcome to Alan's House of Horrors.

WOW

Think about this, found on a wall in Copenhagen.....Is Your God Democratic ?

The Blue Chair

I found an advert in a home decorating magazine, showing a dining set painted blue.
I loved it, I tore the page out of the magazine and kept looking at it thinking, one day, one day I would paint my wooden chairs that blue.
And one day I bought the paint and set about transforming a simple wooden chair to the dream of the advert.
And now ?
Well, after a few tries, the first chair is painted and I have been trying to convince myself that it is just right, but....
sure the blue is beautiful and sure I did a good job
but it doesn't fit with the rest of the colors of the house.
I have to face the facts. I have to repaint it.
Well, there is this red color I saw.......

The Muffins

Back in the states, many, many years ago, Chuck and I got into the habit of breakfasting on English muffins and poached eggs.
Keeping it up living in Mexico was a bit difficult as that type of muffin was not readily available.
So Chuck decided to make them himself and this he did to the very end.
Now I do it.
Not that I have to do it, but every time I make a new batch of English muffins, I think of Chuck doing this for so many years.
That is a nice way to remember your best friend and partner.

The Visa

I have just spent two mind-numbing days trying to renew my visa.
This is a once yearly happening and every year it seems that the procedure has been changed yet again.
This year I find that the office hours have shrunk. What, to the best of my recollection, used to be 8 to 3, has now been changed to 9 to 1, so when schleps like me finally get to present their collected documentation, showing that this person is who he claims to be, to the person behind the counter after waiting in line for 4 hours, and getting the go-ahead to go to a bank and pay the fee for this trip ( and by the way, there are no banks close by ) it is too late to come back, and one is asked to re-appear the next day, with receipt of payment to bank plus two copies of same.
And then you repeat the whole waiting again, sitting, frantically clasping your little, now damp piece of paper with the number of your turn, watching the minutes and hours pass by, waiting for the magic moment when your number follows the annoying ping of the number display.
And then you get to sign a piece of paper that tells you to return in 15 days for your visa, only when I sat down and read the paper it stated that this piece of paper in no way meant that the application had been approved, only that I had to show up at this date to find out .
Blimey, this is getting difficult.

Oh Rats.

I found a biscuit on the floor of my bedroom.
I picked it up, wondered a bit, discarded it and thought no more about it.
Till yesterday that is.
Yesterday I opened a drawer in my chest in the bedroom and saw, neatly stashed away, a multiple of biscuits.
And now the biscuit on the floor made sense. It, for some reason, never made into the drawer.
I marvel at the industry of my resident rodents, for logic and physics dictate that rodents cannot carry more than one biscuit at a time.
I counted the biscuits in the drawer, not including the one that did not make it.
Eighteen. Eighteen times the rodent would have to travel from the kitchen, where the biscuits had been left on a counter, to my bedroom at the other end of the house.
And when ?
In the daytime the mutts and I spend a lot of time in the passage between the two rooms, and at night when we retire, the mutts mostly settle into the bed and/or the floor in my bedroom.
So when would this - or these - rodent[s] find the opportunity. I mean eighteen trips, nineteen counting the one that did not make it into the drawer but was still hauled all the way from the kitchen.
What good, I have to wonder, what good are these mutts if they allow this back-and-forthing to happen right under their noses.
Worthless Ones.
They will bark and howl at things that none but they can see or hear, but biscuit carrying rodents will raise nary an eyelid.
Double Worthless Ones.

A Joyuos Moment

I keep coming back to read the news, the joyous news that now is the end of Bush and his coven of dark and sinister gnomes and misfits.
Now is the time for a new president.
This is like having a big bag of chips and eating them because every chip tastes as good as the one before.
Every time I read that Obama is the new president is as good as when I read it before and will be as good reading it again.
Bring them on, says I; bring on the big bags of chips.

In this rainy season I have been pretty much alone here on the hill. The Mad Queen and entourage left, Nicolas went on some sailing venture and all the other houses are sitting empty waiting for either rentals or the owners to come for a brief visit.
My closest neighbors have been the critters in the woods that scuttle about and upset the Worthless Ones and make them brake into gales of hysterical barking.
Till now when the rains have stopped.
Nicolas is back and the house down the street has had some renters and some white station wagon has been barreling up and down my normally very quiet street. The mutts have taken a great dislike to this car and I fear it is mutual; the other day a youngish, overweight biker-type in a dirtygray t-shirt and hair to his mid back, leaned out the window of the mystery white station wagon and yelled at the mutts. Right neighborly I thought, but then he is only temporary, we live here permanently.
So last night I learned what it is to have neighbors again. The house where I have seen the white wagon parked, formerly Steve's house, was having a do and music was blasting all night.
Now the house is a fair distance away, but the speakers were, as I discovered this morning when they packed up and left and passed in front of my house, enormous, the size one would imagine to be used for an outdoor fiesta at the local market square, not for a private dwelling in the woods.
And by a confluence of bad luck and too much cheap wine, I ended up with a very bad case of tummy ache, so I was wandering around the house, holding my tummy and wishing they, whoever they were, would go away, far, far away and leave me alone in my misery, rather that having the house shake from the music blasting through the wood.
But they blasted away all night, turning the volume down slightly toward morning.
The Mad Queen was having fits about my dogs barking in the early morn; imagine what he would have done with this noisome mess.
I kinda miss not finding out.
But the speakers were packed and shipped out in a rickety red, truck. I saw that myself, so maybe tonight I will get some sleep.

Young Alan

My mother loved this photo of her first [ surviving] son.
Since this was taken before color photography was widely available, my mother sent this to be enlarged and colored.
On the back of the photo, she very carefully stated:
Light hair ( what hair ? )
Blue eyes
Red sweater
Blue trousers
White socks
size 18x24
I never liked this photo and never really connected with this guy, but it was always displayed as I grew up and maybe my mother saw something I have missed.
Bless her.

Unfairness

This time they really did it.
Whoever the leaf eaters in my garden are, they have now stripped my new plant totally.
All that is left are leafless spikes.
I checked the neighbors where I had " liberated " the plant, and the mother plant is full of leaves
but more devastating
it is also full of flowers, beautiful velvet like flowers, deep maroon.
And my plant does not even have a leaf.
Now this is unfair.

The Blackout

Another blackout, but this time it was daytime and furthermore, I had my new cellphone, so this is what happened when I called
Voice on phone : Can I help you ?
Me : I want to report that I have no electricity
Voice on phone : Where do you live ?
Me : Lomas del Pacifico, Mismaloya
Voice on phone : Mismaloya ?? just a minute
long pause
Voice on phone : and what is your address ?
I rattle off my address
longer pause
Voice on phone : You are Bennett ?
Me : No, I am the other one
Voice on phone : OH and you have no electricity ?
Me : NO, nothing....it is dead
Voice on phone : and your neighbors, are they out too ?
Me : Lady, it is raining here, I am not running out to check my neighbors, besides , I have very few of them and their houses are far away
Voice on phone : oh.. well....your complaint is number 470011
Me : and now what ?
Voice on phone : have a nice day and thank you for calling.
And three hours later the lights came back on.
Hallelujah.

Dupery.

I was duped.
At my supermarket they were displaying shelves of cookies in tins, the easily recognizable tins of royal blue or red with pictures of the delicious butter cookies, Danish butter cookies.
And with big lettering they announced
BUTTER COOKIES
and at a price that seemed quite reasonable.
So I bought one.
it turned out the price was not quite so attractive but worse, when I got home and tore the cello tape off to open the tin and taste the cookies, my favorite cookies, I was in for an even greater disappointment.
They were bad, no, they were very, very bad. Tasting stale and as if the makers had forgotten the main ingredient......butter.
So I put on my glasses and checked the tin carefully and, lo and behold, it never said DANISH butter cookies, in fact , in small, small print it said these cookies were made in Portugal.
If I were a Danish Cookie Maker, I would sue the pants off these folks in Portugal for absconding with and imitating the packaging of the famous butter cookies from Denmark.
I was duped by a look-alike product, and now I have to eat all these cookies.
Well, I could feed them to the dogs. They don't care if they are bad imitations.
They'll eat anything.

A Confession

I am a fraud, a wuss.
I keep ranting and raving about the destruction caused by the resident rodents, and saying that I am going to do something about it. Take charge and show them who the big, bad boss is.
yeah right.
The other day I opened a drawer in the kitchen, and there, in a four cup glass measuring cup, a baby mouse had gotten in, but could not get out.
An exquisite little thing, trying feebly to stretch to reach a hold on something to get out.
So here was my chance. Now I could show the world who is in charge and get rid of this mini rodent.
And I could not.
I tilted the cup so the little guy could get out, and when he was reluctant, I prodded him gently, only for him to try and hold on to my finger with tiny, tiny pink feet.
I lost this deal, I know. Now I cannot bluster and blunder about the rodents anymore.
I had my chance and I blew it.
We shall have to come to some symbiotic agreement, the rodents and I.

Friends in High Places

Uh oh, I thought. Here we go again.
I know the signs now, the darkening skies, the lightning and thunder and then the rain.
Another storm.
So I started to find and light the candles for the inevitable blackout, and was fumbling with the matches - Mexican matches are the worst in the world. Measly little things - when the skies opened up and the rains came blasting down and yes, the expected blackout.
I started my storm meanderings through the house when I noticed something different;
my neighbors on the other side of the valley, the ones with houses of nine or ten bedrooms, and who never have problems with the electricity, were out as well.
Black and not a light to be seen.
I admit to some unseemly schadenfreude.
And as I was indulging in this, walking back and forth, trying to reach The Company on my new cell phone to let them know we were without light, on came the lights.
It had been less than one hour and I never even got connected to The Company.
Last blackout, three days ago , we waited six hours for the reconnect.
It must be good to be rich and have friends in high places.

Food For Thought

I make sure the dogs are fed
the resident rodents feed on my victuals and t-shirts
the house geckos are gorging on the insects from my garden
the ants are feasting on my plants
and the grasshoppers and other insects are eating the leaves of my trees
who, I wonder,
who is going to feed me ?

More DIF card tales

And with this card, said Gloria at DIF, you can get discounts for medicine, for travels and some airlines as well and
and she paused and looked a little embarrassed
you can get discounts at places selling clothes too.
Oh Yeah!
Alright, so I did not look my best, but after almost an hour on the public buses and a walk to this office only to be told there was an long wait and spending that time walking to WalMart , fighting throngs of sweaty humanity to purchase a carton of cheap wine, nobody would look good.
And I had mistakenly put on one of my holie t-shirts.
She should have seen me when I left the office and the skies opened up and the streets flooded and cars were throwing cascades of water on the sidewalk where I was desperately running to find a bus.
Drowned rats have looked better.

Sad, really

And then we need a contact, said Gloria at DIF where I was getting my card for the elderly, typing away on a machine that sounded like it was close relation to the original Gutenberg printing press.
Anyone ? A neighbor ?
I have no neighbors, I said.
Friends ? Acquaintances ? anyone in Vallarta with a telephone number.
UH, I said, I can't think of anyone...wait....Antonio, there is Antonio, only I don't think he has a telephone.
Fine, said Gloria, we shall put down Antonio as contact.
So now I have a card, and heavens forbid something happens to me and people try and get in contact with my designated person of contact, for he is listed as :
Antonio Ontiveros,
conocido,
El centro, Vallarta.
There must be hundreds and hundreds of Antonios in the center of Vallarta.

Inconvenient Timing

I am pretty regular, which used to amuse Chuck no end. He used to say that he was regular in being not regular at all.
Most mornings I go to the bathroom to do number two
and almost every time I am sitting there, shorts around my ankles
the mutts will break out in a hysterical fit of barking.
These days I am about the only person living here on the hill, all the other houses empty and for sale or just being used a few weeks a year, so it is of interest to me to know what happens in the street.
I have, then, two options.
I can try and ignore the beasts and end up with bleeding ulcers and a heart failure or
I can push and wipe and run to the door with my shorts around my ankles and find, in most cases, it was nothing.
There is of course a third option.
Get rid of the worthless mutts.

Wish that I had done this.

My New Plant

I pinched a plant from my neighbors.
Well, in truth, I did ask if I could have a cutting when they moved.
They have moved, and I waited a decent amount of time to make sure they were well and truly gone, and then, armed with my shovel I went to retrieve my prize.
It is a wonderful looking plant. I think of it as a Japanese Maple, but I don't really know what it is.
It has beautiful serrated leaves and the whole plant, leaves and stem, is a glorious red and it produces pink flowers.
I love it.
As do every leaf eating insect living in the neighborhood.
From the joy of every morning checking the progress and marveling at the beauty of my new plant, I now check to see how many more leaves the voraciuos insects have consumed during the night.
And despair.
The woods are full of trees and plants, lots and lots for the insects to eat. Why, oh why do they have to choose my special and treasured ones ?
Something to ponder.

Frikadelle On A Fork

I am not sure what made me think of this bar that I frequented as a young person in Copenhagen.
The bar looked as if it had been around for hundreds of years, smallish interconnected rooms with lots of pictures on the walls and lots of smoke. Some pictures were so coated with smoke it was hard to imagine what they would have been like originally.
So there one would meet with friends to drink beer, smoke cigarettes and talk bullshit. And if one, late at night, would feel a bit peckish, one could order
A ROSE
A rose was a freshly fried frikadelle impaled on a fork wrapped with a paper napkin. In a surrealistic kind of way, it might look a bit like a rose.
It was the best frikadelle one could find.
These days I don't go to bars much and beers have been replaced by cheap wine; I don't smoke but I still bullshit and I still think a frikadelle on a fork is wonderful thing.
A rose by any other name.

justice.

It was a bad night with regards to scorpions.
Twice I had to jump up and stomp one of those miserable critters to death not having any kind of cutting tool close to me.
And then sweep them up in my dustpan to await further disposal, only when I got ready for that later on, a million ants had appeared from nowhere and were feasting on the carcasses of the stomped-upon scorpions.
Well now, I thought, there is some kind of justice in this, and let the ants have at it.
The next morning all there was left in the dustpan was a pair of pinchers.
Justice, says I. Maybe even poetic justice.

The Bougainvillea

Chuck planted it on the corner of the house, and he must have found an auspicious place, for it grew to an astonishing height and made a heavy trunk, not an easy feat for a climbing/trailing plant.
At its most gloriuos, people told me they could see it from the beach, like a beacon of red in all the green of the jungle.
Then came the Electric Company and cut it because of fears for their lines, but it made a steady and determined come-back.
That is until yesterday.
Yesterday arrived the maintenance guys; an old man with an impresive moustache and his dimwitted, but friendly helper.
They started to work and by the time I realized what they were up to, the Bougainvillea was gone.
All gone.
OY, I yelled to the guys. And my Bougainvillea ???
Si, said the old guy with the moustache and smiled proudly, it was big. Real big.
And that was the end of my Bougainvillea. What the Electric Company with all their fancy equipment had failed to do, it took a little old guy with an impressive moustache and his dimwitted helper, equipped only with machetes, about half an hour to accomplish.
I do not think it will ever come back after this.

More Rodent Tales

I distinctly remember reminding me not to leave the dirty laundry in the bodega, so not to tempt the rapacious rodents.
Somehow I must have forgotten, for when I made use of to-day, the first sunny day in a while, to do my laundry, there they were.
The holes.
In my t-shirts and undies, chewed by these unwelcome and sneaky little critters.
I shall have to wear these holie garments for I have few others, but it is coming down to the wire;
the rodents gotta go. I have lost my patience and good will.
Now should I write them an eviction notice ?.....

The Scorpion

Where it came from I don't know, but there it was, slithering about in my sink as I was about to do some dishes.
For a scorpion it was not that big, but experience has taught me that small ones pack a punch too.
By now I am beyond getting hysterics, so I calmly looked for the sharpest thing with which to immolate this unwanted critter and I cut it in half, watching as the tail straightened out and then was still.
Then I threw the pieces in the garbage.

The Harpies

My mother, raised a Catholic, left her church behind when she married my father, a Protestant.
She saw that we children were raised Protestants too, but churchgoing was never an important part of the family life except, of course for baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals.
I don't recall the occasion when Mother and I were sitting in the church together.
Most likely a baptism.
In front of us were a couple of harpies in their dullest Sunday Best suits, complete with little felt hats adorned with withered and faded artificial flowers.
They were talking to each other in the particular tone used to be heard by others but low enough to be claimed as private conversation.
If I had known it was dress-up, said one of them, I would have worn a dress too.
Well, said the the other harpy, some people just don't know how to dress for church...
and it dawned on me that they were referring to my mother, who was wearing a dress she had made from a length of Cherise colored Thai silk I had brought from a trip to Asia. She did look like some exotic bird surrounded by a gaggle of barnyard hens.
I was young and I was offended and I was going to let the harpies know how I felt and I was about to lean over when I felt my mother's hand on my arm.
She never said anything, she just touched my arm and I sat down again.
I think she was secretly proud that I was going to let the harpies have it, and I think she was very proud of her dress, but most of all, I think she realized that this was an occasion for somebody else, a baptism I think, and we were better folks than the harpies who, I am sure, having accomplished their smear would later re-live this over and over again while drinking their coffee and eating cookies.
I don't remember mother wearing that dress again, though.

Justification.

When a while back I found myself with an unexpected windfall, I decided to treat me to a couple of things.
One was a new wrist watch to replace the one that up and died long ago to make it possible to tell the time when we have the inevitable black out and the wall clock has stopped.
The other was to get a cell-phone and join the 21st century.
I bought a watch and I bought a cell phone.
And this morning my reasons for getting these items was justified.
I woke up to yet another black-out but, since I now have a watch, I could tell the time and grab my cell phone -without electricity my regular phone doesn't work- and call The Electric Company who sent, hours later to be sure, a truck to fix the problem.
But I felt good, for this was exactly the situation that justified my wild spending of my windfall.
So there.

Missing Tadpoles

Some toad or frog had deposited her eggs in my pool, and one day I discovered what seemed like thousands of tiny tadpoles swimming in the shallow, murky waters of my neglected pool.
I got curious about this happening, and not knowing very much about the life cycle of amphibians, I checked it out on the computer and watched with great interest as they grew bigger and, it looked like, smaller in numbers.
So after my week in Ajijic I checked the local inhabitants of the pool, and there were none.
Not one little tadpole.
And now I don't know if there was a natural disaster, or some tadpole eating critter got into the pool and ate them all or, maybe, they all changed from their gills into lungs and drowned because there was no place for them to get out of the water.
I don't know, and I guess I will never know.
It will remain the mystery of the missing tadpoles.

Another Rodent Tale

And I need some shorts for Ajijic, I said to self as I opened the closet door to get to the shorts and found myself face to face with a rodent.
It was sitting on a hanger with a shirt, and looked at me appraisingly, looked up at the shelf above and then, not at all panicky, started the ascent to the shelf, and the most extraordinary sight was revealed.
Attached to her teats were three good size babies, whose combined weight must have equaled that of the mother, and yet she dragged herself and her brood over the top of the hanger and up the the relative safety of the shelf with the stacked jeans and sweats.
Such maternal dedication deserves something, so I decided not to do anything about this till I get back from Ajijic.
Maybe by then she will have found better accommodations for her family.
One hopes.

Those Pesky Notes

I forget things.
And I know it, so I am constantly writing notes to self.
Things to remember.
Like today, when I made a note of what was needed at the store, drove all the way there
and discovered
I had forgotten the note.

Miss Clarice and Quigley

I wanted to add this drawing to the former post, but that went beyond my capabilities, so this is how I have to do it.
I give to you
Miss Clarice and Quigley.
Enjoy.

Clarice

I never met Clarice.
Christa met her at a shelter in Connecticut where she had been dropped because her humans thought she was pregnant.
Nice Catholic republicans.
She wasn't. She was just fat.
She, and her equally fat male counterpart in Ajijic, Qigley, inspired me to do the Pas de Chat's.
Now I hear from Miss Alice that Clarice has been adopted.
And to a family with a dog, albeit a blind one.
So listen up all you fat broads out there
somewhere there is a blind dawg waiting just for you.
Just ask Miss Clarice.

The Old Lime Tree

And then you drizzle with a lot of lime
wrote Erik in his recipe for tuna steaks.
Shucks, I thought. I have no limes. Tuna yes. Limes no.
But wait, I said to me. Wait.
And I went out in the street and up the hill a bit to the old lime tree that stands at the side of the street.
Miraculously, badly damaged by storms and old age and neglect, it still has limes.
And I picked a few and thought
there are things to be said for living in the woods.
Now I can make tuna steaks a la Erique.

The Madsen Girls

It was decided, for publicity purposes I imagine, to promote the designer, me.
And to do that some of the gowns I had created were gathered and some of the girls I had created them for too, and a photographic session was set up. And we even made it to the front page of the week-end section of the local newspaper. I used to have a framed version of the page with the photo, but that has disappeared on one of my many moves.
Recently I found this polaroid that was used by the photographer to check light and composition etc.
The Madsen Girls.
And such lovely girls they were, nice and talented.
Wonder where they all are now.
Such sweet memories.

Those Blue Eyes

A long time ago, when Chuck and I first started living in Mexico, we went shopping for paint with our dear Mexican friend Carlitos.
In the paint store we all noticed this little old lady moving back and forth, surrounded by the usual crowd of grand daughters and assorted kids.
The little old lady finally got the courage to approach Carlitos, who was obviously Mexican, and said to him
please make them look at me. I have never seen such blue eyes before in my life.
This was mostly due to Chuck, who did indeed have the bluest, most sparkling of eyes.
I remember the shock of seeing them on stage the first time, like blue beacons.
So we looked at her and smiled, and she went away happy.
And to the last minute, at the hospital, with his brother James on one side of the bed and his sister-in-law Kathy on the other and me at the end, he still had those incredible, sparkling blue eyes.
Boy, how I miss those blue eyes.

The Nest.

Well Now, I said to myself.
I am in the garage and I might as well check the oil in the car.
Checking the oil is one of the few things I know how to do. I even know how to add oil and many times I have been in tears, trying to get a recalcitrant cap back on.
So I strode confidently over to the car, pulled the latch and lifted the hood and.......
some animal had made a neat and wonderful nest on top of the air filter.
And decorated with dried leaves of the Heliconias that grow next to the garage.
And another mystery solved. All the torn up tissues inside the car were done so some could be used for lining of the nest.
I felt beastly when I chucked the nest. All that work for naught.
But it is still my car and my kind feelings for animals go only so far.
So maybe I should use the car little more.

When first in New York, I worked at night as a dresser for NYCB and got my introduction to ballet that way.
I found this sketch in an old book of mine. I remember doing it of one of the corps girls waiting for her entrance in Nutcracker.
Over the years my love for ballet that I got in those days may have diminished a little, but it will never go away.
I look at the sketch and I can still recall the thrill of standing, when I had a chance, in the wings and see some wonderful dance.

The Saga of No Sound

Is my face red.
When Friday night I discovered that my TV had no sound, and determined it was no fault of my equipment I mailed a note to my contact in Canada for matters regarding the satellite service. And heard nothing.
Thankfully Flemming and Alexis had lent me scads and scads of DVDs, so I had plenty to entertain me these rainy nights.
Monday came and still no word from my contact, so I decided to mail directly to the provider using the customer space on their web site and, because I am a nice person, I wrote yet another mail to my contact to let him know what I had done.
That somehow got a response. He claimed not having received the original mail.
Many mails later and lots of back and forth'ing, my contact suggested to unplug the whole megilla because, he said, static can build up in equipment.
I unplugged.
And started again.
And had sound.
And felt utterly foolish, particularly since I had written a not so nice note to the provider practically accusing them of sabotage.
I had to eat crow and mail a note back apologizing for my outburst
but it was a small prize to pay for getting the sound back.
Long live us Luddites.

A Luddite's Lament

I am a Luddite. A functioning Luddite, but a Luddite none the less.
Electronics and mechanics and I have a tenuous relationship.
I almost cried when the woman at Telmex handed me a cardboard box with the equipment to set up my new internet service.
Me.
By myself.
And I thought I was smart when I asked, specifically, the girl who was selling me the new cell phone, if the instructions at least were in English. ( They weren't, even if she swore they would be ).
And so I sit here, at this moment with a CD player that has hissy fits like a three year old baby, spitting my CDs out and refusing to play, but only intermittently.
A teevee that has no sound, mostly I suspect, due to some idiotic notion at the server ( Canadian ).
A new cell phone that kept telling me that the keys were locked and that I had to unlock them. But not how I was to unlock them.
An MP3 player that doesn't have instructions because it is obsolete. ( apparently that happens fast in the world of electronics )
All this to show that, although a Ludddite, I still crave the things in life that seem to be so easy for people so much younger than I to handle and understand.
I spend a lot of time fretting and reading instructions written by computerized translators into barely recognizable English, and at times I make things work.
And the joy when that happens.
Well worth the agony.
Now about typing....

Who Cares !

Great Galloping, Gaseous Godzilla, I thought.
Look at me.
My shorts are made from the leftovers of three different plaid seersucker slacks I had made into shorts for Sally.
My wife beater t-shirt has developed holes and runs and
my shirt is a gauzy flower print shirt Erik had left behind because, he claimed, it had mysteriously shrunk.
It isn't that my stuff is second hand that is bothersome . I like second hand clothes; they have a different feel of having been used and loved. No, what bothers me is the haphazard way I had put it all together.
When did that happen ?
When did I stop thinking about what might go with some particular shorts or shirt ?
Probably when I stopped going to town all that often, because it obviously hasn't been a problem for me, and the Worthless Ones care only about me as the source of food and biscuits.
Besides, it is claimed that dogs are color blind.
Now should I change the shorts......?
NAH. Who really cares.

Doggie Biscuits

Doggie biscuits are hard to find here in PV.
Sure you can find the "designer " versions at the vets, but I am talking about the everyday, supermarket variety, the kind you buy when you shop for groceries.
My supermarket has one kind, and I have learned to stock up when they are available, which is all too infrequent.
Yesterday as i was shopping for food, I checked the aisle for biscuits and there were ( again ) none.
Never mind, thought I. I have an unopened bag at home.
And so when I got home I went to transfer the biscuits from the bag to the container I keep for easy access and.....the bag was almost empty.
The resident rodent had stealthily eaten a hole in the bag and one by one, emptied the bag of biscuits.
There were five left.
Little buggers.
The biscuits are so hard to come by that I don't feel charitable enough to feed them to the rodent population; they can eat crumbs and what-nots but leave the biscuits alone.

Beautiful, Brave and Blue

They are jays, the blue birds that make the woods around me their home.
And they are smart and brave.
Twice I have seen them drive an unwanted visitor from what they obviously think of as their territory.
Yesterday was the second time I was aware of a ruckus, a fluttering of many, many wings and a loud and persistent cackle,all around my mango tree.
And I saw the cause.
A snake was resting on a branch.
But the jays did not give up, and community effort and constant badgering made the misguided serpent slide down the tree and go away.
Then, and only then, did the jays relax and stop the chattering.
I feel a lot better with this warning signal.
My brave and beautiful blue jays.

Plain Speech

Many times I am stopped from doing things on the computer because I do not speak computerese, so I get flustered and confused.
But I decided to take a chance and try to install the new version of Firefox.
And after the obligatory many " click here" and " next " I suddenly saw a a little window with this message :
A moment
a little housekeeping.
And I thought
YES
Any program that refers to cleaning out files as housekeeping gets my vote and my business.
Now about typing........

Good vs. Cheap and Plenty

We shall not, said Erik when I met him at the airport for his brief visit with me, we shall not drink cheap wine. I shall buy some good wine, he said.
Well now, thought I. Who am I to argue.
So we bought a couple of bottles of good wine, and that night catching up on all and sundry, we finished them.
Somehow we never replenished the good wine but settled for the "in-house special" of cheap wine in cartons.
Of which I had plenty.
But not anymore.
Time to stock up again.

Et Gensyn

As a student at the art school in Copenhagen, we often went to the museums and art exhibitions.
Once in a museum I saw and fell in love with a painting depicting a hallway with open doors.
Today in the Guardian there is an article about a new show featuring the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi and when I saw his paintings I knew; this was the painter of the one that has haunted me for more than forty years.
Somewhere in time I had lost his name but now, now I know who the painter of my dreams is.
And I rejoice.

Stormy Weather

It was 3:35am when I woke up.
What woke me was a combination of rain, thunder, lightning and a dog barking.
Priscilla.
She had refused to come in after the late night pee stop, and now with the rain pouring, she had changed her mind.
So I went out in my birthday suit and opened the gate to let her in.
After that I could not go back to sleep, and the weather got worse with an enormous and loud lightning hitting something on the other side of the canyon.
Great, thought I, here goes the electricity.
And then a strike so close that it lit up the whole inside of the house with the appropriate sound track.
Here goes the computer, thought I.
Never mind, I said to myself. I shan't worry about this till the morning.
Which finally came and I got up and went to the loo to pee and
there was light.
And I checked the computer which was happily blinking all its little green lights.
We are safe, for now.
Till the next storm.

A Matter Of Guilt

Every morning when I strap on my new wrist watch, I first have a moment of joy, then the moment of guilt.
Sure it was purchased with an unexpected windfall, and sure it was only half the retail price and sure it was something I desperately wanted..... and still
there is a nagging little voice telling me how much I could have done with that money I so frivolously spent on a watch, like paying bills and buying groceries .
I have no clear answer for that.
And imagine what kind of guilt I shall have to fight when I buy a cellular phone.
And I am neither Catholic nor Jewish
just prone to guilt.

Another Dream

It suddenly came crashing into my consciousness as I was sitting reading the depressing news of the day, what my dream last night had been about.
Smocking.
The art of stitching folds together on a garment for either practical purposes or merely decorative.
SMOCKING.
I spent a whole night dreaming of this ?
I have never done it, I have never given it a second thought, I barely knew the name of the work.
The human brain works in mysterious ways

Misplaced National Pride ?

Last night on The Stephen Colbert Show, a guest was mentioning the creators of the communications phenomenon Skype as a Swede and an Estonian.
Estonian?, thought I.
I thought it was a Dane
and not wasting more time thinking, I hurled myself into a web search for the national identity of this person.
They all claimed him Danish.
So how come this author and guest on a show watched by millions didn't do his homework ?
Well, at least I found out, relaxed and can now concentrate on more important things, such as should I take the laundry to the launderette today or can I push it yet another day?
very important issues.

The Resident Rodent's Guide To Better Living

Canines sleep a lot and are sloppy eaters, which leaves great opportunities for liberating food from doggie bowls or just collecting scraps and spills.

Another Dream

In my dream I had finished an unspecified job in an unspecified location and was on my way home.
Home was Seattle.
The local bus had taken me as far as it could, and now I was left in a vast, white and snow covered landscape, with very few habitations and no traffic at all.
I had to find a bus to Seattle, so I walked
and walked
and finally found a public phone with a directory which told me that the long distance carrier, AAA, would get me to Seattle. It also pointed out that there was an attractive view from the overpass of interstate 251.
Then I woke up, so now I'll never know about the triple A bus line nor about the view from the overpass.
Is there an interstate 251 ?

Carbon Paper

They use carbon paper, hissed Erik incredulously when we left the bank.
Carbon paper. I thought that went out with East Germany, he said.
We had been to the bank to change money for him to buy more stuff to take home to Mallorca and presents for the family in Seattle.
Carbon paper indeed, I thought.
This is a vast improvement from the days when we had to stand in line for hours to change money and more often than not, the bank would run out of cash, or the cashier would need a lunch break and the window would come crashing down, marking the end of business for that day.
Now we have the ATM machines and money changers on every street corner, all the conveniences of modern life, so what does it matter that the bank is still using carbon paper.
Kind of quaint I say.
But then I live here.

Y.A.S.N.Y.

The first job I had when I landed in New York, was working for a boutique named YASNY
( You Aint Seen Nothing Yet ) , located on Broadway and close to Lincoln Center.
The people in charge were all dancers from NYCB, and there was an eclectic selection of merchandise spanning from Mexican pottery to simple, reasonably priced dresses, produced by me in the basement.
I was still close enough to my years of schooling to still doing things the old way, which was not always appreciated.
One day a lady was checking out one of my dresses and turned to the sales person and said
But the hem
and pulled nervously at the dress
the hem is done by hand
and put the dress back on the rack.
This was more than she could cope with.

A bargain ?

Alice likes Advil; I am an Aspirin person myself, but I thought that maybe there was something to the Advil I did not know.
I take at most a couple of Aspirins a month unless I have a cold or drink way too much.
So today at Costco, buying food for The Worthless Ones, I saw the pharmacy department and decided to check for Advil.
They had a small box of twenty and an enormous box of generics for almost the same price.
I hailed the lady in the white coat behind the counter and asked
Are they the same ?
yes, she said.
But, I said, one has twenty tablets and the other has one hundred and two, and they cost almost the same. Are they really the same ?
Yes, she said again. Good brand, she said and pointed to the generic brand.
Well now, I thought. That is one big bargain and resolutely put the box of generics in my shopping basket.
When I got home I thought a bit more about it.
If I continue to take tablets at the rate I do now, I will have enough for ten years;
And the expiration date on this box is Jan 2010.
maybe it was not such a big bargain after all.
I have a head ache now,
Quick, the advil.

Pen And Ink

It was pen and ink, I said to my niece.
It was pen and ink I used for that drawing.
Deep silence.
Well, like when in grade school we had learned to write the alphabet with pencils, we progressed to pen and ink.
The pen was a steel nip and the ink was right there on the desk, in an inkwell.
The desk was 0f wood and....
I know, I know , yelled my niece, excitedly. I saw that in a movie about the old times.
So there were my earliest memories of writing and reading, remembered as if they were part of a movie.
And yet. It did happen more than fifty years ago.
And here I am, using the same equipment I used to learn to write "skoenskrift", literally "beautiful writing", only this time I am making silly drawings of cats dancing.
It feels like a big circle, and it does not feel so bad.

Pas De Chat

I was trying to think of something very clever, but failed.
Something funny then ? Same result.

A truism then. Or one of my home made "sayings". So here we go.
All dancers are fools
but all fools
are not dancers.

Housework.

I do certain things well.
Housework is not one of them.
I do like a clean house, but as I get older the futility of constant cleaning gets more and more obvious, and it doesn't help having five undisciplined and unbathable mutts ( four, actually and a Schnauzer ).
And I think of my mother who, when she finally got rid of her mutts ( we, her children ) would really rather spend time painting her exquisite birds on porcelain plates and reading trashy novels than cleaning house.
I think she was very happy when my dad retired and sold the barber shoppe and suddenly had time to help out with the housework.
And so I look at the dusty/dirty floors, the dust balls in the corners the size of rodents, the windows that could do with a wash, and I say to myself
Self; One of these days we will have to do something about this
and then I scribble some or write some or find a trashy book to read ( or Trollope if all else fails ) and decide that too much housework is not good for the constitution.
Hey, I only have to convince me, and I am easily convinced.
One of these days though, one of these days.

The Iguana

Living in the jungle as I do,you develop certain rules for critters who invade your house.
In my case they are :
Snakes and scorpions, instant death.
Birds and butterflies caught and set free.
Toads and frogs captured and reassigned different living areas ( the jungle )
rodents and geckos and ants, some kind of symbiotic existence.
But iguanas
it never was a problem till to-day when some scared, confused and not so small iguana suddenly came barging into my house causing wild havoc with the worthless ones in hot pursuit.
Once it got out of a window and, confronted by the mass of snarling and salivating mutts, decided to enter the house again and had me in a tizzy warding off the worthless ones with a broom whilst trying to make the iguana make a run for the open door.
It chose to attack the broom.
Well now, thought I, this calls for drastic measures, and grabbed the tongs from the kitchen and grabbed the now exhausted iguana with the tongs and carried it, with the mutts attacking me, out to the lower deck, and then with a flick of the arm, sending the culprit out in the jungle, only, it ended up in a tree.
So now guilt came crashing down on me....had I squeezed it too hard with the tongs and crushed its ribs ? had I , because I really, really don't like them, let my dislike get the better of me and deliberately squashed it ?
because there it was, just hanging from a branch of a tree.
I even fought my way through the jungle to the tree to check the creature who was still breathing.
And now, after many checks on the condition of the iguana it has finally moved and is now sitting in the tree, a little more alert.
Which then leaves me with the question
What does one do if an iguana enters your house ?

Blood Type

For so many years I have wondered what my blood type is, and promptly forgotten again for in reality, how often are you asked about your blood type?
But then Flemming told me about a card we old geezers can get here in Mexico to obtain discounts on a number of things, such as bus tickets ( long distance ) .
So now I again had interest in knowing the blood type since this is required information for the card.
And I made a search on the web for places where one would get this info and in the middle of the quest a thought came to me.
My discharge papers.
Surely they would have that information and I found my dog tag ( I save everything ) and yes, there it was.
I am A pos.
Now I know, and all the time the information was right there, only I did not know where to look.

Words.

Too many words, I thought. Time for some picture or pictures. But what of ? I wondered.
Pets.
That always works well. A picture of some cute and cuddly pet. But that kind of excludes the Worthless Ones, who are neither cute nor cuddly.
Babies then.
Doing cute and babyish things. Nah. Not really.
A view then, a view like the one I tried to capture of the sun when it, because of some atmospheric trick, appeared as a big, bright red balloon, only the camera did not see it as I did. So no spectacular blood red sun picture.
And the photo someone forwarded me of a poor, unfortunate female with saggy teats and dyed red hair, standing on the street in bright blue knickers, knee socks, angel wings and not much else, would just turn everybody off.
So what ?
Well, it seems I managed to write a post without a picture.
Maybe next time.

Dear Chuck

I has been a while since I wrote you, but lately I have been thinking so much about you that I felt now was the time for another missive.
This deals with opera and, frankly, there is no-one I can talk to about these things.
The people we knew here in PV would probably not even know how to spell it, and Flemming and Alexis are not great fans of the genre, so that leaves you...and me.
Do you remember when once we saw a production on the telly of Cenerentola, and we both fell in love with the tenor who sang like a bird and was, joy of joys, slender. Well, it seems he has finally made his Met debut and sang The Daughter of the Regiment. I caught a video on YouTube of him singing the nine high C's, effortlessly. AND running about in front of his fellow soldiers. Absolutely smashing. You would have died. Wrong term; you would have loved it to pieces.
I looked him up. He is Juan Diego Florez, from Peru.
And he did an encore of the nine C's, which had not been done since Pavarotti was in his hay day, which is quite some time ago.
The other operatic happening was more of an accident. I was channel surfing ( I know, I know; you always hated that ) and found that Bravo Channel was showing I Puritani.
I jumped for joy as I remembered all the times you and I had listened to the whole thing, one fantastic aria following a duet and leading into a quartet. all of it wonderful, all of it musically sublime.
Not so with this production. A Met production as it turned out. Staid and mothbally. And boring.
The soprano, some Russian dame, Anna Netrebko, very well put together and very pretty in a common sort of way was dull. I swear she must have demanded that her tempi be brought down and, instead of being emotional and wonderful, they became .......BORING.
I read , later, after a search on the web for this miserable production, a glowing review in the NYTimes of her and an explanation for the production. It was indeed hauled out of the moth balls, shaken up a tiny little bit, and presented to the world. Time to put it back in some new moth balls, says I.
I don't think I have suddenly developed a tin ear; she was bad. Just as bad as Jessye Norman was good when we first heard her, or Beverly when she made us cry singing about her little table in Manon Lescaut.
You will just have to trust me, but then this was an area where we rarely disagreed, where we seemed to follow the same line, musical or otherwise.
But I do miss our times discussing the finer points, and I do so miss you.
Well, time to start din-dins and then a night of mindless entertaining ( and drinking ) .
My love to you
Alan.

Arts vs Sports

The email I received showed a gargantuan cargo ship, capable of transporting untold millions of tons of goods from places like China to the USA.
And this monster ship was built in Denmark.
Some still smoldering sense of national pride made me respond to this mail, pointing out that, unlike the Mexican billionaire who is making his fortune on monopoly of telecommunication and who most definitely does not believe in philanthropy, the owner of the company that built this enormous freighter, presented the people of Denmark with a new, state of the arts, opera house.
And then I thought
do people like the one who sent me the email really care ?
Would they not have been more impressed if the gift had been a brand, spanking new sports stadium; a place where one can go and be surrounded by equally testosterone driven fellow fans, eating bad hot-dogs and pop corn and watch grown men so padded and helmeted that they look more like robots on steroids, bang into one another.
People for whom opera, if they ever think about it, would be like a contest between the fat tenor and , most often I am afraid, the equally fat soprano, on who can hold the note the longest in some dreary, plot less production, not to be compared with a good, rousing Broadway musical with lots of hummable tunes and endless lines of good looking gals and guys. ( and a fat one thrown in for comic relief )
So NO;
I don't think I impressed them an awful lot.

Sisterly love

Can I make you a sandwich, my sister asked.
I would have been about twelve and always hungry, my sister going on fourteen and mostly annoyed with me and not prone to attacks of sisterly love, but, hunger overcame suspicion and I ate the sandwich while my sister stood by and watched.
Why? I asked when I had finished the sandwich, why did you make me a sandwich ?
Well, she said with disarming honesty; I feel that I am getting fat and I thought if you were fat too, then nobody would notice.
No sisterly love here, just pure vanity.
But then she was going on fourteen, never an easy time.
And the sandwich was good.

Beware

Beware of females who refer to the male genitalia as ...wieners.
Last night I watched a chat show hostess/comedienne state her views on this in reference to some nude scenes ( male, frontal ) in a new film.
I do not, she declared, like to look at wieners. And, she continued, if men think speedos are sexy, forget it.
Basically what she was promoting, although she might argue this, is a burka for men.
Men, according to her should be dressed, and if they might feel like a bit of freedom on the beach, they might be allowed to show up in those frightful, over sized surfer shorts that seem to be so popular at the moment and absolutely sure to not make females like her , think naughty thoughts.
Is this what happens when women achieve equality ?
They are not a bit better than chauvinist men, only with a lot more make-up and a lot less to wear on the beach.
Equality indeed.

The Chairs

For months and months I had been hounding poor Antonio about the chairs that his cousin had stashed in Antonio's already full apartment.
I coveted the chairs, well at least two of them and I saw them fit perfectly at the ends of my new dining room table, the host and hostess chairs if you will.
The cousin apparently got them when the hotel he works for remodeled and which must have chosen a different kind of chairs for the new decor, but to me they were perfect with rush seats and arm rests, nice and solid and painted black.
Alas, nothing happened until yesterday when all the stars must have aligned and Antonio called me to inform me that not only had he ( finally ) talked with his cousin, but the cousin was agreeable to let me have two chairs and, what's more, for free.
So off I went this morning to Antonio's apartment which is located on a narrow, steep one-way street with a minimum of parking, but again the stars aligned and I parked right in front and schlepped the chairs to the car and thanked A. profusely and rushed home to arrange my new treasures.
And this is where the alignment of the stars stopped; the chairs don't fit under the table. The arms are too high.
So all my dreams and scheming and hounding of poor Antonio came to naught. Sure I have the chairs, and sure they are wonderful, but they don't fit under the table.
They are now neatly arranged on either side of sideboard and can, if the occasion arises, be used as host and hostess chairs, but their spot is not, as I had envisioned, at the table but guarding ceramic pots and porcelain chicken.

Equality

Now I don't know if I threw a hissy-fit or if my mother was the enlightened person who would not let her daughters have new dolls without letting her only ( at that point ) son have one too.
Whatever the reason, when my sisters were proudly presenting their new dolls, I too had one;
a boy doll named Jens Peter Ole, who had a sweater and shorts and a woolly cap.
This was a few, scant years after the long occupation of Denmark by the Nazis, so things were hard to come by and I am sure that the clothes the dolls wore were recycled from old knit-wear, painstakingly unraveled and washed and re-knitted again.
But there we were, sun in our eyes and brand, spanking new dolls.
I asked my oldest sister a few weeks before she so suddenly died, if she remembered the name of her doll in that picture
Bodil, she said without hesitation.
That was her name. Bodil.
I wonder if my other sister remembers the name of her doll too.
They were so important to us and so fragile, being made from left-overs and poor quality materials and surely did not survive a long time;
but their memories and names did.

A Scent

I had not been back in Denmark for many years when I was urged to come back before my father lost the battle with the cancer.
I asked my mother if there was anything she would like from USA and, yes, she said.
The scent that Chuck's mother wears. They had met when my parents came to visit years before.
She always smelled so nice, said my mother.
That was simple; Dorothy used Estee Lauder so I got myself to the appropriate counter in the department store and asked the icily beautiful and superbly groomed sales lady for Estee Lauder.
Which one, she asked. We have many different ones.
UH, said I, it is, uh, for my mother and,uh....
a barely visible frown passed over the face of the beautiful sales lady who said
Maybe you should ask your mother.
I conceded that that would be difficult, but could she, maybe, recommend something, please.
By now the frown was visible and she looked first at me and then through me as she rearranged the bottles on the counter.
Sweating slightly I had an idea;
why not, said I, give me the original. That must be it. The original.
And rapidly and efficiently bottles were wrapped and money taken and this dullard sent on his way.
Next time I was back in the old country was for the funeral of my mother, and I was touched when some of the grand daughters begged for the bottles of scents of their grandmother's because, as they said, granny always smelled so nice.
And I recalled the incident with the ice queen in the department store and thought
It was worth it.
Well, well worth it.

The War Of The Clotheslines

This is so silly, I have a hard time believing it is true.
It seems that there are communities in Canada and USA where it is against the law to use outdoor clotheslines to dry your laundry.
A developer of one of the communities explains that it would destroy the aesthetics of the area were people allowed to string lines in their back yards and, as a 28 year old female of the neighborhood said, who wants to look at your neighbor's laundry.
Well, excuse me Mr. Developer and Ms. Silly-28-year-old neighbor, but this is now, with real problems with regards to energy, and dryers, however convenient, use an enormous amount of energy.
So why not use the free and energy friendly clothesline ?
Are there things to be ashamed of ?
Will it, as one female suggested, turn other females into " laundry maids ", as if doing laundry inside, shifting the load from the washer to the dryer is OK, but if one were to transfer the laundry load to the outside and hang it on lines, then suddenly the female is like an indentured
servant.
Why?
Anyway, where I grew up, there was a communal drying area where all the housewives could hang their laundry to dry after the wash and where, to be honest, the other housewives would give the laundry a look-over and decide what kind of a house keeper this woman was.
My mother was upset about an otherwise good neighbor, whose laundry was looking a bit dingy, according to my mother.
Would that be what the "28 year old neighbor" might fear? A judgment on her laundry skills.?
I say, lets string lines all over the place and show the world that we have nothing to fear but slovenliness and bad detergents.
And lack of bleach.

Dear Chuck

For the last five years there have been so many times I have said to myself
I have to tell Chuck this
well, now I decided it was time to share these things with you.
It became clear when by accident I saw a movie on TV based on a favorite book of ours; Regeneration by Pat Barker.
Remember how after we read the first book of hers you went ahead and ordered more of her books on some web site. I kept them, with some of your favorite DVDs and other books, in the cabinet next to your bed.
Just recently I reread them, so it was a big surprise to find this movie which, as I remember, was done in 1997. Funny we never heard of it.
It was rather good considering the complexity of the book and they either found the original hospital, or else there are other Gothic monstrosities dotting the landscape of Scotland.
You would have liked it, I am sure.
Well, thats all for now.
Alan.

Inframundo

I am reading a book by a third generation Mexican, who is tracing the path of his family leaving Mexico before the revolution and settling in San Antonio, Texas .
He talks a lot about the ideas and beliefs of the old ones, and one struck me as very relevant;
El Inframundo
which is a place where, amongst other things, all that has been forgotten still lives.
I like that, no, I need that.
I look at my past and see a great swath of blank spaces; but if there is an Inframundo, then surely there is a space marked
Things That Alan Forgot
And there will be all the wonderful, clever, mind boggling ideas I have had but now forgotten.
There will be all the kind and loving things I hope I told the people I love but have now forgotten
and there will be, unfortunately, all the idiotic, stupid things I said and did and have deliberately forgotten.
All in one place.
Neat and tidy labeled Things That Alan Forgot.
I like that, because now I can go on forgetting things with the knowledge that it will all be there, in El Inframundo, waiting for me.

The Bicycle

It was blue, the bicycle.
It was my first bicycle, and now I had my freedom.
Aside from not having to walk to school anymore, I could go anywhere I wanted to, anytime I wanted to. Freedom. Magic only surpassed by the learning to read, seeing how little letters would come together and make words that then would make sentences. I loved that so much, and now I had a new love, my bicycle.
That was the one I used when my sister Yvonne and I, she on her own bicycle, decided to go visit our paternal grandparents on their little farm where, in fact, both of us had been born. A long ride, but we were young.
And this was the one I used the night when I "ran away from home" after a bitter fight with my sisters, and without light on the bike and without anything but my shorts and t-shirt, I drove to my maternal grandparents, some thirty-odd kilometers away. It was a matter of pride; I had said I would leave and my sisters had said good riddance and that left me no choice but to go. It was a long, long lonely ride.
And I don't even know what happened to the bike in the end. Did it end up in the basement in a corner or maybe, which I hope, when I outgrew it, it was then given to some younger member of the family.
But it was my first bicycle and I loved it
and it was blue.

Coffee, Glorious Coffee

in my early days in Seattle, when Starbuck's was a quaint hole in the wall place in the Pike Street Market with one more outlet at the University Village, I thought myself something of a connoisseur of coffee. I even had the , then, obliging girls at Starbuck's blend my special coffee
( 1/2 java, 1/4 Ethiopian and 1/4 Italian )
on request. Beans. To be ground just before making of coffee in, what in those days was a rarity, the French Press.
Oh, I was so full of it
so much so that when some friends and I went to a most wonderful pastry place, the name was something "Swiss Pastry"I seem to remember, and I glibly asked the rosy-cheeked and very young waitress, if they had "Latte'', when she asked for our preferences in coffee she said
No Sir,
But we have MJB.
and smiled angelically, feeling that she offered the best to be had in coffee.
So long ago, so many cups of coffee ago.
I thought of all this as I looked at the big bag of Starbuck's coffee that James and Kathy had given me and that I will appreciate as much as I did then, only in smaller doses, because otherwise I stay awake all night.
But the smell,
the taste.
Yeah.

The Best Wringer

She is the best, my mother said as we were having a cup of coffee together, now so many years ago.
She knows how to wring the mop, my mother said about the home help.
I never knew my mother rated the home help, in fact I didn't know she had any help at all, but getting old in the old country gives you a certain amount of advantages.
And now my mother had home help, a young woman provided by the state, who came a couple of times a week to dust and mop and, I am sure, spend a little time exchanging gossip, although you would never get my mother to admit that.
I thought of this today as I was slinging my mop haphazardly around the house to, supposedly, clean the floors. And using the kind of bucket where one does not have to wring at all, just press and twist.
My mother would have disapproved.
A good mop-wringer wrings the mop manually, like most maids in this country, but since I had the experience of a scorpion, who had hidden in the mop, bite me, I have been a little leery of the wringing business, besides, who is here to check the mop anyway ?
So I sling my mop, think of my mother, and use the squeeze apparatus.
Sorry Mom.

Flying Fingers And No Shame

A little nerd with flying fingers and and some business to promote, has found his way to my blog and is making "comments ", only these comments lead to a link to some security, virus fighting site.
If you have opened one of his 'comments", I apologize. I wish he would go away, but the blog is public and I am not smart enough to screen and/or delete him.
The best advise I can give is
Ignore him.
Let us all ignore him and hope he will take his business to some other blog; not a very Christian thought to be sure, but then I am not a very good Christian.
So, Mr. Nerd......Go away. Now......please.

Stupid Things

We all say stupid things but
one expects better from one who at one point was a close adviser to Nixon and who now, for reasons I cannot fathom, is thought of as an "Elder Statesman ."
I speak of Henry Kissinger who I never liked, who came to this country when he was twelve and still sounds like a Marlene Dietrich imitator.
According to the Herald Tribune he at one point said
Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe.
DUH.
I am sure he meant this in a humorous way ( although I don't think humor is one of his stronger suits, if one at all )
but it speaks to the pervasive idea that Europe is one area, a sort of United States of Europe.
Nothing is further from reality. Traveling in Europe, even the densest tourist will discover that these are sovereign countries with their very own government, royal families, language, history. culture and all of this so wonderfully different from whatever neighboring state that country might have.
Not even the Big Bad Bear, Russia, could quite erase these traits in their satellite occupied countries
The saying of Mr Kissinger is really as insulting as if one were to ask
Who do I call if I want to speak to the United States.
The Head Honcho Himself, the Prez, naturally.
And if you want to speak with Europe, choose your target. They all have their own head honchos, or in some cases, honchettes.
Silly old bugger. And his family right off the boat themselves.
Elder Statesman indeed.
Yikes.

A lack Of Equilibrium

I am going about doing my usual chores when, wham, suddenly it hits me :
Benjamin is in the hospital fighting for his life.
And I loose my equilibrium.
The ordinary, yawn inducing day suddenly turns a grim shade of gray.
There, in a hospital bed is a young man who only wanted to serve out his contract, forget about the atrocities he had seen in Iraq, and start a better and peaceful life.
There he is, the victim of the folly of a reformed alcoholic with a tenuous grip on the English language and an all too accommodating Danish prime minister.
And he is, unfortunately, part of an ever growing family of destroyed lives.
When these fine folks leave their offices, they can look back on so much misery, so many dead and so many maimed, that a reasonable person might ask
how do they sleep at night?
Bush says he sleeps quite well, thank you.
That is the saddest statement.
At this moment MY young life, my nephew, is not sleeping well at all.
But Bush and his cohorts sleep quite well, thank you.

The Senseless, Stupid Wars

So now he is a statistic.
Not the worst one, to be sure, only the little mentioned part, the tens and tens of thousands of veterans who now have to live the rest of their lives missing legs and arms and in many cases, part of their minds.
And for what?
Ah, say the people in power, they who sit home and send the young ones out to be killed, so that we are safe from terror.
But are we ?
It seems to me that there still are attacks in different parts of the world, or does that not matter as Mrs. Cheney suggested on the Jon Stewart show, as long as there are no threats to the US.
Now the wars that I have hated from the beginning in an abstract way have become very personal.
Now I begin to understand what so many thousands if not millions are feeling with their young members of the family either dead or maimed.
And no end in sight.
And no WMD ever, and no Bin Laden and no jubilant crowds cheering the soldiers as the destroy their country.
No flowers and hearts, only more misery for them and for us.
What a waste to boost the big egos of little men with too much power.
And Benjamin is just one of so many victims, on both sides, of these stupid, senseless wars.
Stop it and stop it now.

The Phone Call

Hillary's phone call may come at three in the morning, mine came a little after seven.
Louise called from Denmark to tell me that Benjamin, her brother and my nephew, was in a hospital in Afghanistan, having been hit by a bomb.
She was not clear how it happened, only that they were removing shrapnels from face and body and that he was alive. Still. And that he would be back in Denmark in a couple of days, transferred to some hospital for further and, one imagines, extensive care.
And that brought back to mind a thing I saw on the news a couple of days back, where the Barbie doll announcer chirpily told us that the building we just saw imploding on the screen, a vast building, used to be a hospital and that now, and here she could barely contain her enthusiasm, on this now vacant site, a stadium was to be built.
I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking that a stadium trumps a hospital; the saving of lives and treating of diseases is less important than the business of sports.
And now with my nephew going into a hospital, another victim of this groundless war, I cannot help but wonder how a stadium could ever, ever replace a hospital.
Ever.

Dreams

I don't know how other people dream, but my dreams tend to be in segments, more like a collection of short stories rather than a full length novel.
So remembering the dream may at times mean remembering only one little part of a larger picture.
Last night I had a dream wherein Chuck and I were living, temporarily it felt, in a trailer.
Outside there was snow, quite a bit of it.
I asked Chuck if I should take the dogs ( the Schnauzers ) out for a walk and if so, where were their leashes.
Never mind the leashes, said he, there's no traffic and no lights because of the snow.
Come here, he said, and started to apply some cream on a dry spot of skin I had over the nose.
He stroked my hair and said
You are a very handsome guy.
And then I woke up.

The Next Morning

I found this on my table after a night of a close and loving and ultimately sleep inducing relationship with a bottle of cheap red wine.

I drink when I am happy
and when I'm unhappy too.
Does that mean if I stop drinking
I'll be happily unhappy
or just unhappy
like the rest of you?

Not My Day

This has not been my day. Not my day at all.
And it is not over yet.
It started with the mutts starting their daily lick-a-thon to wake me up, only this time it was a little after six and still fairly dark.
All Right, I thought, we will get up and let the worthless wonders out. We did.
And they split and ran down the hill to bark at the yappy mini mutts of the Mad Queen.
Even I would be pissed off at that, so I hurried the other way to, maybe, entice the divergent flock of canines to follow me. Fat chance.
Safely back in the house, all cleaned, bathed and with the coffee consumed, I started my breakfast and discovered that I was out of E. muffins but still had a crust of " My Daily Bread " left, which would have to suffice.
After breakfast the computer announced that my security system was into a life-and-death struggle with some nasty and foreign Trojan Horse outfit, and on a window on my PC the system was buzzing through whatever junk I have stashed on my PC.
I was watching, absolutely fascinated, the numbers flying by as my valiant defender was sorting through all this crap. It was as exciting as watching paint dry.
I am not sure who won, but when I came back from trying to save a few plants in the garden from dying due to lack of water by hauling buckets of water from the abandoned pool, it seemed to be back to normal. At least to me it looked normal.
So All Right, OK, I thought, better get on with making some muffins, and I started to mix the ingredients, the yeast and water and vinegar and flour and...........I did not have enough flour.
I was staring at a soggy mess and no way to salvage it, as my place here in the woods does not have easy access to places where they sell flour. Sure we have tiny tiendas down the hill, but one thing they do not stock, is flour.
So I made do, and made disastrous muffins. YEUWWW.
Then when it was time to feed the mutts I discovered that I did not have enough dog food left and only by using all the rice and beans I had cooked for me for my dinner, did I manage to feed them all.
And now I am here. The dogs have been fed and I am trying to think of something for me, like an omelet, but the most distressing thought is....
it is not over yet, There are still hours left for scads of things to wrong. And surely will.
This has not been my day.
No Way.

On Paying Of Bills

I do love living in Mexico
BUT
Paying bills here is not one of the things I love
At the best of times it is not much fun, and to-day was a good example of the dark side of the problem.
I rent a post box for, mostly, my telephone bill as we, when we moved here to Lomas del Pacifico there was no postal service and keeping the telephone line functioning was important.
In those days, once in a while somebody from the village would make a trip to Vallarta, pick up the mail for Mismaloya and stack it in a card board box in a tienda where one then could rummage through to find whatever mail might be for you.
So having the P. O. box worked for a while, but now we have the occasional delivery to the streets and at the same time the sorting at the post office has gotten progressively more lax.
Which brings me back to the telephone bill.
If one does not receive a bill, one is left with very few choices of paying, in fact just one that I know of. Going to the only office in town, located in a mall, where one can pay without the bill.
And that means waiting in line as I had to do today and by count there were about forty people in front of me and twenty behind me.
And only two cashiers working.
I love people watching but even that gets a little old after an hour standing in line.
I am sure there are other methods of paying , and when I get my bill on time I pay at the supermarket, but that is the exception rather than the rule.
Ah well; really a small price to pay to live in paradise.