I would not, I had decided, redo the cushions on the couch and the chairs until the Worthless Ones had gone to other and better homes, where they could continue their destructive doings.
Well, it is four years and a bit and they don't seem to be going anywhere soon, so I have to admit defeat and think of a compromise.
In stead of the beautiful green material I had bought in anticipation of the change, and which would show all kinds of doggie hair and saliva and the occasional trow-up, I will now have to look for a material that will not show stains, that will stand up to doggie nails and teeth and slaver and that I can afford--and find, this is not exactly the metropolis for fabrics.
I am leaning toward the plaid that is used for pants for school uniforms for boys. If it can stand up to boys, it can stand up to my miserable canines. I hope.
Another item on my "To Do" list, right below the "talk to vet about euthanasia".

And all the newly polished brass....it was worth it.

She is gone.
My resident spider who was residing outside my bedroom window and for whose sake I didn't use the other door to the terrace lest I should disturb her web.
I was making a joke that the only company I would have for Xmas would be the Worthless Ones and the resident spider. Now she is gone, but she stayed through the 24th.
Her sister spiders with their webs in the garden left some time ago, but my spider hung in there with the company of the diminutive male who I noticed is left in her web right next to all her neatly wrapped victims. Dead. I fear he got his way, for as a final insult, he has been left unwrapped.
And so I wait for the next time the spiders come back to build their webs and give me endless entertainment.

I am not sure what got into me...maybe t'was the season, but I suddenly got the urge to polish the brass.
There is a lot of brass and copper in my house, so I started with a simple candlestick. And it looked great when I had finished scraping the old candle wax off the stick and then using a lot of elbow grease.
The thing was that it looked so shiny, so gleaming that all the other pieces looked desperately dingy.
And that was how I got tinto the frenzy of polishing. I did not mean to, but unlike the unfinished tiles on the deck that I am able to ignore, it is somewhat more difficult to ignore things inside.
So here I am with hands that ache and polish under my finger nails but with almost all the brass done.
Tomorrow I shall do the rest and for my solitary Xmas dinner I will light all the candles and watch them glow in the newly polished brass and convince myself that it was worth it.

And speaking of grandmas.
I was at the airport waiting for James to arrive, and while one is waiting, and in this case about three hours, there is nothing else to do but to watch the screen for arrivals, and the people around you, your fellow waiterers.
two things came to mind; I have never seen so many cell phones in one place before. It seemed every person, bar me, would at one point or another whip out a phone and have a lengthy and agitated conversation. As if waiting for someone was too difficult to endure without contact with the world outside the arrivals hall.
And the other thing was the clothing. Now, we gringos living in Mexico and venturing to the airport to pick up friends or family, are pretty much dressed the same way. Bright colored shirts or t-shirts and shorts--however unfortunate the choice for many--and sandals for the gents, smart and bright tops and shorts or tiny skirts and sandals for the females.
The Mexicans are by and large dressed neatly with the menfolk in shirts and long pants or jeans with shoes or boots, and the womenfolk dressed in what Chuck and I referred to as "Maria" dresses, in honour of our maid for many years who always dressed in dresses like that and would never, ever be caught in a pair of slacks, let alone shorts.
But now I see grannies dressed like this little lady waiting next to me with a bunch of grandchildren cavorting around her. Short cropped gray hair, pistachio green tight t-shirt ( I don't know if it was meant to be tight, or was tight because of her weight ) and finishing the outfit with a pair of Pepto Bismol pink lycra leggings, very, very tight.
This was definitely not your granny of yore.
Progress ? I am not sure. There was something comforting in the scores of Marias in their flowerprint dresses and their long hair in a sedate bun that you would see around town and in the markets. Now they are the minority.
Long live the minority.

Flowers for grandma

We were going to my grandparent's little farm, the place where I was born and where my parents had lived before we moved to the city.
We were walking from the train station, my mom and I, in that perpetual summer we seem to have in childhood memories.
The occasion was the slaughter of the pig that my grandparents had raised, but my mother had decided to come late to avoid--as she told me--the scream of the animal.
There we were. I must have been about four or five years old, and the road was dusty but on the sides of the ditches there were clusters of little wild violets.
I was enchanted and I picked the flowers, these delicate little things and held them in my hand because I had decided to pick them for grandma.
When we got to the farm the killing was over and I got to give granny the now slightly wilted and sad looking bunch of flowers.
I don't think she ever had flowers from a grandchild before; my cousins being, in a polite way of saying this, somewhat challenged and most assuredly not into picking flowers.
She thanked me sweetly but a little bewildered and found a cup, filled it with water and put my offering in it.
I think the next time someone gave her flowers was when she and granddaddy celebrated their fiftieth anniversary and the neighbors and family filled their small living room with endless pots of Hydrangea.
There is no picture of my flowers, but there is, somewhere, a picture of my grandparents, sitting on a couch surrounded by pots and pots of Hydrangea, looking a bit lost.
I'd like to think that my flowers made granny happier than all the pots of polite Hydrangeas.

Now this is one way to get a heart attack.
It takes a lot to get me out of the house, but one surefire thing is when I run out of my cheap wine.
And today I was out, so I got in my car and went to town.
Wrong.
Today is the day of our Senora De Guadalupe, and the Mexicans take that very seriously, so many roads downtown were closed for traffic to facilitate easy access and egress from the churches.
Total mayhem, but I made it to the store, fully expecting more mayhem, only to find the store almost empty.
Terrific, I thought, and sped around filling my cart with all kinds of stuff according to my list, and hauled it to the check out and watched the numbers soar, as the nimble fingered checkout lady added up all my purchases.
And then I dug into my bag for my card and...............no card.
My heart was palpitating, my pulse was racing and my face was flushing beet red...
no card...stolen, lost, gone, not here, and I had nowhere near enough cash to pay for my stuff.
What to do????
So I stammered to the nimble fingered checkout lady that I had to run to my car to look for my card, an off I took.
It was there; it had slipped out of the bag and was sitting on the seat.
Finding the card and paying for the groceries made the miserable trip home worth it.
Besides, I now have a supply of cheap wine, and that is very important.

So I decided to clean the deck in front of my bedroom. All through the rainy season the tiles accumulate a nasty greenish black mold, and so I thought, miguidedly it turned out, that now would be a good time to clean it.
What in my mind should be a simple task, slushing a few buckets of water and squish the broom around a bit, turned into a major undertaking, cleaning the area one tile at a time.
There are in excess of 360 12x12 tiles ( I counted ) and the only way to really clean them is getting down on the knees with a scrub brush and a bucket of water with ammonia.
I got two thirds done before my knees and back finally gave up and so, heck, two thirds are better than nothing at all.
When I get my gumption back, I shall finish the job.
Till then I will enjoy the cleaned part and ignore the other.

One can rent just about anything, but what I need most is not rentable.
I need support, kick in the ass sort of support.
I have been at the stores umpteen times looking for a new fridge, and I have left the stores umpteen times emptyhanded.
I get to the point where I try to hail the shop assistant and whip out my card and I am so very ready...I think...and think again and then I put the card back and trundle out of the store san fridge.
Now if somebody, rented or otherwise, would stop me and make me make up my mind, I would now be the happy owner of a new fridge, instead of a frustrated member of humanity who needs the final push.
Somebody willing out there ? A short trip to the store, a big kick in the behind.
Anyone ?
I can offer warn beer and endless thanks.

In my mind, the t-shirts of my childhood were always striped, and in nice "boy colors" like dark blue and light blue.
Today at my supermarket on a sales table I found a stack of striped t-shirts and I threw caution and budget to the winds and purchased one.
I look at it and I am reminded of the little guy I used to be with freckles on the nose and scabby knees. No t-shirt is going to turn me into him, but it will give me bittersweet memories, and that is worth the price of the shirt.
Besides, today I also got the visa that makes me a legal resident for another year, so that is worth celebrating too.
A striped and much loved t-shirt.

I feel that I have finally come back to a normal life, well as normal as my life has ever been.
I have had a bout of the Dengue fever; for those of you who don't know it, it is a mosquito borne, malaria like infection.
First you have tremendous headaches, followed by fever and night sweats--one night I sweated through four t-shirts..not damp...wet--and aching of bones that sometimes would leave you incapable of moving.
Followed then by a red rash, like a minor sun burn, that signals the beginning of the end of this dreaded thing.
All that takes place within seven days.
And such seven days they are, and seven nights I will never care to re-live.
There is no specific medicine for this, you take painkillers for the headache and body ache and just slog it trough.
And mine was the simple version, the more complicated ones you can die from.
So I feel good now that the headaches have gone and the bones don't ache so badly anymore and my mind can concentrate on more important things like writing this post.
I am back.

So many colors, some nice, some very nice and some not so very nice at all, a whole table full of t-shirts on sale at my local supermarket.
And I allowed myself to buy two, since the price was only 13 pesos a piece.
13 pesos is a tad more than a dollar.
But then the decision was which colors to get and after much soul searching and mulling things over, I decided on a beige and a baby blue.
And then I finished my shopping and went home and unpacked and looked at the new t-shirts and thought:
"Why the frick did I only buy two?
What skewed idea about frugality made me buy only two?
At the price of 13 pesos I could have bought a handful and not yet blown my budget.
And sure as manure by the time I make it back to the store for more comestibles, the sale will be over."
It was.

My mother, Mathilde, was not so much adventurous as curious, so one day when we were children, she brought back from the store a container of something we had never seen before called "jordnoeddesmoer" or better known as peanut butter. Now anything with butter had to be good, because butter to most Danes is like blood to a vampire.
We start with breakfast, on the bread for lunch as a base for whatever else you stack on top, for frying stuff for dinner--the famous 'frikadeller" are best fried in butter--and on toast for the late night cup of coffee. Butter is good, butter is smooth.
Not this......the first bite was pure disaster. it was salty and stuck to the roof of your mouth. This was not butter. No way. Thumbs down from all us kids.
One of my aunts--to make my mother feel less bad I think--said she might try it again some time....
And my mother never bought it again.
It took me a long time after I moved to the USA to give it another try, but now I rather like it. Every two or three years I even get the inkling of a craving for it.
So I think about the first time I tasted it and agree with the assessment we then gave it....it is nothing like good old butter, but as a thing of its own, it is rather good.

The Quilt

When the Worthless Ones started to jump on my bed with muddy paws and no respect, I decided to remove the quilt and folded it up and placed it in the linen closet, where it remained to recently when I needed something behind the quilt.
And to my horror I discovered that the rodents had made use of my quilt to gnaw holes and pull batting for their nesting.
This is just a thing, I assured myself, and things can be fixed. Sort of. Maybe.
So I started the process of fixing it, because not to would mean the rodents had won the battle, and that would never do.
The back, being a plain, white muslin, was not a problem. The problem I am still trying to solve is the damage to the front, to the pieces of printed calico that makes a quilt such a wonderful thing.
It is going to take all my ingenuity and skill to fix, but I won't give up.
This is my quilt, and no rodent is ever going to declare victory and destruction of that.
This is war and I aim to win.

So many kind people have said lovely things to me about the demise of Toby.
What if, I thought, what if it had been one--or all--of the Worthless Ones ?
What would the response have been ?
Something like:
I am sorry for your loss of, um, what was the name again? Oh yeah...that one [them ones]
And the fault is all mine.
Toby was an integrated part of my life, before and after Chuck died.
The Worthless Ones ?
I'm not at all sure. They are "here". I am "here".
They share my house, but do they share my life ?
Or will they always be relegated to the secondary class, the ones that are just "here"?

In 1952 Hollywood made a film about Hans Christian Andersen starring Danny Kaye in which they decided, for no reason I know of, to pronounce the name of the capital of Denmark a hybrid between English and German and some other language.
Most people had never heard of that city, so the only reference they had was this spectacle with the mispronounced name.
But now, with the climate conference going to take place there, I hear on the news that the grip that Hollywood has had on the name for so many years has loosened, and the city is finally getting its name back.
Copenhagen. : \ˌkō-pən-ˈhā-gən
Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen.
It only took about 55 years, but we are a patient lot, we Danes.
After all we are still waiting for our national hero Holger Danske to come to our rescue and tear his beard from the table where he has been resting his elbows from about the 15th century, so we are indeed a patient lot.

The TV Saga

I had finished watching another episode of "Rome" and it was too early to go to bed, and it was too late to start another one, and frankly, I had had enough of Roman blood and gore for one night, so I--as I have done on occasion these many weeks when my satellite signal has been missing--turned on the satellite box and LO
I got a picture
and sound
and when I gingerly pressed a button on the remote, it changed channels.
And then I went to town, watching a bit here and a bit there, having a wonderful time watching regular TV for the first time in over six weeks, and then
KABOOM
A blackout.
No power and hence no TV.
The one and only night when the stars aligned and I had a signal, there had to be a blackout.
When the power eventually came back the following morning, the signal was gone.
I fear a dark and sinister conspiracy.

I was laughing.
Good, I thought, Things are looking up.
I was reading a column in the New York Times, concerning grammar and the correct use of words.
I know this is a tad sad, but better that than endless sniffling and sobbing, listening to songs by Piaf and Becaud available as all is these days, on Youtube.
So if bad grammar and misuse of words will get you going, fine says I.
But maybe I should think about getting a life.

The little things

Its the little things that get you. The empty food bowl that will never be used again. The blanket he used, the joy he had when I whispered the magic word......walkies, and how he , unlike the mutts who scampered hither and thither, always was like some little gray shadow walking close to me, and the feeling of a gentle nudge when sitting at the computer, where he would place himself in easy reach for a scratch or a pat on the head. Content.
The little things that were uniquely him.
I am going to miss them very much, indeed.

I am not doing well. I am not doing well at all.
I thought that opening and imbibing a carton of cheap wine would help
well, it did not.
I can still smell the smell of Toby, and I can still see the places where he liked to rest. And I can still see where he chose to lie for his final moments.
And the unlovable mutts are totally ignorant of the demise of Toby.
Blast them.
I want them gone.

Toby the Schnauzer 1999--2009

He was maybe not the brightest crayon in the box, but he sure knew how to love, and he was a gentle soul who allowed his house to be invaded by a gang of mutts after his friend of many years, Asta the Scottie died.
Now he is dead too.
He died lying on the front stairs, seeing the trees and hearing the sounds of the jungle.
He had been doing poorly for a while and I had decided that Monday we would go the vet, he and I.
Now there is no need.
He is resting next to his friend, Asta.
Rest In Peace.

Goldang-it, I said to myself, just do it.
If not now, I said, then when ?.
I am very good at platitudes when I talk to myself.
So I did it. I painted my front door red.
There it is. And I love it.
My red front door.

I just had an argument with myself.
And the subject ? Well.....I went to town this morning and got some much needed stuff for the house, including a new supply of cheap wine.
And so I thought, it being Tuesday and all, that I would start the imbibing a bit earlier; a lot earlier in fact.
So there was a discussion-- better than an argument--and to facilitate this, I opened a new carton of cheap wine.
That kind of blew the side for moderation and patience.
Aw Schucks.......

Most amazing insects. They start out their lives as black and when they die, they slowly turn this bronze color and look very much like Egyptian scarabs. Most amazing.

Gourmet Magazine

I remember so clearly how Chuck and I would fight over who should read the latest edition of Gourmet Magazine first. And who should have the chance to make one of the recipes in this bible of good food.
And how regretful I felt when, many years after his death, I moved the stash of Gourmet Magazines out of the cupboard and down to the garage.
And now it is going to stop. No more monthly joys, no more a secure source for good food and quaint stories and complicated, but tasteful, recipes.
I am glad that Chuck did not have to see this.
Whenever I search for a recipe and find it originating at Gourmet, I shall think of him and his absolute love of all things of taste.
So rest in peace, Gourmet Magazine. We shall never forget you.

I am a Sucker

I don't much care for sayings on my t-shirts, but at times I feel I have one saying , and in big print,
"SUCKER"
The unlovable mutts that share my house have figured it out a long time ago. However bad they are, and they can be bad, at the end of the day there is always a bowl of food and a place to snooze, oftentimes to the discomfort of this person.
The resident rodents have figured it out. They know I have a hard time killing them, so they reward me by eating holes in my bags of legumes and my t-shirts and undies and, the latest, peeing on the satellite receiver so it has corroded and lost its signal.
And now the cat that has appeared and that I was hoping would keep the rodent population in check, has decided that the food that I leave out for it is fine, but better yet is stuff that is not meant for feline consumption. But HEY, what is the sucker going to do ? They all have me figured out, so maybe a t-shirt with "SUCKER" is just redundant.
They already know.

I am depressed, I am. In a funk. A deep funk.
And why? you might ask.
Well, where to start.
Maybe the endless saga of the pictureless television where the cause was diagnosed as a case of corrosion in the box. And hence my problem as I am the proprietor of said box and therefore the one to get it, if possible, fixed.
Or maybe the fact that this morning as I stumbled out in the kitchen to start the coffee and open the door to the bodega, that door fell off its hinges. Kaboom, and there it was, in my hands with no support at all. Now it is leaning against the wall and giving no protection for the rain.
Or maybe the fact that even when I scream and cajole the mutts to go out at night before we retire to do their business, they mostly refuse if it is wet outside, and then I find turds all over the house in the morning. Blast them.
Or maybe the fact that when I rushed to town this morning to buy cheap wine and doggie biscuits--I got the wine, the biscuits have disappeared from the shelves of the supermarkets--and found on my return that one of the dogs had shat in my bedroom and another ( or the same ) had made a puddle on Chuck's bed, seeping through the cover and the mattress cover and the blanket that I keep there and making a big and nasty stain on the mattress
or the fact that I ignore the basics of security and leave doors open for the stupid mutts to go out if they need to, and they reward me with piles of shit all over the house
or maybe because I had to clamber up and check my water supply and, since it was low, very low, crossing my fingers and turning the pump on ( it has been known to not start ) but it did and then clambering up the ladder again to check the progress of filling the tank.
All this clambering is not at all good for a gent of a certain age.
No matter.
I am in a funk, and at two in the afternoon I said, enough, I am going to open a carton of wine, and that is what I did.
It is almost empty now, and I don't feel any better.
What next ?

I try to keep a sunny attitude. I do. I really do.
I often close my eyes and click my heels and whisper : There is no place like home...there is no place like home.
And then the reality strikes.
Apart from the problems of the blank television screen, which today was diagnosed as a problem with the box, the receiver, I had an unpleasant experience when this morning I tried to open the door to the bodega and it fell off its hinges.
The telly problem can be solved, at a price, and I have started to work on that. The door is a more complex deal because some time ago, noticing that the top hinges were pulling loose, I asked Rey to help me refasten them. He suggested to replace the door with a new one, an iron door , strong and not subject to weather the way a wooden door is.
And I gave him the measures, as he suggested, to take to his work where there just happened to be a person doing this kind of work. And that was it. Rey has not been back since and I have not heard from the maker of doors and now I have no door to keep out the rain.
But I try to keep a sunny attitude. Tomorrow I will go down to the village and see if the local ironmonger will give an estimate.
Tomorrow.

My TV set lost its picture; not the sound, and not the banners running top and bottom of the screen showing the time and channel number and name of the show provided by the satellite company, all that was intact, just no picture.
I did all I knew how to : turn the set off and on. And still nothing
But it would play DVDs, which was how I entertained myself while I was searching for a new, reasonably priced set.
After weeks of search and rejecting the over priced and snazzy flat screen sets, I found in a corner of my super market a few of what must be the last of the "regular" television sets, and I bought one and hauled it home and frantically exchanged the old for this new and virginal, however slightly clunky, set.
And I had sound and banners and absolutely NO picture.
But I can play DVDs on it.
I have come a complete circle and accomplished absolutely nothing.
Oh; as I was installing the new set I had the old one sitting on the couch from where it took a dive and hit the floor. What more ?

How do people take photos with the new digital cameras ?
Every time I grab mine to take a shot of something wonderful, it is low or out of batteries.
Always.
Is there a way to circumvent this ? Like always keep recharging the thing. Or what ?
Today some prehistoric monster insect is sitting on the pillow on the couch where I normally sit at night when watching the telly. It is so awesomely ugly and big that I wanted a record of it.
But the camera is low on batteries, so no photo.
Now nobody is going to believe me when I talk about this monster insect, because I have no proof.
It makes a good story anyway, if only I had somebody to tell it to.
You.

The Pastries

The first studio First Chamber had in Seattle was a converted factory located in a seedy part of town.
Within easy walking distance I discovered a real Danish bakery, run by real Danes and making real Danish pastries.
Oh the joy...
and if you hit it at the right time, just when the pastries came out of the oven, there would be nothing closer to rapture.
One day on a break I hit the magic moment and decided to be generous and buy pastries for my hard working friends at the studio.
The pastry was so hot they had to punch holes in the pink box I was given with the lot.
And on my way I allowed myself a taste, and another.....and another
so when I was a few blocks from the studio I realized I did not have enough left to share with my friends....
and ate the last ones too.
AH, the guilt, but somehow I got over it real fast.
I don't recall if I ever told my friends about the pastries.

Some day are easier than others. On the not so easy days, I seem to be imbibing a bit more than usual.
But what, I wonder, what makes a day an easy one or a not so easy one ?
One factor I have learned that is part of the equation, is the behavior of the Worthless Ones.
When they decide that the poor, unsuspecting person passing by my the house is a threat or at best a nuisance, they will all, as one, start to bark and run out in the street, chasing the poor fellow.
Or fellowin (f), as they don't seem to have any preference for either sex.
And then, after screaming at them, threatening them with early and painful euthanasia, I grab the proverbial bottle which, in my case, is a carton, and I drink.
So that is a bad day; thanks to the Worthless Ones.
But it keeps makers of cheap and tasteless wine in business.

I thought I would write about an amusing incident that happened when Nicholas, my neighbor, returned after two months in the UK visiting with his family, and I stopped by to give back the keys to his house that I had been checking for him and the accounting of the bills I had been paying for him.
He thanked me and then I saw a light flicker in his eyes when the realization hit him, that a present might have been appropriate.
And he rushed to his bedroom and came back with a tin of shortbread cookies and a tin of tea bags, four flavors.
I was amused and I wondered why I knew what was going through his head when it dawned on me : This was me too. At times when Rey would show up on a Sunday to help with chores around the house, I would be in the same dilemma. To show my appreciation with money was out of the question; that would be an insult to our friendship, so I, like Nicholas, had to find things that would show how grateful I was for his help. Luckily the Bennetts have supplied me every Christmas with bags and bags of chocolate goodies and this was what I used to give to Rey.
Realizing this, the incident was not that funny anymore, so I decided not to write about it.

There I was, upstairs, cleaning up after the Worthless Ones who have decided that they prefer indoor facilities and therefore regard certain parts of the house as their private toilet, when Toby walked in, sniffed at the-- to him--delicious flavor of doggie excrement, lifted his leg and peed on the floor.
TOBY....my boy, my last bastion in the futile fight for canine training, the one who never, ever before would dream of going to the bathroom inside.
There he was, peeing inside, and all because of the Worthless Ones and their unsavory habits.
I am devastated now; all my theories about breeding and training have gone out the window. All it takes is a house full of untrained mutts and even the best of dogs will succumb.
Sad and ever so like humans.

Theory of relativity

I am not totally sure what the theory of relativity is all about, well no, to tell the truth, I have not the foggiest notion.
But in my world, in this little enclave of lush greenery compleat with an astounding array of creepy crawlies and mentally challenged canines, the relativity is this:
relative to the amount of bad news on the computer and amount of barking and screaming by the resident canines, is the amount of cheap wine to be consumed.
Add to the equation the number of non-functioning electronics, starting with but not exclusive to, the TV, and you have another part of the problem.
So the more bad news, more screaming mutts and more dead electronics, the more the imbibing of cheap wine.
I am no Einstein but I'll say this is pretty cool. Even if it is written after a certain amount of cheap wine.
It wouldn't have been any better had the wine been expensive.

Am I missing something here ?
On the admittedly rare occasion when I pick up my cell phone or my camera, they always seem to be out of battery.
So I charge them and then, when next I pick them up, they are out again.
What am I missing here ?
Should a charge not last a while ? Or am I in a space where charges dissipates ?
The latest to join the line of battery challenged equipment is my portable phone.
Sure, as of late it would send funny "ping" signals after a certain amount of airtime, but how was I to know that this might mean that the battery was about to go dead, which is what I fervently hope is the case at this moment.
Here is what I have learned from a search of the web.
A new telephone will cost about $50.
A new battery--if found--should cost no more than $4 to $5, even here in Mexico.
The trick is, however, to find a place that sells these batteries, and herein lies the challenge.
I know where to buy unlikely thingies for the water pumps, and even where to buy seeds and freshly roasted coffee, but batteries for phones ? No way. And my phone book is six years old and terribly out of date, so where?
Ah, light some candles and hope for the best.
Smoke signals ?

The window 2

TMI, said one of my favorite nieces.
I don't need to know this much, she said.
Hence the TMI ( too much information )
And yet
she admitted that she had a laugh and that the vision of the old fool on the hill peeing out the window was kind of funny.
That is why I love those girls. They will follow the dictum of society but only to a point. After that they are free spirits. And being able to see the silliness in some geezer peeing out the window, in particular if the geezer is an uncle.
It is of course much easier for a male to pee out the window than for a female, but that is for another post.

The window

I can pee out the window.
I can pee out of any window of the house, and nobody but I and the mutts would know.
Why, you might wonder, why is that important ?
Well, you see, even in the depth of the rainy season, when it rains every day and water is gushing in every gully, I have problems with the water supply.
So I try to ease the demand on water by peeing outside, but standing with your weenie exposed in the rain is not that much fun.
So I pee out the window.
And until now, when I told you, nobody knew.
Don't tell anybody else.
But I pee out the window.

My Birthday

Today is my birthday.
Today I turn 66 and I get to celebrate this momentous occasion all by myself; well almost.
All the worthless ones will be here.
As children, we were given-- within reason-- the choice of dinner of the birthday.
So I am going to fix a chicken. That is my choice for this day, my 66th birthday.
But I am a sly puss, I am, for a chicken dinner will last me, properly spaced out, a week.
So this is more than just a dinner of chicken; this is a week of not having to think about what to cook for dinner.
Happy birthday to me.

It took a letter from DMV saying that the end had come to renewing my license by mail to finally make me get a Mexican license.
And I fretted it, but today, after many and silly excuses to not go, I made it to the office and started the procedure.
When I asked the nice gent behind the desk what I might need, he listed items I already had--passport, FM3 and electric bill-- so all I had to do was to get the items copied--a copy store was conveniently located right next to the office-- and then pay the fee which had to be paid at another office, again located next to this office and then, and then, the nice gent told me, under normal circumstances I would have to take a written test, an eye exam and a driving test but.......
so I paid my fee and left a 200 pesos note with the receipt in a folder that I handed to the nice gent, and had my CV and picture taken by a busily typing lady and had my finger print printed and in no time I had my very own Mexican license to drive.
In four years I get to go back and renew it, no renewal by mail here.

Kill'em

I have been complaining loudly and consistently about my resident rodents, and somebody finally listened.
This morning as I entered the kitchen in my usual unfocused fog, I saw, on my kitchen counter, a decapitated rodent.
After the initial shock, I jumped for joy. This is the help I need. This is what will tell the impudent rodents that the free ride is over. No more free biscuits and chicken bones. This is war and the strange mouse killing pussy is on my side, so watch out.
Now if the killer could only learn to leave the carcasses outside, this person would be even happier.
But this is a step in the right direction.
The Worthless Ones slept through the kill. Great watch dogs.

It seems I have always been surrounded with music.
The cities where I have lived have all had a classical music station from New York through Seattle and San Diego to Puerto Vallarta. Yes, P.V. had a wonderful station for many years until, for reasons unknown to me, it was taken over by the cultural commission of the state of Jalisco, located in Guadalajara, and from being a charming, local radio station, it became a talk radio with strong-- some might say only-- emphasis on the city of Guadalajara.
And that was when I discovered the joy of silence.
I had been annoyed and upset so many times by the needless, inquonsequential talk fests of the station, that I started to not turn it on, and I liked it.
Now I like listening to the naural sounds of the birds and other critters in the wood. I like the distant, very distant sound of the waves and the traffic on the road to Puerto Vallarta.
Sometimes I turn the radio on, and sure as manure, there they are, talking, talking, talking.
So I go back to my silence.

Speed bumps and me

I hate speed bumps. I will fight the in-city traffic rather than bypassing it by going through the tunnel, because by going the tunnel way you pass over scads and scads of these hateful inventions.
And I have a choice.
Now we have the bumps on my way to town, and I do not have a choice, because this is the only road. Two lanes and no cross streets and no alternate route.
I do see the purpose of these bumps to slow down traffic to help children and mothers and animals to cross the street in relative safety, but this is not the case on this road.
Here there are no children or mothers or animals to cross the road.
The bumps on my road are erected at the entrances to some super expensive developments squatting on the rocks right next to the sea. They have yet to be finished, these super expensive developments, but now they have the bumps.
Some day we will have the new owners of the expensive developments driving their expensive cars out and never having to worry one little bit, because we who live in the different parts have had to slow down to a crawl because of the damn bumps.
I hate those speed bumps.

Rodents and alcohol and me

I have learned to live with my unwanted rodent house guests. I don't like it, but I concede.
I try to remember to put my legumes in plastic containers and not to leave my laundry unattended for too many days lest I shall find holes where none were before.
I was amused--at first--when I discovered the gnawing of the cartons of soy juice I was stashing in my converted fridge.
All clean fun.
Till they got into my cheap wine which, like the milk and juice, comes in cartons.
And that is not funny. Not funny at all.
Because they, for some reason, start to gnaw holes further down from the top, leaving the carton to leak precious wine if it goes unnoticed.
And you wonder...do the rodents like the taste of wine ?
Do they first gnaw a hole in the top and then, because they really, really like the taste, gnaw a hole further down so they can get more of the super tasting stuff ?
I don't know. All I know is that they have caused the spillage of good, drinkable wine, and that is a no-no.
So now it is war. It is the righteous me against the destructive forces of some rodents who have found courage and bliss in my cheap wine.
And that won't do.
Cheap courage and bliss is for me only.
I pay for the stuff.

After another night with bad weather somewhere wreaking havoc with my television reception, I blamed the mess--again--on the Nature Phaerie.
And then I thought
what does this Nature Phaerie look like ?
and what pisses her off all the time ?
and since I had nothing better to do, I made this drawing of my perception of the Nature Phaerie.
Oh, and the reason, one of the reasons she is so pissed off all the time.
The dress she wore to the Solstice Party last year has mysteriously shrunk.
More to follow.

another day

I was having a long and involved discussion with myself concerning a trip to town.
My arguments against going were the usual, the traffic, the time, the parking, the whatever...
my arguments for going were that it was so close to the week-end, and tomorrow being Saturday would be even worse so...
and then something made me check the day, and today is Thursday.
I gained a day, and I can put off making a decision about going to town till tomorrow.
A whole day to do....what?
I'll think of something.
If I get really desperate there are always floors to mop and bric-a-brac to dust.

A trip

She came on just as the bus to Mismaloya started to leave.
She was big and she was gringa; she was, I thought, a perfect model for a Wagnerian Brunhilda.
After some problems finding change in her strangely tiny purse, she sunk down in seat and almost crushed the poor Mexican girl sitting next to her.
And off we went to Mismaloya and Boca when suddenly a voice boomed
STOP....stop right here.
It was Brunhilda. The bus driver checked her out in his mirror and started to find a place to pull in when she started to say.....NO...Not here....it's too late.
By now we are at a bus stop and everybody is watching Brunhilda who is not moving but throwing her arms --and what arms--in the air and saying that she might as well take the trip to the end and return to where she wanted to get off.
I wanted so badly to tell her to get her big behind off the bus and across the street to the bus stop and catch the next bus going to town, but I refrained.
When I got off at my stop in Mismaloya thirty minutes later, she was still there in her seat, glowering.
Silly thing.

Wheels

When we moved to Seattle from New York, we not only moved from the east coast to the west coast, we moved from a culture where easy transport was either the subway or taxicabs to a place where to get from point A to B you most certainly needed wheels.
So we got wheels.
Chuck got a snazzy, red MG sports car, seating two with no spare room for bags or groceries.
I got a mustard colored Volvo station wagon with ample room for groceries and dogs and extra folks.
Chuck later changed this car for an Alpha Romeo sports car, another two seater but this silver colored.
I stuck with the Volvo to the day I left the North West and moved to California and the reason I even bring this up is the situation today.
I now have my trusty Trooper, a very good replacement for the Volvo which, much like the Battery Bunny, kept going and going, even when some jerk forgot to connect all the four spark plugs at some cheap tune-up place.
So I take a deep breath when I get my Trooper out of the garage, say a silent prayer, and venture forth in my charger which, very much like me, creaks a bit and complains a bit but still keeps going.
So I still have wheels.

Doggie Smarts ?

She has it all figured out.
When I let the Worthless Ones out in the early morning, she is the first one back in. She then sits by the counter where the jar with the doggie biscuits is and stares, willing it to open and give her a biscuit.
I started a long time ago rewarding the mutts for coming back by giving them a biscuit, and now this one has it down pat. She comes in first and gets her reward and then, whenever another one appears she will be there, right next to the newcomer, expecting--and getting--a biscuit.
On good days for her, when her fellow mutts come home in drips and draps, she can get four more biscuits out of it.
Lately I have taken to breaking her biscuits in half; she doesn't seem to mind. It is the one and only thing she has figured out, so I hate to disappoint her.
She is getting a little heavy though.

I Talk To Myself

I talk to myself.
Not out loud, but I have long and involved conversations with me all the time, and a good thing too, since I don't see too many people here in the woods.
Sunday Rey was here to do some work and we talked. Today is Wednesday and I have not talked to a person since Rey.
So I talk to myself.
And mostly about the news that I check, or the shows I watch on the telly or the books that I read and I have learned that throwing things at the telly, yelling at the computer or hurling your book in the air is not solving any problems, so I talk to myself; I reason with me and I argue with me.
It is a darn sight better than talking to the Worthless Ones for they never listen anyway, and if I get upset about something and start yelling, they just look guilty and slink away.
So I talk to myself, because I am here and I listen and I don't ( can't ) go away.

The Spikes

Back in the days when we had to leave Mexico every six months when the visa expired, I for some reason did the trip by myself. My dog and I. And on he second day, after having crossed the border to the US, I stopped at Gila Bend, Arizona.
It was about 104 degrees when we stopped and my dog let out a shriek when he jumped out the car and landed on the tarmac and burned his feet.
We stayed put in the room till it had cooled down enough to go out for a walk.
Behind the Space Age Lodge where we stayed, there was a big rail yard with lots of places for my dog to pee and otherwise mark a brand new, to him, territory.
And there I found the big wonderful nails they use to anchor rails to the planks; I have since learned they are called spikes.
I collected what I could find and for years I used them as paper weights and whenever I needed to hold something down . I loved the way they felt when you had them in your hand, the weight and the form.
And then they got lost. I would occasionally think of them and wonder whatever happened to them till yesterday, when cleaning the upstairs room after painting, I decided to empty a box I had sitting in corner from the day we moved into the house.
And there, at the bottom of this box, were my spikes.
By now they were quite rusty bot otherwise in good condition.
I have been cleaning them and rediscovering how good they feel in my hand.
Glad to have them back.

The Bus

He was standing waiting for the bus at the bottom of my hill when I came barreling down this morning, so I gave him a lift to town.
He is currently living in the house the Mad Queen used to occupy, so he is sort of a neighbor.
He uses a cane to get around because he is slightly crippled.
Thanks for the lift, he said. Yesterday, he continued, three buses passed without stopping.
I don't understand, he said. I have a loud voice, and I tell the driver to drive carefully because I value my life. And I tell the driver to use the wipers when there is rain. And I only pay half price because I am crippled. And now they don't stop for me.
I don't understand.

I was going to write a post about my chest of drawers that I found next to some garbage containers in New York, and how I dragged it up the fire escape to the studio, but I thought...nahh, not now.
Then I thought I would write about the bad weather and the implications of this and I thought the same....nahh.
So I am just posting this wonderful drawing of Albrecht Durer that I found searching for "Bernice", a reference in the book I am reading right now.
Berenice-- or Veronica--was according to legend a woman who lent a cloth to Jesus to wipe his brow as he was hauling the cross. Ever the person with manners, he handed it back to Veronica, complete with an imprint of his face.
This is Durer's celebration of that event.
Beautiful, isn't it ?

Words

It is sad that certain words go out of fashion. As for example the word "platitudinarian", a person given to the use of platitudes, which I found re-reading Daniel Deronga.
It is a marvelously descriptive word, and a word so easily and so rightly applied to politicians of to-day.
Let us reinstate it.

Tis the season

Local lore has it that the rainy season starts June 15, and right on time the rains came. And how.
But this time I was prepared; I had had the leaky roof weatherproofed and the laundry area as well. I was feeling fine. I had done my bit.
What I cannot control are the black-outs and the weak satellite signal that seems to go out every time we have shower.
These things are up to the local electric company and the Canadian satellite provider, and neither is doing a good job.
But I did my part and I feel great.
How I will feel four months from now--the official end of the rainy season-- is a different story all together.

A Thought

If GARRULOUS can lead to
GARRULITY
Can QUERULOUS lead to
QUERULITY ?
And can we then talk about querulity of old age, a condition far more common, I think, than
garrulity of old age

Doggie bones

I was in Pitial, a suburb to Puerto vallarta, for an entirely different reason when I remembered a maid of some friends of mine--and maids in Mexico are the sources of this kind of information--had mentioned that this was where one would find doggie bones. At the butcher's across from the church.
And there it was, and there I was, deciding to spend a hot ten pesos on something nice for the Worthless Ones. Bones. All dogs love bones. Some dogs survive on bones. Bones are good for dogs.
And I proudly carried my light blue plastic bag full of--to dogs--delicious bones to my car and, this being the last purchase, fought the traffic back to Mismaloya and my house in the woods.
And I baked the bones for a while so the mutts would not have to suffer raw meat and such like.
And then I gave them the bones when they were sufficiently cooled down and................
the mutts gave them a sniff, a look, and then went back to sleep.
There they were, the bones that I thought would vindicate my lack of ardor with the mutts, ignored and cluttering up the floor.
All dogs love bones....
Yeah Right; not these dogs. Not these miserable ungrateful critters. I mean, what does it take to make them sit up and take notice ? Half rotted fish and leftover tortillas ? The kind they seem to be so keen on when they get to share the raid of the raccoons of the garbage in the neighborhood.
I give up. The next time I go to Pitial I shall most certainly NOT buy bones for the dogs. No sir. No how.
Let them suffer the way they make me suffer.

Bing

There is a new search engine, Bing,
and for the fun of it I tried it out and wrote:
First Chamber Dance company, and
Tah Dah.....
The history of FCDC is located in the archives of the University of Washington, in 12 cubic feet and four large packages.
There is something disconcerting in the notion that Chuck's lifework, and certainly a good part of mine and others, is contained in 12 cubic feet and four large packages in the archives of UW.
Well, better that than total oblivion.
But "12 cubic feet and four large packages" really doesn't sound very impressive.

On the first page of the autobiography of Anthony Trollope [1815-1882] he talks about the "garrulity of old age".
I love that expression;
And the awful truth is that this blog is just another example of that.
The garrulity of old age.

Frugality or what ?

I had treated myself to a package of new underwear, Hanes knit boxers, one blue, one gray.
And I had dropped the gray in my laundry basket where, unbeknown to me a busy rodent was gathering stuff for nesting and ate holes in my brand new skivvies.
When I discovered this mishap I was left with some tough decisions.
Should I go against the admonitions of Mothers everywhere to always wear clean and whole undies, just in case of accidents or hospital stays or other calamities where people might see your undies and point fingers at you if these were not clean and whole, or should I ignore all that and still use the new but now holey undies.
I took the chance and I am still taking the chance, although the holes have gotten progressively larger.
So I wonder if this is frugality, or just me being cheap.

This photo was taken April 2002. One of the few photos of Chuck and Alan together.
Eight months later Chuck was dead.
but what wonderful memories and special thanks to Miss Alice for finding this old picture.

Next ?

So now I have a "new" computer and things are fine.
Sort of.
But for the keyboard giving me trouble .
Not that I can blame it. It suffers a lot of pounding by this less than excellent typist; in fact, I will go so far as to say this very bad typist.
I tried once to open my keyboard to clean it. Bad idea. I ended up buying a new one as I could not seem to fit all the little whatchamacallits back to where they came from.
So the lesson learned ?
Buy a new one.
Now.

On The Road

we had been on the road for while.
We--the First Chamber Dance Company--had been performing under less than ideal circumstances, doing community services in schools and auditoriums and the morale was low.
Chuck took the--for him--unprecedented step of giving the company a speech where he explained that these people, these local people and their organizations were the ones who helped pay the payroll for another week. So be nice to them. Please.
And left the "dressing room" which in reality was just another school room with small and uncomfortable table and chairs and not much else.
There was a deafening silence till we heard a timid tap on the door which when opened revealed a perfectly nice couple, peering into the room.
And Sara took a deep breath, batted her inch-long false eyelashes, looked into some secret place of hers and then, smiling brilliantly at the perfectly nice couple said:
Hello! I am Sara De Luis.....and with a sweeping gesture to the rest of the room said
and we are The First Camber Dance Company...
The perfectly nice couple looked stunned, but the male cleared his throat and said
Hello! We are the Finkels.
The Finkels from the flower shop ?
Chuck never gave that speech again

Time Out

it was a mini black out that caused my computer to finally give up the ghost.
I unplugged all the many, many cables and what-nots dangling from behind the computer and took it to the folks who know these things and who told me, some days later, that it would be costly to fix and even then I would most likely still have the same slow and pitiful performance.
However, they said, add to the price for the fix and we can furnish you with a reconstituted, more powerful computer.
Not much of a choice.
I agreed to the "new" computer.
All this took about a week, leaving me without access to the world and a lot of time on my hands, time I normally would have spent reading ghastly news or writing emails.
So I decided to start to scrape the old paint off the house in preparation for a paint job.
And I scraped and sweated and got dust in my eyes and aches in my back from standing on a ladder whilst stretching to reach nearly unreachable places.
Till the day I could pick up my "new" computer and plug all the cables back in and say a prayer and press the start button and.........it worked.
I am back.
I have read the news, I have read my emails, I have deleted a bunch of stuff and somehow the paint scraping has taken a decidedly low priority.
Very low.

The Vision

When Alice told me about Flemming waking up from anesthesia speaking Spanish, I was reminded of this from my past.
As a young person I had gotten a STD, most likely from an unsanetized toilet seat, so I found myself at the Public Health Clinic in Seattle for the cure.
And there I was, on a gurney with my bare bum in the air, pressing some cotton on the spot where the nurse had just jabbed me and then something started to change, and from what seemed like miles away I heard the nurse shriek
Doctor, Doctor we have a reaction
and my heart was pounding ready to explode and the buildings were closing in on me
And then my vision was filled with the face of The Bearded One
Don't be frightened, he boomed, your heart is not going to explode
and I told him I was frightened and that my heart was just about to jump out of my chest and...
Forsooth, The Bearded One said, this is but a reaction and you will be fine, but I wish you would stop speaking Gaelic...
Then and there I knew The Bearded One was not God, because He would have known that I was speaking Danish.
He was right though, little by little my heart stilled and the buildings de-loomed and pretty soon I could pull my pants up and get ready to leave the place.
In the hall outside one was obliged to sign out, and the weaselly little guy in charge of the book looked at me in rapture and lisped
You had reaction ! Some people say they see God. Did you see God ?
I didn't even answer. Sheesh.

Sunday afternoon. Mother's day. And my in-box is empty.
What does one do ?
One finds answers to all the silly and inconsequential questions that have piled up in the handy note book next to the computer.
Like who was Queen Margaret of Scotland, princess of Denmark ?
She was the daughter of Christian 1 of Denmark and married, at the age of thirteen James the 3rd of Scotland. See? Now we all know a bunch more about the now defunct royal family of Scotland.
And another burning question.
When exactly did Bombay cease to be Bombay and become Mumbai ?
And the answer is 1996.
Another useless bit of information.
So now I can go back and check my email and see if anybody has taken pity on me and mailed me something............anything........even spam.

Traffic.

I have mentioned the traffic--or the lack of traffic--many times, so I thought it might behoove me to know exactly how much traffic I have here on my street.
I flipped to a new page on my note pad, I put the date down and "cars Passing" and a space for the check marks.
Between eight in the morning and eight at night I counted four and a half. The half was a car that didn't quite make it all the way to my house before it turned around and fled back to whence it came.
Four and a half.
I have a right to make fun of the lack of traffic now.

Fried Squirrel

First the "BOOM", then no electricity and then the all too familiar routine checking the neighbors, changing the phone to call the electric company to report the outage and, too frequently, having to justify the call. In Spanish.
Add to that now calling the cell phone folks to alert them as well, and then wait.
And wait.
I decided to walk down the street to where I thought the "BOOM" had come from and found the fuse on the post disconnected and just hanging there.
And visible on top of the transformer was the tail of a squirrel.
The normally sure footed critter must have slipped and hit the fuse and disconnected it and lost its life in the process.
Later, much later at night when the crew came to fix the problem, I saw, in the glare of some powerful searchlight, the guy on the ladder grab the squirrel and throw it on the ground.
I went looking for it this morning, but some nocturnal scavenger must have gotten to it and had the good luck of getting not only squirrel, but fried squirrel.

It happened again.
I heard the familiar THUD and another bird has flown into a window.
My book on Mexican birds tells me this bird is a varied Bunting.
The color is plum with a blue crown and bright red nape.
It is exquisite.
And there it is, on a piece of matting on my terrace, breathing rapidly.
After many checks to see if it is still alive, finally the moment when it gets up, flies away, and lives one more day.

Food, gloriuos dog food.

Marilyn was a dancer, but she had hung up her toe-shoes and was helping me in the boutique on Broadway in New York.
Her husband, Ivan, was a from Hungary and was not only a great dancer but also a funny person.
He loved to tell the story of when very young he had just arrived to the USA and spoke little to no English ( he still had a very strong accent) and had no money.
He would go to the supermarket he said, and find cans with enticing pictures of stews and funny names like Alpo and Pooch.
They were cheap, they were filling and they were, he came to find out when he went shopping with someone who had better English, dog food.
It didn't seem to hurt him. He remained number one dancer for many years.

The Hummingbird

The bird had been stuck between two panes of the window, a tiny iridescent green hummingbird, no more than two inches long.
I gently picked it up and placed it in the shady part of the planter on the terrace.
It was still alive and breathing and now all there was to do was wait and check.
After a while the breathing was calmer and then came the joyous time
when checking
the bird was gone.
A tiny flash of green living one more day.

On being alone.

It will hit you at the strangest of times, like when you do the dishes and finish all the pots and pans and multiple of doggie dishes and just one dinner plate;
One!
Yours.
And you realize, yet again, that you are alone.
And then you get on with it, whatever "it" is.
Till it hits you at another time.

English Muffins

So here is my conundrum;
If I leave my homemade English muffins in my less than efficient fridge, they get soggy.
Left in a plastic bag on the counter, the rapacious rodents will feast on them, and left in a tin they get moldy.
These are my choices:
soggy vs. partial vs. moldy.
I have tried them all
and partial wins out. At least they taste fine even if there's less of them.
Such problems I have.
Such decisions to make.

I have received so many links to Susan the Singing Sensation from UK that I am beginning to feel a little paranoid.
Do the people who sent me this link sit around and say:
Poor old sod; let us show him that middle age frumpery can win the hearts of the most jaded judges.
That frizzy eyebrows and bad hair day is trumped by talent.
He's got the frump, the brows and the bad hair, so maybe there will be allowances made for the talent.
Or do they just like to share this great moment.
I fervently hope the latter.

Wine is A beautiful Thing To Waste

If computers have minds, mine has a singular and-- at times--unpleasant mind.
I have learned that screaming at it, punching any and all buttons, even running the mouse around and round in crazy circles, does not work.
What does work, however, is cheap wine.
You pour yourself a big glass of cheap wine, drink it, and pretty soon you can not only cope with the antics of your computer, you start to be amused.
The more cheap wine you drink, the more amused you get.
It does not solve the problem of the computer mind, it just makes it a lot easier to cope with.

I was mopping the floors of my house when I stopped and thought

If I were my maid
I would fire me.

A Treasure

This ad has been with me for more than twenty years.
It has become strangely relevant from just being an ad for some dishwasher soap.
Who would have thunk.

Easter Parade

For so many years--at Easter-- my mother and I ended up watching Easter Parade together.
I was convinced-- for the longest time-- that it was a black and white movie, because we only had a B&W television set.
Now when I see it, I am transported back to my parents' living room with the telly in the corner, the couch and the coffee table where we kept the ever present cups of coffee and wienerbroed and cookies.
And Judy Garland is breaking my heart again.
Just like then.
Some things never change.

A small Country

When the company Skype was sold for many, many millions, a pundit on CNN was lauding the young entrepreneurs from, he said, Sweden and Lithuania.
Say What ?
I checked and as I thought, it was a Swede and a DANE who had started and then sold this company.
Easy mistake to make. Both countries--Lithuania and Denmark--are small and only separated by the Baltic sea and some thousand years of history. Easy.
But then it happened again.
I was watching the unfolding saga of the captain being held hostage by the Somali pirates when the announcer on BBC was telling us that the ship involved was Norwegian.
Well, the last time I checked, the owner of that ship is Maersk Lines, of Denmark.
What difference, you might rightly ask, does it make to the story of the sale of the telecommunications company and the plight of the poor, kidnapped captain.
None.
Only when the country is a small as Denmark, roughly the population of Wisconsin, it becomes kind of important to gather all the glory due. There is so little of it to begin with.
It is standing up for the little guy.

Happy Easter ?

The dogs are barking wildly at some stray car and really getting into hysterics over two visiting canines from down below.
The radio has lost its signal and
the computer has given me all kinds of trouble.
The CD player is acting like a two year old child spitting out the discs and refusing to play them.
The palms that I dug from the jungle getting blisters and a sore back, have died.
Happy Easter ?
I don't think so.

Happy Ending

And then this dog came and licked my arm where I sat on the beach, said Inge on the phone, and this dog and the other one were sooo cute and and I asked everybody on the beach if they knew who they belonged to.
And then the police came, said Inge, and they wanted to take the dogs away...
actually, she said "avay". Mrs. Inge is my Danish Lady Friend, newly settled into a big and wonderful house in a gated community close by. She still says "wegetables".
And then, she said, I cried and said that I would take the dogs and they are right here at my feet, playing. One is a boxer and the other.....
Wait A Minute....I cried
Just the other day a guy stopped by my house to ask if I had seen his missing dogs, one a boxer and the other a mix.
What, I asked, are the chances that a couple of dogs, a boxer and a mix, disappear on the same day in the same general area?. What ?
So I promised Mrs. Inge to find the guy--who had said that he lived at the bottom of my hill--and find out what was what.
I found the car and the guy and the description of the dogs he was looking for did indeed fit the dogs that Mrs Inge had picked up on the beach, amidst tears and threats from the local police.
I got a phone number for her to call.
I just called Mrs. Inge and the dogs are now, replete with new collars, bags of food and masses of inoculations--thanks to the generosity of Mrs Inge-- home at the bottom of the hill to go scavenging and having a good time in the hood.
Happy Ending.
Happy Easter.
Now if only somebody would take a couple of The Worthless Ones off my hands..

A Street Full Of Buffaloes

It was a tremendous bump which woke me up, and I was disturbed.
I got out of bed and went to the window in the hallway and saw, in my tiny little front yard, a big, gray buffalo-- the source of the bump-- leaning against the wall of the house.
How strange, I thought and looked out on the street and further up, where my street makes a slight bend, were more buffaloes
many more buffaloes
a street full of buffaloes
and then I woke up.

The call

It was New Years Eve, and I was trying to get back to Copenhagen from the little island in the Baltic where I was stationed as sergeant in the Danish army.
The ferry had left on time for its eight hour trip, but the weather was bad, and we were late.
The ferry was full of enlisted men who wanted, more than anything in this world, to go home and get drunk for the new year.
And then the PA system announced:
Sgt. Madsen to the bridge. Ship to shore call.
Now this is the early sixties, and in Denmark long distance calls were rare and expensive. Ship to shore calls on the ferry were even more rare.
Looking back, these many years later, I see a crowd of guys who just wanted to get home, get drunk and-- hopefully-- get laid, listening to some dude getting a ship to shore call which was, well,
weird and impressive.
And all it was about was my friends being concerned about me not being at their gathering.
But it gave me a lot of clout though.
The guy who had a Ship to Shore call New Years Eve.
Me.

In memory of Gerda

Gerda Madsen --no relation-- was a star. She had a career that started in the silent movies and went on for years and years.
When I met her she was a lady of leisure, living in a spacious apartment in Copenhagen and more and more often, in a wonderful cottage in the country where her grandparents had lived.
Gerda was like a magnet, attracting all kinds of people because she rarely judged. She had been through many rough times herself during the war and after, but she was a survivor.
Many years after I left Denmark she had a sudden revival after a young director used her in what turned out to be a wildly popular movie.
But what I remember most clearly was a gathering at her cottage about Easter time, before her second round of fame, when one of the group cooked a leg of lamb.
I had never tasted lamb before, and I fell in love with the taste and texture of lamb, a love affair that was shared with--many years later-- Chuck.
So when I find lamb [not often] I think of these bigger-than-life people I met and loved.
What could be better than that.

Once Upon A Time

In 1937 the Mexican president appropriated app. 3.180 acres from a hacienda in Quimixto, including amongst many other sites, the area of Mismaloya.
All was quiet for thirty-plus years till 1964, when the ejido signed an agreement that excluded Mismaloya and surrounding area.
After that, with regular intervals, the ejido has been trying to renege on this agreement, and has just as regularly been denied by the courts.
That Vallarta rose to prominence and lucrative tourist trade in the sixties and skyrocketing landvalues might have something to do with wanting to change back.
The latest court decree of Nov. 7 08, tells the inhabitants of the shantytown at the bottom of my hill and next to the sea, to vacate and move to ejido land in Boca de Tomatlan.
They are still here.
Now, all this I got from a pamphlet I found on the street, and I am not too certain as to some of the facts since this was in Spanish, and mine is none too good.
The dates I am certain of though. Numbers are the easy part.
All this, if indeed I got it right, goes a long way to explain the banners, the meetings, the loud speakers and general feeling of unease in the shantytown.
As I see it, it all comes down to lucre.
Filthy lucre.

In Vino Veritas

There are mornings when I say to myself:
"Self. Now may be the time to cool it a little with the Cheap Red Wine."
And I readily agree
and I feel righteous and saintly all day
till about four in the afternoon when I decide that it will be just as valid
to start the cool-out period
tomorrow.

What A Wonderful And Weird World

I am sitting here in Mexico
writing my post in English
remembering a time as a young person in Denmark
where I found a little book of Japanese haiku
translated to German.

This last post-- a short one to be sure--was one of the more difficult ones to write.
Like a Haiku poem with its only 17 syllables for the poet/writer to say all he needs to say, I tried to convey my feelings of aloneness in the gray area between dreams and reality in as few words as possible.
I hope I succeeded.

My Moment

There is a moment in the morning when my dreams fade and reality is still like an out of focus television screen.
At that moment I feel so deeply alone.
Eventually the screen clears and that moment of loneliness passes
till the next time.

Igor's decorating hints.

Following the advice of Igor ( see post March 23rd ) , I set out to find palms to soften the view of the monster mast, but being inherently frugal, and living in the jungle with easy access to palms from seedlings to full grown, massive plants, I decided to dig some myself.
Armed with my shovel I searched out likely subjects and started digging. And digging.
The blasted palms have root systems that defy regular digging out.
After many disasters, many buckets of sweat and even more blisters, the end result was one medium palm and two mini ones.
Mind you, these are the palms that grow like weeds in the jungle, right around my house.
I look at my pitiful result and think that maybe, just maybe, I have to admit defeat and get me to a nursery.
Good thing I decided against the chintz.

Chinese Laundry

Albin's son Mads is going to China.
Albin told me in an email, and what a wondrous experience it must be to spend four months in place like China.
And speaking of China made me remember the Chinese Laundry we used when we lived in New York.
It was located on 17th street, round the corner from the building on Park Avenue South that First Chamber Dance Company shared with the restaurant Max's Kansas City, a hang-out for Andy Warhol and his crowd.
In those days there were no coin operated laundries in the neighborhood, and we most certainly did not have laundry facilities in the basement.
The basement had an enormous monster of an oil heater providing heat to the whole building, which was shut off when Max's closed down in the early hours of the morning. And then turned on by me when I took the Schnauzers out for their morning pit stop.
But no other laundry opportunity than the Chinese on 17th.
It was run by a family, and only the youngest spoke any English a tall, which became a problem when I forgot to collect my laundry before an extended tour and, when I returned, realized that I did not have the ticket and I most certainly did not have the laundry, sheets and such like.
It was difficult to explain my problem, but with the help of a lot of gestures and an honest face and a copy of whatever mysterious sign they had labeled on my sheets with permanent ink, I got my laundry back.
I am glad I was young when I lived in New York.

My post [mast]

They left.
The last of the imported workers from Mexico City, the second group, packed their car and left today, this afternoon.
The cell post is all mine now.
And such a post.
It is way bigger and way more intrusive than I was let to believe.
But there it is, looming over my house in the woods.
In the movie Young Frankenstein, Igor exclaims when Hr. Frankenstein despairs over the state of the castle when he first sees it
Oh I don't know. A few potted plants and some chintz.......
Maybe this is the way to approach it.
A few potted plants and some bright paint and ...voila.
It couldn't be worse than the Pepto Bismol color of my post office

The Mexican Gene

I believe in genes. I believe that Mexicans have one, as of yet unidentified gene, a gene that restricts them from using signals when they drive.
This makes driving here in Vallarta adventurous at times and dangerous as well.
When one is driving it is imperative to watch out for the car ahead as the driver may at any time decide to take a turn without signaling, trusting that other drivers are alert.
He -- or frightening more often she--will suddenly brake and take a turn. Right ones are the easy ones, the left turns command that the car comes to a full stop to check for oncoming traffic before the driver puts the foot on the gas and swerves to the left.
Now this is mostly a problem here where I live, because due to the beach on the one side and the mountains on the other, we are stuck with a two lane road and not much chance for expansion.
So here you have the full delight of the Mexican gene, for miles and miles and miles.
One day they will find it and we will all take a deep breath and say
there you are
and then go on being careful, because discovering the gene does not mean they can change it.

A miserable night - and lately there have been many - will go something like this
Telly on the blink so I read a book and fall asleep in the chair.
Wake up and decide to go to bed but first let the mutts out.
Priscilla refuses to come home.
Wake up with the mosquitoes launching full frontal attack. Get up and start a spiral ( an incense like nasty smoke and anti mosquito thingy )
Back to sleep.
Priscilla barks in the street to be let in. Get up, let her in and go back to sleep.
Mosquitoes defy the spiral smoke. Get up and turn on the ceiling fan. Back to sleep.
Toby does his woof-ing to be lifted (don't ask ) up on the bed. Trying to go back to sleep.
One of the Worthless Ones jump on the bed to show affection by licking my face.
Now I don't even try to go back to sleep anymore.
The time is about 6:45 and I get up to start the day.

The URL

When I started this blog, I had to fill out scads and scads of information
and the end result was my very own blog
with my very own URL.
But somewhere something went awry with my URL, which- as I understand it- should have been a simple repeat of the name of the blog, namely alansthoughts.
Somehow, and I shall never figure out how, the URL ended up being alan-alansthoughts.
You go figure.
And I have never been able to change it;
it feels like the commandments chiseled in stone, not to be tinkered with.
Somewhere there must be a person a lot smarter than I who can either change it or explain why not.
Till then I am stuck with my mysterious URL.
PS
According to my PCs for Dummies, URL means Uniform Resource Locator.
Now that helped a lot.

Breakfast for Pat

Pat from Walla Walla was a recent friend of Chuck's and she came for a visit and stay overnight in our house in Seattle.
I had cooked fish fillets for dinner and must have fretted about the leftovers for Pat said
Oh, I always eat that for breakfast.
Being unwise in the ways of women, and particularly this woman,
and wanting to make a good impression for Chuck's sake,
I served her the fish for breakfast, neatly garnished and with a piece of toast.
She did not forgive me for a long time.
When we finally could talk about the fish-for-breakfast disaster she said:
Alan, you could at least have heated it.

They call me Mister Alan

Actually, it is more like "Meester Alan"
and "they" are the guys imported from Mexico City to erect the cell phone mast
and the nicest guys they are.
Its a motley crew and they truly work hard. All is done by hand. The holes are dug by hand, the re-bar constructed by hand and all the cement is mixed by hand and carried by the bucketful, stepping over the pieces of the monster mast taking up a great deal of space by the stagnant pool where they haul their water supply, by hand.
And they seem in such good spirits all day long, even when they get their break late, and even when they work so late that I have to turn on all the lights outside so they can see where they are going.
They are great guys
their bosses in Mexico City, not so much.

Recession

It has been a long week since I made it to the supermarket, since I have had folks from Iusacell working on getting ready to erect a mast on a piece of land that I am leasing to them, and -since I am alone here- I could not leave the premises.
Today, Sunday, I got to go to Costco for dog food and to my supermarket of choice for food for me, and here is where my heart almost stopped.
When last I shopped, my Cheap Red Wine in cartons sold for 28 pesos and change.
Today, to my absolute horror, a sign said SALE One Brick Of Wine 38 Pesos.
When, I wonder, when did it jump ten pesos.
And nobody told me.
I am a devout customer, faithful and punctual, and nobody told me.
That leaves me with but one option
the cheap 4 liter bottles of wine at Costco,
till they too change the price.

In memory of summers lost

One summer in high school, my best buddy and I were working as parking attendants at Dyrehavsbakken in Denmark, the world's oldest surviving amusement park, founded in 1583.
It was the late fifties and cars were not as abundant as now, so the parking area was a field adjacent to the park and often served by kids like Gert, my buddy, and me.
We even got to wear a cap with a gold braid.
We were the proud cap-wearing adolescents who made life miserable for the people who had trouble parking the way we thought they ought to.
And we made a little money.
But what I remember most dearly, are the nights, when we finally quit after midnight, and we got on our bicycles and rode back to the suburb where we lived, through those magical , light summer nights when it never really gets dark.
And we were best buddies.
Then.

Pas De Chat De Broadway

The Broadway Dance is performed by chorus boys
( mostly males ) and chorus girls.
Broadway dance is doing the steps together while smiling wildly
Broadway dance is to cover up for the stars who most likely can't even walk.
Broadway dancers are called gypsies because they
like real gypsies, wear cute and colorful outfits
and they all, males and females, have ear rings.

From Clarice and Mr. Q's Guide To The Dance And Other Movements.

Queenly advice

I dream a lot, and some dreams are weirder than others.
Last night I dreamed that the the queen of England came to visit at my house here in PV.
There she was, a tiny lady all in blue and red with hat and matching shoes and handbag.
She entered the house and sat on one of my dining chairs, a little ways from the table, feet neatly crossed at the ankles and the handbag in her lab.
I am sorry, I said to her, I have nothing in the house. Would you like a glass of water ?
No thank you, she said, graciously. I came here because I had to talk to you.
Talk to me ?
And then I woke up and and now I will never ever know what she wanted to talk to me about.

Toby the Schnauzer is getting older, and as happens to all of us, sometimes he has to go during the night.
And unlike the Worthless Ones, he will not go inside the house.
He will stand by the door of my bedroom, the one leading out to the terrace, and say
woof
until I wake up and open the door for him.
I leave the door open and go back to bed and, with luck, back to sleep till I hear his distinctive woof again, only this time at a different door.
Now this has happened too many times to be coincidental, but I don't mind.
After all our years together I don't mind getting up and open another door for him.
What worries me is, who is going to open the other door for me when I start to forget which door to use.

Evolution of Alan 1963-2003

A Parallel Universe

Living in Mexico is, at times, like living in a parallel universe.
I had a notice in my P.O.box, telling me it was urgent that I pay my fees and to do that I would need a copy of a household bill and a copy of identification, passport or such like.
Today, armed with all this I stopped by the post office, which is being re-painted in a vile Pepto-Bismol pink.
In the middle of the floor of the room that used to house the mail boxes, a young girl was sorting mail on a rickety wooden table and miraculously found my mail and said
Now you pay
And I went to the other end of the room, where some office workers were lounging on chairs, chatting and looking a wee bit annoyed at being interrupted and said
I would like to pay my fees.
You can't pay today, said one of the workers.
Whyever not ? said I.
Because, today we have no facturas and no facturas, no pay. Come back Monday.
And so I left, did the rest of my shopping and went home to find, on my gate, a note from the telephone company.
I have been waiting two days for them to show, and finally to-day, the day I decide to go to town, is the day they show up.
Please, the note said, call this number 24 hours before the next appointment.
CALL THEM !!!!!!
I had to walk for miles to a public phone to report, I had my neighbors call them, because the frigging line is DEAD
CALL THEM.......... duh.
I calmed myself down and grabbed my cell phone and dialed the number.
My phone is out of money.
It too is dead.
What else, I wonder, can go wrong.

The Daily Wine

About three in the afternoon I start to get ready to fix the doggie dinners and start eying the - as of yet- unopened bottle of wine, or more correctly, carton of wine.
Surely, I say to myself, surely I can have a glass of wine now, it is after three, close to four and almost five.
And if I get the food for the mutts ready early, why, I ask, should I not enjoy my wine a little early too ?
So I do .
And the mutts get fed and I have my first glass of wine
and suddenly things are not so bad after all.
Here's to the early and well deserved first glass of wine of the day
cheers.

Beans

At the grain store, looking for Lima beans, I pointed to a bag that contained what looked like the beans and said
what is this then ?
Ava, said the young man, not a bean.
It looked close enough to the Lima so I bought a quarter of a pound and said to the young man
please write the name on the bag
and with a felt tip pen and in big letters he carefully wrote
H-A-B-A
Small wonder I have such trouble with the name of my street named after the late star, AVA Gardner, with their silent H and the labial B it can cause a lot of misunderstandings.
Oh, and according to my search on the internet, Haba is another name for Lima beans.
So there.

The Postman's Song

I was young, I was emotional and I was stupid and I found myself stranded on the Greek island of Hydra the summer of 63.
That was the second year of the wildly popular Song of the Postman, everybody in Greece singing or humming it.
I heard it over and over and it became part of that painful summer.
Here I am, 46 years later trying to find the song, and I think I succeeded.
The internet is wondrous thing; I can now listen and recall that summer, I can hear that song sung by no less than Agnes Baltsa
and I remember
and I am glad that I am not that young or that stupid anymore.
Still emotional, though.

Sweet Memories

I remember as a student of the Kunsthaandvaerkerskolen in Copenhagen, I and some of my fellow students would, after school, go to a cafeteria, where we would share an order of Pommes Frites
and a bowl of Sauce Bernaise to dip them in.
I wonder what they are serving to starving students now, what with the leveling of taste and borders
deep fried potatoes and tomato ketchup ?

And speaking of muses;
there are nine of them, all named and with specific areas of expertise and knowledge
and then there's a tenth, unnamed and up for grabs.
But why stop at ten, says I.
Why not have a stock of muses to be delivered, free of charge, to anyone who might wish for one.
Someone like me.
A muse that would fit your personality and life style which in my case would be a muse prone to sloth, half blind and tone deaf ( a security measure should I ever decide to sing aloud ) and with just one leg ( another security against me dancing ) but most important
it would be my muse and mine only.
Why Not ?
Surely I am not the only one in need of unconditional love other than of the canine variety.
So I say, bring on the muses and let us all have at it.

My Dance

I don't dance.
For one, I was born with two left feet
and two, all my adult life I have been surrounded by superbly trained and talented professional dancers
so, no , I don't dance
except
this evening, as I was finishing my meal and a bottle of cheap wine
the radio played a particularly enchanting version of Greensleeves, counter tenor and guitar
and I got up
and I danced
and the dogs went into hiding and the birds stopped chirping
but this was a moment between me and my half blind, tone deaf and one legged muse
and we danced.
It may never happen again.
We had our dance.
Everybody should have their dance.
And this was our moment.

What a trip.
It started with a video on Youtube of a-until recently unknown to me - young singer.
I was mailed the link and that led to a clip of the same singer singing Handel's Messiah
which led to my all time favorite counter tenor singing the same aria
which led to him singing in a production of Handel's Julius Cesar
which led to a damn fine production of that opera and to a wonderful Danish soprano
and a superb number of the opera done at Glyndebourne to
at the end of the line
a zany television production of the Handel arias by the ever luminescent Kiri Te Kanawa
and I thought
WOW
I never had to get up and change the record/tape/CD, all is done with a click of the mouse.
Allright, so the sound quality is not the greatest, but good enough to make you sit and weep at the beauty of the music and the artistry of the singers.
What a trip.

There's an old saying - and I paraphrase - if you seek wisdom, go to the ants.
Well I for one don't think the ants are all that smart; devious, yes.
They will do their dastardly deeds at night when regular folks are asleep so they wake up to yet another defoliated plant, but my point is this.
If they were so smart, they would leave some leaves so the plant could recuperate faster.
Not so with these ants. They strip the poor plants to stalks leaving nary a leaf, and many times killing the plant in the process.
Is that so smart ?
My advice is not to go to the ants for wisdom and it makes you think that-maybe- the former administration should have heeded that suggestion.
And don't get attached to your plants if you live near leaf-eating ants.

It makes you wonder.
I don't entertain but should I wish to, I have enough stuff to set a table for twelve.
So why did I feel compelled to buy a bunch of glasses ?
For sure they were cheap
and for sure I thought they were nice looking
but why ?
A secret desire to one day have dinner parties with scintillating conversations and superbly prepared dishes and lots and lots of water glasses ?
I sure don't know,
but what I do know is that now, right now, I have a set of twelve water glasses stored in a cabinet, not likely to be used for a long, long time.
It makes you wonder, though.

All dogs bark, but the Worthless Ones seem to bark more than most
so the other day when I was busy at the computer and they were having a fit, I just yelled for them to shut the F... up
which they did not.
I got up to see what the cause was
and walking in the street was this little Mexican guy who had been cutting grass for his animals and was transporting the grass on his head.
All one could see of him was from his knees down and the tip of his machete.
A walking haystack.
If I were a dog I would have barked too.

A change

Three of the worthless ones did not come home last night.
At my normal hour I locked the doors and went to bed.
When we had the Schnauzers I would have been in hysterics,
now I was looking forward to a good night's sleep.

It was not one of my better days, but as I was finishing my dinner, the radio was playing a collection of arias, sung by one - unknown to me- soprano.
And I thought
I may not have a lot of worldly goods
but I still have an inquisitive mind and a keen sense of beautiful music
and for that I am grateful
and that, nobody can take away.

The Tarte Tatin

I had the apples, I had the time, goodness knows, waiting again for the cell folks to show, so I decided to bake a tarte tatin, which is an upside-down french type apple tart.
Now mostly when I do these, I marvel, I jump for joy and then I eat it, not having anybody to share it with.
This time, though - since it came out near perfect - I wanted to share it, so here it is
my Tarte Tatin
and it tastes as good as it looks.