And so I opened another bottle of wine. Well, this is not exactly true. It is not a bottle. It is a carton, and like most cartons, this contains 1 liter as opposed to most bottles which contain 750 ml. ( three quarters of a liter) and so, even at a price well below the cheapest bottle of wine, I get one third more. Now that is well worth the uncomfortable trip to town. Cheers to all of us who know a good deal when we taste one. and who can still remember the days when getting high on liquor on a Saturday night was a wonderful excuse to have sex. Now we need a lot more just to remember what the excitement was all about. Or to forget that sex was ever part of the equation.
Here is to cheap wine.

It is still raining, and the only space not occupied by some scruffy canine seems to be, luckily, my chair in front of the computer desk and for good reason. It is not very comfortable.
Otherwise my house is full of dogs, lolling on my bed, on Chuck's bed, on the couch and on the sillon in the TV room/library.
Any place but my chair at the computer.
And the smell. There is nothing quite like the smell of wet dog, and add to that the residues of a mosquito fighting slow burning incense spiral thingie that I have to use to be able to watch the telly at night without going mad fighting off the pesky little blood suckers. That one.
Since I stopped smoking ( seven years ago) I have discovered scents and smells that I was blissfully unaware of for so many years. This might be the only reason to take up smoking again, that and quelling of the craving for munchies. But I digress.
The Worthless Ones are being even more worthless in this rainy season refusing to do their "Business " outside when wet.
Really!
Whoever heard of mutts with sensibilities like these ? Really.
I, and I am human, can and will go outside to pee. So why can't they ? Rain or no rain.
Sensibilities indeed.
Mutts.

It is raining; it is the rainy season, therefore it rains
but when it rains and it is gray and dreary, my energy level--never high to begin with--dwindles to new lows, and all I do is think whilst consuming cups and cups of tea or coffee or, on really bad days, glasses of wine before the designated hour.
And I think of many things, of why people contracted to do work don't show up, of how my mother used to make a dish we called cowboyfood and recently finding a similar recipe for a dish that really seems to be enjoyed by cowboys of southern Texas and northern Mexico, of why some friends find it difficult to respond to mails even after multiple mails from me and of why I have too much time to ponder these items.
When it rains
and it is gray and dreary and humid.

I have said it before on this blog that going to town is not a preference.
That is my choice and that is cool.
But when Mother Nature interferes and stops me from doing just that by way of fallen trees on my road, then that is not a choice of mine and therefore.....not cool.
I had--after much thought and agonizing and running out of cheap wine--decided to go to town.
I got the car out of the garage and trundled down the hill when I came to a complete stop.
A tree had fallen, due to two days of heavy, heavy rains, on my road and barred any e-or-ingress.
Going the other way was not much of an option since just getting the car turned around and facing my way again was a major undertaking due to slick and wet road, and the other way is way steeper than mine. No go.
Back to the house and car in the garage and then the sorting out of the situation.
If I decide not to go to town, that is fine.
If I decide to go and cannot, due to whims of Mother nature, that is not fine at all.
Now that is really a conundrum.
Isn't it?

So I did it myself.
I hired Candelarion to paint, well, in truth his wife Hilda was the one negotiating the deal when Candelarion was voicing unsurety about painting.
And so I hired him and he worked hard at painting, a thing he truly had no talent for.
He also begged off work Friday for some family do which, in Mexican fashion, turned into a very wet night and that made him unable to work Saturday and even Monday, when he returned to work he admitted having to fortifying himself with a few beers to stop his hands from shaking.
He worked that day and then we parted ways; he to go to another job, a manly job where he got to use tools and crash and bang things like men do.
And I was left with the job unfinished.
Till today.
Today I hauled the ladder in to the house and I clambered to the top to paint the wall at the highest point, precariously holding on to the ladder and the wall, feeling faint.
But I did it.
After that it was a piece of cake.
So now the wall is painted and the paintings and prints all put back and I am having a glass of wine to celebrate the task done.
I "done" it.

Another day spent waiting in vain for people to show up as promised.
I tell myself that this is Mexico and therefore normal, and I know it is.
But that doesn't alter the fact that I feel that there is a lack of respect for other people's time.
No, I don't have a lot of things to do, and I can mostly work around waiting for these guys, but once in a way it gets to me, and I get a bit pissed off.
This time some guys from IUSAcell worked on some electricity deal Saturday and told me they would be back Monday morning to finish the job.
Still waiting.
And since it involves me opening my garage doors I have no choice but to be present.
And the iron monger who was already a week late said, when I confronted him in person, that sure thing he would be at my house Monday morning.
I am still waiting.
I am much better than I used to be about these delays, but I still do not like them.
Not one little bit.

So what to do to make your stew more palatable the second, third and maybe even fourth day?
You bake a bread
which I did.
A Russian black bread which turned out to be neither Russian nor black, but all the same very, very delicious.
My stew and my bread will make me full, if not happy for the coming days.
That and some Cheap Red Wine.
Bon Appetite.

I decided to make Chicken Provencale for dinner. I had all the ingredients, sort of. It was a perfect day for chicken stew, being gray and dreary and all that.
And so I started the process, chopping, mincing, frying, peeling and all was going well till I got to the point where the recipe said to add wine.
Whoa, said I.
I will gladly put garlic and stock in my stew.
Wine, however, remains in my glass.
And so the stew has all the good and healthy stuff, and I have my glass of Cheap Red Wine.
It is a win-win situation.

This is sad on many levels.
First, it is sad to have a small wiener
Second, it is sad that one does not know how to spell wiener. And
Thirdly, since this is a tattoo we will forever know that he has a small, misspelled wiener
and that is truly sad.

I have had dogs most of my adult life. Most of them well behaved, some even very well behaved.
And now I have the mutts, "The Worthless Ones", and they are anything but well behaved. They chase cars in the street, they chase and try to scare folks who walk by ( few, thank goodness) , they use the inside to go to the bathroom if it is wet outside, they bark at things only they can hear and they totally lack the switch off button, in short, they drive me mad.
How did this happen, I wonder. Where did I go wrong, and so spectacularly.
Are Mexican dogs different?
I see the Mexicans who live in the shantytown at the bottom of my hill with their dogs, and they are all well behaved, to a point.
Why me and what do I do ?
I try to think of some good points in their favor. I fail.
Somehow I was meant to suffer for my sins with these mutts.
And boy do I suffer. And loudly.
Like this.

When I get down, I have a drink.
Sometimes I drink too much
and that gets me down
so I have a drink....

Roskilde....a city outside Copenhagen where the kings and queens are laid to rest in the cathedral and which only a few years ago celebrated its 1000 year birthday, is also the home to a yearly rock festival, one of the many off springs of the original Woodstock rock festival.
Today in one of the local papers I read, there was a video report from the festival, explaining how one could find a place to sleep even though one did not have any money to buy a tent or other cover. I was curious. I watched the video. I am still curious.
Something has happened to the spoken Danish since I left the country. I listened and I didn't understand, and it was not just the mumblings made famous by challenged actors in films...no, this went deeper to a more profound not-understanding.
I am 66 years old. I left Denmark when I was 22, so I spent a third of my life speaking the language which, as I sit here now, sounds so very foreign to me.
Is it, perchance, that the guys interviewed spoke what could be called "Ghetto Danish " ?..
I don't know anymore.
As far as I am concerned, the queen speaks the way I think Danish should be spoken.
Anything else is just not up to snuff.
Or something.