And so I wondered.....do I really have anything to say ?
anything of importance ?
or am I writing this blog just to see my feeble words appear on my page.
I don't really know
I am grabbling with this issue and I am not anywhere near a clear-cut solution
I am, however, aware that I miss sharing my thoughts
so maybe I shall persevere and see what might happen.

This is a story that made me laugh and made me cry.
A little church in Italy decided to restore a five hundred something year old fresco.
The fresco depicted the tree of life.
It was a tree where the fruit were penises and the fresco showed a collection of women trying to pick the fruits.
The restoration had lasted about a year when some experts raised the alarm.
All the penises had disappeared.
Oops, said the restorers, who conveniently had not noticed it before, maybe the harsh chemicals made the penises go away. Not the tree, not the collection of women, just the penises.
Some really harsh conservative Republican chemicals.
So let this be lesson to all. Never expose your penis to harsh conservative republican chemicals. That will make it go away.
Penis envy.

My favorite tree, the one that regales me once a year with an astonishing display of cascading yellow flowers, makes a pod , a sort oversize bean, wherein are the seeds/beans.
For weeks if not months I have tried to make the beans sprout. It is possible, I know because that is what Chuck and I did to make the tree that I have now.
It is possible, I keep reminding me.
I even went so far as to collect a pod from a tree growing miles and miles from here, thinking that maybe mine were not pollinated.
And now, as I checked the pots this morning, I saw a tiny little green spear sticking up of the soil. One little guy. Sure there are a few others but I am not too sure about their lineage they all look alike at the early stage; but this little birthday growth, that is the real thing, because I can see the bean it is growing from, and that is the one I planted.
I am thrilled and nervous. I want to protect this little growth, make sure it gets all it needs. Ward off any and all leaf-eating insects and creepy crawlies. But then again maybe I should just let nature take its course. It has before. Still, a little help won't hurt. One tiny little helpless spear.

Ans so I cried. I did not know what else to do. It was (is) my birthday. I am as of today, 68 years old.
I am a 68 years old curmudgeon, a thing most sane people will avoid. A person that should be held up as an example of what not to be. A person like me.
And yet.
Am I so bad compared to so many others ?
I think not.
I might be a smidgen more honest but so what ?
Honesty did not make many friends and therefore I have very few friends
but I am here
and I still write my blog
That's worth something, aint it ?

Rodents!
At this point I am willing to blame them for just about anything from excessive gas expulsion to halitosis.
Truth ?
They bother me. They bother me because when at times I open the doors to the cabinet where I hear them making noises, I am at times confronted with a Disneyesque looking little creature that as often as not will just sit still and look at me. Big scary me. And then slowly go back to whatever rodents do when not pestered by things like me. Big scary me. And I despair.
What does one do to make these rodents go away ?
One hires a cat.
One hires an old, ugly, belligerent cat. A cat that takes pride in its job, to eliminate rodents. Such a cat has to deal with the Unloved Ones ( my mutts ) and, uno contra quatro, one against four are just bad odds.
But any pussy worth its salt ? will not only put up with, it will negate the powers of the Worthless Ones . It will show the world that righteous pussies will prevail over worthless ones any old day.
Poor old mutts.

PSSTTTT YA wanna know a secret ?
Here is one.
Whenever I have a bit too much to drink, my vocabulary expands to multi-syllable words. And lots of them. So when you read a post of mine and I am using all kinds of big words, be advised. I have most probably imbibed, and liberally.
Sad, it is not, that that is what it takes, a thing that should be perfectly natural.
We have such a vibrant and beautiful language and yet
when you listen to rap artists, they might as well be speaking a foreign tongue.
And as you might have guessed, I have been imbibing.
Cheers.

And in my dream I was starting University..I know, I know..it is a dream , all right ? but this is where it took a Kafkaesque turn with endless and look-alike corridors with people busy going back and forth. And I was lost till I found a person who seemed to be some kind of guide. He asked what I was looking for and I blurted out : " psych 1 "....Ah, he said, you are all right then. They are still taking inscriptions. It will cost you 400 dollars. Anything else I can help you with ?
Yes...I said.
I could use a guide dog.
And then I woke up.

This is a joke that was mailed to me :
Two dogs are sitting talking.
In the hazy background one can see a human walking his canine on a lead.
Says #1 dog to #2 dog
What kind of best friend
would cut off your testicals..

Say wha ???
Now I am as prone as the next person, maybe even more, to misspellings
But testicals.
And this "joke" was received by dozens if not hundreds of people, hopefully all of them struck, as was I, by the glaring mistake and yet.....I wonder.
So as not to make too big a fool of myself, I did check the dictionary; there is no word listed as testical(s).
And then I think, was it a subtle double joke that I missed entirely, like the dogs talking being sort of hillbilly kinda dogs not knowing how to spell testicle.?
NAhhh..

Last night was the night of the no-see-ums. They were out in force and they kept me from sleeping well. My regular mosquitoes I can hear and in most cases ward off with a mighty swipe of my hands but these critters sneak up on you, no warning, and then they bite. And I think they operate in swarms, but that is totally my idea. I really don't like them, in fact I like them so little that I went to the store and bought a bunch of nasty smelling ,insect repelling, slow burning spirals. It is about the only thing that can keep the buggers in check. I'll admit that if I were a no-see-um, I would go away too. Those spirals are lethal.
And at the store I got some more cheap wine too. Spirals for the outside, cheap wine for the inside.
Tonight I shall tumble in to the arms of Morpheus
I hope.

So when do your clever and funny emails turn into something unwanted and unread ?
I don't know.
I do know that some people who I have regaled with my 'witty' and 'erudite' mails stopped responding..
Nothing.
and I so wonder if maybe I passed over this threshold and became a nuisance rather than a delightful break in an otherwise so-so day.
One thing is for sure. I have too much time to worry about these things.
But am I a nuisance or a welcome break in a bleak day ?

Awwww, I thought; Look at that. This thing that I at first thought was a dust ball on my bedroom floor--not an uncommon thing--turned out to be a baby mouse, a mousita, so young that it had not even opened its eyes.
AWWW, I thought again.
And then I realized that this little helpless thing would in a very few weeks be a big mouse and be searching for food in the kitchen at night and eating holes in t-shirts in my closet plus all the disasters I have not discovered yet.
So I gently placed it on a dustpan and tipped it out in the jungle.

I am not sure it pays to be nice.
Somehow some of the mutts had grown a bit weary of the usual fare, so I thought, to spruce up the kibbles a bit, I would add to their food a can of dog food i had inherited from The Bennetts.
Great and unqualified success, in fact so great a success that the mutts would attack whatever bowl I was scooping the canned food into which was not at all what I had in mind, so I told them to get back to their own bowls where I would give them their fair share forthwith.
Not being terribly bright to begin with they all got very confused and one clumsily stepped in her bowl, knocked it over and broke it into many pieces, food scattered all over the kitchen floor.
And then they all disappeared, leaving me to clean up the mess.
Had I yelled at them, had I been strict I would have an easier time with this mess. As it is I tried to be nice, to give them a special treat.
Well that stops this for a while. No more Mr. Good Person. They can eat their kibbles without any extra or not eat at all.

I am so proud of my country, said Alicia Alonso in an interview on CNN, I am so proud of my small country, Cuba.
How small, I wondered, is Cuba?
Well, not that small as it turns out. All the Scandinavian countries are smaller than Cuba but she probably sees it against the towering neighbor of USA, and compared to that, yes Cuba is small.
I enjoyed the interview but I have to say that as much as I admire her as an artist, as a dancer, she does not come across as a very nice person.
Ah well, at 91 I guess she has a right to be unpleasant, only I have feeling she was that way before she hit this venerable age.

A birthday cake.
I had a dream about making a birthday cake. And not just any old birthday cake. MY birthday cake, the one I am going to enjoy a month from now. Never too early to get prepared, I guess.
The choices as I remember were between a plain cake cut into layers and my fancy Queen Mother Cake, also cut into layers with filling.
My mother was the uncontested champion of birthday cakes, Danish style. Wonder who, if any, has taken up the mantle in the old country or if by now, as with so many things, one just makes a trip to the supermarket and buys one. Pre-decorated and ready to eat.
I don't think they will ever taste the same as the ones made by a mother or sibling.

I was bemoaning the fact that by reading the news on the computer you miss the feeling of the massive amount of paper that used to be one of the things that spelled : Sunday.
That and in the old country, freshly baked bread from the local bakery.
Sure, it has been many years since I bought a Sunday paper and it does seem that the writers of the blogs and the ones putting the regular news on the web, are all taking the commandment to heart, the one that says
Kom hviledagen i hu at du holder den hellig
And I have no idea where this came from. This is the commandment that tells you to honor the sabbath, only I can remember it in my native language.
I did not go to a religious school, nor did we have more than cursory instruction in bible knowledge, but somehow this bit got lodged in my memory some sixty years ago and is still there.
I admit that I had to look up the ten commandments and none others are that clear to me.
Funny things, minds. They sure can play tricks on you.
And all this because I was missing the heft and joy of the Sunday paper. And maybe more so now that Sundays seem so long.

And now for a bit of good news.
I have been moaning about the massive amount of newly erected speed bumps on the way to Vallarta, even in places where there was absolutely no call for them, such as the entrance to Lomas del Pacifico.
This morning when I went to town I noticed to my delight that the bumps had been removed, as had the set further down the street and, miracle of miracle, the hateful bumps protecting the entrance to a gated community, rarely used.
All gone. And what a joy and even greater joy since from now on I do not have to listen to the great big trucks go crashing into the ones at my entrance in the middle of the night, since they never got around to put up a warning sign.
Some are still there, to be sure. Some even make sense, but right now I am thrilled that so many of them are gone. Good stuff.
I might even go to town more often now. Nahhh. Best not overdo this.

This was a nightmare. A true nightmare. I dreamed I was wrapped in some sort of shroud, tightly, and I was fighting mightily to get free. In the meantime a body was pressing against me in the dark, making the struggle more difficult.
I screamed for help, but my voice was gone.
I fought and fought and finally made it to the surface of my conscientiousness and woke up.
I was all wrapped up in my bedding and Priscilla the mutt was dead asleep next to me, making it impossible to move.
It took me some minutes to get my manure together and bedding straightened out and move the immovable mutt to a corner where she could continue her deep, drug like sleep.
I do not like nightmares.

I hate getting old.
So what if you get a bit smarter--if that really happens
it does not make up for all the other deficiencies, the dropping of things, the not remembering dropping things, the absolute certainty that the new little age spot is really melanoma, just waiting to grow wild.
I hate getting old. I hate having pains in the morning when you wake up, the time you should be feeling your best after a good night's sleep
Yeah Right
Nights are either full of weird and crazy dreams or fighting buzzing insects that are not taking swipes for "NO" but will pursue you and your sweet blood all night
and nights are full of mutts feeling they have to defend their territory by barking incessantly and loudly at anything that moves outside
nights
nights were supposed to be a time to rest and get ready for another day
Well, I gotta tell you. That is hogwash when you get to be a certain age. Sleep eludes you, logic escapes you and bodily functions wreak havoc with your night.
I hate getting old.

And so I was cleaning another tell-tale pile of termite dust and since this was following my epic rodents vs. dogfood fight I was beginning to feel very un-wanted.
Wait, I said to self.
Wait and think. Try and see it in a different light. Like being wanted, being wanted by the termites to provide all the delicious wooden furniture for them to eat
wanted by the rodents to provide doggie food bags to rip, garlic to steal ( yes, they steal my garlic ) and all the other stuff in the kitchen, not to forget the tissues and paper towels with which to make nests
wanted by the ants to plant and provide flowers and shrub and trees for them to strip when they feel like it
wanted by the mosquitoes and the nasty no-see-ums to provide gallons and gallons of good blood for them to eat
so, yes, I guess I am wanted, just not quite the way I would like to be.

It had to happen.
it was only a matter of time for the roaming and rapacious rodents to find the sack of dog food that I keep in a cabinet. They've found it.
They are eating holes in what I thought was pretty impregnable plastic, neat and meticulously chewed half moon shaped pieces of plastic are--were--littering the cabinet and mixing with the food.
This is war, and I rinsed out a couple of big paint buckets with very tight lids, filled them with the pellets and sealed them. See if they can chew through that stuff.
And I wish they would stop stealing the garlic. Whoever heard of garlic eating rodents, except maybe in Italy. But mine seem to like the garlic and the used tea bags too. They are either very hungry or very sophisticated. Either way, I wish they would stop.
And I am sorry to report the the Worthless Ones are paying absolutely no attention to the goings on with the rodents. But let a nocturnal animal rustle a few leaves outside during the night and they will end up in a lather.
Silly mutts.

I was watching the telly with the window behind me wide open and I was leaning forward to read some subtitles when I heard a thump behind me; a frog had jumped in the window and landed on the pillow behind me.
I looked at it, it looked at me, and this was not my night to be froggie friendly so I took the pillow, frog and all, and shook it out the window.
Gone frog. And I didn't even think to kiss it.
Maybe next time.

Her name was Connie. She was a friend of Rhoda's from Connecticut and like Rhoda, a long term resident of Vallarta.
And she needed some work done, some for her and some for husband, who she described as " a big man " .
I met him; he was short and fat. And Connie and I did not quite hit it off. She had an annoying habit of checking every stitch to see if it was up to her standards.
One time I lost my cool and said to her quietly through gritted teeth as she was checking out some of my work :
Maybe you would like a magnifying glass ?
She looked at me truly dumbfounded and said in her nasal New Yorker accent:
My, you are really sensitive, aren't you !
I decided then and there that it wasn't worth the measly fee to go through this again.
And never did.

So here is how it works.
Every afternoon, about 3:30, I look at the mutts and they look at me and we all know it is getting to be time to get their dinner ready.
What they don't know is that it is also the time I get the carton of Cheap Red Wine out of the cupboard and ready for use.
So as I fix the color coordinated bowls with food for the mutts, I also fix the first glass of wine for self.
And as the mutts clean their bowls, I finish the first of the glasses of Cheap red Wine.
After that I just continue.
That is how it works.

When the mad queen was my neighbor he would take his enormous, black and macho truck for his trips to the local bars and one night, early morning actually, returning from a night of debauchery, he had a flat. This, however, in his inebriated state of mind, was not going to stop him, so he finished the trip driving on the flat tire and that was the end of the truck for a while. It was parked in front of the house and looking like some wounded animal, listing to one side not even having a tire to rest on. I found the tire in the canyon where it ended up after this wild and uncontrolled driving.
Living here one needs transport, so he came to me and asked to borrow my car, right neighborly and all. I said no but I would help out by driving him--and his compatriots--to the store and back. Which I did.
Later I talked to Nicholas my neighbor who also had been approached by The Mad Queen. Nicholas told me he just said NO WAY to the quest for borrowing of a vehicle and that was it. No nampy pampy helping of a unlucky neighbor.
And so I am wondering . Why cannot I be more like Nicolas ?
But then I would not really be me, now would I ?
If the Mad Queen should need help again, as much as I don't care for him, I would still do it.
That is just who I am.

On one wall of my kitchen I have five pigs. One is a little copper pan, one is a framed woodcut, two are carved bowls and the last is a carved and painted wood relief. And I have a framed print of a survivor of seventy cock fights, the Yorkshire Hero ( and no, I do not like cock fights but I love this print ) .
Today, as I was filing my glass with some cheap red wine, I glanced at the wall and realized, for the first time, that all the pigs are looking the same way, to the right.
The fighting cock is looking to the left.
What are the odds that all the pigs are looking one way and the sole chicken the other ?
It struck me funny, but then it was not my first glass of cheap red wine.

There used to be a saying going something like this :
Beware of a skinny chef ( cook ? )
This adage is not so true anymore, in fact I think the fat chef ( cook) is the rarity now.
Watching a lot of cooking shows on the telly I marvel at the trimness of the cooking class.
But one thing has me stumped and it might be a purely personal thing.
I cannot stand the female chefs who sport long, sometimes very long, fingernails.
I watched one trying to dice something and not being able to get a good grip due to the nails. Admittedly these dames, and only dames thank goodness, are a minority but still
maybe one should start a new adage going something like:
beware of chefs with long fingernails.
OY.

I keep in touch with the Old Country by reading the newspapers online and one curious thing has me all riled up. In one of the papers a person, a new arrival to the fair shores of Denmark is writing a blog. In English. And I have read it a few times and I have, a few times, written what I thought were insightful and unbiased comments, basically saying that this person was full of shit.
And then I decided not to seek out this blog to preserve my precarious blood pressure; till today, when I caught another blog celebrating the blogger's first year in the country of Vikings and Hans Christian Andersen. And I despair. To be sure, I have not been back in many years and I make fun of my own chosen country--or countries, but I do this with a love and understanding that I, Alan, made the choice. I. Me.
This new person living in Denmark is pissed at so many things, one of which is that he still does not understand what the announcers are saying on the telly when they speak Danish...DUHHH. I had to take a lot of deep breaths and count to ten to convince myself not to reply to this silly post. But this is my blog and here I can say whatever I want, and I will say this to this person who has the pulpit of a daily newspaper to spread his discontent......you don't like it ? Leave. Right now. Get out and make room for someone who might appreciate the situation better.
There.
I said it.

I happened to look out on my mango tree as I was sweeping the terrace this morning and saw a lot of small, green mangoes that hopefully, in due time, will turn into big, juicy, ripe mangoes.
The problem is that after growing the plant from the seed and planting it, the jungle has taken over and there is no way I can get to the tree now without major slashing of the undergrowth.
I guess I can stand on my terrace and look at the fruits and imagine what they would taste like.
Sort of mind over matter.
But the joy of it is that the tree finally, after so many years, is bearing fruit. So what if it only for the animals of the jungle. They deserve a few good things too.

I am having some bad days, so I decided to write a bunch of emails, hoping that I would receive some kind of response which would make me feel better.
Not quite.
But then I am a bit impatient
and that doesn't help.
Cheap wine, however, does seem to help.
Should one then prefer wine over friends ?
Faulty logic, but oh so easy to make.
Better go to store tomorrow for more wine.
No place to go for more friends.

Knowing your own weaknesses does not necessarily cure them.
I am painfully aware of many of mine, and yet
I still fall in the pits and despair.
I have been writing a lot of emails to people I care about
and now I wait
impatiently
for responses
not really accepting the fact that people have lives, sometimes happy and full lives, that may not include an instant reply to mails from me.
I have too much time to worry about these matters and so, in the parlance of today,
I better get a life
and soon.

There is something wonderful in suddenly finding yourself listening to some music that has you totally taken in
and better yet if it is a piece you already know
and this is what happened the other night.
My Seattle radio station had some problems so I changed to Radio Denmark, mostly out of curiosity and that was when they started to play the full, uninterrupted recording of
Die Schöne Müllerin by Schubert.
I know the piece well, but I had never heard an interpretation so lush, so heartfelt as this. I sat glued to the computer for an hour and ten minutes, just listening to one wonderful song after another and I was sure I would remember the name the next day.
I did not, but after a lot of time and a lot of calculating the time difference, I found the information.
Here is my hat off to Matthias Goerne for such a great job.
Thank you.

I was contemplating writing a post about not having a drink of Cheap Red Wine for weeks and weeks and weeks.....well, at least for a couple of weeks, and then
things started to go a bit awry
and I had my fist glass of wine
and now
I am proud to tell y'all
I have almost finished a carton of very Cheap red Wine
so there
abstinence does not work
I am living proof of that.
Cheers.

The chirpy Gringo lady in the cafe where I buy my coffee said to the pony tailed owner in very broken Spanish
ME---of Oregon---live here
AH, said the owner and continued in Spanish, and what part of Oregon are you from ?
This proved to be too much Spanish for the chirpy lady who just smiled and nodded her head, a little bewildered.
So I translated the question for her and she went off on a rant about the places in Oregon ably supported by mine owner of the cafe who really did know his stuff.
When her bill was settled and she was ready to leave she turned to me, slightly quizzical, and said what she must have thought to be the safest thing to say not knowing if I was a Gringo too, or just a very well spoken local
Hasta Luego ?
Is this what it has come to ? Chirpy little old ladies are not totally sure about me and where I fit in.
Must do something about that accent.

I shall put this in the category of
"Wish I Had Said That".

The early bird may get the worm but
that second mouse gets the cheese.

Never pat a strange puppy.
A golden rule that I know and that I ignore and with consequences
like this morning with Priscilla away checking something in the jungle, giving me a chance to slip down the hill unfollowed by her to buy some eggs from the local tienda and, for ease, taking a shortcut passing close to one of the houses in the cluster down the hill where a couple of pups were frolicking.
And I committed the cardinal sin of patting them
so they followed me down to the big road and waited for me till I returned from the tienda
and one of them decided to walk with me to my house where the resident mutts took umbrage
and I had to rescue the wayward pup and carry it back to its house, from where it tried to follow me home again, braving the coterie of frenzied females.
It finally gave up and I told myself again
never pat a strange puppy

And so I turned off the telly and the lights and all the other stuff I do every night in preparation for going to bed
and one of the mutts, doing her thing, ambled into the bedroom waiting to jump on the bed the minute I drifted off to sleep
however, I noticed that she was looking at something under the bed
puzzled
and I have learned to take these signs seriously, living with easy access for snakes and scorpions and other unwelcome critters
so I grabbed my flashlight and looked under the bed and saw
a dead bird
and a sizable one at that
How, I wondered, did this bird come to be under my bed ?
Did someone, or something, drag it there ? or did it bump into one of the windows as they often do and then seek a place to expire ?
It will remain a mystery.
I picked it up and threw it out in the jungle, a little life extinguished.

I was cleaning the counter tops in the kitchen for mouse dropping, grumbling all the time and wondering if scat only referred to animals in the wild or if it also covered domestic ones, if mice can be considered domestic.
And all this thinking led me to check the word scat which led to scatology and then to muscerdae, Latin for mouse droppings.
So when I next grumble about cleaning the mouse dropping from the kitchen counters, I can instead grumble about cleaning muscerdae, so much more elegant.

Misquoting Oscar Wilde wildly I say
to loose one day is unfortunate
to loose two is irresponsible.

I was somehow convinced that to-day was Wednesday but as I do not have a set schedule, I had not thought too much about it till by chance I saw the calendar on the computer stating that is was not only not Wednesday, it was Saturday.
I had lost two days.
Now I have to rethink all my goals for the week since it is obviously almost over.
How did this happen ? This I cannot blame on the Republicans although I will give it a good try.
Ah well...
next week I will keep better track of the days
if I remember.

This morning I discovered that the water container on the kitchen counter had not sealed properly when I exchanged it and water had seeped and spilled all over the floor
and with exquisitely bad timing Carlos walked by with a dog on a string setting off the Worthless Ones in a frenzy of hysterical barking as I was looking at the mess.
Not, I thought, a very good way to start the day or the week.
On the other hand I thought, searching desperately for a silver lining, it can only be better from now on.
I hope.

Anybody with a computer and an email address will at one point have received a mail where in the end it will urge you to forward it to a number of your friends and good things will happen, the intimation being that if you don't, bad things will happen.
I have always refused to do this; I will not be party to this kind of scam but maybe, just maybe, there is something to it.
I certainly have had my share of unpleasantnesses
so when Alice called all excited about a big order that Christa had landed form Nordstrom and claimed that she was sure, almost, that it was due to her forwarding some mail that promised good luck and fortune, I thought that I might have to revise my thinking about this matter.
And then I thought again and
no
I will not bother others with that kind of junk.
I will bother them with my laments--like this one--but not with those thinly veiled threats and pathetic promises of good fortune.
There I said it.

Yesterday my car sprung another leak in the radiator.
Today my sewing machine broke a vital part.
Two things very important to my life and both have been with me for decades now.
So is this a sign ? A warning that from now on all is downwards ?
I really hope not, things are bleak without that.
The leak has been fixed and I am working hard on getting the part for my sewing machine
but
it sure gives you food for thought.
And it doesn't help that my bones are aching and that I feel old and useless
sort of like my car and sewing machine.
Ah well.

Gorblimey, I thought
this is truly beautiful
and ran to grab my camera which did not for once scream at me that the batteries were low
and I clicked to take a picture of this thing where a fog bank was slowly making its way from the sea following the river bed an covering the opposite side of the hill where I live, leaving the house on the very top of the hill exposed and lit by the sun.
Stunning, and I couldn't wait to send the picture to anyone with just the slightest interest in my neighborhood.
Yeah Right.
When I downloaded the photo I had a very nice shot of fog.
Nothing but fog.
That is not at all what I saw, so I blame it all on my camera.
It truly was beautiful, and now only I with my faulty memory know that.
So much for a picture is worth a thousand words.

So that was what it was all about..

some time ago I had a phone call--I do not have a lot of those --wherein a female, in rapid Spanish, was reading some prepared script.
WHOA, I said. Whoa. Slow down a bit, this is a foreigner you are talking to.
She slowed down for a few words before she took off again on her breakneck speed reading of the script.
WHOA, I said again. I don't get it. I am a poor foreigner. Bear with me. Slow down.
With that she hung up on me.
Good riddance I thought and then
the phone rang again
and a very pleasant gent was asking what went wrong, and I repeated what I had said to the female caller.
He chuckled and said that the female in question was known for her fits.
Good, so far.
A few minutes later my female caller was back with icy voice and very few words
yes or no
I figured that "yes" would get rid of her
so I said....YES
not knowing what the dickens I was saying "YES " to.
Now I know.
On my monthly telephone bill I suddenly have a charge for a thing that will allow me to make almost unlimited calls to the USA.
?
I never call and I have no intention of calling the states.
Now I have to go to the office and get rid of this unwanted xtra.
And I will be telling them about the surly female, you betcha.

Now this does make you wonder...
the other day for no reason that I know of, I thought back on a time when I was taking millinery lessons from a designer who lived in my neighborhood in Seattle.
Across the street from where I took my lessons lived some good friends of mine as well, so it all became a nice memory trip back to the days in Seattle.
Here is where the wondering comes in.
Today I received a mail from one of the guys from the house across the street, who had run into Sara at the opera and gotten my address...
what are the odds of this ? me thinking about those guys and they--he--responding.
There is so much we don't know and don't understand.
Now if I think really hard about.....who?
I'll save that for when I really need something good to happen.

I have been painting my kitchen and I have discovered that unless you are super careful
--and I am not
you will end up with stains on your clothing.
Now I can add to my collection of t-shirts with rodent holes the latest
the paint stained t-shirts.
Such a fashionista I am.

When I lived in New York I sported, according to the times, rather longish hair.
At one point I also sported a rakish goatee---I have one now, but it is neither rakish nor new, merely hiding sagging chin and wrinkles--and so, when once I was negotiating for some wonderful plates of costumes in a small and out-of-the-way bookstore in the east village, the woman I was dealing with stopped short, looked at me and let out a yell, screaming:
Herman, will you come here, right now. This guy looks just like Jesus Christ.
I got my plates.
And she got the thrill of seeing someone she thought looked like J.C.
A win win situation.

I normally feed the mutts around four in the afternoon...like a late lunch or an early dinner...and giving them time to digest their food before the all important nap through the night.
And I sort of got into the habit of pouring myself a glass of wine watching the mutts scuffle down their kibbles.
Now, due to the cold weather ( for us ) the mutts are demanding their dinner earlier and I have complied.
I have also poured myself the first glass of wine earlier, watching the mutts scuffle down their kibbles.
So I want everybody to know that this is a nice thing done by the mutts. A very nice thing indeed.
I don't feel guilty starting drinking this early because the mutts made me do it.
See ?

One of the bonuses of baking, aside form the fact that you get freshly baked whatever, is the smell.
Few things are as comforting as the delicious smells emanating from the oven when you are baking, unless of course you have rodents nesting in and below the stove.
I do.
So the other day when I was expecting sweet scented airs from my apple galette in the oven, I got the nasty smell of roasted rodent nests and rodent kaka, and I swore yet again that I would do something about the problem. Something. Soon.
It didn't, I am happy to report, interfere with the taste of the galette but it did deprive me of the joy of smelling baking apples in the oven.
This is war now.
No more rodents in the oven. Basta.

To A dead Chachalaca

The Chachalaca is a turkey looking bird who, when in company with other chachalacas will make the most goshawful racket, and many times I have been mildly annoyed at them for having a party in a tree close to the house.
Noisy buggers, they.
When checking on the car in the garage, I found a very dead and torn up chachalaca and I felt a bit of remorse for my bad thoughts.
Some nocturnal predator had caught this bird and done a messy job of getting to its vitals with feathers scattered far and wide. One sad and torn up bird which I threw into the jungle, feathers and all.
Next day all that was left was a few of the feathers.
Now I am listening for the chatter of the chachalacas, wanting to hear that they have not given up on me and my surrounding trees.
So far nothing.

They did it again.
I was gone for a while, getting a new supply of dog food and when I returned I found that one of the mutts had thrown up on my bed. Again.
Big deal, you might say. Clean it up and be done with this, you might day.
And that would be the case if it had not been sitting on my bed for hours, seeping through the cover to the blanket to the top sheet to the bottom sheet to the mattress cover and ultimately to the mattress.
A mess.
And so I hauled all the sheets and blanket and cover off the bed and out in the sun to dry, only I was not about to wrestle the mattress out, so it had to dry out all by itself, inside.
Why, I wonder, do the mutts do this to me?
I am fighting my way in hideous traffic to get to the store to buy them food, and the reward is this.
Some thanks.
I long for the days of the Schnauzers and my beloved Scottie.
They never did this.
Never.
They might have chewed up some books and such things, but they never threw up on my bed.
There. Breeding will tell.

As any parent or guardian of young souls, human or canine knows, silence may be the precursor for disaster, so when after a lengthy and annoying barking fit the mutts suddenly turned silent, my 'disaster antenna' went up and I went to check on the suddenly very quiet mutts.
They had cornered a possum and Priscilla had it by its neck and with absolute concentration and a will, was killing it.
And that was the eerie part of the spectacle...the silence. For once the mutts were quiet, even they who were not involved in the act. Just a lot of heavy breathing.
As possums go this was not a very big one, more like an over sized rat, but all the same it was a kill and my usually docile and friendly Priscilla had turned into a killer.
She wanted to parade the kill but that was just a step too far, so I swept it up on a dustpan and threw it out in the jungle.
The mutts have all forgotten about the possum kill, but I must admit that I, the big boss man, look at Priscilla in a slightly different way. The utter ruthlessness of the kill has made me ponder.......who next?

I was feeling despondent and restless, so I decided to check some old emails and found one from 2005 where I talk about the appearance of Priscilla and how she entered my life.
It was a long mail and sent to various people, many of whom are now gone.
And I wondered if it was read, if it gave these folks a few moments of --I don't know--joy, or just entertainment, something.
I have no replies to the mail so I have no idea what transpired.
I do know that I got something out of my system and what better way to do that but to share with others.
Like this.
And unlike emails, this is definitely a one way street, no replies required.
2005....wow, that is along time.

When it gets cold here in Vallarta..cold for me that is...I rummage through my closet to find my long sleeved shirts to wear over my ever present and much loved and much washed t-shirt.
The problem is that I have not replenished my shirt supply for a very long time, in fact not since I stopped going back to the US of A.
And that is a long time ago.
And I wonder
what will give out first
I.....or my dwindling supply of long sleeved shirts

Today I spent a goodly amount of time fixing one of the shirts, turning the collar ( I bet you did not know one could do that ) and fixing other problems, all the time thinking that by doing this I might just brace the race a bit.
Besides, being inherently cheap, it made me feel good saving money not buying a new shirt.
Happy New Year.

This morning the clock on the micro wave oven told me that there had been a black-out during the night and that I needed to reset it.
Nothing new in that. It happens all the time.
What was new was that I could not remember how to reset the clock.
I do it regularly and don't even think about the procedure anymore
till this morning where I stood in front of the oven staring at it
and nothing. Blank.
Eventually I got the clock reset but it was unsettling.
Is this what I have to look forward to ?
or was this caused by a miserable night and not yet functioning brain cells so early in the morning.
I hope that is the case.
The other option does not bear considering.