fecundity vs ferocity

I checked some plants I have growing in pots and I noticed that some insects had gotten to them and eaten part of their leaves.
Always they find the plants you treasure the most
and yet
it is rare that even bad leaf eating insect attacks will kill the plants. Mame them. yes. Disfigure them, yes. Kill them, not so much.
And that made me think that maybe Mother Nature has a plan that I have failed to see.
It made me wonder if there is some sort of master plan, that in climates like ours where things grow so easily, the fecundity ratio is balanced by the ferocity of the insects
A thought.
A silly thought perhaps, but still.

Anyway. My plants look like Cinderella before the ball.
Now I hope that after some time they will look like her at the ball all spiffy and lovely.

Six States of Drunkenness

On a site that I read frequently, devoted to the joy of words, I came across this little gem.
In includes two important things in my life.....the love of words and the occasional over-indulgence in spirits.

Six States of  Drunkenness

1.  Verbose

2.  Jocose

3.  Morose

4.  Lachrymose

5. Bellicose

6. Comatose

Pretty cool, No!

Once a year, if you live here in Mexico, you have to renew your visa, much like in the old days if you lived in the USA and you had a green card, you had to report your whereabouts once a year.

In the past the immigration service was a very personal thing here, a fiefdom ruled--when I became aware of it--by Alicia.  All the expats knew who Alicia was, and most of them feared her.
In those days she, as head of the immigration service, had unlimited power. If she liked you, you were fine. If not, you might find that your application for a visa had been inexplicably denied.
And then things changed.   Suddenly it was more transparent and Alicia, after heaven only knows how many years in the service, retired and like a retired Washington politician, she became a purveyor of visas to all the people who used to shiver at the mention of her name.

And so here we are, many years later and of a sudden the federal government decides to change the rules again. All for the better, we are told. To make things easier, we are told. To speed up the process, we are told.
HA.

I mistakenly thought that I could squeeze in on the old rules but missed by minutes, so I was sent home to apply again and present myself with the new application post haste.
Which I did.
And things were fine until I had to do the final steps and was informed that the forms needed for completing this procedure were not available. 

Please to check with the office.

 When I was told by email that the forms were ready I again appeared at the office only to be told  that--again--the forms were not available.   Please to check back in 2 weeks.

This simple and silly procedure which I have done for more years than I care to remember is now turning into a living nightmare. I have an upset stomach just writing about it.

That is not a way to live, particularly not for old geezers like me. We need gentle handling we do, we bruise so easily now, and the expiration date is closer and closer.

you see what I mean ?

We all have dates are that are important to us.
Of course we do.
First kiss !  First promise to love forever! Whatever.
Any number of firsts
any number of important dates.
My personal most important date is September 4th 1969
that was when I first met Chuck.
So now, more than forty-three years later what do I think ?
I think that I was one lucky son-of-a-gun to find someone like chuck and to share thirty three years of my life with him.
I miss him tremendously and......no..I do no think that there will ever be be anyone quite like him
certainly not for me
so I go on, honoring his memory and
as long as I can
I will celebrate the 4th of September.
Who else would ?

The end of many books

What could be more devastating for a lover of books than to find that termites had found their way into them and in some instances gutted them entirely.
What ?.
This is what I found to-day when by chance I decided to move a few books in my book case in the bed room.
And what a disaster.
Not only had the buggers gotten into my treasury of books, they had also found and destroyed files about the purchase and creation of the place I call home.
I hate those vile insects.
I hate them almost as much as I hate the ants that will find my few favorite plants and eat all their leafage leaving the poor plants to struggle to survive with a few spikes and very few leaves to give them sustenance.
I hate the stupidity of it, as I hate the stupidity of killing of rhinoceros for their horns and elephants for their tusks.
All just to enhance the lives of a few humans.
I am a good person.
I let the mice/rats cavort in my kitchen at night.
I let the toad/frog into the house in the morning when it decides tthat it must spend the day under my couch.
I am a good person.
So why do termites think that they can invade my territory and destroy my joys in life, my books. Why ?
A pox on all termites and their kin.
And a sad good-bye to some wonderful treasures that have kept me sane these many years I have lived alone in the house on the hill of Mismaloya.
R.I.P.

I did not make a cake for my birthday, in fact I did not even make a special dinner. Things did not work out as planned.
But then I got to thinking that there is no reason why I could not move the celebration to another day, a more convenient day.
People of import do it all the time, moving their birthday celebrations, so why not I ?
And then I started to look for a recipe for a cake. I had a vague recollection of a type using tortillas, a thing I found kind of appropriate for the place where I live.
But then I found a cake recipe calling for chocolate and red wine.
What could be better !
So this is what I will do. I will make  myself a chocolate/red wine cake. I will enjoy it and I will not feel guilty.
Life is to short and shorter when your next birthday is seventy.
Onward with the good stuff, chocolate and wine.

What's in a name

I heard some truck lumbering up my hill and checked--what else do I have to do ? --and LO
is was the gas truck and very much needed it was as I was down to low reading on my gas supply.

Jubilation all around. From me for not having to deal with the office calling to order gas, although they are very good, and i imagine from the truck guys for having a sale making the trucking up my treacherous hill worth it.

And so the little guy made out my bill when they had filled the requested amount.

It could not have been more incorrect, and I loved it.

Alan Madsen had turned into Alad Manset

Ava Gardner 562 turned into Abagarnet # 563

and Lomas del Pacifico was L.del Pasifico.

I think the little guy did well with all these strange names.  I would be lost trying to write many of the names they have here. 

Meet Barbra S. Bear

I realized that all the bears that i have been making--a total of thirteen--have been boy bears.
That seemed to me to be wrong so I created the first girl bear.

Here eyes are a little small
and slightly crossed
her nose is rather large
and she likes her schmattas and bows

I will call her Barbra

Barbra S. Bear

here she is for your enjoyment.

The price of water

I could hear the asthmatic water truck make its way up the hill and what a stroke of luck that was. I was down to the last few liters of bottled water in the big blue 18 liter water bottles I keep for drinking.
I asked the guy for three and feeling grateful and generous and happy not to have to haul water bottles up the hill, I gave the guy a 200 peso bill and said
" just give me change for ninety"
he grinned at me and said   "ninety ? " 
I agreed and he handed me a wad of bills which I stuck in my pocket and with a big face cracking smile he  got the truck started and took off as I struggled the bottles into the house.
The bottles taken care of I put the money back in my wallet and realized why he had the big grin on his face.
He had--maybe deliberately ?-- misunderstood and just given me ninety pesos in change.
Some expensive bottles of water.
Next time I will count the change before he leaves.
--

my best friend

With all the outages as of late, my fridge is full of things of questionable food value, one of the many being a cucumber, another a green chili, bot teetering on the edge of  their expiration date. Well, never one to throw food out if at all salvageable, I decided to make a cucumber/chile pickle.   And so I diced and sliced and chopped and mixed and jumped a bit because I really, really had to go pee-pee. But i got it all together and I streaked out on the terrace to relieve myself over the railing. As a good boy I shook vigorously when finished trying to make sure all was dry when of a sudden i got a slight pain in my wee-wee, a burning sensation.   OY, I said to myself. Cancer, I said. Cancer of the urethra. All is going to rot and fall off, I said to myself. But...I said...why so sudden ? Why now ?

And then a million little yellow flags went off.
Chiles.
I had been cutting chiles and I must have had stuff on my hands when I so lovingly and gently held my best friend so we could take a pee.   And sure enough. After a short while the burning sensation went away and we are back being best friends again without any pain involved.
--

The color of bathrooms

Angela came to my house to talk business.
After that we chatted and I pointed to my newly painted wall and said
"Look, I finally did it. I painted the wall "
She looked at it and smiled and said
"Oh, that is very nice. It is a very nice color. I think I would like to paint my bathroom that color "
This was not exactly the compliment I was looking for.

The pesky apostrophe

AH, the pesky apostrophe.
When I wrote the post about Manny's offer of coffee, I suddenly had  doubts about the name of the coffee;
would it be "Tasters Choice", as-- many tasters choose this-- or, as turned out to be the right one "Taster's Choice" --the choice of one taster.
This came after I had espied a card on the street waiting for my bus at the bottom of the hill.
The card read :

GAY'S MEN'S ONLY
OPEN MODEL

I don't really know what the card refers to but a name of a hotel appears and a bunch of telephone numbers,.
What I do know is that whoever had the card printed had some funny ideas about apostrophes and that it made me do some checking so that I would not be caught misusing this pesky little comma looking thing.

Coffee with Manny

I stopped to see Manny after a trip to town.
Manny has had some problems with his landlord and will now move in to the little one door, no windows shack behind the cement slab that is his work area.
Now we will be real neighbors.
His helper/cousin/nephew is moving back to Ciudad Juarez so Manny will be on his own.
Hey Man, he said. Since we now are neighbors and I will be here all the time, stop by one morning for some coffee.
You do drink coffee ?
I said I did.
Good, he smiled, took a deep breath and said with great pride
I have Taster's Choice.
How could I not accept such as offer.

A matter of national pride

Wimbledon today saw a Brit and a Dane win the men's double.
All were jubilant.
The British press hailed the victory as well deserved for the Brit and the er, ahem, Dane who shared the game.
The Danish press called it a miracle that the Dane--the first ever--won the Wimbledon and..sure, he had a partner, the Brit.
And both parties are right of course. It just would have been so much easier on national pride if both players were from the same country.
As it is this was a great victory for Britain
As it is this was a great victory for Denmark
you sort it out.

ink.

I was trying to print something the other day when my machine just processed the paper and sent it out as blank as when I put it in.  Yo, I thought, we have a problema here. No inko.
So I grabbed the spare cartridge that Miss Alice so thoughtfully had provided and after a few mishaps, got it into place.
Hurraaaah, I thought. And on we go. Ta DAhhhh.
Not so fast.....the little screen on the machine lit up with a maliciuous gleam and said....cartridge incompatible !
Say What, I moaned. INCOMPATIBLE ? How ? They assured Miss Alice that this was the right one. They did. She told me herself. She did . They did.
and so I changed the F...ing cartridge back and forth until i finally admitted defeat. I had to get a new one.
Which was another item on my list of things to get and LO.....at WalMart they had a sale on the particular cartridge that I needed for my particular printer---why they don't have one size fits all is beyond me ---and I got it and I replaced the old one and eventually got the thing to work.
Am I clever or what ?  And all that was for a receipt for an absentee owner here in Lomas Del Pacifico who had problems with the IRS and needed proof of a payment of one thousand pesos ( less, much less than a hundred dollars these days ) to the fledgling  HOA where I am the treasurer by default. It makes you wonder what the IRS is doing to the big fish if they spend so much time on items less than a hundred bucks.

potted plants

My neighborhood is expanding.
At the bottom of the hill small and ramshackle houses are appearing, made from stripped palm fronds and secured with colorful election posters. And chuck full of kids and animals and pregnant females.
At the moment there is no running water or sewer service so on hot days it is rather pungent around there.
The latest addition that up to recently was but a slab of concrete and a few corner pieces of wood, is now another marvel.
When I took the short-cut the other morning on my trip to the local tienda for some eggs for breakfast, I met the new inhabitant, a gent with a ponytail and a smattering of English. Manny had told me that he was "artistic" and I believe Manny now, for when I passed his shack he was busy watering an endless array of cans and pots with wonderful plants and flowers.
There is something so impressive about people who will think it important to have plants around them even living in shacks with no easy access to water. Bravo to them.

The snake

  I woke up early this morning and putzing while I waited for the coffee to brew, I noticed the resident frog jump across the room and the all to well known zig-zag movement of a snake.
A snake !
This is the time and i had been expecting something .
It slithered under a couch and I knew that I would never be able to relax as long as I knew there was a snake in the house, however well hidden.
I hate them,
As far as I am concerned there are only bad snakes , snakes who spend their miserable lives scaring good people like me.
So there it was and there I was.  Stalemate.
But then I rushed into action and armed with my trusty snake-killing meat cleaver I started to frantically move the furniture until I had the snake cornered, but this wily critter managed to slither rapidly across the room and hide under another piece of furniture and from that to the final one, a big wooden case with very little space underneath. And heavy
I pushed and shoved and lifted and shored this piece of furniture up so I could prod under it with a long handled broom--a very long handled broom--and finally after what seemed like hours but was in fact no more than 45 minutes, the snake, all five feet of it made its way out of the door I had conveniently left open, wide open, for that same purpose. And I saw it zig and zag its way over the bricks on my terrace and disappear into the jungle where it, I am sure, is searching for a mate to share its miserable life and make many more snakes to come and pursue me. I do not like snakes.
And during this whole ordeal the mutts were absent. Something made them stay way the heck away from this mad chase of a snake in the house.
Now they are back to form, barking and being their usual disagreeable selves.
But we got rid of the snake. Good riddance.
The upside--if there is an upside--is that i got to clean behind furniture that I don't move about all that often, in fact never. Sweep and mop so now I can feel really righteous for  One, not having killed the hideous, slithering and disgusting critter and Two, for cleaning behind the furniture.
Cleanliness is next to holiness.

A mystery

HARK ! I said in my dream---a cell phone ringing !
but, but, I said---I do not have a cell phone, which then could mean only one thing
my telephone was ringing
and I clawed my way to consciousness and stumbled out in the hall to answer the phone.
A call at what turned out to be 4:20 in the morning can only be either wrong number or really bad news from another time zone. By the time I got to the phone it stopped.
I went back to bed and was almost asleep when the phone rang. And again I did not make it before it stopped ringing.
Four times it rang and I never made it in time. The more I rushed the fewer the rings.
Four times we had this dance of ring and stumble and never once did I get to the phone in time to squawk a "hellooo" before it ceased ringing.
Maybe--I thought--maybe the person will realize the errors of his/her way and mail me an email.
So far I have encountered none.
And I wonder and wonder whatever it might have been, whatever disasters  might have happened to someone I know or that--hopefully--it was a really bad idea in a drunken stupor by someone who could not dial straight and got my number all the time by mistake, 
I hope.

decidedly not fair

First I waited years for the tree to mature, to grow big enough to produce flowers.
You see, Chuck and I grew it from seeds we gathered from a tree now long since gone.
But our tree is still growing and strong and tall and now, mature enough for flowers and it regales me once a year with a fantastic display of yellow flowers; the tree is rightly known as Golden Shower Tree.
But the last couple of years the timing has been a bit off. My tree will explode with flowers and just then, sure as manure, there will be a nasty and heavy rainstorm and all the flowers will end up on the ground. Millions and millions of them.
Is it too much to ask for a respite for a few days for me to enjoy the flowers before the destructive rains ?
I am nost asking much, just a couple of days. I do so love that tree.
Ah well. Maybe next year.

Instructional videos

I have been curious about soy protein for a while so I went on a search to find out more.
Now I know it is called TVP ( Textured Vegetable Protein ) and now I know that many people like to make videos and display them on Youtube.
I sat through three excrutiating videos, short in time but oh so long in endurance.
The first was a Vegan showing how to hydrate the TVP. This she did in a not too clean pot and was fumbling about all the time explaining in a monotone voice what she was doing. And I wanted to scream.
Second try was another vegan lady, this one chirpy and smiley and not about to adhere to things like measures. HUH ? Chirpy or not, she got the ax. She also was too fond of saying " good to go " which she must have used four times in a very, very short time. I loathe that expression.
Third try looked like she had been an extra in a cheap vampire movie with stringy hair and lots and lots of eye make-up. Lots. Her method added nothing to my knowledge of how to make TVP, so she went the way of all vampire cooking shows. Gone.
But this all made me wonder. What makes people want to make these videos and display them. What ?
Earnestly feeling that they have something worth sharing ?  And maybe they do. It just is that the presentation, earnest if you will, leaves a lot to be desired.
And don't get me started on the video of the lady showing how to make rag rugs. That was a trip.
Bless them, though, for doing it. It is so easy to make fun, but a lot harder to make a video, so here is to all the unsung heroes of homemade instructional videos. May they continue to make them and brighten my lonely days.

Leaks

I have learned that when peeing over the railing as I do to save water, I have to shake rather more vigorously that I used to, or I will end up with the tell-tale leaky spot in front of my shorts.

  So it is not such a wonder that my car has developed a leak; we are both getting old. Now I don't know if cars age at the ratio of say dogs, seven doggie years to one human year but they surely age faster than do we mere humans.
So my car had a leak and I was worried.
Enter the Mannies, Manny Sr. and Manny Jr.  They have opened a car repair at the bottom of my hill. It is not much of a place, a wooden shack with one door and no windows and a slab of concrete and all the odors of the neighbor shacks which are not hooked up to any sewer or running water. Rather ripe.

Manny Jr.is deported from Chicago where he lived for 31 years and Manny Sr. is from Ciudad Juarez and dyes his hair a most unusual color of reddish brown.
He claimed that he could fix what was ailing the car and started to dismantle it with great vigor. I left.
And the following day it was all ready for me..sans leaks.  I took it to the market keeping a woried eye on the signals on the dashboard but all seemed OK. I came back and unloaded and parked the car and checked and...

I HAVE ANOTHER LEAK....

Not the same to be sure, but a leak. And now I have to make up my mind as to whether to go Manny Sr. again or bite the bullet and try to coax the car to my normal and known mechanic who is located way the heck and gone on the other side of town.
OY such decisions.

Of Gods and Goddesses

I had mentioned to a friend in a mail that I thought Mrs Thor was looking after me since for sure Thor, the embodiment of all things macho would not be bothered by a person such as I, looking all over town for and finding and loosing and finding again a light bulb to sewing machine.

but Mrs Thor ( Sif ) might be better disposed I thought

and that got me to thinking about what they might have looked like.
This is my version of Mrs Thor and her husband.

The hill

An so I finally got my manure together, I looked the devil in the eye, I grabbed the bull by the horn and  a few more hackneyed expressions...in short..I went to town. I got the mutts safely ensconced inside the house and I merrily skedaddled down the road when suddenly i had to stop. My legs were not doing what they were supposed to do. I stood there, in the middle of my badly paved road, all by myself and took stock of the situation. The situation being that I had pain in my legs and felt that I did not really control them.
Now i have done this trip many times. It is easy when you go down the hill---normally.   So why was I having these problems ?    Old Age.  Plain and simple. I am getting old....correction..I AM OLD...I will be 69 this August...or maybe even 70..I am not too sure. What I am sure about is that I cannot do what I used to do without even thinking.
Anyway. I took a couple of deep breaths, counted to some silly number and proceeded to the bus stop and on to town, where I did all the things i had decided to do, shopping et al.
And got my weary self on buses going back to Mismaloya where I was confronted with the daunting task of climbing the hill to get to my house. I did climb the fricking hill and I did huff and puff and I did take a lot of breaks to catch my breath, but I did do it, dragging my groceries in two big shopping bags.
I idly wondered why I was having such a bad time schlepping back up the hill. I had been particularly careful in my choices of comestibles, to wit, rather than buying four cartons of cheap red wine I limited myself to ONE.  One silly carton of wine. Surely that could not be the problem. Then I had the bright idea, after I had unpacked my groceries and taken the dogs for their midday walk, to check the receipt and see whatever cargo I had been hauling up the hill.
About 15 kilos worth of stuff.
No wonder I felt a bit put upon. And I had been so careful, I thought. So certain to pare down my purchases to bare essentials. 15 kilos worth of bare essentials. However, hauling 15 kilos ( 33 pounds ) up the hill in two bags is hard work even for a young and fit person and I am neither young nor fit.
So I suffered.
And I realized with excruciating pain that I am now OLD.
I am old and I hurt when I do things that i used to be able to do without even thinking, like going up and down my hill. Yikes, but how I hate this.
I have decided i deserve to empty my one carton of cheap wine..and I will.
Tomorrow is another day and I may think of something else to bitch about

A fancy word

I am a procrastinator, a delayer and I know it.  I can delay things so long that I forgot what I meant to do in the first place.
I am not necessarily proud of it, it is who I am, so I was elated when i learned that there is a fancy sounding word for this condition

cunctator

PRONUNCIATION:

(kungk-TAY-tuhr)

MEANING:

noun: One who hesitates; a procrastinator or delayer. 

Now I don't feel so bad about it. I will shrug my shoulders and say

Sorry folks.  I am but a poor cunctator. 

See?

too many mistakes

I should know better....I do know better but somehow I forgot.
There I was at the supermarket which was remarkably empty, when at the vegetable department a loud, female voice burst into my consciousness....
Saa skal vi osse ha kartofler.....said the voice. In Danish...It translates to something like...then we also need potatoes....
I should have grabbed my cart and walked the other way. I did not. Mistake number one.
I got my stuff and was about to leave when the Loud Lady accidentally bumped into me.
I should have mumbled something in English and fled but, mistake number two, I answered her apology in Danish.
Little Christmas lights of joy appeared in her eyes and she immediately started to converse in the Mother tongue.
I should have pretended that I was deaf or simple minded or only knew a few phrases of Danish but I answered her back. In Danish. Mistake number three.
After a painful and too, too long conversation with her and her hubby she delivered the final insult to my dignity. I had told them that I lived in Mismaloya, in a house, in the woods and with a bunch of dogs.
OH !  said the Loud Lady and leaned close to me with a smirk and said....And I bet you have a little Mexican wife...
I should have walked away when I first heard the voice ask for potatoes.  Now I did. Politely.
I got my cart going and rushed to the check-out casting glances over my shoulder to be sure that I was not followed by the Loud Lady and her husband.
I do know that one never speaks to anybody at the supermarket. I do know that. I forgot and I paid the price.

Eggs

Now ! I thought.  Now is the  time to run down the hill to the local tienda for some eggs.
The mutts, miraculously were all inside the house, resting, so I did not have to do my song-and-dance number to collect them from their street hideouts.
And off I went, down the hill and to the short-cut that now has a been closed with several strands of barbed wire. Whether this is to hold we who live up on the hill inside, or they who live in the shanty outside I am not too sure about, but there it is. Three strands of vicious looking barbed wire that by now has been bent to accommodate easy trespass, well, maybe not so easy, for when I made my way through the opening I heard a distinct....rrrrrip.
Oh shit, I thought. Here goes the shorts and I haven't even been to the store yet.
I checked as best I could and found no visible damage.
I heard the rip; I know I heard the rip. It was loud and it was real, but what if not my shorts ?
My undies.
I had torn my undies.
Nobody would know but it was kind of unsettling to have my boxers split. I blame it--if there is  blame to apportion--on all my vigorous hand washing of my undies. Ah well. One down and a few more to go.
Maybe it is time to start to look for fabric for some new ones. Never a dull moment.

A brilliant thought

On my way to place some still damp undies on the table outside my bedroom to dry, I had a brilliant thought.
Somewhere on the way back from that task, I couldn't remember what the thought was.
All my contortions trying to remember were in vain;
all I remember was that I had a brilliant thought.....
or maybe not.

Now what?

I had this urge to make stuffed bears. Maybe some deep desire for a substitute for the bear that my mother made for me when I was but a wee child, a bear that  she made from leftover brown velveteen and from a pattern provided by some weekly magazine. The best bear in the whole world, shabby and misshapen over the years and button eyes missing and replaced but my bear.
And so I tried to recapture this childhood marvel and finally, eight tries later and six survivors, I said....
stop.
No more bears.
Whatever am I going to do with these critters ? I am not that fond of them, and most particularly not that many of them.
What to do ?
Something will happen; I will have some brilliant idea, but till then, I have six stuffed bears standing on my dining table.
How crazy is that ?

of yellow pads

OK, I thought
enough of this shilly-shally
get with it
and so I picked up my ( last ) yellow pad and sat down at the table and wrote in big, bold letters on top of a new page
TO DO
and sat and looked at it for a while.
Somehow getting to this point seemed such an accomplishment
and exhausting too
so I put the pad away and told myself that I would start the list tomorrow
for sure certain
tomorrow

Doing Dishes

In a mail from a friend he said :

Three things I hate, wash dishes, iron, and fold sheets. When Chauffer gets here, I hope she doesn't see the weeks worth of dirty dishes. I want to say the dw doesn't work and new one is in the middle of the floor, after two trips from GE.
Harold  plumber and Lilia housekeeper and Carlos pool boy is coming Monday

.And I got my dander up. It is so male--I have known very few females friends who have openly admitted to hating doing dishes--and I find it totally unacceptable.

I live in a country where it is celebrated to be male, where mothers form their male off springs to be just like their fathers, which in many cases is a big, bad mistake.
Jeff, the writer of the email, is not Mexican.  What he and I have in common is that we both have lost partners. He is recently widowed from Sally, his wife of many, many years and mother to his two daughters.
When they lived in a condo where there was regular maid service, they decided they wanted  their very own, daily maid. And she is still working for Jeff, and she is doing what females in Mexico do, making life of the male easy.

I don't think I envy him the maid--I would hate to have somebody invade my territory--but what I envy, if anything, is the money to pay for  "Harold The Plumber " and "Lilia The Housekeeper" and " Carlos The Pool Boy"  and the ubiquitous "Chauffer"????  who is coming to visit one imagines.

Folding sheets and ironing are not tasks that I enjoy either, and few people are aware of what lurks in the depths of my linen closet.....but dishes ? Undone dishes ?
The kitchen is open to all and sundry.
 Not doing the dishes is slobbery and slothfulness is what that is. But having a lot of money to pay somebody else to do it changes all that, and one can make a coy remark in a mail about how one hates to do dishes.

And I get to write a post about it.

NÅ

When I wrote to Agnete, my friend of so many years, that I had been exposed to Danish and that I had discovered that there are two words that are used incessantly in my mothertongue..NEJ and NÅ...she informed me that there is a song in Danish, a cabaret song if you will, using the latter word in all its multiple meanings and thanks to modern technology, I found it on Youtube and listened to it and loved all over again.
The artist, a Miss Liva Weel, born in 1897 and making her debut at 18, is a treasure. By the time she hit fame but not necessarily fortune, she was a stout woman with a wonderful sensibility and unlimited capacity for making a song a special event. She died a pauper in a hospital and reading that I could not help but think of singers of today. Few have the talent she had but many, too many, have endless millions and will surely never be left to die in a public hospital.....talent lacking females like Britney Spears come to mind..but then it isn't the thing to make a song mean something anymore.
Oh gosh     I am such a dinosaur...

pizza

I am not sure what made me think of pizza.  Pizza is not a food I spend a lot of time thinking about, in fact, I think I have had pizza about five times in my life. As far as I am concerned eating pizza, like washing the car, is something other people do. Not I.
And yet...in Seattle, in my little house in Seattle, I decided to paint the floor of the kitchen.using a  special paint, a tough and slow drying paint.
And so Chuck and I painted away and when the floor was finished and the kitchen out of bounds with the paint drying, and feeling a bit peckish, pizza was the solution .
I had noticed a pizza sign in the neighborhood and went there for the reward of many hours of painting and stooping. I ordered the thing, I waited, I got the box and I went home only to find out that the shop I had been to was one where they sold pizzas for you to bake at your convenience. In your very own oven. Only my oven was in the kitchen with the wet and newly painted floor. No entry. Total disaster. By making use of a window and kitchen counter I managed to get the thing in the microwave oven and baked. Sort of. And all the time I kept thinking that regular folks, folks who eat pizza all the time, would never have made that stupid mistake buying a raw pizza.
Would I change from being me and knowing nothing about this food to a connoisseur of pizzas ?
in a word.....NO.  I am perfectly fine not knowing much about pizza. I have enough useless information in my head; more I don't need. Leave pizza to the pizza lovers.

How to explain this ?
The neighbor thought he was doing me a favor when he brought his handyman to meet me and talk about a job I needed done.
A small job, but important to me.
We agreed for the handyman to come the following Saturday.   He never came.
Yesterday when I saw my neighbor again he asked about the job and was confused when I told him the handyman never came.
I have lived here for many years and I see things a bit differently than my neighbor from the other side of the river, the rich side, who comes here for only months.
It is quite simple.
The handyman owes my neighbor and paid back by going with him to see me. He then claimed to have tried to contact me with no success and so, obligations fulfilled the handyman can now relax and worry about better and bigger jobs.
I see this clearly but how to explain it to the friendly neighbor ?   Not easy.
And it still leaves me trying to find a person to do the job.
Ah well....the leak is not going anywhere.

Blues ?

Well, that did not work.
I had been feeling a bit blue, so I thought, since I had bused it to town and schlepped a supply of cheap wine up the hill to my abode, that I might as well enjoy a few glasses of wine.
I did.
In fact I enjoyed a whole carton and fell asleep on the couch and tried to watch some telly after I woke up. Gave up and went to bed.
And had a miserable night.
Today I feel worse than yesterday but I have decided not to repeat the wine disaster.
I am not sure what is worse--feeling blue or having a headache from too much wine.
Neither is good but......oh heck..tomorrow is another day and I am sure it will be a much better one.
So good that I will celebrate with a few glasses of cheap wine........get the drift ?

My best friend

So there I was.
My best friend in my hand, peeing out in the jungle and thinking
what a lucky fellow I am
Not many guys can walk out on their terrace and pee, whenever the need arises.
I can.
I have so few neighbors and the few that I have are so far away that I have absolute privacy.
I could even drop my pants ( I don't ) and nobody would know
what a lucky fellow I am.
And what a great way to save water.

Of children and eating

I now know a bit more about children and their eating habits after a visit by my niece and her brood.
I have learned that one should not really ask children what they want to eat, and if one does, not to follow too closely or there could be weeks of macaroni and cheese or something equally inedible.
I have learned that children rarely die from missing a meal. It is disheartening to see them pick at what you thought was a delightful dinner, but they will survive or the whole human race would have vanished a long time ago.
I have learned that given a choice between a well thought out dinner with lots of veggies and a burger, the burger will always win out.
And there are very few thanks from children.
You've gotta love the buggers to put up with this shit.
And we do.
Mostly.

La Migra

I finally understood what he was yelling at me. He was upset, this Mexican dude in his big, black, macho truck with all his buddies, all of them sweaty and red-eyed and overweight and drunk.
I had committed the unpardonable sin of honking at him when he tried to bully his way into my lane in a narrow street in Vallarta.
He was idling next to me at a stop and yelling again
and this time I got it
U Wan Me To Call Immigration  HUH ?  U Wan Me To Call ?
And I realized that this sweaty faced and inebriated young Mexican most likely was one of the many millions of undocumented aliens in the USA for whom the greatest fear would be to be reported to immigration--La Migra--and who now suddenly had a chance to reciprocate ( I have California license plates ) , and he was not missing that chance. He was going to show this uppity Gringo that this was Mexico and he was Mexican and return the greatest fear....the immigration
The difference is that I am perfectly legal here. I spend a lot of time and a lot of money getting my visa once a year, so this was not a threat to me.
I did not laugh at him outright, that would have been a bad mistake I fear. I let him feel he had won the battle and go home and tell all his overweight and drunk buddies how he really, really told an old Gringo fart off.
I get to write a blog about it so it really ends up being a win-win situation.
Except that he really was a pig trying to force his way into my lane...

I'm back

And so Carlyn mailed me a note asking me if I had stopped blogging. I had. I have. At least for a while. Now my fingers are getting the itch again, so maybe I will take it up for yet another round. I kind of missed it, dissing all and sundry and making a fool of myself...well maybe I did not miss making a fool of myself, I do that too easily and too frequently, but all the same. I missed not sharing my thoughts.
In the meanwhile the site has changed and I am trying to find my way....schucks...I am a big boy, I can learn a few new tricks, just watch and see.
I am still waiting for the day when one can just talk to the computer. Wow, what a relief that would be to me. My thoughts, slow and cumbersome as they may be, are still light years faster than my poor uneducated fingers trying to type. One day....one day I shall be able to really, really blog what I think. Y'all just wait.