Driving

I never experienced my mother driving; she got her license years after I had left the old country.
She flunked three times and I don't think she was a good driver.
I am reminded of her when I drive to town these days. Now we have an explosion of vehicles and a disproportionate amount of female drivers.
Drivers like my mother.
I truly believe that women multitask better than men, but put them in a car and they regress.
In a car they focus all their attention on screaming at their rowdy kids, or commiserating with their best girl friend in the passenger seat or, worst of all, long and involved conversations on the cell phone.
And driving and other drivers be damned.
I shutter to think what my mother would have been like driving if she had lived to see the cell phone revolution.

My Secret Square

Erik mailed me a link to a site showing pictures of the disastrous winter of flooding and snow that happened to Mallorca, his chosen island.
One of the pictures was this, and I thought:
I love this. This is my secret little square. This is what I want to see one early morning in summer when they get ready for breakfast,
and at night, with the trees verdant and the little shop open for late night purchases.
This is my plazita.
I don't really know where on Mallorca this is, and I may never find out, but to look at the picture and to dream
that makes it just as real to me.

It was a simple task, really.
I had a check and I wanted to open an account in a Mexican bank with this check.
I know the Mexicans love of paper works, so I brought my passport, my visa and a household bill.
What I did not bring was a list of "contacts " so I had to go home and get that.
My second visit to the bank I had all I needed and sat through the excruciatingly slow and tedious process of having the clerk fill in the required information on the computer and then, finally getting a bunch of papers to sign.
And I signed the first paper and the clerk looked at my signature, grabbed my passport and looked at it and then studied my visa and finally said
They are not the same.
I know, I said. Every time they are a little different. I am not a robot.
But, I said, since you saw me sign, why don't you countersign?
My suggestion was ignored and the clerk handed me another stack of papers and said
sign here and here and here and here....
After the second new signature the clerk said to stop, handed me my check and started to tear up the paper work because the signatures did not match absolutely exactly.
I cashed my check-and no problem with my signature- and went to another bank where I opened a new account with cash and my now shaky and wildly different signatures.

The End Of An Era

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

Rapaciuos Rodents

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

The 24th

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