En tramite

Domingo 07 - Sábado 13 Julio )  To start off the week, Ania and Frank were here for a few hours sunday for an early evening meal and a round of RummiKub. Ania brought a bouquet of ginger flowers from home. What a fragrance! Much like gardenia, or perhaps jasmine.

Despite Carmen's earlier thoughts about not having any houseplants inside, we broke down and bought two large decorative feature plants for the corners of the dining room. A large Dracaena reflexa and a multi-stemmed Schefflera arboricola (aka “Dwarf Umbrella Tree”) – both need little care and presumably will cope with the indirect illumination from the skylight above. Each cost about US$12 and so of course we needed two more large pots from the ceramic store. With the pots, under which we put casters so they can be easily moved (as they are very heavy), they stand six feet tall and spread four feet wide. It's nice to have some greenery inside.

We seem to not be getting our electric bill inserted into our street-side buzon (mailbox) with any reliability, since it should have been read the last week of June and no notice had yet arrived. Dan went online to the CFE site and found we could print out our bill there. On the way back from a shopping trip into Córdoba, we stopped by and paid our two month bill of 250 pesos, or about US$20. Seems that there was a rebaja (reduction) for about 800 pesos of our bill because we are in the low usage bracket!

Dan was finishing up constructing the new storage area in the master bedroom and Carmen finished painting the window and door lintels dark brown. We also cut more bamboo from Frank and Ania's property, plus pulled up some snake plant and wandering jew ground cover. They were gone that day to Oaxaca city. Planted those along with much dwarf mondo grass, in our back two planting areas. The bamboo is for trellising the passion fruit vine on the upper patio.

We had no problem with mosquitoes 'til a week or so ago. Finally discovered that one can not keep trays under outdoors potted plants here since it rains nearly every evening. The rain keeps the trays filled with water to make perfect mosquito breeding areas. Also our close neighbor's roof was not draining and therefore it was another breeding area just level with our second story patio (his home is all on the ground floor). We told him about this problem and he did climb to his rooftop and unclog his roof drains. His roof dips a little in the center so there is still an ongoing problem there until dryer weather prevails. We bought some liquid insect killer and can now spray his roof de vez en cuando. We are tired of fighting mosquitoes and the itches from bites!  It all should end once the early summer rains are past.

One evening we were looking out the kitchen window when it started pouring rain, and there was Colyn stuck in rain standing under our portico in front of the house. We invited her in and she chatted with us until the rain let up. She then continued to the store for something for supper. We offered to give her whatever she needed, but it seemed that she really wanted the walk.

Monday, tuesday and wednesday went by with no one appearing from the water/sewer commission showing up to put in the new drain line they had scoped out late last week. So, thursday, Dan decided we needed to make another trip to the office to push things along. The architect was at his desk and there sitting on top, was our sewer line work order. He calculated the costs and said we could pay it in plazos (payments), but we chose to pay it in full, about US$250. Now there should be nothing left but for them to send out a crew. Wonder when we will see them?  (Here's a view to the north, from our rooftop mirador.)

We have heard nothing by phone or email from the immigration office, and the website where we can check things consistently can't find our paperwork which is supposedly en tramite (in the works). Our current permiso expires on thursday, so on wednesday we decided to visit the office in person to see what was up – maybe our cards were waiting for us! Turns out they were just holding everything, pending some additional information (which we had already provided the year before) before working on our papers. Can't say why they didn't ask those questions when we were in last time, or communicate with us in some way before this, as we could have come in at any time to move things along without delay. This time the documents were finished up, we signed on the dotted lines, and full sets of finger prints were obtained (again, they already had them on file from last year, so why was the new set needed?). All this could have taken place three weeks ago – now we will have to wait up to another month for our permit cards to be ready. This wait could make us late in renewing the car documents with the aduana (customs) office, which might prevent us from being eventually reimbursed the US$400 we paid for the car entry when we arrived here in September, since it is attached to our visa period. Plus, will we need to have those cards in hand when we go to pay up for another year of IMSS medical coverage, which we must do this month?

So, it's now a bit over a year that we have been Residentes Temporales here in México. All in all, it seems like it's been a very good thing for us. We're eating better, get more exercise and have no complaints about the health-care choices here. The climate at this elevation enables us to be outside in short-sleeves practically every day, and sleep comfortably every night. Windows are open most of the time, letting in the birdsong and the sounds of friendly community life around us. Flowers bloom year-round.  It's costing so much less money than it did in the US, for the same quality of life or better. Now if it only were easier for our relatives and NoB friends to drop by for visits, things would be excelente (copacetic).  Y'all come down!

When we arrived here last year, we learned that Fortín, as a community, had been celebrating Earth Day, for years, with a community-wide interpretive walk along the old railroad grade down and across the Metlac river canyon west of town. We learned that the “Melacton” this year wouldn't be on Earth Day, but instead would be celebrated on Arbor Day, so we wrote it on our calendar to be sure we would take part in it this year, joining the 1000+ neighbors who would make the walk in 2013. As it were, the day after Arbor Day, we remembered to look at our calender. We can hope we do better next year, as this is something we really look forward to doing.

Neither our welder nor our carpenter were here this week, although both said they would show up for some little projects that need finishing up. Bummer. Otherwise, life is oh so good. Well, Dan is concerned that Carmen is making little progress in learning spanish – so he will try to move forward on that a bit a little bit more each day, making it as painless as possible.