Trueno y relampago

Domingo 22 - Sábado 28 Septiembre

A slow week of happenings. The big thing was the cutting down of the banana trees to our east. They have not all been cut down, but the ones directly across the street from our house are now gone, the depth of a lot. All the basal stalks were carted away to be planted in another field. It is sad to see the vegetation cut down, but we knew there were lots platted there when we bought here. We do enjoy watching as a house grows up from the ground, and we have always wandered thru buildings under construction whenever we've had the opportunity. Wonder what will be built there? Hopefully a magnificent one story house, for nice new neighbors.

Our two kitties, ages 9 and 11, visited their new vet for the first time. Dr. Vargas' clinic is only five blocks from here. He speaks some english, good since probably the kitties have not learned spanish yet. However, Smij seems to know some, so we think her first owners could have been spanish speakers. Turns out that the vaccines here cost about the same as in the US. However, here the vet did not charge an office or physical exam fee. Gardi has to go back, since the vet had only one vaccine for feline leukemia in his fridge. The doctor said that over 95% of his business is dogs. He works long hours, and is out nearly all day making house calls! The office aide opens up at 7am and there is someone there til 9pm. The doctor was there at 7pm with patients when we walked over with the fecal samples for cats the next day. We were very pleased with him.

Not so much rain there his week, but the country is still reeling from the tormentas that hit both coasts. The governor of the state of Guerrero reported on one of the newscasts we watched that 50 highways were badly damaged, 500 communities still not accessible, and 5,000 homes were lost. And that is in only one of the 26 states with substantial storm damage, and now over 100 deaths have been verified. Some coastal rivers in Veracruz are still over their banks.  The "back road" from Fortín into Orizaba is partially blocked with earth deslaves (slides)..

We had started the week with a Sunday afternoon visit from our friends Ania and Frank. A nice meal together followed by some table-game play is always a good time. During the meal Ania surprised us with some remarkably good almost-operatic song. As it was later in the day, we did not have this meal from our rooftop deck, but we have been spending more time up there on the mirador. We have joked in the past about being able to string a zipline between our two houses (over the Tec de Monterrey university grounds), and this week during one of our times up on the mirador we had along our binoculars for bird-watching. Turns out we CAN see just their house roof, and should they stand up on the bungalow's flat roof, we could signal (using a bright flag) back and forth easily.

We often do spanish flashcard practice up there, and one day we had a couple of the yellow-breasted chat flying about and chattering during the study session. One just can not call the sound they make a birdsong; perhaps that's why they're called “chats?” One morning we were lucky to see a huge Blue Morpho butterfly fluttering down the calle around the corner of the house and down the avenida a ways. What a sight this was—it almost matched the color of the house! Never thought we would live in an area where we would be seeing dozens of butterflies a day – and so many different ones. Later in the week we saw the Waiter Daggerwing over by the vet's office. A most unusual large butterfly with solid white near the body and solid brown-black for the outer half of wing.

We had some homemade chile rellenos for the first time, mode with some fresh poblano peppers . These must be in season now since there were huge bins of these very dark green long peppers in the supermarkets. Carmen stuffed them with manchego cheese and bits of pork—que sabroso!. We also bought some yellow pear-shaped guayabas (guavas) to try. Very delicate flavor in the front of the mouth, and a developing stronger flavor when it got to the back of the mouth. 100% edible, but we chose to not eat the seeds since they were a bit hard to chew. The fleshy center, inside the ring of seeds, where an apple core would be, was very soft and ultra-sweet. Yes, the white flesh tasted like guava juice pressed from the commercial pink guavas you may be used to.

Our trip into the city enabled Dan to get to a plumbing supply store. His earlier replacements of the faucet washers for the upstairs sink and shower did not work out. This was evidenced by NO water flowing from the hot side of the sink When he pulled the stem out of the valve, he discovered that the soft-rubber conical-shaped washer that he had purchased in town and used to stop a drip, had stuck in the valve below the stem. When he got it out with needle-nosed pliers, it proved to be already compressed, distorted and chewed up so much that it jammed in the orifice. The washers Dan found at the specialty store (flat, harder material) should work so much better. Later in the week he pulled out the toilet fill valve, which had plugged up with a tiny amount of silt carried in water lines.

Our fresh flower salesman was a day earlier this week. The carnations we purchased last week are still beautiful, so Carmen told Dan – who had gone to the door, that we did not need more until next week. Then she looked out the window as the man passed by and spied some bright yellow roses with orange edged petals. She had to have them! By the time Carmen located the front gate keys and got to the sidewalk the seller was a block away and hustling along. Apparently he only stops at the gates where his known buyers are. Down the street Carmen ran hollering “señor, señor”. What gorgeous flowers! And such good exercise!

One early evening while watching tv, we realized that we had not seen our timid Smij cat for a while. Went looking for her and could not find her. Called to her and there was this quiet meow sound coming from the upstairs deck. Poor frightened little cat had gotten closed outside. Bet she will come in next time she is called. She spent a short time being freaked out, and then we would swear that she started strutting around like she was very proud of her little adventure. This one would not understand, unless one is very familiar with their animals.

The first and second cold fronts of the season, moving down from the US southeast states, are bringing us clear sunny days with highs above 80F and nights nearer 60. Our perfect weather, with snow-capped Citlaltépetl (about 18,500') out bright and clear in the mornings. Yea for cold fronts – at least until they get too chilly later on in the winter. Fortunately, the mass of house moderates things inside, and warm days and cool nights mean for pretty even temperatures over the course of 24 hours. The fronts chased away the nighttime rains and thunderstorms. Early in the week, one particularly close electrical storm had Dan downstairs unplugging electrical appliances and computers, and a huge, close, sudden, loud crack of thunder practically bounced Carmen out of bed in startled surprise. This storm was a rarity, in that most of the tormentas de trueno y relampago seem to center a dozen or more miles away, measured by the time between lightening strikes and the resultant thunder claps.

Dan started setting up a new blog intended to document the seven months of work on our “Casa Azuledos“ with more information than appeared here, for those of you who like building construction as much as he does. The plan is to progress thru the various phases of the renovation, with more attention to details and additional images for each part of the undertaking. There will eventually also be a glossary of (mexican) spanish building & construction terms, accessible from the main page of the blog, which could help those who contemplate their own building project.