Proyectos pequeños

Wow! (or as spelled out in spanish “¡Guau!”), how time flies (como vuela el tiempo)! It's been almost two months since we last posted here. No problems or issues, or too much of note, we're just enjoying life, reading, jigsaw-puzzling, some TV most nights, and keeping up with the flowers in the yard. It's typical summer weather here, with warm days and very frequent evening showers, that rainfall taking care of a lot of keeping the plants in the yard irrigated, except for those on the porch and under the roof overhangs.

One monday in mid-July, taking advantage of the timing of a 4pm IMSS appointment in Veracruz, we arranged to drive down early in the morning, taking our neighbor Carolyn along with us. She had been wanting to show us one of her favorite beaches there. Our previous trips to the big port city had us in the downtown area, so some time on the beach sounded great. We managed a good part of the day on Playa Mocambo, in the adjacent city of Boca del Rio, south of the port, From our shaded spot on the shore (we're not looking to burn) one can see far around south, past the river mouth, to the point where the navy school is located. The port area is not visible from here, as that vista is only available from around the point to the north. Carmen had packed a light lunch of sandwiches, so we didn't even have to wander off the playa for snacks or partake of fare from the occasional vendors trudging by. Keep in mind this was a non-weekend day, before school was let out for the month long summer vacation, so parking was no problem (in the lot of the waterpark just up the strand), and the beach was not crowded. The water temp was great, with minimal wave action just right for floating on one's back—a relaxing time.

We left Carolyn under a rented-for-the-day (MX$30) umbrella station (table, chairs) on the beach, got to the clinic in time for the cita, and afterwards had time for a great Carl Jr's burger next to where we parked. Then back to the Plaza America mall (across the coastal highway from Mocambo) where we connected with Carolyn in the food court. She just loves to mall browse. Aside from a few routing mistakes, caused by not having a detailed city map and street construction changing things up a bit, it was a good day. We got back home just after dark, the last few miles on the new lanes of the autopista in the rain (no visible lane edge markings yet, and a steep drop where the shoulder had not yet been graded) causing just a bit of white-knuckling. Dan hates driving at night, so we make every effort to plan our trips to avoid it—if we had avoided the transit misdirects in Veracruz we could have been home an hour earlier.

We celebrated Dan's birthday with a restaurant outing in Córdoba. A few days before we took the time to do a walking tour of the area we think of as the restaurant area of the city. We dropped into six or seven eating establishments serving a variety of cuisines (italian, argentine, brazilian,japanese, etc), viewed menus, prices and ambiance, and decided for this occasion we'd visit the Villa Franca, a new restaurant specializing in “Mediterranean” meals. It was a good choice, after we moved our party (the two of us plus Ania & Frank) from the open area in front (too much street noise) to farther back but next to an inner courtyard window.

A couple of proyectos pequeños (small projects) in the house occupied us a bit. The open shelves in the bathroom got fitted with cantina-style doors (two pairs, the lower ones hung upside down). We bought these unfinished at Home Depot, and stained, varnished, hinged and hung them to create the look of a floor to ceiling cabinet. Now all the bottles and boxes of meds and body care stuff are out of sight.

Items in open hanging areas and on shelves tends to get dusty, but one has to be careful if closing-in spaces or covering them, because mildew is always lurking. So the new bath cabinet has louvered doors. The shelves and unenclosed “closet” spaces where our clothes live have been great for reducing chances for mildew on the fabrics, but even so Carmen hangs them all out in the sunshine every so often to keep them fresh. Closing off that end of the bedroom with louvered doors was considered, but that would have been a big, pricey, job and the doors would always be in the way. So for the master bedroom we found some pull-up “cortinas romanas” made of bamboo slats at Walmart, a type of shade normally used outdoors on a porch. Even this much of enclosure will keep the air a bit stagnant around the clothes, so we will only use these shades some of the time. Pulled up, they are completely out of the way.

Of course they didn't exactly fit the spaces, so both sides had

to be trimmed off with shears and hacksaw, and the bracket slots recreated in the new ends. That got the widths correct, without having to change the cording mechanisms. We elected to hang these so that there was about 8” of space above the shade (where air can easily exit, yet above the sight-line so the hanging clothes aren't visible), and a similar amount at the floor, where our shoes get stashed (again, this is good for keeping them dry and mildew-free).

We have had building-related activity on all three sides of us. Actually, as I write this, there is a crew cleaning out the undergrowth and pulling down bedraggled and brown leaves from the banana field to the north, so some activity interesting to us has taken place in all four directions. After Valentin, in the single-story house to the west, moved away, the landlord came by with a crew to touch up all the exterior painting, reseal most of the roof, and put it new rain scuppers there. So far, no new tenants into this small house, and the landlord comes by de vez en cuando to keep the garden looking nice. Beyond that house, there is a vacant lot, overgrown and rampantly green for all the

while we have been here, that has now be cleaned out, possibly to be sold?

To the east, the corner double-wide lot across the street has been rising fast. The regular crew seems to consist of six or seven happy guys. After the concrete walls went up, about a week of work erecting temporary posts and plywood floor forms, topped with a maze of rebar (varilla) and lastly a bunch of orange flexible electrical conduit and junction boxes tacked to the forms. We expected a pumper and concrete truck (from Veracruz port, the closest ready-mix plant) would be the next step.

Not so. This past saturday trucks delivered huge piles of sand, gravel and then a hundred or so bags of cement, these last stacked against the walls of the church to the north. A crew of 35 men swarmed over the area, making concrete in two large towable mixers, with others carrying it in partly-filled 5-gal buckets (cubetas) to the wall, others standing on a mid-wall height scaffold and hoisting the buckets to the floor level where others would run it over the rebar-covered floor to dump it for the guys placing and vibrating the mix into place. There were enough guys on the crew that a couple would be free to rest for brief periods. By the end of the afternoon all the work was done. Amazing!

Next door to the south, the house (used to be an office for a social-services organization, empty since the end of the year) has been sold to a local newly-married couple, Jorge & Carla. This is Jorge's second marriage, as also living with them is his daughter and his granddaughter (nieta). We have only met Jorge so far. This building, as an office, was only finished on the ground floor, with open-to-sky partial brick walls on the unfinished second story. There is now a crew of three albañiles working to complete the construction (with also some paint and finish work downstairs), which will consist of pouring posts between the old freestanding brick upper walls, then beams and eventually a sloping slab concrete roof. It will be good to have this building made weather-proof, as the rain-soaked brickwork has been wicking moisture into our contiguous wall.

A couple of new blooms have pleased us. First, our night-blooming cereus had three buds that we had thought were new branching stems, but as they developed we discovered they would be flowers. Unfortunately they got to just that point where we were checking every night to see if they had opened when they suddenly died back. Turns out we had let the pot get too dry. We are now taking more care and we have gotten another burst of seven flower buds. Since this plant blooms earlier in the year, perhaps this is because the first flowers failed to mature. How far will these get, and will any of them then form into pitahaya (“dragon fruit”). (Dan bought a huge pitahaya at the grocery store and enjoyed it's succulence. Carmen used a bit of it as a garnish on a melon-jicama pineaple-yogurt-dressed salad one day that Frank & Ania visited us for lunch.). The Stapelia gigantea (carrion plant) just keeps pushing out huge blooms that the house flies just love to visit.

The Stanhopea occulata (Torito, Two-Eyes Stanhopea) we have had for the longest time in a coir lined wire-basket hanging near the from gate, pushed out a bloom stalk thru the bottom of the basket. The large native orchids didn;t last very long but were beautiful, with a fragrance of mint-chocolate. We took the time one day when the car was out to visit the floricultura center north of town and but several plants we have been wanting. This include a Cycas revoluta (sago palm), a native Zamia furfuracea (cardboard palm) and an Adenium obesum (desert/karoo rose), plus another hibiscus to replace the one we lost.

Currently, the open storage wall in the mid-sized front guest room also is getting an enclosing “treatment,” vertical curtains. The fabric Carmen is using is actually plant shading cloth, so it is very strong, weatherproof and yet allows air to pass thru it. Aside from some problems with the sewing machine, which have been resolved, this project is almost done.

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Dia mundial del medio ambiente

Turns out yesterday was World Environment Day.  We learned this after the fact, but as it turns out we had put out for the regular solid waste collection, a large container of clean plastic containers and tin cans we had been accumulating, and Carmen had also policed around the house and up & down the streets a bit, disposing of the scraps of paper and plastic trash blown out of passing vehicles or was discarded by sloppy passers-by.  Here, separation of waste materials takes place right beside the garbage compactor truck, which has bags and boxes strapped or tied to it for plastic, steel, newspapers and the like.  When a container is completely filled with a recyclable material, someone lifts it to the top of the truck where it is tied on.  At the end of the run the truck is quite a sight, covered as it is with bags and stacks of flattened cardboard. Only true mixed garbage goes into the maw of the compactor.  This seems so much more sensible than compacting everything and then picking thru the mess in some centralized recycling facility.

A hard rain again last night and steady all last sunday. However at this time of year the temperature only drops into the high 60s F with the nighttime tormentas. so we leave the windows open except if there are gusts blowing the raindrops thru the screens. Around here, when we get rain it's often accompanied by a bit of (usually distant, 9 seconds away or so) trueno y relampago (thunder and lightning, donner und blitzen).  This kind of sound and light show was very rare in Anacortes, WA, so we're kind of in awe of the spectacle here and beginning to like the dramatic, usually brief, tropical downpours.  At night we often smell the fragrance of whatever orchid is currently flowering.  We've heard that flowers which smell strongest at night are normally fertilized by moths.

We are reminded occasionally that we still live on the Pacific ring of fire.  Every so often we feel the ground tremble.  Not long ago we awoke one morning about 5am with our bed jiggling.  There was a tremor down on the isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca. No damage to speak of, but it's always unsettling when what is presumed to be solid underfoot, isn't. (It seems that most of the faults that are subject to underground movement are on the Pacific side of the country, most often in the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero.)  Then that same morning at 8am there was a tremendous boom, as a power transformer down the street blew up!   We expected a long period without electricity, but CFE had it replaced in about four hours. 

We finally put a bar along the bottom of our car gate where we saw the gray cat belly-squiggling under. Then a week later we found her sitting just inside our back door discussing who knows what with our own cats – very quietly. Shooed her out and discovered another place that she could squeeze thru. She surely is slender, and gets along well with the other two. We just do not need or can afford another animal, so we blocked that access point off as well.  The animals will just have to visit nose-to-nose thru the gate.

Seems that the zafra (cane harvest) is finished for this season, which means the air is cleaner. We have worked hard getting the black soot off from everything. We are busy “working” on jigsaw puzzles and reading, including the Harry Potter series, borrowed electronically from the Anacortes library, which we have not read before. Our bleeding heart Clerodendrum thomsoniae (flor de bandera) is blossoming beautifully this year.

Things are happening! First and most interesting – Gardi cat found us a salamander. Are they not just the cutest creatures? Long slender bodies with a bulbus roundish head and tiny short stick like legs with toes. This one was medium brown and in our back yard. Actually in a large empty flower pot which Gardi tipped over with a small crash of the ceramic pot. Carmen rescued it and hopefully saved it in some thick plantings.  She notes that american robins are out and about singing the songs we grew up with.  Since Mexico is as far as they migrate south for the winters, the ones we have seen must be stoking up getting ready to wing their way north!

The house construction across the street to the east of our house has been restarted after a five month break of no action. The work and daily progress keeps us entertained. One of the fellows working has a great voice and spends much time singing at the top of his lungs.

From our rooftop we saw some construction happening at the other end of the banana field to our east – well behind the house being built, just about a block away.  When it first started we assumed (as indicated by the city building permit nailed to the wall), that is was a large residence.  To our disconcertion it is actually a storage yard and bodega (warehouse) for storing chicken crates, usually loaded high on parked semi-trailers. No live chickens, but some of the odor is still there! So far we have seldom smelled anything at our house, but there are occasional hints or whiffs of "fragrance" on the breeze.

Our good quiet neighbor, Valentin, to our west has moved out. Bummer. The house is a rental and is now being spruced up. We hope the next tenant speaks English and is quiet, and perhaps this time with no barking dogs. Time will tell.  Also the house to our immediate south (actually used as an office), with which we share a wall, has had no visible activity in it since before Xmas.

Thanks to Homeland Security and Bernie Madoff, BanamexUSA has canceled all of the bank accounts it holds with folks living in Mexico, giving only a month's notice, so we have been scrambling to find the best new arrangement for our banking needs. BanamexUSA was so convenient, providing peso withdrawals by local ATM from our accounts held in California, and charging no international funds access fees. This also means that we must have our social security sent to a different location. Talk about frustrating!!!!

On the way home from our walk into town today, we purchased 17 manila mangoes for US$0.78. The time before we bought a bunch of fresh litchis.  We love the availability of fresh, inexpensive tropical fruit.  When visiting the bank, we walked past a nearby house in downtown Fortín, where we heard and saw two men yesterday sitting on the front porch and speaking english. We were in a hurry at the time so did not stop then, and they were gone later. Will introduce ourselves eventually.

We went to bed one night recently and discovered that part of our upstairs is now lit with a bright new halogen light. We could probably read by this light in the one bedroom. The new light is aimed down Avenida 21, but canted in such a way to illuminate our north wall from the power pole across the street. It will certainly give us more security, and at no cost to us except for a bit of glare! The bedroom we sleep in has curtains heavy enough that the extra light does not bother us, plus it is easier to see when we go to the potty in the night. So, what we first considered to be a bad thing, is actually all good!

We discovered the hugest paper wasp nest (about the size of a soccer ball) we have ever seen near our chimney high up on the north wall outside! We are getting up early in the mornings when the air is as cool as it gets, and spraying with a long jet of insecticide. We now see little wasp activity, and need to eventually get brave enough to knock it down, hoping that the wasps have all departed.

We are getting back into fix-up mode again. Dan put up the toilet paper roller and towel rods in our new bathroom, and also hung a full length mirror and installed a door stop in the tiled floor. Next we sanded off the deteriorating finish on our cedar chest. We have two power sanders, so we could both work at the same time. Had to mix a bit of special stain for some trim strips. Carmen gave the whole chest three coats of new nitrocellulose lacquer.  We also sanded some rough spots on the bed frame we had made for the guestroom, and restained and sealed that too. While we had the lacquer out, we disassembled our queen-sized storage bed John Janda had built for us, and attached padded galvanized steel channel stock on the bottom, to raise the structure about 3/4" off the floor.  When we reassembled things we touched up the surfaces where the shallow flooding coming inside from the terrace had damaged the finish.  The bed is now high enough that it stands completely off the the floor--so no more worries about damaging things from stormwater emergencies or wet-mopping the tiled floor.

We still have many small projects. Dan was going to paint a sealer on a bit of our wall that faces the house to west (where Valentin lived). There are some fellows working there getting ready to repaint that house, so Dan asked if he could go over with our ladder to work on that face of our wall while they were there. The fellow showed up this morning and suggested he could do the application of the impermeabilizante for us.  Dan was happy to pay him, and mark that job off our to-do list.

La bodeguita

Domingo 09 - Sábado 15 Feb 

We've generally had high overcast skies since our crew was here.  But, sunday and monday were sunny again and our laundry was on the line by eight am.  We did not want laundry hanging while the work was being done on the house. With the sun, the days are near 80ºF, but the nights are still cool.  Tuesday it rained and was foggy all day. We need weather like this on ocassion, to keep our various cloud-forest plants happy. The plants then love the sun when it come back.  We find this area has just the right variety of cool-warm, cloudy-sunny, wet-dry to keep us (and our garden), contented. Carmen did not need fresh flowers this week, but when she saw what our flower man had in his arms, she just had to have some of those gorgeous snapdragons!

We bought some salt cod a couple weeks ago. It is usually available in the US only around Xmas, but it's in the stores all year here. One of Carmen's favorite foods that Dan puts up with. It smells the house up when cooked for hours to tenderize it before making into a white sauce gravy to put over potatoes, so she waited until after the crew was gone to prepare it. Delicious as usual!  Our doctor last week told us to come to the clinic tuesday and the papers for our eye exams would be ready. Surprise surprise, they were not ready -- they said come back friday, and maybe they will have been processed thru.

Carmen finished the ground prep for new plantings along the new front yard walkway. Took her two days to dig up and pull apart all the dirt to a shovel's depth, trying to get all the grass roots out. Had a mop bucket's worth of roots to discard, and this was after our crew had stripped all the sod off. Next Dan rototilled after Carmen added sand and sawdust to the soil. Lastly we added commercial planting soil from Home Depot and lightly tilled it in. People walking past were fascinated with our small Ryobi tiller. Carmen has put over 50 small plants in this ground, all with a goodly amount of fertilizer at their base. She figures we have ground space for 20 or so more plants from Carmelo. We have high hopes for a beautiful flower-filled yard.  Colyn, who walks by at least once a day, said she has rarely seen flower gardens around here. She is right (although, with so many homes surrounded by high walls, it is hard to tell). Many flowering trees and shrubs, but not many smaller blossoming plants. Wonder which plants the insects will devour first? It would be quite a job to dig in systemic bug killer around every plant, which is what she does with all the potted plants.

Gardi cat has had a smoke gray cat visiting him through the gate, and now a short haired calico has come calling. They talk very quietly. The gray cat actually gets into our back yard area somehow, and leaves footprints on the top, windshield and hood of the car. The other, thinner, cat has been trying to squeeze thru the fencing out front, with no success. We bought a length of metal shelving to attach to our high wall at the spot where Gardi walks around on a narrow ledge to get to the neighboring roofs. Drove down to the Soriana hipermart and bought some Chinese meals for lunch. Still no more of Scoop Away litter at WalMart. The shelf is still bare after two weeks, and we hope it will be refilled before we really need it. Carmen always insists on being ahead on a couple of all important items, like her favorite cat litter.

There is a visible security presence here, with frequent police patrols thruout town.  Pickup trucks have two patrolmen in the cab, and two to four standing in the back with their semi-automatic rifles, continually driving around. Some of the trucks have a protective barrier around the (often masked) police standing in the back. They pass our house several times a day, and not at the same times every day either. Plus a few motorcycle cops sometimes pass by. A few days ago we were out front when we heard tires squealing going around our corner. Police in a hurry -- wonder what they were after? Recently we saw some new transito police vehicles in town – bright green three-wheeled motorcycles! Sure looked snazzy!

Mauricio was here tuesday and wednesday doing measurements for our new bodeguita (little storage) cabinet out front at the end of the porch. While we were out shopping Dan bought the two locks needed to weld into the cabinet doors.  Mauricio did the door and panel framing and skinning in his shop and then the final fitting & assembly here. Everything will be primed and then it is our responsibility to paint, at which time we will sand and repaint some spots on our other cabinets, stairway and fencing that he made for us earlier. He made it back with the doors to install, friday morning. Lots of noise from the porch, with the drilling, welding and hammering! He does great work! While he was here he replaced the mirador's ridge-cap piece that we had lost to a high wind many months ago.

We found some toasted salvado de trigo (wheat germ) at Walmart this week. What to do with it? For lunch one day we had pan-fried patties made of a mixture of diced pork, egg, salt, pepper and wheat germ -- very tasty. Next, oatmeal cookies were made with the wheat germ as half the flour. Oil in the cookies instead of butter. Yep, the raisins were pre-soaked in rum.

Recently, while Carmen was selecting thru the huge bin of fresh mushrooms at Walmart, another woman was standing next to her, examining the 'shrooms.  Carmen filled her bag and walked away a couple of aisles.  The lady followed her and started asking her questions about how to cut and cook mushrooms. Carmen did her best to explain, in her poor spanish, and answer the questions. The woman seemed happy and went back and filled her bag.

Carmen painted the insides of the new porch cabinets the same color as our upstairs railings and stairs up to the mirador. Sort of a deep reddish brown. Dan built and installed the wooden shelf needed inside the cabinets.  We'll finish the painting, and filling up the new bodeguita, next week. The front garden has come together nicely, and Carmen dressed it up with a covering of pinebark mulch.  Looking pretty nice out there!  

Soldando

Domingo 02 - Sábado 08 Feb   Sunday we did a good cleaning of our upstairs terraza with the pressure washer. Wanted it to be clean of the accumulated rain-speckled dust and cane soot when our crew had to work up there. Dan worked the pressure washer, whilst Carmen maneuvered a stiff bristled broom. The next good day for canefield burning will dirty it up again. The soot is not all bad – it makes a good fertilizer for our plants. Seems like we are seeing more cane on trucks that has not been field-burned. The refineries pay a  lower price when the leaves are with the cane.

Last week's concrete shelf work fixed the position for the new water heater, enabling Dan to drill the holes thru the wall for the various pipes.  At one point, when drilling the holes thru the walls, it required two hands inside at the very back of the corner cabinet, lying on the fixed upper shelf in the cabinet.  Once in there with the holes complete, the opening was so tight he just could not back out.  As he struggled to worm out of the tight space, Carmen had to grab him by the back of his belt and pull him out.  

Last week Dan worked soldando (soldering) up most of the sections of copper pipe/fittings to make the connections to the new heater.  Now before proceeding we had to remove the existing stainless steel sink, to provide access for final assembly and re-route the cold water to supply both the sink and the new water heater. Not as easy as it sounds. The back lip of the sink was under the wall tiles and there was a bump of concrete on the front of the hole in the countertop that had to be chipped off before the sink would slide/lift out at an angle that cleared the backsplash tiles. Hopefully with the reinstall and new caulking, there will be no more water leaks into the undersink cabinet. While sink was out, Carmen painted the cabinet interior white to make it brighter. She is considering painting inside the rest of the kitchen cabinets. She  also scraped, sanded and painted a bottom wall in our small "powder room."

Dan pulled out our cook stove to connect the propane to the new hot water heater installed on the front porch. The last hole drilled, thru the brick wall by the kitchen range, was for the flexible gas line, extended with a tee from our kitchen stove propane shutoff valve. We took advantage of having the stove pulled out to clean the grease off the stove sides. Also touched up with appliance paint on the sides of the stove where it had been scratched from sliding it in and out of it's space. 

Our crew of four were here at 7am monday. They worked three days this week to finish all their jobs. The crew removed the forms for the concrete shelves on the porch outside of the kitchen, and then tiled the the surfaces. Luis certainly does beautiful  tile work. The round hole in the shelf  thru which the heater flue will pass was plumbed and a matching hole was cut thru the roof directly above it.  Heri had the job of patching some corner spots where the rejas (steel security bars) had loosned up at the corners.  Carmen caught him about to paint one spot that he had not yet sanded smooth!  The whole crew worked on sealing up the other side of the south party wall.  At the end of the last day for the crew, Luis, Alfonso and Dan connected up the new water heater and tightened all the threaded joints to stop a few leaks.

Unfortunately Dan had a dental appointment tuesday morning and then wednesday we both had our doctor appointment (cita). We hated to be away, always so many questions to be answered by Dan, but, that is the way of life. We do trust them, so that is not a problem. We just missed some of the time with them. They are such happy fellows full of smiles and singing, even at the end of their ten hour days. Amazing!

With the sink out, Dan was able to finish up the new water line runs. One problem we wanted to fix, was to reverse the cold and hot sides, which were originally plumbed to the wrong sides.  Since the two supply pipes and the 2" drain line were installed very close to each other, with the copper pipes extending only a few inches out of the wall surface (with compression x npt valves attached there), working space was tight. It all worked out fine, with the new pipes up close against the back wall, one installed over the drain pipe and the other below.  Bringing the cold water over to the other side necessitated a lot of fittings (and 18 solder joints within 8" between the heater supply shutoff and the supply to the sink). He reused the sink valves, only having to buy a new shutoff valve and a (compression x compression) union to connect the cold water to the new lines.  The final solder joints were in the back of the corner cabinet where the lines right-angled thru to the corner of the porch.  He had to use a cookie sheet for protecting the wooden shelves and the electric conduit strung back there while using the torch.

The rest of our week seemed pretty quiet. Carmen worked digging up the soil around the new garden pasarela.  We got the the sink back in, all nicely caulked. We both worked and got the 4" flue pipes up thru the roof.  Next the big moment of turning on the water heater -- up to this point we had been running just cold water thru the lines. The electric ignition did not work – we will have to call a technician to repair it under its warranty. Dan took the burner cover off while Carmen held the match, and the pilot did ignite. We were happy to see that there were no water leaks under the sink and we had hot water! That is, until we went out front later to find hot water on the porch!  Oh darn, a leaky solder joint (the only one out of more than 50) -- not evident until the hot water had worked it's way past the paste flux. Thankfully it was outside.

Needless to say, the joint would have to be removed, fittings un-soldered, cleaned and then re-soldered. But, Dan had planned ahead and thankfully installed threaded unions (just so the heater could be removed without disturbing any solder joints) so the next day it was a relatively quick thing to detach that 3/4" section (between the heater and the flexible hot water line connected to the pipe going thru the wall) and make the fix.  It is good not to have to wait a long time for hot water at the kitchen sink anymore!   Back to washing a couple dishes at a time instead of stacking them up until there were enough to make the wait (for hot water from the distant main heater) worthwhile.

Albañiles trabajando

Domingo 26 Ene - Sábado 01 Feb   Sunday Colyn came for dinner and we had a delightful chat. Yes, we had the pork roast recently purchased. It was without a doubt the best pork roast we have had in years!  Since we now have our new Koblenz wet/dry vacuum cleaner, Carmen has been super cleaning one room at a time. Took three days to finish ridding the house of the soot we get from cane burning. Of course we could keep our doors and windows closed. But, who wants to do this when the sun is out and the air is warm?  On tuesday and friday Dan had the next couple of tooth-whitening sessions at the dentist.  Each session involved being fitted with a device designed to hold his mouth open, putting a protective coating on the encias (gums), painting a light-reactive bleach-like substance on the teeth, and then having a clip with strong blue light set in front of the teeth to activate the whitener for a period of about 45 minutes. 

Thursday morning, bright and early, our renovation equipo (team, crew) showed up.  Dan talked to Luís, the foreman, about raises for the crew, as the federal and Veracruz area minimum daily wage went up 3.9% this year (to MX$67.29, or US$5.18, per day). As skilled workers, our guys get about 3½ to 5½ times this minimum, for a ten hour day. There are also IVA tax increases on some critical things (gasoline, bus fares) that will affect our albañiles, who travel from Coscomatepec each day. Luis said it did not matter, but we felt it was our responsibility to recognize that they had higher costs this year, so we added a peso to all their hourly rates, plus an additional peso increase for Luís.

They are putting in a pasarela (walkway) on the north side of our entry in the front jardín similar to the ones on the south. We were going to keep grass there, but we have real dislike of using the weedeater to cut the small bit of grass there. After all, doesn't being retired mean you don't have to cut the grass any more? The worst part is the cleaning up of all the thrown-about grass. Already we have many plants just waiting to fill in the new planting areas that will border the new walkway.

Among other projects saved for the crew are: 1) Building a storage cabinet topped with a concrete shelf on the south end of the front porch for holding the new small hot water heater and garden stuff, which will be eventually enclosed with metal cabinet doors made by Mauricio.  Dan will be drilling holes thru the wall to make pipe runs to take cold water from the supply point inside under the kitchen sink to the new heater and a hot line back from the heater to the sink. In the process the sink will be reseated (fixing the constant leaks we've had there).  2)  Ceramic tiles (we'll use up our leftovers from the bathroom project) will be set on top of  the concrte shelf on the porch, and to seal and finish the floor of the base cabinet under the kitchen sink. 3) Redoing a couple of terraza tile joints above the new bathroom at both the east and west ends, where small leaks are staining the walls. 4) Addressing moisture problems on the outside of the party wall south of our house, to keep moisture from damaging interior walls on the porch and in the bath & upstairs medium bedroom. Seems the sealant on the south-facing wall has bubbled so it must be scraped off and re-done. The neighboring house is just finished on the first floor, with its second floor unfinshed brick walls in place with no roof.  The unfinished state of things is allowing rain to soak thru into our house walls. Our crew will reseal the joints and create chaflanes (bevels, sloped concrete joints) where exterior vertical surfaces meet horizontals.

Well – we had almost a year with our beautiful wall to the north. Someone has taken it upon his- or herself to decorate the wall with, what? Probably a name written in a fancy script to make it basically unreadable. We also saw the same tagging in the same color paint on a wall near downtown. Sort of like an animal marking it's territory? Our crew will re-paint the wall  -- we have LOTS of leftover blue paint we can use.. If it gets to be a problem and we get tired of overpainting with blue, we have considered just leaving it be and imprinting flowers overtop the graffiti to obscure and disguise it's message.

Our dearest kitties are closed into their small room upstairs so that the crew does not have to be careful when going in and out the doors and gates This also being the sewing room, Carmen spent time with them while she made heavy cloth sacks for a couple games we have, figuring it is better/quicker to mix the tiles in a bag, than on the table. As soon as the crew leaves at 5:30pm, we let the kitties out of their room and the first thing they do is to run down the stairs, after a quick check upstairs, and out the door downstairs to check out all the new changes. It is amazing to watch. One would not think they would care about such things. When the crew is not here, Gardi will go out front and sit on the porch bench about 4pm, and meow until Carmen comes out and waters plants, if they were not watered earlier that day. Whenever it happens, Gardi supervises -- seems like it might be his favorite time of day. Smij is getting braver every day, but will have no part of the watering. Dan waters the back area and we sort of take turns watering the upstairs terraza off our bedroom.

Our crew changes clothes in our laundry/shop at the beginning and end of their workday. There is a window/pass-thru between the laundry and our new bathroom. To give the guys more privacy, Carmen gave Dan a curtain and he installed the rod to hold it.  It looks good, and also finishes off the bathroom nicely.

The exposed other side of our south wall was worked on this week. The guys scraped off the bubbled impermeabilizante (underneath the paint there is an additional tarry coating) and discovered the wall has a few tiny cracks and one major horizontal one across it.  This was perhaps the major causes of the moisture in the upper wall, causing the interior paint to peel off. They are chipping out loose stucco, re-sealing the tar layer with the propane torch, and will be installing expanded mesh (metal desplegado) and stuccoing over the horizontal crack. 

The nights have been in the low 50ºFs and the days sunny (except for one rainy day) and below 80ºF. Our tall indoor dracaena has decided to lose leaves. Why? It is insect free, so is it due to too little or too much water, temperatures briefly below 60º, too little light or possibly a draft when the back door stands open? Can't think of anything else!  Our cut flowers which were purchased this week at the front gate are long stemmed as usual. Gorgeous white double daisies for our tall vase and delicate pink carnations for the table. The two-week old orange and green carnations still have some fresh looking blossoms so they were put in the vase with the new pinks, which have many buds so should last three weeks. All indoor vased flowers get fresh water, a rinsing and ends cut off every few days to prevent the putrid smell they would otherwise get.  Outside, we lost two plants to the cold nights.  We have been leaving our vanilla orchid wrapped with plastic sheeting when we get a period with nights below 50ºF --  with this extra care we hope to not lose the growing tips like a year ago. 

After three days of  trabajando (working), the guys have nearly finished the walkway. Hopefully all the grass roots were dug out. Perhaps we'll wait a few weeks before planting with the hope of getting any remaining grass roots killed.  We bought a couple bags of potting soil for the area on both sides of our new walkway. That side area was low and the new walkway was built the height of the center walkway, which of course means more soil is needed at the sides. Bought hopefully the final plumbing fittings for the kitchen sink and small hot water heater. Dan has been drilling holes thru the walls to connect water and propane lines. Also been doing much soldering of many little pieces in preparation. The base cabinet to the right of the sink needs to be empty (as the pipes will go thru the walls there and run along the back into the space under the sink).. Carmen did this plus a yearly cleaning there.

The newest food that we like is jicama (a brown-skinned, white-fleshed tuber) and Dan has been enjoying fresh guayabas (guavas).  Peeled and cubed, jicama is much like apple when put into a Waldorf-like salad, or with tomato. Also very inexpensive and full of vitamin C. Actually we have eaten it before, just never learned to like it.  When we think of it as a "fruit" it is much more appealing.

Baño completo

Domingo 24- Sábado 30 Noviembre

The Lord gave us a great fog sunday for all day, along with a mere 64ºF outside and 69ºF inside. Most of the flowering plants outside don't seem to mind the weather - this hibiscus is about 6" in diameter, and seems to love the clouds and rain.  (We ARE living at the edge of the cloud forest, after all!) The weather report called for clouds and precip all week. Sunday was to be the only day this week with no rain, so laundry was to be done. But, isn't fog just a massive amount of water in the air, in much finer droplets? We might be reduced to using our clothes dryer instead of clothes line. However, it was a good day for cooking an item that takes a long time. That warms the house sufficiently. Today it is to be chayote for soup. A colder day will be dried beans or beets.

Nervy little termites have started indulging in a wood beam above our hanging fruit and veggie basket at the edge of the kitchen, as evidenced by sawdust-like fine particles on the countertop below. Their tiny holes are surely difficult to find. Dan climbed a short ladder to give them a drink of festermicide via syringe, which stops the activity immediately. Dan also took the opportunity of inclement weather to catch up on some inside projects, first installing the hidden light fixtures under the wall cabinet at the end of the new downstairs bathroom (a tricky proposition as, due to prior measurement errors, there was just enough room for them to fit). Then finally, working at putting in the toilet we purchased many months ago, which has been sitting there in a big carton waiting for him to get pysched about drilling mounting holes in the tile and concrete floor. With a wee bit of help from Carmen, he installed the toilet. We now have a baño completo (complete bathroom)! The only problem was that the toilet rocked a bit on the floor after tightening up the bolts, so it took some time finding and installing wedges to make it stable, and finally caulking around the bottom edge of the bowl.

We discovered that inspite of all the work done last winter & spring, we still have evidence in the upstairs bathroom of moisture leaking in from the party wall to the south, where the house there has unfinished walls open to the skies above. This will require getting permission from our neighbors to seal and caulk some wall-floor joints on their side of the wall.  We'll have to get in contact with our crew of masons, who all live up in Coscomatepec.  This will be before Xmas, as we owe them their aguinaldo (about 4% of their annual wages) that is always, by law, to be given at the end of the year to all long-term workers. At that time we will arrange for a bit more work we want done, including the sealing of such leaks, running lines for our kitchen hot water heater thru the walls, and some paving blocks laid in the front yard..

Tuesday Dan needed more disks & cases to finish copying the music from his computer. We drove out to buy same and since we were out and about, we went on to Shattuck's. We had heard on the radio that morning that the coffee growers were having a manifestación (protesting the low prices for harvested coffee beans) which closed the federal highway between Fortín and Cosco, where the lady who does housekeeping and gardening lives. We thought she might not have been able to get to Frank & Ania's. Since the weather was colder than usual and rainy, we had best check on miss kitty. She was there, and all was fine.

Tuesday night went down into the 40's and wednesday only got up to 54ºF outside. We don't recall it ever being this cold last year. Even the three cold days we did have then were much later in the winter. Inside our house with no heat, the temp was 67ºF – time for some extra layers of clothing, and an extra blanket on the bed. We also learned last winter that our vanilla orchid does not like temps below 10ºC (50ºF), so we wrapped it with layers of plastic for several days until the temperature warms up sunday. Seems that our kitties do not like the cold any better than we do. Gardi really wanted outside, so we let him out and within a couple minutes he was meowing to come back in. But, we're not really complaining about the weather, which is nothing like the US is experiencing, or the interminable periods of cold-wet in the Pacific Northwest. We're used to and appreciate the clouds and occasional gray days. And, a little bit of seasonal variation helps us mark the months that pass. The succulents we have been collecting seem to be weathering the cold and rain just fine.

Carmen cooked two light hot meals today instead of only one to help warm our bodies. Plus it did warm our house a couple degrees. Navy bean with italian sausage soup for supper and hot spanish rice for lunch. Pans of leftovers were left on counter to cool and give us their heat. This we never do otherwise. We are firm believers in cooling foods as quickly as possible to keep them from spoiling. Our years in restaurant business taught us this. Food cooling and storage procedures were things the health inspectors always checked. Carmen finished the cover for the large foam pad on bench in the master bedroom, with much help from Gardi cat. Looks great!

Saturday it finally warmed enough with the sun out, so that we could hang laundry outside. As we were finishing a late breakfast, an elderly man came to our gate asking for food. Normally he would have gotten a juice or milk box. Today he got lucky. Carmen had not finished her ham and cheese omelet and had a tortilla left, so we put the two together plus some hot sauce and he got that also. He has been here before, moves very slowly, and always looks starved. He did indeed stand by our gate while he ate the food, and he put the beverage in his bag.

Late in the week our mailman stopped twice one day, ringing the doorbell. One of the envelopes contained some pictures of her children from Harmony. Children do grow fast! And, once the bell rang well after dark one evening. Who could it be so late?  It was our fresh flower man rang the bell. The only light we had was the dim outside bulb.  We thought we were buying large white mums and orange carnations. Inside, in the light, they turned out to be pink carnations and yellow mums! Finally,  a report on the progress of building project across the street, with most of the perimeter block walls up at two meters now. Based on the reinforcing steel already in place for the vertical castillos (columns between wall sections), they'll probably top out a three (ten feet), which seems to be the standard around here. The cool weather (and mostly dry days) we are having is great for outdoor building projects it seems.

Aprendiendo español

Domingo 20 - Sábado 26 Octubre 

The beautiful delicate flowers have stopped  appearing daily on the passion fruit vine, but Dan is happy that some of his efforts at hand pollination were successful, as we have a half-dozen or so fruits now ripening on the trellis up on the terraza.  And, down on the front porch we seems to have a new orchid suddenly blooming every day or so.

Catwalks are narrow elevated walkways. When we first got here, Dan built a catwalk for our cats to use along the high ceiling in our living room. We also realize that we have a different kind of catwalk in our bedroom. It is along our mattress at the head of the bed, once our pillows are pulled down a bit from the headboard. This allows our cats to visit us both, without stepping on us.

Dan is still limping around a bit from his almost-fall on the hike a week ago. Carmen is proving that even after a blonde's hair turns gray, she can still be dizzy headed, most especially when raising or lowering her head from the bed. Dan found a new online Spanish course that Carmen actually finds easy to use and fun. The lessons and practice at DuoLingo are tailored for each user's level (you can take a quick test to place yourself above rank beginner), and the website tracks your progress thru the levels.  We have various CD-ROMS  of spanish courses we've tried.  Other methods we have found useful have been a set of 400 flashcards that came with a Think Spanish Level 1 course by Vis-Ed, loaned to us by Ania, and various of the online spanish flashcard "decks" provided at Anki. We use the physical cards every few days (bright days on the mirador are best), with Carmen responding to the questions posed and Dan correcting pronunciation and the like.  Dan's found that Amit's take at Always Spanish (reviews of learning spanish resources, and hints to make the process quick and painless) to be right on.  Dan made long verb, adjective and adverb lists for Carmen's vocab building, and he as he reads or listens to tv/radio he often looks up new words to amp up his vocabulary too.

We bought two adorable plants from our “plant man” who comes down to Fortin several times a week from his home in Ixhuatlan del Café, east of Coscomatepec. One is an “Easter eggplant” (Solanum ovigerum, around here called a ponedora (laying chicken) plant.. The egg hanging from it is white and will turn cream color when ripe. The other is a succulent with softish spines with some dark maroon blossoms, which proved to be a Huernia schneideriana (Red Dragon huernia). His prices are great, MX$25 each, or about US$2 – wonder what he will bring next from his little home vivero (plant nursery).

Ania and Frank came over for a pasta lunch and fresh-made garlic rolls. Carmen also used the limes we picked on our hike last weekend for a meringue pie. Though the texture was good, it was basically tasteless as these wild limes lack much of the acidity we like in this pie. We used our Wii set for the first time since we moved here, and the day before Dan set up a Mii (avatar) for each of our guests. Ania and Frank had never interacted with a Wii before. We chose to play bowling for four persons, and perhaps needless to say, Ania won. They brought along the three packages of Belgian chocolate truffles from Sam's Club that we asked them to pick up for us. Scrumptious smooth petite dark truffles rolled in toasted cacao powder. Can we stick to one per evening?

The construction across the street is progressing slowly. Still filling in the perimeter trenches with concrete and rock mampostería footings. We had a hard rain one day and the southern trench filled with water. The two workers used the rainwater, which does not drain out very fast, for their concrete mixture.

Una caminata a la caldera

Domingo 13 - Sábado 19 Octubre   Sunday morning we had a leisurely breakfast of rocky mountain hash. This is but a scramble of chopped potato, onion, sausage and egg. Ours also had nopal, which we have come to enjoy in many foods. Served on top of warmed corn tortillas and topped off to our individual liking with salsa picante.  No sooner did we have dishes finished when the telephone rang. It was Frank asking us if we would go on a caminata (hike) with them. It would only take two hours, and they felt that Dan needed a break from the computer where he had been helping a friend over a LogMeIn remote connection. After hemming and hawing for a few moments – this was of course after previously advising them that Dan could not afford the time until after 15 October – we scurried about changing clothes, rounding up cats to bring inside, locking doors, prepping our backpack, etc. Carmen had understood that Shattucks were picking us up, so she was straightening the house a bit – only to find Dan heading out the back door with the car keys. Oh, WE are driving! Off we happily go on this gorgeous day, and find them walking along their road near the autopista, with a backpack.

After driving on the highway about 15 minutes to the east of Córdoba, we arrived at the exit where the free route to Veracruz takes off. We followed a convoluted route onto increasingly narrow roads thru the dusty village of San Rafael, still roughly paved for the most part. Ania kept us informed of all the sights along the way. Ex-haciendas, fruit trees, birds we might see – soooooooo many interesting things to tell!  Next we turned onto a dirt road, and finally onto a narrow grass lane. This was our car's first experience with an overgrown grass lane. We expected but a short distance on the grass path, but it seemed a fair distance to us paved road travelers. Eventually, the other two got out and walked ahead to be certain that no large rocks had gotten into the track since they had last been there. It was difficult to travel in spots where the wheels had worn down into the surface, and we had to cant off to the side to avoid high-centering the car. Finally we got to a point but a few paces from what would have been the end of the road, providing an ample parking spot with ample turn around space, to find there were two trees down across the road. Dan's heart fell, as he imagined having to back out over the rough and twisting route when we headed back home. Luckily we found a nearby slight widening of the path with a bit less undergrowth, and were able to turn the car around, backing over the bushes between a rock and a tree to face more or less back the way we came. Hopefully no one else would come down the track to block it later...!

Now, with feet on the ground, at one of Shattuck's favorite hikes – off we go to explore the Caldera del Diablo (Devil's Caldron)!  Dan had insisted on bringing his Komperdell “trekking pole,” just knowing that at least one of us would find it useful. Okay, Carmen grudgingly took it out of the car, and Dan hefted our pack with water & snacks onto his back. Carmen soon discovered soon that she is no longer quite so stable on her feet. She had been expecting a well-worn sendero (trail), but after but a couple steps, she was very thankful to have the help of the staff. The ground was in fact a bit slippery from rains a few days before, plus many large rocks of many shapes and sizes littered the way up the slope. Seems that this site was over 1000 years old, where a small volcano had erupted,. It left an oval (when viewed from the air, as in Google Earth) open cone and an interior caldera (crater) about 960 feet across its longest width.

From the base, it looks like just another hill covered in forest greenery, and the inner caldera itself is accessible by a rocky trail up thru jungle liberally sprinkled with coffee bushes. Looking down from near the top it is revealed as a really deep hole with very steep interior walls, and a basin-like floor way below, now heavily forested. After getting near the top of the outside of the cone, there are two breaks in the rim of the vent, allowing access to a well worn rough path around a ledge maybe 100 feet or so down from the upper rim. Step off the ledge, and there is a steep tree and brush covered slop to the bottom of the big round hole in ground. In some places the ledge is large enough to set up a camp, especially in areas undercut back into the cliff-like vertical sides above, The only real problem here was that the path in places was only about a foot wide, or slick with a thin covering of slippery algae-capped mud. Not a “walk in the park,” by any means.

The views of rock formations were fantastic, rising high up the inner cone walls high above us! Carmen, true to recent form, kept losing her balance, so we kept one person near to stabilize her when she wavered. Unfortunately she mostly tips to her right – the down side of the trail. Dan slipped twice on the slick underfoot, and by the next morning he could hardly put weight on his left leg where a ligament in his left knee was complaining. We were too late in the day to see the parrots and parakeets, but heard a few. Saw lots of butterflies. The crazy thing about this cone, is that all the rocks are gray, the color of aged limestone, and the seepage from above has formed stalagmites on the walls and flowstone-like formations in the undercuts (almost caves) inboard of the trail we followed.  The rocks that littered the trail also were of this same material, and showed the clear effects of water erosion.  So just how can a volcano be made of sedimentary rock?  Is this an example of carbonatite, which we understand is pretty rare?

Ania found many plants for both herself and Carmen. At one point, we three enjoyed some banana muffins Carmen had packed, while Ania was scrabbling up a rock to cut and pull off some favored plants. She always has in her backpack a plastic bag and a knife for such gatherings, plus Frank's hands for carrying more. She is careful to only take epiphytes which have been blown off their perches by storms, or off of trees which have fallen to the forest floor. Ania also packed up a large plastic bag with loose soil, of the type some of her plants like.The walk around usually takes them a half hour. Took us about three times that long. What can we say? We walked slower, with so much to see. Our amigos had never seen a snake here, but we did! A large thick black one, moving quickly away from us out of the arroyo trail on the way back down to the car! We believe this 4+ foot specimen to have been a culebra indigo (Drymarchon corais, probably the orizabensis variety that is native here).

As we drove back home, roads here and there were closed or very busy, so they guided us through areas in the city where we had not been before, and interesting tour of Cordoba! At one point we drove by the huge cementerio with it's big panteon (mausoleum), with a fantastic multiple block-long cut flower market outside the walls, close by to where families come to adorn the graves of the departed loved ones. When we dropped Frank & Ania off, we were invited for lunch, but we really did not have time, thinking Dan's friend would be waiting for him to come back online.

Carmen got all the new plant stems into pots. Thankfully we had purchased another huge bag of soil and some new pots last week. We now need more pots! There is simply no more space outside in the ground, without digging up other plants or getting rid of a least some of our tiny plot of grass in the front yard. Dan tied the orchids that came off of fallen trees during out hike, onto branches in our bougainvilleas.  As it turned out, the friend Dan has been helping never came back on line after we returned home, though Dan tried to raise him. Bummer – we might as well have stayed at Ania and Frank's for dinner. While watching tv this evening, our cable went out, so we went to bed and watched some of the maratón of the last season of Breaking Bad, which Dan had recorded on the DVR last weekend. Good day.

One evening our Gardi cat told us excitedly, that there was something in the bag on the floor which was holding the miter box that goes back for exchange. He was right! We took a medium sized brown saltamontes (grasshopper) outside for him to play with. We believe it is the same one he was with in the hallway the next day, so he must have been the one to bring it in in the first place. He is so good about telling us, with a meow, when he has found something that does not belong in our house.  It was a pretty quiet week here. Four days with no rain. We saw two green birds flying at a distance. Probably parrots? Had to put another butterfly outside.

Work has begun in the lot across the street. With the ditches dug around three sides for footings, next huge piles of sand and rocks were delivered this week.  Then on each of the next days, eight bags of cement plus eight five gallon buckets of water were delivered first thing in the mornings. A single man has been mixing cement by hand, bucketing it to the trenches, and then rolling/placing huge rocks into the mix, creating a mampostería (rubble-concrete) foundation for the lot's perimeter walls. Hot heavy work for 8-10 hour days. Don't know how his body held up to it!  Dan walked across the street and offered that the fellow come to our house if he needed anything.

Dan stopped in at the MasKotas store, and was surprised to find two little bags of Temptation treats, to which our two cats have a long-standing addiction. We have been trying to obtain this product for over a year, and all the pet stores professed never to have heard of it, despite the company's email message to us that it was available in our area.  Unfortunately, our cats' favorite flavor is chicken, and Mexico no longer makes that flavor.  But, second best is salmon, and that is manufactured here by Whiskas. The government has just put thru new tax laws, so the prices we pay for some things will go up. This includes a 16%  IVA (value-added tax) on pet foods and sweets. Cat food was already more expensive here than in the US.   In the store, Dan saw a puppy that he would love to have brought home. No more dogs for us though. They are a problem when we travel. Be nice if they could be trained to litter boxes like cats. The cats thought they had died and gone to heaven when they received their treats that evening.

The little man that comes to the back gate with potted plants that cost 20 pesos each (US$1.50) has been here three times this week. His plants are always small, but well rooted, and we don't mind buying from his little enterprise--better than those that come by just looking for a handout. One day we bought a pinkish peach color thanksgiving cactus. It looks nice on our fireplace mantel. We also bought a dark pepper plant, so he told us. Its leaves are dark green with dark purple on the back. Can't seem to ID it one the internet, so we wonder what it will turn into. At present its leaves are a bit rolled up and look long and pointed.. We potted it with our pepper plant that a neighbor gave us – the one loaded with the hot piquin peppers. Carmen again has everything planted. She dug out all the local soil that we had planted our corn in, which was in the large Earthbox planter we had used for tomatoes in the US. Then she put regular potting soil into the planter for four new plants which came from the Home depot discount table.

Thursday morning we woke up at six am, so we got up half an hour later, showered, breakfasted, and drove into downtown Córdoba. We had once upon a time found an agro-chemicals store there, and we since have not found it again ( the yellow pages have been useless in this regard). The traffic is horrid in this area, with only overfull on-street parking. Our thought was that if we got there early enough, the streets would not yet be full. At 7:45am the streets were only three quarters full! We drove up and down the streets 'til we did indeed find the missing shop. Plus, there was parking across from it! We purchased the weed killer we needed, plus some sulfur for getting rid of those nasty little chiggers.

Lots more stops during the day.  Being that we were close to the east side of town at this time, we went to the Soriana hiper-mart. This store has the best oatmeal. This may seem a small item to visit a store for, however, we do like good oatmeal for breakfast! We started down the aisle for our oatmeal and soon Carmen admitted to Dan that they had best take a cart. The veggies looked especially good this day, also this is the only store that seems to carry good canned sweet corn. The fresh baked goods were very attractive, And there were some pies with real pie crust!  Crusted pies seem to be rare down here. We selected a pineapple one. It was good, but the surprise for us was that the filling must have been pineapple juice thickened with cornstarch. It's saving factor was that it was not over-sweet. Since we do not drive the distance to this store often, we strolled all the aisles. Yes, our cart slowly filled. We found some more ant-proof plastic containers at a good price, along with small milks and juices that we give to folks who ring our door bell or call at the gate for anything we can give them. Several come by each week.

At Home Depot we exchanged the miter box which was missing a part. Of course we always check out the plants, and often buy one. This time we bought four. Two from the discount shelf, plus another large bag of soil.  Onwards to IMSS where we stood in line for ten minutes and never saw the line of over a dozen folks ahead of us move. We will go back another day. Walmart for various items and we spied a whole roasted adobo chicken, plus for ten pesos more we got 500g ranch fried potatoes. They were delicious and the potatoes made three meals. Next the RG store looking for a vacuum cleaner. Finally got back to downtown Fortín, for a fill-up at the Pemex station and a stop at the supermarket for their local apples. Home again before 1:30pm. Kitties met us at the door, they like us to be at home with them!.