El mas lluvioso mes del año

(Domingo 01 - Sábado 07 Septiembre)  Now that our medium sized bedroom has a bed in it, it is time to move the stored wood out of this room. But where shall we store it? Next problem, the hose hanger that Dan installed in the front of the house has got to be moved to a more accessible location. He had put it where it looked best, right over the hose bibb, but too many plants got crushed when doing the watering with it. Much time was spent on cleaning up our backyard area.

It was our understanding that on the first and fifteenth of the month, the Similares (generics) drugstores in town had a twenty-five per cent discount, so we walked into Fortín center to stock up on the meds that Carmen cannot get dispensed from IMSS. She is allergic to the brand IMSS carries, and they stock only one of each formulation. Turns out that this month, since the 1^st falls on a sunday, that the deal is on the second, monday. Since our hands are empty, we wandered thru the flower market shops. Carmen unfortunately wants one of everything. Luckily our property will not hold that many plants. We came home with only six. We are still looking for a hen & chicks plant.

A man came to our back gate, selling plant stands made from black enameled rebar, and we bought one which holds five plants. Carmen spent time transplanting her herbs into the colorful little pots we bought to fit the stand. The pots are too small for all the herbs that she started from seed, so we now find these herbs here and there throughout other pots. The two long planters that had the herbs now sit empty, waiting for...?

Early in the day we did some skype “video messages” of the panoramic views from our mirador, to send to some friends. Thought we would be able to copy and resend to others, but have not figured out yet how to send a video to more than that one person. We are still waiting to do more videoing, when we're home in the morning, and not otherwise occupied, when Mt Orizaba is not hiding behind clouds, as it does by 10am, or earlier, at this time of year. The radio station we listen to in the mornings reminded us that September is the mas lluvioso mes del año (the rainiest month of the year) here.

Monday morning we were at IMSS by eight am for Carmen's monthly appointment to get her prescriptions reauthorized and filled. Our time was for 9am and we were taken at 10 am. Seems that one has a two hour wait, no matter what time one arrives, because people are taken in order of their arrival, not according to appointment time. Just take a book to read, enjoy people watching, or napping,

Next stop was grocery shopping. (Carmen got a surprise when sorting thru the carrot bin. A fellow, dressed as an employee, looked her in the eye and said buenos dias, with a great big smile! The surprise was that he is our next door neighbor, Valentin. So now we know he works here at Walmart.) We had invited Ania and Frank for dinner wednesday, so we needed to stock us on some foods for the planned menu. Today's new item that we found at the store is smoked tuna, at half the price of un-smoked tuna steaks right next to them in the case. Always interesting to see what new foods will be here each time we shop. Could be anything from canned goods, meats, fresh veggies or fruits we are unaccustomed to. Adds to our excitement of being here. Hmm, a fresh spinach bread too. Carmen used to bake bread frequently, but the stores we shop at have such a good variety, that she rarely has this task, though her bread is a different sort than what bakeries produce here. Yep – this was likely written before, but breads deserve lots of mentions!

Got our 25% discount Monday at the Similares drugstores. Thankfully we did our bank stop the day before, as there was a block-long line waiting for the ATM, being the first monday of the month. Stopped by the grocery store in town to buy some beets for a salad. They usually have good fresh ones, and there were none at Walmart today. Found a fresh pineapple at a fruit stand. And lastly we went to the electric company to pay our two month bill of less than US$25. Electricity is expensive here, but we are in the lowest bracket that still gives a special discount to small consumers, as our only electric usage comes from lights and outlets (TV, computers, refrigerator, and a rarely used fan, which we used only twice this past year).

Since we installed the wide eaves trough along the edge of part of our back roof, we now have a deluge in one spot at then end of the gutter, instead of all along this ten foot area. We wanted to keep the water from falling onto the terraza just outside our bedroom door. That part is working great. Now we have a waterfall effect hitting the ground level patio. We bought some white largish decorative rocks from Home Depot, and put them in a large tray, so that the water falling from the roof now drops into there and more slowly leaves the area and flows out of the slightly slanted parking area to the street, instead of drowning the planting area which it is adjacent to. Unfortunately, the harder it rains the farther out the water falls, missing the landing spot we made for it. Back to the drawing board!

Tuesday the young lady at DIF called us, to come in to their office in Fortín to finalize the paper work and receive our senior INAPAM id cards. These will give discounts on public transportation, admissions, and some stores. We feel almost guilty for taking advantage of this program, but we are gray haired now. This gobbled up a couple hours of time. As we walked home, we saw the grader just finishing scraping up the escombro (dirt & debris) the city had left on the road, from doing our sewer connection.  Now, aside from some little patching of the steps which Dan will do, our construction job is at an end.

We unpacked our pictures and together we got those hung on the walls. The hardest part was of course, deciding where to put each one. Also we hung some of our fabric hangings, like Dan's Yale rug in the stairwell. This was a tricky job, on top of a ladder and stretching to reach high on the wall over the open stairwell, to set the anchors. Also put one of Dan's mom's quilts over the new bed, and a colorful batik we purchased when on a cruise in the Caribbean – from Caribelle Batik at Romney Manor on the island of St Kitts (http://www.caribellebatikstkitts.com/caribelle_batik.asp). Still have a lovely piece from Italy that Dan's daughter, Harmony, gave us from when she was in school there for a semester. We are looking for just the right pieces of local color for a couple spots of wall yet.

Dan spent a couple hours cleaning while Carmen did some cooking for the next days meal, both of which continued the next day. Finally there was a day when Ania & Frank could get together with us for a meal on our rooftop! We four have had many past weeks of sore backs or bad weather or house guests which have prevented this meal from happening high up on the mirador. Wanting a nice meal, but easy to carry up all those steps, was a dilemma.

Carmen went the route of appetizers, with nothing hot. Carrying items up the steep stairway is not too difficult, but bringing them back down is a feat! So – in a five gallon bucket, were stacked, all the plates, soup cups, silverware and water and wine glasses. Next came the smoked tuna, deviled eggs and stuffed mushrooms. Then the biscuits made with some cornmeal, chorizo sausage and cheese to the usual dough, topped and covered with and table cloth and napkins. Dan carried the bucket, just like a picnic basket! Carmen carried the room temperature carrot soup in a pitcher. Ania took the bottle of wine and water pitcher, and Frank carted the large bowl of a salad of cooked beets, apple, garbanzo beans, broccoli, and grapes with a fat free caesar dressing, on a bed of butter crunch lettuce. Most elegant looking and oh so delicious! Earlier Dan had carried a card table and chairs up.

The view is so very gorgeous from the top of our house. There was a wee breeze and no flies until a moment after Carmen foolishly remarked about no bugs! Frank suggested that we install a zip line between our houses. Wow! Wouldn't that be something, going over town and cane fields from our mirador to the hill they live on! While packing up to carry all back down the stairs, Dan managed to flip the wine cork and opener off the deck onto the roof top. He retrieved it, which gave us all a bit of excitement. After carrying our items back down, we played a game of rummy cube. Ania won, as usual. Then we had our dessert. Carmen made a cheesecake, and it was the worst she had ever made – extremely dense. Why? Who knows, maybe the cream cheese brand, over baking it, or not whipping long enough? It was sad, and a challenge for the next time she attempts it.

Ania brought a plant for Carmen that she had started, and Carmen sent her home with several starts she had been hoping for. Unlike us, they have a huge piece of property, so lots of room for more plants, which is good since they have almost one of everything. They also have room for trees, shrubs, and tall and sprawling plants. Lucky them – or maybe not – all that yard area requires a lot of upkeep, and we have purposely left that part of our lives behind us.

Needless to say, the next day for breakfast we had party left overs – in the form of an omelet stuffed to falling apart with fresh mushrooms, smoked tuna, broccoli and tomato, with a good local gouda cheese And there were two biscuits left to be freshened in the toaster oven. Oh yum. Yogurt on the side of course.

Dan has been going over tax returns for some northern folks. Carmen fluttered through the day with the plants. Amazing how time consuming they can be. Before these fun things, though, we had a lonnnng spanish lesson while sitting up on the mirador. Most difficult for Carmen to concentrate up there. Too many things to keep track of – birds, butterflies, Gardi cat who joined us, cars on the street below, people walking by, and even a plane flew over. In Anacortes we had frequent overflights, but here they are rare and this was probably only a business jet, unlike the frequent fighter jets in the US from the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. We're glad to be missing the sometimes annoying “sounds of freedom.”

A tropical storm was predicted for the afternoon, so laundry was hung out early and dried. The rainy weather was later than predicted and never did get really bad here. Carmen made some ginger cookies to help us thru the evening. She makes and freezes dough in small batches, then bakes them off in the toaster oven, just enough to eat up right away.

We always take in about an hour or so of evening TV news on ForoTV (and sometimes a little CÑÑ), with Dan translating the highlights for Carmen. After only two weeks of school, the big news is the teachers are on strike, protesting the federal government's education reform program which will have teachers take competency tests, with possible firings for those that fail three evaluations. A big manifestación outside the international airport in Mexico City slowed things down there for the day. There seems to be a general willingness on the part of citizens here to let aggrieved groups have their say with actions like this, but it's getting to the point that parents are becoming angry that classes are on hold.

Friday was a chilly 70 degrees. Time to have the oven on and make a lime meringue pie. Our carpenter came by to tell us that he will be delivering the repaired kitchen cabinet door tomorrow. He had been working on a big job in Córdoba, but he hadn't forgotten us. The original door warped badly after he had installed it. He was trying to straighten it, and if that was not possible, he will have made us a new one. Carpenters must have a hard time here, with little kiln-dried wood available for purchase.

We barely had our eyes open saturday morning before a woodpecker ratta-tat-tatted on a wood en beam above the bedroom window. Up near the roof, we were unable to actually see it. Hope he comes back sometime we're outside, as we like to identify and tally the fauna and flora around us here. We then enjoyed listening to the radio (classic hits on XHSIC “La Poderosa” in Cordoba) music for awhile before the kitties could talk us into getting up.

A flower seller stopped at our gate. His fresh flowers are lonnnnng stemmed and so beautiful! Today we bought a bunch containing Alstroemeria and another of large gerber daisies . Hope they last two weeks as the last ones we purchased from him did. Carmen put one branch of the alstroemeria into a pot of soil – hoping to root it. We had one of these Peruvian lilies growing in Anacortes. Dan has spent the day pecking way at his computer on financial stuff. Carmen spent the day with our plants. Actually sewing the straw like coconut fiber on to the mesh form we made to hold our staghorn fern.

We have a banana every morning for breakfast and they have gotten a bit ahead of us. Since we had recently purchased a six hole muffin pan that nicely fits into our toaster oven, Carmen made banana muffins for our 10:30am snack. The kitties seem tired out today, so they must have worked hard protecting us last night. Dan had suggested that the wine left over from dinner with Ania & Frank wednesday, be used in cooking. The result was our mid-day meal: chicken thighs roasted in our toaster oven, with veggies (carrots, shallots, chayote and garlic cloves, thyme) and red wine. Many children about today. In fact, lots of folks walking into town today. An old red pickup truck with large cans or raw milk also drove by. It actually had a tin cup attached to one of the milk cans. Our carpenter never arrived, so for sure he had something pressing come up. We had wanted to go for a walk, but did not for fear of missing him. Tomorrow for sure a walk.

Mueble nuevo

(Domingo 25 - Sábado 31 Agosto) 

Dan started the week putting up the wood shelves all along the perimeter of the railing around the mirador. He drilled 72+ holes thru the steel tubing, and had very sore hands and one broken drill bit when he finished Carmen worked on mending, or more accurately, she finished hand sewing a backing onto one of Dan's mom's pillows, using the last piece of the purple fabric we had for chair seats. She then hemmed three pairs of Dan's jeans. They were too long since he's lost weight. Also she made and sewed a piece of material that he attaches to an inner safety pocket for his cash and ID, into many pairs of his slacks. Carmen carries her money in a wallet in a pants pocket secured with a safety pin.

A monday morning with sprinkles. So much so that Carmen had to use an umbrella (a first since living here) when she walked to the dentist for a teeth whitening. So nice to have a dentist who speaks enough english that Carmen does not need Dan along to communicate for her. There is a beautiful large mimosa tree in front of the dental office. In the tree was the yellow-breasted chat, a bird we've spotted before in the neighborhood. Carmen also saw a woodpecker, which we think was a pico mexicano (Picoides scalaris, or ladder backed woodpecker) with red on the back of the head, while she was walking up the street.

Our mueble nuevo (new furniture) was supposed to arrive from the carpentry shop in Peñuela today. And it did, at 7pm, on a pickup truck with six fellows! Couldn't figure out why so many helpers were needed until they started to carry in the queen size bed frame, and then the head board! It was quite a feat going up and around our staircase. The six natural finish dining room chairs look really great with our marble-topped table. The bed however was somewhat disappointing in that the color is much darker than we had ordered. The color we showed the company on a table they had in the shop for a sample, was stained “chocolate,” however what we got looks like black. Also, the boards that the mattress sits on were so rough that Dan had to sand them down so that the mattress would not get torn up. Plus, the lower shelf on the head board is really rough, such that Dan will have to sand it and refinish it. Oh well, the price was very good and structurally the items are sound and the wood strong. Bed and chairs were built for us from xochicuahuitl (Cordia megalantha, tropical black laurel) a local wood that is resistant to termites, and used here for the best furniture.

Since the city now has their part of the sewer connection finished (a mere eight months after we requested it to be done), Dan called our crew in for tuesday. They all four arrived at eight am the next morning. Before they arrived, Carmen was bustling about getting a laundry hung outside and watering plants, hoping not to be in their way. In her hurry, she forgot that she is no longer as agile as years gone by. She hopped up, or tried to hop up on top of a couple milk carts to water some plants near the ceiling. She fell backwards and landed on her head, right hip and rght elbow. She immediately put a bag of frozen cut nopal on the big bump on the back of the head. Nothing broken. Thankfully she has very strong bones. Pretty sore for over a week though.

Dan gave Jose Luís the list of things to do. They worked right along, but needed more cement and sand. Dan ordered it first thing and it was promised to be here by noon. By 2pm they were out of cement, having finished the registro (sewer connection box), built forms for the steps at the end of our sidewalk (where the city had destroyed them) and a few other areas we wanted repaired, so they had to finish the day with some painting. The cement and sand arrived well after they left at 6pm, with no real explanation about the delay.

This is the first day, in a week plus, that it has not been raining by the middle of the afternoon and it did not rain until late at night, so the paint had a good drying day. They finished the painting and left at 4pm. The painting was to put another coat of blue where some of the walls were turning partly white for some unknown reason.. They had been painted earlier, but perhaps the last coat had been skipped in these few areas.

Dan sanded the new bed mattress support boards and then cleaned up the mess and we made the bed up. Gardi cat has decided that this is his bed. The quilt Dan's mom had made for him (she did a lot of quilting) was put on the new bed. Not wanting kitty foot prints and fur all over it, we put a large sheet over it and then a big towel in his favorite spot, which is up against the pillows. When he is not there, we find Smij cat happily stretched out there. Cats do love new things. The termómetro only climbed to 79ºF today. We find that we get chilly at about 72ºF now. Our blood seems to have thinned.

The next day our crew was here before 7am. Yesterday they had to walk thru knee deep water (near their village) to get here, but today the flooding had gone down. The concrete work this second day for the crew included a new area where Dan has constructed a curtain-wall to conceal some wood storage and a pad below the water faucet in the backyard, filling the stairstep forms and paving the street gutter area above where our sewer pipe was connected, plus a gallon paintpail of cement with a rebar piece sticking up to provide a base for the bambu pole that will support the growing vanilla orchid vine. They worked fast and finished by midday. It was good to have them here for a bit, we miss them. We left our car outside the fence for the night since there was new concrete at the entry to our parking area.

Thursday was a shopping day, at Home Depot and Walmart. We saw for the first time around here, a concrete pumper. Usually the concrete is either made by hand at the edge of the road, or in a cement mixer, and then carried by five gallon bucket, rarely by wheelbarrow, to the needed location. The nearest readi-mix plant is in Veracruz city, 90 minutes from here, so we assume the pumper unit also had to come from that distance. On the drive home, we saw a traffic accident, actually it occurred in a parking area just off the road. A pickup truck ran into the rear end of a taxi and then sped away – the driver at fault didn't want to get involved, and probably be hauled off to jail. Lots of glass flying about. Thankfully we did not see the whole happening, because we surely did not want to get involved. We believe the taxi was backing out as the truck swung into the area, and they collided.

Next day, while Dan was removing the forms around the cured concrete, Carmen saw Josefina, who is probably about our age, walking up the street after her young dog, leash in hand. This dog likes to slip out their gate when it opens, and he tends to run up the hill towards our location. Doggie ran into the new roadway next to the church contraesquina from us. Josefina was looking exhausted and every time the dog got almost close enough to be grabbed, he of course dashed away again. He thought it was a little game for him, it seems. After watching this for a few minutes, Carmen took a tiny piece of carne (meat) across the street, showed it to Josefina and held her hand out to the dog. Poor puppy fell for it. He was caught and the leash was attached. Dan came out and talked to Josefina, knowing that she and Carmen could not really communicate much. Josefina liked the herbs growing inside our fence and asked if she could have a start of the salvia (sage). She is the lady who gave us our piquin pepper plant, which is growing well. So now we finally gave her something back, which felt good. She also told us that the big tree next door to us in Valentin's yard is a guanabana (soursop), which grows huge spikey fruits the size of bowling balls, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soursop  Later in the day we put up the little curtain wall near the back gate, giving us a spot to store lumber for projects in an out-of-sight corner.

Wherever we have lived before, the nuts in many desserts are walnuts. Not so here. If ice cream or other item says nuez (nut), there will be pecans in it. (If they're peanuts, it will say cacahuates). We have thus far not found walnuts anywhere, although one can also find avellanas (hazelnuts/filberts)and almendras (almonds) in the stores. Another confusing thing:  look up walnut OR pecan in a Mexican dictionary, and they both translate to nuez.  Look up pecan tree and it translates nogal, which is also the word for walnut.  Just another item to add to out “Can't Find Here” list, and perhaps stock up on next trip NoB.

Saturday was a day of many door bell ringings. Or just voices raised in a Buenos Dias, trying for our attention. Today we had at the backyard gate – Dan was out there working away – Artemio asking about possibly more plywood, a person with a car asking directions, and the mailman, delivering two magazines. The cartero rides a motorcycle with side bags, and he nearly always hand-delivers rather than putting the mail in our box, and takes the opportunity to chat. Most days we have one or two people at the front gate, and this day we had: a man selling fresh-dug potatoes, a woman selling homemade foods, a man selling cut flowers, and a man asking for mexican money or food, (he must have been from south of the border). It's rarely this many. Well of course Gardi had his friend, Mayra, give him some pets thru the fence, usually once a day or so.

We read on the MexConnect forum today that Rolly Brook, at 82 years old, has retired from moderating the posts there. We, along with many others, will miss his inputs. His website, www.rollybrook.com, is one of the most valuable for information about how to move to Mexico, and was a real resource for us in our planning to live here. Dan would like to get more involved on the web, sharing information that others might find useful. At this time, Dan really does not do much more than monitoring his favorite forums, and occasionally posting. This blog is all we seem to be able to manage now. Maybe it would be good for him to take the time to become more involved – we really have nothing pressing here that can not be put off for a few days. But, it seems our tasks will never end. Not complaining - we enjoy the keeping busy.

Chac

(Domingo 14 - Sábado 20 Julio )

From the latter half of June thru this week, we have been experiencing tropical rainstorms almost every evening. Now this is not a great hardship, since we are inside and dry, and the precip is not cold or unpleasant, just a lot of water coming down all at once. If we were other people, with desires to use the evenings to be out and about, it would crimp our style. But, we are either curled up with a book or enjoying some TV fare, and the amount of falling moisture outside just adds to the comfy ambiance. And, we appreciate the almost clock-like schedule that rain keeps, as virtually every day provides many hours of dry outdoor time to get some work or travel done. We always said that, coming from the US Pacific Northwest, we would miss the clouds and green vegetation that comes with the rain, one of the reasons we chose to settle here, at 3000 feet near the southern end of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range. Gulf clouds blow in from the east, and when they hit the mountains behind us, they release the moisture to fill the streams and irrigate the land here in western Veracruz. Tropical showers are a small price to pay for otherwise ideal (never too hot, too cold, too dry or too damp) living conditions we have encountered here. 

For several weeks we have been serenaded, come evening time, by what we thought was some sort of goose or duck living down the street from our house. Sounding something like a metal file being dragged across a metal drum, we finally realized that what we were hearing was the call of a Mexican Burrowing Frog. Sometimes it's confusingly called a toad, in fact in Spanish it's a Sapo borracho (drunken toad) because of it's belch-like call. Only 3” or so long when adult, it can inflate itself and release a very loud croak. Hailing from the Jurassic period (dinosaur times), it's the most evolutionary distinct amphibian alive today. Comes out to call and mate only in very heaviest of rainstorms (which flood the streets and streams in just a couple of minutes), and spends the rest of the time underground subsisting on ants and termites. There's a stream and banana field just down the block, an ideal environment for this frog which spends most of the year in shallow burrows, and that revels in a downpour such as we have been experiencing. We named this particular frog Chac (the Mayan rain god). The hard rains are mostly over, so no serenades now. We wonder whether next year we'll hear more of these weird creatures, if mating this year was successful.

Our passion fruit vine is growing like gangbusters on the funky bamboo trellis we made for is. Lots of the most intricate lavender-colored flowers promise lots of fruit “capsules” down the line. The new storage unit in the master bedroom is finished and is starting to be filled up with stuff. Dan moved on to creating shelves for the closet space in the new bathroom addition hallway. These are made of two layers of our leftover 3/8” plywood over 1x2 interior stiffening, attached to the walls invisibly along the edges. He also started on a slotted bottom shelf for footwear for the same closet.

Carmen started creating lightweight curtains that we'll hang over our bedroom closets, to minimally conceal the luggage and boxes we store up high over these storage units, yet still let air to flow thru. In this climate, one takes care to not create spaces without allowing for air to move past stored items, so as to reduce the chance of mildew. We'll keep tabs on the chest area below the seat in the new bedroom storage unit, and will drill holes in the front face if we have problems there.

It is interesting to occasionally look at the stats Blogger provides, to see that this blog is approaching an average of 400 page views a month, with a high of about 600 views. We are gratified that our musings are finding a little following, and hope that opening up our lives to you a bit is appreciated, whether you are just keeping up with our doings, or are using this source as inspiration for a future move to Mexico.

In our walks and drives around Fortín, we have noted a good number of attractive homes for rent and for sale, and wonder why more folks don't elect to become expats and spend some or all of their time down here, out of the expensive rat race that is the US today. Carmen remembers talking to Bill, our mailman in Anacortes, who spoke of a great number of people he came across who spoke of retiring to Mexico, and that we were the only ones he knew who actually did it. Social security and savings stretch a long way farther here SoB. A few vacations investigating living conditions around Mexico will turn up a place with the ideal climate, housing, healthcare, social environment and any other condition that's personally critical for enjoying your life beyond the working years.