En Turno

Domingo 17 – Sábado 23 Febrero 2013.  (Dom 17^th ) A pancake breakfast morning, with chopped dates for Dan and, yes, with chocolate chips for Carmen. Dan remembers a Peace Corps language teacher who insisted that "pancake" was a spanish word, because they were a form of pan (bread)!  Today Carmen worked painting festermicide around planters and on the window frame materials that have been taken out and will be relocated, plus the new door frame pieces purchased from Home Depot. Dan started working on some of the electrical boxes in the bedroom, where the lines had been changed due to the new door opening.

Next he installed flashing all along the north end of the porch roof, and festermicided the tail ends of the tongue-in-groove roof sheathing and the face of the porch roof beams. A difficult job to insert the flashing in the crack between the roof slab and the sheathing, then caulking the joint at the top. This provides a drip edge for water to find, instead of soaking the wood every time it rains. Then he glued and screwed together the bedroom window frame that got damaged when is was removed, so now it's ready to install in a planned new opening on the north wall of the master bedroom. This will give us an outstanding view of the snow-capped Pico de Orizaba in the distance.

While Dan was working on the north side of the house, our new acquaintance, Edwin, and family stopped and chatted a few minutes. So good to keep meeting more folks – especially those who speak english!  The sage we planted here in September is growing nicely. Now what to do with it? Today we featured potatoes boiled and sliced, simmered in butter and chopped fresh sage. Quite tasty.

(Lun 18^th)  No crew today. Luis called this morn to tell us that they had been recruited to help with a bridge repair. Apparently, when you live in a small community, the family is expected to periodically contribute time to a faena (service task) that will benefit the local area.  Sometimes, you can arrange to pay some money for materials instead of providing the labor.  Luis's community is repairing the road and will eventually build a new bridge to replace a washed-out one leading up to the little group of homes there.

We moved stuff around in the area below where the skylight is being opened, where the comedor (dining area) is.  All our tools, supplies and things like the new water heater have been being stored there, in addition to our dining table.  In consideration of the soon-to-be hole in the ceiling, we moved the table into the living room.  Things are getting pretty crowded inside and we will be happy when the construction is finished, when Dan can move the tools into the back end of the cuarto de servicio (laundry room), and all the fixtures and fittings are in place.

(Mar 19^th)  Good to have our crew of four here this morn. Dan took Luis to Home Depot with him today, after Luis set the crew up for a couple hour's work. Luis had been in a Home Depot in Indiana when he lived there. Seems he has several primos (cousins) living in the US. Luis was impressed with the low prices and variety, compared to other stores selling these types of items.

As Carmen was skyping with her brother, Guy, Luis told Dan that we must order more cement, blocks and rebar to be delivered today. Drove into town to order the items and make a hardware and bank stop. Since we were but a few doors from one of our favorite chicken rotisseries, we bought one for lunch. Also in town was the propane truck that delivers our propane, of which we only have a delivery about every three months. Dan asked them to come to our house. He did not give them exact address or instructions, because he thought they recognized him.   Apparently they did not remember where we lived, as we saw them drive by, but they did not stop.

We went to the Super Ahorros grocery to buy some nopal (prickly pear cactus) leaves or pads. They did have them, but they were not well cleaned of the spines, so we only bought a grapefruit and avocado. Cat temptations apparently are not in yet. The manager who had ordered them was not in.

(Mie 20^th) Yesterday Carmen did a fair amount of work with festermicide. She also read more on the internet about getting rid of those beautiful, yet destructive white flies. Nothing so far is working, and the plants are suffering – which means Carmen is also suffering.

Got a skype from Frank while they were waiting for a bus at the Mexico City airport. They will be bussing into Orizaba and then taking a taxi on home. Same method we use. We did offer to pick them up, but they stuck with the taxi. It would have been difficult in our car, since Ania's mother is with them, plus her luggage from Poland. Will be good to have them back here again. They have been on the west coast, in Nayarit, since mid-December. They offered to let us use their house over there for the next however many weeks we wanted. Maybe another year. We just want to get our house project done this year. Their little house there is but a few blocks from where Merv and Delia stay every winter. The couple lives in Marblemount, WA, one of Dan's clients and friends from there. Merv operated the gas station while we had our restaurant there.

Part of our crew worked today on some of the small structures for the terraza: the enclosure for the top part of the water heater closet and the hand sink counter, which necessitated embedding the drain pipes in the wall and finalizing the vent stack location. Most homes here omit the vent piping for the drain pipes, but Dan designed this system with a stack running up inside the wall behind the toilet, providing a wet vent for the infrequently used sink on the terrace above, and then the vent continues up along the party wall in the southeast corner of the terrace. The noticeable symptom of unvented drain systems is sewer odors backing up the drains. The location for the skylight into the dining room was calculated and marked out, and the noisy, difficult job of chiseling out the rectangle of concrete was started. In the bathroom below, others did further work aplanando (smoothing, making plane) the block and brick wall surfaces.

(Jue 21^st) Spent less than an hour in line at IMSS for paper work for visiting a doctor in Orizaba, which we actually got this time! Next made a stop at Home Depot and ordered our floor tile for our terraza, to be delivered saturday. Finally, stopped at Walmart and low & behold, there in the cooler department was one of the items that Carmen has been missing – italian sausage, Johnsonville. Also there were small breakfast sausages of the same brand! Maybe bratwurst will be there next? Our crew was here in full force. They finished digging the concrete out where our skylight over the dining room will go, plus much work on bathroom walls.  What a good day--------

(Vie 22^nd) We spent over five hours waiting for Carmen's turno to go into the doctors office at the IMSS hospital in Orizaba. We finally saw Dr Alma Estevez, a specialist for scleroderma. She is very nice and pretty. Probably mid to late thirties. She gave us all the prescriptions we needed and we then had them filled for absolutely free at the IMSS pharmacy. And here we thought we would be refused because of this pre- existing condition. Of course we still might be. Carmen will be smart and try one new prescription at a time so that if there is a problem, we will know which one the problem stems from. Yes, the meds are all different, but according to the internet some actually sound better. The doctor actually gave Carmen an inhaler instead of nose spray. For the first time since she can remember, she breathed in fresh air today! Wonder if it will keep her nasal passage clear.

Carmen was supposed to get an appointment two months from now, but since we will be traveling in May, the appointment is in June. The clerk signing us up for the appointment clued us in that despite being given a fixed appointment time, all the patients arriving that afternoon will go in to see the doctor in turno (in turn or in order) that their booklets get dropped on her desk.  So this is the reason that everyone rushed up to the desk at 3:15pm -- Carmen, being polite, let them push past her, and hence ended up at the bottom of the stack, with four long hours to wait (and reading matter forgotten at home).  For the next appointment, she will have to have a total thoracic xray and very complete blood test, which can be obtained at the IMSS facility in Cordoba.  All prescriptions are refillable at our local IMSS clinic pharmacy. This system seems great so far - as long as one has days to wait in lines. Also, since we had to go to Orizaba for this appointment, we could collect about US$5 for viaticos (traveling expenses), which we do not intend to collect. Biggest problem with Orizaba is the parking situation, but we were lucky and found a spot about five blocks away. Also we had to drive the windy roads home, after dark. Not good for us.

Crew worked mainly on the area over the dining room, building the three tiers, very wide escalones (steps) really, for planters and seating.  These have to be in place before we can measure for and order the metal stairway going up to the mirador. The guys also filled in block, reducing the old bedroom window into a door shape.

(Sáb 23^rd) Water lines completed today. We will keep them full of water over the weekend to be sure we have no fugas (leaks) or gotas (drips). Also, Dan soldered short sections of copper water line together where they would exit from the walls (a little stronger than leaving CPVC fittings there for the valves and showerheads to connect to) and Luis installed them in the walls. Luis called Dan, in somewhat of a panic. He thought Dan had set the left side faucets to turn the wrong direction. Here they often both turn the same direction, which happens when one doesn't buy a matched set.  These however were purchased in sets, so all was the way we wanted it, with handle swings mirrored left and right.

Our delivery from Home Depot of loseta (floor tiles), tile cement, and pasta (grout) arrived this morning. We placed another order for sand to be delivered monday morning. We'll need this for more stucco work, and for the bathroom floor slab.

Carmen worked on weeding and watering plants, then painted the rusted brackets that Dan had scraped and wire-brushed, which hold up the huge gutters out front. Dan also festermicided and put more metal flashing along the front porch overhang, to prevent wood rot, and then caulked the joint.  Fortunately, the caulk he has now is water cleanup, so smoothing the joint went much easier for him than last time. While we worked out front, a fellow stopped and asked if we are the people from the states. Visiting down the street, he had heard we were here. He welcomed us to a the area, in english. He is from Rio Blanco, on the west side of Orizaba.