Escalando

Domingo 10 – Sábado 16 Marzo 2013. (Dom 10^th) News! Carmen's brother, Gurney, who is with Lowes company, has met a lady in Monterrey, where he has been working. They have decided to get married the end of April and will reside in Monterrey, Mexico. He will either become a general manage for Lowe's or take one of the other jobs he has been offered. He says he loves it here, and he was considering moving to Mexico even before he met this lady. Lilia is a pediatric ear, nose & throat doctor. She has offices in two hospitals. As we understand it, her father is in the construction business and would like Gurney to manage for him. Hope all works out well for them.

Dan painted the welded protection bars for the bathroom window and gate protecting the patio door openings

The overhead power & communications lines thruout town are filled with these epiphytes, little native orquideas, which are now in bloom. A while ago a large clump blew off and landed right in front of our front gate. What could we do but put it on the wall there and mist it now and then. So little we had to do, for so much beauty. Beyond the greenery spikes, there is are short pink stems and then on each the tiny yellow flower juts out. Pretty up close, but not real showy at a distance.

(Lun 11^th) Left home at 6am to get to IMSS in Córdoba for Dan's blood test. Were in line by 6:30am and out by 7:45.  We're finally getting in sync with the scheduling practices and procedures to shorten our wait times here.  Had to buy more linen-pattern tiles, to complete the shower stall walls, so we drove to the east end of the city to the El Gigante store that sold us the original batch of these azulejos.

Also shopped at Home Depot for interior paint in a basic semi-gloss white. The top quality paints here are Behr. At Walmart today, we bought foods, wall sealer for the laundry room & addition interior walls & ceiling and a room deodorizer. We brought one with us, but have misplaced it. Need it for the waste cans in bathrooms. No pastry bought today, now that is a change!  Fellows did not come in today. It was raining hard and Luis had to take sick daughter with the flu, to the doctor.

(Mar 12^th) Carmen started the blue curtains for the smallest bedroom. She made a fresh veggie & chicken soup with dumplings. Since nopales (prickly pear pads) are supposed to help control blood sugar counts and also cholesterol, we are trying things with them. They are pretty slimy just fried, but in this soup, they were like green beans with an ever so slight sour taste. Actually very good, plus they thicken broth as if one used a bit of cornstarch. Dan read and did taxes – it's that time of year.

Crew arrived on time except for Luis, who had to take child to doctor again. He was here by 9:30am and they continued the tiling and wall prep.  They also installed the protective gate on the door from the master bedroom out onto the terraza.

(Mie 13^th) Today David of the crew is home with the flu. Carmen found the first cigarette butt on ground after crew left last night. She has zero tolerance for them. Dan will talk to the fellows and inform them of this this concern. Our guys do not smoke – so it must have been a visitor of theirs. He later learned it was one of brothers.

We were at the water department by 8:15am today with all our paper work again. We talked to the architect and after perusing our papers for the second time, he calculated the cost. We will pay it tomorrow, and the work could supposedly start within a week. We must decide if we will supply the materials or the city will. Seems it might cost a good deal more if the city orders the materials, but then they will not be sitting here overly long in our way. The city engineer is supposed to be here today to give us all the quantities & specs for such a purchase.

While in Fortín, we bought the additional curtain hanging fittings, went to the atm and to the Comex paint store to buy another small roller for the painting. We also looked at and took home some paint samplechips for the exterior of our house. Apparently Comex no longer has a color designation given to us by the former owner “azul lavanda” (lavender blue), so we'll have to try to select one of their present colors. Their highest quality exterior latex paint goes for about US$24 a gallon in five gallon (19 liter) pails.

Luis had to leave at 11:45am, due to an emergency at home, where his oldest brother was seriously ill. The other brother who is working a couple houses from here, also went home. Painting and tiling today. Our french doors, which are presently the outer wall of the dining room, are now being scrubbed. Lots of mortar was spattered on them. The rest of the crew worked on finishing the top of the wall on the south side of the terraza, and painting the little alcove where our water heater sits.

Carmen finished the blue curtains for the smallest bedroom. Next she gets to work with the deep purple Guatemalan fabric. When installing the rods for hanging the blue curtains, we found that a window pane had a space above it to the frame. Dan got out his caulk and took care of that. Eventually, varmints will have a harder time entering our domain. At the end of the day, our welder stopped by with long steel rectangular tube stock for the new stairs, and stashed his arc-welder here to start the job tomorrow.

(Jue 14^th) Dan had a noon doctors appointment with the IMSS urologist and we only waited a few minutes to be taken! Turns out that Dan's PSA test was normal, no problem – all is well. Thank you Lord.

The day was like a whirlwind. Just dashing from one place to another. We did take the time to purchase more Guatemalan cloth for window coverings for the two French doors being moved, one to new bedroom door opening on the terraza and one at the end of new hallway opening onto the rear patio/parking area. A stop at Home Depot and Walmart too, and altogether we were gone seven hours today. We also bought about 17 pounds of beautiful juice oranges from a seller who does business out of the back of his pickup, parked on the bulevar between Cordoba and Fortin. We had noticed him there on other days, so we decided to try him out. The oranges were half the price of those at Walmart.

Also our crew was down to three again today, with Luis home with athe older brother who was succumbing rapidly from liver failure. Visible progress on a number of tasks Dan set them to, with Heri in charge of the two helpers. Maurico, who will be building our stairway, put up the two steel tube stringers for the rooftop stairway, tying them into the terraza floor and at the bottom edge of the roof deck.

(Vie 15^th)  And we thought yesterday was a whirlwind!! Crew of four showed up a bit after 7am this morn. More often here a bit later. At 8am, our welder and helper arrived, to work on our stairs to the mirador. We had two of our crew, plus the two welders working on our terraza space above the new bathroom. Luis and helper, Alfonso, took out the old water heater, painted the rest of the alcove which was behind the old heater, hooked into the old water lines with the connection to the new bathroom, and installed the larger new propane heater. This required lots of soldering by Dan and more by Luis.

Dan was being pulled from one job to another all day! Later he went into the water department to pay for the sewer connection we need, only to find the person he needed to see was out of the building, and was told to come back between 4:30pm and 5pm. He was there before 4:25pm and found the water commission building closed for the day, as everyone left early for the three day holiday weekend. Monday Mexico celebrates the birthday of Benito Juarez, one of the leaders of the revolution and a dead president. The jobsite engineer has still not come by to give us a complete list of materials and specifications.

Carmen made a fava bean soup with lots of fresh nopal and garlic cloves. Yum, yum. Other than that she stayed on the couch, under a cover and finished a book. Yes we do read a lot. The weather was overcast today. Outside only near 60F and inside 65F – chilly! We put paper cover around our vanilla plant again tonight.

We sure do get great worldwide news coverage on tv here! Could it be that Mexicans are more interested in what happens outside their borders than folks in the US? Listening to the clearly enunciated newscasters is a great way to improve the vocabulary, as Dan likes to try to translate what Carmen can't pick up from the video broadcast.

(Sab 16^th) Luis called in to say that his brother passed away last night, and that David would come in to pick up the week's payroll. David arrived in the late morning, and told us that we were invited to the vigil later that day and evening. Considering that we had never met the man, and we had two welders here today, building our stairway to the mirador, we could not leave. The burial is tomorrow.

The welders left the stair treads tacked in place and they told us to tell the crew monday to not to step on them because they were not welded securely yet. They will be back monday morning to continue with the tread surfaces, handrail and bracing. The stairway looks really good.

Carmen spent today cleaning. Dan tried to get LogMeIn running on his computer, and then painted the new security gate on the laundry/shop with black enamel. Felt good to be busy.