Domingo 31 Marzo –
Sábado 06 Abril This week has simply whizzed past. Dan has been
bouncing around like a ball. He would no sooner sit, than one of the
workers would need his thoughts, or a tool, or a decision to be made.
Carmen on the other hand, merely mopped the house, got meals, did laundry and read a 600 page novel.
Tuesday morning at
7am, Carmen called Frank, thinking that Ania was gone from home for a
week, she'd invite him for lunch. Normally would never call someone
that early, but his cell phone was turned off, and we wanted to catch
him before he packed a lunch for the day. As it turned out, Ania
answered the phone! Now that was a surprise! After a dumbfounded
silence, Carmen laughed and gave her reason for calling. Ania does
not leave 'til next saturday. She said she just could not sleep, so
she had been up since 3am cooking, would we like to come there for
dinner? Of course! Okay, we went there and took the meringue pie
Carmen had made. Good time was had by all, though we did have to cut
it short to get back to our crew. Now the pie – Carmen had been
thinking about a lime pie. Turned out that we had only half enough
juice, so she added fresh orange juice with it. This made the pie
too sweet, since the sugar was, of course, portioned for lemons.
Good texture and flavor none the less. Why is it that lemons are
limas in Mexico & Guatemala, and limes are
limónes, yet the "-
ón" suffix is augmentative, meaning something bigger?
Every day this
week, we had two welders here. They worked on finishing up the
mirador structure on the rooftop, and then on the fencing
around the yard, installing intermediate vertical bars to make the
spacing more narrow. The change is an improvement, now we don't have
to stay outside with the cats, to watch that they don't exit onto the
street. They both seem to understand the change, and seem more
comfortable being outside now. They can now sit there and not be
bothered by the appearance of dogs, which before, the cats would dash
back inside every time a dog came past. Now that was a lot of
dashing!
One day the
carpenter was here, removing the door from the laundry/workshop, to
take home and refinish. We had hoped he would put the bathroom
cabinets in, but he did not bring them, and, also, we decided we
wanted another coat of paint on the walls first. Having the guys do
this is strange for Carmen, who used to do all our painting, and now
does close to none.
Our crew varied
during the week. Wednesday, Heri was home sick and Luís our foreman
had to leave after the first three hours to help his brother Ausencio
with tiling a bathroom, a few houses down from us. Luis also worked
on the brothers' job for another 7 hours on thursday. Thursday we
also lost David for two hours for the final push on that job, so
Ausencio could get paid. Back on our projects here, they finished
off the large
ventana (window) in our large bedroom, and then
cut out the holes for the two smaller windows in the smallest
bedroom. Kitties get closed into the medium bedroom where we are
sleeping, when the inside of house is being worked on. Lots more
painting done in bathroom, although the hallway remains half-done.
Time to buy our
exterior house paint. After much debating, Saturday we made a color
choice and bought a gallon, and got a liter free. But, we really
did not like it once a strip was painted on the house. Just does not
look like the sample card. Went back to Comex store and bought two
more liters of slightly different tints. We're looking for a
blue-gray. Between the three, we have chosen their blue “Ebro”
tint. Now if we figure out how much we will need, and purchase it
before next friday, we will get a gallon free for every large 19
liter bucket we purchase.
