Residentes!

(Domingo 04 - Sábado 10 Agosto)   Dan finished up with the router, finalizing some brackets for the terraza railing, and with the bulk of the woodworking done, proceeded to break down his temporary shop. Yes, his shop in our medium sized bedroom is now a clean bedroom again! We drove to Penuela, town just east of Córdoba, and ordered a queen-size bed frame to be made for the now empty guest bedroom. A US queen, the mattress we brought down here, is 4” longer than the queen-size made here, so we adjusted the dimensions on the order. We asked that the platform height be adjusted a bit to allow rolling plastic storage bins underneath. Also we ordered the chairs to go with our marble-top dining room table. We picked up some utilitarian stools for our breakfast bar from Home Depot, as having viewed and priced custom-made ones in Penuela, we knew the steel ones would be less intrusive and a tenth of the price of wooden ones. In a of couple weeks the wood furniture will be delivered and we can put our plastic cheapo chairs up-upstairs on the mirador instead of in the dining room. We must decide on the color and fabric for the chair seats.

The banana field to our north has been cleaned up. All the dead and lower branched leaves were removed, and the weeds growing between the plants were chopped down. Certainly looks different. The plants are about 20+' high now.  Miracle of miracles! The city water crew dug the ditch, laid the 4” pvc sewer pipe on monday and covered the ditch the next day! Later in the week two men returned and worked on reconstructing Valentin's driveway entrance, which we thought we would have to do.

Monday afternoon we attended a birthday party for Tim, whom we had met before. He lives north of here in Coscomatepec with his wife, where they have an avocado farm. He is from Orange County, California and his wife is from near here. Ania prepared another fantastic meal, of baked fish with tomatoes and herbs, stuffed peppers of two varieties, carrot slaw, hard rolls, and homemade ice cream. We came home with an eighteen foot piece of cured bamboo tied to the side of our car. This we plan to attach to our southeast garden wall for our now seven foot high vanilla orchid to grow on. It should climb to the top, and at that height begin to set vainas (vanilla pods). Also brought back enough snake plant from Ania's to fill a planter to sit in the living room behind the chair, between two NW corner windows. Looks great! Also got some other plant starts to put outside. We are truly getting low on planting space unless we remove the grassy area in the front yard, but we can always squeeze one more pot in on the porch, patio or terraza with little effort. We discovered in the evening that something we brought home had been near poison ivy or sumac!

While Dan was on the top of a ladder, with Carmen holding onto the bottom, he installed the last plastic panel on the outside of the north master bedroom window. While up there, he pruned the tall spreading bougainvillea, one of three on the north side of our yard. Carmen last week pruned the northeast plant in the front yard. She also cut back the blue flowering plumbago, and trimmed all other plants in the front garden, plus planting a few more purchased from Home Depot. In this hot weather, outside potted plants all must be watered once daily and some as much as three times. She has learned that the shrimp plant and the hibiscus must be watered with fertilized water every day to keep the blossoms coming! Care for plants here is a bit different for the same plants in the northern climes.

Monday we stopped at the flower market to see if our citronella plants had arrived. The lady at the shop we had ordered them from was on vacation. We went back tuesday and she told us that her brother was going to Veracruz wednesday, where he had an opportunity to locate these plants. Friday we stopped by again and she told us that they had not yet arrived, but not to worry, she would put three aside for us. We are nearly out of the Raid mosquito deterrent liquid that gets plugged in at night. The other citronella wicks we ordered thru a home delivery catalog still have not arrived. Thought we have searched out all water spots that might grow mosquitoes, but they still are prospering, but many fewer are around.

Friday we had a long whirlwind of a day. Oh, when will retirement ever start? We set the alarm so as to be sure we'd get an early start. Dan had a dental appointment at 11am and we wanted to purchase the material to cover the bar stools and a small table cover before this appointment. This will be the same material we will have put on our new dining room chairs. We had decided to buy a rich deep dark blue. Well – after visiting four very large fabric stores in downtown Córdoba, almost running from one to the other since we wanted to be finished before the appointment, plus the shops were blocks apart, it was sadly discovered that blue is simply not an “in” color this season. We settled for a rich deep purple instead. Still has the flavor we were after, an irregular pattern that wouldn't show an errant grease spot very much. Has a very muted snakeskin-like pattern. Also bought some grosgrain ribbon to make strips to make hold-backs for our curtains. We saw a first on one of the Cordoba city sidewalks – a man laying flat on his stomach. People giving him a wide berth as they walked around, so we did also. Felt a bit guilty. What if he was not drunk, but having a medical problem? Bad us – like the rest of the world, we were in a hurry----------also afraid of the unknown.

We actually had twenty minutes extra and were but a block from where we could check on our residency permits. We decided to take a chance on them being in, though we had not yet been notified on the INM website. Up the three flights we dashed. One of the staff there recognized us when we walked in and without asking what we wanted, proceeded to get our cards – which had supposedly just arrived. She finalized the paper work for us, including stamping the transmittal letter with the current date, to hopefully facilitate our dealings with the aduana (customs office) for the car – all in our few extra moments! These Residente Temporal cards are good for three more years.

While Dan was in the comfortably cool dentist's office, Carmen chose to sit, or rather lean back, in the car for a siesta. Sure was hot, a sweltery day like we rarely get. After the dentist we drove to Penuela to give the carpenters the info for the fabric they needed to buy for our chair seats they will have done in a couple weeks. This town has many carpentry shops and is but a few miles from Córdoba. Now a stop at Walmart where Carmen shopped and Dan stayed in the car since there was some wood purchased at Home Depot sticking out the window and we did not want it to leave the car with an open window while unoccupied. It was now 4pm and we'd had nothing to eat since an early breakfast . Dan had mentioned earlier that he noticed this morning when at the bank in Fortín that the new Subway shop next door had a special on 6” subs – yep, one last stop and we each had a MX$20 6” sub for our meal of the day. Actually we also finished off with a piece of lime meringue pie that Carmen had made the day before.

One item purchased at WalMart this week was a package, frozen, of over 200 baby clams. The fresh ones are more expensive. These cost US$2.50 and were tasty. Dan so enjoys the clam nectar left after cooking these morsels, reminding him of clambakes on the beach in Connecticut when he was a youngster.

Since our welder again did not show up as he said he would, Dan tried bending heavy galvanized bars for the big gutter which will keep part of the rain water off of the deck outside the bedroom door. Using the bench vise we had brought down from the US, a heavy hammer and visegrips, the bending (multiple bends, curves & twists) went far better than he expected, so the next thing we knew, we were installing the gutter, with both of us up on ladders, stretching, pushing, pulling, and voila! It actually went easier than either of us thought it would, as we had anticipated needing the crew here to get this part of the job done. Ever so glad to have it up at the edge of the roof. There have been a couple heavy rains since the gutter was installed. It works just as Dan designed it to! But of course!

One day this week, we discovered our back outer gate had been left open. Had we gone out when Gardi was hollering to us telling us of the problem (from his perspective), we would not have later found him across the street. But he was keeping his eye on the house, perhaps making sure that we did not close him out? He happily ran back to the house when we called him. Thankfully he did not become a grease spot on the road.

The city crew discovered a huge water leak coming from our neighbors hookup, or perhaps they caused it with their excavating. The leak was directly under the cement steps going from our property down to his sidewalk. They tore out the steps to repair the leak. They have since then totally repaired his driveway that was cut away to connect our sewer. We expected that we would have to repair that with our crew, so we now hope they also plan to rebuild the sidewalk steps. All houses in town here must have banquetas (sidewalks) at the road edge.

Dan had promised some leftover plywood to both of the gardeners, Artemio and Cosme, who come here trying to sell plants or labor – of which we have used both . This is the plywood from the liftvans, the shipping crates from our move here, stored under the gateway portico and used while we did various projects. Dan held back a few sheets, but he did in fact let the rest of it go at a very modest price. We now can see thru both sides of our backyard gates. The reserved plywood now sits against the wall in the smallest bedroom, which is the room Smij cat hangs out in, also being Carmen's sewing & puzzle room, and a guest bedroom for one. This is the only room Carmen still needs to make curtains for – both for the two new small north-facing windows, after Dan gets the curtain rods cut and installed, plus a curtain to help keep dust out of the storage area along one wall. Things are coming together here, poco a poco.