Band Practice

We've had one of these little practice parades every day this week, as the school kids prepare for the Independence Day festivities coming up next week. On September 16, the groups of young musicians from the schools all over town will march to the Plaza Grande and perform for the assembled citizens.

A First World Problem of the First Magnitude

OK, so we have this concrete patio that we plan to have tiled this winter, when it's dry. But for now, it is wet most of the time, especially under the corrugated fiberglass domo (added roof) that covers the area between the main house, the garage and the bathroom. That spot is the lowest point of the patio, so all the runoff drains there, and it often doesn't dry out between rains. 

The patio drains toward the house and stays wet under the domo.

Over the course of the rainy season, algae begins to grow on the concrete. It may not hurt anything, but we don't like it. And if we don't remove it, the algae builds up into a thick coating that is impervious to Ajax, Fabuloso, Clorolex, scrub brush, broom and everything else we used to try to remove it.

Until we bought a pressure washer. Thank you, Amazon.

The pressure washer is small, certainly not one of the monsters we have seen (and have bought) in the U.S., but it does a nice job of prying the algae loose from the concrete. It does take a constant supply of water while in use, which we had not really thought about being a problem. After all, it rains every day.

Our biggest problem after we bought the house in 2015 was getting rid of all the water during the rainy season.

By now, fellow expats, you are shaking your heads and clucking your tongues. "City water and rain runoff are two entirely different things" I can hear you saying. You're right. You're right.

This is a little house with a little aljibe (in English, cistern). In fact, the tinaco (water tank) is bigger than the aljibe. The aljibe fills once a day and refills the tinaco, so we never run out of water.

Until yesterday evening. The patio was cleaned, showers were done, dishes were washed, teeth were brushed, but in the middle of one last hand washing before bed, the water from the bathroom faucet dwindled to a trickle and stopped.

“Larry, we’re out of water.”

“Ah, shit!”

A few loud drops on the domo told us the rain was starting, so we put two big trash cans under the drain spouts from the roof. The rain caused this problem and would also solve it. Those few drops stopped after a minute, but we were confident that rain would fill our cans overnight — it has rained every single night since June 12, when we got here.

Except last night. This morning, the cans were still dry.

I love having the patio clean. Next time, we'll pay attention
to how much water we're using.

We both slept poorly. Has the rainy season ended abruptly just when we need the water? Would the aljibe refill overnight? Was the pump damaged when the aljibe emptied? Was the water heater damaged? Should we move to a hotel four days before leaving for Mexico City and Alabama? Should we call a water truck to refill the aljibe? How long can I stay in bed before I have to pee?

When I finally got up at 7:30, Larry had been up for two hours. The first thing he said was, "The pump is running." Joy unbounded! 

With all our problems solved, I was able to reflect on my cushy life here in the mountains of Mexico. Privilege is lying awake worrying about not being able to flush the toilet.

Rock Around the Clock

Putting my rocking chair was worth the effort.

Shopping in Coppel yesterday, we stopped to watch three of the store employees assembling a rocking chair just like two we bought a few months ago. I nudged Larry and pointed out that they were attempting the task without benefit of tools. 

“They can’t do it without a drill,” I said, thinking they’d also probably need a hammer and a hacksaw. When the three noticed us staring and stopped working to stare back, Larry smiled his most engaging smile and explained, “It’s difficult. We have one. It’s very difficult.”

We didn't stay to see their further progress. If their experience was anything like ours, they were going to be there for a couple of hours and a lot of cursing was going to take place. 

The framework of the chairs is tubular steel, bent to shape, with holes pre-drilled to accept one of four sizes of bolts. It would take at least two of the workers to hold the pieces in place while one tried to slide each bolt through two sets of holes and then screw on a nut. Everything has to line up just so, or the bolts won't go through the holes, and sometimes even then the bolts are not long enough for the threads on the nuts to catch.

Once we got all the parts unwrapped and the nuts and bolts organized, we discovered that we had no good diagram or even a photograph of how all those pieces were intended to fit together. We are not total fools. We have assembled several pieces of furniture in our lives. Nothing compared with these chairs. 

When we got the first one together all except the bottom brace, we had to guess which direction it was supposed to face. It did not fit either way. The bent steel was at the wrong angle, and the holes weren't even close to aligning. After exploring all other possible solutions (the number was not infinite), Larry brought out his hammer and drill. He soon had the first chair fully assembled.

The second chair did not go together any more easily than the first, but the same treatment brought the same end result. By the end of the afternoon, we had two well-built and comfortable rocking chairs. 

We use them every day. If you visit us, we will direct you to sit on them, as they are the most comfortable furniture in the house. Seeing the young people at the store struggling through the assembly reminded me of our sense of accomplishment once the job was done and made me appreciate my rocking chair even more.

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These

Warm slices of talera toasted on the comal and drizzled with sweet brandy syrup.

Our friends Mike and Susie Warshauer gave us this jar of prunes in brandy imported from Italy. It was part of a basket of goodies they brought us back in March when we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary. We left it unopened when we departed for Alabama later that month.

When we arrived back Pátzcuaro in mid-November, it took several days to get the larder restocked and all the utilities restored. On one of those tired evenings when we wanted something sweet and had hardly any food in the house, our eyes fell on that beautiful, forgotten jar.

We did not have electricity, but we did have gas to the stove. We had one talera, which I sliced into six thick pieces and toasted on the comal. A drizzle of syrup from the jar made the simple bread an exotic delight, and one or two of the prunes satisfied even my insatiable sweet tooth. Then the lid went back on, another treat for another day.

An Honor Well Earned

What a day, what a day, what a day!


I hope I forever keep the memory of waking up this morning to the words, "Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature."

I wasn't sure I was really awake. Did I dream it?

Larry was mostly asleep, but I knew he would want to know immediately, if it were really true, so I asked, "Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"Bobby won the Nobel."

Then we both grabbed our tablets to confirm the news. The Guardian in the UK had only one line, posted eight minutes earlier, but it was enough. A minute or two later, the BBC had a line of its own. It took a bit longer for the U.S. news sites to get something online, and a few hours for the lengthy stories to come out, but since then Dylan's been burning up the internet all day.

Best of all, Barack Obama had his White House staff post this wonderful tribute (from 2012, when he awarded Bob the Presidential Medal of Freedom), along with my favorite picture of the two of them together:

Here's what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you'd expect he would be… He came in and played ‘The Times They Are A-Changin'.’ A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage—I'm sitting right in the front row—comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it—then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don't want him to be all cheesin' and grinnin' with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.” — President Obama celebrating Bob Dylan, who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature today.

Larry and I celebrated all day.

My First Swim in the Fish Pond

The ducks are now three weeks old, and they are at least three times as big as they were when they arrived. Their tail feathers are coming in. They love having access to their own yard, and they protested staying inside the duck house this morning while I cleaned their pool. While I had the cover open, I did a little repair work on the fencing to make it fit better, and I planted grass seed under the pine straw.

While I was working, one of the leaders discovered he could push open the mesh flap that I fold back to let them out, and out they came. They headed straight to their pool and were extremely unhappy that I had not refilled it yet. They walked around in the dry pool for a minute, then climbed out and headed to the other end of their yard, where they relaxed and watched me finish my work.

The new pool is so big that filling it takes half an hour or more. After it was finally full, the ducks jumped in and stayed there most of the afternoon. They love the freedom to swim whenever they want. I had some trouble coaxing them out after dark, and if the mosquito truck had not been spraying poison everywhere, I might have let them stay out all night.

While the pool was filling, Larry put on his wetsuit and went into the fish pond to retrieve several things we had dropped in and needed: a 6-foot measuring straight-edge, the telescoping aluminum handle for the pool brush and a wood ramp we had installed last fall so mammals could escape the water. He quickly found the straight-edge with his feet on the shallow end, but he had to dive in the deepest part for the brush handle and he couldn’t stay down long enough to search for it.

“I can do it,” I told him.

I used to swim the length of my father’s pool underwater on one breath, and I was pretty sure I could get to the bottom and feel around. I’ve never been one to jump into cold water, however, and I tend toward the squeamish, so Larry was surprised that I volunteered to go into the very green pond. I just stripped down and eased myself down the straight side of the deep end. The bottom was slippery and slopes sharply, so there was no standing on the bottom. I pulled my knees up under me, flipped over and headed straight down.

I reached the bottom with my hands and could feel debris at least six inches deep. I dug my fingers into it, searching for the bottom drain, but keeping my eyes tightly closed seemed to shorten my breath, so I resurfaced for air and a mask. With the mask, I could see bright green until I was nearly to the bottom, but the deepest three feet or so was a black zone. It was scary as hell.

I came back up, got my bearings and dove again maybe three more times before I felt something smooth. The handle? No, just a plant pot. One more dive straight to the bottom, and my fingertips found the handle. It was unmistakable this time. I got a grip, but the tangle of pine needles and oak leaves didn’t want to give it up. The threatening dark and the need for air concentrated strength in my hands, and I gripped the handle and pushed off hard from the bottom. I could see brightness above my head as the water changed from black to green to clear. My head and shoulders shot above the water on the force of my push, and Larry cheered when he saw the handle in my hands above my head.

I walked along the wall to the steps on the shallow end, scuffing my feet through the muck on the bottom, feeling for the sunken ramp. I didn’t find it, and we may never find it. It’s probably fish habitat by now.

Welcome to the Ducky House

Today was a big day in the lives of our flock of ducklings. They moved from the bathtub into the Duck House, their permanent home. Larry had finished flooring the space and painted the new floor with deck paint, and then I did a bit more reorganizing to make sure the ducks couldn't get themselves into tight spots they couldn't get out of.

We brought their wading pool in and set it up on the gravel in front of the newly floored space. We filled it with water from the fish pond and piled up gravel around the outside so they could get in and out. It took some experimenting with placing bricks and pavers to create steps and platforms they could use to get into and out of the water, but by the end of their first swim, they had mostly mastered it.

One question was answered: They will eat fish. And eat fish. And eat more fish. We offered them a few dead ones from the filter basket, and they gobbled them down. So Larry scooped up a few live ones from the fish pond, and the ducks ate them, too. I think a few got away, but it is clear now that our overpopulation of minnows will provide a constant food source for the ducks, once the ducks are allowed into the pond.

For now, though, they are confined to their house. They still have some growing to do before we let them get out of reach. We are planning to clear and enclose a patch of greenheaded coneflowers alongside their house and open a flap in the plastic mesh so they can go in and out without threats from overhead. Larry shakes his fist at the hawks every time he sees them.

Larry hung their light from a rafter so that we can raise and lower it easily to regulate the temperature, and we put the outdoor temperature sensor in their bed. We used the bottom half of Ramona's doghouse, which she never liked or used, to hold their bedding, and made taller, reflective walls from foam insulation. We put another tray of bedding in a corner, in case the doghouse got too hot. I don't think they've actually noticed that second bed yet. I went out to check on them around 8:30 p.m., and they were huddled together on the floor. The temperature was 78 degrees, and they need at least 85, so I started moving them into the doghouse. After I moved three or four, the others went in by themselves. Then they all settled down for some sleep.