ESPERANDO

Waiting.  Hoping.  What do you do while you're waiting and hoping to settle on a house?  While the seller is waiting and hoping for the exchange rate to become more favorable for her?

El sr J makes plans for our new kitchen:

I'm crocheting down my yarn stash.   After ruminating for a while about what to make, I decided on some pillows.  I found a shop that sells upholstery supplies.  I didn't know the word for pillow stuffing, so I looked it up in my on-line dictionary.  Unclear.  Could it possibly be the same word as in chiles rellenos?  I asked the clerk if they had relleno for pillows and waited for her confused expression.  Instead, she turned around, went into a room and came out with samples of three different kinds.  I bought the kind that feels like cotton candy, but el sr J is reluctant to touch because it may contain some nasty chemicals.  I bought a kilo, which turned out to be a very big bagful. 

So here are the pillows.  They don't really match each other or anything else, but they've kept me busy.

Front:

Back:

Front

Back and side:

Front:

Back:

If the house business isn't settled soon, I'm afraid I'll smother us in pillows and all those kitchen plans will have been for naught.

CAPITAL TRABAJANDO

Mexicans' tax dollars at work.  It seems like the centro is undergoing a massive facelift, and the sounds of chisels on paving stones and the beep-beep of dump trucks backing up compete with the fireworks and church bells.

Below is the new roundabout they're making on Universidad, close to where the house-that-is-not-ours-yet is located. 

This is what 16 de septiembre, near the theater we frequent, looks like.  The new paving stones are impressive and much too heavy for demonstrators to throw.  I wonder if, like the French students in 1968, the workers chant "sous les pavés la plage." 

5 de mayo is all torn up.  It's the principal access street to the Plaza de Armas, and getting there by car is no fun:

The explanatory sign below refers to solutions.  Yesterday muddy water from a broken pipe flooded the street.  Not the solution the government had in mind.

I thought the refurbishing of the Plaza de Armas was finished, but it wasn't!

Recycled plywood sheeting, carefully re-assembled so as not to disturb the artwork; directions to the street vendors, access to whom is no longer self-evident; and another explanatory sign, depicting the wonders of the finished product:

All this work involves many men, working mostly with hammers, chisels, wheelbarrows, and a lot of dirt and stones.  Around 1:00 pm they break for lunch and a little snooze, sprawling out over the sidewalk in any bit of shade they can find.  We tiptoe around them.  Who could begrudge them a descanso after working so hard.

LA SINFONIA. . .

has started its new season.  Friday we heard a cello solo by Asaf Kolerstein, an inmigrante from Israel via the US, heralding the impending statehood of Palestine.  Well, we hope so anyway.

OTRA CENA DE CHORIZO VERDE

Q:  What is longer than it is wide?
A:  Green chorizo, for one.

This is tonight's dinner.  Green chorizo in a roasted tomato-garlic-ancho pepper sauce with fried potato slices, red and yellow peppers, onion, and mushrooms, topped with cilantro.  The salad is diced jicama, roasted red pepper. and cucumber in vinaigrette.  The red wine is cheap.

BERNADETTE DEVLIN

Speaking of revolutionary women, here is one that you readers of a certain age will remember:

Her autobiography is not on Kindle.  Too bad.

LA CASA

Some of my dearly beloveds are getting impatient with the pace of the house-that-isn't-ours-yet tour.

So let's wind it up.

The front.  We hope to paint it other colors and make the door on the left a window.  Also, a new door on the right with windows.  We've met Gloria, our neighbor on the right.

The bathroom which will continue to be just that:

The service area for the hot water heater, washing machine, etc.

Outside the kitchen/bathroom area, the covered and tiled hallway ends and a patio ensues.  There, halfway through the house, is a big lime tree that really needs pruning.  Job #1 for me.

Then there are two rooms we don't have photos of.  The first will be the kitchen, 12 x 15.  The design is already done.  The next will be the dining/sitting/garden viewing room, 12 x 9.

The patio extends alongside and behind these these last two rooms and provides access to the pièce de résistance: 

THE GARDEN

My sister has already made a planting design for us.

Now some of you dearest friends and relatives may be thinking, "but where will we sleep when we visit?"  Not to worry.  We have not forgotten you and we're anxious for you to come see us.  There will be two single beds in the front room and they can be moved together to make a king size bed.  Privacy?  Yes.  The carpenter will be making two folding screens, in the middles of which I will hang the revolutionary women (or rather their names).  So you will be sleeping with revolutionary women, so to speak.  We also have other fold-out thingies and we're planning to put a futon in the dining room, where you can sleep with a garden view.  So come on down.

OTRO LIBRO INTERESANTE

If you were wondering what happened in physics after Einstein and Bohr, or why a physicist named

JOHN STEWART BELL

   had such a hard time publishing his theorem on non-locality...

or what physicists were doing naked in hot tubs overlooking the Pacific Ocean...

or why 

THOMAS KUHN

   (who taught at Princeton and wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) and                       

IRA EINHORN

were friends

 (Remember Einhorn?  He killed his girlfriend in Philadelphia and hid her body behind a wall in his apartment.  He then escaped to France where he lived for many years until he was apprehended.  He's now in prison in Houtzdale, PA)...               

then I recommend this book:

Now let's have a look at the kitchen in the house we haven't bought yet except in our minds, and which in our minds we have made into the master bathroom:

You step out to the patio from the second hallway, turn to the left, and....  Oops.  We seem not to have taken a photo of anything but the door.  It must be pretty gross in there.

CHICHIMECAS Y OTOMIES

This week a lot of Queretanos have been celebrating their indigenous heritage.

The young:

 The old:

Even the anarchists:

The dancing and drumming took place in front of the Santa Cruz church, the site from which Franciscan missionaries sallied forth to convert the ancestors of these same celebrants:

We heard the drums for two days solid.

It was hot and even indios need to rest in the shade.

There were other outfits as well.  This is a Mexican beauty.

On the housing front, after you pass through the big front room and the first section of the hallway and enter the hallway's second section, the space inexplicably widens so that the adjacent room on the left  is even narrower than room in front of it (the bedroom).  

Too small, in fact, to take a good photo of.  We would make this a large dressing/storage room and a middle passage, so to speak, to the master bath. 

Tomorrow the master bath, which is now the kitchen. 

INAH

If you buy a house in the centro histórico, you have to someone from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia or INAH come to your  place and do an assessment, and then they must authorize any changes you want to make to the original structure.  This is because of the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

On the map below, the shaded area represents several different levels of protection that INAH enforces in the historic area.  The house we want to buy is located in the northern (upper) section of A (máxima protección).  It is on the "wrong" side of the river/fetid stream (farther from the tourist attractions), but the "right" side of the train tracks.  The nearby train station is also being developed as a tourist attraction and cultural center, so we can look forward to eventual tourist traffic, too, in addition to occasional train noise (which we are used to).

The house:  after you go through the big entrance room (last post), you enter the first of two sections of a hallway which eventually opens to the patio and back garden.  The entire hallway is roofed in and has ceramic tile on the floor.  There are two rooms to the left.  The first room we intend to turn into the master bedroom.  See that little window in the foreground?  What the heck is that for?  Room service?

The room is 7.5 x 17.  Narrow!  But just big enough for our queen-size bed.

Farther down the hall tomorrow.

¡ANIMO!

Last night around 8:00 we opened our front door and there was a stream of people headed for the Plaza de Armas to participate in the ongoing independence celebration.  We joined the stream while a guy walking the other way waved a red bandana and shouted, "¡ánimo!"  "Animo," everybody shouted back to him.

When we got to the edge of the Plaza we saw a covered bandstand with the symphony orchestra seated on it.  In front of them was Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan.

The Plaza was totally filled and all the streets emptying onto it were starting to fill up.  

We decided to walk around back to get a front view.  On the way we passed the guy who sells us symphony tickets.  "¡Buenas noches!  he said.  "¡Muy buenas noches!" we replied.

After about three mariachi songs (everyone around us sang along) our ánimo started to wane, so we walked home.  I'm not a very patriotic or nationalistic person, but I have to admit I was moved by the spectacle.  I admire Mexicans' animation and patriotism.  Mexico has never invaded a foreign country (Pancho Villa doesn't count).  I saw no flags honoring war dead in the Mexican cemeteries I've visited.  (They are, however, pretty good at killing each other.  A different issue).  I think my lack of patriotism has a lot to do with Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, torture, drones, Cointelpro, etc.  

On another note, we seem to be closer to buying a house.  Yesterday we went to measure the rooms.  The man living there said his daughter, the owner, was coming here either this week or next.  She has to come to sign the papers or pay 25% of the difference between what she paid for the house and what she's selling it for.

I'm going to show it room by room, because it gets a little wacky after the first room.

This is the room you enter from the sidewalk.  It has two front doors, one of which we hope to make into a window.  The room, which we could call the living room,  is 15x15.

 It has a decent floor and the traditional high ceilings with exposed beams.

Another room tomorrow.