CINE SUECO

There's a Swedish film series going on in the Museo de la Ciudad on Guerrero.  The first film was 

Apflickorna or She Monkeys:

Two creepy, very blond, very athletic teenagers in single-parent households compete for a place on an equestrian vaulting team.

The second film was Sebbe:

A very blond, very poor teenager who lives with his mother suffers from both her bullying and that of his schoolmates.

The theme of the beleaguered, anomic child in a single-family household has appeared in so many films in the US that it has started to annoy me.  Now I see it in Swedish films.  Where are the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, the cousins?  Can no one help this poor child?  If the isolated, single-parent family is going to be a plot device, I think the viewer is owed an explanation.  "All our relatives were gunned down in. . .a church/theater/spa/gym/."  Or is this isolation and consequent anomie a real feature of late capitalism, where families no longer have any coherence or responsibilities for each other and the children are without social norms?

The film tonight is Bolas, directed by Josef Fares:

Doesn't look very Swedish, does he.  That's because he's a Lebanese who moved to Sweden when he was 10.  I can't wait to see what kind of (blonde?) family, if any, we see in this one.

PUERTA MOSQUETERA

It's been a bad year for mosquitoes here.  Bad for us, not for them.  They like to hang around our back door, and since the door opens in, they found it easy to fly right in.  So we got Luis, the guy who replaced our skylights and put roofs over our hot water heater and washing machine, to make a screen door that opens out.  Here he is having finished the job:

End of problem--mostly.

SOFA/CAMAS

There's a store in el Centro (on Allende for local readers) that sells upholstery fabrics on big bolts.  You choose the fabric you want and they make it into whatever you what.  We had two thin mattresses that served as couches in the casita.  We got them covered and they can serve as beds for the twins when they come down.

We also had two twin mattresses that we decided to cover and use as sofa/camas in the front room.  We also got the upholsterers to make pillows for the back of the sofas:

Everything they make has zippers and can be removed for washing/dry cleaning:

(The color here is not accurate.  It should be dark brown.)

We're ready for overnight visitors now.

MI ESPOSO CREATIVO

Some of you may remember el sr J's wine glass holder in our kitchen in WV.  He made it from electric fence wire and insulators.  He wanted a wall-mounted utensil holder in our Mexican kitchen.  He couldn't find one to buy so he made one out of chrome tubing and, believe it or not, metal tent pegs.  Since he didn't have a tool for bending the tent pegs, he inserted them in the holes in the legs of our metal utility shelves and bent them by hand:

As we say here, "todo es posible."

CORTINAS

I finally finished the window curtains I was crocheting for months.  My left hand still aches.  I was going for the Portuguese fishing village look.  The palitas holding them up were left over from Revolutionary Women (who are still in storage).  I couldn't find any thin metal curtain holders.  El sr J  drilled holes in the window and inserted little metal circles for the palitas to go through:

Now for some crochet pillows.

CACTI

I've never liked cacti very much, but they are native plants here so they bear consideration.  We were trying to figure out what plants to put in the window and front door that wouldn't be filched, and cacti seemed like a good choice, so off to the vivero/nursery we went.  There were lots of cacti, but of course they were only labeled "cactus, sol."  I think everybody probably knows that cacti like sun--we could have used a bit more information, as in, what's the official name of the plant?

Oh, well, no use kvetching.  Here's the one we put in the doorway.  The pot is lined with chicken wire so if anybody tries to take it they will have (a lot? some?) trouble:

The cacti cost more than we were expecting and the spines were not as sharp as I had expected, making them an attractive source of a few pesos for someone with calloused fingers.  So el sr J put up chicken wire on the window, too.  Attractive, isn't it.

Middle cactus:

Right side cactus:

Left side cactus:

If there are any cactus ID experts among my readers, please tell me what they are.