New neighbors en route

When we built the Hacienda and moved in more than 17 years ago, we had neighbors directly to the right, a vacant lot across the street and a vacant lot (with a resident cow) to the left.

Now we have a sex motel to the left, the same neighbors to the right, and what appears to be a house under construction across the street. Exactly what’s going on there is a mystery. The property owner lives about two blocks away. We asked what he was building, and he told us he was just putting a wall around the lot.

But that is baloney, the sort of baloney the locals voice on a regular basis. It’s going to be a house or some other sort of edifice. We hope it’s not going to be a salon de fiesta, a rental space for parties, which are quite common in Mexico.

But that’s unlikely … he said optimistically.

***

This morning, I made my biweekly trip to the post office downtown to check my box. There was nothing. If what I read is correct, Trump is mailing me a check for over $2,000 to ease the financial blow the Kung Flu has dealt me. Of course, I have been dealt no financial blow whatsoever by the Kung Flu, or the China Flu as Trump likes to call it.

Love his sassy humor, don’t you?

I’ve given some thought to what I would do with that dough. First, I’d have to figure out some way to cash a dollar check here in the middle of Mexico. There are exchange houses, but I’ve not used one in ages, and I rather doubt they would react well to a check for over $2,000. My bank will not accept it. Too early to fret about that. It might never arrive.

But if it does, I’ve decided to give a good chunk to a niece and her husband who recently opened a small business in the nearby state capital. They sell cheeses and other dairy products, but cash is a problem for them. They bought a used display case, which immediately stopped working. Trump to the rescue!

That he dislikes us Mexicans is a bald-faced lie.

***

Let’s move on to weather, something that interests everyone. This rainy season has been the lightest I remember. Maybe it’s that “Climate Change” Greta is so hysterical about. If so, I’m a fan because the rain has been quite sufficient for the yard, but not so much that we’re wading in mud for months, which is usually the case.

Hooray for Climate Change!

We have happy plants.

Left-wing lunacy

HERE’S A DOSE of leftist lunacy for you.

First off, there’s the video above, less than three minutes for the attention-challenged, in which Fox commentator Tucker Carlson addresses the issue of The New York Times’ planning to dox him. That means print his home address so radicals can threaten his family. Carlson already was forced to move not that long ago due to an assault on his home by Antifa, the Black Shirt arm of today’s Democrat Party.

For those who still maintain the NYT is the Old Gray Lady of Journalism, well, there is no hope for you. By the way, The Washington Post is no better.

Recall that editorialist Bari Weiss, who recently resigned from the NYT, cited “the new McCarthyism (that) has taken root at the paper.” Click here for that.

It boggles the mind. A major newspaper that wants to incite violence against a public figure who holds opinions it disagrees with.

And then there is Michelle Malkin, a conservative pundit and “woman of color,” who was attacked by the Black Shirt arm of the Democrat Party while attending a pro-police rally Sunday in Denver. The police, ironically, did little to protect her which is not surprising since the Denver police chief has kneeled in support of Black Lives Matter.

Malkin survived intact, thankfully.

Lastly, teen hysteric Greta Thunberg has been awarded a 1 million Euro prize from something called the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for her “contributions” in the fight against climate change. That’s $1,151,675 in U.S. dollars and over 25 million Mexican pesos, so we’re talking some serious moola here. Greta’s parents gotta be grinning.

Michelle Malkin Tweeted following her Denver visit: “I’m okay. America isn’t.”

Let’s broaden that: Much of the Western World isn’t.

That part north of the equator.

* * * *

(Update: It appears the NYT changed its evil mind about printing Tucker’s home address.)

Events of the day

MONDAY DAWNED chill, gray and ugly. And in the afternoon, it started to rain, which is blasphemy here in February. Climate change. We should do something!

People wonder about folks who retire to Mexico. They ask, “What do you do all day?” The first thing to remember is that chores take longer here than they do above the border. This was very true years ago, but it’s becoming less so now, due to the internet.

After whole-wheat biscuits covered with honey at 8 a.m., I sat before the H-P All-in-One and loaded the website for the state government, specifically the page dealing with car taxes. Dial in the serial numbers and print out the page you take to the bank to pay.

The fee for each of the cars, 926 pesos or about $50 U.S., was the same even though one is a 2009 model and the other is 2014. Twenty years ago, it was necessary to stand in a long line to pay at a government office. Now you take the printed form and go to the bank. Much easier. The bank also has the sticker for the car window.

But the bank visit was for the afternoon. The morning still required other activities like the exercise walk around the neighborhood plaza. Just as we were heading out afoot at 10, José Sosa drove up. He’s the guy who did lots of painting here a few weeks ago.

Now he’s painting my sister-in-law’s coffee shop downtown, and he wanted to borrow one of my ladders. You’d think a painter would have ladders. He has plenty of other gear, but not the ladder he needed, so off he went with my ladder.

I have lots of ladders.

After the second breakfast at 11 a.m., I entertained myself with YouTube videos, and my child bride knitted. Lunch happened at 2 p.m., as always. We had meat pies she made on Saturday plus minestrone I made last week. Mexico life is thrilling.

Then we killed 90 minutes watching a show on Netflix. At 4 we headed downtown in the two cars. She had to pass by a cousin’s house to pick up rent for our Mexico City condo. The cousin is footing that bill for a nephew attending a university in the capital.

I parked on the plaza and walked to the bank to pay the car taxes only to find the bank closed due to a national holiday I had neglected to notice. We have so many holidays, it’s tough to keep up. They usually entail a long weekend no matter the day on which the holiday falls. The holiday weekend is called a puente, a bridge.

It bridges from the weekend to the holiday, and you get more days off. We embrace reasons not to work.

The puente also caused my Social Security payment not to arrive at the bank. It’ll arrive mañana, I suppose. My car tax errand stymied, I headed to the coffee shop, sat at a sidewalk table, ordered a café Americano negro, pulled my Kindle from my man bag, and tugged a scarf tight around my neck. It was raining, cold and nasty.

There were wool gloves on my hands with the fingertips missing. My child bride knitted the gloves. You must have skin showing to flip pages on the Kindle.

I’m reading a book titled Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, her first novel. It’s very good and, at one point, gave me a chuckle. I knew something Delia did not because I am old, and she is younger. In referring to a school lunch served to one of the characters, she mentioned a “carton of milk.” This was 1952.

There were no cartons of milk in 1952, neither in schools nor delivered at dawn to your front door. Just bottles. Cartons came years later. I miss the bottles.

—-

Tomorrow we’re off to the nearby state capital for our weekly shopping trip, but we’ll have a passenger, our nephew, the kid once known as the Little Vaquero, whom we are taking to an ophthalmologist. He’s not a Little Vaquero anymore. He’ll be 17 next month.

His eyesight is extremely bad and has been for years. His glasses are old, and so are his contacts, which he prefers because he thinks he looks dorky in glasses. His mother’s approach to this situation is: mañana. She does nada. So we’re stepping in.

—-

As I left the coffee shop this afternoon and walked through a light rain to the Honda, I stopped at pastry shop to buy a brownie. It was not as good as my child bride makes — few things are — but it was darn tasty. These were the events of the day.

Now, at almost 7 p.m., it’s still raining and ugly. I blame Greta.

Life in the slow lane

Where two of the three curtains were raised briefly last week. A better view.

WE SHOULD have long departed the monsoon season here, so last week on a bright, sunny day, the latest in a fairly long line of bright, sunny days, I decided to raise two of the three canvas curtains on the upstairs terraza.

The three of them had been down since June when the monsoon season began. Guess what happened. That very afternoon, dark clouds appeared and some light rain fell. I lowered the curtains again. Maybe I’ll raise them again in mid-January.

Dang climate change! Why doesn’t Greta come to Mexico and snarl? We need her.

Curtains up or curtains down, it’s a great place to sit. I go out there at times with my Kindle when I have free moments in my harried, jam-packed days. I sit, begin reading … and nod off. It’s stunningly relaxing out there. The chairs, like the air, are soft.

Of late I’ve become more aware of changes brought by advancing age. The urge to get things done is reduced. You’d think the urge to get things done would increase due to a shortening timeline, but that’s not what happens. You shrug. Go with that old flow.

As Hillary Clinton famously said: What difference does it make?

I still get stuff done but in stages. Since it hasn’t rained much in recent weeks — apart from that light sprinkle I mentioned — it’s time to start watering the yard by hand. I have hoses rolled up here and there. Last week, I rolled out the longest one into the grass.

That was enough work for one day.

A few days later, I rolled out another to make it longer because the Hacienda’s yard, unfortunately, is too large. Yesterday, I connected the two. Whew! This morning, using another hose altogether, one beyond the Alamo Wall, I watered the ivy on the wall’s backside plus some greenery in planters outside my child bride’s pastry kitchen.

I breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Things are being done.

Want to hear an amusing story?

During the last presidential election, I noticed somewhere online that my last ex-wife was a Bernie supporter. Yes, it’s shocking, but she lacked my political wisdom due to my being here in Mexico while she remains unguided in Houston.

I’ve never been certain that she reads The Unseen Moon, but a few months ago, she emailed to ask why I was a Trump fan, proving — to her credit — that she is a Moon fan. I gave her a few of the many available great reasons, and I got no response.

Her birthday is December 6, so I sent her a Trump MAGA cap via Amazon, the embroidered version, not the cheaper painted variety. Again, silence. So few Democrats nowadays sport a sense of humor. We conservatives laugh a lot. We are happy people.

Shortly before sending the MAGA cap to my second ex-wife, I ordered one for myself from China via eBay, a cheap, painted version. I would have purchased the pricier, embroidered cap were I fairly sure it would arrive intact.

Some of you may recall what happened to the Trump coffee mug I ordered from eBay in 2017, not long after the Blond Bomber invaded the Oval Office. The mug was removed from its bubble wrap by Mexican Customs, broken into about 10 pieces, repackaged and sent on to me. I glued the larger pieces together, and now it’s a pen holder on my desk.

Take that, disgruntled paisanos!

My cap is en route. Be interesting to see if I get it in one piece. Sad.

Maybe now I’ll go back to the yard and water two or three more plants. Or connect two more hoses. As usual, there is no rush.

Oh, there’s a guy named José here painting, gussying up the Hacienda. I’ll have photos on that when he finishes. Probably be a week or more. We like to be stylin’.

The Hacienda is always cutting edge, both the buildings and the occupants.