Days of our lives

YESTERDAY WE ate tuna lasagna in The Lasagna Factory in the nearby capital city. We wanted vegetarian, but none was available. So tuna it was, and it was good.

Then we visited Costco and Chedraui for various staples before heading home to our mountaintop abode where peace reigns.

This morning I stepped out to the service patio and noticed, just past the steel stairway to the kitchen roof, a sizable spray of bird crap and a baby bird, deceased. Crap! I uttered to no one in particular. I glanced up, way up, and saw no nest. Strange.

I swept up the birdie corpse, tossed it in the trash outside in the Garden Patio, returned and looked up again, which is when I saw movement. Here’s the situation: There is a huge wasp nest up there, long abandoned, and so high I had never knocked it down.

Swallows had somehow turned a part of the wasp nest, a part that was drooping, into a home of their own, and there’s a family there, minus the one who plunged to his demise. I’ll keep an eye on the situation, and when the little buggers bugger off, the extension ladder will put me within range to knock the whole shebang down, and I will.

Why can’t swallows mind their own business? Nest under bridges or in the house of the people out back who blare music too loud? Where is the justice?

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Tomorrow will be a big day here. More plant murder is planned.

The monster aloe vera which resides at the bedroom corner in what I’ve long called the Willy Nilly Zone will be uprooted and toted to God knows where.

That aloe vera will go, but the datura will stay.

We once had three of these big babies, but Abel the Deadpan Yardman removed one a few years back. It was somewhat smaller than the one in the photo. I have a crew coming in the morning with machetes and a pickup truck.

It’s the same crew that removed the towering nopal, the monster bougainvillea and the annoying loquat tree.

After that’s done, Abel comes the following day, and I’m going to have him remove most everything in that area. It’s not clear from the photo, but there are tons of weeds. I will plant new stuff, but not plants that grow enormous.

More on this in a few days.

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Our mayor has tested positive for the Kung Flu virus. He posted a video announcement on Facebook yesterday while sitting at a desk, which I assume is in his home, in normal clothes, wearing a facemask, to say he’s staying put for two weeks.

He’s a real glad-hander, so his getting Kung Flu is no shock. I wish him a speedy recovery, or maybe he’ll be one of those who never show symptoms, if such a thing exists.

He looked fine in the video.

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In closing, here’s a little humor on the state of America. I might make this a recurring feature. Send me stuff.

This and that

Sweet allysum and wet stone.

LET’S LOOK AT a bit of this and a tad of that, if you please.

The monsoon began a bit late this year, and it’s still getting its sea legs, so to speak. We like it when the rain starts, even though we dislike it by September when it’s outlived its welcome, and the mud is growing old.

A quite noticeable result of rainfall is the blooming of sweet alyssum, a ground cover that looks like snowfall. From January to June, it’s brown and appears dead, but give it a couple of days of rain, and this is what happens. Sweet,  huh?

In other news, City Hall opened our two main plazas downtown a few weeks back because it thought the incidence of Kung Flu was winding down. That lasted about a week until the plazas were taped off again, and that’s how it remains today.

When will this end? I’ve not experienced such a lousy year since 1995 when my last wife dumped me, and then 1997 when a romance with a lovely Latina ended by mutual insanity. You can read about that here if you wish.

I enjoy décor, and I like to take photos. Here is one I took yesterday when I found myself in the bedroom, looking at the scene, and with camera in hand. I’m so good at décor that you’d think I’d be gay, but I’m not.

I bought this lamp in the first few months after I moved to the mountaintop from the nearby state capital almost 20 years ago. It’s made locally, woven from a reed found in the area, if memory serves.

The lamp is almost two feet high.

It’s one of the few pieces of furniture we brought to the Hacienda from the two-story rental closer to downtown where I lived previously, two and a half years — one and a half solo and one more with my child bride.

Speaking of the state capital, we’ll be driving there today for a shopping expedition, a weekly event that gets us out of the house, and we might even eat lasagna.

The shopping trip and memories

THIS IS THE Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. It’s the most spectacularly colorful church I’ve ever seen. My child bride says there’s one just as impressive or better in Oaxaca, but I’ve never set foot in Oaxaca.

This photo doesn’t do it justice. I took it with my cell, having left my camera at the Hacienda when we visited the State Capital today, mostly for shopping and eating.

We ate lasagna. Then we visited the Modern Art Museum. Following that, we walked across the street, under an ancient aqueduct, and a block farther to this church.

We sat a spell.

Then we walked another block to a long, tree-lined pedestrian street full of old Spanish Colonial buildings, some of which are collapsing but some are restored and beautiful. We sat on a stone bench, and I shot the next photo.

This is not a black-and-white photo.

We were less than two blocks from where I lived above a garage after arriving in Mexico in January of 2000. Square in the middle of this photo, you can see the back of a phone booth that’s been there at least 20 years, and who knows how much longer?

Maybe the Conquistadors installed it.

I had a Mexico City girlfriend before moving down here. We’d met on Match.com, and she’d already visited me twice in Houston before I retired youngish and moved south. She was 50 years old at the time but still a real babe. Some women can do that. Her mother was Mexican, and her father was a Spaniard. It mixed well in her, believe me.

Almost every night during the four months I lived above that garage just down the street, I walked to this phone booth and called her. The relationship did not pan out, and a year later we went our separate ways. Just as well because she was not as agreeable as the child bride I ended up with, who is also a real babe. Some women age well.

Then we stood up and headed to Costco and Walmart.