Didn't mean to leave you on the edge of your collective seat till Day20, dear schadenfreuders. It's just that we thought perhaps this next post should be upbeat, full of end of tunnel lights, and happy progress or, in the words of The Shade/Source-er, no-one would want to visit us if we don't lighten-up on these communiques. The last installment, especially seemed to have elicited a great outpouring of supportive buckupedness mixed with a wee bit of gleeful pity. And we thank you for both. So if it's been a bit longer between posts, it's only because we've been waiting for appropriately optimistic material to present itself.  

But we decided to post anyway because this is a watershed half-week of sorts. Today marks our third week here and the end of our stay at the wonderfully cozy cocoon of Casa Gayle in the equally homey colonio of San Antonio. We're going to miss popping around the corner to tiny El Cafe Tal on Orizaba for a ridiculously affordable breakfast of lattes and huevos con jamon in the morning and hitting the Guadalajara Farmacia, Mexico's CVS/7Eleven, on busy Zacateras for a dove bar and some imodium before bed.

But what, or I should say, who we will miss most of all is Plant Boy. Most of the expat homes here are filled with heaps of wonderful flora on their patios and roof gardens that need watering and careful pruning at least three times a week, especially now, in the dry season. That task has been handled here at Casa Gayle by a young man who truly embodies the en Inglés adjective, winsome. The first week we were here, we would look up from one of our internet tethers and there he'd be, all khaki shorts, Timberlands, vest, and kerchief under dark doe eyes and a carefully surprised shock of dark hair. He'd stare at us, silently bemused for a bit longer than comfortable before heading up to the roof with his watering can and shears to work his magic on the potted greenery from the top of the house down. We asked Jessica, Gayle's property manager, all Canadians and Estadounidenses with homes here have property managers which is yet another action item on our ever expanding must-do list, if he could ring the bell first before letting himself in going forward. That helped alleviate the sudden slap of space-invasion of his visits but it was replaced with a slight apprehension of having to lock eyes with him at the front door when the bell rang. Alas, we never learned his name or more likely were told upon our first encounter but were too rattled to remember and didn't have the backbone to ask again. So we called him Plant Boy and are thinking of perhaps engaging him to tend meticulously to our garden across town if and when it ever comes into full bloom. In the meantime he will be missed. Or maybe not.

Truth be told, there has been much accomplished in the last days of  San Antonio that is cause for semi-celebration. I recovered from my bout with bad helado to the point where we went back to Hanks New Orleans Oyster Bar and Restaurant for 2 for 1 Mojito night and had a bowl of their impressive gumbo. I have 2,000 pesos in an actual Mexican bank account now, even if our suspect penmanship hasn't yet allowed a currency exchange account to be opened. We're going down to immigration on Thursday morning with a legal assistant to hopefully get finger printed as the next step to the goal of receiving our residency cards. That means soon we can leave the country and get back in again in a pinch now if needs be. But the biggest wast the looming partial shut-down of construction over the pergola stand-off was successfully negotiated by a truly bi-partisan effort. The most immediate result of that break-through was a trip to Ferreteria Don Pedro with the ever good-naturedly stoic Valente.

The Source-er and El Contratista and their dueling notebooks spent a half day shopping marathon in this hanger-like soup-to-nuts hardware and building supply mecca just outside of town. With our teetering Spanish and Google Translate on our phones and a young salesmen with fairly good English, faucets, shower-heads, lighting fixtures, gas fireplaces, door handles, and sinks, were identified, debated, negotiated and rung-up for hours on end. It was exhausting watching Jackie spend the architect's and our money on this scale, but finally, progress on the house's "finishes" could be sensed. Valente was happy. We chose not to examine why this was the third time Jackie and I had been to the daunting Don Pedro and performed much the same if not as exhaustive exercise over three trips to SMA in the year since we signed-on to building the house. Nor why we were facing having to move into a second rental for the next two weeks. Nor why our stuff in exile may have to put up the funds for another month in storage. We just re-confirmed our new definition of achievement!

So, faithful readers, tomorrow morning we Uber ourselves back out to Querétaro airport to pick up a rental car and sojourn back to Casa Gayle, pack-up again on Thursday to ensconce ourselves in a much more modest rental in the Obraje for the duration till actual move-in, we think. Stay tuned for the drive from Querétaro, a morning at immigration, the load-into new interim crib, a decision on stuff in exile, and many more thrills and spills on our contra-caravan adventure.

​Oh yes, and if you enter someone's space while that someone is eating, do give them a "buen provecho". It's good for your psychic digestion.

When last we left our intrepid contra-caravaners, I believe they were encountering some bumps along the road to late-life artsy kismet. Friday Day16 dawns clear and cool with the usual smokiness that accompanies the dry season in this 7,000ft desert plateau town. And we are recovering from the week's earlier one-two punch of food and real estate poisoning.

Yes, it's true that Day14 saw me foolishly succumb to the temptations of a street helado vendor at the corner of  Insugentes and Hidlago as we were trekking back to the Rincon to try to make sense of the baffling delays and unexpected invoices that stopped us in our proverbial tracks as week three emerged. What better way to shed the light of optimism on the dark corners of second thoughts than with home-made ice cream! Jackie got a generous cono de chocolate while I opted for a taza de pistache. The cart was a cloth-roofed rectangle sitting on the busy sun-filled corner of the quaintest of colonias,  filled with about a dozen dented aluminum pots with their flavors sharpied on masking tape on tight covers. The woman at the tiller of this land boat explained that one side was water-based helado and the other cream based. The pots sat in cracked ice to which another woman continuously adds rock salt. I later remark to Jackie that the helado-ista had to reach far into the pistachio tub for my choice and that her efforts resulted in a much smaller scoop than Jackie's. In other words, that sugar cream and nut mixture had probably been sitting on that corner of the cart on that sunny corner of that town for at least two days and I got the last bit. Lucky me! It was on our trek back, when Jackie brought-up dinner that I realized I wouldn't be eating dinner that night or probably much of anything for oh, probably the next 24 hours. Beware Montezuma's Pistachio!

So Day15 was one of, let's say leisure for me as we awaited an explanation and hopeful recanting of the surprise pergola invoice, and other more positive progress from the banking and immigration sectors. We'd given up on the missing stuff from Magical Marcos who, presumably, was already far north of the border helping out some other unsuspecting reverse emigre. This down-time also led us to realize that our little pipe-dream of turning the lime of our move-in delay into limonada of a couple o' weeks on the Mexican Riviera was just that. The questionable prices at peak season aside, not many of those resorts were cat-friendly, so, instead we spent the day chasing down a place to live starting next next week. Took some doing, but we managed by dint of AirB&B to find a cat-tolerant-if-you-cut-their-nails affordable house in the Obraje colonia just above our place in progress at El Rincon. It comes with a garage of sorts so Jackie went to work finding us a car rental at the Queretaro airport for a month starting the day before we have to leave Casa Gayle on the 31st. This way we could start moving our once moved stuff in two locales one more time to a third one before we moved it all for good to a fourth and final one, whenever that might be.

But, my God, has it all been work, work, work since crossing the border? What about relaxation, I hear you ask. Well, we had been spending our cool evenings before the ceramic gas fire watching the completely outrageous Netflix Latam telenovela La Casa De Las Flores on my laptop. No better way to start to learn the language and the culture than by watching really trashy TV, if I do say so myself. But having finished the series the night before (and guiltily hoping for a season 2), and to soothe our co-fevered brows during what was shaping up to be our semana horribilis, I bought the third season of Victoria from ITunes, so we settled in to watch the first two equally soapy episodes when halfway through episode two, we finally got a response from one of our twin real estate brokers who had met with the contractor that afternoon and consulted with the architect and gave us the verdict: We damn well owed money on the rooftop build and more! Huzzah! Forget about the threat of the Chartists' Revolt, this meant war!

Suffice it to say, we didn't take this lying down, even though that had been my actual position most of the day and it was late. Still, we took out the contracts and the signed architect plans and I dashed-off my best LA Law-esque point-by-pint rebuttal via e-mail to all parties and The Shade's awesome powers of corrective invective were unleashed via voicemail. The result was the convening of a mini-Yalta of all parties to gather inside the construction shed at the Rincon the following day at 12:30pm. Jackie and I prepared our case, drafted an agenda for the meeting. We also crafted a face-saving fiscal solution for all. I must say, with all modesty, we were good. There was no rebuttal to our arguments. Only the absent and suddenly uncommunicative architect came in for most of the much deserved blame. We discovered that he had drawn plans for a much more elaborate rooftop shangri-la than we had expected or budgeted for. And he never sent them to us! Clear violation of para 5! But then this is not LA or NY, it's Mexico, Mr Gittes. So we presented our perfectly reasonable financial proposal to untangle the gordian knot with which he had bound us, for we need to get our project back on track before we have to find a third rental or go home unmoved-in. We now await his response....*

Throughout all of the construction sturm und drang, of course, Jackie's pursuit of design superiority has gone unabated. On the way back from our summit, we stopped back in Centro at CIBanco which had had a change of heart and were now assuring us that our deplorable gringo penmanship could be overcome by their lawyers if we just stopped by for a few more signatures. Yay! Outside the bank was a street vendor with many of the usual crafts for sale including some woven baskets. Jackie had been on the prowl for just such baskets for a good part of a fortnight now. Leaning on my terribly creaky Spanish, we learned that Leonardo lived a few blocks away and could execute the canastas Jackie desired in a little more than a week. We exchanged email and I gave him a deposit. Bam! Baskets ticked off the list. That night, feeling somewhat more adventurous about sustenance, we walked to the very end of our rental street, 20 de Enero, to a spare store-front called Denver's Los Olivios, a local who had worked for Olive Garden in the states returned and opened his own Italian kitchen right here in colonia San Antonio. There, over chicken parm, we seriously engaged our first expats, Michele and Deiter, from LA and Frankfurt with whom we exchanged WhatsApp numbers. Not a bad ending to a tough few days. 

*You're probably wondering how and why does this Mexico DF architect seemingly have so much power over our lives as we are still awaiting his response to our proposal to get on with it! That for a future post. Stay tuned...

Any chance that the officiating crew for the NFC title game was composed of ex-Mexican architects, contractors and bankers do you think?

Well, it took a good solid two weeks, but the grand adventure patina definitely got varnished on Days 12 & 13. How can that be, you ask when yesterday was Ignacio Allende Day here in SMA where there was a parade of the city's entire school population with drums, bugles, uniforms, flags, braided hair and police motorcycles galore. The weather was, once again, gorgeous and it was followed last night by a son et lumiére presentation on the grand pink facade of the neo-Gothic 17th cent Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel where San Miguel de Allende was declared the cultural Capital of the Americas for 2019 as fireworks colored the clear cool dessert sky as the gigantic post-blood moon rose over the hills. It was magical from the roof of our rented casa in the San Antonio where we were attempting to put the day's disappointments in context.

First thing Monday morning I was told that CIBanco HQ had rejected our signatures as inauthentic and therefore could not open an account for us until and unless we worked on or our penmanship! That was followed by silence from Magic Marcos on our missing stuff and similar crickets from our architect on an actual move-in schedule with a week left on our rentals, both living and storage. I did hear from our renters in Nuro, however, who were not happy about the heat, so I changed the settings on the NEST via the web-app and now I see they've set both zones permanently at 80! The pièce de résistance, however, was the one and only new bit of official correspondence to come from our construction team in weeks, a new invoice from our contractor for "extra" work we'd already paid for in November. This time, however, the cost was over twice that from the original bill! We were not pleased and spent the evening, not celebrating General Allende's feast day down at The Jardin with our fellow SanMiguelenses, but culling, copying and and showing the officials on our field visual proof in the way of contracts, wires and emails of what their eyes had somehow missed!

But, wait, for we're not done here on Tuesday, DAY 13, the two-week anniversary of our arrival in magical SMA. This morning, I woke determined to fix the bank situation once and for all and, after answering the triangle (Tuesday is Basura Day, remember) hiked down another lovely morning to Centro and the Banamex at the suggestion of our marvellous Nuro neighbor and former Mexican diplomat, Lucia, to get done what CIBanco couldn't. After taking a Zabar's cheese-counter-like number in the bank's waiting area I saw a young banker who told me that until I got my residency card from immigration, no bank account for me! Not sure how Catch22 translates in Spanish but at least there was a possible horizon on the cuenta front not unlike the car front. We just have to wait to hear from our immigration lawyer on those damn cards. As I returned to our San Antonio casa with a small bag of goodies from a hidden panaderia across from the Centro Cultural for Jackie, she greeted me with the amazing news that for the first time since we saw him in August, our architect sent Jackie an email! Whoa! Progress? Some good news, maybe? But all it said in terse English that we owed the contractor for changes made in the plans of the house and that the house would not be habitable and street would not be passable until mid-February now. Great. Now all we needed was for Marcos to skip town. 

OK, we heard from Marcos finally today and yes, he is leaving town and no, we still haven't gotten our missing stuff from him. Right. And we penned another indignant rebuttal to our lame officiating crew citing slow-mo replay from 50 camera angles and are now waiting to hear if we'll have to take it to the commissioner but chances are, on the move-in date at least, we're screwed. So Jackie is now trying to book us a couple of holidays elsewhere in Mexico (we can't leave the country until we get our residency cards) between losing our rental in 7 days and getting the street in the Rincon paved and Casa 9 ready for human habitation in 24 days. What we do with our stuff in exile not to mention the cats in the meantime, you'll have to tune in to find out!

We take a Sunday, DAY11, pause in our chronology* to reflect on a major almost daily activity of this very early phase of our adventure and that is the search for basic stuff to sit, sleep, eat and put other stuff on. Furniture, muebles. It has to be Jackie-design worthy and affordable, dear friends, as you know that's a major theme on our adventure.

​So you’d be proud of Jackie as The Source-er. (I know, she's already The Shade but she obviously has enough superpowers for two!). As it happens. we went yesterday morning to a little hipster breakfast place right around the corner from the Mercado that we found last time we were here renting in the nabe called Garambullo. The place, besides having fabulous food and excellent coffee sports a great design vibe featuring several versions of those 60’s-ish colourful rubber-band chairs on their crumbly-chic patio (You can see on the side-of-the-road photo of them above). Inside they had super simple versions of the local fave, rush dining chairs which Jackie immediately marked for design prey. (You can see them in the other photo above. The third photo is just The Source-er in her natural element, the far from completed roof garden of our will-it-be-completed-before-we-have-to-go-back-home house). Luckily, the dueña’s daughter, a lovely tattooed and pierced young woman whom I had gotten to know a little because last time we were here in August I stiffed her 50 pesos on lattes on our way out of town and so went back to re-pay her last week, speaks perfect English. Under Jackie’s relentless questioning, her mom gave up the secret locale of the tienda where she got all the chairs. She described it as a roadside place you couldn’t miss on the road to Dolores Hidalgo across the ruta from a watering hole called, La Burger. We packed that intel away and proceeded to El Rincon on the off chance we might actually catch-up with our architect there.

But after conversing with two lonely painters on the job, it was obvious that our broker, architect and contractor were not going to be meeting us at the house on DAY10 to discuss a firm calendar of when we might actually start to move-in, so we went over the Obraje arroyo to the Frabrica Aurora to glean more expensive ideas on muebles pieces we could copy for when we did finally get into our house. Now among dining tables, coffee tables, rugs etc, Jackie had identified chairs from at least four different design sources in San Miguel proper at this point, most of which involved waiting six weeks or more for craftsmen in Michoacan to make them to order with prices ranging from $100 to $350 each including the middlemen's markup. Now the Source-er had a plan!

Once done stealing costly ideas, we picked up a radio taxi at the Fabrica and I mustered enough of my flailing Spanish to get the driver to take us out on the road to Delores Hidalgo and look for that tienda de sillas we got from Carambulla. The taxi would have to wait for us while we shopped and, hopefully haggled and then bring us back to town. The ruta is  the one to Atotonilco where the old church and the hot springs are, not that far really, but too far to walk as is our preference in town. Anyway, like just about everyone else in this land so far, Jose’ Luis, our taxi driver, was terrific and got us to Tejidos Vidal where Jackie proceeded to order 6 Sillas de Tule (the dining chairs above) from young Ryan for a grand total of about $220 USD. They should be ready in tres semanas. The 60’s rubber-band chairs we will probably go back and order once we get a handle on the lay-out of our roof garden. Not a bad day's work for The Source-er but it wasn't her first victory.

The day before she hit up a pretty tony design place in Centro on Relox (SMA's version of Madison Ave.) called Antigua Casa. It wasn't the first time there for Jackie had spotted a beautiful dining table made of Parota wood that she had earlier in the week marked as decorating prey but, alas, it had been sold. It wasn't cheap either but I was told in simple enough Spanish that I could actually comprehend, that another was arriving on Friday as a floor sample. I then built an on-line relationship with the saleswoman, Vero at the store who spoke no English but I was armed with Google Translate and a What's App connection. That allowed Jackie to swoop in and pick up the showroom dining table as part of a deal to also replicate a small kitchen table from a photo she took of  commercial one at the fancy Cumpanio panaderia next door. Two tables down with one shot and a good deal! Bam! Come-on now, this is some exciting interior decorating shit! Remember what we said about adjusting our definition of accomplishment? Anyway it was a hell of a lot more satisfying than watching the Saints let a Superbowl season slip away on Sunday Day11. My deep condolences to all followers of the Black and Gold. May Kansas City now rule!

*OK, ok, a real quick chrono-update before signing-off: Yes we got out to look at our stuff in exile on Friday evening, but Magic Marcos didn't show and the key to his trailer mysteriously didn't work, so we're still in the dark on about three pieces. And, no, the desired move-in summit with architect and contractor didn't happen this weekend so we'll have to wait for week three for any more progress on those and our Mexican checking account, residency cards, Spanish lessons and car purchase. Back to the time-line later this week, I promise.

Not to get all epistemological on your friends & family asses in the middle of this slightly amusing alter kockers in wonderland (ok, Ben?) blog, but I don't think we appreciate just how blessed we are as a society in that we truly are cut an insane amount of slack in our estadounidense lives. I know we think of Mexico as perhaps the alpha dog of Latin manana-ism, and in many many ways it is, of course, as you'll plainly see whenever I bring us up to date on the progress(?) of the house and our stuff-still-in-exile(!). But not so much so, oh pampered citizens, when it comes to government bureaucracy and the banking system. I feel you, Gregor Samsa!

Think about your signature. Go ahead. Got it? How often do you use it? I mean your real signature, not the dashed zip-line you make with your finger-tip on a the Ipad at the hipster coffee shop or with an inkless bic on the credit card receipt those rare occasions when you're not internet shopping. Do you really ever use your true full name, your official signature anymore? And does the world even care? There are times, I bet, when you mistakenly or purposefully dash-off a vague mark against your spouse's or friend's account right? It could even be at the DMV or on your tax return. And what happens? The entire interconnected global poltico-economic system cuts you enormous slack and lets you walk away with the latte, a drivers license or W2 without a blink. Not in Mexico, mis pampered amigos! How this comes into play you'll see in a mo.

Now at DAY9 of our adventure, we have developed a fairly consistent daily plan of action, split between:
-Trolling the town for affordable but oh-so-design-perfect Jackie-sanctioned furnishings for the looming tabla-rasa of our feveredly completing house. 
-Doing our linguistically-challenged best on the construction site to communicate changes and choices to our incredibly patient and saintly contractor, Valente.
-Scouring the area for ferreterias to take pix of door handles, sinks, paint colors, sinks, toilets, at Valente's direction.
-Trying to get hold of Magic Marcos (and our exiled stuff shipped from NY.)
-Waiting in a bank, immigration or lawyers office.
We haven't even started our Spanish lessons or looked for a car yet and the relative time devoted to these regular duties is by no means equatable, as you'll now see.
 
Yesterday, Day8 saw more than half of our entire day devoted to sitting across the desk from the friendly, helpful but somewhat high-strung Elizabeth Ponce De Leon (yes, I know) at CIBanco for the third day running. Seems that our initial contact from Sunday breakfast at El Vergel, Josefa had passed us on completely to her gringo-expeditor. After several hours of back and forth over the same information across some 15 forms between two sections of the bank the bottomline was we still didn't have a checking account with a Mexican bank because, neither of us could replicate our Passport signatures to Ms. Ponce de Leon's satisfaction! Are you getting this? The more we try, the less it looks like our signatures. We've evidently lost the ability to consistently sign our names in the land of don't worry about it, AI and insurance will take care of any malfeasance you may be thinking of perpetrating with that antiquated pen. Thus, in our new reality, no robotic recreation of a signature laid down on a US passport form ten years ago, no deal, no account, no dice, NO SLACK!  

Same with our new local immigration lawyer who just this morning had us sign our several page petitions to turn our visas into residency cards with the admonition that our signatures had to match those on our passports or our $10k peso fee will have been paid in vain. 

So now we wait for the banking and immigration calligraphy gods in Mexico DF to hand down their decision as to if we are the same people today we were in 2010 and will be in 2020 and thus can stay in this No Slack paradise, our fates hanging by a cursive thread.

Next episode: Are we actually going out to visit our stuff in exile this afternoon with the magical Marcos in tow? Will Jackie find the right menaje de puertas? Don't miss the proxima exciting episode!

The way refuse pick-up works in SMA is that usually on the same mostly two days each week at roughly about the same time of day, a caballero walks down the middle of your street loudly striking a triangle. He precedes by a half block or so one of the brand new garbage trucks the city bought last year after much political wrangling I understand. (Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is truly government in action!). Upon hearing the sounding triangle, residents of the block scurry out in various modes of dress depending upon how early it is as well as their personal definitions of modesty, although never, ever bare-footed, a cultural no-no, carrying their refuse and cue-up like Brits at a bus-stop at the back of the garbage truck. When your turn comes you either toss it up if you're mas macho enough or, like me, enlist the aid of one of the two refuse caballeros atop the pile because we seem to have generated twice the trash of the locals around me after only one week in town. 

So for you chrono-hounds it's been a week now. This is Day7, Tuesday, Garbage Day and a time to reflect on how a sojourn like ours changes your definition of accomplishment. I had a somewhat sleepless night not knowing if indeed today was garbage day and if it was, if I would recognize the triangle and if I did whether I'd make it to the truck in time and if I did whether I'd get the protocol correct and actually successfully dispose of our week's trash which, to be truthful was piling up a bit and becoming slightly odiferous.

First, I lay awake in bed for a half hour listening for tell-tale triangling before deciding to get up and go downstairs and look up and down the street for the usual signs of garbage day of which there were none, duh. So I decided that perhaps Tuesday was not a garbage day on Calle 20 de Enero Norte after all, so I went back upstairs and took a leisurely shower. As soon as I emerged dripping, of course, there was the triangle! I will use the verb "scurry" again because it's so apt in describing how I went into action.The moral of the story is that I made it! Fully clothed, and more importantly, shod, I cued with my surprised to see an obvious gringo disposing of his ample pile at the rear of the truck before it moved on down the block neighbors who wished me a buenos dias with a twinkle.

When I got back back inside, I had the most satisfying feeling of accomplishment. The odd parochial system worked and I managed to become a working part of it. Yes! It got me to consider what we have accomplished in a mere week of our adventure rather than obsess over what we have not.  In other words, it's not too soon to make a step away from we-don't chill-New-Yorkerdom. So I looked at Days5&6 and gave it a whirl:
-We still have not gotten to behold the shipped stuff missing from our storage locker, but Magical Marcos did respond to my last What's App saying he'll meet us out there at some point!
-We still don't have a Mexican checking account set-up but I did meet with Josefa at CIBanco yesterday who now has most of the documentation needed and will let me know when I should come down again!
-We still haven't made it to the Immigration Office to get our residency cards, but we do have a contact who will shepherd us through, once we hear from her!
-The two cats are no longer fighting, having been thrown together in these foreign feline environs!

Not bad, right? And as for Casa De La Sombra itself? They've begun the exterior paint and we're seeing samples of the new interior color today son las cinco. Will we actually be able to move-in at the end of the month as planned and promised? There are other ways to measure home-building accomplishments, no?
​ 

Just a short break in our slavish chronology for a few quick observations from Days1-4 on this Day5 Sunday as you estadounidenses watch the NFL playoffs. ( So Stephanie, Saints or Eagles? Be careful of your answer.)

Spoiler Alert: Not to break our promise to finish the tales of The Wall and Our Stuff, we can tell you that neither has concluded as of now but, unlike the folks in Washington, compromise was reached on our Wall which hopefully will not delay the completion of our migration nor keep the money flowing out of our 2019 budget allocations. As for the Saga of our Stuff, we're waiting for the return of Magical Marcos to SMA this week so he can accompany us back to the storage locker and solve the mystery of the apparently missing stuff, once and for all. Stay tuned for that!

​Plus, I've always wanted an occasion to use "interregnum" in the 21st century. (Take that, Nilda!). 

So, as to misquote Clapton, "She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie, Propane".  For much of Terra Gringo it's the facile punch-line of the now defunct Fox cartoon King of The Hill or just those cumbersome silver tanks of liquid gas you exchange at the Home Depot every few weeks during the warm weather to power backyard barbecues. Here in the high dessert of central Mexico, however, where there is no central heating or cooling nor a Keystone natural gas pipeline nor any wood, it's the only way to light your stove or heat the place you sleep on chilly winter nights. If you're lucky (meaning not poor), there's a "gas log" in every bedroom and maybe even in the living room. Being a fervent wood-burning fireplace man myself, I'd always looked down at these elaborate ceramic faux logs with faux burnt parts barely disguising a series of metal tubes spouting too uniform rhythmically dancing flames. They'd be hypnotic if they weren't so cringingly fake. But no longer am I a propane gas log snob! You see it can get down into the 30's some nights in the winter months here (admittedly followed by 70's by late-morning, true, but still...). We've discovered that even slight discomforts at our ages can easily compromise long-held aesthetic prejudices. 

We spent the afternoon of Day2 checking out the latest models at Ferreteria Don Pedro on the Salida a Queretaro and Casa Roberto here in town. You wouldn't be amazed at the choices of styles and and we have three of these bad boys to install in the new digs as well as a number of gas outlets for equally unhandsome wall heaters. Yes, brother, like the one we had in our only bathroom growing up in Gentilly (Nola). Ah, the circle of life! Thus, this wood-burning fireplace snob, who just bought a quarter cord of wood for the unappreciative renters in Nuro who no doubt have the Nest thermostat set at 80 till March, is now an acolyte of these badly executed works of practical art. They are actually amazingly efficient for warming just the few square meters necessary to get a night's REM sleep. Now we just have to get used to the lingering sweet sour scent of liquid propane wafting around the house. Stay tuned for pix in future digressions.

Bells. Remember bells? Not school bells or lunch bells or the corny celestes of dreaded Christmas music but church bells. Even though the US has more churches per capita than any other western what-used-to-be-a democracy, we sure don't use church bells much outside of maybe Sundays if you live near one of the ubiquitous houses of worship. Well, if you've been pining for the sound of church bells all-day, every day, SMA is the place for you. I didn't know until I came here that I was indeed pining for them because I can't seem to get enough of them. What's even more fabulous is that there's a code of their constant and seemingly random ringing that once you break, brings you one step closer to being a local and we all know from the success of AirB&B, everyone wants to be a local!

So here's the secret: It's all about time! Except for the bells that actually calls the faithful to mass which, truth be told sort of  screws up the time code thing, it's pretty easy to remember. A Big Bell sounds the hour followed by a small bell that indicates 15 minute intervals, once for 15 after, twice for 30 after, three time for 45 after. At the top of the hour the Bell rings it followed by four small bells. It's mesmerizingly cacophonous, especially at noon and midnight: 18 bells!!

Enjoy the football games and stay-tuned for this weeks possible adventures at The Bank, The Immigration Office, Our Storage Locker, and of course, The Wall at CASA DE LA SOMBRA itself. 

Days 1-3:
No, not that wall. But in its own cross-cultural sheltery way, a symbol of, shall we say, clashing world views? Competing egos? But we'll get to The Designer vs. The Architect anon. Chronology is king in blog-land and I know you're dying to know if and how we recovered from the much too consequential Day0 to charge into Day1. 

Day1, January 9th dawned crisp and pale blue sunny in the San Antonio colonia of San Miguel. Cocooned in the matching terry cloth bathrobes JC purchased specifically for this phase of the adventure, the first order of business was finding the damn cats who had both melted into the unfamiliar nooks of Casa Gayle as soon as we had released them from their travel bondage the night before. We had, of course, purchased exact replicas of their Nuro heated cathouses, packed them in an extra suitcase for the trip, then set them up in the courtyard before collapsing at the close of Day0. And just as, "of course", neither had gone anywhere near them overnight. Girlscout ensconced herself firmly underneath a large antique apothecary in the dinning room where she remains three days later. Charley, on the other hand was somehow always either in our bed or under it. So that's hows it going be is it? Oy.

We, nonetheless, needed caffeine and sustenance for the day ahead which consisted of tracking down the elusive and mysterious cross-border mover-magician, Marcos and the trailer of our possessions which he had deposited somewhere on the road to Celaya and the all important initial rendezvous with the agent and contractors at the house site. We headed out across the intentionally uneven streets toward Cafe Monet on Zacateros for cappuccinos and our first huevos mexicanos of the new era. Thus fortified, we grocery shopped, nailed down a visit to our hostage possessions for the next day and made the long but never boring cobblestoned walk to colonia Obraje and El Rincon de Santa Maria where the dramatis personae of the Casa 9 project where waiting for our arrival: Ximena Dominguez and Nancy Howze-the hardest working real estate brokers in the state of Guanajuato; Valente-the affable project contractor and Tomas-the serious project foreman. We couldn't wait to see the progress and gauge if indeed we were going to be able to move-in at the end of the month as promised.

Missing, alas, was The Architect, Luis Sanchez Renero, henceforth known as X-Acto. During our initial meetings with him last February and the Skypes the months following plus the in-person progress tour with him in August, he and Jackie, henceforth known as The Shade, had gotten along fabulously. Both had an obvious life-long passion for creating unique shelter experiences and very well and long developed design aesthetics. Perhaps too well. Jackie had been successfully and amicably chipping away at Luis' entrenched modernism over the construction year. Our version of his "Casa Patio" would have ceiling vigas (beams), the powder room under the stairs not in the kitchen, the terrazzo floors would be warm beige not cool grey. In fact when we saw via our bi-weekly pix that the floors had been poured the wrong color, they were ripped-p ripped-up and done over to JC's satisfaction. (Remember, she was a member of the Pantone Advisory Committee in her youth! Question her color sense at your peril!). There were more tweaks to Luis' design that were sometimes executed and sometimes not. In any case, these concessions to The Shade had evidently taken its toll on X-Acto, for now we were told his English wasn't that good and our Skype connections were worse and we were now only to communicate via the stoic Ximena with whom we were rendezvousing at 3:00pm.

Upon arriving at El Rincon, we were first struck with the amount of construction activity everywhere around us, for Luis had decided to build seven new homes rather than four. Secondly with how much progress had been made on the house and how the re-done floors and the beams looked great. Thirdly with how big it was, hmmm. Fourthly with that it probably wouldn't be move-in ready at the end of our Casa Gayle rental, aghh. Fifthly what's up with the entrance wall? THE WALL! The concrete wall that the original design called for at the entrance to the patio Jackie never liked. In typical Frank Lloyd Wright fashion, this wall was to box you in upon entering before surprising you with the expanse of the outdoor space. Feh, The Shade wanted blue sky to meet you after stepping off the street. X-Acto had countered with the idea of making the wall steel rather than concrete. But there was no wall there at all on DAY1, just a slot in the paving stones where it was to be erected. DAY2, however, we were greeted by the full steel grid that was to be THE WALL.

Who would prevail? And what about those guys in truck in the picture above?
Tune-in for more on Days2&3. The Wall and the trip to Puente del Carmen with Gilberto and his pick-up to visit our stuff in exile!

DAY 0:
January 8th 2019 loomed as Contra-Flow Caravan D-day for almost a year. And I'll be damned if it didn't finally arrive! All the planning, the spending, the worrying, the wait-what-are-we-doing, did I mention worrying, came down to one day. But really, it's not fair to that day. Even if time is just a human invention, how can one day possibly carry all that responsibility? Especially when loaded down with air travel and pets? 

So as any pair of self-respecting, co-dependent, stop-telling-us-to-chill-we're New Yorkers would do, we called up our reserves of pessimism and braced for a day of freak snow-storms, escaped cats, cancelled flights, lost luggage, denied visas, and, yes, political retribution at the border. No way was this going to be easy, right? Well guess what? It wasn't! But for all the non-worried-about reasons. Ooo fate is a nasty mistress.

We woke at 4:30am, no snow-storm, drugged the cats and hustled them into their carriers, said goodbye to our naked Nuro house at 5:30am, got to LGA at 6:00am where we proceeded to perform the repack-three-bags-becasue-one-is-only-12 pounds-overweight ballet, got on the flight with the eerily quiet carry-on cats, arrived in Houston three and a half hours later into the same concourse as our connecting flight to Queretaro so had time for an early oyster po-boy at Landry's Seafood, got on the flight to QRO with now groggy and thirsty carry-on cats for the final two hours and touched-down in Viva Mexico! where all our bags were waiting for us on the carousel.

What?! No cancelled flights?! No loose and/or embarrassingly defecating cats? No lost luggage? We're here? We've made it! Ha! Damn you fate! Now it's just getting through passport control, customs and an hour drive to out three week rental in SMA. And it's sunny and 75 degrees.

Even passport control is fine as we navigate our visa for residency with little trouble. But then came customs and the cats! Now you have to understand that Jackie has spent weeks and hundreds of dollars getting shots and topical applications for these diffident companions not to mention official forms and vet paperwork. She's prepared for the less than urgent customs agents who take the cats and the paperwork into the dreaded back room. Then time, that human invention, slows down to Mexico rhythm. We're still waiting as the rest of our plane and then another pass through the hall. Have we celebrated too soon? Will Charlie and Girlscout get turned back at the border as a grand gesture of we-will-not-pay-for-the-wall defiance by the newly elected AMLO administration?

But no! The agents finally emerge from the back room with more paperwork for Jackie to sign and then our now completely pissed-off and hung-over cats and we are sprung into the Mexican sunshine. Thankfully our Bajio-Go driver is still there and we all head off for an hours drive to San Miguel in his luggage-filled Jetta, passing many Pemex stations with 70's like gas lines because of distribution issues the new gov't has evidently caused by trying to stop wholesale petrol theft. But we have plenty of fuel to make it to SMA, just not great tires it seems as, yes, just outside of town we get a blow-out. We unload our luggage and I give the young guy a hand in putting on a spare. But it's getting late and both we and our strung-out cats are getting testy and hungry by the time finally find our rental about 4:00PM central time.

It's an absolutely beautiful home, however, filled with amazing art in a very cool part of San Miguel we hadn't explored in our previous visits, San Antonio. We meet the owner's property agent, Jessica who quickly runs us through the mechanics of the amazing place and leaves us the keys. We need to get the cats some litter before the pet store closes and ourselves some vittles before we do.

Then fate, or stupidity if you want to be cruel or truthful, finally decided to step in like Dean Winters in a serape.

I try the key in the front door before we head-out. I manage to get the bolt thrown but then can't get it back or the key out of the lock. I try all my patented fix-it tricks sans WD40. Nothing works. This goes on for about an hour. Now we're worried. There is no other egress. The bars on the first floor windows are secure and the second story balcony is a bit too high for my parkour talents. We're stranded. Jessica is not answering her phone or texts. We call the owner in the states who suggest we call for take-out and have it shoved through the bars. Oh, and it's about this time that Jackie realizes that she hasn't seen either of her credit cards the last few days. There it is! All that worry and pessimism justified but aimed in the wrong direction.

So, yes, the bad stuff will come no matter how you prepare. It's how you react when it arrives that matters. Good platitude if I do say so. I didn't react well. Yes, Jackie, I've got to work on that and my Spanish. 

Jessica did finally respond and got a locksmith to release us about 8pm and we immediately headed out to a wonderfully cozy Italian restaurant called Antiga where Puttanesca, Carbonora and some Chianti brought us back from the brink. Goodbye January 8th, 2019. You didn't disappoint us, you bastard.  Hello the next 2 and half months. Don't you dare!

Next installment: The House and The Storage Unit

Many of you reading this will have experienced our patented cure for insomnia, the story of how we decided to build a home in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico after only two visits and a tense come-to-jesus with our "careers" and bank accounts. It seems, however, that dragging you onto an ICloud Photo Album of boring construction pix didn't quite guarantee a full eight hours of REM sleep so, we're going to try this blog thang to put you in a coma once and for all.

DAY -1:
Today, Monday Jan 7th 2019 is the last one here in leafy Westchester before tomorrow's Contra-Flow Caravan south of the proposed wall. To bring you up to date, we’ve rented our Nuro house to an un-named actor and his girlfriend starting tomorrow till mid-March while he’s shooting the third season of Divorce for HBO (leave him alone, Pam!)

Thus, starting the day after Xmas, we've had to strip the house of seasonal decorations, bring-in our handyman for touch-up painting and systems repairs, move-out our fab niece, Charlotte, who’s been with us since June, get AJ & Oliver's Christmas haul to their respective Murray Hill & Williamsburg apts, and empty-out all our closets, bathrooms. etc. This all as we made repeated trips to the Mex consulate in NY for permanent residency status so we could pack-up spare and recently acquired furniture, appliances, etc. to ship down to SMA for a one-time duty-free move*. Oh, yes, then there's the cats...*(The saga of the move and the mover will be the subject of a later post-move post and possibly a separate podcast and soon-to-be Netflix miniseries.)

Stay tune for posting of  tomorrow's DAY0 story of the flight cum cats, and immigration at Queretaro...