Hola, ya’ll, one last time desde the sun y fun capital of Guanajuato. Well, not really for the “last time”, but since I made the bright self-in-corner-painting-move of calling the previous post “penultimate”, we’re sort of stuck with this being a “one last time” and so it will be. Let’s say the last one this time round from the brisk cool and sunny morning studio of our real despite-all-odds home, Casa 9 en El Rincon de Sta. Maria, Col. Obraje, San Miguel de Allende, Gte., Estados Unidos de Mexico. For, yes, we leave for the March-Madness-Mueller-Memo obsessed northeastern US too early Tuesday morning after nigh on to three months in this whiplash paradise.
 
I wish we could tie-up what we’ve come to calling the Alter Cocker Adventure: Phase One with a  neat litany of universal lessons learned con happy ever after all nuggets of cactus rainbows and unihorned burros astride our impeccably finished minor league-Barragàn modernist desert palace, but what we’re really taking back home for a while is much more complex and dare I say life-altering than that. “Yeah?”, I hear you thinking; “will we finally get some substance, some little profundity from all the sad-clown attempted comedy of these aren’t we brave scribblings?” “Sure, life’s wonderfully messy even after you’re eligible for the senior ticket discounts on Metro North, we knew that. And so…? Give us and a proper ending ending, for Crissake!”
 
Hold-on, you’re looking for the life-altering, surprising but uplifting take-away of this intense but, let’s face it, only one quarter of a year excursion a couple of degrees south and one language and time zone away? Don’t know yet, sorry. As Jackie says, we’ve got to let it percolate, but you will be the second to know when the moral brew is ready. We give you our Valente-like promise. Teehee. In the meantime, we’ll just wrap up the diarist chronology thang, post some nice pix and let you get back to your brackets as we drag out our three dusty suitcases and stare towards Tuesday March 26th, VM Day. (Well if Jan 8th was D-day, then March 26th should be Victory in Mexico Day, right? Ok, make it Victory OF Mexico, smart-asses!) Three suitcases, a camera bag and one cat carrier. Yup, I said ONE cat carrier.
Bummer alert!
 
As you may recall, we delayed our original return date for a few original reasons, the weather here was too mind-bendingly gorgeous to go back to always disappointing March in NY, didn’t want to interrupt AJ’s visit and there were more unfinished projects to oversee on the completion of THE HOUSE. Added to that was an unspoken lingering hope that Girlscout would finally descend from the rooftops or ascend from the arroyos of the Obraje in the nick o time, given a little more of it. But that didn’t happen. I think we’ve come to terms with her flight, however. She’s obviously found her place here, perhaps making a stand that until the present pro-canine/anti-cat US regime is overthrown, she will remain in AMLO’s feline friendly socialist paradise. Or more likely, she’s always been a hider, and just hid for too long this time. Don’t cry for Girlscout, Argentina, we think she’s just embarking on the third of her nine lives, but you may lend some sympathy to her former estadounidense humans. Especially the female human who remains fairly bereft at her loss. On the other hand, the prospect of seeing our short-legged, long haired orange tabby with a handlebar mustache, bandolero, dangling cigarillo and shaded almond eyes under a sombrero gives us something to look forward to upon our return to SMA for Phase Two in late summer!
 
And before we take down that Bummer alert, remember the “Halefrigginluia” raised in the last post over finally getting internet from the time-shifted Ma Bell of Mexico, Telmex? That lasted two and half days until the communication-monopolies-are-the-same-world-over technicians discovered that our line had been spliced onto an overloaded distribution node thanks, evidently, to the incentive of “lunch-money” to the installer buey last Saturday. And I thought I was getting the hang of working the sitch here!  After all, I grew in Louisiana and worked for NOPSI, but when that little peso-incentivized electrical improvisation slowed everyone else’s web access in the Rincon, our electron enabled lifeline to you, dear friends and fam, got pulled pronto by HQ. Now we’re talking easy three weeks and the prospect of having to stoop to going with the dreaded cable company, Megacable just to keep our webcam broadcasting and our solar panels registering while we’re gone! This is where I’d usually employ my patented lazy button on an unresolved plot point, “stay-tuned”, but if this is the last post, I got to find another device, hmm.
 
Ok, you want some takeaways? Here’s one, ConEd ShmonEd or we’re not in Orleans parish any more, Dorothy. Semi-seriously, though, new definitions of achievement rise in new cultural situations! The right view of this seeming slap-down here is that another major milestone that we thought we had reached we get to look forward to reaching again upon our return! Build, knock down, build again! The circle of Mexican life!
 
That wasn’t so hard, ok, here’s another: You, my bloggispherephiles, are all living examples of another lesson of our first round of the Michael & Jackie Mexican Adventure Bracket. That’s the simple and universal Duh that the most precious and cherished of all unexpected but fervently hoped-for discoveries when throwing yourself into the uncomfort zone are people. No matter how unbelievably and breathtakingly pleasing to the senses the strange new venue, it’s uncovering the shared and unique landscape of its inhabitants that makes you anxious for the next day to begin. I mean when was the last time you woke up at 5:30am and thought, damn, it’s not time to get up yet. I’m not talking about too much caffeine either. We’re reminded of our oh so distant youth when we left the humid monotony of the delta for the cold shock of Manhattan and the prospect of meeting all of you, as an example. So it is that his last lap of Phase One has delivered unto us the gift of even more amazing humans that instantaneously trigger and neutralize all of the two-steps-backism of this insanely beautiful, clement, seductive, hard-easy, familiar-strange, cat-dog new blessedly not-home home.
 
So we’re leaving this build, knock-down, build again place in the hands of a whole new cast of characters. You’ve met most of them, the villains and saints of our adventure and we encourage you to contact Meg Simon who will be casting the Netflix series from the podcast of this blog in the very near future if you’re interested in a role. Add to the existing dramatis personae the following:
Manolo, our infectiously can-do-but-at-my-own-pace accountant turned real estate broker turned property manager and his wife, daughter and son who are to be the guardian angels of Casa 9 till we return and after.
Sarai, the encyclopedic and overwhelmingly diligent landscape designer and experimental horticulturist and her crew of equally diligent plant bueys who are turning the several outdoor spaces of our could-be cold modernist home into an amazing botanic refuge.
Jesùs, our gimlet-eyed guardhouse guy who has become our trusted fix what Valente’s guys have gotten wrong guy who possesses the surest hands of any portrait painter and the calm demeanor of any astronaut.
 
See you all back north in a few long days, changed but the same, built, knocked-down, built again. Stay tuned…
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Happy St Paddy's and no, we're not on our way home to the overserved and underwarmed northeast US. But good catch, oh steel-trap minded blogamaniacs! You are correct, we were slated to reverse our contra-caravan so, I guess just caravan, north, albeit with no apparent gang affiliation, this very day along with AJ, who, graciously, spent a hunk of his puny and precious vacay time with us this past week, but we're still here. Physically, anyway, for another nine, count 'em nine days. We made the decision some time back that, with a number of Casa 9 “deliverables” still teetering on the cusp along with the prospect of packing-up-the-house, such as it is, -mania impinging on AJ’s concise visit, we’d rebook to the 26th. I know, we didn’t tell you in the previous posting and for that we humbly ask your pardon.  And what, my deeply committed friends and fam as well the odd, how did you get in here, FB creeper, is our present mental disposition at this vague but pivotal juncture of our waning adventure, you may well be asking yourselves. Well, you may as well ask yourselves because we’re not answering that question. Not, that is, till we attend to that old taskmaster, chronology!
 
 
So, this last hurrah, final push, denouement , coda of phase one of “the Adventure” was preceded by a much anticipated and, we’ll admit, a tad worried-over visit from AJ. He was arriving in Mexico City on Tuesday and flying out Sunday. Now he doesn’t get a lot of time off and it was going to be his birthday while he was here so we were facing a long haul cum short skid scenario of which we wanted to make the most.  How would we accomplish that, you ask. Planning, my friends, precise planning. A quick hits of Mexico City followed by San Miguel food, golf, sun, pool, rooftops, did we mention food?
 
Our plan then was to start the week by taking the 3-4 hour, depending on time of day, day of week, week of month, month of year, Premira Plus 10:00am bus on Monday morning from San Miguel’s Estaciòn Central de Autobuses into Mexico City’s Terminal Norte, then grab a cab to a very handsome boutique hotel in the Juarez colonia, Stara Hamburgo, that was run by our neighbor and role model Lucia Liceaga’s friend Sandy. We’d stay there for two nights while AJ would stay for one. Jackie would don her Source-er’s disguise and scope muebles in the capital on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning before the hijo arrived Tuesday afternoon upon which time we’d spirit him off to Coyaocàn to experience Casa Azul and Trotsky’s House and Diego Rivera’s Studio before sampling the first of a host of fabulous CDMX restaurants like Pasillo de Humo (oaxacan) and Azul Condesa (oh, that Tortilla Soup!) and then we’d all head back to SMA on the comfortable Primera Plus 5:40pm bus on miercoles where he’d spend four chill days as the first non-me&Jackie to experience the new family set-up and we'd relax the hell out of him. Brilliant, yes?
 
Ok, I can tell what you’re thinking but Monday Morning Quarterbacking isn’t really constructive at this point so please put it away. One thing we had neglected to take into account was that Mexico City has 22 million inhabitants and 9 million vehicles on the streets at any one time. While we did make it to Coyoacàn for a quick sprint around Frida’s house with about three hundred of her biggest fans before it closed and managed a couple of wonderful meals and a greener than green park or two, about three quarters of our time there was spent in Ubers luxuriating in tear-out-your-hair-if-you-still possess-any Mexico City traffic. The relatively serene Terminal Norte of  early Monday afternoon was packed and tense on Weds evening and the four and half hour bus ride north was not the chill introduction to SMA we had envisioned for our harried NYC journalist.

Lesson to be learned when visiting amazingly handsome, dynamic, delicious and gorgeous park-infested CDMX: Pick a neighborhood and explore it on foot for several days, only taking to cabs and preferably ubers to other colonias early and late in the day.You’re welcome!
 
Despite the somewhat fraught and draining opening day and half in the capital city and a limited time away looming, our first-born first visitor to the SMA adventure project was able to partake of some of the charms of my namesake saint's town and, in the process, we rediscovered them too. Like El Charco Del Ingenio Botanic Gardens that sit in the hills just above our Rincon and offer a beautiful walk, some amazing views and bizarre cactus. Plus he worked on his tan and his handicap with what he says was the fastest 18 holes he'd ever played at the nearby impeccable Ventana club de golf. He even did us the honor of braving the, shall we say bracing and I do mean plunge Casa 9 pool before treking down to centro for a classic SMA meal. He, of course, brought us something too, not only a wonderful vibe of family and home we were sorely in need of, but didn't know it, but also a bit of break-through luck on the it-will-never-be-cleared-before-they-go back punchlist, dear schedenfreuders. Oh yes!

For we now, after five long weeks of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown Telmex promises of internet connection, a lone installer arrived yesterday while we were deep in AJ’s birthday celebrations over a lunch at the glamorous The Restaurant in Centro on Diez y Solano, about 1.2 miles from the Rincon. We had ignored last night’s 15th straight notice of their cross-their-corporate-hearts promised arrival within 72 hours to fo'sure install so for Chrissake don’t leave your home. We had settled into the reflex of knowing if by some wormhole an installer actually did appear, confused, questioning and disoriented at Casa 9 after all these weeks, there were always hordes of unregulated, non-unionized, and seriously un-OSHA-ed workers to let them in. Except on Saturdays, of course, when there are none of the ample build-it-tear-it-down-build-it-again craftsmen at hand. When I got the call from both the contractor, Valente and the Property Manager, Manolo that TELMEX WAS AT THE RINCON, I had just finished a lovely lunch that I had to put in immediate jeopardy as I left Jackie and AJ at the table to run the 1.2 miles and throw my body in front of this phantom Telmex installer’s little white van, if needs be, to get him to stay!  Did I make it? Was the broadband of Gunajuato curse broken? Testament to the success of my altercocker one sixteenth marathon is that this posting is the first in some 5 weeks delivered via home WIFI.  Halefrigginluia!
 
Another bright light in a week that started in a dark mood, was the lovely surprise of our let’s get to it landscaper, Sarai Guzman. When the three intrepid Mexico City traffic victims stumbled across the threshold of Casa 9 at 10:30 Weds night, we were confronted with an amazing array of fruit an olive trees, palms, more bizarre succulents than you could imagine, birds of paradise, bougainvillea, jasmine and more giant terra-cotta pots than a Beckett festival!  As we retired exhausted in our new starting to feel like home, a visit from family and the promise of an amazing garden allowed that perhaps as the horizon appears, things were looking up! We even had some rain for the first time this calendar year last night as we walked back from a lovely birthday dinner at the top of Trazo 1810.
 
Ok, OK! Totally out of character, sorry. I won’t get carried away here. We’re still nowhere with our water system or Pergola, still surrounded by 6 houses in varied states of Hiroshima level dust-cloud producing construction, still finding barely wound electrical tape as the finish of choice on light fixtures, still looking for Girlscout! 
 
So, after a whirlwind five and a fraction days en Los Estado Unidos de Mexico, AJ's winging, if you can apply that somewhat glamorous predicate to flying Jet Blue, his way back to Murray Hill, as we settle-down to another baker’s semana in the relentlessly lovely and clement Obraje colonia of SMA.  One more shot at trying to kill the punchlist and set our minds at ease before we leave our marvellously frustratingly remarkable home in Mexcio in the hands of others till we return for phase two. Stay-tuned, oh faithful followers of our extranjero follies, as the finale of our grand Mexican Adventure approaches.

Really, my beloved but increasingly misguided and besieged homeland? Daylight Savings with black ice still on the desiccated pumpkins? With flurries yet smearing the fresh ashes on your foreheads? With the lurking treachery of the Ides still a possibly frigid week away? Meaning, we here in surprisingly rational on this topic Badhombreland have got to get up two hours earlier until April 7th just to commune with you, our sleepy brethren? George Bush’s most enduring legacy, other than “WMD” and “Mission Accomplished”!
 
So, my bleary-eyed chrono-idense friends and fam, Mardi Gras has passed and Lent descended from The Marigny to Brooklynn, Murray Hill and Petra since our last communique which no doubt left you all to wonder about the Big Miercoles. We’ll cut to the scoreboard:
 
-Still no Internet from that Throwback Thursday of Telephone Companies, Telmex! Even with daily visits from the preternaturally optimistic Valente who was joined by Jackie and me early last Friday morning to put a pathetic estadounidense face to the clockwork pleadings. No slack, Jack. We got a definite “work action” vibe from the lethargic men of the little white vans. Seems that a subcontractor had gone belly-up and the staff didn’t like the new workload in which we, once again bad timing-wise, are smack in the middle. Now considering trying MegaCable! Oh, yes the cable company. That’s how desperate we are. (AT&T has informed me that we’ve already used 75% of the month’s mobile data allotment!) Stay-tuned, if you can get our feeble signal, that is.
 
-The pool, however, is fully operational, thanks to Sergio & Co., if a bit frigid for some of weak loins, but that will be remedied by the time you visit… I promise!
 
-The carpentry, such as it is, has been completed, pretty much. The Roku TCL 612P display and the Definitive W Studio Sound Bar System have a proper 42” from the floor to the middle of the screen maple shelf on which to dwell in the two-story echo-y studio. Of course, with no broadband, we can only watch purchased shows from ITunes off my laptop via the HDMI cable I bought at the Radio Shack at the La Luciérniga mall on the Salida Celaya. Yup, Radio Shack is alive and well here. Comforting, no?
 
-Sarai, our marvelously personable landscaper is ready to start tomorrow on the roughly three garden areas of the oh-so-in-desperate-need-of-flora-at-this point house, the roof terraces, the patio and the carport/entrance. She took us on a whirlwind tour of local nurseries including her own exotic native plant backyard nursery cum laboratory in her very compact white pick-up. I even succeeded in getting the ever-pliable-and-ready-to-please-to-a-point Valente to install two faucets this week to facilitate the greening of Casa 9. Stand-by for pix, we hope…maybe
 
-As for the ever-changing disposition of the water purification and pergola projects, we’ll leave them in their comfortable slot in Luis Sanchez Rincon limbo for now. Even you house-hunter chronoastes don’t deserve any more droning-on about them, I’m sure. More only when there’s more to share on this for we should get onto much more pertinent current events, my contra-flow schadenfreuders!
 
Yes, you’ve seen the photo above: GIRLSCOUT IS GONE! Again. Many of you may intuit that this is actually not a great shock even though it’s been a great shock to us here under shall we say already somewhat stressed circumstances. The cat was acquired from the New Rochelle animal shelter the week after the notoriously destructive Hurricane Sandy and immediately, upon coming into our Premium Point Park abode, proceeded to irrevocably piss-off our two-year-old boy cat, Charlie and then immediately fall down the ash pit of our fireplace. Tony Gabriele, our stalwart neighbor, spent an entire day helping retrieve her, both ash-covered and wheezing in the basement by the end of the ordeal. Some years later, the same creature disappeared for six weeks, assumed lost but found near-starvation after hiding in the basement of our other neighbors. So, when, after being drugged and flown in a handbag with her arch-enemy and step-brother to a foreign land, deposited in three different homes over two months and harassed by a steady stream of loud workmen and an over-friendly neighborhood Ragdoll cat named Chloe, she decided to take to the roofs of the Rincon like some short-legged, long-haired feline Quasimodo, who could blame her? Jesus and Serafino, our privada’s gatehouse bueys, have each spotted her fleetingly, making her nimble way across on the interconnected roofs of our neighborhood, but she continues to elude us all. Will she come down before we leave for home? Yes, another cliff-hanger, to keep the real-life serial running.
 
The genuine bright side (you know there would be one, didn’t you?) of this seemingly tragic pet tale is that Girlscout’s distressing if not altogether surprising disappearance has thrust us suddenly and firmly into the El Rincon community as our neighbors, henceforth barely known to us for lo these weeks and months spent on home-building task. In a flash of four days, they have emerged from their beautifully designed walled enclaves and rallied around the search and rescue of our ludicrously dramatic cat. And what a pleasant revelation it’s been as the dramatis personae of our little modern corner of never ceasing to be surprising San Miguel de Allende have been revealed to us. Get ready for lots of names per individual because of the Spain-like custom of keeping both your father and mother’s name here:
 
-There’s the president of the nascent home-owners association and tall James Taylor chill private equity guy and contemporary of Cuaron, José Antonio Contreras Leyva and his wife Malu Lopez Portillo, Mexico City born & bred weekenders.
 
-Next is Michael and Monica Hoppe, Brits by birth, transplanted from Portland, owners of the notorious interloper Ragdoll Chloe and one of the few full-time residents of El Rincon; he’s an accomplished and well-known modern composer and musician; Jackie’s sure that Monica was a model.  
 
-Then there’s there the gregarious Pilar Romero and Max Garcia, weekenders and more from not far away San Louis Potosi; he’s an ex-oilman and now partner in his wife’s booming travel business. They hosted an impromptu rooftop gathering Saturday night where the cast you see here minus the Hoppes and plus her brother, nieces and daughter all graciously spoke flawless English to both our delight and shame.
 
-Finally, the slightly mysterious but definitely charismatic side-by-side neighbors and other full-time residents Lourdes Robles and Sicilia who own a gorgeously hip boutique hotel/B&B, Casa No Name, that sports a Unesco World Heritage protected mural. Lourdes moved here from Guadalajara after a revelatory yoga drop-out to India and Sicilia is an accomplished visual artist and muse for No Name. Lourdes is Casa 8 to our Casa 9 and resident nemesis to Luis, El Jefe Arquitecto, X-Acto!
 
And then then there are the two Canadian couples, one from Toronto and the other Quebec as mandated by Canadian law, who are long-term renters. And Peter and Nicole Mills, Aussie full-time residents in Casa 23. More on them and the owners of Casa 5 who live in Hawaii but are from New Rochelle, I kid you not, in future postings. In the meantime, dear bloggernauts, we prepare for our bus-ride into Mexico City Monday morning for a two-night stay at a boutique hotel in the Juarez nabe so Jackie can do more muebles Source-ery before AJ arrives on Tuesday and we all bus back to SMA on miercoles for our first-born as first-guest.
 
Who knows what will and will not happen at Casa 9 in these first three days in a month away from constant intercourse with Valente, Tomas and the crew that couldn’t hammer straight? Will Sarai get the garden going? Will Grilscout come down from the bell-tower? Will it be Telmex or (gasp!) MegaCable? Will the pool warm-up on its own? You know the drill by now…Stay-tuned!

​Just when we’re finally convinced that the unrelenting, if it were happening to someone else it would be Larry David, Joblike impediments to a naturally progressive settling-in to our exotic sitch were really duh-stark messages from the zeitgeist that the body Mexico had basically rejected our extranjero organs, boom! we get our Residente Permanente Cards from the Instituto Nacional De Migraciòn. Yes! We’ve been officially accepted by the state, despite our bigoted political leadership and chronically bad penmanship. Not quite a Sally Fields moment, but comparable.
 
We got the mood-jerking news as we were coming back from retuning our stoic VW Vento after a month of lovely if challenging locomotive freedom to the bueys at Firefly Rent-A-Car at the Querètaro airport on landmark Day50. Forgive the narrative repetition but, yes all three of our estadounidense GPS apps got us considerably lost on the simple and direct way there. And when we finally got there, with only a quarter hour before our Bajiogo hired car ride back, the damage from the quaint Unesco-sanctioned cobblestones and lethal topes of our precious San Miguel had bestowed a $200 penalty to the suddenly delicate albeit teutonic rented undercarriage. Cha-ching-idense!
 
I’m loath to report, oh dear and hopeful blogateros, that our mood was already dark at the outset of that sad and expensive trek because the prior days had seen our oh-so-close to finally getting there home hit some topes of its own. Mainly distressing was the floor of the master bath and a corner of the adjacent patio being savagely turned-over like an unauthorized exhumation because of, you guessed it, serious plumbing problems. As the excavation was being thankfully closed for what we hoped was the last time, the almost inhumanly desirous to please Valente, showed me a cut off plastic bottle bottom as the culprit for clogging the waste. I immediately recognized it as very much like the one the, not sure if he’s actually part of the construction crew or just living in their equipment bodega, guy occasionally used to water the insipient little ground cover plants between the paving stones in our patio when everyone else had left for the day. How it got down the toilet one can only wonder! That bit of news was delivered just after discovering that our ubiquitous plumber/electrician had neglected to “REMOVE THE SHIPPING ROD BEFORE INSTALLING THIS BRAND NEW NOT INEXPENSIVE AND A BITCH TO GET DELIVERED WASHER/DRYER”, rending it leakily inoperable as our piled-up laundry was shipped off to always-there-in-a-pinch Nancy’s.
 
It’s Mexicotown, Mr.& Mrs. Gittes! You’re welcome!
 
Oddly enough, however, black moods, profound misunderstandings, unexpected expenses and hair-pulling incompetence aside, or maybe precisely because of them, we are more and more feeling “at home” in these physically stunning, socially embracive and meteorologically magnificent surroundings. Some days even our Spanish works, although that’s usually due to the linguistic benevolence of the local populace. Our cool and sunny mornings are punctuated by the sounds of birds and bells until the chiseled noises of construction on the six other houses take hold and we’re up over coffee to plan the day around punch-list and new digs logistics. Because we’re still without house internet, I look to getting to either the Starbucks or Geeks & Coffee to use their broadband Wifi to screen the Rockie Awards nominations and download the night’s Itunes acquired entertainment to my laptop. Then it’s off to another try at the bank as Jackie scans for more acquisitions to outfit our Mexican retreat for your visits, oh friends and family! Putting in four to six miles across the sometimes treacherous cobbled banquettes we meet for a late breakfast or early lunch and often encounter, as Lent approaches, the outrageously and anachronistically costumed indigenous dance groups who drum and “battle” around the Paroquia like the Mardi Gras Indians on St. Joseph’s Day. (A very Happy Carnival to all our Yats, by the way!). We are home by mid-afternoon as the temps top-out in the mid-80’s and attempt to communicate with the construction crew on the latest two steps forward and one (or more) back as the house, for good mostly, inches towards, ok, we’ll call it completion, for now.
 
Speaking of Lent, Ash Wednesday, este miercoles, portends to be another pivotal day in the contra-caravan adventure as our pool guy, Sergio promises to get our little watering hole up and running after the plumbing swat team used it to pump out the waste system last week. Our landscape architect, Sarai is taking us to choose our potted trees, plants and bougainvillea for her plan for the patio and roof garden. Telmex is said to install our phone and internet and the carpenter returns to build our TV table in the Studio and spice racks and book shelves in the kitchen. Will there be rejoicing or the beating of breasts as we go for our ashes? Stay-tuned dear blogophile.
 
Because we’re now starting to consider our return in about a fortnight to the always disappointing never quite spring of tax-time in the northeast, we have to prepare for leaving this maddening paradise just as we are finally, perhaps, getting used to it, of course. Can we get what we need done in time? Will the full house water purification system ever be put in? And what about the always contentious pergola? These, dear friends are questions that have taken on more importance for us that the outcome of the failed Hanoi summit. Sad, I know. But there you have it. Mixed emotions are already taking hold. Prelude to that, of course, is AJ’s birthday visit for which we are meeting him in Mexico City for a day before busing back to SMA and hosting our first born as our first house guest really. Stay-tuned for that as well.