Cuando el lÁtigo baja

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!