don't be fresh, i know your mother!

Buenos Dias, dear intrepid bloggernauts; or Buenas Tardes /Noches depending on when you’re  reading this, oh, and Buen Provecho if you’re snacking while reading and Con Permisso if we’re invading your space with this post and much gusto if we’ve not met here previously. That should cover it, Gracias! You see, for such a truly no worries day-in and out community, such a no real time-frame and loosey-goosey word-keeping society, there are formalities to be observed here. Yeah, I know these aren’t Margret Meade-like revelations but no matter how much you read about this stuff in dumb extranjero-in-paradise scribblings, the affect doesn’t sink-in till you’re immersed in it for a good month or so.  
 
Bottom-line is there is little room or patience for anonymity here. We must acknowledge each other and each encounter with another soul, physical or no, is to be punctuated by an established verbal admission with eye-contact or its equivalent. That alone in the age of universal fake identity if not algorithmic robo mean-girl trolling is a jolt. You can neither run on these steep cobblestones nor can you hide. It’s as if, to quote my Bronx-born friend Fran Weinstein, “Don’t be fresh, I know your mother!” is set in grantito here. It takes getting used to, let me tell you. I have no doubt we’ve already gotten a reputation from countless tiny acts of social intercourse. Don’t know what it is, (don’t be fresh!) but we have to tend to it, that much we do know.
 
Now amongst you, our bloggerati, our reputation during this adventure has been as long-suffering indignantaries to the very edge of credibility. So as not to upset chronology nor dispute reputation, we will attempt to share the plot-twists around the supposed-to-be final push into our house here without getting too splastick. Here goes.
 
You may recall that when last we met, Little Dorit….sorry wrong serialized tale…, we had confronted the new construction demons and had won a date of Friday, Feb. 15th as our drop-dead you will be able to spend the night in your house concession from El Jefe Arquitecto et al. Well, we worked ceaselessly towards that date only stopping for a Valentine’s Day massage at the San Antonio flannel and Yoga emporium followed by a true night-out with our dear friends, neighbors and Mexico role models, Tony and Lucia who had arrived just in the nick o time to revive our admittedly strained spirits.
 
What a night for sore psyches we had, drinks at Casa Blanca, dinner at The Restaurant and dessert at Churros y Chocolate across from the Jardin. Lucy, from very old and distinguished Mexican lineage and Tony ditto except Italian and New Rochelle, gave us news from home and a new lease on the task at hand. Also for the first and, let me assure you probably the only time, we had somewhat outsmarted X-Acto and his henchmen of the SMA building trade by adding an extra night to our rodentially active Obraje in Exile digs and arranged for movers to come on Saturday even though we were assured on a stack of Architectural Digests that we would have running water and power sufficient for us to finally sleep in our place on Friday.
 
As you may have divined by the above smugness, the end of D-Day38 brought not blessed closure as negotiated but a neighborhood-wide power outage and water shut-down. What? Really, we can’t sleep here after all? But you promised, Snr Arquitecto!!! Oh whatever shall we do, as we are homeless in a strange land, bla, bla, more indignation and guilt throwing… I know it’s extremely juvenile and petty but, for the first time in weeks, we actually felt a tiny bit in control. We didn’t let on for a moment that we had this oh so very likely contingency covered as shit for once and that it was the next night that we’d have to panic but for now went off, faux-dejected with Tony and Lucy to our favorite organic restaurant in the Guadalupe complete with two youngster playing Django/Grappelli string jazz as we tested nopales con queso and local organic clara cerveza. Tomorrow was going to be a bear of a day, a marathon box-breaking, stock-taking and move-in of all the NY in exile stuff stuffed into the studio plus a solid month of Jackie design-dominance acquisitions to be assembled and staged.
 
We made a date with Tony and Lucy for Sunday at noon, strolled back to our car at the Rincon, drove it up the hill for our last night at Susana’s where we packed up our last 15 days of George Carlin defined subset of our stuff stuff one mo time and girded for herding the cats into their carriers in the morning. Burrowed into the pushed together twin beds at the back for a last slumber in the Upper Obraje, we drifted off till the teen party started next door at 2:37am and lasted till 4:16am. Nice send-off, kids! We once again pulled the insufficient sleep from our eyes and the ineffective plugs from our ears around 7:30am and began the march down the hill for the real and long move-in Day38.
 
We did indeed sleep at El Rincon de Sta Maria, Casa 9 that Saturday, even though we didn’t have hot water and there was several inches of construction and dry season dust over everything we set-up around the by nightfall. The coming week would prove to be some of the biggest tests to date as we were now living in a real live construction zone with day in and out setbacks and disappointments and Tony and Lucy would leave us for Mexico City. But we’re in, for good or ill and so stay tuned for an eventual and we hope proper ending to our adventures.