more triangle!: On accomplishment

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?
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