Plumbing the depths 7 Leagues and yes, THE WALL is baack!

Dearest and loyal bloggerphiles, as I said to the ever too kind Susan Leventhal who exclaimed with surprise and admiration after perusing way too many recent and much-delayed accumulated house pix that “we were in!”, we’re in alright, up to our necks! I meant that in a, well, in all the ways you may choose to interpret. But, yes, our house in Mexico is now for all very practical purposes inhabited and so I’ll try to refrain from an excess of Fielding-esque digressions and offer some hard-core counter-caravan adventure facts.
 
As of this writing, which may not actually reach the blog-ether till I lug my laptop to a properly broad-banded wi-fi locale which is only a partial excuse for these posts being fewer and farther between, but more on that anon, we’ve now slept at El Rincon de Sta. Maria, Casa 9, better known to you as “Casa de la Sombra”, a total of eight nights. The very best news there is the operative word, “slept”. How unusually quiet it is here, at night, that is! I cannot adequately express to non-visitors/inhabitants just how wonderfully unusual that is in this cacophonous town. (I can, however, encourage the footnotables amongst you to refer back to the sounds of Obraje in 2/8 post). This fact alone makes it almost conceivable that we may contemplate patting our own backs at some point down the line. But let’s not get carried away just yet. The day after we officially moved in, we lost power and, with it, hot water for much of the day and night. But we’re evidently adapting to our surroundings for our solution was to go for dinner, tequila and churros and by the time staggered home across the black cobblestones, the power was back!
 
Here’s a partial home chrono-punchlist to date:
 
-We’ve made about three passable meals in the kitchen not counting breakfasts and showered in all three bathrooms with varied success. New parameters of achievement!
 
-The washer-dryer remains inoperable and, I have to say, remains the fulcrum of not a little cross-cultural cum builder-client tension. Remember Jackie bought it in October of last year at the direction of the contractor who forgot to account for it as he put the laundry room on the third floor and thus had to get a crane to get it up there where, surprise, surprise, surprise, Gomer, it’s sprung a leak but it’s not their fault?! Sorry about this but, yes, we’re at a you-know-where stand-off as our dirty clothes pile up!  Stay-tuned for this resolution, you amateur diplos (and non-DJ’s).
 
-The little plunge pool is also in operational limbo with its 5/7th filled and increasingly dirty-green contents being used mostly by Valente’s two limpiadoras to wash down the detritus left by their third stripping and attempted refinishing of THE metal WALL. But there may be a break in this stale-agua-mate (see Property Manager below).
 
-Yes, THE WALL. For some reason, the contractor has, of the thousand and one nights of punch-list items in front of him, made THE friggin’ WALL priority number one. Sound familiar? Got no clever socio-cultural takes on this, I’m afraid.
-We have no internet, cable or phone yet and don’t have an ETA on when we will! When the three nattily uniformed Telmex field guys came in their mini-white-van to hook me up last week, they discovered there was no more room at the broadband pipe-inn, so no web for you!  Evidently, the kindly and never conscious of being overwhelmed and thus always cheerful Valente didn’t take into account that seven new houses needed a whole new “last mile” underground cable access before the utilities could do their mass communication duties. So for most of last week, out of our impressive cocina picture window onto the chaotic construction of the other six houses, we witnessed the digging of a replica of the Regina Trench from the arroyo just past our place. Meanwhile. we’ve blown through our monthly allotment of tortoise-speed AT&T data for the month trying to reach out to you, dear friends and family and excruciatingly downloading a few movies and TV series. Our subsequent posting will offer the next chapter of this tale. Whether it will be the final one, only the speed by which it will be delivered will tell.
 
-As for plumbing. As I suggested above, our encounters with the coming and going of water has been complicated here, even problematic you might say. Water is, of course, scarce in the desert, a spring discovered at Ojo de Agua above this town in the 16th century is why it’s here at all and the idea of venting waste pipes has not been a priority of invention as is evidenced by the faint aroma-therapy of sewer gas in many a caballero room. About mid-week our master bathroom waste completely backed up necessitating the removal of the toilet and the twice-replumbing of the fuga-ing sinks in the master and the kitchen.  While fixed for now, stay-tuned for more on this theme, I’ll wager.
 
-The yearned-for notorious and, I’m guessing continuingly contentious roof garden pergola is on hold till, we’re told, the can-do but just not-now Valente finishes the main house punch list. Meaning, maybe we’ll see it when we come back in late summer.
 
-Still waiting for our modern art iron and gas fireplaces and the other bone of contention, the full-house water purification system.  
 
-We’ve hired a property manager, Manolo Orta who has already found us a housekeeper, a pool guy, a handyman and drove us in his SUV on Saturday us to nearby Celaya where we stocked-up at Home Depot and Costco on must haves for setting up a new household from pretty much scratch.
 
-We’ve also engaged a local landscaper, Sarai Guzman who has delivered a wonderfully fanciful plan for turning Casa 9 into a high desert oasis of buganvilias, succullents, olive trees, lavender and birds o paradise. Now we only need to see the presupuesto before we know if we can afford paradise.
 
Here’s a partial social chrono-punchlist to date:
 
-Had too little but nonetheless non-stop enjoyable tie with Lucia and Tony. Had great meals, learned the secret of the best churros and discovered our new go-to tequila, Siete Leguas.
 
-Attended another semi-expat house party, this time in the lovely and fecund Guadiana colonia not far from Juarez Park, hosted by Jacquie and Robbie from Louisville, friends of Kathy Carroll.  
-Still waiting on our illusive residency cards and a functioning bank account.
 
-Have to return the yeoman's VW rental later this week to Querètaro airport. We’ll miss jumping out of town to La Comer supermarket, Liverpool mall, El Vergel Bistro, La Burger Argentinian Parrillada, Tejidos Vidal chair-maker, Ferreteria Don Pedro, and La Bastide, yes, Stephanie a real provenćal restaurant with a French owner/chef.
 
-Prepping for AJ’s visit in a couple of weeks. Will the pool be usable? Will the showers be hot and strong? Will the web be available, TV getable and golf course welcoming? Stay tuned.
 
So there, dear friends, family and benign blog-creepers is a barely varnished rendition of a internet-challenged big move-in week 6.5 of Jackie and Michael’s Excellent Adventure.