Triumphs and Tragedies

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TRIUMPHS

  • Got groceries. Yes, we’re eating cereal with 2% milk and cooked hamburgers last night. But the boys have eaten their weight in bolillos, and they just discovered leche de guanabana, so baby steps.
  • Found a clothes drying rack at Home Depot (there’s a washer and dryer, but Tom is devoutly opposed to the idea of paying for hot air when it’s:


The house is completely covered with a lovely apricot-colored plaster, but that means there’s no way to hang anything like a clothesline. We felt absurdly triumphant about finding this rack yesterday and Tom immediately set it up and ran a load.

TRAGEDIES (BUT NOT REALLY)

  • Got ants. Teensy tiny little gray ants have figured out that we’re in here and we have food. I swept and mopped and wiped down all the counters, but they just keep coming. I’m storing the cereal boxes in the freezer and bought airtight containers for flour, sugar, and rice, but they just keep coming. We bought this ant poison gel yesterday and squirted it into the corner they seem to be coming from. Still have ants. So if anyone has any ant suggestions, I’m all ears.

  • La canje. It means “exchange” and it’s this paperwork process you have to complete within two weeks of arriving in Mexico with a temporary resident visa like we have. On the one-page sheet of instructions we were giving by the embassy back in DC, it looked straight-forward enough. Here on the ground, it’s proving more complicated. The website is a convoluted labyrinth, and the appointment page doesn’t seem to work at all, so yesterday Tom went to the government offices to try to set the appointment in person. Only he was told we have to fill out some other stuff on a different page of the website before we can set an appointment. So. This kind of stuff all gets very Douglas Adams-y:

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

 

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