barn swallows – Ex-pats in Mexico

More on the renovation

Sorry it’s been so long since the last post. Leslie and I have both been dealing with health issues that have restricted our movements. Nothing related to the current pandemic, gratefully.

Briefly, we’re both dealing with hip and leg pain caused by pinched nerves. Being limited physically as well as by COVID has been frustrating, but we’re both getting better now and we can refocus on the renovation of our house. As our San Antonio friend Joan used to say, “Gettin’ old ain’t for sissies.”

You saw the new kitchen last post. Now here’s a short video showing the other part of the project. Turn on the sound to get the play-by-play. Basically, we turned the former master bathroom into a laundry room and storage area (which got the washer and dryer out of the kitchen to give us more space there), and added a new bathroom. Enjoy the video!

There’s more to be done, though. New paint inside and outside is important, but we need to pick colors first and we’re not there just yet. We also want to replace all the doors and windows in the house. In most cases, this means simply replacing old black metal frames with white frames, like the new door from the patio into the kitchen. The major work will be replacing the sliding glass door in the front with a “real” door that’s more like other houses in Riviera Alta. We’re thinking of a double door with screened windows on each side that can stay open at night and let cool breezes flow through. It might look something like our home in Illinois. That’s coming later this year — don’t know when.

In other news, Leslie and I are eagerly awaiting our second vaccine jab in the next few days. However, we got the first jab back in mid-March and we’re concerned that it’s been too long since the first installment. So we plan to get an antibody test a few weeks after the second shot. If the results are not adequate, we will head back to the States to get one of the vaccines available there. We know several people who have done that.

Finally, we really hope to be traveling again by the end of this year, if COVID restrictions will allow. There’s a lot more of Mexico for us to explore and to tell you about!

Hasta luego!

*The barn swallows have returned to Lakeside. Once again this year, some of them are trying to build a nest on the roll-down shades on our pat*io. We were able to prevent them from nesting last season and hope to do so again. They are fun to watch, though.

food, Living overseas, Mexico, Retirement

UPDATE: Roommates are flying high; and Leslie wins again!

hatchlings-2 — Taking a break. Three of the hatchlings are on the back of the right-hand chair, while the fourth is on the pillow of the other chair. I think that’s one of the adults on the back of the left-hand chair.

In the last post I told you a pair of barn swallows (golodrinas in Spanish) had built a nest on the wall of our house, just outside the sliding glass door from the master bedroom to the patio. Well, the four hatchlings have learned to fly and are spending their days checking out the neighborhood. They still come back to the nest at night, though.

I shot a brief video that shows the kids chilling on the backs of our patio chairs, and suddenly one of the adults swoops in. We have lots of swallows in this area, and it’s fun to watch them — usually during breakfast — dart and dive through the air. Here’s the video:

BREAKING NEWS: Sort of. If you’re Facebook friends with Leslie you already know she took third place in judging at this month’s meeting of the Culinary Arts Society of Ajijic — better known as CASA. The theme was Southern or Louisiana dishes, and Leslie made New Orleans red beans and rice using a favorite recipe from her long-time friend Deanne Faucheux, who lives in New Orleans now. We were happy that our good friend Carol — a Kentucky native — won first place in the dessert category for her Derby Pie. I had some — yeah, it was a winner!

*The judges gave this dish third place, and Leslie will get her picture in the paper again.*

CASA members are required to present a dish at a monthly meeting at least four times a year. This was Leslie’s fourth entry and her fourth award. Three of those were from the judges — most of whom are local chefs or restaurant owners — and a fourth was a People’s Choice Award. Not a bad record so far!

Next month’s theme is Méxicano food, and Leslie is already researching recipes for pre-Colombian dishes, which should be an interesting twist. The idea comes from a special meal we enjoyed several years ago at Topolobampo, a Rick Bayless restaurant in Chicago. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

That’s all the excitement for now. August can be a boring month in this part of México because there are no fiestas en Agosto. That changes in September with Diez y Seis de Septiembre and other festivals. More on that next time.

Hasta luego!

Living overseas, Mexico, Retirement

Bienvenido a nuestra hogar!

*Although daytime rain is rare during rainy season, we often see interesting cloud formations, like this one right over the lake. Sometimes the clouds make Mount Garcia look like a volcano. It’s not.*

The title of today’s post uses the Spanish word hogar (home) rather than casa (house) because Leslie and I are gradually trying to turn this house in México into our home. We spent three weeks in San Diego recently, and it felt great to come back to familiar surroundings instead of moving on to another new city or country. We did that for a little over two years as “vagabonds.” Now we’re settling in. And we like it.

We’re fairly confident the leaks in the roof have been fixed — for now, at least. We haven’t had a torrential downpour like those that brought this problem to light in the first place, but one is coming! There are still a number of “issues” with this place but now we have Eddie, the best handyman in México, on our side. Eddie spent many years in the U.S. and is fully bilingual. In addition to fixing a toilet and other repairs, he hung up most of our art work for us. Builders don’t use lumber and drywall here, they put up brick walls and cover the brick with concrete — for interior as well as exterior walls. Bricks and concrete cost less than lumber and drywall here, and no wood in the house means fewer termite problems.

Hanging artwork here is not as simple as nailing a hook in the wall. We marked spots where we wanted to hang something, and Eddie drilled a hole in that spot. Then he inserted an anchor into the hole and put a screw into the anchor, left it sticking out a bit, and hung the picture on the screw. Having our art on the walls makes the place seem more comfortable — more familiar. Eddie admired some of them, as did Salvador, our bottled-water delivery guy.

And here’s a surprise. We have roommates! Sort of. A pair of barn swallows has built a nest on the wall of the house, just outside the master bedroom. We’ve seen at least three baby birds in the nest, but there may be four. There are lots of swallows in this area right now. Leslie and I enjoy watching them dart and dive around as we have a meal on our patio. Lots of hummingbirds here, too, but they tend to be camera-shy.

As promised, here are some photos of how the house is turning out, all full-size so you can see better:

LR-0515 — *The living room, with our furniture from the Westmont house and the treasured rug from Pakistan’s tribal areas.*

LR-DR-0521 — *Living/dining area, and you can see the English antique hall tree in the back.*

DR-0519 — *The dining room, familiar to some of you. We eat outside a lot, though.*

BR-0531 — *Master bedroom. We have a spot for you, too, when you visit!*

kitchen-0534 — *Big kitchen. Really needs an island. Sorry about the light coming in the south-facing window!*

*The back yard was pretty barren when we moved in. Blah!*

With advice from our neighbor Margaret, we’ve started on a new garden. This shot is from June 1, and the lawn has improved dramatically since then. But leaf-cutter ants damaged most of the new plants while we were in the U.S. last month. They are bouncing back now, all except the five rose bushes, which are just gone. I’ll post another photo when it’s more colorful.

Finally, in the last post I left out something important. With the rainy season comes higher humidities and lower temperatures. You may recall that when we moved into this house three months ago, temperatures were high (90° F.-plus) but low humidity and a nice breeze off the lake made it more comfortable. In rainy season it still gets into the low 80s during the day, low 60s at night. But now the humidity can be as high as 70 percent. We still think this is a nearly perfect climate. After all, it has never snowed here!

That’s it for now.

Hasta luego!

swallow chair-0499 — *While one swallow sits on the eggs in the nest, the other stands guard from his perch on our “zero-gravity” chairs.*