Small Patio Big Mess

Building the Boveda Ceiling is an art form

Work on the Studio Extension

Swallow's Nests

I've Grown Accustom to this Place . . .

I was walking with Cayden this morning and at some point I realized: HEY! I’m living in Mexico!

I suppose that seems incomprehensible to some that I should suddenly have this epiphany nine months after we made the big move but though the thought comes infrequently and unexpectedly it always comes at me like a curveball, hitting me upside the head when I least expect it. This morning’s “ball to brain” came from the many, many radios playing all over the neighborhood.

It wasn’t that long ago that I would have noticed and made note whether the music was Mexican or 1980’s Gringo as soon as I stepped out the door; sooner if the volume was high enough on our friend and gardener Ricardo’s radio. Although in the case of Ricardo I wouldn’t have had to listen . . . Ricardo always listens to Gringo songs. Maybe it is to improve his English which is already quite good and leaps and bounds ahead of my Spanish.

But this morning as we walked along I was thinking of the dozens of swallows that keep trying to nest up under the eaves of our house. Is that what they call it here? Eaves? I don’t know -- but anyway we have had to go around most mornings and knock down the mud ball foundations that the swallows keep building because we are having an extension built (yes renovating already) onto the studio and the place that the swallows have chosen to raise their off spring is currently a human construction zone.

This morning as I walked along, enjoying the sun on my shoulders, listening to the birds sing and the “rain birds” (Scarabaedae?) screech a warning of impending rain I suddenly noticed that all around me there were radios blaring Mexican music. I have grown so accustomed to the sounds of Mariachi that it no longer sounds foreign and I do believe that once you begin to take something for granted you are home.