Hell’s Half Acre

It is absolutely FREEZING here today and yesterday. We’re starting to scrounge for socks and shoes but Jamie cavorts around in shorts and short sleeved shirts while the rest of us are robbing the birds for their feathers and stuffing the down into our sweatshirts for extra warmth.

We headed to Tulum last Sunday and decided we would do this (or some type of trip) every Sunday now. We had such a good time and forgot how simple and beautiful it is to get out of the “drudge” of living in a palapa on the Caribbean. Seriously, though, we are generally working on palapa stuff or killing cockroaches (thanks to Deb and Ian, we are now armed with both Boric Acid and Diatomaceous Earth) or reading to the kids or washing the 37th load of dishes or the 179th load of laundry and before we know it the day is gone. We haven’t even been exercising for the past week; no Yoga and no walks as we’ve been directing the abaniles in our concrete kitchen cabinet job. Jesse has been jonsing for a Tulum trip, the only beach the boys have been able to boogieboard, and every Sunday something conspired to delay the trip another week.

So it was wonderful to finally hit the road and head south and see all the changes the past couple months have brought to the carretera and surrounding area. I have had an itch to explore the Sian K’an for longer than Jesse has been jonsing for Tulum and as we somehow managed to get an early start, I decided we’d kill some burning sun time by exploring the Biosphere. The kids were too antsy to explore but agreed to come back the next week so I can get my Sian K’an fix so we headed back to Tulum and had an amazingly enjoyable day; so much so that we decided to make it a weekly event.

After getting a couple bids on the kitchen cabinet project, I decided to give Manuel the opportunity as he seems to have less of it than the resident contractor, David. Unfortunately, Manuel never showed and David met his price, so we had David start the cabinet job and are so happy we did. They did a wonderful job and we couldn’t be happier both with the job, the time they took and the ability to now put stuff away instead of dumping it into Rubbermaid tubs.

Since that job seemed to go so swimmingly, we decided to finish the top of the recamera and put a proper finish to the floor. We purchased some tile during our last trip to Home Depot and figured out a design. Yesterday, Daniel (the cement worker) laid all the tile and today he began the floor finish work. I had headed to Comex (the paint store) to get the opinion of the professionals as to what (if any) color to add to the cement, what color of cement (grey or white) to use and whether or not the polvo (calica) would add a color element. Thus armed, I headed back with materials and after Daniel finished tiling today he began the mixture of color, cement (blanco, natch) and polvo to make the floor finish. I had previously arranged to take some kids to an Art Class given by the Casa de Cultura, so I left Jamie in charge and headed out. I returned to utter chaos. The abaniles were completely unable to make the color turn out; they started with red/chocolate and made the transition to dirty pink; neither of which have a chance to complement the tile. They needed to wet down the existing concrete and as such Jamie, Jesse, Pike and the neighbor boys ran around ala Dick van Dyke, moving couches, bookcases, the fridge, stove, laundry, etc. as water cascaded all over the inner area of the palapa AND the inside of the recamera. Dirt and polvo covered every surface of anything in the palapa (and since the trailer has been emptyied to combat cockroaches, that means EVERYTHING), cement splashed everywhere from the comedor to the new kitchen cabinets. It was a mess of epic proportions. All I could do was laugh and make dinner and hope that tomorrow brings us a solution for the floor upstairs. I’m sure they’ll figure something out but I hope it doesn’t involve large quantities of cemento blanco as that stuff is about twice the price of the cemento gris.

I’m going to be REALLY ready for Sunday this week!