the house that jack built

So the boys have been dying for space.  Any space larger than the 2×2 hole that housed 4 bunks and a gabinete for clothes.  So we talked to Freddy (abanil) and Dino (palapero) and it was decided that instead of remodeling the comedor into a room for the boys, we’d go UP.  I gotta tell you, going UP in a palapa is not for the weak of heart.  Basically, our palapa is comprised of 4 sticks on each side (postes) and grass.  There is no foundation, but the postes are cemented into the sand/calica that makes up the ground.  As long as we’re building on cement or calica I’m pretty confident, but supporting an entire ROOM UP, well, that is going to take a real leap of faith.

But Dino is a master palapero and Freddy is an artist with cement, so we signed on, having no real idea what we’d be left with and what it would take to get there.

The first day started with a huge change of plans.  We were going to lower the current support posts that criss-cross the palapa to allow them to support the boys room.  The posts were supposed to live on TOP of the kitchen wall, but it was decided that the cement and blok wall really wasn’t nearly as strong as the post.  You know, I have to wonder if it wasn’t just palapero prejudice against cement.  I bet the abanil would have found the post to be flimsy and the wall to be Herculean.   So we now have all kinds of wood all over the cement walls and they are really, to be perfectly honest, quite ugly.  This is so NOT what I expected.  Pike tried to bouy our spirits yesterday but by the end of the day, even the palaperos noticed it just wasn’t to our “gusto”.

Today the palaperos decided to start putting in the floor of the room.  They also began the process of moving the pasillo (the straight part of the catwalk upstairs) over to make room for the new room.  This was a new development for them, they had no idea that the pasillo they’d removed just the day before would have to be reinstalled in a new spot.  Dino speaks Mayan to the palaperos I think mainly because he knows I won’t understand, but honestly, even “did you see the hammer fall?” in Mayan sounds like an overt threat.  When Dino told the head palapero that the pasillo would be reinstalled it sounded like WWWIII was about to start, but I’m sure it is just the language.   So the guys backtracked and figured out how to install the pasillo in a new spot and proceeded to stick more ugly wood all over the kitchen walls.  Sigh.

So tonight we checked out the flooring they’d begun cutting (but thankfully not installing) and determined that really, we were going to need more than pine planks as flooring.  Tomorrow I’m going to have to insist on triply as a base and pine planks ontop of that.  I just hope the whole damn thing doesn’t come falling down.

In most excellent news, I’m running another 10K this weekend and if the runny nose/sore throat that has been making its way through the family manages to leave me alone, we’ll be once again basking in the Jonna and Mimi colonial.   And in even BETTER news, as a thank-you for picking her up at the airport the other day, Mimi muled my replacement camera down.  I took it to Kilo beach today and put it through the paces and fell in love again.  Unfortunately, it has the SAME problem as the last one, so I’m guessing this must be a user issue, even though Canon tech support said it was a camera malfunction.  Sigh.

So, Cliff Notes version: Palapa remodel – Stressful; Camera back – Life is good!