Take a sad song, and make it better

Today is my sister Jenny's birthday. I recently read a letter from her. She was at the steps of Sacre Coeur, listening to Beatles songs and singing along. She said it was so beautiful, she and her friends had to jump up and down. They had so much fun that they missed their train and spent the night in Clara's flat in Paris!

Today, I'll look for something beautiful, and I'll sing a Beatles song to Maxito and Yeni.

xoxo

Fast Forward

The house is ready! It is the blue one:

Sometimes it seems like too much happens at once, and life goes by faster than I can write about it. This distresses me, because it means I'm losing the details. But things will settle soon, because we are about to move to our house!

It's finally finished. And buying it was honestly not that difficult, in terms of bureaucracy. I thought we'd taken on a bit too much by working with a realtor who only speaks Spanish, but I quickly learned the key vocabulary words for things like "down payment" and "house title". Our realtor, Luz, marched us into Scotia bank and opened an account for us, a feat I'd heard was near impossible for expatriates on tourist visas.

We are now learning about buying furniture and trying to get water service and waiting for deliveries that arrive when they arrive. But the house! Here is the inner courtyard:

Here is the hallway, someday to be filled with art, when we learn how to hang things on concrete: Here is the yellow living room, empty save for a piece of furniture we bought off the street. Our Oaxaqueno friends warned us not to buy the furniture that's carted around on dollies in neighborhoods all over the city. The wood is young and not dry, and thus shrinks and changes. But the furniture itself is lovely and quirky and the kind of piece that would cost so much in the United States. And we bought it a block from the house, in the middle of the street!

Someday, the rooftop garden-to-be:

I think I can even handle haggling the moving price with the guys that drive the "Transportes de Carga Ligera" trucks all over town.

Workers of the World Unite

I like May Day and the month of May a lot. It starts with Worker's Day or Mayday, depending upon if you prefer the revolutionary or the pagan route. Both versions appeal to me.

One of the big bits of news in my star chart group last year (sweet memories of Portland) was that my north node is in Taurus, which makes sense. I seek stability and security, especially since my south node is in Scorpio, an indication, as my wonderful astrologer Emily pointed out, "That, in past lives, you were burning down villages and walking away." I can see that tendency in my more recent past, that leaving in a hurry. Fear must not be my ruler. Though, who knows, it could have been the revolutionary in me doing the burning.

But what I really want to write about is baby Jenny who is heady with her power. Today I sang out the cheerful suggestion, "Let's have a family picnic!" (Those who are familiar with my teacher persona know I can have this Julie-Andrews-as-Mary-Poppins tone).

Genevieve responded by upending the trash can and sending garbage down the stairs. Then, she spit on the floor. So what does that make her, the pagan or the revolutionary?