The deep end

It’s a long time since the last post. Kate & Jack, the last of our snowbird friends, left on Thursday. Things do slow down now. However, friends of Steven and Heather of the house next door are staying for a month. We went out to dinner on Thursday night with Cathy and Ian. They are in the process of buying a lot on the other side of Ajijic, near where Sonia has her house. They don’t plan to start building for a year or more, but are having a great deal of fun and pleasure in scouting out ideas for what to build. They plan to continue with their jobs for 3 or 4 more years before coming here for at least half the year. This is a working holiday for them; Ian works for a mining exploration company in northern Ontario and can do a lot of the necessary paper work and information to investors from here via the internet. His company has hired Cathy to do some updating and furbishing of the company website, which is also something that she can do here. However, they say that most work days, they spend the day in front of their computers.

Last Saturday, we took the 4 niñas (Gloria is kind of permanent member of the group; she is in the middle with long hair in the photo) next door to Steve’s pool; there is no shallow end so the girls have to be in water balloons . That of course, means that we have to be in the pool all the time. Both Barb and I got sunburned. The twins, who had been in that pool before, both went in quickly, but Gloria and Fatima took a few minutes to get up their courage. But all had a very good time.

We have been a bit mystified because everyone at LIA keep calling the twins, “Camila”. Finally, we asked Alvia. She just shrugged her shoulders and said, “I can’t tell them apart, which is Dareli and which Dariana, so I just call them ‘Camila’”. We have not resorted to that. When we first go there, we find out which is which and note what clothes they are wearing, usually different. Then, when we want to use their names, we look at the clothes. Actually, if I watch them for a couple of minutes, I can usually distinguish because there are slight differences in behavior, but it is very difficult if you just look at their faces.

April is usually quite hot, but this has not been the case very much this year. In fact we had quite a bit of cloud for a few days and the temperatures did not get much above 27º C (over 80º F). However, today we set a new high for 2010; it got to 31ºC (87.6º F). Last year the hottest day of the year (32 C or 90 F) was on April 28th. I expect that we shall be getting more hot days for the next few weeks.

Barb claims that she has finished making new flower beds. That aside from changing or replacing a few plants occarionally, all she has to do is maintain what she has. Even that involves quite a bit of work. I am trying to get her to let Rosendo do a bit more. He won’t do it as well as she does, but so what? Although she is letting a bit go, I am still working on that.