Author: iagardener55

I have started, in the past couple of weeks, at night, while I’m trying to go to sleep, to have complete conversations, in my head.

In Spanish.

Yup. You read that correctly.

In Spanish.

It has taken me 3 years to have this ability; one that I have waited for for years, and years. Now, it is with me.

All in thanks to Jesús, and Liz. They talk to me in Spanish every day, unlike someone else we all know, and love.

I have conversations, in my head, with any number of people; family members, in-laws, people that I don’t even know. Everything, however, is in Spanish.

When I get to a word which is unfamiliar to me, or I just don’t know, I’m stuck. Do I get up, and look it up, or do I wait until the morning, (afternoon), and hope I can remember what I was trying to think of?

I always wait until the next day.

I never remember the word I was trying to say, but, oh well. Maybe someday, soon I hope, I will be able to have a complete understanding of the Spanish language.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves. (Mantenerse feliz, saludable, y seguro. Lávense, cúbranse, y protéjanse.)

Post script: felicidades a nuestro hijo. El tiene 44 años de edad en este día de hoy.

We just had an earthquake.

For real.

About 10 minutes after the city wide “alert” testing. The city initiated a system of alert a few months ago, and were testing it for a few seconds, making sure it worked.

It works.

A few minutes ago, I was in the kitchen, had just opened the fridge to make something to eat, when I heard the chimes going off, saw them swaying, about 5ft. in front of me. I also saw the rug, draped over the clothes line, moving back, and forth, aggressively.

Then I felt the swaying of the building. The movement always makes me nauseous.

I hollered at Ivan that this was a real earthquake, and we needed to get downstairs. Get outside.

We all gathered outside, even baby Brandon.

My stomach growled.

We’re back inside, eating our lunch, no worse for the wearing.

On my seismic app, the quakes, 3 registering 7.5, 7.5, and 7.6, within minutes of each other, happened in the western state of Colima. T

he western side of the country is getting hammered by quakes. Further south, in the state of Guerrero, in which contains the city of Acapulco, has had multiple quakes over the past few weeks.

Damn Skippy.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

We caved.

I finally gave up the fight, and let Ivan buy us a microwave.

I have been a staunch supporter of a non-microwave household for 3 solid years. Until the other day.

It was delivered today, and I have already fallen back in love with the convenience. I heated some refried beans, and chicken for a taco for Ivan, taking all of 1 1/2 minutes; more than the time it took to warm the tortilla on the stovetop.

It takes up a bit of room at the moment, but Ivan, and Jesús have plans to build a shelf in the pantry, and put it there. They wanted to move the small oven in there, but, as I explained, there is too much heat given off by the oven, so it needed to stay closer to the exhaust fan. (The fan which does nothing but suck up the heat, throwing it back into the kitchen, Lovely,)

When we get to our forever home, (to be known as FH; no, not funeral home. I said forever home.)

To change the subject for a moment, we were picking up in the living room yesterday, vacuuming, and mopping, when Ivan moved the big tote in front of the metal shelves we have, and this is what we found.

Remember the fruit fly epidemic? We missed this area all together. Had no idea it was also a source. Jesús was kind enough to take it downstairs, and dispose of the contents. He was pretty grossed out. That says a lot as he cleans the entire inside of the condo here, and comes across all kinds of filth.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Brandon.

Next week he will be 6 months old, and is growing fast.

He has just started with a tooth on top; not the front tooth, but the second tooth, on the left side.

He’s been rolling over now for at least a week, though, he needs a bit of help occasionally. He is trying to crawl on the sheet of their bed, but, as I said, he doesn’t get anywhere. He is making the correct movements, but nothing is working yet.

Here he was, just a few minutes ago. Enjoy.

Today, Friday the 16th, is Independence Day, here, from the Spaniards. Nothing got done today, except I baked a juicy, delicious spatchcocked chicken. It was probably the best chicken I’ve made in awhile. Can’t wait until tomorrow to have more of it.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

What is this about?

Tomorrow, I will be making croquettes de huauzontle.

What the heck is huauzontle you ask? (Pronounced u-a-u-zont-lay, but quickly. More like wow-u-zont-lay).

Huauzontle is a green vegetable that grows here, in Mexico, and is considered a weed in the US. Not so chicos.

Like the “weed” called purslane, or verdolagas, here, verdolagas, as well as huauzontle are much a part of the indigenous cuisine of Mexico.

I am determined to learn how to make a decent meal of the huauzontle plant. This is what it looked like before I removed the thick stem, and brought it down to just the “florets”, if you will.

When I finished removing the stems, and was left with the florets, this is what I will use to make the croquettes.

I must tell you that it smells very ”green”, meaning that it smells very

green.

I will be mixing it with crumbled cheese, onion, and garlic powders, a bit of AP flour, S&P, and a couple of eggs. I will form small handsful of said greens into small rounds, and fry them in about a teaspoon of a neutral oil.

Before all of the above, I will be making a salsa de pasilla chiles, using tomatoes, onion, and garlic, all toasted on a very hot comal, (coe mal), or griddle, and dried pasilla chiles, rehydrated in boiling water. When everything is toasted, and/or rehydrated to my liking, I will put everything in the blender, blend it up, and then fry it in a teaspoon of oil for a few minutes. This will be the platform on which the croquettes will sit. I am hoping for the best outcome.

Neither of us has ever tasted huauzontles, and have no idea what it will taste like, but, according to the “likes” associated with the recipe, it should be good.

By the time you read this, we will already have made, and eaten the above. I will definitely let you know how it tasted. Looking forward to the challenge.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

You folks probably already know, and have done the thing I just figured out.

That’s ok. I’m frequently the last one to do things.

It is amazing, however.

Unsubscribing from email senders for whom you are no longer, or never were intererested.

That simple.

I opened my phone the other day, having deleted about 50 emails the night before, to a whopping 91 emails; just overnight.

I spent the next hour, or more, opening each email, scrolling to the bottom, to search through the microscopically tiny print to find the word “unsubscribe “. Finding each one, and eliminating each one, was cathartic in the best of ways.

This morning, or afternoon really, I found I had 2 emails; both in which I had interest.

“Lose 40 lbs. of belly fat in 30 days.” “Eat this before bedtime, and lose 20 lbs the first week.” “Confirmation necessary: you’ve won…..”. Really? I don’t care about any of those silly things, and I was really getting upset at all of the crap I had to go through to find the very few emails I needed, or wanted to read.

No longer. Try it, if you haven’t already. It truly is amazing.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: this afternoon, I had 4 emails. 🙂

Finally.

Last night, well, 2:30am this morning, I thought I would try the expired Melatonin 3 mg. tabs I have on the shelf in the bedroom.

I know that 3mg. does nothing for me; 6mg. either. So, in my heightened need for sleep, I tried 12mg.

That worked. I slept 12 hours. A wasted day, but much I am much refreshed.

Tonight, I think I will cut back to 9mg. and see what happens. I will either get some more much needed sleep, or I won’t. Stay tuned.

Not much happening around here.

It has been raining daily. In fact, Jesús said last night that yesterday, Gabi thought he could stay home from school because it was raining so hard. We all laughed; Ivan, and I remembering about how we hoped to stay home from work having had 12” of snow during the night.

In the nursing profession, especially nurses in the Operating arena, there is no such thing as staying home, unless one is on death’s door. And, even there, you’d better be highly contagious. If not, off to work you go. Many go, even though they are contagious. That helps the entire staff becoming ill. Not good for excellent patient care, for sure.

In the coming season, please, stay home if you have a contagion. No one wants to get sick in this time of CoVid, etc.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

We have eaten almost the entire bag of Russet potatoes; no joke.

Once we got started, it has been difficult to ignore. I make sure we have an ample supply of bacon at the ready, with at least one package cooked, and in the fridge.

We have been putting butter, S&P, bacon, and 5% Fage yogurt on them. Well, I do. El jéfe only likes the first 2 items; minimalist at heart. Oh, I have also been putting a slice of Havarti cheese before the yogurt.

Mind you, these are not the cream of the crops harvested in the US. These are 2nd’s, or even 3rd’s. They are small, and most have cuts through them, or bad spots on them. But, WHO CARES? Not us, certainly. We are just glad to have them here.

I have been making 3 or 4 per “batch” in the Smart oven, so, when I get hungry, and don’t want to make any thing major, I just put one back in the oven, for about 10 minutes, and load it as listed above.

Not much happening here, hence the lack of posts. Sorry, but I am not going to post about nothing.

We are both well; the forever house is coming along nicely, so, hopefully, within the next year, or two, we will move there. It will take as long as it takes.

We shouldn’t have much trouble selling the apartment as the apartment 2 floors above us sold recently for a bit more than we paid for this one, and that was before they renovated it. Wish us luck.

Brandon is growing, as you can imagine. He, and Gabi are such treasures to have in our lives. Watching them grow, and helping out where we can, means the world to us.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

For those of you that had a difficult time understanding the gravity of the fruit fly “crisis”, here’s a bit of proof.

I saw 2, or 3 flies in the Garcia’s bedroom this afternoon, when I went in to vacuum the floor. I checked the “apple” fly trap, and it had the rascals walking on top of it; none were taking the dive, so to speak. I picked it up, and checked the contents, and noticed quite a few flies already floating in the vinegar.

Took it to the kitchen, opened up the apple, and dumped the bit of vinegar that was left in it, and the flies, onto a small white plate, and about croaked.

I gathered up the other 2 apples, did the same to them, (one actually was completely dried, with an entire coating on the bottom of dead flies), and dumped them onto the plate as well.

This is what I came up with.

I”m not going to take the time, right now, to count them, but I’m guessing there are about 100, or more, of the “rascals”. I rinsed out the apples, filled them with about 1 1/2 Tbs. of apple cider vinegar, and put them where I collected them.

Within the hour, and with the fresh, strong smelling vinegar, there were already flies gathering. Somehow, something got in the wastebasket in our bathroom, who knows what, and that is what they were eating. And multiplying. Once I figured out to change the garbage bag, things are getting a bit more “normal”.

And here, I thought the crisis was over. Nope. Only averted.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: a wonderful, happy 69th birthday was had by my friend, lover, partner in all things, my husband; Ivan. Many more, mi amor.

He is the sweetest baby I have ever had the opportunity to know.

He just turned 5 months old, and got his first tooth about 1 1/2 months ago. That’s right, at 3 1/2 months, he had his first tooth. At the moment, he had 2 well formed tooth buds, able to bite his mommy.

He doesn’t sit up yet, though that is coming, but he babbles on, and on for 3 or 4 minutes at a time. (In the presence of his mommy.) His face lights up when we come into their room, and start talking to him. It is such a highlight of our day, I can’t tell you.

Here he is tonight.

Liz was holding him on her chest this evening, and they were both having such a great time; each laughing at the other. I called out to him, by his name, and he turned to look at me as if I was in the room. Of course, everything I say to him is in English, so, hopefully, he will be the first bilingual person in the families.

One more funny photo, then, I’m out.

Liz is trying to get him to take a pacifier, so Ivan bought him this one. He hates it. But it gets a laugh from each of us when he uses it for a second.

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.