Causes & Effects

So now we have a lawyer, a consumer specialist guy called Francisco Rojo. Call him "Paco." Paco the Red. He doesn´t hold out much hope for getting our money back or getting the house finished, but he´ll take us on a 10% contingency. We should know by the end of the month if Mario really ever means to come back and finish our house. Then we can start all over again with the project! What fun!

We have the new apartment too. We need to move things in there, but it´s three floors up. I had an asthma event this morning, the first one I´ve had since we came here. I went and refilled my old asthma medicine prescriptions. 120 Euros! Holy moley! I should´ve just kept wheezing! (still a darn sight less than I´d pay retail in USA, where I was really dependent on daily doses of heavy-duty steroids and anti-inflammation drugs.)

This afternoon, since we were in Palencia anyway to meet the lawyer, I popped ´round to the only medical clinic that will take my insurance. Good thing I did -- My right lung´s all watery. A bit too close to pneumonia for comfort. Antibiotics. Another 35 Euros.

Because I think he is behind all the allergy and lung business, Tim the new dog can´t come inside anymore. Tim doesn´t seem to mind so much, but Paddy is pouting, saying we should´ve just given him back to his old owner when we had the chance.

There´s always tomorrow. So.

Maybe I will not go to Leon tomorrow to sign up for another course of Spanish. If I feel up to it I will move the essentials over to the new place, and get the gasoil man to come and fill up the furnace tank (an operation involving a hose full of diesel fuel extended up three storeys through the balcony doors and into the kitchen). I´m a bit too wheezy to carry boxes up the stairs, at least for now. And tomorrow the electricians say they are coming, (really, honest this time!) So is the new washing machine... someone´s got to stay here and wait for them all to roll in. Paddy will. He doesn´t like the house any more, but he´s loath to leave it.

Other than that, the weather was beautiful. The newly sown rye is coming up and turning all the fields green once more, a striking bright lime green. Where I come from, August and September are deep green months, where every plant is gone wild with summer. Here, after the wheat is cut in late July, the whole world is shades of brown. It takes til October for the fields to put on their green again, and they stay green all the way through to the end of June! Yippee. I like it better this way.