The Terrifying Center of a Great Adventure

It gets worse.

* Justi, the guy next door is "rat-bombing" his barn. Which means we might have uninvited guests in the next few days. I do not mind a few mice, but I really hate rats.
*It rained hard all yesterday and last night, and sposed to rain off and on all week. The chicken house roof is a resounding failure.
*I slipped this morning and gave my tailbone a fearful crack. That kind of injury hurts for frickin´ever. I was carrying a newly-washed Una to be dried, and she ran off into the house and instantly rolled in the dirt. &%%$ dog!
*The bozos apparently, while working on the main house, trashed the connection where the barn roof meets the side of the house. We have been storing things in there we didn´t want to put in the leaky old main barn... upholstered furniture, rugs, boxes of lovely coffeetable books shipped over from America, suitcases full of our woollen clothes. The rain came in there too. I got through a box of sodden books and a suitcase, and then I had to leave it.
I don´t usually cry much. I am breaking all my hysteria records. Paddy, maybe because he´s English, thinks when someone cries they are terribly ill. He keeps hugging me, and telling me to go to bed!
Anyway, after all the drama we took some giant plastic sheets and some old roof tiles, and I climbed up on the roof and Paddy handed things out the windows to me, and we got a temporary fix done. It was good to DO something.
*Bozo News: Fran and Mario are dissolving their partnership. All the paperwork has Mario´s name on it. Fran claims he is taking over the job, but he doesn not answer his phone any more than Mario does. And because we thought ol´Fran was just the gang boss, we never learned what his whole name-ID number-address was. We found a lawyer to look over the paperwork and tell us what our options are.
* The US dollar hit its seventh record low against the Euro on Thursday. All the money we saved for this house project is in US dollars. What the Spaniards don´t rip off, the George Bush Americans are pissing away.
* I contacted my two most "enchufada" ("well-connected") friends yesterday: an Augustinian priest from Valladolid now an Ivy League professor, and another Ivy League professor who´s going to be given the Spanish Order of Isabel the Catholic in a couple of weeks for his record of academic achievement and service to Spain. (Impressive indeed, and no one deserves it more than George X. Greenia, hardworking editor of American Pilgrim magazine, the latest issue is on newsstands now!) Neither of them can do much to help us. It was the Valladolid bud who told me I probably don´t have a real contract, and my smart Welsh friend down in Almeria who confirmed that. (I used to know a really important foreign ministry guy in Madrid who could do anything. But he´s in jail for tax fraud!)
* It is hard, coming to terms with the sad fact that I am a chump/fool/dupe/idiot. After reading all the books and consulting with all the experts, we still managed to be ripped-off in the most elementary way.

But Paddy is over at the Ayuntamiento (town hall) now, seeing if we can finally get Tim the Dog legalized, seeing if the Junta can do anything more about the Bozos, seeing if the Milagros can rent us a little apartment in Sahagun for the winter.

It´s come to that. We cannot live here in winter. We´ve got to get what little worldly goods we have left out of the rain. And it looks like we gotta get a lawyer. I´d settle for a roofer just now, or a plumber. Better yet, an electrician who can put in a clothes dryer! There´s the chance this Hoja de Reclamacion paper we filed last week will set a fire under the Bozos, but I have lost all belief in them.

I feel like I´m becoming very boring these days, whining about the same things all the time. I wish I could tell you Libby is enjoying life on the Camino, but she apparently twisted her ankle just outside Los Arcos and is now laid-up in Logroño with it all swollen and painful. Damn. She oughtta be cruising through through the LaRioja vineyards and west. I hope she recovers and can continue. Otherwise she will have to come back here. In the rain. Until Christmas.

Now that I´ve written all this down it doesn´t look like THAT much. So I guess I´m feeling better already. I am still not ready to go back to Pittsburgh. But Sahagún is looking better all the time... bedrooms! Windows! Shops!

We still are alive. Moratinos life is not exactly the Siege of Stalingrad. Unless you are one of our hens.

We´d probably quit if we could, but we are totally invested in this. We can´t bail on it. Our only fear is what might happen next. Such an adventure, this!