Someday Soons

We have been living for two years now in a sort of semi-homeless state, which is -- we are told -- about to shift into something more stable and permanent.

I am not making light of the truly homeless. We do own a house, and we have a little rental apartment, too, at least until Wednesday. There´s a semi-warm place to lay our heads each night. What I´m sayin´is, even though it STILL has no doors or faucets, hot water or countertops, we will officially move into the main house at The Peaceable this week. The long era of "Year-Round Summer Camp Life" will draw to a close. Soon.

We shall have to find a new rhythm of living. With the house business behind us (I know, it never completely is...) we can turn our attentions to the waiting lists. The dozens of things we´ve shoved aside, procrastinated, put on hold until we had the space/time/leisure/energy to get to. The house has been a fabulous excuse for a good long time.

But Someday Very Soon I will:

• Turn back to the medieval camino adventure novel I started writing ten years ago. I will either completely rewrite it, or I will abandon it altogether, in order to...
• Gather up all the diaries, lists, memo books, and blogs we´ve produced in the past two years, and start writing a new book with it, and
• Start being nicer to the people I know who are literary agents, or who have agents. (Mine has apparently disappeared from the face of the planet.)
• Find a home for Mimi the little dog.
• Nail the Spanish drivers license exams, and then nail Spanish grammar. Then really start integrating into this here community. I want to work in some capacity at the new Pilgrimage Studies Center at the Iglesia de la Peregrina in Sahagun when it opens next year, because I think I´d be really good for them, and I know somebody who knows the boss. But if I work there, I think they might want me to speak Spanish sometimes.
• Figure out how to bake again, using Spanish ingredients and equipment and measures. In our fabulous new kitchen! Find people willing to sample the experiments.
• Learn what I´d have to do to buy and sell real estate around here. I think I´d be good at that.
• Figure out how to host pilgrims at our house, without bringing The Law down on our heads, or subsidizing the Middle Class European Skinflint Hiker Locust Cloud. (A Swiss hospitalera friend just spent the last day with us. OMG, the horror stories she told us of pilgrims cleaning out the larder and leaving 50-cent donations.)
• We have a barn, so we oughtta get a donkey, and/or a horse for inside it. I´ve wanted a horse since I was a little girl, Even though I am terribly allergic to them. Hay is cheaper than diesel fuel these days, and just think of all that free fertilizer!
• Get a sheep and/or goat, and learn how to make cheese.
• Get some pasture for all the above, as well as the pilgrim donkeys and horses.
• Find passing pilgrims who are experts in garden design, interior decoration, exotic cuisines, wildflowers, wifi, yoga, and Shiatsu massage. And who will share their expertise in exchange for a bed and a nice meal.
• Learn to play the guitar. Find a concert guitarist pilgrim from the Wisconsin area willing to bring our new guitar over here and play a inaugural recital on it for all of Moratinos, St. Nicolas, and Terradillos, in exchange for a free bed and a nice meal. And an airline ticket, maybe. We can then let traveling pilgrim guitarists play pick-up concerts on this super-fine custom guitar when they stay at our place. (Thanks, Federico!)

Other expats have warned us we might feel a bit un-moored for a while after we move in, having spent so much time and energy and money in the past few months just getting a place to live. I can´t say I´ve worried too much about that. There´s always a ton of things to do around here. First and primary among them, however, is what I shall do now:

Pull up a chair out on the sunny patio and scratch a dog-head. Hear Bob Canary and the doves sing along to the Cole Porter album on the box.
Let´s face the music
and dance.