Pictures of a January Day

Mornings are very foggy and misty, sometimes straight through the day. We take Tim and Una out along the Caminos first thing -- otherwise their heads would explode. The ever-changing weather is forever providing new vistas on our same old hikes. We give each route a romantic-sounding name: the Promised Land (which you´ve heard of), St. Martin´s Triangle. Shepherd´s Creek, The Mushroom Walk, or the Sunflower Road. There´s also the Dovecotes, the Old Camino, or Way Back of Beyond.

Most of the walks have beautiful views. Tuscany and Provence have nothin´ on us, out here on the Meseta, even in winter. What boggles my mind is how many people skip over this part of Spain, rabid for mountains and beaches and cathedrals. I don´t worry too much though. It leaves more for me. And the dogs.

Tim, a Brittany Spaniel, is a bird dog. But Una, of uncertain parentage, is a terrier to her bones. She loves to excavate critters that dwell underground, and she´s initiating Tim into her obsession. And just over halfway to San Nicolas is a waste place full of rills and erosion, untillable and honeycombed with rabbit holes and critter tracks. This is Una´s favorite place in the world. We call it The Hare Field.

And here is one of my favorite pictures of Una, in the place she loves, doing what she does best. (she is the dirty white spot in the middle.)

I look at these wee images and despair of ever capturing the beauty and depth of the vista, fog notwithstanding. I guess that´s one of the many reasons people keep coming on down the camino: they can see it for themselves, and hopefully their knees don´t pain them so much they don´t notice the visual feast spread before them.

Then there´s the personal favorites: the progress pics! Here are some little ones, showing the downstairs of the house from outside and inside: the old salon with its new windows, and the progress on opening up a new doorway onto the back yard. It looks like archaeology, and it´s heavy going, even with a jackhammer!




Last but not least is the road back, a fond glimpse of Moratinos in the fog. The hump in the middle is the bodega hill. Our place is over to the left, beyond the trees, lost in the mists of morning. (sigh.)

No Unexamined Hog Shall Be Subject to Home-based Pig-Sticking

Behold, the old has passed away, and all things are made new.

...well, SOME things are. Like our windows. They´re almost all installed now. All they need to really be windows is glass. I wonder if we have to pay extra for such frippery.

But I´ll get to the boring building stuff later. In the bigger picture, there´s a couple of new edictos posted on the public board on the plaza. The first one forbids the butchering of pigs at home without having a state vet check them first for worms. Oh, damn! So much for my weekend plans!

Also fresh from the Junta de Castilla y Leon is the plan to plant new trees all along our stretch of the Camino, seemingly from Villaoreja all the way to San Nicolas.

There already are lineups of these saplings here, along the N120 bike trail/alternative camino path. They´ve been around for years along the camino just west of here, shading the path from Calzada del Coto to El Burgo Raneiro. Some of those are real trees now. But many, many of them struggle to stay alive. A whole crew of guys spends their summers trying to irrigate their roots, but I´d say just over half of the trees survive their first couple of years. So we´ll soon see a whole new crop of them, along the "real" camino. I am not sure how I feel about the idea, me being a lover of wide-open spaces. But no one asked me.

The next bit strikes me as a potential blues lyric. I wrote it originally as prose, but now I´ve broken it up for you musical and poetic/doggerel types.

Hiking along there this morning
in the fog with the dogs
I also saw
the latest crop of crap.
It´s them pilgrims again.
Even the winter ones, the hard core, the deeply dedicated
Can´t carry their trash to the bin in town.
They have to throw it on the ground.
Jesus wouldn´t do that.
Pilgrim sonsabitches.
I hope you get a vision.

So...
New to the Peaceable Kingdom:
We have lots of new aluminum framing for drywall now stacked in the old salon. And scary as it is, the electricista came today. I like the guy, he´s got a good face. The scary part was having to tell him where we want the lights, all over the house... what KIND of lights, how many, and where. And where we want outlets, too. The whole time Jose Castro, the general contractor, was following us along telling us NO, you don´t want that, you want THIS. All in 55 mph Spanish.

Jose Castro is the general contractor. Jose Luis is his second in command, Jose Luis´s son is hanging drywall and generally is being kicked around by his dad. His name is Jose, too. Demasiado with the Josés, guys! Maybe that´s why I liked the electricista so well. His name is Juan.

Hardest of all was the kitchen. I know we´ve had MONTHS to mull over what goes where, but suddenly I had to say it: sink here. Stove and oven here. Fridge there. Lights right there, and there, and there. I know it´s not exactly public policy, but these are decisions I´ll have to live with for years to come. It still feels like I haven´t thought it through well enough! I kinda wish they´d just come in and do it all FOR me. Then if I don´t like it, I won´t have to blame myself.

So progress is being made, at long last! When these jamokes are finished we still will have to install the floor tiles all over the place, finish the wooden floors upstairs, and paint and/or plaster almost all the walls. I think we can handle that. Or find someone who can. By then it will be fully pilgrim season, and perhaps we´ll pull some willing workers from that constant stream.

Having workers working has lightened Paddy´s mood considerably. It makes it so we have to be here at The Peaceable by 9 a.m. each day to let people in, and it means we can´t really come and go as we please because the dogs may escape through the doors and gates left open by the workers. Tradeoffs.

So we´ll wait til a better time to go and buy a little TV set. Our lack of TV is a marvel to our neighbors and friends. We are told by experts it may help me overcome my mental block with Español. Paddy´s eyes don´t do reading so well in the evenings, so it will maybe keep him occupied.

And so goes the progress.

An unrelated thing: I read other blogs sometimes, and there are lively exchanged of comments at the bottoms of the posts. In this blog there are no comments posted, almost never. Why is that? Is it something I said? Please feel free. No junk email will arrive, no Death Squad will call. I kinda want to know who you all are, OK?

The Elect(ion) & the Damned

Nothing doing here ´cept a grey drizzly day and dogs scratching scratching scratching at the door to be let in. I don´t blame them, as the fire is very nice and there´s Brahms playing on the box. But the dogs are making it hard for me to breathe, and somehow I managed to leave all my breathing inhaler thingies at the other house.

...And they ARE dogs, after all. Let em be cast into the outer darkness for a while.

We didn´t win the big El Niño lottery, even though we bought a ticket! I wonder if my bud in Salamanca won. (the author at www.wandering_woman. blogspot.com). She said she could feel it in her bones. But she must have the same kind of bones I do.

But speaking of trying your luck: I am encouraged by what´s going on in the caucuses in Iowa and New Hampshire. Today I downloaded the forms to apply for USA absentee voting ballots, as this is one election I don´t want to miss! (I´m a legal resident in Spain, but for the next 9 years, at least, I´m still a USA citizen.)

I know they don´t count the absentee votes til WAY after the decision is made, but what the hey. I´ve always gotten a real kick out of voting. And after the mayhem and monkey business that have plagued elections all over the world in recent years, it´s all the more important for people of good will to cast a ballot. Otherwise, the terrorists really do win. One way or another.

¨The sleep of reason brings forth monsters,¨ indeed.

Another interesting thing about watching the elections from the opposite side of the planet is the news coverage thereof. The USA political process is quite heavily and comprehensively covered here in the national press... sometimes even better than the job done in American papers! People in the café will sometimes ask me about the voters in my home district, and when my primary is, and which parties hold the majority there, etc. Intelligent questions. I have to think really hard to remember the answers! But I wonder how many citizens from anywhere can answer simple questions about local political matters that ought to be more important to us. (not to mention the challenges of answering them in Spanish! Another vino tinto here, please!) I think it´s easier just to adopt a cynical attitude, to not bother, or stop caring. Not caring translates to too many people not voting, or too many not voting responsibly. Which gets us into the kind of mess we´re now living through.

It´s not as if America is at the center of Spanish media, though. They cover elections in England and France and Germany and Russia and Turkey very thoroughly too. The papers here are just a lot more international than even the "America´s Great Newspapers" I used to work for.

All that said, I gotta tell ya: One of the most wonderful things about this election is I DON´T HAVE TO COVER IT!!! (God how I grew to DESPISE covering elections!)

All that makes me feel a lot better about life and drizzle and breathing. Maybe now I will let the dogs come inside, and put an end to this weeping, wailing, and teeth-gnashing.

Sol y Sombra

It´s a very strange sort of day, very Spanish in its "Sol y Sombra" aspects. (That´s "sun and shadow" to you English speakers. Meaning things are extreme, black and white.)

The sun was gorgeous this morning, and yesterday´s rain has made the fields positively glow with newly germinating rye. But on the way back a Mystic Fog came down from the north, where the mountains stand about 20 miles off. You can see it moving, like that gruesome mist that slays all the Egyptian firstborn in "The Ten Commandments." Except this is gray mist, not green, and it doesn´t lay on the ground...it rises up over your head in whifty drifts. And no one´s dead yet that I know of. It blocks out the sun instantly,and takes visibility down to about 30 feet. It made my mood go all kablooey too. I think this is where the term "wet blanket" comes from.

But when I got back to The Peaceable, a truck was in the drive out back. It was a crew of subcontractors from Becerril de Campos, here to start installing the windows! Wow!

The sun came back out. The mail lady arrived, bearing a big, heavy box with USPS tape all over it. It was Christmas, from my mom and sister, a box full of staple items from The Land of the Fee, full of unfindable American things like powdered sugar, shortening, peanut butter, and the ever-lovin´ Kraft Mac & Cheez! Shipping them over here cost three times what the food was worth, but like they say: it´s the thought that counts. And OMG, am I ready to make a QUICHE. We have fresh eggs out the wazoo, and now maybe I can make a decent pie crust! Hallelujah!

When I went to write fulsome Thank You emails to them both, I found the email server is down today "for obras." So if any other of you was expecting email from me, please know that, technically, being "cerrado por obras" means "closed for maintenance work." It really is code language for "closed for however long we feel like taking off and not working." Sombitch!

I went back to Sahagún and cleaned the apartment and did all manner of errands, one of which yielded up the happy discovery of Paddy´s birthday present, which is always a major wintertime challenge. In the Plaza Mayor, accompanied by loud recordings of kiddie Christmas tunes, were three city council members in fake beards and silk doublets posing as the Mailmen for the Three Kings. The innocents of Sahagún will give their lists of demands to these City Fathers, who will supposedly pass them along to the Reyes Magos, who arrive tomorrow evening on the 7:15 train from Chamartín in Madrid, bearing lots of toys and goodies for all the good girls and boys. (Most towns have the kings clattering into the plaza on fine horses, but Sahagún is inordinately proud of still being a stop on two main railway lines.)

It felt nice, being out and about on a sunny day in January where everyone is cheery and the shops are full. Tomorrow´s the big holiday, so today was rather like Christmas Eve is at home...a last-minute scramble for gifts and cakes and cash. I stopped and chatted with Rigoberto, the Cuban guy who runs the big pilgrim hostel. He finds my Spanish almost as incomprehensible as I find his English. I also saw Anunciata, the superior from the Benedictinas, out buying fresh sardines for lunch. She´s always smiling, that one. It makes me wonder what she´s up to.

I came back here to Moratinos. The window guys were gone, having put in a solid five hour day. And having installed floor jacks in the salon, apparently to hold up a portion of the (brand new) second floor they apparently don´t trust. (they asked Paddy if he knew how far the new joists sink into the wall. He told them he didn´t know. They didn´t tell him why that was a concern, and he didn´t ask. Men.)

I strolled through the house, an activity that sometimes is very encouraging to me. I saw the windows shimmed into place, and the three-feet-deep sills behind them, with the adobe exposed and rough... and the complete shambles of a backyard visible beyond that. We stick windows in holes, but the outer walls are losing their tiles, and the arch over the back gate is falling down. I´ll trade in my Three Kings for a handyman angel. One that speaks Spanish, and doesn´t mind the mud and cold and isolation.

My allergy pill is failing, and the dogs that don´t usually bother me are starting to. The sun is now clouded over good and solid. I´ve started snapping at the dogs, and Paddy can´t be far behind. The internet went down altogether. I hope you get this.

It is time for some rooibus tea. Or hormones, maybe. Or Bourbon.
I may have to settle for mac & cheez, and a snort on the asthma inhaler.

Open flames, fire water, and warm wishes

Hola, faithful readers! Feliz Año Nuevo to us all. (Another one like 2007 might just do us in, but it´s still not as bad as 2001. Euugh.)

We spent New Year´s Eve over at the Milagro House, on the corner of the Plaza Mayor. It started out pretty small and quiet, with just the eponymous Mom Milagros, Pop Esteban, and Estebanito and José, the Milagro Boys.. and another neighbor, Edu´s Brother Who Lives in Segovia, whose name I don´t know. It was as civilized a convo as you can have, having eaten a mess of seafood lasagna for dinner and then tucked into tons of cookies and turrones.

These guys seem to take great delight in smacking down bottles of home-brewed likker in front of Paddy, wheeling out a collection of frosted shot glasses, and fillin´em up and knockin´em down from there. Dear ol´ Pad does his best to meet their expectations, but me? As an Official Girl, I can go easy. I had to drive, y´know. I´ve noticed how they look askance at women who do just about anything to excess. So I stuck to the aguardiente-soaked cherries, which are delightful, long as there are no open flames about!

The Open Flames showed up at about quarter till midnight, when all the men and women, boys and girls of the Segundino Family next door rolled into the big gathering room. Milagros put more coal in the stove, and corks popped and everyone got big glasses of fresh, hard Asturian cider to toast the midnight hour -- and more chocolates.

And oh yes, GRAPES! All over Spain, according to tradition, Spaniards mark each stroke of the midnight clock by stuffing a grape into their gobs. Yes, twelve grapes in about a quarter-minute´s time. You try it. And don´t use the seedless kind!

Then swallow a shot of hard cider straight after. Then kiss your sweetie, and cheek-kiss everybody in the room, and do ching-ching with your glasses, and go outside into the sleet and set off some explosives! Ain´t New Year´s Eve grand? (especially when one of the skyrockets smashes right into the church bell! What a lovely racket that was... scared every dog in town right out of his wits.

Seeing as we are usually tucked into our beds by 11 p.m., we didn´t last long after the big moment. I am not sure how much longer the party went on after that, but everyone there looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at Mass the next morning. Another tradition was observed there: after Communion Don Santiago, the smilin´ cura, holds up a tinsel-trimmed basket with a plastic baby Jesus in it, and all 20-odd faithful in the place must troop up to the front and kiss its upturned, pink knee.

This flies in the face of all my Calvinist upbringing, which included a heavy dose of the Exodus and Deuteronomy Old Testament Jehovah so fond of raining fire and salt down on people who "bow down before idols." Kissing baby dolls? No thanks. Paddy and I stayed in our pew, but when everyone else was finished Don Santiago looked at us and smiled and said, "This gift is for all of us. All our friends are welcome."

Even Jehovah Himself couldn´t say no to that kind of peer pressure. If I go to hell someday I´ll be basted right along with the Baal and Astarte Thor devotees, I´m sure.
...Better company than some religious people I can think of.

Anyway, in the days since we´ve kept quite quiet here. The weather has been misty and sharp, so we´ve kept near the fire in the kitchen. Our woodpile is shrinking away, alas! So much work, and it´s only January! I hope we have enough for the winter. Yesterday I wrote a letter in both languages to the Spanish Foreign Secretary, whose name is Miguel Angel Moratinos. I pointed out he has not visited the village that shares his name, and we´d like to have him visit for the big Fiesta in August. Who knows? He might just. It´s a great photo op, and we live right in the middle of Partido Popular territory... the opposition!

Friday winds up the holiday season hereabouts...it´s Three Kings Day, aka Epiphany, the day the kiddies all get to open presents. The adults get another big lottery drawing to blow 20 Euros on. And it´s the start of yet another long weekend!

I hope very much this means the constructors will show up and pitch in to working on Monday, but I won´t be surprised if they don´t. It may be a new year, but it´s the same old Spain!

The Year That Were

Like everyone else on this spinning planet, I am using the last hours of this year to look back and wonder what the heck happened here! LOTS happened this year, it may have been the most eventful year of all 45 in my collection. It´s been really educational, and heartbreaking, and amazing, and expensive. And it´s put some claws onto my already-blossoming crows´feet. But I kept good notes all the way through, so I figure 2007 is a good start to The Book that still has no resolution.

I did some summing-ups. Some are very sketchy and incomplete. Others I will leave out, to protect the innocent. But here goes:

Fifty-two people signed our guest book. A lot more got by without signing in. 32 countries were represented, the strangest being Oman, and the most common, the United Kingdom countries of England, Wales, and Scotland. Yes, we do tend to attract English-speakers. Must be those ties to the USA and UK confraternities, or maybe our listing in the UK guidebook? Or maybe it is the neighbors. PIlgrims who ask for something are often pointed in our direction, especially if they ¨look English.¨

Despite all that, we are known locally as ¨Los Americanos,¨ even with Paddy being so ghastly English. Anyway, lots of those visitors, to be fair, were not just random pilgrims. Many were people we knew before: fellow hospitaleros from Rabanal del Camino or Miraz, (like Frank from Scotland, or the Wallsgroves from Wales, or Marianne The Swiss), or folks we walked with on our caminos, like Dick from Holland, or Immacolada from Italy, coming by to check out the mess we´re in. Others are people who stopped here for coffee early on, and came back! Some of them stayed for weeks even, to help out ... including Sebastian from Belgium, (in the picture, smoking) Anselmo from Valencia, and The Czech Boys. I thank them all, very very much.

Others were Family. Libby and Ryan, you´ve read about ad nauseum... both from the depths of Ohio, both incredibly helpful and full of insights and refreshing laughter and good cookin´, when they weren´t out there pounding the path. Such helpful people can fetch up here anytime!

There are other people who we were glad to see the backs of, but I won´t go so much into that. You might recognize them.

We have actually made some progress at The Peaceable Kingdom. We do have a good, level roof, and new floors and walls upstairs, at VAST expense. We´ve found a new contractor who´s already delivered windows. We´ve integrated somewhat into our community, and Paddy and I are still on speaking terms with one another. What more could you ask for?

Except maybe a new dog. Paddy says the day he went out walking with Una, and came back with Tim as well, was his single best day´s walking he did this year. Is that lovely, or what? (and then there are The Chicken Girls...)

I did some other BEST and WORST thinkings...

Best Nap of the Year: Was at the Refugio in Arres, back in June, when I walked the Camino Aragonés. I walked a good 30 kilometers that day, including a hike up and back down a horrific mountain. In the rain. God did I NAP!

Best Wine Discovery: the wines of Toro, Zamora, right here in Castilla-Leon. So far my favorite is Colegiata de Fariña. Around here it goes for about 5 Euro a bottle. I don´t know if it´s exported. Amazing wine, like drinkable perfume.

Best Meal of the Year: was 29 November at Chez Toinette, a neighborhood bistro in the 9th arrondisement of Paris. An undiscovered gem of a place with a menu that changes every day. I had scallops braised in coconut milk, which sounds awful but was absolutely divine. And fresh cheese and berries for dessert. And Armagnac. I think this little restaurant may be the key to world peace. If you go to Paris, do not miss it. But don´t tell everybody, OK, or you´ll ruin it! (I was treated by my best bud Jeanne. I´d roasted the Thanksgiving turkey a few days before at her place.)

Someday soon I will learn to make fresh cheese. It´s sorta like ricotta. Maybe after we get a goat.

Best Mail: A tie of several ways. My Aunt Esther sent me a real old-fashioned chatty hand-written letter telling me all about Thanksgiving in rural Western Pennsylvania, my cousin´s chemo treatments, the llamas, the horses, the weather. A thing of beauty. Another was from Kathy Gower, one of my greatest upholders... she sends books, fabulous books! My sister Beth sends Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, which has saved my sanity a time or two. My mother sent an entire overseas shipment of my Stuff from America in February... much of which has now vanished into the barn somewhere. And the Junta de Castilla-Leon, God bless their black little hearts, sent me notice in February that I had been approved for Legal Residence in Spain. WooHoo!

Best Nature Moment: Seeing a funnel cloud outside Calzadilla de la Cueza this spring. Terrifying and wonderful. ... but then there were the poppies in June, everywhere.

The best architectural moment: Touring around over the roofs of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela at sundown with my dear bud George from William and Mary, and his merry crew. He gave me a quick mid-summer vacation that really rallied my spirits, and showed me parts of Santiago I never would have seen otherwise.

Best Day´s Work: Installing the baldosas on the floor of our despensa, singing songs with Patrick the Czech. The baldosas (old funky floor tiles) came from a crumbling barn owned by Edu, our neighbor. Patrick the Czech helped me lay them, very unskillfully, into concrete. We taught one another ´Salomon,´a Czech anthem, and ´By the Mark,´an American hymn. Someday the floor will be GREAT. I think Patrick the Czech may be a mystic boddhisatva, traveling this world and teaching people things they need to learn.

Best outcome: The front of our bodega, shored-up and whitewashed and generally made much more respectable, with help from Dick from Holland. We scored major points with the neighbors on this one. The other really proud outcome was the latest issue of "American Pilgrim" magazine, which I did some heavy work on and loved. I am very proud of how that turned out. I hope it was not a swan song!

Coldest moment: Was the coldest WEEK! The second week of January, at the pilgrim refuge at Eunate, up in Navarre. I volunteered to help reopen the place. There was no heat. I have never been so cold, not since Halloween 1967 in Denver, Colo. So much for "sunny Spain!"

Best View: Was way the heck up in the Pyrenees Mountains... there was no town to peg it to. My buds Edie and Kathy from California let me drive them all over Catalunya and into Andorra in June, and we toiled all the way up to a tiny resort town atop a mountain. From a layby on the way down the peaks were magnificent. Who knew the Pyrenees were so thick and tall and serried? Amazing! And what great company!

The Best Welcome: Every morning, when we drive from Sahagun to Moratinos, and open the front gate. The dogs go crazy with joy, as if we´ve been away for months.

I won´t go into my Most Scary, Most Boring, Most Strange, Most Stupid, Most Horrifying or Most Heroic moments, as they are depressing or the Statute of Limitations is not yet expired on them. Suffice to say this has been one amazing year... and having 7,000-plus hits on my blog in less than 6 months (even if a lot of them were probably just spammers looking for mugs) makes me feel a LOT less isolated out here!

I do hope some of you will show your faces this new year. Maybe we will have a place for you to stay by the time you arrive. Bring your allergy medicine... and the sharpest cheddar cheese you can find!

Clowns in the Convent

Ah, The Clowns of Arenillas de San Pelayo! It could have been a terribly dull afternoon, but Libby and I were shanghai-ed along on a rather dreary prospect...a gathering of elderly campesinos at a 10th century monastery out in the middle of Palencia.

El Colegia de los Campos, a state social service agency, does its best to get isolated villagers out of the hovel and into some good company. (I am not sure how they feel about immigrant interlopers being caught in their nets, but there we were.) There´s a tiny meeting of neighbors in Moratinos every Tuesday afternoon outside the harvest months, and Paddy usually goes... they chat about current events and play Spanish Scrabble, which is a very strange creature indeed.. but I digress. This Arenillas meeting was to be a special regional treat, we were told.

Paddy bailed out. Libby said she would go. Like the rest of the old farmers around here, she needed to get out of the house.

We went in a terribly squished little car up hill and dale, with Modesto and Raquel. They are sorta the patriarchs of Moratinos, very "plugged-in" to local government. I think they also own an awful lot of land around here... but they have always been very nice to us, and so I seldom refuse their invitations to go and see sights. And they know everybody. They can get the keys to open up Romanesque chapels and crumbling barns and pigeon-lofts and navigational towers.

The clowns, two 20-something boys, had the 40-or-so campesinos rolling in the aisles. A lot of it I didn´t get, but that´s OK. I had seen the church and the chapterhouse already, and I could smell the chocolate brewing in the kitchen.

Arenillas is a perfect example of the secret treasures that lie scattered around here in the hills and valleys. Here, converted in a nice way into a senior center, was an ancient Premonstratensian seminary and church, complete with Romanesque stonework over the door, an extremely cold and ancient and still-in-use church, and a meeting and classroom for the monks that dates back 1,000 years. There still are 16th-century monk initials carved into the tabletops. I love this sort of thing! I am willing to tolerate CLOWNS for a good snoop inside something so historical and tucked-away and otherwise inaccessible to me!

After the clowns put away their hooters and honkers we all had hot chocolate thick enough to stand up your spoon. Then Modesto stood up and shared with us all three of his wildly popular poems. One was about A Mother´s Love, another about Garlic Soup, the local staple. The encore extolled The Noble Mule. Here is a picture of the performance. There wasn´t a dry seat in the house!

We have been enjoying the dogs very much these days. Una went out yesterday morning to the Hare Field and ran into something that fought back. She came home with her ear tattered and muzzle bloodied-up, but after a good scrubbing she is none the worse for wear. She really enjoyed Libby´s last days here, and seemed to know she´d better get in all the cuddling she could.

That is me by the "Christmas Tree," getting the Rias Baixas white opened up for our Christmas feast. (I am red-cheeked from the hot kitchen, OK??)

The last picture might be the best. It can´t compare to the monastery at Arenillas, and there are no clowns in it. But it´s the view into our despensa... see that tile floor, starting to take on a shine? And see those spankin´ new windows, ready to be installed? Beautiful!