The Longest Day of the Year

The weather is perfect.

Sahagun has been in full fiesta mode for days, but we´ve pretty much stayed away from the crowds and the racket. Una can hear the fireworks all the way from there, 9 km. away, and they still freak her out! Poor dog. Someone must´ve shot her with a BB gun when she was a pup, as any kind of shot or explosion sends her right out of her skin. The other two dogs just ignore it. (Tim, being a hunter, is actually attracted to gunshots!)

Dogs are very much in the picture around here lately. We have been hosting Che, a little Jack Russell Terrier pilgrim dog, owned by Sarah and Joop from Belgium. Jack Russells are composed almost entirely of energy, but it looks like the Camino has been a bit too much even for her. Her little footpads are swollen, and she´s just wiped out... and sleeping in a tent isn´t really agreeing with her either. She woke up a couple of nights ago and started eating strange things. We´re not talking frog legs here, we´re talking half a towel, the edge of a t-shirt, and a shoelace.

So Che is not a happy pooch. She arrived here yesterday afternoon in one of the most clever constructions I´ve seen on the Camino. She was slung in a cargo net from a stick, which Joop and Sara carried her 8 kilos between them. What a deluxe ride! I can´t see most dogs tolerating this sort of thing, but Che just happily rode along, rockin´in rhythm, not having to walk any more.

Late in the evening an Australian couple arrived, too, and a very timely thing it was... she (another Sarah) is a veterinary nurse, and he (Andrew) is an architect. They are doing-over a dairy barn in rural Queensland, and he´s very into bodega caves, so we all had much to discuss and see and do!

Che´s paws got a good going-over, and we all took an architectural tour of the Alamo and the bodegas (Esteban came out and opened up his monumental bodega and passed around samples of this year´s vintage, which was declared "spunky, young, and hair-raising.") We came back to the house and feasted on roast chicken and huge salads and Belgian chocolates. Gotta love them Belgians!

Joop and Sarah are very taken with Mimi Dog. They may come back after their Camino and take her home with them to Brussels. I think it´s a great idea, but it makes Paddy sad. She would have to learn to speak Flemish.

The pilgrims hit the road again this morning, and I´ve been doing laundry all afternoon. Tonight we´re going into Sahagun to watch a bullfight on TV. We don´t usually like bullfights, but they are strangely fascinating... much like passing an accident scene along the highway. You can´t look away. Anyway, there´s a new bullfighter on the scene right now who is spoken-of in phenomenal terms, supposedly the best and finest and most humane killer of bulls seen in Spain in the last 30 years. His name is Jose Thomas. (I wonder when he´ll appear on Celebrity Look Who´s Dancing. Then he´ll be a LEGIT celebrity!)

... A few hours later: We got into Sahagun just in time for the final encierro of the fiesta. Just after we found a parking place they shut the steel gates they´ve been erecting for weeks, and the brass bands started marching up the streets to the bullring. The "novillos," or "little bulls" (aka ´calves with horns´) were supposed to be set loose at 7:30 p.m., but about 7:15 the sky cut loose with a downpour. The scurrying was monumental, the bars filled up, and general merriment ensued.

I found Paca sitting outside Bar La Rueda. She´d staked-out a table with a full view of the plaza mayor, and was holding court with her friends. I´ve written before about Paca, an 80-something Sahagun native ball-o-fire who runs with her family a little book shop in town. She was in full blossom today, with all kinds of fresh gossip and news of this year´s successful fiesta.

Paddy scurried off to Bar Deportivo to see the Corrida, and Paca sent me after him, saying she´d still be at the plaza when I got back. And what followed was about two hours of hiking up and down Calle Constitucion from one packed-out bar to the next and to the bullring, trying to find Paddy somewhere among the exhausted drunks and the raging bulls. It was a lesson in how many people I´ve never seen before already knowing who we are. Everyone in the city evidently had seen Paddy about three minutes before I got there, and found it highly amusing that I couldn´t catch up to him. He, of course, had left his mobile telephone at home.

I love this man, however, and was really kinda enjoying myself. Kike bought me a beer at Bar Robles, and Leandro the Plumber invited us to dine with his Peña -- one of the big confraternal clubs that run around in odd uniforms throughout the fiesta.

I finally gave up and rejoined Paca and Nieves and Piedad and the ladies out on the arcade at the plaza. I asked them about peñas, and heard the lowdown on the local priest; a local tragedy that´s left a lady bedfast for 12 years, aware but unable to speak; a warning about the gypsy folk who are in town running the carnival rides ("they sing beautifully, and some of them dance. It´s wonderful. And when they do that, hang onto your purse!")

The rain came pouring down again, and the wind picked up. I noticed something pink waving and bouncing in the breeze from the front of a vendors´ stall... It was one of the prizes for a shooting-gallery game. There among the giant plush pythons and cuddly monkeys waved a pair of flesh-tone inflatable sex dolls, their lipstick mouths making O´s into the rain. Ah, Spain!

The bulls ran anyway. (they don´t kill them at encierras. They just tease them a lot.) The bands played, the crowds shifted around the town, and I finally found Paddy again, back at the Deportivo. The weather was trying to clear when we left, and as we turned eastward the sunset broke through behind us. And up front, stretched out from one side of the sky to the other, was the most spectacular rainbow that either of us has ever seen.


It couldn´t be captured by camera, but I tried anyway.
Vichysiosse for dinner. And a long sleep with rain pattering against the windows.

Monissimo

Now it is time to write about an ubiquitous bit of Spanish color: the mono.

In Greek, "mono" means "one." In American Junior High Schools "mono" means "mononeucleosis," a strange disease that makes you feel really tired and keeps you out of school for months at a time.

In Spanish "mono" means a whole lot of things, but today I´m focusing on the bright blue canvas kind that forms the background of working-class Spain. Monos are overalls, one-piece "boiler suits." Electricians, farmers, plumbers, tile-setters, ditch-diggers and bricklayers all arrive at their worksites dressed in their usual polo shirts and khaki pants. They find a likely-looking place (often within plain sight of whomever may pass by) and strip off their shoes and pants. They then step into their mono, zip it up over their tummies, put on their boots, and get to work. (No, I´m kidding. They really take a break for a cigarette.)

At 2 p.m. they step out of their monos, put on their regular clothes, and have lunch. And at 4 or 5 they step back in for a couple of hours. Monos are a great idea. They keep polyurethane foam, paint, tile adhesive, mortar, solder, and sheep manure from staining your clothes. They keep you warm when it´s chilly.

And they´re stylin.´

One thing we were obliged to do when we started hiring people to work for us was to supply them with monos. Last fall when Patrick the Czech was here he wore a mono left behind by the Bozos, but we knew we didn´t want to keep that thing around. Blazoned on the back was an ad for Reformas Gonzalez, and it was difficult not to lob bricks at it.

When Paddy and I started working in concrete and plaster and polyfoam ourselves, and our clothes began to unaccountably stick to other clothes in the hampers, we decided to invest in some monos for ourselves, too. We paid 15€ apiece for two nice monos at the hardware store. One has bright yellow racing stripes. The other is plain blue, but has a "special cut," the man told us. Estebanito told us later we shouldn´t have paid more than 10 for them, and the guy just sold us the extra fancy ones... that we could´ve had some nice green ones with "FertiBeria" printed on the back for a mere 8€. (the Milagros own a FertiBeria franchise. But green monos are the exclusive fashion statement of moonshiners and agricultural workers, and I personally hesitate to label myself as a Fertility Symbol.)

Anselmo from Valencia, ever the fashion icon, refused to wear monos. (Do-rags, yeah. Monos, no. Go figure.) So our flashy blue-and-yellow Speed Racer mono saw its first service with Thomas the Dutchman. He was a bit too tall for it, but it served its purpose. It has some paint smears on it, and some polyfoam (which you cannot use without getting all over yourself forever), but that only added to its rugged charm.

And now that Paddy and I are doing some concrete finishing, we are ourselves joining the Ranks of the Mono... Patrick in the Speed Racer model, and myself in the Special Cut. We are liking them, because they are warm, and because they are THERE. They´re available. They fit over anything, they´re comfy, tough, and you can get them as dirty as you want without worrying about ruining them.

I will never wear my mono outside our walls. The women of Moratinos would be scandalized, I´m sure... they all still wear skirts and sensible shoes everywhere, every day. Monos are Menswear, right down to the double-zipper in the front to make peeing more possible. This is where my mono fails me. I learned very quickly to visit the toilet the very moment I felt the urge, and to limit my intake of liquids when wearing one. Because even a quick widdle means climbing the whole way out.
And I can´t say mine fits beautifully, as it is made for a man´s body. It´s baggy in the bottom and the crotch, so I hike it up and put a belt around the waist, and ... et voila! A perfect boob!

Paddy´s suit fits him snugly. He complains that it accents the roundness of his paunch, but I think anyone with a gut would feel the same way. Here in rural Spain, every day is Easter, with multicolored egg-men tottering atop tractors and repairing walls and highways, their monos quiet declarations of their class, status, and ongoing employment. To wear a mono means you are gainfully employed and hard at work. Unless of course you have a cigarette that wants smoking just now. Or you need to pee.

Oh... Mono in Spanish means "monkey," too. It also means "cute."

Open For Biz

Dear Readers, we are finally really here. We´ve arrived. The house is FINISHED.

The melted-down light switch is now grounded. (Grounding power switches is, evidently, an "opcion" around here, and Paddy told the electrician we opt for YES.) I got the internet to work, even though the wifi looks like it will require a professional. The toilets flush. The oven and the stovetop get hot when we turn the knobs the right way. We have chairs and sofas and beds of various types and comfort levels to sit or lie down upon. And we have a good, steady stream of pilgrim traffic washing up here and there, and some of them are great cooks!

They are washing away, too. After keeping very good company and helping the Peaceable progress in leaps and bounds, Patricia the lame pilgrim limped on westward yesterday, Thomas pedaled his way east, and two fresh-faced young couch-surfers slipped away by Dawn´s Early Light. We are now alone... alone as we can be with three dogs, a canary, and three hens.

Alone is good. Don´t get me wrong: I love my pilgs! But we have never ever inhabited this house together before. It´s like having a new baby... you work hard and wait long for it to arrive, and when it finally emerges you are glad to have smiling faces around you. But you also want to keep the little treasure to yourself for a few hours, to really let it soak in that it is really here, it´s yours, it´s what you´ve been dreaming of and planning for all these months.

...And to try not to let the enormity overwhelm you!

It´s a big transition for the dogs, who have lived cheek-by-jowel with us in the litte kitchen for what seems like forever. Now Mimi and Tim, who don´t seem to understand that the inside of the house is no longer a part of the Great Outdoors, must stay on the Out side of the main house. Una gets to come inside, but only to the kitchen and living room. (she very much wants to sleep on the beds, but no.)
Una loves to swan around in the kitchen, begging for scratches and scraps, casting a pitying gaze at the Outer Darkness where Tim and Mimi cower. They understand exactly where the threshold is, and they press themselves right up to it...and sometimes accidentally slip a paw or a a muzzle over the door sill...hoping, hoping we will soon come to our senses. (they still have free rein in the barn and little kitchen, so don´t believe any of the sob stories they´re telling.)

Today the sun came out. I went to my Drivers Ed school and had a total-immersion combination Castellano-Normas de Trafico session of about two hours. After that I went down the street to the Church of San Juan de Sahagun, where the local confraternity is having a Novena prayer session to warm up for the big Saints Day Fiesta this week. What perfect preparation for a Driving Test in a Second Language, than a long session of study, song and prayer? I bet you didn´t know there´s a particular psalm written just for San Juan de Sahagun, our local saint. (Bonus Points in Heaven for anyone who can sing all the words.) I got the chainsaw sharpened and the daily bread bought.

This evening we´re loading the dogs in the car and heading out for a long walk. It seems like ages since we did that, and every time I open the car door the dogs remind me how badly they want an Expedition. And so it is time to get back to Life As Usual around here, but with a generous addition of pilgrims and other visitors to the mix!

Now that we´re Here, we Disappear

This is a quick update for anyone who´s been trying to communicate with me, or us.

Our internet server is down, and we´re currently trying to figure out how to get online again at our house. Meantime, the electrician who chopped down the antennae, the internet provider, and the Mac people are doing their very best to blame each other for the outage. Or outrage, maybe.

I am coming face-to-face with my internet dependency. And I hope to be back soon, mainlining as much Web as I can squeeze through my teeny tiny bandwidth.

We´ve had lots of pilgrims in the past couple of days, and mostly enjoyed it!

Be back at you soon, with gruesome details.

Reb.

Hit the Ground Running

I don´t think I won the blog contest, (I am pretty sure I came in second), but seeing as my web access is so limited these days I decided that´s not a great priority just now. I gotta blog while I can, before the LAN goes all funny again.

We are now hosting our first full-on pilgrim guest person, a woman named Patricia. She is lame in the right foot, and will stay til Wednesday. She is from Hackney, London, via North Carolina, Switzerland, Tasmania, and all points in between. She speaks all kinds of languages and can do all kinds of things, including sailing yachts and diagnosing the injuries of race horses using a pendulum. And she´s a fine cook! We went into Sahagun this morning to shop, and her fresh take on the morning´s events refreshed my own view of the grubby old town. Buying broccoli really IS an adventure here if you´ve never done it. And the busload of Japanese tourists who descended on the shops just as we did gave me a fresh appreciation for the patience of the local storekeepers.

Thomas the Dutch handyman is STILL here, still struggling with the roof over our back gate, still cleaning up as he goes. He is driven. His idea of a cleanup is not only all the roofing and concrete mess he made over the past two weeks, but also all the scrap lumber and timbers left behind in the yard after Anselmo cut most of it into firewood last month. Anselmo, at age 30-something, said he couldn´t move the big timbers alone. But here is Thomas, at age 60, somehow getting the entire pile up the yard and stacked under the shiny new tin roof he installed last week. What a guy! And tomorrow, he says, he´s off over the Pyrenees to find work in France. On his bicycle.

His moving-on will make room for Danny, a Couch Surfer/pilgrim from Annapolis USA, who is walking the Camino with someone named Jess. Couch Surfing is a wonderful idea whose time has come, a way for travelers to share their lodgings, hometowns, and company with one another all over the planet. You can find more info here.)

Danny is also a computer engineer, and I´m hoping he can take a single look at the spaghetti of computer wires and tell me exactly how to set up a wifi network at The Peaceable...or at least return my present rambling wreck to reliability. Like Patricia, Danny and Friend can expect a warm welcome, great food, and a real bed to sleep in, but they´re expected to contribute something, too. And they do, gladly. So far.

We also are, sometime this week, expecting another pilgrim... an Italian lady. She´s not said just when. And there´s always the chance a random soul will wash up here, someone we told long ago to "stop in whenever." All these people and the mix of beds had me wondering if Jess is a male or female, and if he/she could share a room and bed with Danny, or if we´d have to split up a happy couple because the double bed was already occupied. I guess hoteliers have to think of these things. I have never thought of myself as a hotelier.

As such, the big question just now is beds. We now are proud purveyors of a single bed in the blue room, and a rather snug sort of double bed in the green room, a single bed in the rather Spartan despensa (although it does have its own bathroom and kitchen now, with two dogs thrown in for good measure.) And now a snug double mattress on the floor in the salon. And a nice leather sofa. (The spankin´ new big double bed Paddy and I now use is not included in these equasions. Some things I will not share, even with the best pilgrim!)

So... If Thomas leaves tomorrow, the bed in the despensa will be open. Patricia has moved herself to the mattress in the salon, so that leaves the green and blue and despensa beds open. Which means all three of the travelers can show up tomorrow and still all have a place to lay their weary heads, although one of them may feel kind-of put-out if he sees the other parts of the house before repairing to his chilly, pitch-dark, windowless despensa room. (But then one of them may be a mendicant hermit. Which means the despensa will be right up his street.)

Tim and Mimi dogs are not allowed inside the new house. Una is allowed into the kitchen, but she can´t get up onto the furniture. It´s been a fascinating learning process, seeing how well they know the boundaries, and how they push the limits... like Tim "sleeping" in the doorway, with a single paw poking over the sill. He lives in hope.

I say all the above to say this: The Peaceable Kingdom seems like it is Open for Business. The dream is coming true! (now if I could only find a graceful, trouble-free way to make it pay...)

Once in a while I catch Patrick´s eye, and we share a kind of strain. We are hermits. We really love our down time, our long walks along the canals with just the dogs, long afternoons just sitting in the sun reading. Our great house-building project is, for all practical purposes, finished, but we have yet to spend a day alone together inside it. (And it is wonderful! Following wise advice from an early visitor, we focused on making the kitchen-sitting room a clean, comfortable space first, so we´d have a refuge from the chaos in the rest of the house. It´s a delight, even without any art on the walls yet.)

We know we will have many, many days alone together here -- or at least we hope we will. We know that being hosts to the International Lame and Halt was a primary purpose for coming here, and we do enjoy the company now coming to our new lovely place.

But in an odd way we also miss one another, the little kitchen, the rumpus of three dogs and a couple of pilgs coming in from the rain. Just for a coffee and a sello. Just for now.

Last Chance: the Dark Side of Democracy

First the plug: This is the last day to vote for Moratinos Life in The Best of Blogs travel and leisure category. I am chuffed to have so much support out there, but somehow we are still well behind another blog from another American expat: this one in Saudi Arabia!

So maybe she IS a bit more relevant to today´s news, and maybe she does look fetching in her abayya. But I´m the better writer. So there.

Quality writing doesn´t always mean a lot in the wide-open frontier Internet world, not to mention good taste. That´s why dung blogs like Perez Hilton and Drudge Report are famous, and writers like us -- the people whose blogs are nominated in this little contest -- toil in relative obscurity. I am not sure why the administrators put the final decision into the hands of the mob, but hey... that´s democracy.

So tap on the Best of Blogs icon on the upper right of your screen, and then scroll down to Travel & Leisure, and check off the dot next to "Moratinoslife." Then good things will happen to you. Eventually.

Good things are happening here. We are cleaning like lunatics, moving things around, moving them again, losing them for a while, and then finding them under our pillows. We have an injured Aussie lady on her way here today, and I do have a nice room for her to sleep in, and the floor isn´t even crunchy! We need to hang pictures one of these days. Poco a poco.

We bought a mess of liver for dinner, lamb liver, much more edible than the calf kind. I never liked liver before I came here and discovered this stuff. The Spaniards prefer the calf kind, and so sell the lamb liver for about 40 cents a kilo! What a deal! And they throw in all the rest of the little creature´s organs, too, so we stew them up for dog treats. It makes for a disgusting bundle from the butcher shop, a real anatomy education.

We are rediscovering the furniture left behind when the former owners left. The green bedroom in the photo has the antique bed with wood inlays, and the living room/kitchen are home to two very fine tables. The one Paddy is waxing is an old workbench that weighs a half ton. Getting it in through the window was a pantomime worthy of Tin Pan Alley. The other is a small side table. It looks like the outcome of two amateur woodworkers, each pursuing his own vision. It spent the last few decades in the barn hosting spider families, but now it´s promoted to stereo duty.

Thomas is staying through the weekend, putting up a new gate out back. So here we have your hosts, an American and an Englishman, the pilgrim guest from Perth Australia, and the working man from Maastricht, all gathering ´round a table laden with Spanish lamb guts and Vichysoisse. Gotta love it!

Dark Before Dawn

Massively small things have been going on, with plumbers, carpenters, pilgrims, neighbors, and dogs traipsing in and out for days. Massive money has been traipsing, too... all of it out, I am afraid. (Except for one extra happy German lady we gave coffee to this dripping-wet morning. We dried her out a little, I spoke execrable German to her, and she gave me a four-Euro donativo!)

While I sift and shift food and cutlery and pots and pans between the summer kitchen to the new Real Kitchen, I am also trying to integrate the kitchen things from the piso in Sahagun, and the things shipped over last February from America... got to get the turntable from Pittsburgh into the cabinet before I install atop it the 10,000 little pots of spices we´ve accumulated from all points of the compass. We have two types of Garam Masala and an assortment of piquant leaves, nuts, and peppers for making tamales, but we still have no vanilla extract. I am sure there is some in one of these boxes. And I actually am opening all of These Boxes now, and re-discovering things I didn´t know we had! It´s like Christmas around here, but the piny smell is from sawdust.
The carpenter is STILL hanging the doors, which came (finally) from Asturias without any hardware attached. The carpenter´s had to create doorsills, then hang the doors on them, and now he´s hollowing-out the edges for the handles and locks. Seems a little front-to-back to me, but then HE is the carpenter, and I am happy to see these doors are solid, heavy wood.

The work leaves wood shavings all over the place, so it´s no use cleaning up yet. And we don´t want to put down rugs or move big furniture until we´ve cleaned. So here we are, still parked in the summer kitchen... so close!

We have light fixtures up all over, a lovely woodstove installed, hot and cold running water, and toilets that flush, too! A new mattress was delivered, and a lovely brown leather sofa, and painters then came to touch-up all the damage left by the delivery guys. (We had to scramble to find an old sheet to cover the sofa with!) The internet went down. (that´s why I disappeared for a couple of days.) We moved the fridge into the new kitchen, and had to shift the door front-to-back so it opens from the left instead of the right. It´s harder than you´d think!

Ttoday the antenna man came to hook up the TV, and said we´ll only get two rather snowy channels unless we take down the array atop the mast and replace it with another, more space-age model -- a mere 700 Euros worth. Having just paid an electrician bill that was a good €1,000 over what I´d planned, I kinda snapped. I told him to saw off the entire mast just above the internet receiver.

"You will have no TV signal," he told me, his jaw twitching a little. "I know," I told him. "I worked too long with TV people. (I actually said this right, using the preterite.) I very much dislike TV, except for football games sometimes.¨ The man nodded. He put on a good poker face, but I could see his mind working behind his eyes. "This woman is entirely unhinged. I´d better watch myself," he was thinking.
"What does your husband think about TV?" he delicately inquired.

Paddy was out walking the dogs just then, so I phoned him up and handed the receiver to the man. Paddy told him to go ahead and saw the thing down. And so, having consulted with the authorities and confirmed for himself that All Foreigners Are Mad, he did the deed. And after the antennae came down, the internet switched itself back on. Electronic wonders abound. Here I am! Now all I need is a wifi wizard to appear and make the computer work all over the Peaceable. (Part of the original plan was to provide wifi for whoever shows up. We we shall see.)

It´s all winding up now. The place is zooming together all of a sudden, just like Father Dick prophesied way back last summer. We have beds, we have chairs, we have heat. I am almost afraid to cut loose and rejoice, for fear of being premature. We still don´t have the final bill! But I can feel the joy bubbling up down inside.

I think it´s held in abeyance by Paddy, who is not dealing well with all this at all. He is quiet and withdrawn when he´s not whining, complaining, or asking What It All Means. Add to all this a holiday (Blessed Sacrament Sunday, a pretty summertime procession marred by an inter-family squabble), and a funeral: our friend Resti, the chef at Casa Barrunta over in San Nicolas, died on Monday from a fast-moving brain tumor. He was 57. We attended the funeral yesterday, a very sad affair replete with tolling church bells, a cortege through the town, roses and handfuls of dirt thrown down into the grave by each person. (In America the graveside service is much more sanitized...as if we can´t really acknowledge that the body in the box is going into this hole in the ground!) I think the hardest for me was seeing Raul, the ever-merry young waiter at Barrunta, shoveling fresh concrete onto the tomb as the tears streamed down his face.

Una, like Paddy, is off by herself these days, skulking. I think the chilly, cold weather and all the change and hubbub may be too much all at once for these two sensitive souls. I try to give them extra scratches behind the ears. I hope they get better, because I want to really enjoy this little Between period. Between finishing the house, and telling everyone We Are Open for Business.

Just what "business" means is still up in the air, a subject for another post perhaps. But we have a pilgrim from Italy coming on Monday, and some Belgians are leaving their car with us in a couple of weeks while they walk the Camino with their dog. A string of friends is coming in July, August, and September. September will be especially fun, with loved-ones expected from California and Wisconsin, Wyoming and London, Rotterdam, Sedona, and Ghent!

...And meantime, I MUST get my driver´s license.