My Birthday & Other Stuff

In this little domicile, on Calle Aquiles Serdan, Col. Emiliano Zapata, the door opens directly onto the street.  At dusk I hear the sounds of kids playing out there, running and running past the door.  I like to catch pieces of their spanish; they speak more clearly and loudly than most people I talk to.  I guess if I was trying to sleep or concentrate, all this noise might be annoying but I

am  just putting groceries and stuff  in the tiny kitchen, trying to find room in the mini fridge.  Even the dog constantly barking next door, has become something got used to.   That and the constant sound of someone's music playing in the background and noisy vehicles rumbling by over the cobblestones.  It just seems to be part of the ambience. But my favourite sound is the man who sells bread:  "Pan y boliiiiiillooooos"  -  "Bread and Bunnnnnsssss" he sings in his beautiful tenor voice.  He carries a super big and shallow basket on his head along with a little foldable wooden stand like the waiters have and when someone wants his bread, he flips open the stand, places the big basket on it like a huge serving tray and voila.  I can hear every transaction taking place on the street. There is really very little privacy  here. The windows are usually always covered by my collection of sarongs, but when it gets really hot, I draw them open to let in the breeze ( and the dust and the insects).  And yes, cockroaches do fly.  I nailed one with the egg lifter the other day, but it's too much trouble cleaning the egg lifter, so last night I shooed the second on out the door and onto the street before my dog got ahold of it.

I found a beautiful green baby bird yesterday.  It was sitting on the sidewalk near my door, sleeping with its little head tucked into its wing.  Very tiny and too young to fly and had one bad leg.  I know I should know better but I just couldn't leave the thing to get eaten by a cat.  It was a lovely green and yellow, it's feathers hadn't reached their full potential of colour yet.  I found a little plastic bag and used it to hold him and try to feed him some water.  He hopped around fine and looked okay, but just kept wanting to sleep.  I placed him in an open shoe box after he started to look poorly, his head was pulled back and he was struggling to stand up.  I said a little prayer for him and told him how beautiful he was and then he just stopped moving.  So perfect in his stillness.  

There are lots of parrots wild here and many in cages as pets.  Also I see lots of canaries, (surprisingly not all yellow either) for sale in cages at one of the vets, probably not expensive, and they sound so lovely.  But I don't think I could keep a bird in a cage.  It's just sad.  Or maybe I could be convinced if I knew it had been born in captivity and couldn't survive without being taken care of. . . . I could sleep at night knowing that it needed me.  When I get a place with an outside, I dream of having birds singing there.

The other day my dancing buddy Omar took me to a section of town where it seems all real people live, it's a neighbourhood called Pitillal, named after the river that runs near it, and instead of a neighbourhood, it's more like a little city within a city.  Everything is much cheaper and there is everything there; services, shops, church, etc.  There was a fair going on for the last eight days in the Plaza and we walked through the markets, eating food and me going crazy for comfortable flip flops (finally!) inexpensive underwear and cool knock off  sunglasses each for less then 6 dollars.  A man selling sweet bread tried to rob me of 50 pesos, thankfully Omar made a point of counting back my change.  He also made a point of bartering with every vendor.  At the sunglass stand, he was having a challenge convincing the seller to go down from 75 to 65 pesos.  "Okay, I'll make you a bet", he said to the vendor.  H took out a coin. "If it's heads we pay 75 and if its tails we pay 65! Whaddya say?"  The vendor, bored I'm sure and perhaps wanting something fun to do and after all, being Mexican and never refusing a bet, said okay.  We won!   At midnight they would light the big pyrotechnic castle we saw them working on in the street, all made of wood and fireworks.  It would be spectacular, but we couldn't stay that long to see it burn.

A few days earlier on my birthday, I was treated to a lovely dinner under a huge palapa called Muaritius in old town.  There was only one other table occupied.  The waiter did everything to serve us impeccably and before I could finish my appetizer, two singers with guitars showed up and sang me Las Mananitas, plus two or three other very lovely Mexican ballads.  I had to choke back tears, because truly, the words to these songs can hardly be translated, but they are so full of heart.  Dinner was an exquisite meal of steak and prawns.  And when my surprise birthday cake arrived, the most perfect chocolate cake in the world, the staff all came and sang Las Mananitas again.  I love this.  Then the tradition is to have you take a big bite out of the cake, with only your mouth. "Que le muerda, que le muerda!" " Bite it, bite it!" they all shout, and you do it, and hopefully nobody shoves the cake into your face.  I cut a piece for the whole staff; they were all so nice.

So, a big birthday.  I spent the afternoon having my hair done; my mom's present to me.  I got many emails and a couple of phone calls and in general it was perfect.  After the lovely dinner, I grabbed the leftovers and went salsa dancing.