For the doubters, they lost their bets. I continue blogging, continue tweeting, even though I almost never tweet, because to say something in 140 characters I have to wait to connect to the Internet, then I post and it’s more clear.
Let me tell you. On my return and after successful combat against sewage, like Martina the Cockroach, with the money earned by my husband, I gave myself the task of fixing the house. My little hut is very nice and welcoming, but it hasn’t been painted in more than ten years, the dining set has suffered the impoverishment of losing a chair, entirely the responsibility of Raul Rivero before the Black Spring of 2003. The remaining chairs are cyclically coming unglued with no remedy, and end up losing their backs. Then I had to make them cushions to avoid the pinches from the loose wood, and finally they are tied together with electric cord so as not to fall to pieces. Once on the blog I spoke of a bad run of breaks, but these daily miseries I kept hidden, so that they would not be misinterpreted by someone.
My idea was to buy a dining set to replace the old one already detailed, but the prices give me chills, and they are almost always of chipboard, so I took advantage of the farmers market that was selling these rather rustic stools and I bought them, and the table I thought I’d give four legs in place of the central support that looks like a carousel. The carpenter to do this doesn’t appear, the carpenters are the elite of the manual laborers, taking their due in CUCs, like high fashion designers, what they do is create, not repair.
In the kitchen I have my new best friend. I enjoy the rare privilege of being the last one in my neighborhood to have a decent washing machine. I also gave myself the task of buying two sacks of cement and something called “stone dust,” which replaces sand and gravel. I bought the cement at 6.40 CUC a bag in a hardware store to avoid problems. But for the stone dust I visited a place in the city that seems like another planet called “The Screw,” where they built the first reservoir in the city, now defunct. I should have done a post about that trip but I was busy.
I have a handyman friend and I contracted with him to build a wall and to take down another, small ones, no fear, with the intent of giving my son a room with some privacy; also to move the built-ins in the kitchen and to paint. And I have not been contemplative: I’ve sawed, hammered, screwed and unscrewed, collected, washed down, rearranged, in short, I’ve worked like crazy and still am not finished.
But for one whose house was so tacked together, to see it now is satisfying.
In these two months, the first in Spain and then working on the house, I’m sure I’ve lost many readers. It doesn’t matter. I will start again. Don’t be confused by the domestic tone of this post: My bifocals haven’t stopped looking around very carefully. So I return to where we were. I also missed it.
July 11 2011
