Spring Projects: Destroy Kitchen Shelves

The hot season in Mérida usually blasts in toward the end of April or early May.  This year the temperatures hit 100°F almost every day in March.  The evenings cooled down to low 70's; the brisk nights gave us a chance to reacclimate to the daytime heat.  It seems we haven't had a drop of rain in months, but with the heat comes humidity, and 'heat and humidity' is my favorite weather combo.

In mid April the temps rose even higher.  Being more acclimated to and happy to feel the tropical sun and heat, I got into spring cleaning mode. If you read the previous blog you know I repaired and relocated - and replaced - my desk.  That mission accomplished, I decided to work on the kitchen. 

When I moved into this house in July of 2007 the kitchen had cupboards in place.  I had the top(green) cupboards screened in to allow air but dissuade bugs.  The bottom doors were plastic and I should have gotten rid of them at the time.  They survived about two years. 

Over time I have ripped out the plastic doors as they became dysfunctional and started to bug me.  Once the doors were gone, the lower cupboards seemed so much larger.  Still, the supports for the plastic doors stood there blocking access. 

I took everything out and piled it up on the floor.  I removed the rusty old screws and was able to yank out all the fake supports.  They have nothing to do with the functional Mexican style shelves that were hiding behind that phony plastic shield.

Some people think having all your food, pots, pans, plastic containers and such in the open is not aesthetically acceptable.  I don't like closed doors and I guess that feeling extends to kitchen shelves.  Frankly I think it's the 30 years living in the tropics.  I get a bit obsessive about storing items in jars, being able to use all available space, and I don't like sharing my food with bugs. 

Sawdust Desks: Are They Safe?

A while back I bought a "computer desk" at a popular office supply store.  Sliding tray for ergonomic keyboard comfort. Upper shelf to house the printer.  Room for my speakers.  A side shelf for the hard drive.  Of course it's made of pressboard, evidently the material of choice of Office Minimum.

It's served me well for a couple years but over the past few months its screws started coming loose.  As they'd fall I'd collect them along with several bolts and nuts.  The entire desk began to lean to port and I supported the lowest shelf with a few coke bottles.  I knew I needed to repair it, but I do live in mañana-landia, after all.

It's no wonder I lacked inspiration in the cluttered corner below, too many distractions. The cats enjoy hanging out around me because I'm the one with the air-blasting fan.

When my bro/sister-in-law sent me a new webcam for my bd, the time had come to dive into the project. I carefully unplugged all the computer's components, wires and plugs and safely stowed them to be cleaned before reconnection. I flipped the desk over and around tightening and replacing screws. I even set glue into the former screw holes for a little extra support. The ergonomic shelf had long ago fallen apart and rusted. I poured some Coca Cola on to clean off the rust and was able to reassemble and reattach it. It doesn't slide anymore, but it's still a nice feature. I completed the reconstruction on Thursday. 

On Friday the sturdy new-looking desk was moved into its new location, in another room; to give me a new perspective and inspiration. I' d been sitting at the desk for a couple hours answering emails, when all of a sudden the entire desk collapsed around and on me and broke into several pieces. I sat there in shock as I watched the computer and all its attachments, attached, take off flying onto the cement tiled floor. Naturally a fresh giant glass of ice water was part of the mix.

Upon inpection of the boards that collapsed, the pressboard had returned to its original state of sawdust covered in wood-colored paper. It was completely disintegrated and had the appearance of a piece of wood that had come into contact with a swarm of starving termites. There were no termites, it was just sawdust. Not a very strong item for tropical living.

I couldn't stand looking at the parts just sitting by themselves, so at 3am (not my usual housecleaning hour) I took my dry paintbrush and cleaned the components as if petting a newborn kitten, and dragged my sturdiest wooden table to 'inspiration corner'. The top half of the sawdust desk was salvageable, and it works well sitting on top of the REAL table. The printer took a beating but it seems to want to work, so it'll get some professional attention. What's important is no one was hurt (like me!) and neither was the computer. Everything is working today as usual.  Things always work out, because now I have a larger desk space with room to move and places to write. I may feel empowered here after all. 

Idiomasyncracies: ¿Hay Fab?

I often walk to the corner store and end up being cornered by the owner.  He'll go off on a rant, arms flailing about, while customers come and "ocho" go.  He just belts out a number once in a while to collect his "doce" due from the patrons.  Frequently people walk in and ask, ¿Hay Fab?

The question means, "Is there Fab?" or more in laymen's terms, "Do you have laundry soap?"  For that the owner has to go into the back room.  It gives me time to think, and one day it occurred to me that I haven't actually SEEN Fab since I came back here in 2007. 

Powdered soap usage is not limited to laundry.  Cars, dishes, hands, floors - you name it - washed with Fab.  In the days before our attraction to having to have an overwhelming variety of brands available to choose from, in laundry soap brands, there was only Fab.  The people still refer to all laundry soap as Fab.  For a Yucatecan, a bag of Fab, and bottles of Fabuloso, bleach and muriatic acid are all one needs to effectively clean any kind of surface, dirt, or mold.

Yesterday I scoured the laundry soap shelves at our local supermarket, Chedraui, and this is what I found.  No such thing as Fab.

¿Hay Fab? 

No, no hay.

Think YOU'RE Having a Bad Day?

Just be happy you aren't dealing with all this: 

Japan, before and after the quake and tsunami

Japan's Not Lookin' Too Good

I copied this map from http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ site. The yellow boxes represent the earthquakes from the past seven days, the blue ones within the past 24 hours, and the red ones within the hour.  This was copied at 7:00am today, March 15th.   If you are at all interested in the earth's movements, check out this site. You'd be surprised where some of the 'hot spots' are located.

Carnaval Masks 2011

The photo above was taken at last year's Carnaval ('09).  Our friend Julie let us borrow these masks which I believe she brought back from Africa.  With Pablo's congo drum and these, we scored lots of prizes!  If you can draw some attention to the people on the floats with cool things in their hands, you're in! 

After last year's experience and learning the theme of Carnaval this year was Samba(or not), it seemed like a good idea to wear masks.  I walked down to 58th St in Centro, looking for some feathery masks.  I prefer to make things like this, so off to Miguel's Fantasia I went.  I swear we had almost as much fun making these as we did wearing (and eventually trading) them at the parades! Therefore, you are about to scroll through all the masks we made.  We gave three to our palco mates (the friends we shared the box seats with), four to our housekeeper's family, and then traded our own at the end of Monday's parade for tshirts and recycled bags! 

Since this is a TOO MANY PHOTOS blog, (and no, I will not go to a blogger's support group for this problem), I'll keep the words short.

One last note, I added the blue feathers to cover my wrinkles, it didn't work!

First Pawpaw Harvest

All right, PAPAYA.  I just like the word 'pawpaw', it's South Pacific equivalent. My tropical cookbook from Fiji has great recipes: pawpaw slaw, pawpaw seed salad dressing, lote, mousse, fresh green pawpaw pickle, and mango pawpaw punch, to name a few.  There are some creative uses for papaya and I was thrilled to harvest the first ripe fruits today.   Below is a photo of the tree, growing in the front patio, from what may have been sunrise papaya seeds from Guatemala, or not. 

They are huge and have been ripening fast.

Pablo stood on the ladder and used the new weapon we created:  a strong kitchen knife well-taped to an old squeegee pole...not too tall but effective for now. Look how beautiful this fruit is!

Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of one cut into thirds because it was so sweet and delicious it just didn't occur to me!  We got caught up in the moment! 


This week I have to get back out into the yard and finish cleaning up the garden areas.  The cilantro below is flowering and will soon go to seed. Must stay on top of that.  My project these past few weeks has been to add dirt to the perimeter of the yard where we try to grow things.  The dirt washes away and all that's left is a shallow bed of tierra and lots of limestone rocks.  The plants are very happy with their new beautiful black dirt.

I think tiny flowers are interesting, they are so intricate and delicate.  These are the cilantro flowers. I'll try to get some closeups and maybe post them another day with the rosemary flowers from last week.