i have a little list

Well, I had a little list.


And it was little.


I just wanted to accomplish a few things on Monday. Get some pesos. Buy some hangers. Not much.


But I ended up not leaving the house -- except for one emergency mission to attempt to get Jiggs a cortisone injection.


The owner of the house where I am staying was up early this morning to drive back to her summer home in Wisconsin. We said good-bye to her around six. We also thought there would be plenty of time to sleep in.


But not so. At 8, the bell at the front gate rang. I thought it was the maid. But I was wrong. It was two fellows who were at the house to repair several errors in bathoom tile they had installed earlier this month.


While my brother was dealing with that project, I started laundry. The house has a washing machine, but no dryer. Like most houses around here, clothes are dried on the roof.


Four people can create a lot of laundry -- even when the laundry is primarily sheets and towels. After five loads of washing and drying, I have learned far more respect for people who maintain houses.


I had hoped to put my clothes in the master bedroom and to set up my computer in the office. But that is where the tile work is taking place -- and there is plenty of dust. I decided to wait.


Instead, I set up the kitchen while Darrel treated our fruits and vegetables to a nice bleach mix bath. The house is starting to feel like home.


But the day got away from us.


Several readers urged me to bring my own sheets to Mexico. Sheets do not matter that much to me, but I bought some fancy-schmancy high-thread count sheets. They certainly felt nice.


I washed them. Dried them in the sun. And was ready to put them on the bed.


I do not like fitted sheets. They always seem to outsmart me because I try to put them on the bed incorrectly.


I was in my bedroom muttering away that something was wrong with the sheets. Darrel came in to help me -- imagining, of course, that his brother was incompetent in another mechanical task. But he could not get the sheet to fit either.


We looked at the label: "Queen size sheet set." The bed is a King.


I was positive that I ha bought a King set. I could see by ther look in my brother's eyes that he was prepared to declare an "operator error."


I felt vindicated when we looked at the other sheet and the pillow cases: "King size sheet set."


Vindicated, but no better off. I now have a set of sheets that will fit neither the King nor the Queen beds in the house. Darrel will take them back to the store when he returns to Oregon.


When I stayed at the house in July last year, I recognized there was a real danger of becoming a hermit. Everything I need is right here. I can get almost anything delivered to the house. What I cannot get delivered, I can purchase within a few minutes' walk.


When Darrel leaves, I will need to consciuosly get out and learn my Spanish. I already know quite a few people from the homeowner's introductions and from my own efforts during the last two trips down.


I wonder if there is anything like a social hermit?