before there was a before

I accidentally ran across a great resource on the house I am currently considering in Barra de Navidad. The realtor showed me two houses that had been designed by a local architect: Alejandro Lazareno. I googled his name to see if he had designed other houses. He had.

But the most interesting find on that search list was this blog. It shows a week by week progress of the house being built two years ago. Where but on the internet could you find such a resource?

It is a huge blog -- with lots of interesting commentary and even more interesting photographs. It gives me a good idea where lines are buried under the concrete, but it also assures me that the house is very well built.

Comparing the photographs, it is hard to believe that it is the same house. For example, remember those colorful stairs? Here they are in their unfinished glory.

The picture at the top is of the lot before any work began. Compare it with the first picture in yesterday's posting. They are taken from about the same point.

Alee' asked for some additional pictures. So, for her, here is the dining area.

And the entry walk -- just inside the gate. Note the curved overhang. That is an Alejandro trademark.

And, once again, the beloved pool -- this time from the upstairs terrace.

As you can tell, my ardor has not yet cooled.

cinderella returns home barefoot

When I was in Barra de Navidad and La Manzanilla last November and December, I wanted to see several houses. As luck would have it, one of the houses in Barra sold the weekend before I arrived. So, I looked at several other houses -- and found two that interested me.

Those of you, who have been following this blog, know the rest of the story. I started my tortuous analysis on when I should move, and concluded that I would probably move to Mexico in April of 2008. I would rent for 6 months each in Barra de Navidad, La Manzanilla, and Pátzcuaro -- and then buy wherever I had decided to settle.

Well, the winds of change are blowing again. The realtor I was dealing with in Barra sent me an email on Tuesday letting me know that the sale failed and the house was back on the market. I must admit that it was like hearing that your favorite ex-girlfriend has popped back into your life.

And there is the first warning sign. Comparing a house to an ex-girlfriend should raise all kinds of flags. But let me share some photographs of my sweetheart.

The house is not right on the beach, but it is an easy walk to downtown Barra and the beach. Because it is at the beach, the houses are very close together -- and the lots are very small. Two bedrooms. Two and a half baths. A terrace patio off of the master bedroom on the second floor. With a very nice kitchen.

But it is the little touches that make a difference. These stairs lead from the back yard to the upstairs terrace. Each riser is painted a color from the interior of the house. How cool is that?

And, Nancy, I have found my traveller's palm -- and birds of paradise.

But, I saved the best for last: a pool. Anyone who has spent any time on the Pacific coast in the summer knows where I will be spending most of my time. Good-bye, hot tub. Hello, pool. Meals and reading are about to have a new -- but similar -- venue.

Now a little cold water to be poured on that dream. I still have the same time frame issues. Retirement sometime between January and April 2009. Selling my house in Salem. Those facts have not changed.

And a new issue has arisen. In talking with non-Mexicans who sell property in Mexico, there appear to be a lot of different answers on whether Mexican residency can be claimed to take advantage of the Mexican capital gains tax exemption. Like most "residency" requirements, the application is fluid because it is based on weighing a series of factors. I know that none of you are tax experts, but do you have any idea if residency is assisted if the only residence a buyer has is the one being purchased in Mexico, and if having an FM3 at the time of purchase is a favorable factor? It would make sense that if a person has sold all other residences prior to purchasing a Mexican home, residency should weigh toward Mexico. It will be interesting to see what each of you have to add. I suppose the only trustworthy advice is that you know you can use the exemption when you try to use it and Hacienda approves it.

Now I need to either get back on track with my renting plan -- or I should start the negotiation process to tie the knot with my new princess.

cruise or lose

Two more weeks until I leave for Brazil! Well, two weeks and four days. But who's counting?

I planned this cruise almost a year ago. And I almost cancelled it in December because I thought I could use the money and time to continue my scouting trips to Mexico. I kept it on the calendar, though. After all, if I retire early next year, I most likely will not have the financial resources to head off on a two-week cruise to Brazil.

Originally, the cruise was heading to Brazil, Morocco, and Portugal. The Morocco stops were dropped for discrete reasons of security, We are now visiting four cities in Brazil (Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Recife), Tenerife, Madeira, Spain (Cadiz), and Portugal (Lisbon).

The only ports I have never visited are the Brazilian cities. I am really looking forward to grabbing a taxi in each port and just heading off to see what there is to explore.

We will also have several days of sea days. Those are my favorites. No responsibilities. No house to clean. No meals to cook. I will just read and enjoy the sea from my balcony.

I consider these cruises to be rehearsal for my next who-knows-how-many years of retirement.

post script

For those of you who do not read the comments left by readers (and you really should; they are often the best part of almost all blogs), I want to give you "the rest of the story" concerning my neighbor. For those of you who do read comments, you will recognize this as part of my response to "Juan Calypso."

I talked to my neighbor tonight. She had two reactions. The first was a tearful acceptance of my offer to let her use my trash can. That did not surprise me. After all, what was she going to say?

It was her second reaction that caught me off guard. She was noticeably perplexed by my offer. That was a good reminder to me that no matter how good we think our relations are, they are probably not as good as we suppose.

For me the moral is that I need to show the same kindness each day -- even if it does shock my neighbors -- and frighten the horses in the street.

mending wall

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

My back yard looks as if children rehearsing for Mardi Gras have paraded across my lawn. There are shreds of paper of various size. Not the uniform deadly massacre of a lawn mower when it meets its mortal enemy. No. This paper has been meticulously -- purposely shredded, as if for some secondary school art project.

But the hands that created this artistic detritus do not belong to children -- unless they are the children of Chip and Dale. The budding sculptors are gray squirrels. The chewers of BMW wire insulation.

The squirrels are busy constructing their little Levittowns. But they are not very good at their tasks. Plenty of nest-building material snows from the Spruce tree in my back yard. Now and then a clump of twigs the size of a basketball hurtles from the tree. I keep wondering if the Squirrel News headlines will feature the loss of home and possessions. But apparently no loss of life. The nascent nests are as devoid of squirrelettes as they are of ever being a happy home.

The newspaper scraps have a source, though. The lady who lives next to me stacks her leftover newspaper on her back porch. To the squirrels, it is a Home Depot. And I could probably put an end to the confetti in my yard by asking her to do something with the paper.

But the paper is not the problem. Lack of money is. She does not recycle the newspaper because she needs it to burn in her fireplace for heat. Besides, she cannot afford to have her garbage picked up because she has no money for that. Some nights, while I am in the hot tub, I can smell that she is burning plastic in her fireplace -- putting her life at risk to avoid the cold.

My choices are limited. I can confront her and she would ashamedly move the newspaper and stop burning some of the plastic. But I was reminded tonight of a lesson I learned from another of my neighbors -- Bill. And I got thinking what he would do as a good neighbor, and the answer came to me. It was simplicity itself. I have plenty of extra space in my trash can. If she will simply bag up her plastics and other garbage, I can put it in my can. It costs me nothing more and she will not be tempted to burn her plastics. I also have a pile of older wood that I am not going to use. I can give that to her. As for the newspaper, I have several old brass boxes that I am not taking to Mexico. She could store her newspapers there.

I need to talk with her this evening. I am not trying to toot my own horn. In fact, I am a bit ashamed that I did not think of such an obvious solution to being a better neighbor.

But, it is another good example of how good deeds get paid forward. If Bill had not shown his kindness to me, I might still be shaking my fist at the squirrels across the wall.

evolving to mexico

This evening I started reading Edward J. Larson's Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. Based on the first 50 pages, I think it will be very informative.

Professor Larson spends the first portion of the book discussing the background of the trial. I would have thought the background was unnecessary. After all, we all know the background. Good grief! We all saw Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind. We know the hero and the villain without a lot of academic chat.

Well, I was wrong. The introduction dispels a lot of the myths surrounding an issue that has taken on cartoon predictability. The issue is far more complex than popular culture would claim. I will give a more thorough review when I have finished my read. (I suspect that will be after I return from my Brazil trip -- more on that later in the week.)

But the book and two comments today from Kim G of Boston started me thinking about my planned move to Mexico. Several posts ago, Michael Dickson raised the issue of whether I had a very realistic idea of how my move to Mexico would impact my life. As part of that question, he raised the title of the blog: same life -- new location. His point was that if I thought I was going to have the same life in Mexico as I have in downtown Salem, I was deluding myself. I see his point, but I think he is wrong in certain respects, and correct in others. And where he may be wrong is a direct result of me not being very precise in how I use the term life.

I know that Michael is correct that until I have experienced some of the frustrations of getting simple things accomplished in a foreign country, I cannot possibly know what it means to experience life there. To a certain degree, I experienced that in Greece, and to a lesser degree in England (even though I think the language gulf was equally wide in both countries). However, those are circumstances, and circumstances are not my life.

My life is the sum parts of who I am. Going to Mexico will not make that life any better (or any worse). I have read enough blogs of people who were moving to Mexico because they believe the Mexican people have no worries, everyone is friendly, no one competes at the expense of neighbors -- and the sun shines all day and it only rains at night. But talk like that is malarkey -- and the writers are soon to suffer great disappointment when they discover the very thing they thought they had left behind lives right next to them in their Mexican Eden.

Those are challenges. And that is part of the reason for the move -- to wake up every morning and know that I do not have the skills to get through the day, but I will need to learn them to cope and thrive.

Same life, Utopian? I don't think so. Just a realistic appraisal that I am not running away from anything. I am simply trying to find a way to keep some interest going in my life.

茶花

Camellias. Every time I hear the word, every time I see the bloom, memories of Bob Edwards reminiscing with Red Barber come flooding back to me.

Strange that a flower would do that, but Bob often inquired of Red whether his camelias were in bloom "down there in Florida." Then the mellifluous flow of analysis and nostaligia would begin.

Baseball has long been a love of mine. But the game always had more meaning -- more texture -- more class when Red was relaying stories about Mr. Rickey fighting segregation and Pete Rose finding redemption.

It has now been fourteen years since Red died. But I cannot see one of these hardy blooms )and they are everywhere this week) without remembering what Red added to every Friday of my life -- and still does.