Expensive-ish Lessons

Why do I always offer to pay?

SHORT VERSION:

I’m not renting the house with the big yard despite running the rebuild of fences in the dog yards all week. The house is a windowless hovel that was oversold to me by a relative of the owner. “Full kitchen” was a gas stove with no ventilation and no countertops. “Laundry room” was a washer of dubious service sitting outside. “King sized beds” were dirty mattresses without sheets or coverings. I can fix most things and decorate with the best but I can’t ventilate gas and fake air and light. It was a non starter, but why the fork was I paying workers and buying fence posts?

The Rambler:

The house I couldn’t get in to see last week with the attached yard got off to a fast start on the Dog Yard Redo. Not sure why they started construction and poked through the block wall and put in my salvaged gates before I committed to renting or even seeing the house but maybe the homeowner needed to fix those fences anyway. Without question the opening made the courtyard more defined, less echoey and the yard accessible. The deal was that he’d get a quote from the worker who was on salary with his local (wealthy) sister. We would split materials and that fee. I agreed. Pretty simple.

Things are never simple nor what they seem in Sonora, Mexico. I’m being specific to this region because even after 25 years of Mexico travel and study and language I’m baffled daily in this fishing village desert vortex off the highway. The dialect, the roughness of the people, the flip flopping of moods, the entire other vocabulary from “Spanish” is not the Mexico I fell in love with decades ago. I’m familiar with the “ahorita” and the “manana” time is fluid culture and all those old chestnuts. This is deeper subtext. These are not laid back for the most part. Intense, gruff, cowboyish (but office workers) Northern Mexicans are not your buddies from Chiapas or that chef you knew from Veracruz. Sharing a border with the US ruins everything. It’s more expensive, people have been caught by border patrol, everyone has a bad taste in their mouth for Gringos. It’s full of cartel wars and it’s a pipeline for drugs.

History has not been kind. I’m the ONLY American in this town and so things are not shaped around my needs or experience. I get it. I don’t like any of it and it’s an ugly lifestyle but I tell myself it’s temporary EVERY SINGLE DAY for the last 910 days. I’m here for the dogs.

So when the week started and the keys still didn’t show up to get in to the house I was confused why the workers were here banging on my gate and asking for money to clean up the dog yard (litter) and get labor $ for some pretty sketchy looking woman who was with the carpenter. Hmmm. I figured I missed something in translation, maybe I agreed to this? Oh, she’s the cleaning woman? Okay. They seemed confident. Gonna need 800pesos. I was in the grip of a migraine and I just wanted them to go away so the dogs would stop barking. My usual method is to throw money at something that is bothering me. I don’t really have that kind of money any more but in my mind I do. (Lesson One. No decisions are made when my cranium is on fire)

The next day I went to see that the woman hadn’t done anything but put a bunch of leaves in bags and left all the litter. The bags were all split open and I saw a pile of Pacifico beer cans and some glass pipes laying around that were new. Ahhh, I thought I recognized her. Decades of restaurant hires, home renovations and growing up in Florida, the all too familiar meth head.

The week unraveled further, the fence posts weren’t set, the husband of the wealthy sister came over and micromanaged his worker and pulled him hither and yon to work on this yard and then back to his house. To his credit the worker/carpenter was pretty organized for a dope head. That kind of distraction is tough to recenter. Those touched with ADHD even the “sometimes” kind can appreciate that. Likely the speed helps him, but without proper dosing and consistent pharmacological intervention, it’s just a cycle of get paid enough to get some scratch to buy some crank and a motel room. Rinse, repeat.

I dismissed the girlfriend and said I wouldn’t be needing her ever again. He said she ran off with another guy the next day. Apparently she was one of those fair weather dope sniffing girlfriends. Oh, you’re not carrying? Bye.

The carpenter guy is affable and looks like an Irish kid and does pretty good work. Sadly, he’s caught in the web of his own spinning. I heard he was an apprentice with his dad who was a fantastic cabinet maker. He died 2 weeks ago and the sister took all the money and told the brother to get clean or there would be no dinero.

Next day he was setting posts and the landlord (allegedly) told him to get materials money from me and he’d pay the rest. Oh, okay. Let me get my wallet. (Lesson Two, stop doing that. You’re running old programs of Homes Renovated Past. This is not YOUR house) I confirmed with someone else that I had the directives clear. No one here speaks English. Not a word. But some are slower talkers. Yes, that’s what he said. Another 500pesos.

By Friday, most projects were finished but not to my standards, but hey. Not my worker. The keys arrive. They kick open the black metal door that faces west and expands in the heat (always a question mark, this choice) and inside I see dirty sofas with ripped upholstery, no kitchen counters, a gas stove without ventilation, a home with no windows (?) and an outside washer that didn’t seem to work. WHY, I asked his (not wealthy sister) did you oversell this place to me? Did you think I’d not notice when I got inside? I don’t mind outfitting a place, that’s pretty common here but it’s impossible to find counter height tables here and I’ve been cooking 3 meals a day for 900 days on a sliver of space that doesn’t even fit a cutting board, I’m not moving for same. And gas in a closed space is not just an OSHA violation. It’s just dangerous.

The landlord spoke to me in a tone I’d not heard from him before, a take it or leave it I’m not doing shit conversation and I saw the foreshadowing of an out of town landlord who likely wasn’t going to be any nicer or fix shit AFTER I gave him a pile of money.

Also he wanted a contract, a big deposit, a copy of my passport AND all was to be paid in cash, no bank transfers. To the sister. Who keeps their tienda cash in a cigar box next to the cat bowl in the kitchen. Interesting. Buttoned up on my side but under the table no paper trail on his. There’s a reason that house is always vacant.

I paid the worker though. He did what he was asked to do and it’s not his fault. I could see him getting caught in the “no one told you to do that…” and I resigned myself from yet (another) task. So I fixed this rich lawyer guy’s fences and bought some recycled wrought iron gates for free. I feel like I dodged a bullet though. And I feel that renting this basic broke down casita with windows and daylight and a small yard (and no contract) with an intown landlord is fine for now. I believe the Universe is moving things around so we can get out of this town/state all together.

I have found a spay neuter vet who will come to town with a guarantee fee and I’ve already signed up 18 people. It’s Feb 17 and I’m not sure where I’ll have the clinic set up but I’ll ask the churches and schools and some lazy govt workers if they can set something up. If not I’ll do it in my living room. I’ve worked with less. Getting a vet to drive in was the biggest hurdle. And currently my dogs are all laying on sofas or looking at the back yard wall for cats. They’re fine. Walks are later and on Sundays we go to the shore.

The other lesson is to stop taking responsibility for shit that isn’t mine and paying for things! Helping innocent dogs are working class even drug heads is a better donation than paying for home repairs of slumlords.

I’m praying someone takes the baton and holds these spay neuter clinics monthly and I can feel like my 900days here wasn’t in vain. it’s about $40 US to alter an animal, if you’d like to sponsor a street dog, I’ve committed to five. You can donate at linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue