I'm still here, and it's raining.

The rains have started and the streets are starting to green up -- cobblestones black with moisture and fresh green mossy little plants poking up in between. There are scarlet-colored scatter rugs of fallen ponciana blossoms here and there, and the ecological park is alive with the screes and scrawks of various winged creatures. Some not so winged, maybe. Nancy and Danny swear that the deep electronic digiridoo racket coming from the guayaba tree beside their gate is a tree frog, not a bird. I thought it was a very loud radio on an alternative rock station.

In June there’s hardly a gringo left in La Zona. Most have fled north to escape the heat. Ha. Ha. Fooled them. It’s been fresh and cool here. I even wore long pants and long sleeves when we went out last night to celebrate Agneta’s birthday. OK, it’s DAMP, but when we turn on the AC to dry things out, we freeze!

My walk has been getting longer and longer, since there’s no one to talk to. I do it early. Highway 200 pulses with the sound of traffic long before dawn. Fishermen from La Peñita gun their engines through the estero and hit the sandbar with a resounding thwack. It’s a team effort shoving each ponga up on a loose axle and pushing it over the last few meters of sand into the ocean beyond. The Thursday market continues, minus the colorful crafts that tourists like. “Tupperware Alley” is still full of vendors offering every conceivable everyday need. Life goes on even when no white people are watching.

In fact, life gets a little more colorful and bawdy. Construction workers making an early morning start on projects to be completed before the return migration are more likely to crank up the volume on la música, and more likely still to break into song themselves. Even Harry Beckner’s parrot – a gawdy multi-hued, multi-lingual macaw – entertains himself and anyone within earshot by imitating the sounds of construction noise. One bird alone sounds like an entire work crew, from the the chink, chink repetition of hammer and chisel to the high-pitched whirrrr of an electric drill.

And speaking of work – that’s what is keeping us here in Mexico for longer than we planned. Larry and Danny are knee deep in paperwork and meetings, forming a Mexican corporation. They’re putting in an RV condominium project -- a place for people with big RVs who aren’t inclined to shuttle them north and south anymore and would like someplace permanent to put them. Larry and Dan have a nice walled lot where they’ll build a pool and clubhouse, a casita for a year-round caretaker, and individual concrete pads with tiled roof patios and some other amenities. It’s walking distance to everything. Fourteen slots. Highly restricted. Very nice. And a LOT of interest.

But we’ll head north, maybe this coming week. Hopefully the triple digits in Texas will have subsided by the time we get there. Larry wants to pick up his motorcycle, I’ve got a talk in Los Angeles. We’ve got Mom and Dad to see in Lubbock, a niece’s wedding down in the Texas desert near Big Bend, friends and family all over the southwest to meet and greet and give hugs to.

Sorry not to have been blogging. I HAVE been writing otherwise. Rain tends to bring out that urge. It’s the best excuse to cozy down with the keyboard on the verandah, listen to the water flow through the palm leaves and out through the downspouts and pound away at the keys. Shades of Somerset Maugham. Well maybe.

I hope there's someone who gets that reference to Somerset Maugham. My little friend Lucy, English lit major that she was, is sure to. I miss her! She's off for a month in Mexico City with a temporary office job, wearing high heels and translating reams and reams of instruction manuals for a personal care/pharmaceutical company. Their major products are hair removal creams and condoms. Well, that sets the imagination running, doesn't it? Ah, dear Lucy. Come back to Guayabitos!

So I'm off to jail today in Compostela to visit a friend of a friend. Sixty-five year old woman. Gringo. Well, actually, African-American. It's a story.....I'll share it another day.