Today’s topic: The Hood
There’s movement from the apartment next to me! Mi vecina (my neighbor), Lupita, lives there with her two daughters. One of them is a grade school English teacher, and the other one works on a cruise ship most of the year. Furniture is disappearing as are bags that I think may be full of clothes. I’m hoping it’s just Lupita’s daughter leaving the nest – Lupita is nice and I’d hate to see her go. (edit: Lupita took her tinaco today. I think she’s gone.)
Another neighbor moved out this past Summer. I can’t seem to quite get a grip on how many people there are in the apartment now – there’s a bunch that come and go. I see a guy with an accordion frequently so I’m going to say they’re part of a banda group. This has yet to become their rehearsal zone – and if it does I’m going to help them with their security and place an extra lock on the iron gate at their door. While they’re inside! So far they’re much quieter than the previous tenants – with the two girls that were constantly screaming and crying.
Across the street is a four story apartment building. The ground floor is both the entry and either a storage unit or a garage – it’s NEVER open so I’m assuming storage. When I first moved here the three apartments were all occupied. For a short period the entire building was empty, and for the last several months it’s just been a small family in the first floor unit. With a yappy pug dog. He’s cute, but not too bright. Their apartment is the only one with a balcony, and that’s where the dog spends most of its time. When I came back from my last trip, he had a bandaged back leg, and is limping. Me thinks he may have gotten a tad exuberant at a passing stranger and took a header off the balcony. Other than the limp he seems no worse for wear.
Last Summer there was some frenzied work (ok, it was frenzied by México standards) in one of the homes down the street – and suddenly a neighborhood bar appeared! Not that we need a neighborhood bar. There are several in a 10 minute walking radius. The former owner of my apartment also has a house just a few doors down from me. The bar was his last straw in the noise department, and now he’s living in another neighborhood. Too bad he didn’t wait as the bar only lasted a few months. More frenzied work, and the agua place two blocks down moved into the space. Bottled water is used by everyone here, mostly in 5 gallon garrafones. When they’re empty you can either flag down the agua guy with his cart of full bottles, or you can run down to your local agua store and get your empty garrafone filled. Its pretty cheap either way. So, now we’ve exchanged a slightly noisy bar for a nice quiet agua store. Gone also, is the vidrio and aluminio (glass & aluminum) guy that was next to the original agua store. I’m assuming that something is happening with the whole building as it’s now completely empty. We’ll see!
And so it is. Change comes. Change goes. Familiar faces leave, new friends to be made arrive. Only the sun and the beaches remain fairly constant. And beer. Life is good.
