Still here....

Ten years ago, when mini-male handler was ten, he said to female handler (FH)..."I want to be with you when the world ends in 2012."

FH has remembered this over the years, and in spite of crazy schedules by everyone, expired passports, rescheduled tickets, not to mention residing in different hemispheres and three different countries, the family is together today and for the next week celebrating family time, and fortunately NOT the end of the world.

What a gift. What a huge gift!

And what a bunch of silly gooses!

Making a home...Uruguayan style

Do you ever wonder how many ways there are to make a home? 

The Handlers had to wait until early spring to bring in this specimen of a home...formerly to about a thousand hornets. It was slightly elevated from the ground as basically the surrounding underbrush act as built-in stilts.

A duck has found one of the rows in the orchard to be ideal for her home (she obviously didn't scout the location well enough to realize that she and her babies are in danger as fox rule the nights in the orchard. We hope that they all make it).

Honeros, a native bird of South America, brown with short tails and long bills, have decided mud is their material of choice. They have built a home on one of the almond trees.

Back View

Front Door

Other honeros have even built a home under the chimney cap.

As  you can see from the horneros nest, Uruguayan dirt is clay-like, very dense and heavy. Matter of fact, this same dirt, mixed with water and organic matter (soggy hay, cow manure...), is used to make bricks.

Mixing stage

The clay is molded into brick forms, and then stacked in a tower with plenty of vent holes and areas to load additional eucalyptus wood for the 3 day firing of the kiln.

After the burn, it's time to take the new bricks and create walls.

This particular house is farther along, with the thatched roof being worked on in a rather artistic fashion.

Add loft story windows...

....and a flue pipe for the stove, and you're set.

I've often wondered where we could build the perfect home and out of what material.

One built up here might not be sustainable with the Uruguayan winds.

But the view is awfully nice.

  In the meantime, I guess this one will suit me.

Spring Views

Summer arrives next week so before these pictures become too old, let me show you what spring has looked like!

 

Early wheat harvest

Almond fruit

To J and A, with love

The Handlers rarely go off anywhere together. The reason being is I require mucho attention. The food dish, the water dish, a lap to snuggle on, a body to sleep by, and I need constant validation that I am adorable and am loved.

Eight months of planning seem to crumble just before Thanksgiving and Female Handler was looking at the possibility of sending Male Handler alone up to the US with the turkey recipe. Male Handler was stressing...

Then two angels came across the river from Buenos Aires. They were novices with cats. They were novices with goats. Within a day, I had them trained. Within 10 days, they had enough pictures of me to fill their hard drive.

To J and A, I send you my purr with love. Come back anytime!

Working with what you find...

Not too long ago, opening the front door required two hands. Although it is a big front door, only the right side really needs to open.

If the Handlers are balancing a food plate, it requires putting the plate down and putting some muscle into opening the door. Sticky doors, along with sticky drawers (as in a chest of drawers, and not underwear) do not always require the drastic action of shaving them down a tad, but perhaps...just a bit of soap.

Or maybe something else.

The handlers like to take walks along the beach and usually always find something interesting to pick up. It could be some driftwood, a few shells, or sea glass. Or it could be men's hair wax.

Female Handler (FH) was a little concerned over the extreme excitement shown by Male Handler (MH) of this particular "find". Never had he expressed a desire to sculpture his hair. What had 18 months in a Latin country done to him?!

As with many beach "finds", this one was put in a drawer (as in kitchen drawer) and forgotten until one day they had the marvelous idea to try it out on the door sill. It worked great!

So if you have a sticky door, I personally recommend L'Oreal 2 Force Wax. Or soap. Or shaving it down...

Early morning visitor

Keika and I were out most of the night. We enjoyed ourselves immensely but were ready to come in at first light. We headed for our respective Adirondack chairs once we were let in. This is how the conversation went between the handlers as I was trying my best to settle in for a morning nap...

Male Handler (MH) to Female Handler (FH)..."do you want to eat outside?" FH said "perfect". The temperatures have indeed been perfect lately and they've been eating most lunches outside enjoying the distant views of rows and rows of olives. This would have been their first breakfast outside.

The front door is quite large. It's really two doors that open in French door fashion. Going out them is a bit of a chore. I begin to hear the locks on the doors start to unlock (there are two of them). And then the floor bolt lift up. And then FH pulls the left door open, and immediately says "oh shish kabob" or something similar, and slams the door shut with such vigor that I am truly forced to delay my nap because of all the commotion. Seriously people, have some respect!

MH calls from around the corner in the kitchen asking "what's the matter?" FH answers "I just slammed the door on a snake!"

MH calmly replied "I knew you were going to say that..."

It was bound to happen that we'd have an unexpected visitor, but how MH knew it was going to be for breakfast is beyond all of us. FH severed the snake's head in the door...or rather nearly severed the snake's head as it was still attached to the rest of its body by a mere thin sinewy filament. The door is fine. The snake is not.

Ignorance and the Weather

Weather is rather amazing. It can be so fierce and so unpredictable. And then there are days that are really defined as "perfect". We had a perfect day yesterday. There was  sun, a slight coolness in the air, and a constant breeze.

Having come from the US, the Handlers are used to the concept of weather forecasts and predictions, not to mention that Female Handler (FH) has this thing for Jim Cantore. With all the money that goes into weather predictions, for the most part, the US forecasts are usually spot on.

The same cannot be said for Uruguayan weather models, and really the Handlers didn't expect such precision. In order to know if the day would be ideal for fertilizing or drying clothes, they look at these websites for monitoring the weather:
http://www.meteored.com.uy/tiempo-en_Colonia-America+Sur-Uruguay-Colonia-SUCA-1-13022.html
http://www.eltiempo.es/colonia-del-sacramento.html?v=por_hora

Male Handler (MH) is in charge of announcing the weather and what's in the forecast. He's no Jim Cantore but he's a close second. He takes pride in this role and really studies the forecasts, direction of the winds, how many mm of rain will fall and what hour exactly the clothes should be removed from the clothes line. FH is not really an exact person, and is just interested in the MAJOR events.

MH had mentioned last weekend that a big storm was going to arrive the early part of the week and park over the area for a couple of days. But we've had big storms before, so no big deal. Since the Handlers have no TV and really only occasionally turn on the radio, they had no idea that the rest of Uruguay was gearing up for a monster, quite similar to what is happening right now in the US northeast.

The storm did arrive Sunday night, and the rain was heavy and the winds gusty. The power flickered a bit every now and then, but for the most part stayed on.

Sunday night FH dreamed of an ambulance, and happened to mention it to MH the next morning.  MH remembers all his dreams in excruciating detail. When he questioned FH more about her dream, she just shrugged and repeated there was an ambulance in her dream.

It wasn't until Thursday when they had to go to the milk shed (i.e. the outside community) that they found out it was a mammoth storm, an extratropical cyclone (!), a huge number of Uruguayan's lost power, and many homes were damaged. Ok, so hold on here...an "extratropical cyclone" sounds on par with the Frankenmonster that's about to hit the northeast coast of the US. Ummm, not quite. Here's what wiki says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extratropical_cyclone. In fact, this storm was pretty impressive for Uruguay. Our area was under an Orange alert while much of the Atlantic coast was under a Red alert. Our casualty of the storm was a tree that fell outside the sunroom (fortunately not on the sunroom), and soggy goat bedding. Otherwise not so bad.

But having to go to the milk shed occasionally is good for the Handlers. It is their time to catch up on what's on the minds of the locals, and hear the latest gossip. The most interesting was that our neighbor just to our north had a fire, and the fire trucks raced to his farm on Sunday night...ahhhh hence the ambulance scene in FH's dream that she could not offer much explanation... while the Handlers, Keika and I blissfully slept. Indeed, the world could have ended and the Handlers wouldn't know until they ventured into town or to the milk shed which is pretty infrequent.

The "not knowing" part really made for a relaxing week for all of us!