She Said...

I haven’t mentioned much regarding one of my favorite Mexican companies, Telefonos de Mexico, lately. I’ve gotten used to the fact that I will get the messages that callers leave for me when I’m not home …just a few days later, sometimes as many as ten. I always check to see if I have messages every time I’ve gone out. And every time, I hear «You have no new messages,» spoken in a most pleasant, polite female voice, not like that horrific one who yells out «LINEA OCUPADA!» if the number you’re dialing is busy… Then, every once in a while, I’ll pick up the receiver to make a call, only to hear (in Spanish of course) «Please dial asterisk eighty-six to pick up your messages.» That’s when I can usually hear messages left any time between a few minutes ago …and last week. Well, today, I heard something new, even for me. I dialed asterisk eighty-six, but all I got was another nice voice saying «We’re sorry, this service is unavailable at the moment. Kindly try again later.» So there you have it. Vivan los Telefonos de Mexico!

In this land of extremes and surrealistic realities, where there are people living in cardboard shacks just a couple of kilometers away from million-dollar condos and department stores selling blouses for $200 dollars, where the public hospitals are constantly running out of the most common medicines, there is a huge billboard on the highway leading north which advertises … cryogenics!

I’m including the photo so you won’t think I’m making this up, but that’s what it is. In fact, the billboard shows a pretty pregnant lady and the text reads: «Protect that which you love the most. Preserve your stem cells.» Don’t get me wrong. I think the concept is fabulous. I wish I had had the opportunity to preserve mine, for my children’s sake, but the technology didn’t exist yet, back then. (Neither did disposable diapers…) I just found it so incongruous and somehow out of place…

Talking about things out of place, the other night my menagerie suddenly went wild for no apparent reason. Dogs and cats jumping around, all focused on the same point. The point turned out to be the biggest, greenest grasshopper I have ever seen anywhere. I have no idea where it came from …nor do I want to know what became of it in the end. Maybe it’s just another one of those mutations.

I know that I’ve mentioned it many times before, but we have truly messed up this little planet of ours, folks. In more ways than one, and it’s not just the changes in the fauna.

This year, the breathtakingly beautiful primavera trees whose huge bright yellow bloom usually dot our surroundings in the month of April, are already losing their flowers. They bloomed a full two months early. And the potted poinsettias I planted in my garden last January, after their «season», are just blooming now, in March! This is not a good thing. I read that similar things are happening all over the world, wreaking havoc with the entire pollination processes and subsequently, with the harvests. The fruit trees flower early, the insects arrive too late, the fruit don’t happen, etc. etc. Although I scored well in my botany classes decades ago, I couldn’t explain all this if you paid me. I just know it doesn’t augur well for our future. And I still haven’t been able to go out in the evenings without a long-sleeved sweater and long pants; it’s been nearly three months already. Thank goodness for the heat in the daytime.

An article written by Paty Aguilar for NoticiasPV states that the City is looking to purchase one of those humungous machines that compresses car wrecks. The intention is to clear the city streets of all the abandoned cars and pick-up trucks and set up a dump where such a «compressor» would be installed to squash these old vehicles - all in order to obtain the coveted «clean city» certification. All that sounds just fine. The point I do not understand is where the article goes on to state that the owners of these wrecks will be compensated. Huh? For what? For having abandoned these eyesores in public streets for months, if not years? For causing additional expense to the city? The logic escapes me.

I am also amazed at how the folks who represent the three competing bus companies in this town have the gall to ask for a raise in the fares they charge. I got a glimpse of the letter that reader sent in to our paper this week; can you imagine watching a bus falling apart as it’s driving? Ohmygoodness. That’s scary stuff! Nacho Cadena wrote a hilarious article last year which he entitled «All for 5 Pesos!» In it, he described riding the buses in our town as an «extreme sport». If I can, I’ll see if the Trib would reprint it one day.

Before I forget, I have good news for all our readers who enjoy real hallah (or challah) bread, you know, the one that’s made with eggs and looks like a braid. Well, the folks at The Deli, located at 311-B Venustiano Carranza in the Romantic Zone on the south side of town, have discovered the secret to making the real thing. I shared a loaf with a half-dozen picky Jewish friends of mine, just to get their opinion. It was unanimous: this was REAL hallah! The loaf I got had raisins in it, and I was thinking… it was also very close to the raisin bread I’ve been missing so much lately. Hmmm… And boy, is it great for making French toast!

While I’m still on the food theme, I had another one of those serendipitous discoveries last week. The half & half cream that Fruit Forest hasn’t been able to get for the last couple of months …was stacked three deep at Rizo’s! Which -of course- doesn’t mean that I will ever find it there again. Sort of like the canned salmon they’ve all been promising to stock for the last six months… Just another similarity with the former Soviet Union. Over there, when a highly sought after item appeared on a store shelf, folks would have to stock up on it –if they had the money- ‘cause they never knew if they would ever find it again. This is a common occurrence here. Every once in a while, unexpected items show up, especially at Wal-Mart, sometimes exhibited at the end of an aisle. Items like mixed nuts in beautifully painted canisters, shortbread cookies from Scotland … or salmon.

Still on things unexpected, I got a good laugh when I noticed what the computer grinches did with the final Tribune of a couple of weeks ago, the one with the lady charro on the cover. Words, and in a couple of cases, entire titles, were missing. I wonder how many readers noticed it… Instead of reading "R.I.S.E. Fundraiser Breaks All Records", the title read "R.I.S.E. Fundraiser Breaks". Instead of reading "PV Needs More High Rises", Gil’s article was entitled «PV Needs More High». Now, that was really funny! As if there weren’t enough marijuana around… Oh, well, what can I say?

I hope you all have a wonderful, surreal week - but in every good sense of the word. Take care of yourselves and of each other. Hasta luego. pvmom04@yahoo.com

By the way, to the reader who asked me why there were no comments posted in my "wonderful blog", I only have one answer: I don’t know. But thank you for the compliment.