Thursday, April 4th, 2013

Today is laundry day.  This is the day where we pack up all our dirty laundry and take it to Reina’s mother’s house where she will wash it in her washing machine, we will hang it out on her clothesline and after they dry in a few hours we will fold them nicely and take them home.  I usually give her 50mil for doing the wash.  One problem is we have to go through 2 iterations of this because of the limited space on her clothesline.  Another potential problem is the weather.  It helps a lot if it’s sunny and doesn’t help at all if it rains.

But first we stopped at Viva! and I took out more cash so I could complete the payment of my debts this afternoon at Reina’s mother’s house.  We also stopped at Exito and Reina bought a pair of socks to wear with her new shoes and a couple packages of plastic bags.  She wanted one package because they were larger but I chose another because they seemed to be thicker.  (We’ll use the remainder for garbage.)  We used one to carry dirty clothes to her mother’s in addition to the mesh bag I have that is full of my dirty clothes.  This doesn’t include underwear which Reina does herself.

At 10am we took a taxi to her mother’s house.  That costs about 11mil each way.

I gave Dylan some money so he could go buy soap - 38mil.

Lorenzo, the parrot, has apparently learned Reina’s sister’s name as sometimes for several minutes he will scream “Jessica” perfectly clearly.

I finished reading The Concrete Blond on my Nook.  It was a good detective story and I wouldn’t mind reading another one of Connelly’s books sometime in the future.  I started reading Idiot America but for some reason it was just a sample.  Other books have a tag on them clearly marked “sample” but I thought something was wrong when I saw the total number of pages were only 57.  I decided I didn’t like it enough to pay for it so I went on to my next book Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope.

Reina’s neighbor’s daughter Sarah was there visiting in her pink Hello Kitty t-shirt and purse.  She’s 6 years old.  It was cute to see her helping with the laundry.

When we got to the apartment we stopped at Exito and spent 61,127 pesos for food, mostly meat. 

Dylan stayed behind to meet Jesus so he could pay him what I owed him.

On the way back we stopped at the stairs by the crossover walkway and bought strawberries from a man selling them from what looked like a 10 gallon tub.  My best guess is we bought 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) for 3000 pesos ($1.67).  

I had asked the Colombian Expats forum if Colombia has an income tax and the reply I got was no, but they have a 16% sales tax, automatically built in, on everything you buy.

After we got home I checked my iPad for new email and that’s when I found out Roger Ebert had died of cancer.  It seemed to me it was just that morning, or the morning before, that I heard he had a recurrence and was taking “A leave of presence”.  It’s a real shame the iconic movie reviewer from Chicago is gone.

A little while later Dylan came back with his friend Harold. 

 

 

At the Barber's after the first swipe.  Uh-Oh!