Saturday, January 31st, 2015

I got up at 8:30 and my back, for the first time all week, felt near normal again.

At 10:15 the electricity went out.  Laura left for her English lesson 5 minutes later.  Teresa said if the electricity doesn’t come back on we’ll tell Jhon to come some other weekend.  That means we have to be back no later than 4pm so we can call and tell them whether the electricity is back on or not.

I put 4 dog biscuits in my fanny pack and we left the finca at 11:55am and the electricity came back on just before we left.  We got past the killer dogs undetected.  After a 10 minute wait we were on a bus to Envigado.  Teresa pointed out this bus had a restroom.  Teresa got the driver to drop us off right behind Home Center.

First I took some cash out of the ATM.  I gave Teresa 500mil for food for the first half of February.  While we were shopping we heard a lot of noise above us that we thought was rain.  I guess she asked someone working there because a minute later she told me it was just the air conditioners.  I picked up a small package of hooks for the closet, Teresa picked up some brushes and paint.  I understand she wants to repaint my old kitchen chairs white.  I charged everything for 87,500.

We walked across the street to La Bahia where we had a nice lunch for about 18mil.  The family at the neighboring table had a dog sitting under their table.  At my urging Teresa got permission for me to give it a dog biscuit.  Of course that generated a conversation between her and them. 

We walked back to Exito where I bought some expensive face cream for Teresa for 61,841.  We picked up some groceries that Teresa paid about 95mil for.  We took a taxi to the highway and after a 15 minute wait we got a cash ride back to the finca.

With each of us carrying a couple plastic bags we got past the killer dogs undetected.

At 5:45 I noticed Teresa opening all the shutters.  She sometimes does that when she’s burning garbage out back and it blows in the house.  She started coughing and gagging and I soon understood she accidentally shot off the pepper spray in the house.  A few seconds later it hit me and we both had to leave the house for a couple minutes.  I think it felt like the can was empty and she tried to verify if it really was.  It’s a good thing it was the nearly empty can she used instead of the full one.

Jhon arrived with Laura at 6:15.  We spent most of the evening just sitting around and talking.  We discussed my brother’s trip at the end of February and my need to sign a legal document and return it to the US.  Teresa had the great idea of suggesting that they get it to my brother to bring with him, I sign it, and they pick it up from him when he gets back.  On the US side it could probably be done entirely by mail.  One thing I learned is that Laura doesn’t like people to say her name with the English pronunciation – Lora - because it Spanish it means parrot.  She pronounces it more like Lawra.  We finally went to bed at 12:30.

T-shirt of the day: Do what you love.