A Sunday afternoon whine...

This time I wanted to not haul cement blocks or bags of cement and no make trips to by nails and sweat and cry in frustration over misunderstandings in Spanish and carpentry (neither of which I understand much). I thought this time we would walk into our new house with groceries, clothes and furniture and began living. So what happened?

I find myself struggling with hundreds of meters of 2-inch tubing (which looks and feels bigger than two inches), unrolling it across a pasture and through heavily wooded areas with steep drops and downed trees, all the while wistfully thinking of my old dream:

"I like the coffee table there, and the reading lamp by that chair," Vicki says to Greg as she nibbles a piece of coffee cake she baked the night before, "What do you think?" They love there cozy new Patagonia home, listening to music on the computer as they leisurely unpack boxes into closets and cupboards.

But here I am, stumbling into a trench that has been dug, a roll of volcanic ash-covered tubing splayed out over me. Greg pulls if off me and we start again, meter by meter across Nono's pasture.

Today is Sunday. I met Nono and Ismael on the road with their wagon and oxen. They were coming back with sacks of sand they shoveled from the Azul. We have to mix the sand with the cement to rebuild the dam at the water source. Ismael showed us where the next 500 meters of tubing has to be unrolled and we were heartsick. It is utterly and completely impossible for us to do it. We feel ashamed for that but we simply cannot physically do the job.

It is after noon, and I am taking a break from filling the wheel barrow with split wood and hauling it back to stack under the back porch. I have five wheel barrow loads of gravel up by the road I need to bring down and spread on the dirt floor of the back porch.

Nono is growing tired of my weak city ways. It's almost as if she is saying, "Enough is enough, If you are going to live in Patagonia, GET WITH IT! Stop whining." Of course I don't whine to Nono. I would know how to whine in Spanish anyway.

Greg wanted to go to the Futa Fest Kayak event at Cara Del Indio rafting several kilometers away on the Azul. I don't know how to act around people any more and just not good company these days so I urge him to go by himself. It's odd to feel isolated and still wish to be alone sometimes. And I'm thinking that Nono is annoyed at me bothers me more than the fact I forgot to buy candles for tonight, or that so much more work is ahead of us.

That said, I will stop now and finish the task at hand. Stack wood, haul gravel and be done with it!