Disaster after disaster, or just life?

Hah.

Song of the day: “Just haven’t met you yet” by Michael Bubblé. It’s been going back and forth through my head for two days now, and though the song isn’t by any means bad, I am getting a little tired of it.

So it’s been an incredibly busy couple of days, and if memory serves me right I finished the last blog with a mention of me needing to go out to bring grandpa to the hospital.

Well, we went. Arrived at the hospital and headed for the ER, as instructed by the physician in the village. Things started out fine, we identified ourselves through the security glass, got a wrist band with a name for grandpa, and a companion sticker for me and were sent through a door…to a half-full waiting room.

My first sinking sensation was short-lived since we were there for less than five minutes before grandpa’s name was called over the intercom (you have no idea as to how they can mess up foreign names, it took me a full minute of deciphering before I nudged grandpa in the right direction) and directed us to triage number 1. (That should have tipped me off, but I didn’t make the connection until much, much later.) We showed the letter or recommendation form the doctor and this wet behind the ears girl looked it over before she informed us that grandpa would be called when it was his turn.

That’s when the waiting started. Poor big brother, only one person was allowed to go inside with grandpa, so big brother spent the rest of the evening on his own. One hour passed, with grandpa and me watching the people before us passing through the proverbial cues. We didn’t start to worry until after midnight, when gradually the people who came AFTER we did were being led to the consultation rooms, while we got skipped time and again. Around one in the morning I decided to tackle the translator who appeared every hour, or so, carrying paperwork with him for the foreigners with different insurance papers waiting there.

Luckily he was a friendly guy, and when I asked, he did check if grandpa was even on the list (we had our doubts, you see). He was, and the guy (not a day over 25, if that) apologized for it taking so long. One in the morning was nothing, and since my stomach thought my throat had been cut, I finally succumbed and called big brother to beg for something to eat and drink. He came to the rescue with a donut (eeewww, but it was sugar, so what the heck) a bag of chips and a bottle of practically frozen water. *sigh* I could have fainted from the sheer bliss, and for a moment there wished I still smoked. Hah. Seriously, two years ago I would have gone through two pack waiting there. Smoking is such a wonderful thing to do when you’re waiting, and now that they have those fascinating pictures on the packages, you could actually start a collection to boot. Hah.

I don’t get that, by the way. The fact that people still smoke really doesn’t have anything to do with ignorance about what the supposed effects are. Seriously, who in this day and age hasn’t heard all the horror stories? Putting those pictures…heck, even the stupid “smoking kills” texts on it, just shows bad taste of the governments and whatnots who insist on them. It won’t help, I promise you that. The biggest regret about quitting smoking is definitely that I was never able to do this particular scenario:

Non-smoker: “This is a non-smoking area.”
Smoker: “Uh-huh. I read the sign.” Puffs on a cigarette.
Non-smoker: “Second-hand smoke kills, you know.”
Smoker: “Not reliably, it doesn’t.”

*snort* Of course I never would have had the nerve to say it, but I can hope, right. Hah.
All in all, the reason I like quit smoking is that I am no longer dependent on something so bloody expensive. Ah well.

But where was I? Right. Waiting.
Another hour passed, and I had just stepped outside for some more necessary stretches, (I’d gone out three times already) and another bite of the chips (there was a no eating and drinking sign in the waiting area. Morons!) when through the window I saw grandpa jump up at the appearance of a really grumpy looking guy in a white coat and scruffy jeans. I was already heading inside as grandpa opened the door looking around frantically.

I barely had time to gather our things at the impatient gestures of the doctor, and basically had to run after the guy who flopped behind a desk and started tapping on a computer while he asked what the problem was. His English was about as minimal as my Spanish, but we managed to make each other understood at least.

He glanced at the reference note, nodded and then said, “follow” in Spanish. We rushed after him, seriously, you’d think the guy was doing a marathon, and I was still juggling our things. Hah. In another room, gynaecology oriented, mind you, he shoved grandpa from one spot to the next, spritzed his eyes, examined them, rubbed at them, only to come to the conclusion that we had to come back on Monday because he didn’t have the right machine for it at the moment. Turns out they have to drill this small piece of metal out of grandpa’s lens. Now the metal is not the only problem, seeing as it has been in there so long, apparently, that a ring of oxidation has formed around it. *sigh* Poor grandpa.

Can’t blame him for being a tad worried, really. He often talks of the last time when he got eye surgery. He was just a boy then, and it was in the middle of WWII. He had an eye that crossed towards the center, so they had to correct the problem. He remembers that he was tied to the bed and that they operated on him, cutting through a muscle, without anesthetics. Then the bomb raid started, and they left him tied to the bed while he was wheeled to the basement. His eyes were covered, and all around him the sound of bombs coming down. Yikes.

I don’t know if I would be able to make myself go through this particular procedure with that memory in my head. Talk about scary.
Right. With grandpa half blind from the stuff the doctor had done, and carrying with us medication that is supposed to see him through the next few days. Grandpa was rightly outraged about the treatment, and it took me a solid ten minutes of joking to get him to relax a little while we headed home.

We didn’t get home until four thirty in the morning. My poor doggies were outraged and hurt. They just didn't understand why they had been locked up for so many hours, and before bed-time to boot. After their usual cacophony and greetings, it was five in the morning. Darn it. But what the hey, I set the alarm an hour later, and conked out for the night.

Yesterday…well, not a lot happened. Just a lot of busywork on my part, really. I walked tenant down. We worked in the yard for a bit, and I cooked dinner…which turned out rather nice I might add. I was on the phone with the garage, because, surprise surprise, we’re going to need a new exhaust pipe and muffler for the friggin’ Opel. Aaaargh, which brings us to today.

Yep, today was a day spent in town for me, and nope that didn’t make me happy at all.
I wouldn’t have minded sleeping in late, but we had a garage appointment and headed right down to town only fifteen minutes later than planned.
After dropping off the car we went back to the Land Rover only to discover that we were locked out of the driver’s side. Yep. The lock broke!!! I couldn’t believe it, and big brother and I messed with it for a solid fifteen minutes before we requested the aid of the mechanic of our garage, who, like us, failed to get the thing to open.
He said he could break it open for us, but then we wouldn’t be able to close the door until Monday, when he could get us a new one. *double sigh*

So we went grocery shopping, just a bit to tide us over for the next couple of weeks, crawling over the center every time. Of course then we realized that mom will need the car on Sunday, and that she can’t possibly get in that way.

Back we went, and entered to the news that the new muffler/exhaust pipe was the right one for an Opel Astra, but not the Opel Astra Merrit. Grrr. Need to drop it by on Monday too, and now drive it while it sounds like a friggin’ race car. They took an hour to take out the lock, and it was seriously busted. So either we had to go past junkyards to get a 2nd hand one, or order an expensive new one. We were gifted a list of phone numbers for local junkyards apparently there are seven big ones in Malaga, and a warning for the seventh, which is in the gypsy area. This place is where our mechanic went once, and almost go hold up for his money. Fascinating. Almost makes me want to go, just to see. Hah.

We jerry rigged the door and headed home where big brother took about an hour to figure out a proper lock for the door…and succeeded. There was supper, there was a dip in the pool, and there was a quick check of the yard before the day’s blog had to be written and I am where I am now, ready to call it a day, but still four hours away from actual bed time. Gotta edit, remember?

Ah well. This’ll do, won’t it?

Small emergency

Song of the day: “Fireflies” by Owl City. Still a fun song, even though I do tend to get stuck on the chorus most of the time. Poor big brother who has to endure the continuous repetition most. Hah.

First of all, Grandpa got something in his eye, so he’s going to to emergency room as I write this. Do hope that they can spray the stuff out.

For you, the reader, my last couple of days will probably sound incredibly boring, but to me they were splendid. Seriously, forget about the stupid foot and my complaining back, the weather was so great, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Yay.

First off, I started yesterday, right after the usual morning chores, with making, leek and carrot soup of today’s lunch. All the ingredients came from our own yard this summer, so that made it extra yummy…have you ever noticed how stuff from your own yard tastes better than stuff from the store. Heck, I even eat broccoli, and enjoy it, from our own yard. I don’t know why that is, it is just fact. Added to that, I know that our stuff doesn’t have chemicals, or whatever, on them, meaning that basically I can pluck them off a plant and devour them.

As is at the moment the norm, we immediately went into the yard (tenant and caregiver went along) to start on the work that needs to be done. First up was transplanting the young seedling tomatoes, and four broccoli from the multipots into the small pots that now already fill half a table in the greenhouse.

While I was doing that, grandpa and big brother turned earth of two more potato patches, and watered what needed to be watered. Which meant that after transplanting said seedling, and changing my clothes into shorts and sleeveless top, I could go down into the yard and plant one field of potatoes. We decided to leave the second one for later.

Next I went down to gather the pumpkins big brother harvested, along with the big batch of peppers and gershkins. The latter tenant offered to cut so we could boil them into a soup to feed the dogs later. Was nice of her to do that, and it kept her busy for several hours.

Next I trimmed the big poplar tree on the berry terrace. Seriously, it was so full with small branches that there would be no sunshine whatsoever on the new potato field, and since summer is gone and sunshine is good then, it didn’t matter. Took of a good amount, leaving four massive trunk on the corner beside the stairs, which is an impressive sight, to say the least.

Since I was busy there anyway, I also trimmed one of the acacia, leaving the rest for tomorrow…ehm, yeah that would be today. Okay, will get to that later. Hah.
That done I went a level down, had two axes, a chop and a saw. With that, Dani and I took out poplar roots with 7 feet high sprouts that were rapidly multiplying there. It took a while, but then they were gone, leaving only two more spots on the property to clear in that particular way in the near future.

Had french fries for supper, which went down rather well, I’ll admit. Sometimes it is just bloody wonderful to be unhealthy. Hah. We took the meal as an opportunity to go through our messages of the day, and then headed down to the second patch which had been prepared for potatoes.

Though the fire was doused yesterday, we did hear choppers go back and four for an extra 24 hours afterwards. Turns out that they had to evacuate several more neigborhoods and that they had to shut down the toll highway. That’s some serious shaite. They’re actually comparing it to the fire of 2001, which was massive and scary in its own right. They had to fly in materials and aid from Cordoba, for crying out loud. I, for one, am extremely happy that it didn’t come our way this time.

Finished the day with another edit of course, what else? Hah. It went relatively well, even though the evening before ran into another argument about sentence structure and heated words that made me decide to quit early, rather than risk wrecking the story, or going for each other’s throats. Hah.

Went to the yard this morning, after tenant came home from her doctor’s appointment. All was well with her. Good bloods sugar levels, blood pressure fine too, and then when they were ready to leave, she asked the doctor if she could weigh herself. Her weight startled her. Tenant always was a devout dieter in the past, but according to the doctor it wasn’t too bad for her height, which I would have to agree on. I like the fact that she has a bit of reserves these days. If not, just a few days of the flu could do some real damage. *sigh*

Trimmed more trees, in particular the Acacias and another poplar, and that done I headed down into the yard to re-hang more tomato plants and trim them off their dead leaves. This took me several hours, but in the end it turned out that quite a few of the plants are still doing well enough for production. We’ll see, eh?

That done, we had yesterday’s soup with bread, and it was nice. First time I made this soup, and I wasn’t displeased about the result at all.
Afterwards we managed to remove two mats from greenhouse. Considering the roof is covered with pumpkin vines, this was quite a feat. Hah.

We had wanted to go to the garage to pick up the parts that arrived this morning, but mom and little brother got a phone call from a friend who needed a tow from the beach. So they needed the Land Rover and we decided to wait ‘till tomorrow. Good thing too, since after they were gone we checked out the Opel’s exhaust and discovered that the lost tailpipe was rusted through. We’ll probably need a new muffler and everything. Grrr.

I’m seriously contemplating (I had an hysterical fit of laughter about this while we were checking the car out) walking into the garage with the tailpipe and saying: “I think I need a new exhaust.” I don’t know why, but for some reason it had me double up. Guess I was a little too enthusiastic thinking that the Opel troubles were finally over.

At the end of the evening we sorted paint buckets at the storage, which was on grandpa’s insistence.

Which brings me to Grandpa. I just got a call that he needs to go to the hospital with his eye. Apparently something got stuck in it, and now we need to go to the big hospital to get it out. Darn it, that is his only good eye.

I better load the computer now. This is going to be a long night.

Big fire threat. *Phew*

Last night.


This morning same mountain:


This morning to the east:


So I get to those pics a little later on, otherwise I forget the sequence of everything. Hah.

Song of the day: “Disturbia” by Rihanna. There we go again. It surprised me considerably.

Yesterday started relatively early with the preparation for another canning session. The day before that two buckets of prickly pears got picked and while tenant and Dani were making their way down the mountain, I started burning the thorns of the soft yellow skins. It took me two hours to get them all done, and then another hour before we had them all peeled and cut, but then the nasty part was over. We could wash our hands, despite the fact that it does very little to dispose of the remaining thorns and put the prickly pears on the stoves. Adding sugar, lemon juice, a pinch of salt, pepper and mint, we put the concoction on the fire and let it boil for a long time. The pots that had been cleaned the day before got filled as soon as the liquid was separated from the meat and pits, we had ten wonderful pots of syrup, three pots of compote and another two cups for chutney. All in all a good produce for a day’s work, eh.

Well anyway, I read 26 pages for “V.L.” afterwards, which was a good thing, considering I’ve been totally slacking with V.L. for the past few weeks. “S.N.” is taking so much of our time that I can hardly get anything else done. As is usual for S.N. really. So consuming.
Be that as it may, “V.L.” is not bad at all, in particular because this is the completely unedited version. The mistakes aren’t as big as I expected, and though I have made some changes, they were nothing major

After that I was pretty tired, so I went up to my cabin for half an hour nap that would allow me to get through the remainder of the day without falling face down on my computer. Hah. Was a nice half hour, thank you very much, even though the weather consisted of a rather pressing moist heat for a change.

Got up and then headed for the terrace in front of my cabin to join big brother in the edit. Luckily he’d gotten quite a bit done while I napped, so we could immediately get to it. Good thing since we had to make a pick up in town later that night.

It was around ten in the evening when grandpa and caregiver came down saying “have you guys seen the fire?” Big brother and I looked up. “Fire? What fire?”
“Look!”
We did, and it was massive. It must have spread across the mountain, on the other side of our valley, within three hours because I hadn’t seen a thing while he was on my way up before my nap.
Raging across dry country-side, devouring everything in its past during heavy winds, was a fire-worm of old, crawling over the sloping mountain peak straight across from our property.

The wind was such that we knew no helicopters could be deployed. And boy would they need them. There were warning lights flashing across the many miles of fire, both orange and blue, and on the main roads we could see long lines of cars driving away from the disaster going on.

Turns out, that while the fire headed in the direction of the coast at least five hundred people were evacuated. Horses were carted off and the toll highway was shut down as the fire raged on well into the afternoon of today…but I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Back to yesterday.

We all gathered on the highest part of our property and looked at the scene discussing what to do if it came to an evacuation again for us as well. We have a location we can go to, and if push comes to shove, we should be able to rent a van somewhere like the last time so we can get the dogs out. Though, in this case, that will be worst case scenario. First we would try to save the property, of course. But anyway, the scenario was discussed and then, since we had to go out anyway, big brother and I decided to head on down the mountain to check the ongoing from nearby prior to our pick up.

The dogs feel something is off immediately, of course. They'll be barking, howling and making a genuine nuisance of themselves on the overall. Poor darlings. They sense that we're tense, naturally. In fact, in these sort of situations they'll actually stick to us like glue. Heck, in an emergency, I think that my personal pack will be so "stuck" that they will not leave my side at all if it came to running off somewhere. Let's hope I never have to find out.

Several roads were shut off by the cops, sirens were howling all round, lights were blinding and there was so much traffic on the road, it was almost day-time. Everyone was heading out of town to check on the progress. Boy, those were high flames. Higher than some of the buildings, in fact, but as usual the fire department was so capable that they kept it under control in most cases.

We heard that the fire has been deliberately set. Apparently some sort of asinine idea of clearing the land for building. Turns out that the local government was so wary of this particular practise that they made a law. If the land is wrecked by fire, and there was not a prior permit to build, you can’t build on it for 25 years. That should teach this a-hole.

We headed back home, taking the other road since the southern one might be compromised. Had no trouble getting home thankfully. Prior to getting to our respective beds late, we did a final survey from the mountain and watched the fire head fast to the small coastal towns southward.

Woke up to a rather dark sky. The fire, as it turned out was still raging, and high plumes blocked the early morning sun as I got up, grabbed my phone and stumbled my way to the top of the mountain once more. It looked like a friggin’ battlefield. Jeez. There were massive plumes of dark gray smoke towering into the sky. Choppers and planes were attacking the plumes from all sides, circling and swirling like bees to a hive. All very impressive. They do know how to battle a fire here in these areas. And boy did they do a good job again. Seriously, I saw places where the fire stopped just short of yards.

I had several appointments this morning, but first we had to unload the car. Then I had to get dressed to make it in time to town hall for my appointment. It all went fast in there, and I got referred to another address in town, which I should be able to make in time before siesta started. Big brother and I headed down the mountain and just barely managed to find a parking spot in an area that was literally bursting at the seams. Jeez. I was in line there for 30 minutes (I know, bureaucracy, aaaarg, right? I need a number, for crying out loud!) only to hear that I had been sent to the wrong address. Darn it.

Another appointment, and picking up more paperwork along the way, I decided to leave the rest for another day and got some minor groceries before heading back home. We decided to take the scenic route through the country. While driving there, (it was further than it appeared during the night) we saw a huge helicopter come in to drop another ton of water over a persistent smoke plume. Rather impressive. It was one of those executive class things, heavy rotors and blocking out the sun and everything. Almost felt like we were in the movies or something.

Once home, after bringing all the news and such to the “home-front” we headed down to the yard and planted potatoes in the newly turned patches. By now I’m pretty much done, and I really should get to work on the edit again.