And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. 2 Samuel 23:4

Today I woke up and felt great! No sinus issues, not even a little headache. By 7:30 the sun was up and starting to dry up the puddles on the road — I guess we had a little shower sometime during the night. I made the bed and showered. I hung my towel out on the balcony to dry in the morning sun. Then I went downstairs for breakfast. I only remembered that it was Saturday and that I had planned to go to the clubhouse for Saturday morning bacon and eggs AFTER I’d already made my bread and butter and cheese and yogurt and fruit breakfast! Oh well. Maybe I’ll go there for lunch.

I puttered around all morning. When my neighbour Pepe came by I stopped him and asked about refilling my water cooler bottles. I knew I could phone the corner store and they would deliver a full one and take my empty in trade. But I didn’t feel comfortable enough to try ordering in Spanish, and no one at the store speaks English. Pepe immediately took my two empties and put them in the trunk of his car. Hop in. We drove to the store to buy water. Pepe showed me where they stored bags of ice, so I bought a bag of that too.

I don’t do water like this at home, so I had no idea how to get a big 5-gallon jug of water upside-down into the dispenser. Pepe tackled it no problem, and we only had a SMALL puddle on the floor to clean up. I also mentioned to him that I was expecting Mario, my landlord, to come and fix my toilet today. Pepe wanted to see the toilet. We marched up the stairs. He asked me to bring a bucket, and then showed me that when you dump a bucket of water into the toilet it flushes just fine. So it’s not plugged. No, Pepe said, the problem is that there is so much lime in the water that all the little holes around the rim of the toilet are plugged, so not enough water is getting into the bowl when you flush. If Mario doesn’t come through today, Pepe will ask one of his workers to come fix the toilet on Monday (Pepe has a TEAM of workers–cleaners and electricians and carpenters and plumbers–because it turns out he has more than 20 homes that he owns and rents out and which he manages).

Okay, it looks like my new friends will look after my every need!

It seemed to me that it was a bit warmer today than it has been the last couple of days. I went to the clubhouse to check it out — to see how much busier it is on the weekends. Very much busier! A full house. I sat down inside and ordered a hotdog and fries and a couple of Modelo Especials. And I watched the men at all the other tables. Lots of tables pushed together so the golfers can sit in groups of 8 or 12. Loud. Lots of laughing and cheering. Everybody knows everybody. And the Mexicans ALWAYS shake hands when they say hello and again when they say goodbye. Enthusiastically. Vigorously.

The clientele here today was not poor people. Everyone had proper golf attire, even fashionable attire. Like a Scottish hat and knickers. Or lots of Titliest golf hats. Mostly long pants. A bag with their golf shoes on the floor beside their chair. And they were all eating and drinking, but the food was mostly small plates of shareable stuff — most of which I had no idea what it was. I think I saw a plate of beets! Yuck! One guy must have had a hole-in-one and was busy ordering more champagne for his table and getting hugged and congratulated by everyone in the room. It was great! A good feeling of ‘community’ among the Saturday morning golfers.

After sitting there for a couple of hours, I took a walk in the neighbourhood. LOTS of very large and beautiful homes here. Most have 2 BMWs and a Porsche parked in the driveway. Nobody drives old ugly cars here.

Back at the house I had a FaceTime call with Alex. And then Mario came zooming up in his Jeep and took a brand new toilet, still in the box, out of the ‘trunk’ and put it in my garage. He’ll send HIS plumber guy to install it either tomorrow or Monday. When Mario left I got myself set to watch a couple of NFL playoff games — so I had to find channels on my big TV that would show them, and ones where the connection was good enough so I didn’t have to watch spinning cursors every few minutes. But if you want something bad enough, eventually you will have success. So I did.

In between the games I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich and opened up (finally!) one of my two bottles of wine and had a glass of Malbec with ‘supper’. Great. A little headache had returned earlier in the day, but really I think I’m nearly 100%. By tomorrow for sure!

While the first game went my way, the second game not so much. But I sat up until 12:30, working on the computer and then writing my journal. But now that that’s done, I’m off to bed. Got a song in my head:

If today was not an endless highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If tomorrow wasn’t such a long time
Then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all.
– Bob Dylan

Well, tomorrow the Driedgers are scheduled to arrive, and that’s not such a long time; and then lonesome will mean nothing to me at all! I’m looking forward to their company. And I can’t wait to get out on that golf course!