Of course.

I haven’t lived in the Untied Snakes in almost 20 years, but I don’t remember blocked aisles in supermarkets being a regular occurrence, as they are here. I don’t think many supermarkets up north have such crowded aisles.

I’m going to go way out on a limb, and guess that it wasn’t a customer who left a ladder blocking the aisle. And with crowded aisles, you might think employees here would take more care not block them. You would be wrong, of course.

That would involve assuming the employees are paying attention, or care. Also, situational awareness isn’t really a thing in Uruguay. That’s nice in a laid-back kind of way. Sometimes.

Take 3 (cochera windows)

Take 2 kept rain out of the cochera for over a year but, as you can see, plastic mesh on either side of the “nylon” didn’t solve its inherent weakness, and probably susceptibility to UV — the sun can be very strong here. I’ve been thinking about the roll-down plastic “curtains” used to close in porches, extending their usability as the weather gets cool, wondering where I could get plastic like that.

The local ferretería (hardware store), it turns out. All you have to do is ask. Who knew? One down, one to go.

The faceoff

Lara, left, and Leo, right, otherwise known as the little white monsters, abruptly parked themselves in these positions in the middle of the dog walk. We were expecting to see an epic clash, like a joust, but after a few moments they both decided, “Meh,” and wandered off to chase Mocha the dog, who was chasing dirt bikers. Much more exciting, even if they took no interest in chasing the motorcycles ( good thing), only Mocha. Sofie, center above, made one of the encounters more interesting by standing in middle of the wide sand path of the moto, whose rider yelled something at her. We were too far away to do anything. We didn’t hear what he yelled. And didn’t need to, I think.

Memo to self: close screens

Out at our chacra (mini-farm), now happily no longer ours, I discovered an unusual contribution to my working mess: twigs in the sink…

…which had fallen from the light fixture I had built above.

And there were more in the refrigerator.

It seems to have been an avian case study into where not to build a nest. I was glad for that. And I closed the screen on the kitchen window. No idea why it was left open — painting, maybe — but previously I had startled a cat that made a hasty exit through the opened screen. Ya’d think a felluh would learn….

Point of failure

Friends were ditching their long-used toaster oven because the door wouldn’t stay closed. I was curious to see if I could fix it. It didn’t take long to see that the spring had pulled inside (yellow arrow below) the part that connected to the door.

So, simple to diagnose but not — for me, anyway — simple to repair since it needed a rivet, there being insufficient clearance for a nut and bolt (double red arrow). Much as I have always thought a rivet tool would be cool to have, I’ve never been able to justify buying one, and this was no exception. I placed a small nut and bolt to hold the pieces together, and gave it, door not closing, to our cleaning lady, whose husband probably has a rivet tool, or if not probably knows where to get his hands on one.