Some people are just disgusting

Background:

In our tiny neighborhood there is one woman who is schizophrenic. She's a really nice woman, when she's talking to you, but when it comes to her imagined friends, she uses all the slang and bad words in the book. Her family (husband, and children) abandoned here years ago and since then, she's lived here alone. We call her The Water Lady because she has an obsession with water. The landlords cut off the water to her apartments so she used to walk down the steps everyday, many, many, many times a day putting water in a bucket, taking it upstairs to her apartment and throwing it on the floor of her living room. I've been told her apartment looks like a cemetery.

Anyway, flash forward to about a month ago. The landlords took out the water faucet from downstairs so the woman started walking to other neighborhoods to use their water. About a week ago, they put a door on the stoop in front of her apartment while she was sleeping, locking her in. She was able to break down that door. This afternoon, while I was outside talking with a neighbor, The Water Lady came home yelling upstairs for a son: PEDRO! PEDRO! THE POLICE ARE COMING PEDRO! They had put a lock on her door earlier when she had gone out and (we think) her son was locked inside (that can't be confirmed since we never saw anyone come out).

Her family, whom we haven't seen the entire (almost) year we've been here came storming through the community doors, shouting and screaming and because me and the neighbor were the first people they saw, they threatened to sue us and beat us up. They called the police but aside from the siren of the cop car, I didn't hear or see anything else.

Now, what's bothering me about this whole fiasco is that I am essentially GIVING money to people who are heartless enough to do something like this to a sick woman. I've never liked our land lady, she carries a bad vibe about her and now I know why. I don't know what to do about this....I want to move, but we have no money, I just get a sick feeling in my stomach, a sick, guilty feeling for continuing to help this woman financially.

Guess What?!!

Toño published his first article on Univision.com

Check it out here!!

It'll be on the front page!!!

Día de Muertos

So, yesterday was Day of the Dead and Toño and I spent some time with the family before they went on vacation and then headed off to various cemeteries.


It was a beautiful site, families eating and drinking and playing. Hired music (or family musicians) playing to the dead while the children, dressed in halloween costumes played around graves sites, looking in awe at the altars made to unknown dead. The graves of babies and children, littered with toys and food and balloons and chocolate milk. I'd never seen or even imagined a cemetery could breath so much life.

We headed to Reforma where there is a constant art exhibition....this month are calaveritas.....actually more like calavarotas decorated beautifully.


And then the various altars made by the government and various tourist spots....


We bought our own little sugar and chocolate skulls and even though I didn't make my own altar to my dead, during these last two weeks I certainly thought of everyone I've lost...

So to gramma Chana, Tata, Uncle Tim, and Gramma Betty and everyone else.....



for more calaveras and ofrendas (these pictures are so beautiful that I didn't want to reduce them....just click on the link to see the full picture)