This story is too strange to not mention, at least in passing.
The house we live in currently is two doors down from the house we’re building, so it’s very convenient to monitor the progress of the construction. As we found out on Sunday evening, though, there are also disadvantages to being that close.
Around 8:30 P.M., there was a knock on our door. I set down my margarita to see who was there, and when I opened the door, before me stood one of the guys working on our house. I didn’t actually know his name, because he had just been hired last week, along with two other new guys. He was a rather big guy, a bit shorter than me, but a lot stronger-looking. He smelled like booze and was barefoot in the drizzling rain. So, I said hello, and asked what was going on. He asked me if he could call the contractor. I said sure, no problem, and I went to get the phone from the other room. When I came back, he was sitting on the porch step with his back turned to me, and he was sobbing.
Uh….awkward….
I said, “Here’s the phone.” (This whole conversation was obviously in Spanish, so these aren’t necessarily exact quotes from either of us). The guy said that I should call the contractor, so I dialed the number and handed him the phone, but he didn’t want to take it. I hung up. He said I should sit down and talk to him because he was lonely. “Well, sure,” I said, and sat down, hoping this wouldn’t be one of those repetitive, three-hour Drunk Guy Sermons.
He told me many, many times that he was sad, and that the reason he was sad was because the other workers, who were staying in the same house with him in the back of our new lot, had tied him up. I asked what he meant by “tied him up,” and he said that he gotten too drunk and violent, so they tied his hands and feet, took his car keys and shoes, and put him in his car to sleep it off. Evidently, he’d managed to untie himself and had stumbled his way to our house because he didn’t know where else to go.
He kept grabbing my ankles and wrists to demonstrate how they tied him up, and lightly hitting my chest to demonstrate how much his coworkers’ actions “hurt his heart.” It was the weirdest conversation that I’ve had on that particular porch…so far, at least.
And all of this was going on during Smallville! Not even one of the episodes from season 1 and 2 that they show during weekdays; no, this was a Sunday episode from the “new” season, and it was already super confusing, not only because it was in badly-dubbed Spanish (“Was Lana in that car when it blew up?? And what the hell is happening with Chole and Luisa—did they switch lives?? WTF?!?”)
In any case, Angela called the contractor, and he said he’d head right up from Palmares. So after sitting and talking with me for about 10 minutes, this drunk guy who kept calling me Max--evidently he once knew an American named Max—decided that he was going to walk home to San Ramón, probably to avoid the contractor who would pass by on the other road in a matter of minutes. Obviously, that was just sweet, stupid drunk talk, but I also didn’t doubt that he’d try to actually walk downhill 15 kilometers in the rain…barefoot. So, I called in to Angela and asked her to bring my extra sandals, and I stalled the guy until a Smallville commercial break came along and Angela brought the sandals. He put them on, and despite our attempts to convince him to wait, that was the last we saw of him.
When the contractor arrived, he talked with the remaining guys in the house where the workers are staying, and he sorted things out a bit. Apparently, the guy had been drunk, and he had tried to fight the guy who runs the Berlín pulpería, which is kind of like a little drug store or general store, only much less convenient and with fewer items. It appears that our guy wanted to fight the pulpería owner because the guy wouldn’t let him buy alcohol on credit…and also because the pulpería doesn’t actually sell alcohol.* (*As an aside, the pulpería in question here is NOT the one run by my sister-in-law’s husband’s brother-in-law, but rather the pulpería run by the son of the guy who rides around Berlín on his fucking horse and shuts off the water every night…in other words, the drunk guy actually should have hit the pulpería owner so hard that his father would feel it, too. As an aside to an aside, every time I play “Six Degrees of Separation: Berlín Edition,” basically everyone around here turns out to be my “sister-in-law’s husband’s brother-in-law” or something similarly obscure. End aside.)
So, the other guys turned vigilante on our drunk buddy’s ass, and they tied him up and took his car keys, all of which was probably a good idea, all things told. The contractor arrived and told the new guys that this type of shit hadn’t happened in the six weeks before they arrived, and that he expected them to be gone by the time he arrived the next morning.
And in a fictional little town in Kansas, some alien thing took some of Clark Kent’s DNA, and the episode will be continued next week, when we’ll find out if Lana Lang really died, if Chole gave her live to save Luisa’s, and when we’ll hopefully not be interrupted by any more drunk shenanigans.
Unless it’s the type of shenanigans where people return your pair of backup sandals. Shit.
This is the front bedroom, in the corner. As you can see, in the last few weeks they've gotten up most of the crown beams.
Harvey working on a complicated crown beam in the corner of our bedroom. This was yesterday (Saturday, May 24) and they were trying to work quickly before it rained.
Workers working on setting up the crown beam in the living room, and cussing a lot in Spanish about the drill.
The view from the front corner of the house. It's been pretty gloomy looking lately.
Here's the thing about putting in all that dirt, and then having it rain a lot: it creates gigantic areas full of mud. Here Angela is sinking in.
Fortunately, they're washable. Around here, we have a saying when this happens: "Aw shit!" Mainly because I cuss in English or German, and Angela learned all the bad words she knows from me.
The view from the back.
This room in the center of the house was going to be our laundry room, but then we decided to put all the laundry crap in the garage and use this room as a TV room. Right now, it's where we're storing our extra rainwater and mud.
The corner of our bedroom-to-be.
If you were wondering why there was all that weird wood crap sticking out from the windows, it was to form these structures. The windows are going to be poking out of the main structure. We saw it in a house we liked and thought it was cool. Hopefully it turns out OK. It's pretty fancy for Berlin, after all.
Saturday, May 24, 2008. We're thinking of having a bikini mud-wresting tournament in our front yard, so be sure to register today!
As a clean antidote to all the mud, we saw this tub in a movie we rented (The Nanny Diaries... Angela was complaining that the movies I was renting were "puro zombies!"). Now we'd kind of like one, but can't find them around here, so if you come down, bring one with you.
