Coco, looking eerily innocent at the beginning of the day.

I had a number of errands to do in town, including atoning for a misunderstanding yesterday (Saturday.) After 3 hours on the phone with my computer tech in Canada to set up my new Mac Air, (Yay! I’ve been trying to do this since July. Since then my order was cancelled once, then I finally had one sent to a friend in Oregon who just brought it to me in Mexico and I’ve been waiting for over a week for an appointment with Chad, the world’s best Mac whiz, in Canada, who hops into my computer and solves all problems.) After our session, I checked my phone, which I had turned off, and found a message from a friend asking if I was on my way to pick her up. Unfortunately, I thought I was giving her a ride to Chapala on Monday and she thought I was doing so on Saturday. Guilt, guilt.

Since she is pretty much wheelchair-bound, I thought I’d atone by doing some grocery shopping for her, since I needed to go to Walmart to buy a number of items that couldn’t wait. On the way home, after shopping and leaving her groceries by her house, I’d stop by the Panteón and do some work on the three graves I adopted 8 years ago. If you want to know how that came about, go HERE.

At any rate, the graves were again in a terrible state. The bougainvillea and agave I’d planted a few years before had pretty much taken over the graves so you couldn’t even see the gravestone. I could tell Oscar had been there and pulled the weeds, in addition to the bougainvillea,  here was a huge stump of some treelike intruder that had been hacked off but not fully removed and the gravestones needed sweeping and scrubbing. Unfortunately, however, although I’d set out the gloves, clippers, broom and garbage bags I needed the night before, then assembled the bucket and cleaning supplies this morning, when I stopped off to view the state of the graves before going to Walmart, I realized I’d left all the supplies I’d assembled the night before sitting on the garage cabinet.

So it was to Walmart, where I discovered they have removed all the Day of the Dead and Halloween decorations…row after row of them…and were setting up Xmas decorations!! This 4 days before Day of the dad and two days before Halloween!!!! They can’t have sold them all as five entire rows as well as a huge display at the front of the store had been there two days before. Talk about rushing the season!!!! So, I searched in vain for Halloween candy to contribute to the bags made up by a committee in the fraccionamiento where I live. To compound the matter, although they did have Dead Bread—a necessity for every grave and every altar…They were sold only in containers of 12 or in very large loaf sizes. I had 12 waiting at home, minus the one on my altar and one I’d eaten. I needed 3 for the graves but had of course left them along with the candles at home. So I. bought new candles and a broom, thinking I’d make do, but when I turned off the Carretera to stop by the cemetery, I discovered too late that I’d driven right by it and was a mile down the road. Then when I finally found a road that connected it to the carretera again, I realized I’d already passed my friend’s house and was half way to San Juan, where I live. So why not just go get the needed tools and come back, leave my friend’s groceries off, and go do my duties at the graves? But, nearly back home, I realized my friend had told me just to leave her door unlatched. If I drove home and all the way back, I’d be much later than the two hour wait I had predicted and once again she’d be waiting for me. So, I turned the car around, went back the three or four kilometer’s to her house, lugged the shopping bag to the door to find it….locked!!! I hated to ring the doorbell and cause her to struggle in her wheelchair from the back of the house or even perhaps upstairs, so she had to come down via elevator. But luckily, the woman next door saw me struggling with bag and lock and came with a key. Only to discover it was now bolted from inside!!! It must have been the lady who arrived earlier, she said, and rang the bell. Luckily the woman, not my friend, answered, I put the groceries away and drove to the Pantheon..and, as I was parking, a large van drove up and honked just as I was getting out of the car. It was Yolanda and Oscar, with clippers, buckets, broom and garbage bags!!!!!

I had no idea they were coming today and if we had planned it we could not have coordinated so well. So in the end, I clipped the bougainvillea, Oscar did the heavy weeding and cleaning up of the soil around the graves. They got rid of the huge stump, although I don’t know how they did it. When I went to buy flowers and more candles, Yolanda cleaned off the graves and by the time I got back, all was readied. We put the marigolds and candles on the graves. To atone for a year of neglect, I lit the candles. If they didn’t blow out, I’d replace them tomorrow when I came to place the dead bread, beer or Cokes, and to hang the papel picado streamers and banners. For one more year, the dead would be placated.

My altar at home almost completed, I had but to find a proper item to place in front of Bob’s photo. Somehow I had forgotten my friend Betty and sister Betty, and had gone through bushels of photos to find the most flattering one of each and so needed to also add a symbol of each in front of their photos except….

That night, when I finally let the dogs into my room to sleep, I mistakenly left the door between my bedroom and the rest of the house open. I was working on the computer in bed but had fallen asleep when I heard a crash and, seeing the door open, I knew what had happened. I moved to the hall to see the papel picado skirt around the alter in shreds, the glass candle holder spread across the floor in shards and my mother’s framed photo tipped over and nearly invisible, having slipped behind the small cabinet the altar was set up on. This act of vandalism was not unprecedented. See HERE the scene last year, When a different doggie decided to go after the dead bread. This time I had placed two large milkbones in a cross and two beefy stick treats on each side in front of the dead bread and all were untouched. Undoubtedly, the shattering glass had saved the day, although I must say the doggie treats and dead bread would have been more easily replaced.

So, Coco, in disgrace, was banned from the house while I cleared away some of the damage. Tomorrow I’ll replace the papel picado and Yolanda will sweep up shards I overlooked in the darkness of the hall. Coco is once more installed in my bed—a necessity when she was going crazy over the opossum negotiating the high wall of the backyard into the front yard for her nightly feeding. There she promptly got into a hissing exchange with the cats, who I brought in to preserve the peace. The opossum has long since finished her dinner and the cats have again been relegated to the outside lest they, too, decide to visit the altar.

Tomorrow I have two English lessons to give and then need to redo the altar and get the huge bag of  Halloween treats  I finally located in the regular candy aisle to the guardhouse, since after buying it, I ran into a member of the social committee who told me they’d already prepared the bags for town children two days ago. Years ago they decided it was easier to distribute the treats at the bottom of the hill than to have children traipsing up the hill to home after home…and I had heard after a hiatus over Covid, they had resumed the practice, so again, I am tardy for yet another task and will just give the candy to give to the kids who are themselves tardy and arrive after all the bags are gone.

I will finish decorating the graves–still a day early, as Day of the Dead for children is on Nov.1 and for adults, Nov. 2. For once I’ll be ahead of the game and all will be well for another year. Oh. Except for Thanksgiving. and Christmas. But, tomorrow is another day and let’s not worry about it, okay?

My new computer, by the way, with a few exceptions, works like a dream. I’m typing this on it now!!!!!

Coco, looking innocent

Yolanda and Oscar, my saviors

The (almost)completed plot.

Grave minus a few necessaries

And… the altered altar

broken candle holder.

More torn papel picado.