My husband woke early Wednesday morning, anxious that the digger that had been ordered, sight unseen, wouldn’t be big enough. Unable to go back to sleep, he went out to the living room and read a little Job. This is called foreshadowing.

The poor guy’s stress level was already quite high:
*The cement blocks he’d ordered hadn’t come in. (Still haven’t.)
*The property was without electricity (and would probably continue to be without it for another few weeks).
*The volunteer trailer was sucking up resources and time, and it still wasn’t ready. Plus, the trailer severely cut into much-needed space on the already-small property: When the cement blocks would finally arrive, finding a place to put them (and the sand and the gravel and the rebar, etc) would be a struggle.
*Everyone was clamoring to see progress, and the first official volunteers would be arriving on Saturday. Pressure was mounting.

So that morning, while waiting for the probably too-small digger, my husband worked on wiring the electrical post. Needing some more supplies, he went to Home Depot.

After searching for out-of-stock items in roped-off aisles (while moving merchandise, they completely shut down the aisles), he, in hopes of escaping more quickly, chose self-checkout. But then the item he was scanning wouldn’t scan. At the breaking point, he took his bucket full of selected items back to the aisle from whence they came, set it down, and left the store.

At noon, it briefly poured rain and water streamed into the trailer through the windows. One more thing to add to the to-do list.

The lunch he and the kids had packed wasn’t big enough. My older son called me: “Papa’s having a hard time. You might want to make something nice for supper.”

When the digger finally arrived (five hours late), my husband’s worst fears were confirmed. Ancient and small, it had only a piddly 8-inch bucket. He’d be better off digging the footers with a spoon.

He took a stab at digging anyway, jouncing around the lot while the rest of us took videos and laughed until we cried. I forwarded one of the videos to Chiro with the caption: “John says he’s seen better in a junkyard.”

The laughter didn’t last for very long. My husband was on a fast downward spiral into abject misery. Trapped and powerless, he felt like a failure. He was wasting everyone’s time. He couldn’t do this.

I, of course, knew this was absolutely not true. Tomorrow will be better, I told him, and then to drive the point home I sang a few bars of Mama Said. It didn’t help much. When one is firmly entrenched in The Pit, there’s not much to be said. So I went home and ordered my younger daughter to make some dough — we’d be having pizza for supper.

My husband finally had to admit defeat and call for the guy to come pick the digger up. Then, right before closing time, he and I drove to the little shop for the refund. There we learned that they couldn’t give us a receipt but, If you follow me, I’ll take you to business headquarters, the employee said cheerfully. Sighing heavily, we climbed back into our van and meekly followed him to a neighboring town fifteen minutes away where they printed a receipt for us.

“I can not wait for this day to be over,” my husband said. 

The next morning, the video of my husband lurching around on the decrepit digger surfaced on the church’s group message system with a note, the gist of which was, Pray for him. And then Lery posted a photo of a toddler perched on a plastic toy backhoe with the caption, “This would’ve done a better job,” and suddenly, we were laughing — even my husband — and the cloud began to lift.

We — the locals and us — were in this together. Things would get better, and in the meantime, they had our back. It’d be okay.

Chiro made some calls and three days later a guy with a real digger showed up.

 And volunteers!

Several hours and a bunch of dirt later, we had footers, glory hallelujah.

The ball is starting to roll!

This same time, years previous: this is us, brown sugar rhubarb muffins, a better grilled cheese sandwich, the quotidian (6.2.14), the quotidian (6.3.13), of a sun-filled evening, the best chocolate ice cream ever.

Orange juice is not called jugo de naranja, like you’d think, but rather jugo de China. Gouda cheese is queso de bola (ball cheese). Cheddar cheese is queso de papa (potato cheese). Potatoes are patatas. 

Water is never ever cold enough. In the shower, from the tap, in the ocean — it’s all tepid.

How I long for bone-chilling cold water, frigid enough to suck the heat from my body, the puffiness from my feet!

I miss quart jars. We’re slowly accumulating leftover jars from salsa, pickles, and jelly, but they’re mostly small, and for many of them I can’t get rid of the overpowering smell of garlic-and-vinegar. And nothing ruins a delicious iced coffee faster than storing it in a pickle jar. (Well, except for soured half-and-half which is turning into a regular occurance, sigh.)

My morning runs are agonizingly boring. I run loops around and through the neighborhood, but the concrete flatnesssince is soul-killingly dull. Without hills, I have to do sprints to actually get my heart pumping. And the heat, of course, is such an energy suck.

I actually gave up running for a little there, but then I felt terrible because I wasn’t getting any cardio, so back to My Mornings of Misery I went, tail tucked between my legs.

Silver lining: I’ve since learned that if I leave the house by 5:40 a.m. then I can at least finish before the sun comes up.

Since we’ve arrived here, I’ve had a borderline sore throat. Am I reacting to something I’m eating? Am I over-tired? And then my husband suggested that maybe my throat irritation is due to the dust in the air?

Also, for quite a while I struggled with a queasy stomach. I thought it was maybe due to the lettuce I was eating — all that romaine lettuce had just been recalled — but then the nausea disappeared. Either I’m no longer eating contaminated greens or I had a stomach bug.

Whatevs.

It’s super breezy during the day — our hallway feels like a wind tunnel — but it gets murderously still at night. Thank goodness for fans.

Problem: maggots. As in, our outdoor trash was roiling with them. We’ve since learned to wash all raw meat packaging and to store meat scraps in the (already too-small) freezer. Also, keeping the trashcan in the sun, not the shade, helps.

I located the recycling center! I found the post office! I am succeeding at life!

We store our bread in the microwave. Best breadbox ever.

My glasses get ridiculously greasy. It’s like they’re magnets for face oils, or maybe it’s just the heat — perhaps the humidity is half human sweat? Whatever the reason, I have to wash my glasses multiple times each day.

Night driving is freaky. It’s hard enough in the day, what with all the missing signs, switched around roads (and the misinformed Mrs. Google insisting I drive on roads that don’t exist), non-working stoplights, and crateresque potholes, but at night it’s dark. And I don’t just mean absence-of-sun dark — I mean dark dark: streetlights are few and far between, and many lanes are unmarked.

Like I said, freaky.

Public libraries do not loan out books, sob.

Apparently, no one in Puerto Rico eats tacos because I can’t find taco seasoning anywhere. Chili, too, or only a little bit of it because I’ve only found tiny containers of chili powder. Also, THERE ARE NO TWIZZLERS. (But then Chiro found some for us when he was out traveling, and even though he thinks they’re appallingly gross, he kindly bought a bag of them for us.)

Sad news: ice cream runs about double what it costs in Virginia so we’re not eating ice cream.

Except we are because I’m doing some ‘sperimenting, yay!

This same time, years previous: simple lasagna, butter chicken, an evening together, in her element, a bunch of stuff, showtime!, down to the river to chill, barbequed pork ribs, fresh strawberry cream pie.