What the Rain Brought

When it rained, the rain left snowy caps on the mountains for about half a day. It was great to see Misti and Chachani snowy again!

That's My Boy!

Alec may have the pie gene, but Joffre definitely got the "acquired taste" gene from both sides of the family. To his father's consternation, Joffre is hard-pressed to finish an ice cream cone before it melts in a puddle at his feet, but he scarfs down tofu, spinach, sushi, avocado, olives, boiled eggs, eggplant, shrimp, squid, onions, raw peas and beans, and a host of other foods that would make your average preschool McDonald's junkie squirm.

Even I was taken aback a couple of weeks ago when we had company over one afternoon, and Joffre asked for sushi. I said no, that he has to ask in the morning if he wants me to make sushi, and he replied, "then I can have some blue cheese?" Sure - go for it. I cut some blue cheese up and put in on a plate, and he started scarfing it down. Ever the gracious host, he offered some to his friend Marcus, who looked absolutely stricken at the prospect.

But the real kicker was last week when I made osso buco. I cut up some of the meat, and ladled it and vegetables with sauce over some rice on Joffre's plate and called him to the table. He looked at it, shrugged, and walked away. So I said in my most dramatic voice, "Joffre! Come look at what's on my plate! It's amazing, you won't believe it!!" He came running. I showed him the shank chop, complete with big ring of bone in the middle. I handed him my fork and got him to tap the bone. "It's a bone!" I said. Then I took the fork and scooped some marrow out of the bone:
J: "What that?"
M: "It's called 'marrow.' It grows inside bones."
J: "It for eating?"
M: "Definitely!"
J: "I try it."
He ate all the marrow out of three bones, and asked for more. When I said there was no more, he whined and tried to convince me I could make some more right then.

I've never been so proud!

Pie Thief

The so-called "pie gene" is well-documented in the Clark and Gunson families, where if you don't dive in after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, you might not get any pie at all, where Aaron's cousin David at the age of two actually knew what the letters p-i-e spelled, where a single man can finish an entire pie off in one sitting and think nothing of it, where a favorite motto is "I never met a tart I didn't like."

So I probably shouldn't have been too surprised to walk into the kitchen and find Alec, aged 17 months, peeling back the plastic film from a pumpkin pie, and then digging in:

Success!

The glitch with uploading photos has been fixed, and the pictures have been added to the Colca entry.

Once the camera gets home from its hard working day up at the mine, I will download some other pictures off it to share with you.

Know What? I Know Who Lives in my House.

There's a certain etiquette to a misdialed phone call, at least in Canada. The conversation usually goes something like this:

*ring, ring*
A: Hello?
B: Hi, is Yolanda there?
A: Nope, sorry, you must have the wrong number.
B: Oops! Sorry!
*click*

Not so much here. Here it goes like this:
*ring, ring*
A: Hello?
B: Hi, is Yolanda there?
A: Sorry, you have the wrong number.
B: What? Where's Yolanda?
A: Um, there's nobody here named Yolanda. You must have dialed the wrong number by mistake.
B: Well, I need to talk to Yolanda!
A: Seriously, this is not her number!
B: But I dialed her number!! She's got to be there!
A: Maybe you hit a wrong key by mistake!
B: Look, just let me talk to Yolanda, would you?!
A: *click*
A: (ignores vehement ringing of phone for next 10 minutes)
(except, obviously, in Spanish)

Now, this has happened occasionally to me in Canada, like the time some bimbette kept calling my cell phone every 8 seconds to see if the number had magically become Mike's. Even when we went over the numbers, and agreed that while she indeed had my exact number written down, it was in fact my number and not his. But here it is every darned time. People range from totally baffled to outraged at my inability to produce the individual they seek.

And then there's the odd time I dial a wrong number. Most often, I know right away that it's not right and I just say, "oops, think I got the wrong number," and hang up. But the other day I was trying to call someone, and I knew it was one of two numbers. I kept trying both, but there was nobody home at either. Finally, a voice answered at one of the numbers, and the conversation went like this:

A: Hello?
Me: Hi, may I please speak to Roxana?
A: Roxana?
Me: Oh, do I have the wrong number?
A: Which Roxana do you want to speak to?
Me: Is there one there?
A: No . . .
Me: Then I have the wrong number.
A: Wait, what number did you dial?
Me: The wrong one?
A: Well, this is xxx-xxxx.
Me: Yep, that's not the right one. (I didn't know this till I got A on the phone, of course)
A: Well then, why did you call me?
Me: ??????? *click*

Seriously.

And then there was this conversation, when I called Elly's cell phone a couple weeks ago:
Man: Hello?
Me (taken aback): Um, is Elly there?
Man: No, I don't know who that is.
Me: Oh, sorry, I must have a wrong number, but I really thought this was her number. (as in, it's programmed into my cell phone)
Man: Well, I guess it could be.
Me: (realization dawning) Did she leave her phone somewhere?
Man: Yeah, in the back seat of my cab. Do you know where she lives? I could take it to her.
Me: She works for me. You can drop it off at my house.

He did, and accepted a 10 sol tip for good deed, but it was pretty clear that he was trying to pretend he didn't know nuffin 'bout no missing phone. Or was he? He was cool with bringing it up to my place, so maybe he was just that clueless over the phone . . .

Even More Babies!

And a doubly big welcome to:
Thomas and Eric Rosario, born Oct 10, 2006.

No doubt ready to give big brother Markus and Mom and Dad Erika and Persio a run for their money!

Congratulations everyone!!

Hurray!!!

Well, it's a good thing we got that skylight fixed, because it RAINED on Saturday night! A nice, gentle, cool, light rain that lasted for about an hour, and cleaned out the sky and made the air smell fresh. It also left breathtaking snowcaps on El Misti and Chachani, and if Blogger gets the glitch worked out with the photo uploads, I'll have to show you the pictures Aaron took.

The humidity level was much higher yesterday, which gave the air a softer, nicer feel, and there have been big puffy white clouds in the blue sky ever since. The forecast, of course, is now for sun, sun, and more sun, but the little fall of rain has given me renewed hope for the next couple of months, and was a welcome relief from the acrid desert city air that has been plaguing us.

A Cankerous Racism

I went to the big posh department store in town today to buy kitchenwares, as we are moving back to Canada in 2 months and we have a largely unfurnished home to set up when we get there. I bought dishes, glasses, a kitchen scale, and various and sundry items. The total amount was not huge by Canadian standards, but sizeable enough. The big issue, however, was that they were taking forever to wrap and pack everything, and I had to pick Joffre up from school. So, off I went, and when I got Joffre, he was miserable and obviously in no shape to be at the store. I took him home instead.

So, I gave the Visa receipt to Sonia and told her to go to the store and pick the stuff up. I said, "the home phone number is on their copy of the Visa receipt, along with my signature and my passport number, so they can call me if they need to." Twenty minutes later, she came back empty-handed, saying they wouldn't give her the stuff because she didn't have the itemized till receipt. I told her, well, I didn't have the till receipt either; they must have stuck it in one of the bags. I asked why they hadn't checked the bags, or called me, and she said that they were rude to her and wouldn't even look at her. They just kept telling her she needed a document she didn't have.

I got on the phone, called the store, and told them that I wanted my housekeeper to pick up the stuff since I was at home with my kids. That they already had the phone number and could call if they needed to. They asked for a description of her and her name, and said it was fine. So, off she went - this time with a weepy, shoeless Joffre in tow, since he refused to be separated from her - and about forty-five minutes later she and the cabbie returned with the stuff. What a saga at the Saga.

I was incensed, of course. Had the people at the store taken the time to listen to Sonia, they would have understood what she was there for, and could have called me, found the till receipt - which they had kept accidentally - and released the stuff. Apologists, including my Spanish teacher and Sonia herself, will tell you that the store was just being careful, protecting me from potential theft. The fact is, however, that even considering the unlikely possibility that a thief might find or steal a credit card receipt and from this know that unclaimed kitchenwares were awaiting pickup at a certain register in the store, had I gone in with the exact same document asking for my stuff, I would have received all kinds of attention. Even if they had been unable to give me my things, with the document I had, they would have been courteous and apologetic, rather than dismissive and condescending.

You may say that the discrimination at work here is economic, rather than racial per se. After all, it's obvious to the clerks at Saga that Sonia can't likely afford much in the store, and therefore has no buying power. So there's no benefit to them in being polite to her. If they are rude to me, however, they know that I may choose to spend my considerable discretionary income elsewhere, and they will have lost a valuable customer. But in fact, these two concepts are inextricable. The people in Peru, almost without exception, who can't afford to shop in the fancy stores and malls, are more indigenous in appearance, and poorer in dress. They are shorter, darker, and less fashionable than the Peruvian elite. There is an internal racism against indigenous people, which is unlike the racism one sees in Canada against our own First Nations people, in that Peru experienced a much higher rate of intermarriage than North America did, and so there are countless degrees of Spanish-ness or indigenous-ness here. As poisonous as racism is in Canada, it is doubly so in a country where the richest, whitest people discriminate against the second-whitest, and so on, down the line, till you arrive at the poorest and most purely indigenous. It results in a very small "ruling class" who are characterized by snobbishness and exclusive behaviour, which leads them to turn inward economically and socially. Every other class in a minutely-divided social layer cake behaves the same way. Thus, nepotism and back-scratching divisiveness and isolation are the rule rather than the exception, and the economy as a whole does not improve or develop, because the majority of the nation's population are deliberately kept poor and disenfranchised, and don't see any way to organize and improve their lot.

Of course, there is also the fact that in spite of being disadvantaged and having the odds pitted against them, many lower-class Peruvians are in fact improving their economic lot and, thus, their buying power, at a rate that far outstrips their rise in social status. The parents of one of Joffre's friends at school, for instance, speak excellent English and are engineers, skilled workers, doing well financially, but are very indigenous-looking and continue to wear clothing and hairstyles that set them apart from your average Peruvian mover and shaker. These people, although they don't look it, are in fact powerful potential clients for any business in town. Sonia, too, is doing far better than she was a year ago, and even then she was doing better than she had been earlier in life. All of Sonia and her husband's children are going to university or technical college, even though their father is a truck driver and their mother a housekeeper with little post-secondary education. Both of them have come through very rough times, and are now doing reasonably well and getting better everyday. So the truth of the matter is that the stuck-up clerk at Saga may well be damaging business by ignoring Sonia. Maybe she can't afford to shop there much now, but who knows whether she will be able to in a few years? The company might find that it pays, long-term, to treat all people as potential customers, regardless of their appearance.

Maybe that's still too much to hope for, in this society. I do think, however, that for Peru to advance, economic realities and a general commitment to the economic improvement of all people, in all classes, will have to win out over old prejudices and false senses of entitlement and gentility.

The Colca Canyon

While my parents were visiting, round about the second weekend of August, we made a visit to the Colca Canyon. This canyon is located about a five hour drive, mostly on switchbacks and gravel roads, from Arequipa, and is known for two things: it is the second-deepest canyon in the world (the deepest, Cotahuasi, is also in Peru, about another eight hours of driving past Colca on gravel roads), and it is home to a striking number of enormous condors. The song "El Condor Pasa," made famous by Paul Simon, is like a local anthem and apparently originated in the Colca area.


Driving out of Arequipa, on the way to Colca, you first pass a vicuña reserve. Vicuñas are by far the cutest of the camelids, and their wool is incredibly expensive. A scarf made from vicuña wool can go for anywhere from US $600-$1000, and shawls and coats are astronomically expensive.


Once past the vicuña reserve, we leave the highway and embark down a gravel road. The altitude here is already over 3000 metres, and there is a rest stop where food, herbal teas, and the usual tourist paraphernalia are sold. One of the teas, said to help with altitude sickness, is made with a plant called retama, which makes my pulse race and tastes like . . . meat. Never a good quality in your herbal tea.

Along we bumped and bounced on the gravel roads, Joffre's head lolling in his car seat, Alec vomiting yogurt from time to time, passing grazing llamas and alpacas,


alpine (andean?) meadows, a glacier,


and eventually the 5000 metre above sea level (masl) mark.


We stopped for a moment to gaze down into the valley, and poor Alec, already motion sick and altitude sick, drooped lethargically and threw up some more.

We made the long journey down into the town of Chivay, which sits at the east end of the valley, as we visited it (the river continues further east, and there are more towns along it, but the main tourist stretch of the river runs west from Chivay).


The town sits at 3600 masl, which was fine for us but still a dizzying altitude for many tourists. Orange and grey clouds rolled in and it rained - sleeted even - as we pulled through Chivay and headed the half-hour or so along the river to our destination, the Colca Lodge.


We had to cross the river, and then twist and turn along more bumpy roads till finally we found ourselves at the lodge. Because of the nature of the geography, we drove in from above the lodge, and descended a staircase and crossed a little bridge to get to registration, while porters brought down our bags. In classic "chic trek" style, we were invited to relax and take a cup of tea while reception practically registered for us. The rooms had lofts, with two comfortable twin beds downstairs and two more up. Snowy robes and towels were available, both for use in the room and the hot springs, natural thermal baths located a short walk from the rooms. The baths are built to look as natural as possible, incorporated into the canyon wall stone, and carefully regulated to have perfect temperatures ranging from "bathtub" to "almost-but-not-quite-scalding." Each pool is named after a nearby volcano.


Once checked in, we relaxed, soaked, recuperated, and eventually ate a deluxe buffet dinner before crashing out in our rooms.

The second day at the lodge, Mom and the kids and I didn't leave. We spent the whole day playing, drinking lemonade, sitting in the hot springs, and relaxing. We ate an excellent lunch, and in the afternoon Aaron and I took the boys on a pony ride. Aaron and Dad had gone for a long hike earlier in the day, so the late afternoon was a good time to rest. We had one more soak in the hot springs, and then went up to the bar to hang out with Joffre's new hero, Pedro the barman,


drink a bit of wine, feed the kids, and relax. We took turns eating dinner, as the children were sleeping, and then finished off with a game of Settlers of Catan.

The final morning was a bit hectic, as we had to eat breakfast, pack out, and be ready to go with our driver by 7 am. We were supposed to pick up a local guide in the tiny town of Yanque, but he didn't show. Scared of missing the condors, who leave their nesting area to search for food by about 9 am, we headed off down the valley. After a couple more small stops, we got to the Cruz del Condor lookout by about 8:30. We saw three condors - some people claim to see as many as fifteen on a good day, at the right time - and it was breathtaking.





Colca condors are said to be the biggest in the world, with a wingspan of up to 3 metres, or 10 feet. Even Alec was impressed by the enormous birds flying overhead. By 9 o'clock, true to form, the birds had pretty much abandoned the lookout area, so we headed back to Chivay. We drove back on the opposite side of the river, which gave us a unique view and the opportunity to see more charming little villages.




In one such village, the van got stuck in a rut across the road, and we had to use a board and some passing Chilean tourists to get out.

We ate lunch in a lovely buffet restaurant in Chivay, and stocked up on snacks and drinks before making the long, winding, bumpy trip back to Arequipa. We finally arrived home around 5:00 in the afternoon. It was tiring, but overall a beautiful and unforgettable journey.

Babies, Babies, Babies!!

I would just like to take a moment to welcome:

Sophia Grace Cannon, born Sept 5, 2006
Sofia Delgado Turkman, born Sept 26, 2006
Jakob Elliot Antweiler, born Sept 28, 2006
Stella Maris Mooney, born Sept 29, 2006

And also to say, wow, that was some Christmas 2005 . . .

If I didn't know better, I would think the fates were conspiring to make it so that practically everyone I know is having babies!!

I would show you all pictures of them, but I guess that's not really my place . . .

Glass Houses

So, we went out to a party on Saturday night. Elly stayed with the kids. After we'd tucked her into a taxi, we headed upstairs to go to bed. Aaron said, "hey, what's this glass all over the stairs?" And, sure enough, the stairs all the way up were covered in tiny sparkling slivers and shards of glass. A brief investigation revealed that the glass had come from the big skylight, which had a hole-with-spiderweb-cracking-around-it, reminiscent of the result of a pebble hitting a windshield at high speed. We cleaned the glass up as best we could, but since the next day was Sunday, we couldn't call to get it fixed till yesterday. In the interim, every time a heavy truck went past, it rained glass fragments and dust down the stairwell.

But now there is a new panel in the skylight.


The other big news is that a playhouse has finally been built in the backyard. Now, we asked for a simple, on-the-ground playhouse, for which we would pay, to be built back in March. Absolutely nothing happened. The contractor was unreachable, the homeowner wanted us to pick the house from a catalogue that she failed to provide for us, and then we were often traveling with family. Out of the blue in August, the homeowner showed up saying that the contractor would be starting the treehouse soon, since he was moving in September to Canada. Despite my repeated protests against a treehouse in a yard characterized by 10-foot drops from terrace to terrace, the contractor turned up one day in early September and started working. He promptly realized that the treehouse concept wouldn't work logistically, announced, "I'll be back tomorrow," and turned up ten days later with the makings of a steel frame and platform. The house which eventually resulted is quite pretty:


However, the upper platform is not safe, and they are planning to put in a slide as the means to get down. As there has been no word on when such a slide might arrive, I've asked them to put in a temporary railing, which has not been done.

So, last week, the contractor announced that he'd finished and the house was "ready." The next day, I let Joffre play in the house with Carlos. Ten minutes later he was bleeding profusely from five cuts on his feet. Little trooper that he is, he submitted to cleaning and bandaging with no complaints, and was itching to get back up there immediately. The problem, of course, is that the windows in the house are real glass, and the contractor and his assistant cut the windows inside the playhouse and then neglected to sweep up. So, the whole little house was filled with shards of glass and glass dust. Sonia cleaned it up, and we are going to get a carpet for the room. The homeowner has no intention of further painting or furnishing the little house, however.

Man, I could happily go the rest of my life without dealing with glass detritus again.

Might as Well be Spring

I'm Canadian. We are a people of a strong, contrasting climate. In Manitoba, summer is usually warm-to-hot, with occasional rain. Fall is crisp and cool, or soggy and cool, and leaves change colour and fall off the trees. Birds migrate south. It starts to freeze. Often, we have snow by Halloween. By November, it's really really cold, especially at night. Winter is long, really cold, and snowy. The days, while often blindingly bright, are cold and short. Spring, when it comes, marks a huge contrast to the winter that went before. Suddenly, everything is melting, and earth and branches that were black and dun have turned a pale green with new buds. European and North American holidays reflect the changing seasons; Christmas and Hannukah, falling at the winter solstice, celebrate light in the darkness, Easter celebrates rebirth and renewal in the spring, and Thanksgiving celebrates the harvest in the fall. This is why Canadian Thanksgiving happens more than a month before American Thanksgiving does - our fall comes earlier, generally. For a Canadian, the mere words "September" and "October" conjure up images of autumn leaves, ripe apples, fresh school supplies, steaming ciders, hearty pies, pumpkins and Halloween costumes. It is nigh impossible to separate the notion of fall from the months of September and October, even when one is on the other side of the equator, where these months in fact represent spring. Sort of.

Peru, even southern Peru, is much closer to the equator than Canada is. We are currently about as far south of the equator as, say, the Caribbean is north of it. To get anything approaching the kind of weather changes we see in Canada while in South America, I would presumably have to go to Patagonia, in the south of Argentina. And even then, the climate is so different due to other factors, that it really wouldn't compare. So, I might be more likely to consider it spring now, and get over my fall feelings, if we were moving out of a wintry spell into a warmer, wetter, more springy season. But as far as I can tell, spring in Arequipa mostly means that the days feel a great deal hotter than they were in winter, and the sun rises earlier and sets later - but not by a whole lot - and as the time since the last rainfall grows greater and greater, the amount of dust in the air increases. I said the days feel hotter, even though the highs remain within a degree of each other. I think it's because it doesn't get as cold at night now. And the direct sun is incredibly strong. In theory, we are experiencing greater humidity than before, which is only evidenced in a slight increase in the number of clouds, from zero to a scattered few, and a bit more haze between us and the mountains. So, spring here means hotter, hazier, dustier, and slightly longer days. There was that one cloudy day, too. Nevertheless, the winter turtlenecks, coats and boots have given way to spring fashions - sandals, sundresses, shorts - as the temperatures have climbed from highs of 21 and lows of 2 to highs of 22 and lows of 8.

Spring is nearly over here, I suppose, and summer on its way in. However, if we assume a summer of November-March - five months - the climate changes rather abruptly smack in the middle, in January/February. It almost never rains before early December, and then very little, although the daytime highs climb past 25 degrees. The temperature begins to "drop" down to 21 or so in the latter half of January, and sporadic rain continues. Real rain doesn't come until February. As far as I can see, February is far and away the rainiest month here. Fall isn't really considered to be in full swing till the rains have gone, which is mid-March. So, in contrast to Canadian conceptions of seasons, which come and go as indicated by the changes in the weather, it seems that Peruvian seasons really go by the calendar months, and the biggest climatic shift of the year happens mid-summer.

Some years are far wetter than others; we came in a particularly wet February.

I'm not likely to see rain till we leave Peru. So sad. A few weeks ago, when it got all cloudy that one day, I kept walking around singing, "God said to Noah, 'There's gonna be a floody, floody!'" But nothing happened. Now the forecast is predicting cloudy weather this Friday and Saturday, but rain is highly unlikely.

It doesn't feel like any spring I can relate to. So, my mind keeps circling back to fall in Canada, with the result that my Peruvian friends are now acquainted with pumpkin pie, apple spice muffins, and a wide assortment of autumnal comfort foods. The notion of Thanksgiving dinner is nearly nonsensical in a country where there are three crops a year, where the ground never freezes, where there's no point to preserving food through canning or pickling.

I really miss fall. And spring, for that matter. I figure I have no cause to miss winter, since I'll be getting my fill of it two months from now.

House of Cards

We live in a big house. It's a pretty house. It has nice wood and tile floors, marble countertops (in some places), expensive fixtures and appliances, and a whole lot of shiny wood closets and doors and doorframes and whatnot. It has three storeys, or six depending on what you count as a storey, and four bedrooms, and four bathrooms, and a jacuzzi tub. It has huge picture windows overlooking the terraced fields out back, and a terraced backyard, and all manner of beautiful and luxurious features. Some of you have seen it in person, and others have seen it in photos. If you haven't seen it in photos, click here.

But the thing about this particular house is that it appears to have been built with such a preoccupation with form that function has fallen by the wayside. For instance:

-The electric hot water tank is on the roof, where it is exposed to the cold night winds and various elements, and where should it leak, as it has done, it causes indoor rain. Hot indoor rain.

-The whole main stairwell of the house, which is the central feature around which the house, um, centres, is covered by a big skylight made of alternating stripes of yellow and white glass. It looks a bit like a glass awning. It also, in the event of torrential rain, leaks impressively. Only in the two months when there is rain, admittedly, but when it does rain it really rains.

-No door or window fits very well into its frame. This results in the entrance of water, wind and dust, whatever happens to be going on weatherwise, and during a robust downpour last March, a puddle formed on the rooftop patio, and then seeped under the patio door, causing a waterfall down the big staircase. Also, doors and windows rattle ominously at the slightest breeze/passing vehicle/earthquake. Sometimes it seems that people are simultaneously trying to break in through every door and window.

-The shaft. The master bathroom is lit by a skylight, which is about four feet higher than the ceiling, through a concrete shaft. The skylight itself is not completely closed in; the glass of the skylight sits several inches above one side of its presumed frame. No rain has gotten in, when there was rain, but the shaft channels metallic grit and volcanic dust down into the bathroom in remarkable quantities, so that toiletries and toothbrushes are constantly being coated in grey grit. Twice, now, I've found pigeon feathers in the sink, although I doubt a whole pigeon could get in. Given the absence of a bathroom fan or any sort of ventilation in the concrete walls, the shaft allows humidity from the shower to escape. It's just that it lets a whole lot of other stuff in, too.

-The plumbing is ridiculous. The home has an electric hot water tank, as critiqued above, and also solar water heating. The electric heater runs from 3-5 am and again from 5-7 pm, on a timer. Sometime around 7-9 am, depending on how many baths and showers are happening, the tank runs out of electrically heated water and starts drawing solar heated water instead. For some reason, around this time, the water pressure gets low and we get air in the lines. The result is spitting, popping hot water for anywhere from ten minutes to a half hour. Then, around 5 pm, presumably due to some related factor, if the hot water hasn't been turned on for a while, when it is turned on the pressure is too strong and causes the tap to quiver and hot water to splatter at great velocity out of the sink with the force of the stream.

-The wiring is worrying. The other night when I turned off my bedroom light, I heard the *ping* *ping* of rapidly cooling, contracting metal, and smelled a burnt hair odour. Since then, every time the light is used, it makes odd noises that seem consistent with overheating. The walls are all concrete, and the other day we discovered that an unmarked plastic pipe sticking up out of the ground in the backyard actually leads into the wiring in the kitchen. We know this because Joffre decided to run the garden hose into this pipe, with the result that water poured out of the light switches, electrical outlets, and electric panel that are located in that wall.

-The trouble with wood. Clearly, the wood in the house is mostly for looks. Although there have been no problems with wooden closets and cabinet doors, the wood floorboards have shrunken with the dryness, causing several great, sharp-edged gaps to appear between boards. The base boards are completely cosmetic, and are attached to the wall with glue. Then, three-quarter-round has been flimsily attached to the base boards with a few finishing nails. Base boards are coming off all over the house. Last week, Joffre walked by me brandishing a 10-foot length of three-quarter-round, bristling with finishing nails. When I relieved him of it, he screamed at me for taking his "sword." "Lance," more like.

-The dining room table was made from green wood, apparently, as its majestic girth is now marred by two long and vicious cracks that start at opposite ends of the table and terminate about a foot from the middle on either side. If and when the cracks connect, I fear that a third of the table will fall right off. Also, the chairs around the table are upholstered with leather, which does not handle the rigors of dining table activity well (spills, stains, scuffs, etc), in spite of our attempts to be careful. I will probably need to clean them all with saddle soap before we leave.

-The handles have repeatedly fallen off many drawers and closet doors, because the screws are too short.

-No, really, the plumbing is ridiculous!! We have had pipes replaced, more than once, in both the downstairs bathroom and the kids' bathroom, due to repeated leaks and backup issues. We recently had to have the drain on the kitchen sink repaired due to leaks. In spite of all this effort, the spaces under every single sink in the house are dank, moldy, and wet, to the point in some cases of seriously warping and ruining the melamine cupboard walls. Remember that we live in a desert. When I've pointed this out to the company handymen, they claim that I use too much hot water/water that is too hot, and that this causes the pipes to contract and expand too much, creating leaks.

I'm sure I could think of more issues, but you get the point.