Aaron cracked me right up when he was telling me about a recent opportunity he had to chauffeur a France French member of the team visiting for meetings at the two plants here in MX.  Waze is a MUST for any travel here and sound MUST be turned on and volume turned UP… relying on the tangled mess of multi-coloured road lines on the screen is simply impossible and you never really can take your eyes off the road or stop continuously scanning around you, so you need the Waze Lady’s voice to guide you along. Driving towards downtown MX where the corporate headquarters are, Aaron and his French passenger are quiet, listening intently for the Waze Lady’s next instruction.  “Stay Right and Turn Left,”she says.  His passenger’s head pivots from gazing out the window to staring at the phone, then he looks at Aaron and says,”It’s a little different driving in Mexico, isn’t it?  That is an interesting instruction…”  About sums up the general absurd direction of life here – head in one direction, but oh, turn in the other right NOW…no matter if you’re screaming across 6 lanes of heavy traffic to get there, horns wailing,  THAT is where you need to go!  Just react!!

Tomorrow is the 12 week mark at the hotel!!  I’m about as sick of living here as you may be about hearing about it!!  🙂  But we broke a record, and we didn’t even have to call Guinness!!  The hotel’s finance lady actually scared the you-know-what out of me last Thursday when she bounced up to us and in a perky, two-tones too-high voice exclaimed, “I hear you’re leaving tomorrow.  We miss you already!!”  We were in our ninth-floor living room getting homework done, as per our week-night routine here.  My jaw was now sitting squarely on my chest and my eyes were searching her face and it was clearly telling me that, according to the hotel, our stay was up… She started to waver and now there was all kinds of doubt hanging in that well-Febreezed air… She runs to check her computer, I grab for my phone and immediately text Aaron…so wish I’d opted for the wine tonight when I was offered…Aaron has no idea what HR is doing or has done, so we didn’t really know what date our stay had been extended to, until just that moment!!   There is NO WAY they can send us away now, with no house to go to, no furniture… and then she plays the “Well, I’m not sure we can continue to offer the same rate next week, ” and “did you know the hotel is really booked next week, but I’ll see what I can do…” cards.   Of course, this sets a bit of an awkward tone and she goes away and I fall silent, not feeling or being overly friendly with the staff after that… Fast forward to dinner, Aaron is finally home and we are ordering when she reappears at the dining room, wanting to assure us that we are always welcome and how much they have loved having us there (blah, blah, blah).  She goes on to explain that we are not typical clients, with a family and animals, but because we are there it feels more like home for the staff.  “And you broke a Hilton record for being the longest staying family we’ve ever had!”  Aaron wondered where they were going to be displaying our trophy and did they want us to pose for a picture beside it? 🙂   What a claim to fame!!

Coming down for breakfast on a Saturday morning recently, the usual concierge chorus of “Buenos Dias!” greets us as we disembark from the elevator.  We are crossing the lobby towards the dining room when we are waved over by the “head” concierge.  He welcomes us all then turns his attentions to me.  “Miss, you see, well, you know, there has been a little bit of a problem… with the laundry.  The children’s school shirts, you know, are white… well, they no good any more…”  I start to laugh, which surprises him, but I know exactly what has happened to those white uniform T’s – they have been bleached yellow or dyed blue with the jeans… it was really only a matter of time and I’m just glad it wasn’t me that did it!! lol!! (And I’d love to meet the committee that decided it was a good idea to make children, especially boy-children, wear white shirts everyday to school!?).  Mansell whispers to me,”Mom, Cool! I guess we’ve been here long enough for them to screw up our laundry!” I laugh harder.  Our concierge friend is puzzled by my reaction, but continues,”You bring me the cost and I replace them?”; went to the uniform store at the school and replaced them Monday morning and submitted the “cost” (receipt!:) after school.  A week later, when I called the desk to request our latest load of laundry back, a different concierge on the line joked that “hopefully there won’t be any problems with your laundry this time!”  No secrets here!!

Absurdities abound… Last week we went to Costco and bought a fridge, a dishwasher and a microwave.  Now, it may seem we were a little ahead of ourselves, given that we don’t yet have anywhere to officially put them, but the sale was over end of February (and it was a good one!) and we actually waited til the last day of the sale to buy them, eternally hopeful that our house keys would be handed to us sooner than later… here we are over a week later, and still no keys.  We tried to arrange for the delivery with the real estate agent for the better part of a week, and finally we were told that the landlord did not want us having any access to the house until the deposit has been paid… which I suppose makes sense… but at this point all contracts, etc. have been signed and the money is on it’s way through the abyss of bureaucracy, which just takes ooodles of time, come on people!!  So he’s being a bit silly and we’re caught in the middle of it.  And now we have appliances that are paid in full, no longer on Costco property, we THINK with the delivery company, who may or may not have tried to deliver them… I worry that we may have just donated a really decent fridge, microwave and dishwasher to some lucky somebody… How is it possible that we’ve lost our appliances in Mexico City???  Is this really happening…???

Definitely having many “never-in-a-million-years” did we ever expect to be dealing with THIS, moments…