Esta casa

#13 of 20 things I’m going to miss about San Miguel is this house.

I love the roof; someday a real gardener will fill it with plants and it’ll be gorgeous–for us, the most gorgeous part was the view, though I did put up papel picado (cut paper, actually cut plastic for outdoors).

Iglesia San Antonio, San Miguel de Allende

I love the shutters that open onto the stairway, the porthole windows in the bathrooms and closet, and the light that streams down from the many skylights and the glass roof over the stairway.

I’m not going to miss the pigeons. Oh, okay, I admit I’ve liked hearing them coo outside the “art room,” a.k.a. “the other bedroom,” “Bubbe’s room” for its longest-staying guest, and “____’s room” for whoever was staying there at any given moment. But I could do without their poop in the kitchen courtyard. I also don’t like it when they die on the roof, but they like it even less, so I shouldn’t complain. Notice that the glass does nothing to repel them. Maybe it works against humans, since we haven’t had a break-in.

I love showering under a skylight, especially when it’s raining, evoking memories of showering in the rain in the open-air shower at Girl Scout Camp. I love the fireplace big enough to roast a goat, even though of course no goats were harmed.

I love the kitchen, even though the more burners you use, the less gas flows to each one, and the oven is barely capable of staying hot enough long enough to bake cookies.  I’ll be happy to be back in our own kitchen, but I’ll miss the tiles and the natural light.

I love the eclectic mix of furniture (including the Wardrobe We Dare Not Open, because of its emphatic sign saying “Don’t open!  It falls!”) and all the beautiful carving, like on the calla-lily mirror (hard to see–it’s hard to use flash near a mirror) and the bench.

(This is the Bubbe’s-bedroom headboard. Ours is made out of an old door, with the iron keyhole just over my pillow.)

And I love the funky art and crosses everywhere, and the way they’re hung on the walls with the “wherever there happens to be a nail sticking out” method.  Appropriately, my weak grasp of the image editing in WordPress has led to a similar effect right here.

This is my favorite cross, which we dubbed “chubby Jesus.” I love his expression, which suggests that what Jesus felt as he died was less anguish than a kind of resignation at the sad foolishness of humanity.  “Lord, it’s up to you now.”

And I love the patio and the way so much Mexican architecture brings the outdoors indoors, but that’s for another entry.