One of the gifts I bought Talluah for her birthday was a bag of leña (firewood). It’s not romantic but when you’re married to someone whose feet are colder than a frozen turkey it makes sense. Leña is readily available in Easy, a hardware store, but there is obviously the problem of lugging a sack of firewood across town on a regular basis.
We had a friend call a leña man and explain where we live and a price was set. We live at the end of a paseo and agreed to meet the truck at the intersection at 3:00. At 3:00 we were told that the truck wouldn’t arrive for another 90 minutes. It looks like our clocks have been reset to South American times. At 4:30 the call came through that the truck will arrive at 5:00. I waited from 5 until 5:30 when Talluah came up to the end of the paseo and said that he will call us when he arrives.
You might feel proud of us having all theses amazing phone conversations with the leña man but this is a moment akin to Cyrano de Bergerac with Talluah chatting with Boris on Facebook while he was phoning the leña man.
At 6:25 Boris called us and I went up to the corner to wait for our timber. But at 6:30, only three hours after the original agreed time, the leña man called Boris and said that he couldn’t see me, the only 6’2” pale skinned person standing on the corner. We met and then he asked me how far the house was. I took him for a walk and then listened as he explained to his two-man crew how far they had wheel the timber. I have a feeling that reference was made to my mother but I wouldn’t be able to testify in a court of law.
We now have a pile of timber a metre high and two metres long in our living room and it’s all eucalyptus so there is a distinct smell of home.
Where's the firewood photo, we want to see it and the men wheeling it up the street?.... although maybe they wouldn't have appreciated the photographic interest!
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