Picture Painting

Jorge the painter speaks the kind of Spanish that makes me crazy. It's kind of slurry and sounds like Aaron Neville messing with the last syllabal of a song. There is nary a consonant to be found anywhere in the yodel and even a simple phrase like bueno dias becomes hard to decipher as it arrives as when-0de-ee-oss. I fear I will be technically fluent and still be unable to understand the regular speech of the everyday Panamanian. Not that that's a problem. I get by being clueless as to the lyrics of your average rap or hip hop song apart from the ubiquitous "fuck" and when I lived in the South as I young man I went weeks nodding and smiling at people whose language was theoretically the same one I was using even though only every fourth or fifth word was recognizable as such. So no big deal really.

"What's that Jorge?" Si, si, por favor. Whoops. I think I just agreed to have the window glass painted over. Ah well, we can always go outside for the view.

Jorge has been here since Tuesday painting most of the interior. It all looks good and is essentially the same sort of peachy color we had before, but a touch darker and, of course, less faded looking. Gus can't wait to get wet and rub himself dry against the bottom ten inches of the walls. I'm told though, that this paint is easier to clean than the old stuff. Gus is looking at me as I write this and has just said in dog, a language easier to understand than street Spanish, "you're sure to find out."

Displaced, discombobulated, disarrayed and other forms of being dissed short of disaster are what it's like to be living in a house while it's being painted. Nothing is where it is supposed to be. "Charly, hand me the remote will ya." Charly? Charly?" Now where have they put her. Amazingly, Gus remains the same color. I thought for sure, he'd end up peachy and we'd have to wait for movement to see him like picking out Predator against the backdrop. We've tried to vacate for as long as we can the last two days, but we've run out of things to do outside the house. I've had today planned for weeks now and I'm not altering my schedule for any reason. The NFL season gets underway at seven and as soon as I finish this, I'm going downstairs to sit in front of the tv to wait for it. I just hope there are air holes in those drop cloths.

There was one other thing I wanted to talk about today that has nothing to do with what I've already talked about but since a segue is usually called for at times like this - I once had a Toyota Segue that got 36 miles to the gallon- here's the one that comes to mind. Kevin Bacon once had his house painted by a guy named Kirk which just happens to be the name of the most famous character that William Shatner ever played. Shatner is now on a show called Boston Legal. Charly and I have seen commercials for BL several times and commented that it looked like something we would want to watch. Unfortunately, it never played here in Panama...we thought. This is not unusual, by the way, especially in sports. Many events are promoted, but never seen, which better not be the case with tonight's game or Gus and I will be completely out of sorts, which is a thing you should never be out of. Anyway, flippingthe flipping dial last night, I came across a show called Justicia Ciega which means, Blind Justice. Wouldn't you know, it's Boston Legal. I can only speculate as to the name change, but I think it has something to do with Mariano Rivera, a Panamanian, playing for Yankees. That and Boston being a hard word to slur in Spanish. Anyway, it appears to be a good show. We'll watch it again.