Power shopping in Santa Rosalia

Santa Rosalia keeps surprising me! Today I went shopping with Sr. Jueves to get Christmas tree lights. The grocery store we frequent most often is Moreno on Funeral Street. Although this street probably has a real honest-to-God Mexican name (something like Santos Degollados which you find in most cities and which means ‘Beheaded Saints’), Esperando and I refer to it as Funeral Street because that is where most of the funerals take place, at least that we know about. What happens is the street gets blockaded off with sawhorses so traffic cannot pass through whenever there is a funeral going on. This is because the funerals are open air with all the attendees sitting around on folding chairs. Traffic would be a distraction and probably noisy as well so they just block the street off. This is a one way street, so those wanting to get to the grocery store drive a few blocks below the funeral parlor and back up the street to get closer to the store.

In any event I was just telling Hermana that a glue gun would be really helpful in making the Xmas tree ornaments on which I have been working. First the cook brought me some really sucky rubber cement so I could get glitter on the gourds, then when I got pretty frustrated with that, I asked Sr. Jueves for something resembling Elmer’s glue. He brought me a VERY runny white glue that is so thin it easily spills on everything and makes quite a mess. Well as we were walking up the street to Moreno, he pointed out a florist shop that had some Christmas stuff. When we went into the store there was very little useful to me for Christmas purposes—except glue guns! I was so excited! I never thought I would find a glue gun here. Then we jaunted across the way to Moreno that had about 10 brand new really fresh Christmas trees on their front porch bound up with twine and quite a few boxes of strands of Christmas tree lights for sale.

Everyday the store gets more and more bounty to meet the Christmas demand. I actually found and purchased a squirty can of real Challenge whipping cream, some mandarin oranges, a few more really fresh yams as the ones Sr. Jueves brought yesterday were really tiny. But that is not all, no not all—what I didn’t buy were Bugles, chocolate covered cherries, tins of Christmas cookies, a large box of Francia white zinfandel (ugh!) Then as we were heading back to the house I noticed someone had put live poinsettias in a planter box. I asked Sr. Jueves, what is this red flower that is special here to Christmas—aaaah, a Noche Buena, he said. Do you want one, there is a man selling them here in town. Oh yes, says I. He turns the vehicle up another block and there is a man selling poinsettias right out of his pickup truck for $15. So I bought one. It is amazing what you can find in Santa Rosalia these days!