The Sea is a Salty One

  Flamingo yesterday. I had an epiphany this week. Over the time since Covid I'd become somewhat depressed. Not continually, more like feeling uncomfortable in my own skin in my dear home here. Why? Well, the constant demands of our neighbor here I have had such issues with. Also I've been mourning my old life, my healthy life, a life were walking into a building holding lit cigarettes, fuzzy dogs, strong colognes, and cleaning supplies didn't mean epipen+emergency room. Back almost twenty years ago when I got my diagnosis I went through an extended period of mourning over the changes. Now I'm seeing far more clearly what I've lost, and it hurts.  What's the deal? I watched as they took advantage of my husband, again, again, and yet again. Every time he tried to break away only to have this person push the guilt buttons hard. I've talked to the husband endlessly, including him complaining about this person to me. But the husband could not stand up to this pe...

  Bought a new sewing machine. The computer screen on my Bernina finally kicked the bucket and cannot be repaired here, so I'm going with a Janome for all my quilting needs.  Light blue and covered with pictures of cats, yes please, what more could a girl want? The last few days, actually weeks, has been sort of rough with the exception of the days in Arenal. My darling husband had being going through quite a lot after finding out a few weeks ago that one of his best friends since middle school, Big Joe, was terminally ill with lung cancer. On Friday he finally passed on even as my husband was fretting and trying to decide if he was going to fly to the States and see Joe. Airline prices had gone nuts after the USA bombed Iran. I am merely surprised it took this long for Joe to develop lung cancer. Lordy could that man just smoke and smoke and smoke.. and drink beer at Max's bar. I have hoisted a few with Joe at that place listening to his stories of crowd surfing and the local...

 We spent most of last week on vacation. Figured we needed some days away before we head to Louisiana for the final things to do for my mother. It was good and bad at the same time. A rare photograph of the Arenal Volcano completely exposed. Many times it's ringed in smoke. Not this time. The drive was fine. We stopped for pastries at the German bakery before arriving at the usual place we stay, a hotel on the mountain above the Arenal Waterfall looking out at the volcano and Cerro Chatto. We pulled up into the parking lot and the parking lot was gone, just a small amount of gravel to park on. At first I was upset because sitting on the huge pool deck reading was one of my favorite things to do there, but they are rebuilding much more nicely this starting to look shabby hotel. Turns out they tore down the hotel and are rebuilding it, with, get this, 6 count 'em 6 handicapped accessible rooms too. That's amazing. Most hotels do not have that capacity! None of this affected u...

  Using this photo for the back cover of my book. It's Copey, a typical evening with the clouds coming down over the mountain peaks, very otherworldly. To the extreme left you see a tiny view of the church that burned down about a month before we left. Large several hundred year old wooden church in this tiny town burned to the ground. Using a photo of the church burning down as the front cover. I had real fun with the back cover adding fake quotes from various Christian Evangelical provocateurs I've knocked heads with, including adding in a fake Kenneth Copeland "WHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooo" More amusing than trying get other writers to do a book blurb about my book being amaze balls. Very few books are that amazing, I don't think mine is. But I like fun, I need fun because right now isn't very fun at all. So what's my major malfunction, Kenneth? Just family. Church. Church had eight - count 'em - eight dogs equals mild anaphylaxis for me hooray. Prep...

  Walking the unpaved back roads of Copey when I first got here almost nine years ago. Believe it or not that little mountain stream holds trout.  I should have known that the offer was codswallop. It's a local realtor trying to buy my mother's house at a fire sale price. Nope. I know what it's worth. I know what others on that block not on the golf course have sold for when they needed a complete remodel. Oh please, I know for a fact that the few undeveloped lots in the neighborhood are going for at least the amount of the offer. I think some folks see an empty house, listen to town scuttlebutt and try to get in at an unbelievably low price. I can afford to sit on it for the right buyer. And now the Aunt Heap has spoken. Late last night one of them messaged me, telling me to call the across the street neighbor. I told her I would have the husband do it. He's the one with the relationship with the eighty six year old man there. This is the same neighbor that emailed the...

  Waiting on an offer on the haunted doll house on the country club 5th hole. That photo is just the dolls in the living room. You should see the stacks in the other rooms. Heard last night that someone is eager to buy my mother's home. I am supposed to be going there next week. This thing might all be over with now except for the exchange of moneys and the shouting. Gawd I hope so. I have no genuine need or use for the house. It would be a good house for someone, just not me.

  Feeling pretty belssed right now. Even in the heat, the dust and the copious wildfires. Oh, the wildfires you would not believe them. Every year during dry season someone burning leaves gets out of hand and large swathes have been known to burn. Right now it's in the mountains above Hernandez, not far from Avellanas. Smelled and witnessed it the other day at twilight as we rode back from Santa Cruz and the credit union/co-op. Hanging around between the beach and the road. It creates some magnificent sunsets. The more smoke and dust, the prettier the sunset. Like this: or this:   The air was horrid that day. I'm always darting out to get spectacular sunsets even in the dust/smoke if the asthma's not so bad. See the panga boats anchored just offshore? To get out to the big sailboats and cruisers.  I've been in the best mood I've felt in I swear it's been three years, maybe even four. The summer I came back and discovered the person feeding our cats had been givi...

  Tamarindo beach in black and white. Still sick but only whining about it on my page The Mast Cell Block Tango . Let us just say that walking out into the world beyond our living room is like stepping into the dry heat of a blast furnace right now.  We're still trudging back and forth to the credit union over an hour away, still trying to scare up the right documents to move the bulk of our liquid assets there since the bank is suddenly paying diddly squat. Nothing in Costa Rica happens in a hurry and it doesn't pay to think that it will. It just makes you crazy if you ignore Tico Time and think anything will happen rapidly. I've long since lay down my illusions and frustrations over Tico Time and now I expect it. Saturday we went out to see 2 new friends of the husband's. They were DJing 80s music at a bar we'd never been to before. The place was merely meh, it didn't even have the virtue of being on the beach like most of the joints we go to. It was positivel...

  The yearly flowering of our banana tree. It's been pretty dull this week. Going to and fro from a credit union in the next big town over to get a better rate on our CDs. Very tedious and time consuming. However in the middle of the quietude with our home and lives in crash lands my mother yet again. One of her neighbors tells me that he saw steam coming from the roof vent and went into the house to take a closer look. It was the faucet in the bathtub running full on. He accused me of leaving the water running after telling me he shut the water off at the main valve and I must hire a plumber the next time I visit. I did not leave the water on! Not at all! I did notice you have to give that old thing a hard wrench to turn it off so there was zero dripping. Which is what I did. I am not really surprised this happened because I'm pretty sure my mother stopped all maintenance work the house something like ten years ago. There are some repairs that need to happen.  Came to the con...

  Trying to stay peaceful, which isn't easy right now! Asthma drugs have amphetamine like side effects so many times I feel like kicking ass but I don't! Popping benadryl like effing TicTacs. Stuck inside for now. The Ogress never appeared! Good! She's back trespassing on someone else now. Last week when she was trying to use our pool the husband drug his feet on her. He never allowed her in. She contacted our tenants and wanted them to allow her in. No dice! Goodie, goodie, gum drops. I know this runs contrary to what my husband keeps trying to manifest -- helping anyone that asks. He sometimes gets taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. I'm proud of him for his reluctance to allow her to be here. Says a lot about how he also does not want various folks here any more than I do. But today is a new day and I am rejoicing, well, as much as I can rejoice from the bed. Skipped church because of the dust levels outside.  Positives this week? The jeweler finished my emerald ...

 Man I wish this was real and it actually worked because I could use some coconut silkiness. Asthma gone haywire right now, but I'm not whining about my idiotic health here any longer, just in my Mast Cell Block Tango page . Separated it out because it's a lot and I needed to detail it for anyone else maybe mightily struggling to get a MCAS or systemic mastocytosis diagnosis. Right now I am this.  Yep, Crackheadin' Mast Cell city right now. I know I said I'd never talk about this awful woman again but it's rant mad shirt or explode at this point. I am LAUGHING at all of this. I don't have the mental bandwidth to actually be terrifyingly angry because, well, mast cell. I will make my displeasure more known once this lifts. So in the midst of this, my grief over Porque, my annoyance over Mr. Ogre and pal standing up the husband and trying to deal with Bottomless Babs from long distance the Ogress inserts herself again. How this time? She whines to the husband, and...

 Not just because of the asthma, but other things. The fact that the husband was stood up yet again by Mr. Ogre at a social event was infuriating. Wish he would realize that the guy is nothing but bad news. I did paint a portrait of Miss Porque. The house feels very strange with a mere one cat now. So much so we've been talking about getting a kitten. I don't know how Stinky will react.  Here's Porque's portrait. Tomorrow I am doing Stinky's picture. He's happy as a clam to be the only one in the house. Much more relaxed.  

  We're coming up on the ninth anniversary in our house. After we'd been here a few years and Jim started feeding the feral colony we had one of the kitties move in. This one, Miss Porque or Pork, Porkie, Porkenstein, Porkerrella and Porkohantas. I called her so many goofy names over the past seven years. She'd show up, park herself on the sill of the bedroom window and look in at me. She'd run if I tried to get close. But eventually she relocated to the covered lanai that wraps around three sides of the house. Eventually I could even pet her. Then she came in through the cat door and never really left. It was " Hey I live here now. I own you. You are my new family ." She was sweet, loving, always purring and wanted to be petted. Quite the contrast to the evil genius that is Stinky who fights snakes and iguanas and nags me via those record-able pet buttons to feed him treats. Not sweet Porkie, even if she developed the bad habit of thinking anything we were ea...

  About the only sort of guy I trust to do an exorcism. The guy in the middle helms a church that's actually been doing that crazy demonology work and exorcisms.  A lot has gone down this week. Highlights, lowlights. Towards the end of the week we visited the Ecomuseo de la Ceramicas in Guaitil. If you're ever in Guanacaste Costa Rica take a morning or afternoon and visit this place. They have pottery in the museum that dates back before the time of Christ. Pottery is still made in this town using the old traditional methods. We all got to make our own pottery animals. I did a tortuga (tortoise) and the husband did a pato (duck). Well worth the twenty bucks a head! Didn't take photos. They have all sorts of handmade pottery for sale too! Yesterday the washer and dryer were delivered. I got a matched set of dark gray LG machines and just in time.Woke up this morning with a stomach ache before my stomach started spewing its contents all over the place. It was one of those ...

  Let's just say they aren't going well. Not taking or anything else involving art classes. Saturday. Painting class and I'm sitting nearby a woman my husband knows of and does not like. My husband likes everyone. He does not like her, which tells me there's something very wrong going on with her. We ran into her during our last Price Smart run. She's a weirdo. Just very off putting vibes. The painting is ugly. Ugly example. Ugly wrong directions with ugly ideas all the way around. No, it's not the one above. That's one I painted twenty years ago and I love. It's based on a place I used to go to off Pensacola, Florida. Weirdo lady kept yapping that the teacher promised them a "Picasso" alike project. Well no, I started explaining, this project has more in common with a Piet Mondrian or a Mark Rothco than Picasso. Just like that I'm sucked into a college level explanation of painting styles of the more modern artists and what distinctives th...

  Caballeros at the Santa Cruz Rodeo festival last week Yesterday I was on pins, needles and threads going to church. Was quite curious to see if the pastor of the best gosh darn mini megachurch in the rainforest (his name for it, not mine) would mention any need to pray for the things going on in our world. Meaning the shootings in Minnesota by ICE agents. Crickets of course. Nothing, de nada, it was all sunshine and "control your thoughts" per usual. I don't get why the hubby loves this church because a lot of the theology is out of Christian Nationalism.   The funny: The Ogress was there when I was walking in and I complimented her on her pretty dress. She looked at me, started to smile and say something before remembering that we're supposed to be mortal enemies in church. So she scowled, turned up her nose and went elsewhere. Laughing because whenever I run into her in town she's friendly still, but in church there is something of a performance going on in fr...

  Yes, yes, I have been here a lot the last two weeks. We've been in Santa Cruz moving some of our investment funds to a credit union here. Gonna give you a big moving to Costa Rica secret -- the banks and credit unions here offer the best certificate of deposit rates, unlike the USA. We live off the interest of our various investments in Costa Rica. If you do that not only will you likely beat the volatile stock market along with the bonds and CD rates, you'll gain investor status here. It makes residency much easier. Costa Rica just wants to make sure you can support yourself if you move here. Pretty excited tonight! My new dishwasher has been installed and made pretty short work of the dishes. I have been living in this house nearly eight years with me being the solemente dishwasher. I am so thrilled! Ordered the new washer and dryer and they're supposed to be in at the store in a week, and installed the Tuesday afterward. Repairman here tomorrow to work on putting a cov...

  About as much fun as getting groped without consent. See I can poke fun at the Democrats too. Since May/June when we had to fly down to Louisiana because my mother was in the hospital we've all be puzzled over the rapidity of her dementia decline. Was it even possible to lose marbles so suddenly? The best the medical experts would say was "white ischemic matter found throughout brain" with no deeper explanation than "causing dementia".   Not so now. More tests and a more definitive diagnosis of something I never heard of before - CSVD or ' Cerebral Small Vessel Disease.' Her brain is dying while her body is in tip top condition from her years of excessive workouts. Not an ounce of fat on her body anywhere. Her cardiologist said she has the heart of a much younger woman, even with all the AFib. None of that matters if your brain is toast. The brain is the boss and it needs fat to live and function. They've tried the limited spectrum of dementia dru...

  Feeling like a hen in a pot sailing on the ocean a long way from everyone. Found out this afternoon there have been many more falls by Mom and the hospitalists say she's needing cameras to watch her all the time, possibly round the clock nursing and hospice. Mostly what I am feeling at this point is relief. It's her own poor little brain dying. Very likely I will be going back to Louisiana for a spell.

  I have been better behaved, I promise! Although I was anxious to fly the double birds like this to 2025 because of the mom shenanigans and the husband's cancer recurrence.  The last day of the year was anti climatic. I went to a new beach I'd not seen before hidden away between Brasilita and Flamingo. I wish I'd have brought a camera because there's a small island just off shore that you can walk to during low tide. I cannot wait to wobble over there and hunt for sea beans! That was the most excitement of the holiday. I fell asleep early, work up just as the fireworks were going off and went right back to sleep. Tried to go to sleep early last night. I felt tired, but unable to sleep well, waking up again and again with leg cramps and pain, weird dreams and the like. By the time I got up this morning it was pretty obvious something was deeply off. Dang, on laundry day too.  Now I have the flu, no doubt exposed by some American slumming it at one of our local grocery s...