The Sea is a Salty One

  What I sometimes feel like saying, although I am not usually this level of rude or petty to folks. I just think it, and dump the petty here. Yesterday I spent another day running around like a crazy person. I was cleaning the living room and kitchen like a fiend scrubbing while still figuring out what to pack and washing, drying, ironing and packing. When you have a chronic illness you grab the days with decent function hard and do it all. I am high on stress right now. Cannot do anything else as its raining all the time here right now, the last gasp of rainy season. We need to garden but that has to wait until the rains end. Last night we were laying in bed, myself reading a book by one of the kids in a TLC reality television show exposing how toxic and traumatic being raised in front of the camera was, and the husband watching BBC news when the "ask" we'd been expecting happened. What ask? The ask I was talking about last week when someone was fawning over the husband...

  If a photo summed up my day. The problems with Mom continue. Last night she managed to try and climb out of the bed, fell and broke her hip. The night before she did the exact same thing but hit her head. Stitches and tests to make sure the cabesa wasn't permanently hurt. Today they had to do a full hip replacement. Aunt is making all the medical decisions. I am so confused right now. Memory care says her balance is gone and she must use a wheelchair, but here she is in the hospital getting out of restraints and climbing over the rails only to fall. Getting a hip replacement when she cannot even walk now. They have a sitter in there with her right now and they stepped up the restraints. I offered to fly in and help, I have tickets in ten days to be there but I could be there sooner if needs be. So far I'm being told not to rush. It's kind of heartbreaking watching all of this unfold from so far away. I regret not bringing her here to Costa Rica where the same level of car...

  A Guanacaste cowboy and his cows. Well, Bottomless Betty is now also Battling Betty.  It's been a day, actually more than a day. Last night I was afraid to watch the election results. I instead read a book about circus life before tuning in to the bread and circuses that was the US midterm elections. Thrilled to discover more people rejected the entire cruel zeitgeist of our administration. Couldn't sleep and watched until the wee hours. Today was us going to one of the few higher end home furnishing places. We're purchasing a large (7 feet tall by five feet wide) fountain for the back yard along with a multi piece outdoor dining set, various rattan chairs and the coolest swinging two person hammock I've seen in years. Thrilled. November is the month to buy furnishings. Everything was sale priced to move. As soon as we returned to the house my messenger app exploded with my aunt. It's my mother. She's been hauled from her happy hidey hole in memory care to the...

 ...foot traffic visa runs by expats and others? I wish I had taken photos the last time I did the border run! This photo is from the time before that.. The husband standing under the Sandinista flag. Yes, the same Sandinista that Reagan and Bush kept trying to illegally funnel money into so they would overthrow the government. How did that work out? Well, they did and it's not an improvement. Just like every other time the CIA has meddled in Central and South American politics. Don't remember the date of the photo. I've been all turned around since my mother's goat rodeo started and I started having to fly out to Louisiana regularly. I haven't given the visa run a thought in a long time. It's changed a lot, and I mean a lot a lot in the nine and a half years we've been living here. In the early days we went to the border a mere month after I arrived in Costa Rica because the husband's three month tourist visa was running out. Pro tip: any organization ...

 ... he never promised me a rose garden!  Not the final state of our back yard! The wall has been painted. Twice! All those piles of stuff turned into a swimming pool and Jacuzzi.  Yesterday was the husband's yearly what will we do about the yard verklempting, and watching someone I know is a thief and the slowest laziest most unskilled gardener strip the back yard of the beautiful birds of paradise from the back yard. These things: Orchids, Ginger and blossoms that are actually a variety of Heliconia not birds of paradise! Husband keeps calling them birds of paradise, but that name has stuck.  I wasn't watching the work much. There's nothing out there for Stealy McStealypants to steal, just a rechargeable radio and old bottles of sunscreen. They aren't worth it. Husband asked me when I was cleaning the kitchen what I thought about the work ongoing. I told him Stealy was working with a slowness that not even a stoned sloth on Xanax would move. Later when I looked I d...

  Hey, uh, buddy, you may not be as "straight" as you are claiming.... Just like certain people aren't as good and Godly as they pretend. Yesterday I was having something of an emotional hot mess of a meltdown because yet again at church a pile of folks brought dogs into the sanctuary and it made my asthma go haywire after almost two weeks of bonkers haywire reactions. I am considering my options including turning this place into the health dept. here. Today I am better, but I woke up and took one look at my normally beautiful and relaxing looking side of the bedroom and see what looks like the doings of a junkie = multiple pairs of abandoned shoes on the bedside rug and so many empty dropped where they fell all over the nightstand nebulizer vials. I guess when I'm in that state I am the worse of junkies, not worried about keeping everything tidy like normally. So I'm cleaning the bedroom this am after another neb use. I do have a cute little cat hook that I'm...

  I cannot tell if RFK Jr. was in my yard or if the lurking raccoons were. Yesterday I made pork chops for dinner with baked potatoes and honey glazed fried apples. Husband took his plate to our dining room table on the lanai. A few minutes later I had to call him in to take a call from the kids, our adult kids. Didn't think to warn him about leaving his plate unattended. He went back out twenty minutes later and someone had jacked his pork chop, boosting it right off the plate, left the potatoes and apples alone. Took just the meat. Pretty sure it's just raccoons as they're the reason our doors and cat door are locked at night now, to prevent some furry thieves from taking our crackers and running that purloined goodness straight out the cat door for a feast. That pork chop was a beast feast!  They were calling to tell us about our son's new job! Hallelujah and praise jibbers, he finally scored a good IT job in the Washington DC area and starts in a few weeks. We also ...