The Sea is a Salty One

We survived the flight, the memorial, and the trip home. No, I did not mud wrestle Mrs. Satan. I did drink a lot of tequila. But we still had behaving badly relatives and for once it was not either Mrs. Satan or I even if she did wear a rather questionable dress to the graveside service. Very flashy to the point of almost inappropriate. Not that many others dressed like society usually demands you do for a funeral. But none of them wore attention-getting get ups either. I wore my expensive black lace dress and was clearly very overdressed by today's funeral standards. My mother did not show up for the service, which was awesome because I know I would have been treated to a many months long rant on the evils of violating Miss Manner's and the Junior League's ideas on funereal splendor. I consider the issue really a non-issue. Wear what you want even if family members will snicker over it for ages, like the entire family still does over the low cut nearly red dress my m...

So I'm supposed to be packing for the funeral trip right now, cleaning the cat box, making sure there is fresh bed linens on the spare bedroom's bed for the house sitter. What have I been doing? Watching the monkeys instead. This morning instead of the usual lone ancient howler monkey that lives on our hillside he showed up with his entire troop, babies, mamas and himself. I was fascinated. They were up in the trees just beyond my patio. I sat outside much of the day, watching the babies climb up and down and the adults flop down on the branches to snooze. Endlessly entertaining instead of shoving clothing into a suitcase for a trip I have no desire to take. Tried to take photos but it's dark in the trees. I put a few grainy edited ones on Facebook of the howlers. We've already run into some crazy schedule hassles. The airline changed our flight to an earlier one so now into the three hour layover to get through customs in Dallas we have a four and a 1/2 hour layo...

Yeah, it's the middle of the night. Yeah, I'm up. Why? I cannot sleep because I'm doing some pre-memorial service worrying. A week from today we will be state side while a house sitter lives in our Tamarindo home to feed the kitty, water my sad attempt at a vegetable garden and keep random locals from breaking in and stealing our crappy tiny television. There will finally be a memorial service from my Maw in Law, who passed in mid October while we were also state side. We wanted the funeral and memorial service to take place while we were there in October. Even our kids flew out to Texas in anticipation of a funeral. My husband's brother and his second wife, Mrs. Satan. insisted we not hold the funeral then, but do it the week between Christmas and New Years. Great, just what I always wanted to do, give up two holidays and pay outrageously inflated airline fare on the busiest week of high tourist season here in Costa Rica. We dickered back and forth a few times on...

I've not posted in awhile I realize. It's been days of guests, dealing with getting our investments moved here, days on the beach, well most days on the beach. Sometimes I have to stop and do things like laundry, buy groceries, slide on down to the chicken shack and the fruit stand. That's between having mojitos and chifrijos on the beach. Playa Conchal, Playa Avellanas, Playa Danta, Playa Langosta, Playa Brasolita, Playa Grande and many more visited. I'm as brown as a leather satchel without wrinkles now. I've swam daily in the Pacific Ocean. One day I stood on a high cliff over the ocean and viewed an endless vista of beaches tucked into mountain coves. During the run up week to Christmas I had one of those most unique Costa Rican experiences. I went to the local bullfights at the festivals every village throws in mid December. They build the bullring from scratch every year with trucked in lumber, haul in carnival rides, cotton candy makers and other yummy ...