The Sea is a Salty One

We close on the house tomorrow, just after lunch, and start schelpping our nine suitcases, 35 shipping boxes and piles of random stuff to the new place. It sounds like more than it is. On Sunday we got wind of a development we had not looked at in our price range and a huge farm in the hills around Lake Arenal, and took off for some sightseeing before deciding both places were simply too remote. Monday seemed like it was our new daily weekday routine, get up, get dressed, go to the bank, hurry up and wait, talk to the bank officer about more picky details and then head home. We both got home shortly after lunchtime, ate and took naps, getting up just in time to meet the realtors, both the liar and the less of a liar and someone that the Lying Liar was pushing as THE pool guy in Guanacaste. Liked the pool guy, and he had some great things to say about the property and installing a pool. What we were not prepared for was his estimate of around 40 thousand to install the pool. Jim...

Saturday morning took a weird turn. Jim poked me awake early even if I was staggering around under the effects of my asthma and allergy meds before coffee. He wanted me to immediately print out a copy of the engineering report and the architectural report from the home inspection team to hand over to lying realtor. Printed the reports out, threw on a beach dress while downing a cup of coffee and tried to make sure my feet were in the right sided flip flops. We went to see our lying realtor (my new name for him). I thought we were just dropping the copies off and then meeting with the sellers realtor who lies somewhat less at 4 pm. But no, no, no, we were having a full bore on meeting to discuss the reports. I'd only had a tiny bit of coffee, I'm fighting my stupid body's tendency to try and stop me from breathing, and I'm still dealing with a body hangover for having eaten the most delicious, but stomach affecting cheeseburger. Three days before I'd had a grille...

This week has been taken up yet again with the roiling cluster fuck of our house purchase. The bank here in Costa Rica has refused for almost three weeks now to release our funds to us. I'm scampered around like a crazed chipmunk hording for winter, but the only things I'm hording is a flood of paperwork proving that the money is honestly ours from honest endeavors. It's enough of a sum that's it has created massive stress levels in both of us. It's enough to buy enough CDs to support ourselves on the 8% return rate here in Costa Rica combined with enough to buy the house, the property and the guesthouse, buy some furniture, a washer and dryer and install a swimming pool. Yeah, 8% return, a crazy high return when you cannot even get 1% in America at that bank. The government bank here is backed and insured so the money is safe, well as safe as money can be overseas. Here's the scary bit about about of this and why is was more of a hassle for us than most fol...

I have glossed over the raw nerves and sheer anxiety dealing with getting a very large sum of cash wired from our broker to our Costa Rican bank account to go to closing on our new house next week. This week has been me on the edge of frayed nerves, trudging back and forth between banker, real estate agent, house inspector, lawyer, baker, candlestick maker. There's been some nerve related petty squabbling between Jim and I, at least that one evening when the agent told me (rather untruthful) that Jim had ignored getting things done, throwing me into a panic of trying to accomplish this pile of tasks. Jim showed me the email trail and Jim was right, the agent is a lying asshole whom I almost believed. Like I said, nerves on edge, providing more and more documents to the bank to justify bringing Scrooge McDuck's bounty into the country for a house and assorted investments. Just when you think things are resolved there is another document requested. I think we've finished ...

Spent an amusing afternoon. I felt like I should have made popcorn and brought out the beers as I sat ringside and watched two people I know from my old fundamentalist/evangelical/quiverfull church duke it out with words on Facebook. I watched and tried not to laugh before one of them got uber huffy and erased the entire thread. Guess what they were fighting over? Which one of them was truly disrepresenting God. Serious. Oh holy shit was it funny. What did it start over. A t-shirt meme about God being kicked out of schools and now we have all these shootings. Oh brother! If you're going to fight over a school shooting please fight over what we can do to protect the children of this nation, not which one of you is channeling God or not. One of the participants was Tom Smith, my personal bete noire doing my years fundying, and the other is someone I was on the prayer team with. I've heard interesting things about so many at my old church because some many there are goss...

We spent the majority of this day trying to get documents into the hands of our bank so that they will allow our wire transfer of the funds to buy the house through. Every single time I think we've checked all the boxes, dotted the I's and crossed the T's something else comes up. I'm told it's pretty common. The local bank just wants to make sure Jim and I aren't using some sweet sweet illegally earned drug money to buy our new house. If we had sweet sweet illegally earned drug money we'd be buying a much bigger and fancier house dudes... Getting worried that the money won't make it in time for the closing so I'm currently filling out paperwork to wire it into a escrow account if the bank rejects our paperwork and sends the entire amount back. But that was later, it wasn't the incredibly crazy start to the day. So I've had flu for six days now and crawled out this morning with no orifice spewing bio hazards and able to walk upright. Whi...

Today I'm going to touch on a few not as nice realities of moving to Costa Rica from the United States. There are oodles of blogs, message boards and books screaming 'Move to Costa Rica, it's fun! It's cheap, it's fabulous!' There's not a lot that addresses the realities here. First last me say I love, love, love it here. The way the laws are set up it's very hard to sue someone for any reason. We've already moved all our Costa Rican assets into a corporation instead of personally owning them outright. Makes it almost impossible for the Tim Baylys of this world to try and spank me legally for calling them out on toxic behavior. Yes, Bayly has threatened to sue me, I have the emails to prove it. Other things to love. If you live simply like a Tico it's much cheaper here. Even with our copious complaints about the costs of electricity that cost is still way less than what we paid in the States. Local food is cheaper. It's only more expe...

Recently we started looking for a house to buy after our beautiful rented castle started to turn into a nightmare with suddenly raised rent, dead fridge, washer and dryer and an ongoing confloption involving the electrical system in the house starting to short out and landlords that seem less interested in fixing anything than trying to jerry-rig the joint together until they can sell it. No bueno. We rented here with the idea that we might buy the entire joint, four cabins, two houses, pool and landscaped acreage. Not happening now. I've seen what a lack of maintenance can do. This would be a money pit. It would take moolah and lots of work. I'm too lazy for that. I will admit I will miss the backyard howler monkeys and the birds peeking into my bedroom window. I hope there is wildlife where we are going. Looking for a home rental back in August and September had been a frightening and comical experience that involved things like an apartment manager ex...