The Sea is a Salty One

This morning I saw one of the oddest sights I've viewed in awhile, and that's saying something considering yesterday I was in a Florida Wal Mart and it looked like most of the customers were escapees from 'The People of Wal Mart'. We went to breakfast at a darling little cafe, and as we walked through the parking lot my eyes fell on a newish Corvette. The things dangling from the rear view mirror were decidedly not that New Orleans favorite fuzzy dice. What their were was boobs, well, boobies as imagined by Jim Henson's folks at the Muppet workshop, with big old aureolas and nipples. Stuffed, fuzzy and hanging from strings from the rear view mirror. I snickered and remarked that chances are that the driver was less than desirable. A penis mobile festooned with fake breasts does not scream hot to me. Sure enough the only other customer at this place was an elderly man, rather portly, looking like he had one foot on the banana peel and the other on the tombstone...

I am here in Cocoa Beach, Florida with the family. It feels bitterly cold to me, so much so that I had to go get winter clothing, something I do not possess. Thank gawd Ron Jon's has hoodies and long sleeved tees! It's in the 50s and 60s here, something the Weather Channel neglected to tell me and I am not acclimated since Tama is between 75 and 95 every single day. This feels cold. The other thing I was getting at Ron Jon's was a huge buttload of their tacky advertising stickers. Why? We had a little tiny catastrophe on our way here. We changed planes in Atlanta from Costa Rica and someone accidentally took my suitcase. There were ten identical suitcases on our flight from Liberia. Ten large Kenneth Cole Reaction hardshelled suitcases. All brand spanking new. I've mentioned before the expensive shopping and lack of quality in Costa Rica, so when Auto Mercado started their yearly stickers for stuff green stamps like program this year it was for suitcases, decent sui...

We fly out in the morning. By lunchtime our AirBnB guests will be picking up the keys from our agent. Flying to spent Christmas with the kids in Florida. From beach to beach. I guess it takes me awhile to catch up, but I was completely unaware that you could check in online and pick your seat from the cheap seats. Just checked in and we're not sitting by the back bathroom this time.  Upgraded to sit by the exit where you have leg room. All happy. Packed up and ready to go. Our internet came back on too around noon today. I was happy because the last few days with no television, no internet and the power cutting in and out was gruesome. I've read a pile of books now and made three throw quilts. Glad to be leaving, as much as I love our house in Tama the invasion of the crazy San Joseites has happened. You cannot drive in town, you cannot get near the beach, the grocery stores are filled with drunken tourists. Add in a pile of American tourists and it is miserable. The re...

This morning I worked on finishing up an item for a dearly beloved relative. Something I've been promising for ages, a lap quilt with fabric from 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' movie. I'd not been sure for a long time what to do with it, deciding finally to do a very simple design in purples with gnashing teeth. The fabric is super busy so a complex design was just not going to work. This does. I'm excited to finish it up and finish up the Day of the Dog quilt I'm making for this lady's dog. At the same time I got that fabric for TNBC I also stumbled across fabric for Mexican sugar skulls, dog skulls, and it was just so cute! The problem being complex busy fabric with the need of a simple design. Worked that one out  too. Will post photos of both when I'm done. One quilt I finished but never sent off was one I started for myself and ended up promising to Cindy Kunsman. I was going to make it into a weighted quilt, but I ran into some design problem...

I finally remembered the kind man that squeezed the orange juice and made me some delicious hot toddy - Narcisse. We went back today so I could have more oj and another hot toddy. Also got passion fruit and pineapple juice too. All of it helps. I added in garlic pills this time and today I felt much better. First time in years I've gone from one day of bad cold to feeling better this quickly. Less drugs and more supplements and juice. Still no essential oils. Cannot do those.

I had a hard time getting up on Sunday morning. No amount of coffee seemed to help, and once I got to church I was tapped to sing, at the last minute because the fluffy stomping lady neglected to show up. I was okay with singing, but not okay with not having the time to do vocal warmups or rehearsal. It went well regardless. Even did that thing I hate to do - sing soprano. I was pleased that the pastor had taken my advice, adding in some Christmas music with the worship choruses, mixing them together instead of skipping carols under Christmas Eve. One song in particular, "What Child Is This?" really got to me, well specifically one line which I am now thinking about a lot. Particularly in light of the nasty cultural enforcers I cover at NLQ 'The silent word is pleading..' Yes, it is, too bad there are some too listening to the sounds of their own voice to pay attention. I'd been geared up to talk to and possibly confront Oily Jane, but she showed up five minut...

Cindy Kunsman and I have been talking a lot lately. Cindy, and me too I have to admit, does not always have the best boundaries or pick up on who is using you and who is a true friend. Coming out of my old religion I sometimes struggle to have good boundaries and I don't always figure out who is using me until too late. I know one thing, Cindy is my friend, a true friend. I've cried on her shoulder, laughed and vented over the doings of Mrs. Satan and I've listened to her process the things and people she deals with. It's helpful to have good friends like that. Looking back over my blog I can see I've done a boatload of bitching about people, from oily Jane on down, but I don't mention the oodles of great people I love, or hang out with. You wouldn't know it from my complaining but I have many wonderful people in my life. They just don't tend to get under my skin enough for me to end up ranting about them here. The kind of relationships I have with...

Made a funny discovery this morning upon opening emails from the doctor's office to start the insurance paperwork. The Spanish word for mushroom is 'hongo,' and it's the same word for fungus. Jim has mushrooms. He's no better. In fact he has an infected bug bite on his butt, which means two things. Number one, Dr. Fernando is going to be squeezing the pus out in the next day or so to his delight. Number two, I've had to play step and fetch it today. I ran around first thing to take our power washer to the church so they could clean something at the new building. Jim rode with me because the workment know no English and my Spanish does not extend much beyond 'Gimme a mojito,' 'where's the bathroom?,' and 'what does that cost?' On the way back Jim wanted to stop at a new gym. We got there just in time for their morning class. Apparently it's some sort of 'Crossfit' studio and we got treated to instructors and owner hav...

Jim is pretty sick right now. He has a full body rash that keeps coming and going that has turned out to be one of the common fungal infections here. We spent much of the morning at the doctors office. He had blood work run on his liver functions to make sure the fungal thing that would not go was not a symptom of liver failure. Jim also scratched himself up pretty badly and has a bacterial infection that have to be lanced and drained. Plus a cold. Miserable. But most ladies know that a man with a paper-cut thinks he is dying so it's good times at the house. He is very cranky right now, but too sleepy to be much of a pest. Life is good, even if Dr. Fernando is freaky in his obsessive love of draining all infected carbuncles on your body. He's not happy unless you have some oozing pus. The little hot tub that blows our fuses is still being problematic. Alejandro and guys were out today switching out electrical cables, seeking to find a breaker and breaker box where turning o...

We have had some fabulous times in the last week. The hot tub is finally in, and running. We bought the cushions Jim wanted and they look lovely against the gold painted stucco of our house. I'm still ordering the gardener around to move plants to better locations. On Sunday we spent the day on a forty plus foot long catamaran. Once or twice a year our church gets a half price rate for the cruise and we go out for the day. Forty bucks a head instead of eighty. Wonderful time on the water, I wish I had photos but my sports camera is not cooperating, it's not allowing me to access the photos on the memory card. Which is really a bitch because the cruise was one of the best days yet in Tamarindo in some big ways. We went way out, dropping anchor near one of the tiny deserted islands that dot the Pacific. Dropped anchor in about two hundred foot deep water, and jumped in to swim. The water was turquoise and crystal clear. While we were out we saw a pod of dolphins and sev...

Last night I  toyed with a scammer. Many years ago in the early years of the internet I used to be part of a group that baited Nigerian scammers . If you could get a Nigerian to rush all over Africa on a safari thinking they were about to fleece you out of dough you'd scored. I loved doing this, but it made Jim nervous so eventually I stopped my amusing hobby. But the other night it was just too tempting. I engaged with one of the newest wrinkles in the Nigerian scam - the Facebook Romance Scammer. These are the guys that try to find women of a certain age, near retirement age. Their profiles always show Mr. Successful, as a military officer, big international businessman, or the newest one |I got, a doctor working with Doctors Without Borders in Syria. None of them have friends, or many photos, or usually any posts beyond one or two. They show up, try to friend you suddenly. I always look at the profile, because I do get a fair amount of strangers hitting me up because of N...

Broke, as in things aren't working right. There have been a thousand roadblocks, changes and not so nice things happening on the patios, yard, hot tub and gardening front. As in crazy asthma from the spraying of the weeds, the burning of the trash, the chemicals used all around. As in broke the crappy old sofa having some horizontal fellowship. But none of those even began to touch the most awful broken. Which is hearing yesterday about a sweet boy from my old church, the place where the Possums run in fellowship - Possum Creek Fellowship church. Ned was one of my bff Joanie's foster kids. She and her husband had him for more than a couple of years. They got him as a toddler out of an abusive home with substance abuse issues. Ned grew up into a nice boy in his time with him. Ned was sweet, well behaved, particularly for what he came out of, and the challenges of being born to an addicted mother, physical challenges mingled with psychiatric ones. He had a pretty bad seizure ...

One of the things I do not like seeing here in Costa Rica is that the worst aspects of America popping up here. Usually that means, for me at least, seeing Ticos flocking to McDonalds and KFC. This morning I witnessed something very different, awful and oh so typically North American. Road rage. Once church let out and Jim went to fetch the car from a nearby hilltop (no parking at the church) I saw a blue car and a tourismo bus drive by fast, side by side, ignoring the oncoming traffic until the tourismo bus had to fall back behind the compact car or be hit. This took place on the one road leading to and from Tamarindo, simple two lane blacktop. This happened a couple of times as I watched. I could see that the tourismo bus was attempting futilely to get behind another tourismo bus painted exactly like it. But the blue compact car kept speeding up every time the bus tried to pass. By the time Jim brought the car around things had actually escalated, the bus had squeezed by the ca...