The Sea is a Salty One

Well the Hell Bert fall out happened quickly yesterday. As I was sleepily shuffling towards my French press and fresh coffee Hell Bert sent Jim a message that he had to have 80 dollars immediately. No explanations, just the same demands for moolah as last year. It finally dawned on Jim that nothing  has changed, Hell Bert is exactly the same scamming scummy guy he always was. But now Jim sees it. This morning brought another set of pleas from Hell Bert, right down to claiming the extra 3 mil Jim paid him was a 'tip', or a reembursement for the meals I refused to provide. I have always said the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. We all do it, we slip into what we know, even if it does not work because it's more comfortable to keep doing the same thing than to try something different. Yesterday started with me driving Jim around to the electric company and to get keys made. Our electric bill was high, but Jim refuses to accept it was high last month bec...

You would think that after nearly 33 years of marriage that it would have finally dawned on Jim that the middle of the night and the very early morning is so not the time to have a discussion with me about anything serious. Last night I passed out about 9:30, just exhausted from dealing with this awful cold for the last week. Around midnight Jim decides to try and talk to me about what I do not know. All because I sighed and turned over in the bed in a moment of slight almost almost awakeness. Jim: "Hey, whata you think about blahblah blah? I think we should do blah, blah, blah.." Me: "Huh? Potato. Leamington. Faffleafngoi @#(*%6" Jim : "No really, what do you think:" Me: ***SNORE****** Followed by shuffling along around 7 am, making a direct bee line for my French coffee press, not much more awake than I was last night. I do not have conversations before coffee. I just feel super cranky, like being a serial killer is a completely doable idea. J...

We did end up getting a new sofa, a blue one. Just a couple of problems. Jim is still in a huge orthopedic thingie on the left side of his body. I am still being felled by the cold from hell so it made for a miserable shopping day and drive from Tamarindo. By the end I just did not even care any longer because I felt too sick to care. We ended up getting a blue sofa with no arms, that can be folded down easily into a bed and the coordinating chair in various shades of blue. We just did not realize that the sofa was so.. soo... small until we got it home. It looks puny and tiny in the living room, like kids furniture. Maybe I need a second one, two facing each other, I don't know, I just know it's not quite right. Don't get me wrong! I love it. It just might be better suited for the guesthouse, which needs a new sofa too. It may be back to the furniture stores soon.

One of the few things I insisted upon after Jim's hospitalization is that we fly back to Tamarindo instead of taking that five hour bus ride back. I kept remember how much I puked on the ride back from my stroke, not looking forward to Jim and his bulky orthopedic appliances being on th at bus. I sensed he might have as horrible a time as I did. I insisted on the flight, went online to find and book two seats on one of the commuter tree hopper flights for Easter Sunday. Throughout Jim's time in the hospital he kept crowing that he thought he'd lost a lot of weight. His weight has been mostly up since we moved to CR and their delicious versions of junk food. I've lost some more, Jim's gained. I couldn't figure out why he would think that when he was ordering up a hot cocoa from dietary a few times a day. He laid in the bed and he ate. The big shocker for Jim  happened when we rolled up for our flight. Here in Costa Rica when you take those small tree hopper...

I have returned from days in San Jose at Jim's bedside with a cold from hell. I cannot think straight, I just cannot function at all. Except in one capacity. I have been scrubbing like a fiend! My rubber flip flops, my purse, my toiletry bottles, anything that accompanied us to San Jose for Jim's surgery at the Metropolitano. Jim fell off a short step ladder on Thursday at noon, maybe two feet, onto the soft grass outside of the guest house when he was painting. He broke the part of his shoulder that is like a cup, holding the head of the arm in. Broke in two places. Lifeflighted to the city, three days in the hospital, and he's fine. I am amazed at how quickly he is recovering. Somehow I picked up a cold there, and cannot even sit up for more than an hour without having to go crash. Making up for the  missing sleep in the hospital I guess. One of the things I picked up in the States in December was a big bottle of Hibiclens. It's the scrub you must use when you h...

Back before I met my husband I worked at a chair restaurant. One big in the South and South West and prided itself on home cooked style foods. Ever now and then upper management would come up with some bullshit programs to try to increase employee moral and better service goals. Even all the way back them I was sort of snarky and sarcastic. I remember they did a program with a name like 'Warm and Fuzzy' and if you were found to be doing something friendly and personable for the customers you'd get a piece of pompom called an actual 'Warm and Fuzzy' stuck to your name tag. I remember rolling my eyes then and chortling out that if the company was really interested in improving moral they would have taken the amount they blew on this program and given all of us bonuses instead of a childish 'atta boy' in the form of those silly fluffy pompoms. I had no use for bullshit then and I do not have any tolerance for it now. Lately it seems like the bullshit leve...

Sometimes I am reminded just how really small our world is, at the same time that it's big. Whenever I travel I am reminded. We are all the same, with the same needs both physical and emotion. We all  have to eat, we all need to be loved. We all have dreams. I think in this divisive time of Trump and others is is important to realize this. It's just too easy to think we're this or that, and none of us has connections to the world at large. Two things stand out this week to remind me of our deep interconnectness. Sunday night was the season 8 premiere of "Game of Thrones" I have to say I have really enjoyed interacting with GoT fans from around the world. I've been in deep discussions this week with friends from the Muslim world that love GoT. Sweet ladies with head coverings. Men who normally limit their interaction with unknown women. They are hardly the only people group I've had contact this week, but we were all saying just the other day that if w...

Seriously sunburned right now. Me who never burns. Why? Earlier last week I went to an animal rescue with my daughter and they invited me to volunteer since I'm local and I have animal rescue experience, big bird handling. I have, I have worked a few hours there over two days. The first day was wonderful preparing foods for the animals and feeding them. I got to bottle feed a baby sloth. The second day? Hmm, not so much. I got sunburned very quickly out in the smoky haze and overcast afternoon I spend traipsing about in the bush trying to wrangle various animals in the path of a fire. We went to the edge of the fire in the marimba woods to meet with firefighters and other animal rescue folks to scoop up a frightened (and very fast) youngish scorched coatimundi and a few other animals. It was a comedy of errors that took way way too long. We could have made a comedy skit out of all the crazy stuff that happened. I ended up with sunburned lips, backs of my knees, backs of my ...

I have reappeared. My adult children were here for six days and I have been busy. Today things have returned almost to normal. I've gotten all the extra bedding and towels washed and put away, the house straightened up and the kitchen cleaned. Tomorrow I tackle the guesthouse. Still sweeping out sand. We have half of the sand in Tamarindo in the house. My kids do not like me talking about them here. The visit was lovely. My daughter saw our dentist and we came up with a treatment plan. Enjoyed seeing both of them immensely. But there is something good to be said about returning to routine too. Cannot swim nude or sit in the hot tub sans clothing with visitors. Sadly I am rather sunburned, something that has very rarely happened to me. I think it was the antibiotic I was one.

I clocked an American tourist with my car tonight, and I cannot blame it on the pain pills I take for my newly infected foot. Yeah, MRSA again. I am SUCH an old lady. Actually the tourist clocked my car. Tonight after a particularly long and goofy worship team rehearsal I had errands to run in Tamagringo. It's high season, and the town is very tourist filled, so much so it is putting a strain on the local electrical company and the water system. But I still had to get colones and dollars at the bank and make a run to the fruit stand. Once I got into Tama one of those golf carts pulled out from a side street in front of me. I could see that the golf cart was a biggie and very bigly overloaded. The bench seat up front held 3 or 4 folks, the back seat the same, and the bench over the back bumper held 4 more. One dude was standing, feet on the back bumper, hanging off the golf cart ceiling, jumping about and acting a fool. As soon as I saw this my naturally inherited from my moth...

My kids arrive in a few days so I'm in frantic finish redecorating and placing the last of our possessions where they go. While I'm doing that Jim is running about trying to get his motorcycle running now that it's finally been delivered. I've semi joking said "Just call me Widow T" to a few friends because I really worry about him driving it in the crazy clusterfuck of stupidity that is driving in Costa Rica. Saturday we did that necessary evil that is the border run. Costa Rica only allows you to stay 90 days on a tourist visa and we're still gathering all the oddments of paperwork we need to apply to be residents. I don't mind doing a border run since we're less than two hours from the border. What I do mind is the huge plethora of bloggers with inaccurate info that they have posted online about the border run up to Penas Blancas. I'm looking at you My Tanned Feet! Because my mind is more the strange playground than a steel trap I coul...