The Sea is a Salty One

Still felled by various bodily problems, but now I have MRSA in my right eye. Ugh. It just never ends. When we got back from Monteverde we didn't do much for a few days. We're working on the guesthouse now, that's taking all of our time, and Jim is still hobbling around with his arm, while I'm still  having to pull up his pants, buckle his seat belt, drive him everywhere. One of my friends thinks I should McGyver his ass, put binder clips and a bungee cord on his pants. The guesthouse we replaced all of the doors with new cedar ones, I'm having some walls moved, and we're putting more new things in there. It looks like a nice hotel room now. Just a few more things and it will be ready for friends and family. Late Tuesday night, Wednesday morning Jim was up at 3 am on his computer. We're in the middle of rainy season here and so far it's been extremely rainy. It was raining then too. Around 4 am a huge wave of water started pouring in under the glas...

We took a little trip. Between Jim's surgery, my asthma and all the work on the house we decided to get away for a few days. Somewhere beautiful where we could sit out in a garden and just read. I suggested Arenal,and our friend's hotel. Jim wanted to try Monteverde, somewhere we'd not been. Not far from Arenal. And yet an extreme world away. Monteverde was beautiful, but I was reminded of the worst of West Virginia. The roads were awful. Dirt and rock, rain and fog. We could not see a foot in front of the car. So we crawled along as 20 mph. Driving in Costa Rica is so so so damn slow even when the road is paved. I figured I might be in for some rough roads, but not like this. Back during Hurricane Nate the roads of Monteverde were washed away. The town was cut off for a couple of weeks. It took a good hour to go 20 miles. It reminded me of West Virginia because of the remote nature of the mountains and lack of all people. I was surprised because I knew this was a hig...

Today Jim asked me to think about making slipcovers for some of the outdoor furniture, the dining room table chairs. I can do that, and set to looking at fabrics. Getting the material turns out it might be a challenge. Cannot get the good Suncaster material shipped here by Amazon or anyone else so it was off to Santa Cruz. The lone fabric store where I only buy muslin to back my quilts. I left Jim home alone. I've not driving out to go shopping alone over an hour away for a very long time. I realized Jim and I are sort of joined at the hip now. I worried about leaving him because he's only a month post surgery and I still have to help him pull up his pants The only shop had lots of ugly cheap polyester fabrics that remind me of the 1970s, and not in a good way. I drove through a terrific thunderstorm and got pretty wet once I got to town, but it was good, even with rain and no decent fabrics. I'll have to hit Liberia in a few days. There is a high end fabric store the...

Tonight was the finale of "Game of Thrones" a show I deeply loved until this season. It was uneven and slipshod, trying frantically to wrap up too much storyline in too little time. I did still love one character until his death last week - The House, Sandor Clegane. Loved the arch of his story, loved his bluntness, his cursing, his love of the Stark girls. Since last September I've been rather blunt at times. I have cringed over it, but I think I'm done with that, even if I'm not likely to call random people 'cunts' like Sandor did. Did something today and falls firmly into the Hound territory and I'm not sorry at all. Likely I'll be called on the carpet for it next week. What did I do? Called someone a big old nasty homophobe right to their face right before telling them they made me sick so I was getting as far away from them as possible. Today at a social event I walked up to whisper in Jim's ear that we needed to go soon. The resta...

Don't worry, I'm not about to talk about some gross bodily function. My close friends can tell you I am a creature of habit, good and bad. A squirrelly little thing  that does things certain ways, even if they don't make perfect sense to others. Today was one of those days. I spend much of the afternoon working on my bedroom. Specifically my bed. I'm one of those weirdos that must have the right sheets, mattress pad and other accoutrements on my waterbed if I am to sleep. Not quite a princess and the pea type situation but not too far off. That was the great thing about the trip to the city. I hit Crate and Barrel as well as Pricesmart and got a new mattress pad and high thread count sheets for my little slice of heaven. When I make up the bed I have a lambswool pad beneath the mattress pad on top of the waterbed mattress. I like nice things. Unfortunately my weird ways sometimes confuse others. After my earlier conversation where I made my dislike of many Go Fu...

After a morning spent running errands like picking up neb juice for the asthma, fruits and veggies at the market and hitting the paint and hardware stores I was ready to rest this afternoon. It was not to be but it turned out to be such delicious schadenfreude. One of my long time friends sent me a pm, a group message between her and I and a third person. The third person is someone I've been easing away from for months on end now because of money issues. Her constant scammer=like fundraising. Ironically the friend that pmed me was laughing over someone else the three of us know who is attempting to fund raise for very ridiculous reasons. She and I laughed, tittered, capered and carried on about those that constantly fund raise for stupid reasons. The former friend got quieter and quieter and quieter in the discussion before dropping off. I don't think that the lady that pmed me realizes that the third lady had at one time seven different Go Fund Mes for all sorts of thin...

Today was another bad asthma day combined with Jim losing something. Jim frequently misplaces things. This time it was his keys. He wanted to do a GI Party. I wasn't opposed to that. I've been doing a minimal clean around here because of the nature of being sick as hell and having workmen traipsing in and out of the house. Ain't no way I'm mopping my bedroom until they finish sanding the crack fix. For all our frantic cleaning Jim's keys were found outside sitting in the grass. But much of the day was spent at the clinic getting Jim his physical therapy for his arm. I don't mind driving him because it means a good ninety minutes I can mentally check out with no worries and read in a heavily air conditioned building. He is making progress. It's just way slower than he wants. Tonight there might not be much sleep happening as he is a pain from the PT and I have my crackhead shaking going on from the nebulizer.

We had to take a few days and head up to San Jose. Jim needed to see his surgeon and have his shoulder looked at again. I tried to make sure I had everything covered. I booked a large room with a king sized bed at a Holiday Inn near the airport just because we've  had some interesting times and not so great experiences at locally owned hotels in San Jose. I Googled up everywhere we needed to be, printed out directions, programmed the GPS, packed his xrays and medical records, and meds, oh so many meds between the two of us. After the last three weeks of asthma sickness for me and his lengthy recovery from the surgery I was looking forward to a few days away. There were just a couple of things I didn't count on. I knew Jim was planning on visiting the Customs office to see what steps we could take to resolve getting the rest of our things. I knew it would be a long shot, plus the office is by the airport, which is why we were staying there. It just hurts. Every time I th...

A lot has happened and I have a lot to say. It's just right now I'm exhausted. My lungs have been extra crappy this week. I apoligize if none of my pieces at NLQ made any sense at all this week. Not one of my finer weeks. It started weeks ago with the cold that morphed into  bronchitis and will not lift. They workmen inadvertently made it worse by trying to delay and stretch out their jobs. They were hired to fix two cracks in the bedroom ceiling. During last rainy season we twice had a leak in the bedroom. A freakish leak, We'd had a random leak like that at the old house, when we had a storm that blew rain sideways through a crack in the siding. This time was something like that. I'd had the roof examined and repaired the second time we had a storm that drove the rain in. Two little cracks in the bedroom and one in the living room. I was working in my office slash sewing room and wasn't paying attention to what they were doing. Jim was supposed to be, but ...

This morning I had quite a shock. One of my newer Facebook local friends when on a rant against overweight people. Or as he called them 'Lazy Fatties' This dude works at one of the two gyms in Tamarindo. It was a screed name calling, shaming and blaming anyone without a perfect body. Ugly words ending with an appeal to get off your flabby, lazy, fat ass and start working out there. This is the problem with gyms, serious gyms. The judgement. If you really were fat would being talked about like that make you go to the gym, or would it send you face first into a pile of Penguino chocolate cup cakes?  The years I worked out at Powell Wellness Center I got to see people of all ages, shapes and weights doing what they could in an environment where it didn't matter. As it shouldn't matter. We all have different needs and abilities. About six months ago I was with Jim when he went to check out one of the other gyms in Tamarindo. He'd been working out at the gym I'...

All of these are difficult at best in Costa Rica. When our things finally arrived from the States the bottom platform of the water bed didn't make it. Just as well. The bed is over 30 years old, needs some tender loving care and the bottom platform is merely stained dark walnut plywood. Yesterday we had an appointment with the one of the town's custom furniture builders, Bruce. Bruce sold us our mahogany and leather rockers, made us teak pool furniture and fixed a broken side board on our bed. I trust him implicitly. He has all the pieces of the water bed and is restoring the finish and building the platform. That's a thing in Costa Rica I love. You reuse, you fix, you keep what you have and treat it gently. Which leads us to the sofa situation. A few weeks ago we purchased a very pretty blue sofa sleeper, got it home and realized it was like putting doll house furniture in an adult sized big huge home. The sofa is perfect sized for the guest house, so it is going out...

No, not me. If I'm evil it's a slip-shod lesser evil that just wants to take a nap. I am still sick as hell, but can now spend some of my awake hours upright so I've been sewing madly, turning a pile of long sleeved shirts to short sleeves, turning some of Jim's pants from work (the Dockers) into shorts. Finishing up a few half baked quilts I started long ago. I was merely cough-y, sneeze-y, snotty until early this afternoon when I got the news that writer Rachel Held Evans had passed on. It tore a hole in my heart, and knocked me for a loop. Both because I'd had friendly correspondence with her, loved several of her books and her recent health problems are like my worst nightmaresque  ways to go that are possible for me. I've woken up intubated in ICU from a drug interaction. It ain't a garden party. I still remember the panic of waking up on a ventilator. Cannot think of a way I would rather not go even more, unless it's being run over by a car o...

Over the last few days/ week I have something new and annoying going on. A wave of Costa Ricans trying to friend me on Facebook that are friends of friends of friends. That would be okay if it was just for friendship, but no. To a man each and every single one I have approved has fallen into one of two categories. 1 - The Tico Romance Scammer, which I think might actually be either Nigerians posing as Costa Ricans,  They pm you and say trite things like "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven gorgeous?" or immediately start flirting before asking you when you retire and how much pension you will get. Oh hell no! Blocking and deleting. 2. The second set is a bit more problematic. So far I've been approached by a real estate agent, two stockbrokers, someone self styling themselves as a Bitcoin investment expert, a pool maintenance company guy, a construction guy, someone that remodels kitchens. you see where I'm going with this? Some of these guys are legitimate bu...

Today was frustrating, not the least because of my ongoing lung infection. I did manage to get to the doctor and insist on a meds change. So I cannot get Xopenex here, but I did switch to a generic abuterol.  That other neb solution they had me on for two days gave me headaches, high blood pressure and some pretty hairy nose bleeds. Turns out it had steroids in it. I am pretty steroid intolerant after all these years doing high dose steroids. But hey, I managed to staff off going back on high doses of methotrexate again, or something more hardcore that will cause my toenails to pop off and lose body hair. It's just I am still feeling like 20 inches of goop on the bottom of someone's sandals. Too sick to do much more than drown drugs and surf from sofa to bed to sofa again. Today the new painters came in to paint the very tops of the bedrooms I could not reach on a ladder because of the high cathedral ceilings here. I was happy with that, and the crew did a great job. What...