The Sea is a Salty One

I have a friend, a sweet friend, but a friend that is frequently wrong about medical conditions and the side effects of drugs. She will not take antibiotics, but she'll use so much colloidal silver her skin turned gray and she was still infected and in pain. I also cannot take any advice from her about the end of the world. She believes in an epic meltdown of society that will be her, her tiny pink pistol and her thousands of dollars worth of Jim Bakker food buckets. I keep trying to tell her if that scenario goes down like that two things will happen. 1) I'll immediately kick the bucket with no asthma drugs and air conditioning available, and 2) It will be armed biker gangs with Uzis, rocket launchers and grenades scuffling over a squirrel carcass after they've removed her food buckets from her. One of her beliefs really makes me laugh. It panicked me at first, I ran to Cindy Kunsman and wanted to know if it was true. What does she believe? That benadryl cause brain tu...

So I went. I went to the 'Millionaires Picnic' this afternoon after a morning of misery. The plumber showed up to replace the plastic dryer vent hose like contraption of the bathroom sink with real pipes. There's just one problem, the same one every time they work on plumbing and other things here. The awful stinky petrochemical based solvents, glues and silicon grouting. I reacted, had to don my hepa filter and chugalug the drugs before I was even done with coffee. I went to hide in my studio and sew, but reacted to the oil I had to use to lube up the sewing machine. It was just one of those I cannot freaking win mornings. Coffee and nebulizers and pills oh my! Took a lunchtime nap from the drugs and awoke in a panic. Jim and I had been fighting in my dream. What were we fighting over? The Pythagorean Theory. The funny of that is that I had to stop and look it up after the dream because I didn't remember enough math to remember what it actually was. I don't k...

It struck me this morning as I was grumblingly wiping down the kitchen countertop for the millionth time this morning why women flip out, rant angrily, have nervous breakdowns and sometimes kill family members. Why? Well, it was obvious when I viewed the pile of used plastic cups. They lose it after telling those same people for the millionth time not to do whatever it is the family is doing that makes their workload insano! You can tell the family not to use the microwave for science experiments, not to skeet-skeet on the kitchen countertop, or not to wipe their dirty feet on the couch cushions, get agreement from family members. Turn back around and there's fresh skeet on that countertop yet again. It's enough to drive a person mad. Are they really that in love with dicing with danger? Forgetful? Love skeeting so much they cannot help it? We keep having the same conversation in this house about using glasses. I tell Jim to do like I do. Use one glass per day and rinse i...

Our fleet of Joses have been continuing on tearing up our yard to put in the Tico Tennessee Valley Hydroelectric project and the beginnings of putting in the supports for the soon to arrive solar panels. They're pounding, and scraping and making an unGodly amount of noise. I am cranky, as you plainly know from my whining yesterday about the former friend gone nuclear crazy toxic blonde firing off constant questions about the Duggars. I finally just blocked her. Let her earn her podcast pay without trying to pick my poor, pathetic, probably pickled stupid on asthma drugs brain. Today went about like the lyrics to that silly song from the sixties, "Harper Valley PTA". After my usual rounds of housework, work-work, working on the book and going with Jim to order more concreto I was contacted by a lady I know from the church here. I've mentioned her before, Maggie. Single mother of a teen, physical therapist, and all around oddball. She's been banned from the chur...

Dear Person Trying to Drive Me Nuts (granted it's not a far drive!) I spent many years living in the Greater Washington D.C. area in Virginia. I know people at just about every federal agency. My husband has worked for the feds for over twenty years. Of course I'm going to know people who love to gossip, who may or may not be on the money over that damned Duggar family that work at those agencies. Do you really think I'm going to give you names and titles of people I'm friends with that work in the investigation services at certain agencies? Would you give out friends names and titles? I know you're just wanting the information so you can publish it on your podcast. You don't care who you have to step on to get the info either. Please stop, get a grip and go smell the flowers. I know you're making crazy bank with your podcast, but I am so not a source. I don't want to enable your madness since you switched to all celeb gossip. Don't you have s...

Yesterday my husband did some crazy stuff. Some of it makes me laugh. This is so what being married 33 years is like. He had constipation. Bad constipation. Crying, hollering, rocking on the toilet constipation. When he finally went he started yelling he could not believe how big his bowel movement was. I said 'Uh-huh' and went back to what I was doing. Then he trotted out with his phone, trying to show me a photo of his bowel movement he took to prove how big it was. Just what I did not want to see in the morning while drinking my coffee. Being married this long has kind of broken both of our filters. Inappropriate things happen, or are said. Like how I flip the bird at the television every time he watches Fox News to see what inanity they are spouting on any given day. Sometimes it's nice though. Yesterday we went to a community wide  Thanksgiving meal. I walked up, someone was smoking and my wheezing started. Walked into the cram packed meeting room and my whee...

My ex had some of the lousiest luck with cars. He had a Corvair, which was horrible at any speed but spent more time stopped. He then bought a brand new Vega, drove it a year and the motor mounts failed causing the engine to fall out. But he never learned the lesson that you don't buy crappy cars with horrible reviews. The last I heard he was driving an ancient American-built van. I seem to recall him with a rodeo of rolling scrap iron. I only had one bout of bad idiotic car buying. Back in college I scored a job delivering air freight for one of the bigger air freight carriers, making a munificent twelve bucks an hour, when minimum wage was three bucks and ended up strolling into the European car dealer to buy an Italian made convertible. Stupidest. Decision. Ever. Well, maybe second stupidest. First stupidest was getting married young to a much older guy. That stupid car was in the shop more during the one year I owned it than I was able to drive it. In the shop, in the shop....

Yesterday we finally ordered Jim's desk and I picked up mine. I went with a very small Guanacaste wood table and paired it with a nice comfortable low chair I picked up a few months ago. I am so short. I don't need much. Yesterday was a big wasted day because I did something so damn stupid early on. Like I am prone to do. You'd think I would learn. I took a quarter of a blood pressure pill because I had a borderline high reading when I got up and I'd taken no pressure pills all week. Readings straight down in my shoes. The car was in the shop most of the week. We have dead sensors, and electronic parts dying that had to be replaced. More on order. I'd forgotten how badly I dislike not having a car. Today was sort of stressful early on. More crazy Duggar speculation and rumors, more people pming me like mad, while I was trying to put up a post and fix Jim's computer.  He spilled apple juice into the keyboard of his laptop. Not much, but enough so that ...

Yesterday Jim and I had an interesting conversation in the car. We were on our way to Liberia to look in the furniture stores for a desk for him. The guy that always custom builds our furniture quoted a price Jim thought was high.  So he wanted to look first. I'm still partially felled by asthma and completely felled by parts stupidity and reporting on the mess of the Duggars. Hearing from oodles of people claiming to know. I've just reported on it all since there are a lot of rumors I cannot prove one way or another. The only sure thing is that a branch of the federal law enforcement is after Josh Duggar. That we know for bedrock sure. It's stressing me out. What did we talk about? One of the places I wanted to hit was the big fabric store. My friend Mary swears they sell batiks, and I need blender fabrics for quilting. I started talking about my years working part time at the art studio and quilting store. It had been great under the original owner, but after she sold...

Boy was I cranky last night at about 2 am when I last wrote. That's what happens w, then I deal with the asthma. I get crazier than usual. Having three different people try to market their MLMs to me at church and getting lots of bad medical advice, including a friend that make the mistake of trying to get my to tray homeopathy. Today I slept in until something like ten am, getting up to the tabloid press finally starting to mention the Josh Duggar rumors and claim they are just that - rumors. Perhaps, but likely something is happening there, but perhaps something rather different than is thought. Stay tuned. I didn't update NLQ today. I ran an errand and when I walked into the book store my friend took one look at me and said, "Wow, you look like you feel very bad today!" Yep. So what did we do after that. Desk shopping. Since Costa Rican Customers decided to give us one drawer of our desk and confiscate the other 7 drawers and the desk we both needed a desk....

You'd think I would have learned by now. A very bad night with low blood pressure and crazy asthma equals a very crappy day where my patience is oh so limited and stay away from people like the entitled rich gringos here that babble about balancing their feng shu, aligning their essential oils and climbing Machine Pikachu. But like a ballerina on crack at the circus I stumble my ass right into the middle of it yet again. Even as I know better. Yeah, I went to church. I felt fine when I got up, better than fine like nothing had happened the day before. Maybe I wasn't so fine, but I was merely distracted by all the odd news coming out of the Duggar family.  I went. Mistake. I need to take a complete sabbatical from church I think. Last week it was Mr. Z chasing me down to lecture me about the fact that I do not take communion. I explained that the sulfates in the wine and grape juice are insta-asthma for me so I just quietly sit out. He explained why he thought that was incre...

Been a week. Right now we're pondering another big change. There's a situation happening I cannot really talk about that if it goes down will change our entire lives. No, it's  not a bad change, it's just one of those things one must do when others drop the ball. All week has been embroiled with discussion of the possibilities and looking into the logistics and costs. It's not something I want to do, but I think it might benefit some of my loved ones. That's when we're not in the pool or at the beach. Jim and I had one of our rare big fights over something that happened at the beach on Thursday. We did our usual beach walk, and seeing that high season has started with oodles of tourists we did not have the beach to ourselves. There were two young women that suddenly removed their bikini tops, and sunbathed topless. All I could think about was Lori Alexander, she who threatens thonged girls, foaming at the mouth. It's illegal here in Costa Rica, consi...

If we're not in official dry season yet we're at least flirting with the edges of it. This morning I got all my dry season chores done, scrubbed pool deck and covered lanai, dusted off the cobwebs on the lanai teak ceiling, cleaned out the bird feeders and bird bath and hauled out my outdoor drying rack. And I was paid back magnificently right afterward. I got to see an orange-green small parrot taking a bath. While fighting off angrily all comers. Birds circling. So beautiful. The rest of the day was a goat rodeo, a two-step to an out of tune honky tonk band with a disrhythmic drummer. While I was sweating my ass off watering plants and watching the birds someone called and said they were coming over to swim, RIGHT THEN! Please, please, please do not invite yourself over to other people's houses to swim. Or if you do give them more than five minutes notice. I had to dash inside to don a bra and other clothing. I don't care if Jim sees my sagging boobage and assor...

We've been busy. Eating out with friends, the usual running of the errands and Jim drug me to bingo. BINGO! THE! HORROR!!!!!!!!!! He loves bingo. I'd rather have a long slow root canal with no laughing gas than play bingo. Particularly at this local joint. Gringo prices, slow slow servers, so-so food. Jim's bingo obsessional friends are a pretty dull bunch. But I did manage to have a good time this time. It was the usual suspects, the girl named after yogurt, the girl that climbed "Machine Pikachu", the guy that is so clearly insane he's climbed Everest a bunch of times, the man that works out six hours a day and assorted others. Dumb millionaires. Nice people, just not my type at all. Usually I end up playing Candy Crush and cruising the internet on my phone while playing bingo when I go. No one there worth talking to usually, and the few that are are so  focused on bingo that heaven forfend you make an innocent inquiry into how their dog, surfboard, or...

Yesterday morning when I got up I was pretty bummed out. I'd spent most of the night thinking about that poor little puppy. In tears during breakfast talking to Jim about the situation. Once Jim went away to Bible study I looked up the animal rescue people here I'd had contact with and called them about the puppy. They agreed to take it if we couldn't keep it. But when Jim came home he told me that he'd persuaded our friend to call up his housekeeper and find out about the puppy. According to her the puppy is eating and drinking and behaving normally. I wasn't aware that it was nearly two months old because of the small size. The animal rescue people are going to see if they can intervene and help out with some of the issues this poor dog will face as it grows. Starting with treating for mange first. To me that is one of the very difficult bits here. The way animals are sometimes treated here. You're talking about a population of people who are too poor ...

Today was filled as usual with ups and downs. A down that turned into an up. Sometime a few months ago we had people in the house caulking and repainting the ceilings. One of the painters went into my closet while painting the ceiling, opened the closet, opened the small drawer at the bottom, got into the box I had hidden my jewelry in, and took a number of items. One of those items was my wedding ring, the engagement ring and ring guard, custom designed I'd had for the past almost 34 years. Most of the other stolen items save for the other ring, tanzanite, diamonds and platinum, were small potatoes. A pried out of the setting blue lapis, a small emerald pendant with a poorly colored emerald, a very small diamond and tanzanite pendent, a garnet pendent. He left a dematoid garnet necklace likely worth more than the house, a complete set of 10mm Mikimoto pearls I've had forever, a set of alexandrite and diamond earrings, a set of pink sapphire and diamond earrings, a set of...

I've been cleaning yesterday and cooking today. Why? Well, we were scheduled to have lunch guests today, and it got pushed back to dinner guests. But not as fervently and crazily as usual. Normally I would be reacting all over the place, but for once I was able to not react like a rat in a maze chasing cheese. I'm sort of kind of proud of myself for once. During my formative years, in my childhood I picked up some rather weird anxieties and reactions. Example, someone coming over and I would go into a frenzy of cleaning and cooking. On Friday when I started to go into that very weird space I thought to my self for the first time ever, "Hey wait one cotton picking minute! My house is clean enough, just need to dust and turn on the Roomba. These people know me, they know I'm a scatterbrained artist. They like me, and they aren't coming with white gloves to make sure I have polished the underside of the pipes or anything nitpicky like that!" I cannot tell ...

Having some sleep issues. Passing out unintentionally too early because I've stepped up the workouts. Waking up at 10 pm all drooly and confused tangled in my too long hair. I'm just  a laugh riot! Tempted to give myself an extreme hair cut soon or else I'll have to come up with some sort of elaborate Game of Thrones braided style. It's just too heavy, too hot and too much in my way. Up in the standard huge messy bun all the time now. I look like some deranged granny. Yesterday was more than a little scary, and not just because my wrinkled sagging old self was on the beach in a swimsuit scaring folks either. Jim and I went for a walk on Tamarindo Beach yesterday. We've been limiting our walks to Grande, and some of the smaller more remote beaches. Jim needed a massage and I was finally able to put down the muscle relaxers from my own back hijinks and start walking again. It was low tide and quite interesting. Like I said I've seen a very early uptick in to...