The Sea is a Salty One

Yesterday when I was getting ready for bed after a chaotic day in San Jose (long story for later) I started thinking about the community it takes to raise children. It's not just mom and dad, it takes the help of many. I brushed out my long dry hair, adding a large dollop of coconut oil, remembering the advice of a hair dresser to my son. He has dry Native American hair like mine, needing extra moisture to keep it from turning into a tangled mess. I used some natural cleanser on my face, remembering when my oldest daughter was recommended what I was using by a cosmetologist for her beautiful, but sensitive peaches and cream English skin. I don't have her gorgeous flawless skin, but mine is sensitive too. When I got out of the shower I used a spray made of coconut oil and cocoa butter to lock in the moisture, something recommended to my youngest daughter during an appointment with her dermatologist in her teens. She has my grandmother's extremely dry skin. This was all i...

Oh man, what a day! I am laughing even while still having that rotten fever and rash. What happened? This morning all the usual stuff, breakfast, laundry, dishes, pool and working in my garden. My smuggled sweet potatoes have yielded a pile of slips and I've planted them. It's Wednesday, these and our weekly grocery run take place on Wednesday. This afternoon, after a morning without power (typical Tico brownout we get for an hour or two during high season when every gringo visiting turns the ac to igloo), I came into my office to check messages and approve whoever had been caught in the damn nanny filter at Disqus and my computer blew up with messages. Turns out at S Curre had contacted Nicole Naugler and sent her a link to one of my very old posts on Patheos on the Nauglers - Nicole Naugler Does Not Understand What "The Best Interest of the Children" Means. The post itself is over 18 months old. It's not the first time, and very likely not the last time I w...

Starting to creep about a bit and do things even as I'm struggling with itchy rashes. At least I no longer feel like the stuff on the bottom of someone's shoes. We got the final word yesterday on the status of our seized household goods and I can finally talk about what's going on and what has happened without jeopardizing a thing finally. Back up to us shipping our stuff. Recap - sorted all the boxes in the storage room above our garage and marked them. Booked a shipping container. The shipping container was delayed, but when they could get it out to our house I would be back in Costa Rica, so I paid my realtor to have a crew load the container. I left a detailed list of what went, what needed to go to the dump, or Goodwill, and what our kids would be picking up. Unbeknownst to me the crew packed everything, from trash to treasure, into the shipping container. When my kids showed up to get their things it was all gone. I called the shipping company in a panic  and th...

I spent most of today in bed. Not the entire day, but a large chunk of it. I even skipped church, even as I knew the other vocalist was on a cruise. I just could not get up. What is this stuff I have no idea. Fever, rash, cannot think, or do much of nothing. I must have picked up something. I knew on Thursday night I was feeling weird when we did the rooftop dining experience, but it wasn't until last night when we were visiting our friends with the mini golf and ice cream shop that it got bad. I stopped being able to easily converse. The day was me laying in the bed, or on the sofa, getting up at regular intervals for food, bathroom and switch another load of laundry over. I cooked once, very quickly and simply. I already miss my daughter. Its a deep ache.

Took my darling daughter back to the airport today after more laying on the beach and guaro dirnking. Going to miss her. We had an awesome time. I'm just not used to no down time and go go go, so I'm pretty exhausted tonight. Confession time. One of our friends made a cane for me, for giving him rides to and from the airport. At first I struggled and thought "I do not need  a cane!" because I can walk just fine. But.. I did start using it for balance. I didn't realize until I started using the cane how incredibly bad the MS has made my balance. It's a godsend, particularly here with uneven ground and cracked pavements. Much more stable with the cane. But funny misunderstandings happen. For example, today, standing in line at Wal Mart in the line marked old timers, disabled and pregnant women. Typically a Tico man cut in front of me in the line. The older ladies in front of him started shaming him, not for cutting in front of me, but because he was young a...

Today was a falling day. First off we went to the animal rehab I was volunteering at for awhile. I realized very quickly that my health is not exactly compatible with what they needed help with. All it took was one smokey afternoon chasing a squealing, squalling, complaining coatimundi around a mountain on fire to let me know I could not. We caught him only because we gave him a granola bar. He was still squealing and protesting while scooped up, but never let go of his sweet treat. So now, I come in only when they have oodles of babies that need to be bottle fed, burped, encouraged to go to the bathroom. They haven't had babies in awhile. Last ones were a set of baby sloths, baby bats and one shy baby deer. It was very nice revisiting the place. I haven't been in a while. The exotic birds, the blue macaw, and the yellow naped ones were especially happy to see me, talking, doing tricks and trying to seduce me to come into the cage to scratch heads. My buddy!   ...

My daughter is here right now, and we've been going out to the beach, going out to eat, and hitting Happy Hour. I'm having to stick to soft drinks due to the drug they added for the MS.  If you drink with it you get crazy drunk off very little, and the only time that happened some idiot accused me of flipping birds at him, when I was just trying to stand upright and walk. No conscience bird flipping going on at all. Between career talk and talking about how weirdly drugs affect you this evening I found myself telling my daughter about my roughly 3 years working at the large internal medicine clinic as a social worker, a job that started out with me lining up people for hospice and mental health help, that rapidly devolved into taking over a number of functions at the clinic. Yes, this is the place that fired me in 2007 for daring to have a serious asthma attack when I was exposed to an aerosol, the first real appearance of the asthma from routine to "oh holy crap this ...

Today was a perfect illustration on how Americans and Ticos differ in resolving problems, a set of cultural differences that can be most frustrating. The area where international flight travelers must past through in order to enter Costa Rica near Liberia. Notice it's just lurking baggage folks and taxi services? They've stopped allowing we peons to come anywhere near this point to meet guests, pushing everyone outside in a huge tangled mess. But that is not so much the problem because it's a tiny airport. Today we arrived to pick up our daughter from the States. Liberia has all the flights arriving and taking off at just about the same time.  Three times a day during high season from December to April and once or twice a day during rainy season. Why? I'm pretty sure it's a cost saving measure for the airport. It means you only have to actually staff the place fully for an hour or two on either side of the arrivals and take offs. I can appreciate that the ai...

Valentine's Day is one of those holidays I could take or leave. It does not hold tremendous meaning either way. For me it's how you treat or are treated the other 364 days a year, not one special day. Working for four years in a national florist chain exposed me to the worst of human behavior, all the fear, greed, utter strangeness involved in trying to meet other peoples needs. Jim is good about the holiday, but it took some letting him know I had expectations. Plus I had to mature enough to realize it's just one day, and no matter what happens it really does not say anything real about your relationship. I am fine with a card, without a card, with roses, without roses, etc. I got a dozen roses this year, and we went out for dinner. It's what we always do now and that's fine. One year, back when we were still quiverfull,  I remember feeling unappreciated and ignored. Jim rushed in after his long commute from D.C. with a tiny flowerpot. So small it could not h...

We got up this morning to no electricity and water. Typical day in Ticoland. I started to stress out over this because I had planned on scrubbing the guesthouse in air conditioned comfort followed by hemming the new drapes for the larger guestroom on my sewing machine. But it was not to be. Got a grip on myself and realized anew I only have to stay Cajun and eventually die. Everything else is free form. Today illustrated an important principal of our move to Costa Rica. I did something else and it was fine. I scrubbed windows, mopped and dusted the entire house. Normally these are tasks I would do the day of or the day before someone comes to visit to keep that good clean smell around. Now I'm completely done with guest arrival save a few dishes in the morning and a load of towels. Part of living here, living the dream is flexibility and no 'must dos' I rarely make real plans any longer because things change. Sometimes, like Wednesday afternoon, the change is dictated b...

It was the vest of times, it was the blurst of times. The last eleven days with zero internet.....I kept a ranty running diary I'm about to inflict on you all here. This starts last Thursday. ~~~~~~~ I'm sitting here, sweating my rump off with a fever of 101 and most distinctly unpleased. Going to see if I can reconstruct the last week, if for no other reason as a reminder to never ever repeat all of this blathering. We fully lost internet 8 days ago. Before that we had very sporadic connections. Our cable tv went with it. For the past three weeks roughly I've been nattering at Kolbi/ICE to get off their asses and fix this. Sadly the Tico way is to take a report of outage, and if they don't get around to getting out to your house to fix it in the promised 30 hours they turn around and close out the complaint as resolved without doing a thing. Which means it takes a few days before you know, and you have to start the entire process over once again, and pray some...