Endings! Beginnings! Rocks! Zucchinis!
What they do in Costa Rica instead fix the road holes. Pack with dirt and pile rocks onto the unfixed portions.
Right up until I got to the main village road. I knew something was happening there because of the past few days we've seen city buses and trucks on the dirt back road past the front gate. Turns out they are 'fixing' the roads again, the village road, by packing dirt into the potholes, which fixes it until it rains again. Rainy season just started. They also piled rocks and trash onto the portions that are still unfixed even with dirt. It's a silly Sisyphian task I completely do not understand except I had a Tico tell me if they broke down and fixed the village road with asphalt or blacktop he'd be out of a job.
I wasn't any happier to get to the grocery store for my weekly trip. Packed, over the top packed, no social distancing at all. No masks, people waving off the guy at the door trying to hand out hand sanitizer and spray down the carts. Chaos. After the silly bs of the church gather that violated all the rules and now this, I took my masked self, grabbed what I needed and got the heck out of there. Clearly the Ticos, like everyone up at church, thinks that COVID 19 is over and done with.
There are active cases here in Guanacaste. I think we're about to see a second wave here in 3, 2. 1....still without the beaches being open more than a few hours at dawn.
I got home just in time to see a local American friend of mine wanting to know why I hadn't bought a copy of his latest book, a cookbook. I had to ignore his message. I don't have the heart to tell him that I leafed through it, and while I'm glad he's hit upon a way to support himself here by writing and releasing books on living in CR I have zero use for his cookbook.
Why? Well, mainly because I am Cajun. I am used to cooking beans and rice. I don't need recipes from clueless gringos who've never figured out that you can make ten zillion things out or zucchinis or other vegetables and fruits. I know they never lived in a food desert with out access to anything, but they must have been raised in a white bread, mayo and prepared American foods. Cooking isn't exotic here, merely prosaic. Costa Rica food is very devoid of spices, and the last thing I need is a slim volume of recipes I would never make. Hell, they only have one recipe for zucchini in the entire cookbook. I could have written an entire chapter out of just zucchini, including pickles made from zucchini and cookies from it and cakes and a million other things.
It is bad enough that going out to eat here is bland and uninspiring. There are very few restaurants in this area that I consider good. I was raised in the New Orleans area and most food in many places fails measured against that metric. But even horrid Culpeper had decent restaurants. We had a couple of nearby five star places. And Washington D.C. and Baltimore Maryland were a hop, skip and a jump.
The day got better. I finally finished my Paris quilt. I did something this time I had not done in ten years. I handquilted it, something I used to routinely do but got disabused of doing that during my years at the art studio. My hands look like hell. I'd forgotten what a number it can do to your skin.
And I am proudly on day two of no rescue drugs. Just the maintenance ones. I did react slightly to the smell of the hot tub yesterday it was not enough to send me wheezing into the bedroom to my neb and a laundry list of drugs. Clean and sober baby. I slept last night without having to take anything to breath. Now I'm just trying to catch up on sleep. Sleep is a beautiful wonderful thing.
I also made a startling wonderful discovery this week that took some of sting of betrayal away, illustrating yet again that life, love, and family are important, not internet drama. I found a box we were given after my mother in law passed. It was mostly junk, a small handheld video card game, a bunch of label pins for the organizations she was a member of - most of them educational groups, and assorted things. Most of the stuff I ended up tossing, silly trinkets. But I gave the video game to the kid across the street, and put some of the pins and things aside for my kids.
The biggest surprise was in a crumbled manila envelop. A new looking Canon digital camera. Not new, of course, older but like new. Inside was a SD card holding photo after photo of my beloved Maw in Law in a variety of costumes for various festivities at her retirement home. I was able to post the photos onto Facebook for all the friends and relatives. Made my entire week.
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