Cleaning Up

 

Scored something crazy at the store, something missing for some months here. Clorox Wipes, that essential for daily MRSA prevention and COVID 19 avoidance.

Many years ago Jim and I owned a country store near the main hiking trails in the Shenandoah National Park. It was a good, but hard three years. One night we had troubles with a regular at the store. This guy had so many DUIs that he'd not been able to hold a license in some years. He went everywhere on a bicycle. He was as nice as could be, but he wasn't all together there, I was never sure if it was because he'd marinated all of his brain cells in too much cheap Wild Irish Rose wine, or if it was because his family seemed to exemplify the whole inbred hillbilly genre of cousins marrying cousins and living off making moonshine and SSI payments for intellectual disabilities. I wish I was making this up, but it's the sad truth.

You could see him riding the mountain backroads on his bike, spray painted a glistening silver with a matching silver cowboy hat. When I had asked him about his hat he'd proudly explained that he'd found an old plastic dishpan, softened it up over a fire and sculpted the hat out of the dishpan before spraying it silver to match his bike. Interesting guy in his own weird way.

That particular Saturday night after stopping in twice to buy his favorite cheap wine over the course of eight hours I'd refused to sell him any more. Drunker than who shot Cooter Brown. He should not have been that wasted off two small bottles of cheap wine consumed over the course of a day. Clearly I was not the only merchant selling him wine that day. He stumbled outside, sat on the old wooden church pew out front and passed out. Jim and I came outside, stood over him as he snored, puzzling over what to do. I told Jim 'If Junior pukes you're cleaning it up!' Then Junior started to puke everywhere in his sleep.

We're having heavy rains all day every day, and it's been as much of a hassle as dealing with and cleaning up after Junior was all those years ago. It usually only rains like this from the last week of September through October. We're getting pounded early this year.

Nope, no one is drunk or puking here. But it's been quite the few days. Monday we got locked out of the house and property. Late Monday we had to go out and sign more paperwork having to do with fighting the canton on our house value. When we finished Jim decided to get a shake at our favorite burger joint, and pick up burgers for dinner. We got there and our pal that owns the place wasn't there. Bad news because he's the only decent cook there. We ended up getting subs at another place and headed home at dark.

We pulled up to the gates of our house. Jim hit the button the gate opener in our car. Nothing. De nada. I pulled the spare from my purse, hit the button and nothing. We both noticed about that time that it was dark, pitch black, country dark without a crack of light to be seen. No electric. No electricity, no automatic gate opener. I got out to manually unlock the small pedestrian door and promptly broke my key off in the lock. I'd known that lock had been getting stiffer and harder to use no matter how we oiled it up. Our buddy the locksmith has been out of town for a couple of weeks now.

So we spent a full hour driving around, first having a picnic in the parking lot of the only store in the area with a generator. Later I went in to buy a drink and noticed they had a huge display that had once been full of Clorox wipes. It hadn't been there the day before. In fact no Clorox or Lysol wipes had been available anywhere in Guanacaste since early March. Score! I bought one of the last ones! Limit one. Never have I been so thrilled to buy cleaning products before.

Yesterday was more rain, but the crew showed up to work on the lot drainage problem, installing more drainage in the pouring rain and making plans to pour concreto down to the wall to solve the drainage by extending out the French drain. More pouring rain with guys tracking oodles of mud on my freshly scrubbed lanai floors. More scrubbing followed.

Today was a bit different, even if it's still pouring. We went to Nicoya to get the car reinspected for it's yearly inspection. It flunked for one minor thing a few weeks ago. On the drive down we saw just massive flooding, scores of houses flooded, someone's cattle sheltering on their tiny lanai. Humps and hillocks of horses, sheep, goats and cattle standing in high spots surrounded by water. And it's raining hard again. 

We're not flooding, but I'm thinking it's likely those places and more are even more flooded than this morning. It's been pouring for at least 9 more hours since seeing that flooding. I took a ton of photos on my old crappy battery will not hold a charge Iphone I'm going to post once it charges. Unbelievable sights. One place we came to between 27th of April (yes, real town name!) and Canafistula was a miles long sudden lake or sea stretching all through the verdant cattle pastures in the valley. I have seen smaller lakes!

One flooding photo before my phone died.

 

Once we got home in the late afternoon we found that Jim's surgery will be taking place next week. Turns out his bone scan shows that they can just remove the screws and he'll be fine. There was some question about that with the first sets of xrays. Not looking forward to it since I am a terrible nurse and so squeamish dealing with blood and things, while Jim is an incredibly unhappy patient.