The Sea is a Salty One

    Just sitting around in my teak Tico leather rocker enjoying some sweet, sweet, sweet delicious schadenfreude!  I bounced around today between bouts of joy while dealing with talking to friends with some pretty severe issues today. I talked to three of my best friends, trying not to giggle while listening to some dilemmas. Today was my last piece for No Longer Quivering. I was happy, peaceful and content over it, feeling like the circle has come around and I've done what I need for my health and writing my book. So happy I took the step, but that's not why I laughed all day after discovering something yesterday. Why am I laughing? Karma, baby, sweet karmic realignment to someone that surely deserves it mixed with some vindication.  One Katie Joy of Without a Crystal Ball, former friend through work at Patheos. She's being sued by Tati Westbrook, another YouTuber. I haven't followed the entire Tati and Katie story. I do know that Katie has been 'reporting' on ...

  A newer stray, Pork. She's so sweet. She loves to hang out in front of my bedroom window and roll and purr outside the window. She's just now starting to let me pet her. By cutting off most of my social media, about three email boxes closed, and by stopping the hammer and tongs writing for Patheos I'm starting to finally regain a bit of time. This afternoon I spent one very long stint in the garden, something that fell by the wayside as I was sick this summer, and as my time was eaten up with YouTube, comment moderation, Patheos and everywhere else. Since June I have been on a daily time crunch. I did an enormous amount of weeding this afternoon, happy to see I was able to rescue the vegetable garden where most of the plants were doing well. I have kept them picked, but not well wedded. I resurrected my herb garden, harvesting the herbs about to go to seed, and replanting some of the containers. Cleaned up the areas around the hammock and guesthouse.  I got filthy dirty, ...

  Bananas in our banana tree when we first moved in. Putting in the pool upset the tree and it died. Since we've finally had a new banana tree grow from the old stump. Hoping for those delicious fingerling bananas this year. I've been quiet this week. The dizziness is back, and the vertigo is back, so it's been a week of books, naps and resting. Better today. Ran about cleaning, cooking and getting everything done. I don't trust tomorrow. While I'm not trusting tomorrow and falling down it's been a rough week in a couple of ways. Church and people. We lost someone we know to suicide this week here. The shut down of tourism killed his business, and I guess he just lost hope. I was sad to hear it.  Lots going down that has not been so pleasant to hear. Most of our American friends are back in the States, and we got word of another set going back. A couple we know well from church. Got here just about the same time we did. I don't know what the husband did in t...

  We've had a lot of four legged and winged visitors here lately. From the yellow naped green amazon parrots, through iguanas in all shades. This guy lives under our pool and is over five feet long. He hangs out in the starfruit tree every day. The golden iguanas with red spikes are rarer than the other varieties. It's a good thing it always feels like a Tuesday afternoon here, even this morning when we went out for breakfast at a charming cafe overlooking the beach. My mast cell symptoms have gotten so insane. I'm having more issues than ever before, and I wonder how much stress plays into it. We went out for breakfast and a grocery run before coming home and I crawled straight back into bed.  Hallelujah anyway. At least I can view the critters from the bed, I am not dealing with the debilitating dizziness I was and can walk without people pointing and saying I am drunk. The mrsa is back, the mast cell is the most active, and I'm almost a shut in by now., an exhausted ...

  Playa Grande recently near the big rock. Jim tried to get me to go to the beach today, but I was just too under the weather to make that happen. One very interesting thing happened. A set of friends just made it back from the States. They originally said they were staying here and going nowhere. But pretty quickly into the Covid lockdown someone in their family had an emergency and away they went back to the States.  As I've said before Tama is a ghost town, most of the rich millionaire types have departed. They are the first to return I know of. After listening to their tale of how hard it was to return and the costs of having to find a rental home, and everything else their little sojourn it ran a good twenty thousand dollars more than staying put would have. Wow!  I knew the airline tickets are now astronomical if you can even find a flight, but didn't consider the other costs. I'm glad we stayed put. They're even five hundred bucks out of pocket for the rapid Covi...

  The frutus and vegetals stand near our house. One of my favorite places in the area, and a weekly stop for fruits and vegetables.  Been exactly six weeks since Jim's surgery and now I have a mrsa spot on my nose. It never fails. I cannot go near a hospital without picking up a hospital infection, even if I'm not the patient. I had to fish out my tube of ointment and grit my teeth. It's way more painful that a regular skin infection. Stupid body, stupid immunio suppression therapy for the mast cell. But I've learned, to deal with things quickly. First throbbing this afternoon I'm slathering it with my prescription cream instead of of waiting. I'm getting better to figuring out needs and taking immediate action. Knowing when I need to let go and rest happen now that never happened in the past. I was thinking about that on Monday when the dizziness was insanely bad, I never even bothered to get dressed. I had coffee, did the minimum and lay in the bed listening t...

  That time Jim got a monkey on his back. I'm trying to get one off mine. The internet one. I have to say I will welcome the day when I get online and don't find nasty messages on every place threatening to shave my head and worse. They are still coming in, but per usual I'm just blocking and removing. But I have seen a down tic in them since announcing I am retiring. The idea that I can go online, or not go online and it does not matter is a marvelous one now. I feel completely free.  There were always things I was uncomfortable with during the last ten years, most especially when folks started complimenting me. I have always struggled to accept compliments, or people saying nice things. I was raised to not seek praise.  People being ugly rolls off my back. Always has because I'm a veteran of IRC chat, Usenet and other early internet interactions. You don't take that stuff seriously! Unless its a large angry mob like the NIFB. One big plus is that I no longer have ...

  Taken from a mountain overlooking Playa Pinellas here. One of my absolute earliest memories was the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. I remember it well because of seeing how much it affected the adults around me. It felt like a very unsafe transitional time. Our house staff was greatly affected, our housekeeper,  and our gardener most of all. I remember my mother holing up in her bedroom in front of the television with bon bons and her favorite adult beverage, crying for days on end. It marked a time of uncertainty for me. I have had a number of transitional times in my life that have felt unsettling, even if some were happy, like getting married and moving to Europe. Our last one involving moving here to the English language school in the mountain town for a semester. Buying our home on the outskirts of Las Baulas and Playa Grande. Selling our house in the States. For the past year I keep telling my friend Cindy and others that I sense I'm coming up on another ca...

  Raining this afternoon. Shot around sundown from my bedroom window. Sometimes when it's still like this and I have everything done I like to sit back, watch it rain and read. This evening was one of those. I see I have a crazy hit number on the post where I bitched about our neighbors being pushy. They were trying to persuade us to hire their maid, even though our house is cleaner than theirs and most here. I keep the houses pretty clean. One truism here is when work gets scarce every one you know will try to force you to hire their domestic help who are begging them for more hours. Not interested, don't need it, already have. They approached me exactly wrong way on an bad asthma day. Shrugs, least said, soonest mended. Last night Jim showed up all white and spooked. Asked him what was going on. He told me that the picture on the wall outside the master suite was moving and making racket. He was sort of freaked out. This morning I investigated. It was a lizard, one big lizard...

  Somebody else having a very bad day with the deep muddy pothole in front of Banco Nacional. We had to plod through it today too but we didn't lose our bumper. So Sunday night, I'm walking in the kitchen, going to grab another delicious Clight limeade, right between the fridge and the stove when there was a tremendous BOOM!!!!! and flash. Simultaneous, no lag.  I jumped  a foot, we smelled burning plastic and discovered that the lightning had run in on the electric and fried our router. The only thing in the house besides my Himalayan pink salt lamp plugged directly into the wall and not a surge protector. The salt lamp wasn't touched, but the router was toast. This was after two earthquakes earlier in the day. Heh. I thought they were rumbling trucks going by. Still having coming and going bouts of dizziness and stomach issues again. Back to the doctor, told yet again it's a virus and my Mast Cell is making this more complex. Meds changed again. We had to shrug and sa...

  Love him or hate him, it's been quite a weird newscycle. Today as we were shopping this afternoon at the Mega Super we kept running into Ticos we know. The question on the lips of most of them seemed to all revolve around what did we think of President Donald Trump's shenanigans. We have several years worth of friendships with folks working there now, and sometimes they are eager to know where you fall on the fault lines of life. Particularly on a week where we had a couple of minor earthquakes here. It seems to be the ultimate Tico litmus test. Do you like him, or dislike him?  It's also interesting that most of the  millionaire class Trump supporters that have lived here from the U.S. have gone home. Decamped. Taken their dough an returned home. Many putting their homes here up for sale or rent. I only know of one still here. Even with the borders open to parts of the U.S. now it's still relatively a ghost town. Still no regular flights and no U.S. mail here, just...

  I am feeling most salty right now. Tonight the electricity has been off and on and off and on several times during our usual evening thunderstorms. My asthma is particularly bad again. I am reacting left, right and center to foods again. Having to go back on the very restrictive allergens diet for a few weeks. Yesterday I was fine, the asthma was only moderate, and the flu seems like it is fading. Jim is even better. Towards late afternoon I started to be not so fine. Why? Recent friends who do not understand boundaries at all. Remember last week when our friend tried to play 'intervention' on me because I asked him to bring back an 18 month supply of fiber tablets and benadryl? That was the first incident. There have been a few "You should do things my way." from him in the past. He's an evangelical Christian, and I have noted that a lot of them have no awareness of boundaries and appropriateness. Example: he sometimes says very creepy things around me, I turn ...