Rolling Confloptions

 


Just like this rooster is not supposed to be in our yard today was one heck of a flubbed up confloption. Today was supposed to be a Costco/PriceSmart/Walmart run, but it didn't quite work out that way.

I got up dragging. Late last night I started coughing and wheezing, feeling like I was coming down with a cold, so I knew we needed to make a big grocery run, but I felt like hell.

By the time Jim finished with his Skype Bible study, and I'd staggered around pouring in coffee it was nearly 10 am. Went to get on the road. Jim packed up his sound system to drop at the stereo shop since it's suddenly not working. I packed up all the insulated freezer bags we'd need for meats at the butcher and for the frozen junk from PriceSmart.

We came to the gate, our front gate, and pressed the remote, denada, nothing. I fished the spare out of my bag, denada, nothing, the gate didn't even shiver. We didn't have time to waste so Jim got out, manually opened the gate with the key like we did the first six months we lived here. Gate dead, not a great start.

We pulled through the gate, Jim got out of the car to shut and lock the gates. When he came back his keys would not move. You could not start the car. We could not even push it back through the gate because you could not even drop the transmission into neutral. Checked the battery, checked to make sure the keys weren't bent, did a bunch of things. Dead car now sitting in front of our gate until the mechanic comes tomorrow.

By that time I just decided I was over it, too sick to deal with this unexpected happening. Not wanting to take the Gnome-Mobile, the 30 plus year old Dahatsui jeep our friend is storing at our house. It's so smelly, like mold, after being caught in Hurricane Nate and sitting the water something like three days before anyone realized it was underwater three years ago. It has a permanent mold smell that makes me wheeze, and it seems to be put together with bailing wire and spit. I try not to even ride in it much less drive it. I also don't think it would be road worthy enough to go to Liberia in.

Lots of quick scrambling and changing plans. Jim decided to get to the stereo repair place because he'd told them he'd be there before 11 am. We decided to scrap the plans for the monthly jaunt to town for vittles. We have food here, I just wanted to make a big meat run to the butcher and see if I could score paper plates, body wash and Lysol wipes at Price Smart.

I went back to bed, Jim went to get the stereo fixed. So typically the guy who works on those things was not there, even after telling Jim to come today. The mechanic could not get around to working on the car ignition until tomorrow afternoon. The gate guy showed up, and said that the gate electronic mechanism is entirely filled with rain water from rainy season.

Even though today was supposed to be the first day we had steady water after ten days of the local Asada repairing the mains we had none, which severely limited what I could do from my daily list. Hard to scrub the bathrooms with no water. This is Tico Time, folks. The Asada sent around a notice saying we would have days long water outages from Dec 1 through the 10th to repair the system. We are still without during the day. I suspect tomorrow will be much of the same. Hard to mop without water.

This is one of the more frustrating cultural things, repairs happen about at the speed of turtles imbibing downers. I know better than to get upset over cultural differences, and am pretty sangfroid about the entire thing. Jim, unfortunately, is not always able to shrug it off and wait a few days.

We didn't get a lot done today. I don't know what tomorrow holds, but it's gotta be better than today.

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