The Sea is a Salty One

    The last time the bullfighting ring was being constructed in Villarreal. I am starting to feel like the church here needs something like this, or a mud wrestling pit, for the various factions to fight out their differences. It's getting toxic and weird. You can cut the tension between the folks with a knife it's so thick. Churchmaggedon is still ongoing. Everything is so secret squirrel right now. Church board members being appointed from people that rarely ever attend, while much of the board has quit the church, yet still sit on the board. Backstabbing, gossip, do it my way or the highway. Smiling in your face while sticking in the knives and kicking anyone in leadership. I am seeing lots of pure assholery ongoing around me at the same time. I'm just about done with any version of organized religion. Tried to reach out to the lady I believe is being abused and she told me her husband said she is not allowed to talk to me. Very weird. I've done nothing to them at a...

  Stinky sleeping on the couch in the guesthouse before I upgraded the curtains and added throw pillows. The guesthouse is a work in progress right now again, and much nicer than this. We've started talking here about life, and what we want and need to do. I've been contemplating something like turning the guesthouse into emergency shelter for American domestic violence victims here. At least when there aren't friends and family in it. Lately we had visits from two sets of friends. Since the announcement of changes at the church I've been talking a great deal with a good friend of mine who used to live here. I love her dearly. I knew her marriage fell apart here, but I didn't know the depth or details of what happened. Apparently he was physically abusing her, and everywhere she turned they either refused to help her, or told her she was lying. The worst was hearing what the pastor and his wife I love did.  They showed up after she told them about the abuse, and tol...

  Maybe all we need to heal ourselves is good chocolate. Cocoa pods I took a picture of in Monte Verde last year before this crud happened. Jim was sick today. He moaned and napped most of the day. Says he's dizzy and feverish. Explained it's usually an ear infection of some sort when that happens, but knew he'd fight going to the doctor. I've been busy today and this week with doing the twice a year rearrange all the closets and storage. Over the last few days I've been rotating out what's in the heavy duty first aid kit I keep in our car. I don't know what the lifespan is of bandages, gauze and other things in there, but they've been in there over a year now, and the Oxygena Agua (Hydrogen Peroxide) had leaked out over the towels. One of the things I've learned the hard way here is that when you drive it benefits you to keep one of those giant oversized ziplock bag bulging with first aid supplies. Why? Well most of Costa Rica is largely rural. Ther...

  I know I just shared this one yesterday, but it's genuinely my favorite now. Our big BIG iguana chased Stinky up a tree this week. I was standing in the picture window of the kitchen when I glimpsed Stinky up about twenty feet in the Carambola (Star Fruit) tree. The iguana ran him up the tree. I don't know if Stinky figured out yet that I have seen that five foot long beauty in the very tops of that tree. I had to come out and call Stinky. He did finally come down but cut a wide circle around this guy and every single time the iguana cut eyes at him Stinky went into a submissive cat posture. That unfurling of the flappy bits and spikes standing straight up is an example of male iguana dominance. This has been the most incredible week in one way. Not one bit of asthma. I took only slight maintenance drugs for the first time in a year. I feel well. I see this iguana quite a bit in our yard. He walks up to me now, very close, and has sat on the patio with Jim and I. I get to see...

 ... that keeps me awake! Yesterday was a perfect illustration of what I've been involved in this last full week and how it's just gone sort of haywire. Much to do with the church, projects, and a possible upcoming project involving domestic abuse. Not much to say about any of it right now. But I'm busier than that one legged man at the asskicking contest. Plus we've had guests and I've been playing chatelaine of the tropical palace here. I am happy, contented, with a full life, in spite of Covid and crazy folks. We awoke yesterday, Jim went swimming. I'm having to stay out of the pool because I got some sort of dreadfully infected bug bite on my right breast. Draining. Gross. Usually Jim gets these things, not me. Here's something I learned here. Going into the swimming pool or ocean when you have an open wound is downright dangerous here due to the different bacterial loads and types here. I don't play around when we get this stuff. Jim was complaining...

  And here we are again. Last night I got over a hundred emails in my spam filter. This is my old email box that is connected to No Longer Quivering, and nothing else. I have filters in it that send different types of emails into differing folders. The spam filter catches anything that seems squishy. I would rarely get much in it during my time at No Longer Quivering, the occasion "Dear Friend, I am the wife of General Ngbogo of the Nigerian Army and he has left me millions of dollars I will share with you, kind friend." I checked the filter every time I accessed the box, but besides the few Nigerian come ons there was rarely anything in it. That all changed once I started speaking out against Without a Crystal Ball's Katie Joy Paulson. Suddenly I started reaching a flood of spam emails. Being signed up for magazines, insurance quotes, shipping notices for free marijuana gummies and other goods and services. And oh boy, porn, porn, porn and more porn. I feel sorry for ...

 Yesterday I was consumed with thoughts of a tragedy that happened 9 years ago, followed by the criminal trial. Yesterday was the 8th anniversary of the criminal trial, possibly the biggest reminder to me that I didn't have much in common with the locals of the town we lived in for 30 years. Backtrack: I'd know Pat for about four or five years at that point. She taught Sunday School at the Methodist church we attended after leaving our fundamentalist church. She was one of those silly ladies that volunteered for everything at church, she was nice, but she was weird, goofy, silly.  Later I figured out she had substance abuse issues involving alcohol making her seem even sillier. All of that I could have handled, and mostly did. After all she was sometimes on worship team, standing right behind me. Singing off key in my ear. But I still liked Pat, silly or not, except for one thing, one big thing that made me avoid her. The fact that she cooked for church. Any church function, t...

  It's been crazy lately. Three weeks of bad back, some asthma, some super low blood pressure, a insurrection viewed from long distances, a political changing of the guard, hack attempts, crazy spam I've been signed up for, spilling a few secrets involving No Longer Quivering that I never planned to out, and the whole roiling rolling conniption fit that involves that certain lawsuit. Sometimes I feel like I'm just sitting back watching the wheels go round and round Aftermath of the Vyckie reveal. People are coming out of the literal woodworks to tell me tales of her contacting them out of the blue begging and demanding money. I didn't have a clue how awful her requests were and how wide spread until that moment. Watching Saltzy and Emily D. Baker get death threats, legal threats and all sorts of Twitter nonsense from people supposedly close friends of Katie Joy. You literally could not make up this crap! I'm betting before this lawsuit is much over we're going t...

 Since posting here yesterday about my history with Vyckie Garrison and why I would have nothing further to do with her I've had people coming out of the woodworks. Why? To tell me more tales of Vyckie trying to get money out of them. Yes, more people has stepped forward.  I understand Vyckie is upset that I have spoken out. I'm sorry that she feels that way, but I had reached the point where silence was no option for me. I believe in transparency.

 So some rather idiotic drama has gone down, and yes, it involves Vyckie Garrison for once. Let's recap. I took over No Longer Quivering ten years ago from Vyckie Garrison because she was unable to keep posting. I appreciated that, and I've worked steadily on it all these years. I did it not for the money because truthfully there was little, but because I had a passion to expose the seamy underbelly of a cult faith. I decided to put NLQ in inactive mode at Patheos November 1st, 2020 because it was just time. Ten years is a long time to keep doing the same thing. There have been some scary individuals lately from the NIFB that have issues some very specific threats towards me that nudged along that decision. Five or six years ago I started to hear from people I know through NLQ that they'd given Vyckie money to set up the Take Heart Foundation, or for this or that, and she'd never once followed through on what the money was for. No one knows where those funds went. I kne...

  A pile of clean bedding, curtains and towels to go out to the guesthouse after our unexpected guest. Spent the day in the guesthouse. I'd put off doing a hard scrub a few weeks. We'd had the guesthouse sprayed for termites, which is an annual thing we do here. I try to wait until the point where the insecticide has dissipated enough not to bother me. Since Covid has ended the flood of friends and family coming to stay in the guesthouse I'd not done a hard scrub in a while. Today, lawdamercy, I did. stiff and sore everywhere, to the point where I cannot get comfortable enough to sleep. Cleaned walls and windows and every conceivable surface. Extremely pleased with the outcome. Tomorrow I must see if I can get replacement curtain rods for the bedrooms and lamps. The cheap little bedroom lamps have walked off from the guesthouse. It's the only petty theft we've had this year. I hope someone is happy with their five dollar lamps. Getting nicer ones tomorrow and stand ...

 Si, so here we are again....   This afternoon Katie Joy announced that she'd been contacted by "The Dr. Phil Show" They want her to be a guest. Most of her detractors said it was not true. But I know it is. I know of at least five different attempts by people I know to get the show to take a look at her, her lies and her various insane claims and plots. I've seen copies of three of those email contact forms, screen caps of what was said.  Those are just the few I know of in my own friends group. Likely the total was much higher. No names, but they were contacted. She just stated that she's not going to do it. I am disappointed. I would have thought she's not turn down a chance to abase herself on a grand scale in her chase for clicks and coins. To call out her hating haters that hate, allegedly. Still not sure I believe she would turn this down. Then Saltzy dropped another legal brief and Emily D Baker read it. Turns out to be the most insane one yet. The s...

  This morning I awoke to a friend pondering on trying to reach the state of happiness. He was talking about 2020 and our launch into 2021, and stating how he was trying to be like the Dali Lama, be happy in every circumstance. I think he's mistaking peace and contentment for happiness.   We are wonderful, infuriating, complex creatures that exist along a vast rainbow like spectrum. How can a binary state of happiness/unhappiness possibly contain or quantify what we feel from the millions of fleeting ever changing moments? It cannot, and that's really okay! It means you are human, like the rest of us.   I love this cartoon by "The Oatmeal" explaining his take on "Happiness" He, like me, isn't naturally attuned to being happy all the time. We like to do similar things, the reading of eleventy billion page books, and the creative processes of an artist which sometimes involves emotional pain and angst. Now I don't run until my toenails fall off like ...

 Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean..... Nope, stormy weather again! Sometimes I am just such a clueless dope! I knew for months and years they were all starting to mutter madly about our pastor, but I largely ignored it. I should have known because the volume of chatter had risen. But the biggest red flag was going to church yesterday and seeing folks that had not attended for like two years smiling in your face, the backstabbers. I should have known. Earlier in the week we'd talked to the pastor and there was nary a word about decamping to take care of his mother with dementia, nothing, business as usual, some very normal discussion of his State side sabbatical. He was ready and raring to go. I knew on Friday there was a board meeting. One of the board members who'd been talking smack about the pastor and the church for ages was heading it. Later I heard that most of the other board members flew in from the States on Thursday just for the meeting. Of the 8 board members only 4 ...

   Inside of the round church in Santa Cruz pre Covid. Going back to church for the first time since the Pandemic hit. Our church closed to physical services and has been doing virtual since except for a three week stretch in the fall. They reopened and had less than ten congregants. Why? What's the problem? I think it's the whispering campaign of one of the local gringo millionaires. I went to church with him for some months before he approached me during worship team rehearsal to try and talk smack about the pastor. Told him that was a very inappropriate conversation and if he had a problem with the pastor he needed to take it to the pastor, not me.  I don't play those church games. I've seen amply first hand the extreme damage they do, pitting person against person, ideologies against ideologies and have nothing to do with the central message of Christ. It's childish. It's evil. My faith has morphed through the years, and I think it would horrify the gringo i...

 It appears we are here again, and I wanted to rant about church and religion instead. There's a lot going down in the local religious community that is so wrong and toxic. Today will not be that day, sadly enough.   A few days ago someone I never heard of before popped up on my YouTube channel. They weren't the usual brain dead person who does not like me telling me I am "Teh Evilz". It was someone making the allegation that Emily D. Baker and Tati Westbrook knew each other, were in league to ruin Katie Joy's life and that they both knew Michael Saltz, Tati's attorney. Some sort of evil cabal and conspiracy according to this poster.  I did screen shots before erasing the comment, because I cannot stand conspiracy theories like some stupid QAnon codswallop. I have no time for bullspit in the middle of more bullspittle. Posting them on Twitter I suggested the long ranty nature of the comment reminded me of Katie Joy. I never said it was her, just that is soun...

  A bouquet of wildflowers I picked this morning before this sad day. It's been a pretty horrid day here. The weather is gorgeous. I gardened, I swam, I cleaned the bathroom in the guesthouse, put away the Christmas things and dusted. You'd think it would have been wonderful. Sadly we're dealing with something I thought I would talk around here tonight, a nasty contentious church split, and we're losing friends who are on that hideous collision course with wanting a church with very stupid strict Fundy-Gelical leanings. But no. It seems so silly now. The problem started when we went off to lunch, Jim and I, we went off to eat at the place with the red octopus on the sign. Some ceviche, some patacones, some discussion. We were still talking about the church snafus when my Iphone Facebook notifications blew up. We'd left the house after watching Mitch McConnell speak, both sure that the election would go through now. But not to be. All afternoon we've both been gl...

 Bet you don't know what song this blog title is from. A rather grainy photo I took last year of a Yellow Naped Amazon parrot in our grapefruit trees. The trees are starting to produce and I awoke this morning to the parrots making their first raid on the trees, and hummingbirds circling the blooming fruit trees here. A peaceful start to a morn. Today was pretty average for the kinds of things we do here daily. We couldn't go anywhere because under the new tighter pandemic restrictions we could not drive our cars today. I hate seeing more lockdown, but understand the why. Too bad we're not tourists, tourists are still allowed carte blanche to go anywhere and drive any place. Spread that Covid, honey. We swam, I used my hot glue gun to fix various things, and I gardened. So exciting, not. I did get to see and here a black billed Toucan in the back yard snacking on our Starfruit tree. Took down the Christmas tree. It didn't start off so well though. Jim, in his perpetual ...

  It's the most miserable time of the year, sing with me! Tamarindo Beach today overcrowded with people on that holiday week that is the busiest week of the year. Needless to say I did not walk the beach like usual. But my back is much improved finally. Today has been filled with shockers. What a week! Capped off by reacting to cutting up broccoli, then having to stop to medicate while soaking the broccoli in icy water and lemon juice. I made a run to the fruit and vegetable market in Villareal and stocked up. First time I've ever reacted with asthma to broccoli and I haven't a clue why. We had the broccoli in a salad for lunch, after a couple of nebulizer treatments, some drugs and a whole lot of rinsing of the broccoli.  Finding that produce market happened quickly after moving to the area. Part of the finding out about the places surrounding you is seeking out where the locals shop, and local produce. I've been going to this place since we moved here over 3 years ago...

 I've been quiet here lately. One reason. I suddenly have sciatica for the first time over the course of the last week. Very intense this last week. Finally got it looked at by the doctor and got muscle relaxers. Starting to lift just slightly. Starting to concentrate on trying to exercise and diet. I don't care what your health issue is the doctors want you to lose weight. I know it can only make it better. I hope. Every day I do the minimum I must before doping up. I've watched a pile of television shows, the good, the bad and the ugly. Didn't even make it close to midnight last night, was in bed a good hour before midnight only to be awoken by the fireworks an hour later. Which went on into the night while I went right back to sleep.