The Sea is a Salty One

  Pork, the stray that moved in and adopted us, taking a long hard nap on my fresh sheets. She arrived with her friend we called Beans, as in Pork and Beans, but Beans comes around rarely now. Not Pork, Pork is permanent. Yesterday Jim gave his good friend Derwood a ride to the Liberia airport.  I didn't offer to go with them. I knew Jim wanted to take the opportunity to talk with Derwood alone. Last year when the pandemic started until Sept Derwood was at our house every single freaking day. Jim thought he'd made a close friend here. It's hard to make close friends here because of the very transient nature of the place. It fits the description that Stephen King used in "Stand By Me" about friendships. It's more true here that friends move in and out of our lives here like busboys at a restaurant. My best friend here got abused by her husband and went back to the States.  It happens. When Derwood disappeared in Sept we were both puzzled by this. Every single d...

  Right now I need all the chocolate in all those cocoa bean pods processed in my hot little hands pronto! No sleep because no breath plus asthma drugs. It's easing some, and I had a small window of time today without wheezing, but my eyes look like I'm smuggling these cocoa beans between the bottom and top lids. No bueno. Stayed home largely in the bedroom under the air conditioning and I read and crocheted a lot. If I ever again utter the words "Hey I love that very intricate afghan and I'm going to make it" I want one of you to stick my head in the paint can shaking machine down at the Sherwin Williams store, either here in Costa Rica, or home in the States and flip that sucker to high. Right now I'm making the Phoenix pattern and I'm losing my mind. Had to rip out the last six rows last night because I'd some how made an error six rows back screwing up the entire thing.  Because I am somewhat sidelined I'm now the official keeper of the Iphone...

  Last night's sunset at Tama. Horrid asthma. This will be brief. We keep running into Jerzey and he's still shouting out warnings about the Covid vaccine like he's this guy.    He cannot speak of anything else, no matter what you say he's right back there again and again like that last conversation. Lather, Rinse. Repeat. We're going back into Covid restrictions and near lock down again because now we're ranked #4 per capita in infections. Number 4, yet they are completely 100% open to tourism. Please don't visit right now! In other less exciting news I got new glasses, purple this time, a purple so dark it looks black. I'm not excited about them except now I can order from Zenni and get pairs in crazy colors and shapes to break this up a little. New glasses, old wrinkles. I had to laugh yesterday because right around the time I took this selfie in PriceSmart my husband started asking me where I got that pink necklace. He thought it was new. I had to po...

  Traffic jam on Monday afternoon coming back from Nicoya! This week has been getting Jim's motorcycle through the Retive process - the yearly inspection. The motorcycle being problematic because of something to do with adjusting the idle down low to get it to pass. We have to take it to the closest Yamaha authorized repair shop, which is Nicoya over an hour away, have them adjust the idle, get the inspection, come back to adjust the idle up to make it more drivable and then go home again. Monday it didn't work out. Turns out the bike needed a ton of work so we left it and came on home. I was dismayed to find that the fabric store in Santa Cruz I'd been buying quilt batting and quilt backing from had gone under and the other store a few blocks from the park had all unnatural fabrics in an array of garish colors but no silks or cottons. I'm trying to make an altar cloth and need a silk or a cotton to use encaustic waxes on and dye for a batiked altar cloth. I'm going...

  A meme I found from "The Righteous Gemstones" that sort of represents this crazy cluster you know what of a day. I'm still having sleep issues. I might fall stone solid asleep sitting in a chair, on the sofa, laying on the bed reading by 7 or 8 pm, sleep three hours. Wake bolt awake and be very unable to sleep until the still small hours of the morn. Snatch those precious few hours and wake up around 8 am. Lather, rinse, repeat. Last night it happened again. I didn't sleep. Woke up this morning and tried to do a few things like folding 2,408 loads of laundry before I gave up and said what the hell. It's been that kind of a week. I got up the other morning to find that one of the folks I'm not real close to on Twitter was claiming I had lied to get on a jury, I'd broken the law and they were going to see I was legally charged. Short story - nope, this person only listened to a small section of one live stream. I tried like hell to get out of that jury poo...

  A rainbow yesterday from the edge of our property. Reminds me of promises. A few dark days here. Not because of anything here. Everything here in paradise continues on in its proscribed ways. Jim teaches, he edits things, he frets over the painting job the last Ticos we hired did. The Tico that tried to move in with us right before Thanksgiving has reappeared in phone calls begging Jim to bail him out of jail. I do my usual things, including planting my new garden frame with every kind of flower instead of veggies. Okay, I planted more American corn. We stay home all the time because of the climbing way too high Covid rates in Costa Rica. It's not India, but if this keeps up it will be. No beds left for Covid patients in the hospitals. So why are the days dark? Two words one name. Josh Duggar. Yesterday especially. I got offline for the entire afternoon and evening instead of spending a bit of time in the morning and checking in during afternoon and evening a few times. The diape...