The Sea is a Salty One

 So we bought this. Cash, drove off the showroom floor literally Kicks just keep getting harder to find. Sorry, joke, big joke, stupid joke about a old song! A song so old there are black and white video of go go dancers and Paul Revere and the Raiders singing. The car is the tiniest of cross overs by Nissan called a "Kicks" It's pretty sweet, drives well and we got the package with all the extras like cameras and geegaws and gadgets. Good pickup on the mountain road. Good pickup going around burros, bicyclists and carts along with assorted road detritus. Speaking of road detritus, the old junky car we've been storing is what we used to drive up to town to buy the car. Ran great until coming back from the dealership, when it promptly died. Making a hellacious racket! One minute Jim's behind me in the jalopy, the next he's disappeared, somewhere near the bridge over the Tempisque River where one can see crocodiles easily. The bridge is notable because it was on...

  Reproduction statuary at the Diria hotel here. I have that same shocked face as this statue for several reasons. 1 - Two days ago we finally bought a new car. A new 'new' car. A first in our 36 year marriage. In the States we always bought used cars from dealerships with factory warranty that just old enough to have depreciated out.  Here? Turns out buying used even from a dealership is a crap shoot. No consumer protections at all. You roll it off the lot it's your problem. It's like the States were before Ralph Nader came along and spearheaded the "Lemon Laws". We bought a cobalt blue Nissan Kicks, a small little crossover with twice the gas millage of our old Honda CRV. Bought right off the showroom floor. We'll be able to pick it up on Friday from our salesman Stalin. Yes, our salesman was named after a Russian dictator, hope it's not a bad omen. The not so good stuff. Costa Rica, in their infinite weird wisdom, decided to let the contract with th...

  Hibiscus growing over a stone wall near Playa Grande. The impossible juxtaposition of order versus nature, blooming rampant nature.    I am learning one thing anew, that my dear husband brings a certain element of chaos with him. It's a weird energy that has him hopping about. I'm not saying this as a negative, I'm just stating something I just realized. It took a good month away from each other to uncover this for me. A few months ago I was surprised to hear our daughter say that he brought 'negative energy' with him that she had no patience to deal with. I wouldn't say it's negative. It's the same energy that allows him to dream very big - like moving us to Costa Rica five years ago. It can be highly negative, but it's usually not. They were just knocking heads over wedding costs at the time. I can forgive and forget any number of weird things out of the mouths of folks in the middle of wedding planning. It's a stressful time! When I came b...

  Also known as Real Housewives of Tamarindo starring in "As the Stomach Churns" See that grody old barn? It was hidden until recently, just like the behavior of needy annoying friend until recently. We had no idea that barn as on our block it was so hidden behind vegetation. Turns out it was always there. Jim is home, and he's brought with himself his own frenetic energy. For the first time ever I'm realizing that he exhausts me, he exhausts post stroke me, so we're talking about him stepping up, and I'm feeling like laying on the floor and dying. I cannot complain too much, because he realizes all those fundytown years where I did everything for him have borne strange fruit, and utter exhaustion for me. Ongoing conversations, gentle reminders and a thanks for getting a decent licensed plumber out here today. Tankless heater ordered to be installed Saturday morning. No living with shut off water and only turning it long enough to shower, flush toilets and do ...

A howler monkey letting it all hang out. I'm effing pissed off right now! Cleaning, cleaning again and mopping with bleach to burn off excess pissed offedness anger. So I'm answering a few emails this morning when I get a message from our 'friend' down the street. It says that she went out this morning and her good air conditioned van started right up. This is a vehicle that two days ago she was claiming was in the shop broken down? Now she says I should use it to pick up Jim. No thanks, I say, he's taking the transfers turismo van for twenty bucks. So now she's told me she's going to go pick him up because she's afraid of this poor man and his luggage walking the block and a half. I told her not to do it, that I would consider that stepping over the line to inappropriate behavior. I'd told Jim how squirrelly she's been behaving and I think this is some sort of game angled towards making me look bad so he'll turn to her. Real Housewives of Ta...

  ...teats on a boar hog. Here, look at a festive Christmas time Stinky. What a few days it has been. Gardener has started chopping down the jungle in the front. The back yard is just not that bad right now. Locksmith came, cleaned, oiled and adjusted locks. Plumber scheduled for Friday, I just hope he doesn't give me any troubles for my request for a tankless hot water heater. We don't use much hot water and the tank we had was second hand, and that plumber got us, gave us the Gringo Shuffle of overcharging and here we are five years later.  Things since I've been back haven't been smooth, at least in regards to the so called friend that promised Jim she'd lend me one of her many cars. Well, that did not happen. She claimed she could not due to some scrambled mixed up plans involving Mary Moonbeams and something her teenager was doing. This lady lives right down the road, we've bailed he biscuits out so many times, so she does pick me up at the airport, but exp...

  Hopefully what part of the garden will look like after the gardener arrives! I don't trust everyone with a key for good reasons I will outline below. The weeds are nigh high as an elephant's eye in one mere month. I am felled with kidney issues after barely drinking a thing the day I flew. I slept during the flights and missed the drinks cart. From the kids house to my house I think I had one small cup of coffee and a small water. Got very dehydrated and am now paying the painful price. New meds added. Done very little on my list here. Suitcases unpacked and laundry done. That's it. I'm in the bed, or sitting in my rocker watching tv until the pain lifts enough to ditch the pain pills. I take that back, I did do one other thing. I cleaned every spot of white spidery web mold out of the house, swept and mopped. Apparently we're had such intense rain that the entire house was muggy and this grew on the weirdest surfaces. The handles of kitchen appliances, the back o...

 No photo. I am way too tired. Got up at the ass crack of dawn to fly from Reagan National back to Costa Rica. First flight very full, Sat next to a silent priest listening to hymns and a woman who spent the flight working on a pamphlet for an MS org. Quick, smooth, problemless in every way. Wheelchair waiting for me at door to door. It was the second flight that was the doozy. Last night they sent me an alert that they were having to push the flight back an hour. Negative perspiration, right? I noticed when they wheeled me up that there were more people waiting than usual an hour before boarding. Asked about and found out that the mornings flight to Costa Rica had been cancelled so my flight went from full to crazy full with oodles of folks on standby. I have never seen so many standbys. About thirty minutes before boarding I hear shouting in the distance and watch one of the flight crew, the cockpit crew, come storming out issuing curses. Turns out one of the officers quit after ...

   Me six weeks ago at Arenal at the Arenal Falls Lodge. Zinged out due to the crazy of the car situation. Still no car. The car we requested hasn't been shipped so we're going to be looking anew the day after Jim gets back. I am now leaning towards anything smaller they have on the lot at the Nissan dealership. But that's not today's laughs. I'm supposed to be airborne by this time tomorrow on one of the bigger carriers. I've been somewhat concerned about this because news is saying a boatload of stuff about cancellations. So let's just say I'm not upset or annoyed about that, more expecting it. Last year when I flew here in July I got moved back a day by the carrier. This morning, bright and early, I arise just in time to get a 'please check in now online with our airline' message. Aha! So we're still on! Awesome! I have cats to pet and weeding in my garden to do. An hour later I get an email asking if I would be willing to give up my spot ...