The Craziest Effing Day

 

Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean! I don't know if you can see the time I am writing this but it's 2:15 am right now.

I haven't written because it's been a stretch of pretty typical days during the worst part of rainy season here. Get up, drink your coffee, rush to do a few things outside before it rains cats, dogs, goats and coatimundies. You rush to do a few errands between these just tremendous thunder storms. You read or nap once it's raining too hard to trot around outside. Very boring. Very wet. This is life here until mid November. In the glut of the rainy season.

There's been idiotic YouTuber creator dramaz but I've mostly stayed away from that nonsense.

So this morning I'm doing a YouTube live video and end strides the hubby Jim telling me he needs to talk to me. Recently I told him he always has the right to cut into any video or phone call to tell me to wrap it up because he has something important to say, and boy, oh boy, did he.

Remember Velma? Her of the gate bashing with soupcon of denial. Insisting that the sun heats our hot tub and other inanities? Last night she fell and broke her hip. This morning our medical clinic was insisting that someone come cough up the money to transfer her via private ambulance to the private hospital in Liberia. The same shitty one I was in earlier in the year.

So Davey, remember Davey and his shifty behavior back during the time our old car died back in May. It finally dawned on Davey that to be on the outs with Jim meant he couldn't bum rides from us during rainy season. Yeah, that dude. He was with Jim when the church got the call during bible study about Velma. She was trying to reach someone desperately because, surprise oh surprise, she has no way to pay for her broken hip to be replaced. 

Normally Velma might go to the Caja, the socialized medicine Costa Rica has that citizens and residents qualify for as long as they keep up their Caja payments, which are pretty minimal. But Caja is a ten day wait for a hip replacement and it turns out Velma hasn't paid her Caja bill for over three months.

Davey and Jim rushed down to our clinic to see what they could do, only to be told that being immobile with a hip fracture for the ten days the Caja would that would likely be a death sentence. It turns into them being told a hip replacement here is 10K, and they needed a financial commitment by 11 am to have time enough to order the necessary supplies to do the surgery later today.

Velma's in her mid 80s, on an extremely limited income. Not having the surgery or waiting the ten days is death, so Velma asked Jim to help her out, and to see if he could organize to help raise money for her surgery. Front the money, and then do a fundraiser to be reimbursed. The church raised money last year when she needed a hip replacement, but it wasn't an emergency situation.

So here's the effing frustrating thing, Davey starts volunteering Jim to pay the entire thing, the roughly 10 to 12K this is going to cost. Jim asked Davey if he would donate towards this. Davey said he didn't even have a spare five bucks. Very very typical and so infuriating. I keep telling Jim what a user Davey is, he saw it clearly again today. Jim refused to commit to anything, insisting he had to come home to talk to me first, hence the interrupted live stream. I was talking about the Chris Hansen deep dive on Jessi video at the time. Jessi is this crazy gal from the Anti Katie Joy community Pitchfork Nation.

He came home, told me, I yelled at him a bit, and then said we needed to put up the money and try to do a fundraiser to recoop. I would hate to be the death of a literal little old lady. I'm not thrilled about it, but I understand we're just about the only folks she knows that could easily put up the money with no sweat at all.

I've talked a little bit on here and on YouTube about getting burned out by the constant fundraising by the woman that started No Longer Quivering, and various others who've tried the total grift on me. I sometimes give, but its much less frequently now. I gave a few days ago to someone in my circle that was in a bad way. I give to struggling family members too.

Just had to remind Jim that when we give like this, even if the person says they will pay you back, that it's better to give or lend without expecting the money back. All that jazz about being a cheerful giver just pisses me off, but again give with zero expectation that you'll get it back.

We headed to the clinic for one of us to ride in the ambo and the other to follow with the car to make that 11 am deadline. Right before we pulled in Davey called and the first words out of his mouth just pissed me off. He immediately started babbling out that he hoped we had the 10K cash on us now, now, now. I yelled at Davey, told him to stop pressuring us. Davey has always been eager to spend our money for us.

Got to the clinic and I talked to the clinic director/owner, a doc I know well from my medical misadventures. Confirmed everything Jim was saying, and like the entire saps we are with "Easy Mark" written on our foreheads we agreed to pay the damn bill. Jim climbs into the ambulance, and I drive the car, taking Davey home first, and stopping by our place to pick up a few needed things.

The Davey trip, what a trip, we had a "Come to Suzanne's version of Jesus" meeting in the car. Why? Because he started mouthing evangelical platitudes at me. Nope. I pointed out that so many people have attempted to use us, work us as their wallets that I was just done with it. Shouted him down, told him the trip he'd begged us to make next week to Liberia was going to be a figurative "Ass, Grass, Gas, nobody rides for free" situation. He needs to pay gas and millage next week.

He just sets my teeth on edge, all the while insisting we pick up this entire hospital and surgery bill. This, folks, is why you have insurance, even in the foreign country! 

I'm taking that hour long drive to Liberia, up the mountain past Tama, down and around drunk contractor following a snake through the woods roads around other mountains. Just as I'm sitting at the stop sign in Belen to turn towards Liberia I suddenly see Jim walking up. Turns out the ambulance broke down in Belen. We wait close to an hour for another ambulance. Miserably hot today.

It takes hours to get Velma settled, and yes, where the rubber meets the road we did the decent thing, we paid for half the medical bill up front. In the next few days we have to pay the other half. I'm not wild about the idea, but at this point I think she didn't have many options. She tried calling her kids, but none of them could even scrape up the money to fly here much less pay her bill.

At least we got to eat at KFC and I got my beloved Nashville Hot chicken with extra pickles. Plus a quick PriceSmart run.

The drive home was sort of insane too. I drove back and saw a drunk man walking in the middle of a poorly lit highway. This was followed by seeing an enormous bus that had driven off into a deep culvert and struck a huge Guanacaste tree. Random goats I almost hit with the car hither and yon. We were almost back home when we got stuck in a huge sobriety check point. That's not to mention the scads of drinking or drunken Ticos on foot we kept dodging. This is why I try to make sure we're in the gates and not driving around in the dark on Friday and Saturday nights here. People booze like its their jobs! 

This is all so hard! I've been better with Velma lately because I realize that she has creeping dementia. She runs single handedly the only food bank in our area. I hope she makes it! Looking at the statistics about survival of a broken hip or the surgery isn't as positive as I'd imagined.