Jibberish and Spanish
I will skip all the boring moaning about mast cell that is driving this exhaustion and point out something super funny about living here in Costa Rica. Accents. Spanish accents!
Just now I was outside speaking to Eduardo and Luis, the pool guys, as they did their Saturday morning thing at the pool. As I approached Eduardo stopped his constant rapid-fire commentary to Luis. I find Eduardo very hard to understand when he's speaking like that. Why? He's speaking very rapidly and slurring the words together. He's a Nico, from Nicaragua, speaking with his regional accent. He knows if he speaks to me it has to be slower and more distinct.
Spanish class in university did not cover accents and colloquialisms.. Here you might have Guanatecos with their slang, Ticos from farther south, Nicos from the north, Mexicanos, Argentenians, etc all with different accents. Sometimes I have to listen carefully before saying "Repite por favor"
Funnily enough I am drinking coffee, the husband is off to his Saturday morn teaching/pickleball and the pool guys are skimming and putting in salt and I hear a string of Spanish in a song I've listened to for years now from a popular US musician. He speaks a few lines of Spanish and for the first time I realize it is complete jibberish. It is Spanish, but the way the words are strung together just makes no sense at all.
Speaking of no sense the Ogress has been trying to glom onto our lives again, silly things like demanding at 10:30 pm that we pick her up in the morning from the airport, and other just last second demands. We keep saying no very cheerfully. It's working sort of, but now she's moved on to complaining about me to anyone who will listen she knows in the church world, assuming I am the one driving all the resistance to her, refusing to understand pretty much everyone in my friends circle and my husband are disgusted with her too. Last week she asked the husband to mule in money for her here since she was running out. She thought she was so so clever doing this to avoid fees and taxes. Not entirely sure it was legal so it was a solid no. In Spanish and English. Last week I walked into painting class to find the teacher acting strangely, praising the Ogress, and later she gently chided us to take the Ogress somewhere. It has come out that the Big O has been whining about me being "mean" to her. I guess saying no to her schemes stamps me as mean in her mind. She does not understand it's not just me, its pretty much anyone she's tried to use saying no. Damn, and this stupid woman lives right down the street.
One very good thing about all of this is that she's stopped having any effect on my relationship with the husband. Hasn't for about 18 months after he finally got her number. She's tried for a long time to drive a wedge between us, and I haven't allowed it at all. We used to kind of spat a tiny bit over her but once it dawned on my husband she was using him without reciprocating in any way that stopped too.
Just like the last time she did this at church and I had to go behind and have a conversation about this with each person so I will have to do something similar with the art teacher. She thinks obviously that myself and my friends are bullying Ogress when we're just ignoring her entire existence. I need to tell her about her attempting to split the husband and I, that time she gave the keys out to our house to her teenager and others leading to a completely trashed home, and the constant impositions at the very last second. We're not her servants even if she treats us like we are.
It's insane, I just realized we've been dealing with this crazy in one form or another for over five years now. If we were in the states I would have already gotten a restraining order.
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