The Sea is a Salty One

 Monday started off okay. Our monkeys showed up just outside our windows and walls, closest yet. I talked to the insurance company who told me they would pay 85 percent of Jim's hospital bill if we used the Liberia hospital. So we scampered off for Jim to do the pre op bloodwork, the EKG, the COVID test and the xray. Show up at the hospital, met at the door by the nurse with a handy dandy temperature gizmo. Pop a 101 temp. I had to trot back out to the car, and read a book while Jim did his pre op. Which I was nervous about, rightly it turns out. I handle all the insurance. By the time Jim came back out an hour later it was all bolloxed up, changed around. The insurance company refused to pay for the pre op, saying there was no indication that this surgery was necessary. Upshot now after two full days going back and forth with the hospitals, doctors and insurances. Jim is not having surgery tomorrow in Liberia, but in a week and a half in San Jose. That five hours away San Jose. Ou...

From our trip to Manuel Antonio a few years ago. How I wish we were there now, and not having to deal with the insurance. The tale below is why I like the idea of Medicare for all and socialized medicine. I had nothing but very positive experiences with socialized medicine in Germany. We got up this morning and discovered that our insurance will not cover Jim's upcoming surgery if he has it at the hospital in Liberia, even if it's just another branch of the same hospital in San Jose. There was a lot of back and forth between us, the doctors, the hospitals involved and the insurance company. It's still not resolved. But now I have an official billing statement from the hospital in Liberia with the full price for the surgery on it. The decision now is if we should just pay 100% out of pocket for the surgery in Liberia and then submit all the bills to the insurance company, or go to the pre-approved hospital in San Jose and have it entirely paid in full. Depends on how much th...

I have to have another very hard conversation today and I'm not sure how I'll approach it. In marriage hard conversations are best done with a careful approach to keep from explosions and drama. Yesterday someone was sort of inappropriate with me. In retrospect I think he was a little too much handsy touchy feely with me, gray, old, sagging, salty old me.  At the time I didn't pick up on it, but later I kept thinking about it. We're going to have to talk about this. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe my boundaries are all screwed up out of my family dysfunction, but it sure felt pretty weird.

Stinky hanging out in the guesthouse during last October's flooding of the house during the massive storm. I love that coffee table. Mango wood shaped just like a surfboard. Stinky fell off the roof a little while ago, right into the bubbling boiling hot tub. I'd been in the hot tub for my back when he started meowing. Spotted him on the roof, started talking to him and he rolled right off the roof. Never have I seen a critter move so fast getting out of the hot water. I needed the laugh. I've been filled with crazy irrational anger all day long. You'd think by now I would recognize it as a coming severe asthma bout, but I rarely do when its happening. Just much later. But it did hit, after I sat in the hot tub. The hot tub chemicals get me every single time now. So I'm stuck with the bad back now. My padded computer chair got all wobbly and I've been having to use my leather Costa Rican rocker. I'm only 5'2", Jim's well over six feet. My desk i...

Literally my favorite beach photo I've taken here. Playa Grande back in December or January.   The photo is a great one because it illustrates an important marriage principle that I think religious people get so so wrong. That' people who are married are not sinning if they don't think alike, don't  stay joined together at the hip or agree on things. I took this photo on one of our beach walks. Jim walks due north, I head south. He walks to the developed areas with houses and friends, I walk to the wild area with shells and wildlife. Differing needs. Each happy the other is doing what they love. Jim is a good foot taller than I. His legs are longer. When he beach walks he pounds down the beach up from the water in the dry sand. I walk at constantly shifting speeds barefoot in the surf, leaving a looping trail like that left on the cartoon "The Family Circus" by a child. I look at the sunning crabs, scamper over to where the large shells wash up, go over that w...

Coffee I got and high protein cookies I got the last time I did a  big shopping run to the U.S.A. back in September 2019. There are days when I miss the convenience of the States, everything you need 24 hours a day, even coffee. Much better coffee here, but a lack of coffee shops, and no gas station has coffee. Coffee is one of those things that my husband Jim and I differ on so much. He likes the way it tastes, but cannot handle the caffeine. When we were dating he drank some of my great aunt's Cajun coffee, boiled on the stove top in an old fashioned coffee maker. Strong as Hercules and black as night. He didn't sleep for three days. All to impress Great Aunt Nan. Me? I cannot function without a cup or three in the mornings. I'm either extremely befuddled, or serial killer on edge. I stumble around, he is talking ten million miles a minute while I'm trying to figure out how to open the coffee canister and turn on the pot. I don't get it. I cannot be that way at a...

Just had a very upsetting conversation. Chewed out by a Bridezilla. My husband Jim has a friend he made back in elementary school he loves dearly. We've visited them off and on for years. He and his second wife have a daughter just about the age of our youngest. She was always bossy, opinionated and headstrong. Even as a small child. The last time I went with Jim to see these friends I wasn't too favorably impressed by the grown up version. What's cute in a child in small doses can be deplorable in adults. Loud, obnoxious in every single way, vulgar with language lousy with swear words. I cringed away from her every time she spoke, this future Bridezilla. I especially remember our final meal together on this trip. We took the family out and I was on tenterhooks the entire time. Copious drinking, ordering half the menu and then not eating it. After we were driving away at the end of the night Jim and I talked about how immature she was. I knew he would have a problem with he...

It's rainy season, not much happening here. Very boring. A picture of our latest rescue kitty  who has decided he lives with us, napping the laundry room. I could not love a man that does not love rescue animals. It is one of the wonderful things about my husband I dearly love. But not this morning. This morning I finally forced myself to start looking at the man-fluffing insanity that is Suzanne Venker for NLQ. Her complete and total ennoblement of guys I consider sub-dudes, or duds.The type of guy living in his mother's basement whining that no decent female will give him the time of day. I've worked with some of these guys, and most are such incredibly rude and unpleasant people it's not surprising a hot super model hasn't fallen into the laps. Or even the pimply young gal working at Burger King, or anyone in between. She's complained that chivalry is dead because of feminism. That feminism is the reason men cannot be assed to do good things, or behave in dec...