The Sea is a Salty One

 Kind of down in the dumps today. A reason for sharing a photo from sunset in January here. Today Jim went back to the doctor and hospital to have his shoulder looked at yet again. Eighteen months ago he fell off a two foot stepladder and broke bones in his shoulder. It was a medical flight to San Jose, surgery and four days in the Hospital Metropolitano. He's still not right. We just found out that the setting screws placed in to hold the bones together have worked loose and he's on the verge of a rebreak. Looks likely he's headed back to surgery. Either to remove the screws, or replace them in some fashion. I am so not looking forward to this. The only good news is that it looks like it can take place at the Hospital Metropolitano branch in Liberia, which is an hour drive, not a five hour drive away. Details as I find them out. Jim is one of the most miserable chafing at the bit sick people you could ever imagine. Wanting to be up and about, swimming, motorcycle riding, c...

When do you run out of patience with people? Sadly too soon. It's all too easy. Last night there was a large beetle, big, black and shiny, that I saw futilely flipped upside down. Legs waving in the air, finding no purchase. I turned him right side up about a dozen times, just to see him flip over again within seconds. I'm not sure if there was something wrong with him, or if it was sheer cussedness mixed with confusion. He was dead by morning. I get up and watch a friend struggling with serious issues complaining that someone at the food bank gave her food she does not like, and I have to think she's like that silly bug. I keep seeing her shooting herself in the foot, refusing to get off her back, making no attempt to help herself and demanding to be taken care of, yet eager to deride any type of help anyone tries to make. She does not understand that there are hard people out there, some connected with another church, that don't want to help anyone now because they ...

The clock tower Burnabela Ramos in the park of the same name downtown Santa Cruz. I always park near it when buying fabrics and sewing supplies or shoes in Santa Cruz. Photo taken in mid February. There was no shopping there today, just driving through. Things are getting a hair weird here. Yesterday's COVID 19 rates climbed by over 35% in a single day from the day before, which was a good hundred more than the day before. It's skyrocketing here. Which means that strange lottery called national health recommendations changed again. Announced last night that beaches are reopening until 2 pm, and tourist flights are resuming on August 1st from Canada, UK and EU. No flights in from the U.S. In the middle of the rising rates of a pandemic. SUCH a dumb decision! Most of the country is under an orange alert, we're under yellow. Meaning there's strict curfews in both, and no sit down restaurants open in the orange zone.  We found that one out the hard way, just like the fabric...

 They see me rollin., they hatin'.. cuz I'm ridin' dirty... Today contained one of those God/Universe moments telling me just how inconsequential I am, and how dumb and petty my own problems are. Fortunately I recognized it quickly and was just rolling laughing at my own stupidity and besmirched dignity. The last three days I've been completely down in the dumps and extremely concerned about my elderly mother. She's showing some pretty serious signs that she's in end stage alcoholism. She has most of the symptoms. I've been getting panicked communications and sad phone calls from other family members in Louisiana too. It's not good, it's looking like the end of the road is unfortunately within our vision. She's no longer rational at all. We've had one of the longest and oddest phone calls of our history on Sunday. She's slipped so much so suddenly. I've been in denial about how bad it has gotten but talking to the elderly aunts it...

A stump that washed ashore last week at Playa Grande. Even though the end part of the week was more like what I encountered on the main road through our village when I went to pick up medicine this very morn. Those grinning local road repair guys were at it, trundling over wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt over to the axle cracking potholes deep enough to bath in, dumping it and tamping it down while chortling and waving to me. I shook my head and smiled, knowing the first hard rain it would all dissolve. This was around 9 am. By 1 pm it was raining cats, dogs and iguanas, and all the dirt had washed out of the potholes. Life is getting too much lately, and I'm starting to feel grumpy again, as grumpy as last month when I had to keep telling friends to back the eff off on Facebook and phones. I couldn't figure out the why then, now I have a better handle on the why. Keep reading that people with empathetic tendencies are getting emotionally worn out in the time of COVID 19 ...

I have been kind of down and out for the count the last four days. My back. I've done something to the muscles just under the shoulder blade extending down to the top of my hip on my left side. Started in Arenal when I stupidly, clumsily, awkwardly did a header into the soap dispenser after slipping. Slipping again, wrenching those muscles. This isn't the first time, and it's unlikely to be the last time. Two years ago I threw my back out taking off my swimsuit. Last year it was when Stinky jumped off the headboard onto my back. C'est la vie. Here's the problem for me. I have a bleeding disorder. It comes it, it goes, and I don't know if it's active if I'm not having blood tests run, or bruising up terribly. It's intermittent. I know if they pull a few tubes of blood and I start bleeding like one of those dumb Grindhouse movies. Which means taking NSAIDS  is sometimes a very bad idea. Like right now. I was taking what I had, a form of Tylenol and nar...

Those shoes on Oates are just cracking me up! Sadly I no longer have my shorts I'm about to talk about. Many years ago, about a year before I met Jim I made the mistake of dating a coworker. I was young and fancy free then, thinking my dad with his hyperbole corn porn advice from bayou country was back in the stone ages. He'd always said "Do not get your meat and your bread at the same place" as his reasoning about why dating a coworker was so bad. Turns out he was right. It was the first, last and only time I did it. But the story isn't about the bad date, or even my very first exposure to fundamentalist Christianity. Even if it was both. I worked at a big restaurant that was a chain in the South in the early 80s while I was in college. I had taken enough coursework to qualify for a culinary certificate just so I could have a decent flexible income to put myself through school after my short lived marriage right out of high school. It was a good job, I could work...

Mountains and volcanoes topped with cloud cover near Liberia The last few weeks have really been so depressing. I had a hard time even thinking about my birthday while everyone was asking me if I was having a good time. I turned 60 earlier this week and it's not a milestone I am excited to reach. I will be way happier in two years when I hit 62 and can file for Social Security, that's if Trump doesn't raid it, and steal it before then. Nope. I was not having a good time. Everyone tried. Flowers, cake, going out to eat, presents and phone calls. It wasn't them. It was me. But my brain kept drifting back to COVID 19, the riots and marches over the death of poor George Floyd, Trump's idiocy and a million other things. It didn't help that it's rainy here, cold and rainy I had a sweater last night. It didn't help to discover friends and family were at the D.C. protests, several near the White House the night of Trump's photo op  It didn't help that I ...

A A guy on horseback explaining to a surfer that the beach is still closed today. Today went from confusion to confusion. Today was my 60th birthday. I had hoped to sleep in, but that was not to be. Jim tried to wake me up bright and early with breakfast in bed, a nuked bacon, egg and cheese biscuit from Wal Mart.  Without nuking it quite enough. A cold hard biscuit when I kept trying to roll over and go back to sleep. It's the thought that counts, right? Me, laying up in bed with a coldish breakfast sandwich. Had to get up, and before having more than a mouthful of coffee roll out of the door. We had to take our friend's car to the mechanic to have it fixed to pass Retive. Another goat rodeo. I had to flag down Jim less than a block from the house because the bottom half of the Jeep door was flapping open spewing trash. The back of the Jeep is filled with detritus. We got back on the road and then Jim forgot where this place was. I am no help because I'm just trying to dri...