The Sea is a Salty One

 And so here we are yet again. Another day, another pile of things spilling from Katie Joy of Without a Crystal Ball's lips that sound like lies.   Why this time? Some nonsense involving a moderator of hers who has been apparently masquerading to do videos against her that went by the nom de plume Tea Detox. Frankly, I think the ones that need detox are the viewers of the content of Katie and Tea Detox.  I've been out of the KJ loop because I know when my emotional health is important. Since leaving Patheos and No Longer Quivering I'm trying to find my sea legs, newly structure my day, and get back into the routine of swimming and riding my bike daily along with other writing projects. Change is hard. Sometimes it's just like that Jimmy Buffett song about Hurricane Katrina "Breath In, Breath Out, Move On" Not that this time is as hard as post-Katrina is, or was. Katrina was particularly bad. I have to see if I can scare up my New Orleans photos from the terr...

He's baccccccccccccccck!  Short and sweet tonight. Christmas Eve night at 11 pm I got a Christmas miracle, an email arrived in Spanish saying my Covid test was negative, strep was negative and the other tests were negative. This has been another episode of Covid or Asthma. Thank you for playing. Glad because I had been reading that being exposed to an unmasked someone with Covid while you were masked gave you about a 30% of contracting Covid. But Baby Dr. made me laugh when he was examining me while he was dressed in full out protection gear. He said I might have tonsillitis. I had to point out you actually had to have tonsils to have that and mine were removed 55 years ago. Christmas was very low key. Tamales (Costa Rican tradition) with corn casserole, tomato avocado salad and homemade bean dip and chips along with assorted desserts. Naps all around before we had our friends over for a carefully socially distanced swimming thing. Spent a lot of time on the phone with family. I mi...

  Our Christmas tree this year. No presents to be seen. We bought none because between the two of us we have everything we want. Cash to the kiddos and flowers for mom and we're done. Have one small present for a friend here, but it's got to wait until I get the all clear sign. Last few days has been feverish and slightly insane. I finally went and got tested for the 'Ronas yesterday but it took jumping through some hoops. Back in April I was tested when I went to the clinic with my asthma out of control asking for either methotrexate or some other chemotherapy agent to turn off the asthma. One chest xray and blood test later and before I could say "Just give me the chemo" I was told bloodwork showed a virus, required to be tested for Covid. The health dept came out that afternoon and used a very fine plastic tubing up my nose to lavage the sinus and pull the fluid out for the testing. Quick, easy, painless and 100% free. This time not so much, but it needed to ha...

  Chifrijo and patacones for lunch at a local soda. Yes, before I knew we'd been exposed to the 'Rona. Too bad because I need some fresh patacones. Plus after the last two days Santa needs to bring me a stocking full of Xanax for Xmas. I have been having one hell of a bad worrisome time since yesterday morn. Jim came home from church and announced one of his friends has Covid. I had to point out that meant we'd both been exposed to the disease. On last Tuesday, almost 7 days ago, we went for our bi-weekly cat food run to Maxi Pali. Jim spotted a friend in the parking lot he hadn't seen for a long time and trotted over to talk to him. Jim's been going nuts during the pandemic because of the isolation. His friend did have on a mask, but removed it to talk to Jim. Jim had his mask in his hand, the big dummy. They stood about four feet apart talking. After a few minutes I walked up. I'd been slower than Jim because I had to fetch the reuseable grocery bags ahead of ...

Funny, a year ago I was preparing to fly into Charleston, South Carolina for Christmas with our adult kids. Every year we pick some spot all of us haven't been, and fly in to spend Christmas in an AirBnb. San Marcos, Texas. Cocoa Beach, Florida. Charleston, South Carolina. and Savannah, Georgia just to name a few. Not this year. Spotting this church from the HBO show "The Righteous Gemstones" in North Charleston near where we were staying made my vacation. I love that show! We spent the week singing snatches of "No More Misbehaving" randomly i.e. 'Running round the house with a pickle in my mouth..' and 'Mama said not to but I did it anyway..Misbehavin' Someone on Facebook reminded me of a crazy tale involving our very short stint with a Russian foreign exchange student. A tale from our days at a fundamentalist church. I was drinking the koolaid, wearing the jumper/frumper, trying to keep working, yet appease the very conservative crowd I was run...

 Here we are again.   One of the Roloff's released a statement about sexual abuse that happened to them as a underaged person and Katie Joy has jumped on that like a starving piranha on a pile of rancid corndogs. Klassy! Yet again she makes someone else's trauma into her way to make money.  Let me say this again for the terminally clueless - someone elses sexual trauma, as a child or an adult, is not gossip fodder for someone else. I swear I get sick to my stomach every single time Katie reports on something like this, rapacious, rapturous expression on her odd little face. She seems almost sexually excited, like the words of the confession have invoked a spontaneous orgasm in her. It's quite uncomfortable to watch her exploit someone elses pain for clicks and coins. Trauma is not tea.

  Pangas pulled out of the water. Been rather busy with regular busy-ness here. Things fixed like the gate, the car, the stereo, the fan in our bedroom and other things, finally that run to Price Smart and the butcher in the big city, and dealing with aduana to pay the import taxes, the impuesto, on my N99 masks from Great Britain. Plus the fruit stand had huge bags of tomatoes for two bucks and I am now the proud possessor of 14 jars of home made spaghetti sauce. I've been busy. But this evening I started watching a squabble that's been going on for days on some of the local ex pat boards, and I've been chuckling. Why? Well, they're sort of proving the words on one of my Tico friends here who says that America isn't sending their best people to live here, they are send criminals. Sounds familiar? Yes, our dear president said the same thing about Mexico and Central America. Are they sending only criminals? I don't think so. We're not criminals. Most of my fr...

  For the past three days I've spent very limited time on social media, a few minutes here or there talking to family members and good real life friends. Why? I realized I was getting so caught up in the whole insane movable feast of a conniption fit that is Without a Moral Compass, and the attempted hack of my husband was just a fridge too far. Add in the sheer stupidity I keep seeing on the fan boards for the show pictured above, "Love After Lockup" and there's lots of good mental health reasons to back away for a few days. I'm not perfect. I'm not super smart. But I do know when I need to take a mental health holiday and back away from the weasels carrying the dull steak knives for my own good. I've started to get a bit better at that now. Sprinkle with a little miserably sick fighting off lung crud with a soupcon of everything has effing broken, stereo, car, gate, and trying to find the right post work balance in the very unbalanced time of Covid. What...

  Just like this rooster is not supposed to be in our yard today was one heck of a flubbed up confloption. Today was supposed to be a Costco/PriceSmart/Walmart run, but it didn't quite work out that way. I got up dragging. Late last night I started coughing and wheezing, feeling like I was coming down with a cold, so I knew we needed to make a big grocery run, but I felt like hell. By the time Jim finished with his Skype Bible study, and I'd staggered around pouring in coffee it was nearly 10 am. Went to get on the road. Jim packed up his sound system to drop at the stereo shop since it's suddenly not working. I packed up all the insulated freezer bags we'd need for meats at the butcher and for the frozen junk from PriceSmart. We came to the gate, our front gate, and pressed the remote, denada, nothing. I fished the spare out of my bag, denada, nothing, the gate didn't even shiver. We didn't have time to waste so Jim got out, manually opened the gate with the ke...

  Some big ups and downs in the past few days. A few ups. The iguanas. This guy above is the King Kong of our various iguanas here. He's been around the entire time we've lived here. He's over four feet long. Yesterday he interacted with us quite a bit. Used to be he ran. Then he stopped running and just ignored us. The other day I took this photo because he came right up to us. Started bobbing my head at him, and he bobbed back. By late yesterday he was on the patio with us, sitting on the floor between Jim and I as we had dinner. Bobbing his head anytime anyone looked his way.  Bobbing heads in iguanas can be a show of dominance, but it can also be a way of saying 'Hi ya!' and I think this is a "Hi ya!" because it carries no other signs of aggression or dominance.  Another up. Talking with a family member this morning and they forwarded me a link to a FB page of a friend of my ex, guy named Roger. A super obnoxious musician friend. A guy that lived in Am...

Big Iggy just walked up to me in our yard. He's four feet long and suddenly not afraid of us. I had a head nodding conversation with him. Bet you didn't know I speak iguana.  Back years ago when I was in one of my social work positions I worked with a 21 year old girl who styled herself as a rapper named "LoLo Ballz" Clearly this was not her real name. She was a very attractive girl with waist length wavy chestnut hair, a petite figure and a pretty face. If you'd have been casting a teen movie you might have cast her as the ditzy Valley Girl sort of friend. LoLo was harmless, but she used to just stress me the heck out every single time I had to interact with her. It wasn't just that she did things like interrupt a IEP (Individual Educational Plan) meeting to shout, "Quick! Quick! Can someone explain how you give a blowjob!" The blowjob thing is a long story involving an inappropriate relationship with a married man she worried would cheat on her wit...

 ...it ain't gonna be my problem. Today. This morning. Beach walk here in my beloved stretch of beach towards the estuary. Do you see what I see? Oodles of people and dogs right in the estuary flowing into the ocean at low tide. Frolicking around ignoring all the "Warning" "Danger!" "No swimming because there are crocodiles here!" signs willy-nilly. Seems to be something of a representative for life right now.  Sadly before my walk was over I saw something happen that has happened before. Someone's toy poodle snatched up in two quick chomps and down the hatch. Yes, I witnessed another dog eaten by the crocodiles and the usual amounts of freaking out by the owners. The local crocodiles have gotten a real taste for dog now. They rarely bite people, but I still would not swim at the mouth of the estuary because they do sometimes take someone's lower leg off. Every year or so. But the dog carnage is real. This invasion of disrespect into the the pa...

Another moody morning at Grande, sun and clouds from just the other day! I'm in my bedroom right now, sitting here stupidly wheezing. The pest control guys are here and I told them that they could spray the outside of the house. Of course I'm smelling in from inside the sealed room. Supposed to be 'safe' and 'non-toxic' No such thing. No rest of the weary and wicked. It's the yearly spray the guesthouse for termites, but the guys really wanted to spray the house too. Nope. Just the outside. We just have the usual number of bugs everyone gets. The termites tend to show up in the rainy season and munch on the old back door we replaced last year in the guesthouse. After the debacle with the trainer that tried to move in and fleece us for various sums we decided to at least heed one of his warnings. We went into the guesthouse to clean after his departure and found.... .... drum roll please.... ........... Nothing, just the usual dust and musty smell of a place ...

 Yes indeedy doo! Here we are again! I think that from now on when I refer to Ms. Without a Moral Compass I'm going to have to separate it out from my life, and do it's very own "Sayin' Don't Make It So" post. Several full days of WAMC twittering on and on about bombs and yesterday evening the reply to the Tati Westbrook lawsuit hit our hot little hands. It's a doozy, but what it wasn't is a bomb, more like a pack of those cheap Black Cat firecrackers you forget in the back of the junk drawer. When you remember you have them and try to light the package it fizzles out. The reply tried to claim that there was no jurisdiction in Seattle over the gal whose name they could not even keep straight in the reply, referring to her as "Katie Joy", "Katherine Paulson" and "Kathryn Manske Paulson" at different times. KJ claims that there's no jurisdiction because she does not believe that Tati lived in Seattle during many of t...

 Remember this video. Remember this guy? So you say, but saying don't make it so. Theme of yesterday. Derwood showed up and stayed all afternoon. I appeared, said hi and disappeared right back into our bedroom per usual to work on my book. He is borderline creepy so I my contact very limited with him.  And the big reveal is... drum roll... are you ready for it? Are you? Really, really ready for it? ... ... ... His only reference to what had happened was to tell my husband that his wife had gotten angry with him, for no reason, and kicked him out. Which meant he had no option but going to live with that gal on the beach. And dodge all the phone calls and messages from my husband apparently. I smiled and said little, but I'm not buying it. I've seen his wife's tears and distress over the past month. Something serious went down.  Why is it when men leave they immediately spin it into their being without a choice. Bullshit, we all have choices. There have been tough tim...

  Driving up to the front gates with the guesthouse tucked snugly against the wall. Turns out our guest broke our washer and our dryer. I spent much of yesterday night breaking them apart to clear out the mess. He washed and dried a pillow that came apart and all the stuffing had gummed up the works of each. Dissembled and cleaned both machines. The next time Jim mentions a Tico moving in we're going to have a very naughty word laced 'Come to Jesus' Never again. Jim's at church, and I'm drinking my coffee this morning watching an enormous flock of yellow naped Amazon parrots go from citrus tree to tree on the property. Trying to deal with super low blood pressure again and continuing asthma. Now I'm allergic to Jim's shaving cream, the same one he's used since we met, very basic. Nervous about one thing. Derwood, Jim's friend that used to hang out here for days on end for months before leaving his wife is coming by this afternoon to talk to Jim. I...

  A monkey just outside my sewing room window. Today we had a "Come to Asthma Jesus" meeting this morning where I told a certain man I needed help, hired, or him, to keep the house during my asthma times. Sylvie is in Nica for who knows how long. My stupid Roomba broke a few weeks ago, and I do not do sweeping or dusting because of the asthma. Someone has to play step and fetch it and do those things.  After we came up with a plan that involved him sweeping, dusting and cleaning windows with me doing everything else, at least until I can slide into Price Smart and pick up a new Roomba we departed to hit up the Auto Mercado. Our unintended house guest has done a number on my broom, breaking it, and wrecked all sorts of havoc on supplies and implements.  We live on a big property, so sometimes things can happen near the gate we don't see right away. We pulled up the the gate and the entire front half of our property was flooded with water gushing in. I freaked out, jumped o...

  I just need to dive headfirst into this basket of fresh cocoa pods we saw on a coffee and chocolate plantation tour we took last year. I am really in need of chocolate. We had the dramaz, the major unhappy dramaz. Why? The trainer I was talking about last week. Last week when he started training Jim he came up with the idea that he was going to move into our unoccupied guest house for the next month and train Jim. Jim was enthusiastic about this. I had to throw water right on that crazy flaming idea. I pointed out to Jim he didn't know this man from Tico Jeffrey Dahlmer.  Jim and I make quite the pair. He trusts everyone. I trust no one, at least not at first. It takes time, you have to prove you don't suck. This process has gotten longer in Costa Rica because of the craziest Americans and those Ticos that want to rip you off for being American. We had a very unfriendly discussion over this nearly two weeks ago. It was settled. No random guys we just met moving in with us. B...

 Last night after Without a Moral Compass moaned about taking a four day internet break she posted this: Vaguely hinting around about being suicidal. I hoped she was just being her manipulative self, but I've been seriously worried by the Tsunami that is Suenami going around. She's started to act more like her slim hold on sanity is slipping. People stepped up to call law enforcement to ask for a well check after the suicide threat and we get this: She makes a vague threat of suicide, then get upset when people take it seriously and want to make sure she hasn't carried through on the threat. Apparently this is all a game to her. But here's the deal. In this difficult time dealing with Covid, not seeing friends and family and all the other struggles for money, to keep a roof over ones head it's not something that could or should be treated as an idle threat. Just in the last few months I have had several friends here in my small Costa Rican community kill themselves....

  Yesterday's morning walk at Playa Tamarindo. The boats all anchored up, waiting to take tourists out fishing and more. Several days ago on one of the local gossip lists people started bemoaning something entirely new. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano the tourists are back here. It's a good/bad thing. Why? Covid. Our Covid infection rates are climbing here with each day. We finally ended up being declared a danger zone here in Guanacaste because of the rapid rate of infections. People are flooding in from Europe and the States. The good is that they bring money, and the locals are in desperate need of tourist dollars, even if this is the group with the least money, that do not ever want to spend it. I have to ask the question: Who takes an overseas vacation in the middle of a dangerous pandemic? Who gets on a plane filled with non socially distancing people who cannot be bothered to wear masks for hours on end? I think I have an answer to that now. Those of us who liv...