The Sea is a Salty One

  Yesterday was the kind of gray fruitless day that colored the last month or so. What happened? Insurance happened. Weather happened too. Lately the weather here hasn't been as sunny as usual during our dry season. The standard dry season day in Guanacaste is a relentless, merciless, cheerful, sunshine. Lately we're had a string of days that starts out sunny until creeping clouds cover everything. It's unnerving, and it tends to shut down our beachwalks and other outdoor fun. The photo above was taken during the rainy season and it rained shortly after. But it's still not that unnerving bland blanket of gray we're experiencing off and on this week and parts of this month. I suspect we're about to have a very truncated dry season. This week has been a frustrating morass of printer hijinks. The old printer decided to stop scanning, no matter what work around I tried. We bought a new one, that my computer promptly refused to see, even if I got my Ipad to connect t...

  Biggest rock I know, Arenal Volcano taken last year. Today was down to Nicoya so my dear husband could see a knee specialist.  Specialist recommends a knee replacement. Husband agreed only to shots and meds first, which I am glad. Everyone I know that gets the dreaded knee replacement says it is the most incredibly painful thing, worse than natural child birth, my personal metric of pain so bad you think you're losing your mind. Plus I know a number of people with very bad outcomes. No desire for that ever. Woke up with one of those terrible head colds that makes one feel like their nose is a faucet. No fever, no lung congestion. Still I drug on through my day like a slow sloth. Only really bright spot was having a fried pineapple pie at the just opened McDonald's in Nicoya! Now Nicoya has their own "Gringo Corner" to compete with Liberia's. Nicoya has at the main intersection a McDonalds, a Burger King and a KFC. Why is it that American fast food is our main ex...

  Our neighbor's house and bananas. Wonderful people! Unlike what I'm about to bitch about. Jim's been eating his muscle relaxers for the bad back last week until he decided on Sunday that he'd had enough, and he attempted to resume his life full tilt boogie without missing a step. I explained with bad backs I usually take the drugs the number of days prescribed, use the heating pad a couple of times a day and avoid doing anything to aggravate the back. Not Jim, he's the worlds worst patient. Can you guess what happened? Happened here on Tuesday. Playa Grande. I stomped around looking for sea beans at low tide nosing through the sea wrack and finding none. I went past the beach at Las Ventanas all the way to the next beach. Not as far away as Playa Mina or Cabo Velas, but close. So far my left leg went almost completely numb. When I came panting back up and traded places with Jim at our Chillbos to guzzle water Jim went for a walk. I am used to walking without much ...

  Where sea and sky meet in Costa Rica! Been a jam packed couple of days. Shuffling the investments around. Buying stuff, and dealing with the copious weirdos here. The guy whose car we stored for free and even got conned into running through inspection just went home for good. The day before we left for the United States he called, trying to get Jim to come fetch him from the hospital in downtown San Jose. We didn't even know car guy was there! Jim said no, of course, since we'd be airborne from Liberia when the hospital was releasing the guy with the purple messed up car. Tried to ask if he was okay, but car guy blew Jim off without a word. But it turns out car guy has lung cancer. Not surprising since he was a heavy smoker. He's sold everything he owns here and jetted off to his home in the frozen north, his trailer, and his socialized medicine for treatment. I hope they caught it in time. I may be annoyed by some of the stunts he pulled but I still wish him the best. No...

  We came back to one of our banana trees blooming. We'll be having fingerlings soon! Excited. What wasn't exciting was coming back here. I walked in all three airports to avoid the United disability corral and possible missing a flight. I walked like a drunk without the fun of actually being a drunk. Will never fly United ever again if I can avoid it! Nothing of any use accomplished with my mother. I think I'm just going to call her, one morning while she's sober, and point out that I wish her to go into a retirement community asap or myself and the aunt heap will no longer be entertaining her hi-jinks. Lay out my position and stick by it. I am a direct person, and don't do passive-aggressiveness well. One of my aunts was so triggered by the way my mother reacted to my visit that she was very difficult to be around. Just explained to her that I always hold zero expectations when dealing with my mother. It's just emotionally safer that way. Jim is sick with a co...

  Exxon Baton Rouge Things have changed dramatically in the past few days. Games have been played, unfun ones involving substance abuse and passive aggressiveness. Finally I got a sense of why the aunt heap is collectively freaking out. Yes, situation very bad with my mother. After my mother lied to me about what she was doing on Sunday and Monday she called up the aunt I am the closest to and ordered her to call me up to tell me that mom was 'too sick' to see me on Tuesday. We'd left it that we'd get together on Tuesday. Somehow this got translated to we'd grab lunch. Not a word about lunch was mentioned between us. Too chicken shit to speak directly to me, and Mom ignored about a dozen calls from me before this. Mom then told my aunt that she'd get together with me for lunch on Thursday. Chicken head Mom, I fly out on Thursday morning! Came for the week, spent a mere four hours with her. Emergency meeting at the aunts. I told them I wash my hands of this mess....

  Calm blue ocean! Calm blue ocean! So now I'm here. I was there. I'm in South Louisiana to see my mother. I saw her yesterday, and all I can say I think my aunts have lost their f#cking minds. They had me super worked up yesterday when I got up, calling and making all sorts of claims against my mother. I just love crying into my coffee. My mother is 82. You're allowed some eccentricities when you reach that age! They're claiming she's playing games with them, and she may well be, but again she's 82. I think she would benefit from getting someone in to help with the house and with meals, like a service such as Home Instead. But she's nowhere near ready for the nursing home. I am concerned over her lack of eating. I did see evidence of that, and no food in the house. But I'm visiting tomorrow, first I'm stocking up, buying her groceries. I always do when I visit. Things I know she'll eat like peanut butter, soups and tuna. Some very basic supplies...

  Taken from my sewing room window FYI - I am circling ever closer to publishing my book, and may stop writing here and only post on my new website. At least I'm going to stop moaning about my health for a bit. It's as tiresome to kvetch about it as it is for you to read about. Plus I doubt anyone interested in the book is interested in a free floating stream of whining. It's a bad habit I have. New website is https://www.withstrangefire.com I have to thank a pastor friend for helping me with the name of the book inadvertently because he was complaining on a recent day about how many Christians start in a good place and end up in the weeds of a far place. I started thinking about that because that was my experience in my old church, not only ending up in that far place but doing so many bizarre things that it seems like the strange fire mentioned in Leviticus 1:10. So the book has gone from the working title of " A Quiver Filled With Assholes " to " With Str...

  You're getting an assortment of cat photos because this is heavy going. Nope, it has nothing to do with the Christmas that the Football Grinch ruined either! My personal Grinch did apologize for ruining Christmas by hellishly yelling at the tv for 12 hours. He has groveled and someone has an apology gift of rather nice new earrings by a custom jeweler in town. Water under the bridge that has rushed to the shore and been subsumed in the vast aquatic expanse of the Pacific. No, the horrible is almost unexplainable. My mother. Mom seemed fine the few times I managed to catch her at home. She had Covid, but like Jim and I, only found out she had it on the back side while she was recovering. She got her gift, and we had several nice conversations. I am always on tenterhooks calling her because I don't know what I'm going to get for sure, bad mom, good mom or something inbetween? She drinks pretty heavily and I've learned do not call after 1 pm!  Then my aunt called, the on...

    Yeah and it's hard to keep that in mind when dealing with others. We had a series of conversations today. I am still waiting for his realization and apology for his shiatty behavior yesterday. I pointed out over lunch that he'd shouted and squealed like an offended Wookie being deprived out of Wookie-Chow for 12 solid hours and he's lucky I didn't attempt to bounce something fatal off his skull. I was that offended. It just reminded me too much of various assholery drunk family members that turned every holiday into drama and indigestion. Today he's ranting it had to be someone messing with him, the CIA or something. I had to point out that the CIA has a lot more important things to mettle in internationally that getting players on his fantasy football team to throw the game. Starting to wonder if this is creeping senility or the first indication of Alzheimer's.

  Christmas at my Virginia home eight years ago. Yesterday was miserable, just miserable. What happened? Fantasy effing football. This morning I'm in quite the mood as I've been thinking and ranking the most awful Christmases of all time. Top five. Excluded from the list are those holidays where some  Cajun relative got piss ant drunk and told someone off or just acted tacky. That happened a lot, enough that it wasn't note worthy. Figured I needed to do something better than construct a voodoo doll of the husband and torment it. 5 - The Year Dad Nearly Burned Down The House I remember this year all too well because I was in my starving student phase. I'd left my first husband and his abuse behind and was living on ramen noodles in a crappy efficiency apartment (glorified room with a kitchen in a closet) working and going to university full time. The day had been awful before the fire. As per usual my kid step brother got over the top presents, that year was a tv and a n...

 Used to make this yearly and will be making it this year with a few changes. I cannot get fresh or frozen cranberries so I'm going with Granny Smith apples and blueberries. No almond paste or proper sour cream, but I do have the Costa Rican version of quasi cream cheese that's not quite cream cheese I'm going to use instead. You want a sweet dense flavor with tart sort of fruits to offset the rich sweetness. I'll let you know how it goes. You need: 2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries 1/4 cup Amaretto liqueur or you can substitute water for a non-alcoholic option 1/2/ cup dried cranberries 3 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 tsp salt 11/4 tsp baking powder 2/3 tsp baking soda 4 ounces almond paste (at room temperature) 1/2 tsp almond extract 2 1/2 cups sugar 1 cup plus 2 tbsp butter 6 eggs 1 cup sour cream   For the glaze you will need 2 tablespoons Amaretto and 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar stirred together and poured over the cooled cake. Two hours before baking: in a small sa...

  View from our hotel when we went to see my neurologist Dr Freddie in San Jose. I love this photo because you can see very old buildings reminiscent of New Orleans mixed with more modern ones. The mixed clouds and volcanic fumes hug the smoking mountain tops surrounding the city. I was going to talk about something utterly different. My realization that I carry this crazy "Do not inconvenience anyone for any reason ever!" that I learned from my mother and how it's caused a lot of silly fretting and anger through the years. Just dawned on me that this thing was in me.  But this afternoon someone sent me a link to a hotel for sale near Playa Avellanas. I am not sure if anyone but me remembers but pre-Covid a set of our newer friends wanted us to invest in this very hotel.  I wrote this on March 14th, 2019 and quickly removed it from my blog because I thought better of it: " Yesterday morning Bob and Carol showed up at our house. We tried to very gently tell them that...

Here, have some chocolate pods. You're gonna need 'em. Just got back from the doctor's office. Blazing crazy painful uti. Again. Le sigh. I need to put down the coffee cup and drink more water. What is funny about it is the conversations in the car Jim and I have on our way to different places, like talking about the woman in the bank the other day that kept angrily glaring at me and started throwing anti evil eye hand signals at me. I'm still not sure what her problem is, but I am sure there's a fancy psychiatric name for it. It was so creepy, and no I'm not involved in the demonic. Just the Magic 8 Ball! Used ironically on my YouTube channel once in a great while. But the funniest is when Radio Dos places some ancient song and I cough up a memory I'd long forgotten. Like hearing "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" by Elvin Bishop. Every time I hear that I flashback to the moment I decided to leave my ex. He liked to drink, and he wasn't a fun dr...

A hummingbird that used to visit and sit quietly when you talked to it. Trying to also get a photo of the parrolet that is digging out a nest hole in our strangler fig tree. Fascinating in that if I stare directly at it from the pool it gives the warning/fright cry and darts off. But if I sneakily glance over briefly he's not much bothered.  Well, I will admit one thing, Jim going daily to the clinic for iv infusions has landed us among some rather strange characters. Just the other day we were sitting in the back waiting for the iv to finish up when they brought a lady through to the " Sala de Emergencia " or the emergency room at the clinic. She was an odd bird. It's a small clinic, a couple of exam rooms, a lab, an area with a few beds so you can get ivs or rest, an ER room and a procedures room. There's no notion of privacy much either there. Very modern and clean, nice than many U.S. hospitals, but zero privacy. In tromps that patient, and we could not avoid ...

  A sunset from the hospital room during Jim's rupturing gall bladder adventure. He is sick, way sicker than I have ever seen him. But the time together has been peaceful and nice. This is the second day since we got home and I've started working on my mountain of laundry generated by having guests. We also nap a lot. Napping is good. The cats are pathetically grateful to see us. Yesterday, today and tomorrow Jim had to be transported to our clinic for iv antibiotics and a check up. There will be more blood tests and checks to see where he is in a few days and to see if he needs more meds. So far I, and Jim, have managed to keep visitors at bay. He really shouldn't be exposed to possible germs or Covid or RSV/Flu. He's not ready. Our friend from the other night has gone angrily radio silent after I told her no, that Jim said no, and she said a bunch of not so nice demeaning things. Whatever. I am that crazed Momma Bear for the folks I love when they are sick. Today'...

 No pretty picture. We've been away since Saturday. After dropping our family members off at the airport we had to drive down to nearly San Jose to get Jim's gall bladder removed. Not going into too much detail. Suffice to say it was literally something of a sh!tshow. The bladder was very infected and starting to rupture. Once they opened Jim up it was pus everywhere and infected tissue. A 45 minute surgery morphed into 3 hours. So we've had to stay two additional days due to the overwhelming infection. I'm exhausted from being the only driver as it's a five hour ride before you add in medication breaks, breaks so Jim can pee and breaks where he had to walk about. First of all. I seized Jim's cell phone shortly before the surgery because he was getting so many calls it was stressful on him and he was just so sick. Including but not limited to Velma demanding to know why we switched from the hospital that did her hip surgery to one in San Jose. I told her succinc...

  Took a ton of sunset photos last night from San Raphael Hospital yesterday but haven't started to edit them yet. All in these colors of my Brasalito photos. Crazy week. Family visiting from the States. Jim had a gall bladder attack and we're trying to work out where exactly the best place for the surgery is. San Raphael is closer, but I'm still trying to collect for my ER bill and the four days I was inpatient with the 104 fever back in March. Insurance keeps rejecting the bills each and every time.  Hospital Metropolitano takes our insurance 100%, but is a five hour ride. I had to explain to Jim I am so not taking the damn bus. In the middle of this drama trots one of our visitors to tell us how he views our marriage. I cried I was so crushed by his ideas. No one looking at your marriage from the outside can possibly determine everything going on inside. It's just not possible. Plus he's angry and bitter about being alone at thirty something, which colors his vie...

  It's backyard banana season again! These are my neighbors bananas. We relocated our banana trees out front with our cacti, not quite big enough to bloom and produce bananas but close. They weren't doing much back in the shade. I had some interesting experiences this week. My fancy newish coffee pot has started doing something terrible, well, terrible for the white marble countertops. It sometimes spews coffee and grinds everywhere instead of down into the pot. I ended up going online to see if I could solve this problem. Manufacturers website blamed the problem on a dirty coffee maker, too fine a grind of coffee, or, get this, brewing a full pot. Brewing a full pot?!? I always brew a full pot. I do that, let it cool and pour it into my cold coffee pitcher for iced lattes in the morning.  Consulted Consumer Reports which said some coffee makers were more prone to that than others and offered some tips to avoid it. I ended up with various tools to effing remove that useless li...

  Beach walking on a cloudy day. Last week I made a discovery of something I'd never laid eyes on before. Or maybe I'd seen them and it didn't mentally register. This time I stopped and picked it up. That's a sea bean in my chubby little hand. What's a sea bean? A seed from a tropical plant that gets carried on the ocean currents before landing into the flotsam of beaches at high tide. I picked it up without knowing what it is. Now I've fallen down a sea bean shaped hole and have been back and forth several times to Grande looking for them. Few and far between. Once it's finished with the freezing that kills any potential bugs the old dremel is drilling a hole and we're stringing it up for a necklace. My new crazy searching fetish means I've been beach walking twice as far even as I'm having some post Covid fatigue. At the same time my legs look like I caught them up in barbed wire or something because I'm ringed with scabs. I'm having cr...