The Sea is a Salty One

  Let's just say they aren't going well. Not taking or anything else involving art classes. Saturday. Painting class and I'm sitting nearby a woman my husband knows of and does not like. My husband likes everyone. He does not like her, which tells me there's something very wrong going on with her. We ran into her during our last Price Smart run. She's a weirdo. Just very off putting vibes. The painting is ugly. Ugly example. Ugly wrong directions with ugly ideas all the way around. No, it's not the one above. That's one I painted twenty years ago and I love. It's based on a place I used to go to off Pensacola, Florida. Weirdo lady kept yapping that the teacher promised them a "Picasso" alike project. Well no, I started explaining, this project has more in common with a Piet Mondrian or a Mark Rothco than Picasso. Just like that I'm sucked into a college level explanation of painting styles of the more modern artists and what distinctives th...

  Caballeros at the Santa Cruz Rodeo festival last week Yesterday I was on pins, needles and threads going to church. Was quite curious to see if the pastor of the best gosh darn mini megachurch in the rainforest (his name for it, not mine) would mention any need to pray for the things going on in our world. Meaning the shootings in Minnesota by ICE agents. Crickets of course. Nothing, de nada, it was all sunshine and "control your thoughts" per usual. I don't get why the hubby loves this church because a lot of the theology is out of Christian Nationalism.   The funny: The Ogress was there when I was walking in and I complimented her on her pretty dress. She looked at me, started to smile and say something before remembering that we're supposed to be mortal enemies in church. So she scowled, turned up her nose and went elsewhere. Laughing because whenever I run into her in town she's friendly still, but in church there is something of a performance going on in fr...

  Yes, yes, I have been here a lot the last two weeks. We've been in Santa Cruz moving some of our investment funds to a credit union here. Gonna give you a big moving to Costa Rica secret -- the banks and credit unions here offer the best certificate of deposit rates, unlike the USA. We live off the interest of our various investments in Costa Rica. If you do that not only will you likely beat the volatile stock market along with the bonds and CD rates, you'll gain investor status here. It makes residency much easier. Costa Rica just wants to make sure you can support yourself if you move here. Pretty excited tonight! My new dishwasher has been installed and made pretty short work of the dishes. I have been living in this house nearly eight years with me being the solemente dishwasher. I am so thrilled! Ordered the new washer and dryer and they're supposed to be in at the store in a week, and installed the Tuesday afterward. Repairman here tomorrow to work on putting a cov...

  About as much fun as getting groped without consent. See I can poke fun at the Democrats too. Since May/June when we had to fly down to Louisiana because my mother was in the hospital we've all be puzzled over the rapidity of her dementia decline. Was it even possible to lose marbles so suddenly? The best the medical experts would say was "white ischemic matter found throughout brain" with no deeper explanation than "causing dementia".   Not so now. More tests and a more definitive diagnosis of something I never heard of before - CSVD or ' Cerebral Small Vessel Disease.' Her brain is dying while her body is in tip top condition from her years of excessive workouts. Not an ounce of fat on her body anywhere. Her cardiologist said she has the heart of a much younger woman, even with all the AFib. None of that matters if your brain is toast. The brain is the boss and it needs fat to live and function. They've tried the limited spectrum of dementia dru...

  Feeling like a hen in a pot sailing on the ocean a long way from everyone. Found out this afternoon there have been many more falls by Mom and the hospitalists say she's needing cameras to watch her all the time, possibly round the clock nursing and hospice. Mostly what I am feeling at this point is relief. It's her own poor little brain dying. Very likely I will be going back to Louisiana for a spell.

  I have been better behaved, I promise! Although I was anxious to fly the double birds like this to 2025 because of the mom shenanigans and the husband's cancer recurrence.  The last day of the year was anti climatic. I went to a new beach I'd not seen before hidden away between Brasilita and Flamingo. I wish I'd have brought a camera because there's a small island just off shore that you can walk to during low tide. I cannot wait to wobble over there and hunt for sea beans! That was the most excitement of the holiday. I fell asleep early, work up just as the fireworks were going off and went right back to sleep. Tried to go to sleep early last night. I felt tired, but unable to sleep well, waking up again and again with leg cramps and pain, weird dreams and the like. By the time I got up this morning it was pretty obvious something was deeply off. Dang, on laundry day too.  Now I have the flu, no doubt exposed by some American slumming it at one of our local grocery s...

  This was certainly true yesterday. I veered into some very bad behavior. I've been cringing and inwardly beating myself about it since. Embarrassed myself indeed.  I mean, this is nothing new, I'm not perfect. I screw up, I screw up a lot. I usually try to do the right thing.... right up until someone provokes me in some horrible way. You remember last year I was having sudden problems with an Airbnb property behind me? Someone built a three story lux townhouse, and while it was some ridiculous distance from us, like twenty yards or so, they could see over our ten foot wall to the glistening pool and hot tub. Plus the back wall of the kitchen is a picture window something like eighteen feet across with my range and sink on that wall. Eventually we started getting complaints from their guests showing up on our doorstep to either request pool and hot tub access or accusing me of standing there like a creep spying on them when I was either cooking dinner or washing dishes. We s...

 Took it all down. Why? I don't want to leave space for her, not even negative space in my life. Who? Who are you asking about? The stealing accusations were getting me so angry and I don't like staying angry. Prefer to treat her like a buzzing fly and ignore.

  Boats off Tamarindo. They really need to built a harbor now.   I finally found my missing jewelry. Just inexpensive costumer jewelry. Every single time I stay alone at my mother's house I have two or three pieces go missing because of Norma. Times three trips that is about nine pieces.    Who is Norma? My mother's late husband's second wife. The one he was married to all during his and my mother's many years long affair. I knew Norma. I knew Norma pretty well because whenever she'd drink she'd call the house when I was a teen. I spent many a long evening talking to Norma trying futilely to reason with her, begging her to stop calling so I could study. Once she died my mother and her love married, and moved into Norma's house on the country club fairway. I begged my mother to buy another house in that neighborhood, not to move into that place but she listens to me about as well as I ever heeded her advice to me.   Here's the thing. I have always felt so...

  Yeah, any family that thinks it is a okay to let a toddler be in neck deep water is a great thing isn't really so wonderful themselves. Another day, another set of crazy things I have to do for my mother while fending off the other side of the family demanding I fly to New Orleans for a funeral. So many stupid phone calls, so little time. Discovered this morning that another family member disregarded my wishes and named me in the relative's obit even as I literally had not once clamped eyes on her for twenty six years.  I did get today's most important task completed. The yearly required distribution of her IRA account. But it was close, multiple phone calls. First to find out if they received our notarized paperwork over her being in memory care and incapable of making big decisions. The rep kept referring me to the website, where I tried to log on and got locked out. I had to call back multiple times before I was able to finish the transaction.  Right now I am contemp...

  Feeling as stripped and used up as this abandoned building right along Playa Panama that's already been knocked down. I should be so lucky! One of the biggest most horrible things about being back is the husband nagging me a few times a week on what he thinks should happen with my mother and her assets. I finally had to take to telling him to ferme ta bouche please, before I lose my mind. I can only do so much, I am determined to be responsible with every cent, and this whole crap shoot has required oodles of paperwork. Like trying to eat a steak the size of Detroit levels of paperwork. I have discovered the only way I can cope is two fold. 1 - Keep a detailed hand-written ledger of every action. 2 - Take only the size bite I can handle that day. Anything more than that is too much. Today's crisis was I was contacted about an unpaid bill at Mom's new home. I did sign away my life and provide the home with the obligatory cancelled check, told them I didn't want to be b...

  Sort of me the last few days. I decided on Monday to give up my decades long post-coffee drink. Stopped cold turkey Monday morning -- Diet Coke. I was drinking one to two cans/bottles a morning after my coffee. My aunt guilted me into it based upon several studies claiming it causes high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes. I've had a TIA and a more serious one, so I'm trying to do everything I can to avoid another one. I started feeling physically awful and exhausted on Tuesday morning and here it is on Saturday night and it finally dawned on me I'm suffering caffeine withdrawal. Yay me! I'm so dumb sometimes. This has been going on at the same time as the husband has been losing his mind after the accusations of financial chicanery at church by you know who. Would love to know how our president drinks a dozen cans a day? How does he sleep? I cannot stay out of the bed. Sleeping eleven to twelve hours a night this week.  Not sure how I'm going to drag my ex...

 Starting with a song by Jason Upton - Freedom  I love this lyric: "  Well, we live in a country supposedly Pharoah-less But all over town and in churches abide Powerful weaklings who practice they're politics Stealing from Jesus his beautiful bride Whether you're Pharisees, Sadducees, heresies You best get outta God's way!" This is what went down yesterday with the Ogress texting my husband every five minutes all day long ringing his chimes by accusing him of stealing or misplacing money. I believe now that she set him up. She was so incredibly upset that we stopped all favors to her, stopped her swimming daily in our pool, and the husband stopped going out of his way to help him. She blames me, but she decided to torment him in order to upset me. She's a powerful weakling. While it did upset me the only thing I did was leave it alone and spill my ire here, and think of ways to expose or dethrone her. While I'm annoyed she's done this by late yesterda...

  This morning the poor husband still had not found the missing monies and he's not taking it well. He's about to take it a whole lot less well when I tell him what the Coconut Telegraph spit up today to me as he napped. The Ogress told others he is ' confused ' and ' not himself.' Oh, please! He's his usual one track mind * coughcoughFantasyFootballcough * self, no more senile than usual even if he is at least ten years older than her. He has always been a guy who focuses on what he wants to focus on, and behaves every time he's around her recently like a man forced to use a rotting kipper as a tie pin.  She's gaslighting him to anyone who will listen now. I find it infuriating, but he is going to lose it when I tell him what the rumor she's floating is. Way worse than I did. On the flip side I finally realized what I need to do to shut Rebecca of Delusional Hill Farms down and it involves an upcoming meeting, asking legitimate questions and quo...

  A Thanksgiving many years ago in my Virginia home. I still miss this place, including the small galley kitchen. Giant turkey roaster. Good times. Had something of a down day today. Talked to my aunt a long time last night. Aunt have all sorts of problems, meaning she's dragging on things she needs to do on her end, like get the paperwork notarized for my mother's investment account. Since we're both on the power of attorney we both have to apply. I'll be going to the Embassy on Tuesday to get my half notarized. We're bumping up against the mandatory withdrawals you must take yearly after reaching 73 and change. She's also telling me that Mom still thinks we moved her to a cheaper place, and are stealing her money. Mom's trying to report my husband and I as some sort of illegal rapacious folks spending her money in great orgy of spending, and is trying to be sprung from her memory care unit to move home to the haunted doll castle on the fairway of hole 5 of...

  I am an old woman, not an ogress! Written on Friday the14th A week ago today we flew home. I'm still recovering from my month back home. I brought things back to the house, all the towels and bedsheets I'd purchased for the assisted living plus a pretty inexpensive comforter for my bed. My aunt tried to tempt me into purchasing an absolutely beautiful white comforter with silver pewter medallions sewn into the white linen. I loved it, then reality set in. I'm married to a guy who is so so smart but does not have one lick of common sense. I've learned I must have a pile of inexpensive comforters that can be washed. I never know when he's going to trot into the bedroom and pass out on the bed with black little goat feet. Here in Costa Rica he tends to walk around shoeless and if I'm not awake to gently remind him to wash those goat feet he'll go to bed with them like that. Besides the beautiful linen was dry clean only, something that does not exist here. I ...

 Whelp, this one seems to be summed up by the news a few hours ago when it was announced that 40 different US airports will be staffing down starting tomorrow. I'm scheduled to fly out on Sunday back to Costa Rica through one of these scaled down ports of call. One of the biggest. So far my flights are listed as ' on' but I feel no confidence that this will happen if my flights to get here are any indication. Might have to take a cruise home if flights are cancelled. I am so ready to go home, you just don't know! I've been rushing about buying furnishings for my mother's accommodations in memory care since her bed is too big. Had her assisted living apartment packed and delivered back to the house, and placed her in the new place. There's just one big problem, Bottomless Betty is livid with the move. She threatened my husband physically, all 91 pounds of her soaking wet, and has hurled angry nasty invective at both of us, insisting that the move was made on...

  Nope, I'm not at the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, but I might as well be.   Shit and Roaches, Excuse Me Palmetto Bugs Tuesday Oct 14 th Well, I am here in South Louisiana now and I think my experience so far can be succinctly summed up by an episode last night. I had purchased a bundle of flowers in lovely fall colors to brighten up the nearly empty home. Looking through my mother’s collection of high end vases I decided to go for broke and use the huge cut glass lavaliere that’s big enough to bathe in. I pulled it down from a high shelf and an enormous roach fell on my head. Yep. I screamed and ran before I realized the palmetto bug variety of roach was long dead. I flew in on Sunday. It was a shitshow. My plane in Liberia had gate changes three times before they changed planes and we left very late after having to scrabble up an outside set of metal steps instead of a jet bridge. Flew into Dallas and my next flight was changed planes and gates after an hour’s...

  The Chesapeake Bay Bridge last weekend. So where have I been? Back to Louisiana and then up to Maryland. I wanted to check on my mother in her assisted living. It didn't go well at all, even if I stayed ten days. One of my aunts in the Aunt Heap nicknamed my mother 'Bottomless Betty' after she suddenly developed the inability to wear bottoms at all, no pants, no panties, no skirts. It was most bizarre and had a sudden onset. Her dementia has gone haywire in the few months she's been in assisted living. I'm not entirely sure she knew who I was either. This was a shock, her mental status slid so fast it was scary. Did what I could, talked to the folks in the admin office seeking a way to help her. My mother's doctor had tried a drug to slow the dementia but all it did was cause my mother to hallucinate.   Got home on Tuesday night, taking that long airplane ride from Washington, DC to my home near Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Human Greek chorus and alarmist member of...

  Some years back. Need to take a new photo as the banana trees are putting out six bunches of bananas. Yes, we have bananas! Starting with a mangled cliche! There was a Jimmy Buffett song titled "Cliches" with the chorus lyric " Cliches, good ways to say what you mean, mean what you say. " I hope some I have listed below are largely devoid of meaning.  Yes, I am back doing D list actor who is not very deep's writing prompt. It's a good one today, cliches uttered by parental units. He was wittering on about his favorite Southern writers, O'Connor and McCullers, while admitting a) he's really not read them, but ha has seen the movies and b) kept confusing the two. C'est la vie!  I prefer the works of people like Zora Neale Hurston, Truman Capote and Faulkner for my navel-gazing Southerners. At least Capote was amusing. There are so many things, deeply fucked up things uttered by my parents that I am at loath to repeat them here. A sampling of a f...