MIAMI TO COSTA RICA

No zoning. Part One.

Little bitch of doom.

About a week into last December my doorbell rings and it's some little Tica chick wanting me to sign a piece of paper saying that I'm okay with her opening a daycare center two doors down from me.  Seeing as I'm not deaf, stupid or crazy, I had to say no.  Actually, I think I laughed first and then said, "No way."  She was none too pleased.  Her fake-o smile was promptly replaced with the psycho sneer I would see over and over in the coming weeks.  "That's fine." she said, "I'll just talk to your neighbors."  If you read my blog with any regularity or happen to know me personally, you'll know I don't generally trust most people to sit the right way 'round on a toilet seat but, for reasons I still can't explain, I figured that my neighbors would blow off this ding-a-ling and her daycare center as quickly as I did.  For a split second I considered running to the neighbors I know and pointing out what a HORRIBLE idea this rug-rat repository would be, especially after a few of them have been so worried about security and noise and odd cars parked on our street. It turns out that I underestimated psycho-Tica and overestimated my neighbors.  She came back the next morning and rang my doorbell and when I opened up to tell her to piss off, before I could speak, she waved a handful of signed papers at me and, sneering, said, "I don't need your signature, I have your neighbors and you can't do anything about it!"  I spoke to the neighbor between my house and the proposed day-care and, of course, she hadn't signed.  Then I spoke to the neighbor on the other side of me.  She had signed.  She said she thought it would be "cute" and that the girl had told her that she might be interested in hiring one of her teenagers to teach music.  The mother of twins signed because she was told that the girl would give her a discount if she sent her kids.  The teacher signed because the girl assured her it would be a bi-lingual primary school.  The old guy signed because she said it would be a school for 'special needs' children.  Two neighbors signed because they were told that another neighbor, who had refused to sign and begged them not to sign either, had had a change of heart and signed.  All in all, two thirds of the signatures were generated by Psycho-Tica's lies and the neighbor's gullibility (I'm being nice).  Christmas was right around the corner and those of us who hadn't signed decided to let it be until the new year and hope this chick wouldn't be able to rent the house or would move on to terrorize some other neighborhood.  I spent the next three weeks pointedly ignoring the neighbors who signed and hoping for the best.  The Monday after Christmas, I realized that 'the best' wasn't going to happen:  the 'Alquiler' (For Rent) sign was gone from the house two doors down and Psycho-Tica was in the front yard screeching at someone on her cell phone. My neighborhood nightmare had just begun.

I can see you. No, really, I can.

Back in August I was reading a blog and noticed they were using a tool called Sitemeter.  I clicked it thinking it was just some application that helps you see how many hits per day a website gets.  I didn't really read much about what it did, but it looked interesting and simple to install on my site and I figured that seeing how many people were actually reading my blog might spur me to write more often and, possibly, try harder not to sound like a nattering idiot.  Up until this past weekend I hadn't bothered to check out the statistics that Sitemeter had been gathering.  Last night, unable to sleep (probably due to the shock my system is experiencing without sugar) and having gotten bored with on-line sudoku, I went to Sitemeter's website and began sifting through the stats for my blog.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people have come to the blog over the last three months, although I kind of felt like a mom whose kids don't call or write.  How come you people don't leave more comments?  I'll take complaints and snarky remarks too!  I think it's pretty cool that I've gotten hits from Iceland, Australia and Turkey to Tennessee, South Dakota and Hawaii.  But the coolest feature so far?  When I clicked "detail" next to the locations, I got the latitude and longitude of each visitor.  That was interesting for the far flung locations...but it got really neat when I started checking up on the regular visitors.  If you enter longitude and latitude on Google Maps, you can get really detailed info.  If the long. and lat. is in North America, you can get a street view and an address.  That's right, photos so detailed you can make out the numbers on the house.  I checked out a few regular visitors and tried to figure out if these were people I know.  After a while I began to feel a little guilty and creepy - like this kind of poking around might qualify me as a sort amateur cyber-stalker.  I've decided I should probably leave it alone...for now.  At least until I rent Saw 4 and can't sleep again.  Until then, just remember:  I know where you live now.  I can read your Welcome mat from the satellite photo.  At least entertain me by sunbathing nude on your roof or spray painting "Hello!" on your sidewalk.

ADHD or Why I Haven't Posted in Over a Month.

I ran out of Adderall right after I moved here.  I've been reading a lot of posts lately on other sites with people griping about people who gripe about "What's Wrong With Costa Rica".  Weenies.  Right now, as far as I am concerned, what's wrong with Costa Rica is that this frigging berg doesn't sell Adderall.  What the Hell is wrong with these people?  I told a doctor here that I took Adderall in the states and he, like two other docs I've seen here, hands me a 'scrip for Concerta and goes on and on about how it's the best thing since sliced bread.  It's not.  At least it's not for me.  I've eaten bags of Skittles with more punch than Concerta.  Maybe, if you have a mild case of ADD, it might work.  For me, at it's highest dose, I am about as focused as a squirrel in a pinball machine.  After a couple of months of Concerta, I gave up and moved on to coffee.  At 6 - 8 cups a day, my heart was racing, I was dopey, craving sweets and my impulse control and irritability were off the charts.  I stopped the coffee about two weeks ago.  I've since had cluster migraines day in and day out.  I've decided to see if I can get it under control by just ditching sugar, caffeine and a few other food additives that I know make me crazier than I need to be.  I'm also trying to put myself on a pretty rigid schedule.  Lack of choices is a good thing for someone like me.  So, starting this week, I'm going to try to post more regularly and I'm going to throw out the cookies in the pantry and the M&Ms I have stashed in the freezer.  I'm going to eat more fruits and vegetables and little or no processed crap.  I'm going to see if I can get this stuff under control using a more sensible, natural approach.  If I haven't stabbed myself with a carrot by the end of the week, I'll consider adding in some meditation...if I can sit still for that long.  If none of this works, I'm gonna scrape up a couple hundred dollars and get my old, ethically challenged shrink in Miami to mail me some Adderall so I can get through the holidays without driving myself and everyone around me stark raving bonkers. 

Pot.

I have a problem.  I need your help.  I've been trying to decide something very big and I can't seem to make a decision:
Should I get a tea pot? 
I've been making a LOT of tea lately and my little glass French press is put to work daily for a few cups of shade-grown and so far I've just boiled the water in an aluminum sauce pot.  But I hear the neighbor's kettle whistling a couple of times every day and I wonder if this might not be a better way to boil my water.  Less splashing onto the counter.  I could leave it filled without worrying about winged creatures and pet-hair.  But every time I get to the moment of truth, the moment where I select a tea-pot/kettle, I hesitate.  Do I really need one?  Will it be better than the pot?  Do I not violate the single use item ban by purchasing something that I'll only use for one purpose? 
I had one in each hand today.  One was steel with a snazzy padded handle and the other was aluminum with a plastic handle.  I put them both back.  I couldn't make a decision.  As I walked out of the store a few minutes later, I considered the possibility that I haven't got nearly enough going on lately.  An epiphany and something I promise to work on.  But, in the meantime, what do you think?  Pot or Tea Pot?

I'll be dead soon.

I have a sinus infection.  According to Dr. Samuel Flikier-Franjo, the otolaryncologist I saw at Cima Hospital, a nasty one too.  He stuck a metal wand, with a camera on it, up my nose and we watched it in full color on a ten inch screen.  Spelunking in my head.  Cool.  He pointed to the gobs of white pus hanging in the glossy pink cavern and told me that I wouldn't need an MRI because it was pretty clear what was going on.  I guess my telling him about the raging fevers, the three weeks of headaches that required Vicodin just to function and the domino-sized blob of green, brown and pink I'd horked up two days earlier weren't enough to assure him.  I was given a scrip for some monster anti-biotic and sent on my way.  I'm very anti-anti-biotics.  Haven't taken one in, like, seven years.  I'm convinced that if I take anti-biotics in the willy-nilly way everyone I know seems to, that one day, I'll come down with some Ebola-Marburg-Hanta-Avian killer flu and no medicine known to man will stop it and I'll die a slow and messy death leaving my darling husband to be cared for by our six-year-old because she's the only one who knows our phone number and address.  My neighbor, whose husband has terrible sinus problems, suggested I see someone when I was on day four of what I'd first thought was a migraine headache.  I don't like doctors and since I wasn't feeling congested at the time, I didn't want to find out that the skull-splitting pain I was having was, in fact, some inoperable brain tumor and I only had a month to live.  Granted, finding out that it was terminal would at least give me a month to write down information that my husband might need and make some of those depressing videos for my kid that you always see the tragic characters in movies making.  As it turns out, not only am I not dying, I should be just dandy in a few days.  My head will stop hurting, the dizziness will go away, the pain in my face will fade, no more chunks of ick, the sexy growl in my voice will leave with the sore throat and I'll be fresh as a daisy again.  Unless I drop dead suddenly from one of the side-effects of the anti-biotic.  I looked it up this morning on the Internet.  Seizures, heart attack, liver failure.  I felt woozy and went back to bed.  After a while I convinced myself that I really didn't feel my liver twitching and I probably wasn't having chest pain and I should just get up and carry on as best I could.  After all, I thought, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was being melodramatic. 

Fiddy.

My husband turns 50 today.  He's spent the last few months agonizing over this milestone.  Alternately moaning and whining and being depressed.  I keep telling him that age is just a number, but it hasn't done much good, he still seems to think that he's now officially "a geezer". 
I bought him a bulldog for his birthday.  He's wanted one for years and "Etta" has cheered him up considerably in the last few weeks.  Sure, she eats like a frat-boy and chews anything she can reach - including our kid, the maid, the cat and, after breaking into the pantry, a roll of paper towels, but she is cute as Hell and watching her lumber around, farting and belching has been fun for all of us. 
Still, "T" thinks that this birthday signifies that the end is near.  Or near-er, anyway.  So, to my geezer husband, I would like to say this:  you're still smart, sexy, funny and the best person I know.  Suck it up, baby and keep moving.  Life is long and you're not done yet by a long shot.  Happy Birthday my love, may you piss and moan through many, many more.

Old like me.

It's official:  I'm a geezer. 
No, the boobs have not crept any further toward my knees, no deep lines or creases on the face, no more gray hair than the average thirty-something, I don't lose my keys any more now than before and, more important, I still know what they're for when I find them...this is much worse.  Last night my husband handed me a packet of Theraflu so I could read the directions for him (this is, apparently, my job as wife) I held the packet at the same distance I would have held it a few weeks ago but, last night, it was blurry.  I blinked a couple of times - my contact lenses must be cruddy (it happens), I tilted my head a bit - the print on the package must be squiggly (it happens), I turned on another light - poor light can affect one's ability to see clearly (it happens).  I still couldn't quite read it.  Suddenly I caught myself doing something I'd seen my aunt do: I tilted my head back, raised my eyebrows and pulled the package back a bit.  The print became clearer.  Oh, Holy crap.  I read the instructions and handed the packet to my husband.  I went and looked in the mirror.  I am now old.  It'll all happen at once now won't it?  Tomorrow I'll have crow's feet deep enough to plant crops.  Next week my boobs will drag along the ground beside me.  If I ever find my keys again I won't know what to do with them.  ...sigh...  Okay, pity-party over.  My grandfather was still getting arrested at cock-fights (that he drove himself to, out in the boondocks, late at night) until shortly before his 100th birthday, so if genetics have anything to do with it, I need to snap out of it and move on.  Besides, I'm living in a plastic surgery paradise right now, I can (and very cheaply) nip and tuck all the outward signs of aging.  I can dye my hair any color I like.  My failing vision is not the end of the world.  I can still see Keanu Reeves clearly up on a movie screen and, as long as I can still remember what I'd like to do with him, I'll be just fine.

Newsflash: Cats Don't Like Showers.

Yeah, well, it's news to me.  I've always had dogs and, if you have dogs, you've most likely had occasion to take a shower and bathe your dog at the same time. Well, today I decided to do the same with kitty.
This morning I got up to find our Persian (long hair!!!) kitten running around with a jelly-bean sized dingleberry tangled in her fur and even though I got a napkin and pulled it off, she still stunk.  So, despite my husband's insistance that "cats clean themselves", I felt that our kitty needed some shampoo to help take that nasty cat-poop smell off her butt.  I didn't think hosing her down outside was a good choice since she only weighs about 2 pounds and it's kinda cold and the sink was out of the question because that's just nasty.  The shower seemed like a good choice and I'd just gotten back from Pilates and needed one myself.  I grabbed up the kitty on my way into the shower, plopped her on the floor and started the water.  I just figured all the yowling she was doing was due to cats not liking water although, from the street outside, I'll bet it sounded like someone was yelling, "Help!" over and over.  She didn't need any help.  I picked her up and put her under the stream of water and she started to struggle, but didn't really claw me, then I put the shampoo on her and started to lather her up.  I think the shampoo was her limit - she lost it.  It's a credit to my pain tolerence that I didn't drop her...or throw her out of the shower.   Kitty went bonkers and started to shred my hands and wrists and, since I was naked, I had to finish the shampoo and rinse holding her at arm's length.  Luckily India walked in and I was able to hand the still pissed off kitty to her for drying.  I don't think I'll be doing that again.  As it is, the kitty won't look at me now and at some point over the next couple of days I may have to explain that the slices on my wrists are not due to a botched suicide attempt.  Stupid cat.  Next time she can clean off her own dingleberries.

One of many reasons I should never be alone with my thoughts...

Wouldn't it be great if, whenever the universe allowed you a peek at a lost love (or ex-asshole), if they weren't still madly in love with you, wandering through life, gibbering incoherently about having lost you, that they were at least now forever shackled to some hare-lipped, mustachioed troll with a *vestigial tail and incurable body odor? 
I know it's not likely, but it's a cool thought nonetheless.

*gotta see this...