MIAMI TO COSTA RICA

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.

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. 

Intelligent design.

So, last week I'm sitting on the back porch of a very nice house in Escazu, waiting for my kid while she took a half-day art camp upstairs with a dozen or so other children.  I'd been reading David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed in Flames and laughing out loud, occasionally getting stared at by the house-keeper.  It was a really pretty day, the kind that reminds me why I love living here.  It was cool and sunny and there was a breeze and across the valley I could see low-hanging black clouds that assured me I'd been right to bring our rain jackets.  As I was enjoying the view between chapters, I looked across the porch and saw four little pre-Colombian looking clay figures on the wall.  Two were larger than the other two.  I looked closer and noticed that one of each size was obviously male and the other two were, I guess, female.  For some reason I was really struck by what a small, simple difference the addition of external genitalia made.  And then the thought hit me.  What would I do if I had a penis?  I mean, like, if I just woke up from an afternoon nap and, BAM!, there it was, hanging off me - what would I want do first?  That answer came instantly.  I'd want to stick it somewhere.  Immediately.  Over and over and on and on.  No, wait, that's not what I'd do FIRST.  What I'd do first is try to see if I could, ya know, get it in my mouth.  That's when I realized that if men could actually do that, if they could actually service themselves without ever involving anyone else, well, we would never have left caves.  Hell, the species would have died out.  Maybe that's why we have a spinal column?  Or maybe that's why we have enough vertebrae to keep us from too much self-service?  Oh, crap.  Could that possibly mean that there is 'intelligent design'?  Could my atheism be a mistake?  Could there be some controlling power in the universe?  But then, I remembered that men, just like the little 'male' terra cotta guys on the wall, have nipples and until someone can give me a satisfactory explanation for those, I'm sticking to evolution.  Heck, for all we know, there were earlier versions of humans with no skeleton and that's why there's no record.  They just died out because they actually could reach their penis with their lips and never managed to reproduce.

Baggage.

I went to Miami for some shopping and alone-time last week.  Ten excitement-filled days of sleeping until 11, going to Starbucks twice a day (I love saying, "Venti non-fat latté, please") and spending the rest of my time wandering in and out of the Apple store, Target and Publix.  Ah, glorious stuff.  Well, to tell the truth, one of my kid's little friends gave me her fever, sneezing and hacking cough before I left and I did spent most of my trip stoned on Nyquil and Benadryl.  But that only made the shopping more pleasant for me.  I'm really not much of a shopper.  I walk into most of those places and my ADHD takes over and between the fluorescent lights (they cycle on and off at blinding speeds!), the colors and packaging and music and people talking...after a few minutes I can usually feel a panic attack nibbling at the very edge of my sanity.  Thoroughly sedated as I was, it wasn't so bad.  It might have been an almost Zen experience if I hadn't been with my pal, Ana, who's manically super-charged personality can make me jittery even with a double-dose of Nyquil coursing through my veins.  At the end of my visit though, I'd gotten to see a couple of other friends, picked up all of my Amazon deliveries and caught up on my sleep.  I flew out of Ft. Lauderdale airport on Spirit Air and, unfortunately, I believe I've seen the future of air travel and not only is it not pretty, it's not cheap either.  While Spirit had better fares than most, they nickle and dime passengers every way they can.  They charge for EACH checked bag (not just the second, as many have started to do) and though they give a discount if you pay for the bags when you purchase your ticket, it's not that great a savings.  I was only mildly annoyed when I had to shell out another $50 for an overweight bag.  Had I known beforehand, I would have maxed out the weight for the full extra 25lbs.  The shocker was when I was asked if I wanted to pre-select my seat - for another $10.  They may have had pay toilets too, but I never got up after practically shoe-horning myself into my seat, so who knows?  I think they were charging for beverages and snacks on-board.  I don't know for sure because cold meds take the edge off one's hunger, so I really didn't care and I couldn't hear over my iPod anyway.  The same iPod that I was asked by a scrawny, bedraggled-looking flight attendant with a Valley-Girl accent to remove.  Four times.  The first time I just smiled and nodded and ignored her.  The second time she waved and cocked her head to one side and bugged out her eyes and pantomimed removing ear-buds.  I just nodded and said, "yes".  I was hoping she'd just give up and bugger off, but it's amazing how black and white instructions and a uniform make some people so damn surly.  The third time she tapped my arm - jabbed it, really, with her bony little index finger.  I slipped out an ear-bud.  "Yes?"  "You need to shut that off.  We're moving."  No shit, really?  I just thought the terminal was rolling away. "Oh.  Well, it's just an iPod.  Do I really have to shut it off?  I've never needed to before."  "Yesssss.  You need to shut it off and put it away."  "Uh, okay, I'll shut it off."  Why did I need to put it away?  What?  Didn't she trust me to turn it off?  Even I didn't understand at that moment why I was getting so pissed at her and why I was so determined to keep my iPod on.  She walked away and I tucked the player into my pocket, but left it playing.  As she was walking to the back of the plane to take her seat, she saw me, rolled her eyes and said, "Ma'am, " (Oh yeah, that helped.) "you're going to have to put that away."  "Why, exactly?"  She seemed surprised at the question and proceeded to guess at the answer.  "Because...it can interfere with the plane's radio system." I smirked. "No, it can't."  I couldn't believe I'd said it and neither could she apparently, because she scowled and paused for a second and just then, I got a flash in my head of being escorted off the plane à la Adam Sandler in that Anger Management movie.  "S'okay, nevermind, I'll take it off and put it away."  She just shook her head and walked away.  I turned and watched her head to the tail section and then I tucked my iPod back into my pocket, slid the ear-buds and cord through my shirt and out of the neck, tucked them back into my head, cranked up Coldplay and snuggled into my seat - a happy asshole and, more important, a still-on-the-plane-and-not-in-police-custody asshole. When she passed by later, she glared at me and the white bits of plastic stuffed into my ears, but it was too late.  After we landed, I considered asking her why I wasn't told to turn off my music then, didn't that whole iPod-messing-with-radio thing apply to landing as well?  But I was so glad to be home in Costa Rica that I just smiled politely and said, "Buh-bye" as I passed her on the way out.  I still think I'm right about the iPod and I don't plan on turning it off on my next flight either.  So there.

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...

Rain, rain, go away.....

...no, seriously, go the #*@% away!
It's been raining non-stop for two days.  The ceiling in the bedroom has sprung a leak.  Well, actually, several leaks, all in a row.  We've moved everything to the other side of the room.  The guy who's supposed to fix the leaks has made two visits - mostly reconnaissance.  The humidifier is overwhelmed.  The dogs are refusing to go out in the rain, so I've had other puddles to clean.  My meringues are coming out sticky.  All I want to do is take a nap and I may have to throttle the next person who tells me that it's only just begun! 

TUESDAY, JULY 4TH, 2006

'CONVERSATE' is not a word.

It just isn't.  I don't care how many damn rappers and small claims court defendants say it.  It's not a real word. 
"I just wanted to conversate with her and she called the cops."
"We was conversating when the five-o showed up."
I'm going to have to slap the next person who says that. 
Of course, after it's all over and the object of my ire is being arraigned on murder charges, I'm sure he/she will tell the judge that if I had just 'conversated' with them instead of whacking them with my cellphone, they wouldn't have had to kill me.