More about the Sighing

So if you haven´t yet, read the next post down (which I only just posted) to find out what´s up with all the sighing.

Okay.

So I´ve spoken to every mechanic I know (starting with the one who came to "fix" the car I disabled myself, since it was when I called to arrange for someone else to pick up the girls that day that I discovered the red car wouldn´t be available to me for much longer), and I talked to the guys who changed my oil once, and the owner of the gym, and the aerobics instructor, and some guy who does auto upholstry down the street from the gym, and I´ve gotten all kinds of suggestions for places to look for cars.

I told everybody that I had two criteria:

• I want a small car, since the parking at the apartment is very tight - the Elantra snuggles right up to the neighbor´s doorstep - and
• I want a fuel-efficient car, since I´ll be driving about 45 minutes each way to work, and I´d hate to
  
  A) Cancel out the world-saving aspect of working to promote solar energy while burning up all that gas to get there, and
  B) Pay all that money, cause gas is even more expensive in Costa Rica than in the States.

I gave myself a strict talking-to about not falling in love with the first car I saw, but I´m afraid I don´t respond well to being told what to do, and I went ahead and loved the first one.

It´s a 1995 Geo Metro LSi, which CNN just did a whole article about how fuel-efficient they are. It´s in great shape cosmetically, despite the family having three small children and driving it to their farm on a regular basis. The engine is sparkly clean, and they just changed the oil and filters and, last year, the timing belt and the water pump.

It´s got AC and an alarm, along with luxury rims and a fancy radio that the guy said he could replace with standard rims & a plain old radio (fine with me) in order to bring the price down to what I figured I would have to spend in order to get a car I could feel good about. (You would be horrified if I told you how much that is, since cars are more expensive in Costa Rica than in the US. But $4000 is reasonable for this car in this economy.)

And it´s my absolute favorite color (the dark purple of my blog header), which I am choosing to see as a very good sign, just because I want to see it that way and you can´t stop me.

I need to organize the money end of it, and of course have a mechanic look it over. But hopefully by, say, the end of next week, I´ll have a new car to go with my new job, to go with my new apartment.

And then I´ll stop sighing and get on with it.

Post-Blogging: Oh. Wow. Whole different kind of "Sigh"

(This post is backdated because I finished moving all my stuff yesterday and by the end of it, I simply didn´t have the energy to get back in the car and come over to the Internet cafe...)

So the "car trouble" wasn´t really car trouble at all.

How did I feel when I realized that I had engaged the damn anti-theft device when I parked the car, and that´s why it wouldn´t start?

Well, I was embarassed and a bit aghast at myself. And then I figured, well, if you´re going to do something stupid, it may as well give your friends a laugh, so I guess I´ll make it into a post.

But that´s not what I mean by a whole different kind of "Sigh."

Turns out that, as of Sunday, the car I´ve been using has been sold, so I find myself suddenly in the market for a vehicle.

So once again I say,

Sigh.

There's that tag again

So I hadn't mentioned, but I have a new job to go with the new apartment. Some friends of mine have a solar energy business (I'm not even sure if "solar energy business" is the right term, but I can always come back and edit...)

My first day saving the planet was enjoyable; we spent a couple of hours talking about the business, how it works, who's involved, etc. We finished up fairly early and I was looking forward to getting back to town and moving another load of stuff down from the house before picking up the girls.

That is, until my car wouldn't start. Now I've inconvenienced four people (and counting), will not be getting back to town before the girls get out of school and...well, there's that tag again.

Sigh.

Wednesday Hello/Goodbye

So I heard on the radio last night that we were getting a tropical wave, with heavy rains all day today and tomorrow. Guess I shoulda done the heavy moving yesterday, but...I didn't.

Fortunately, the main truckload, from the house here, was done when it wasn't raining at all - actually it was sunny, hot and humid. The second, which was just the bunk bed and an old (reportedly functional) washing machine Yolanda offered me, both of which were at her house, did get very wet, but there was nothing particularly vulnerable, since the bed doesn't have mattresses. (Note to self: Must get mattresses.)

The house is in a bigger mess than I think I've ever seen it - the apartment actually looks pretty good, except for my room which is full of boxes and suitcases and stuff.

Most of the furniture fit the way I planned. The one exception was the desk in the living room - I didn't measure the distance to the front door, which it turns out is shorter than the length of the wall opposite. So the desk and couch switched places. I put the wire shelving from my office into the bedroom, and the vertical bookcase in the "hall" between the bedrooms. Oh, and the fridge is in the kitchen instead of the adjoining laundry room after all.

I'll be taking the computer down to the apartment today, so this is goodbye to regular Internet access. I'll use Internet cafes until I can get regular service to the apartment - looks like that might work out a little sooner than I thought, but I haven't made the calls myself yet, so I guess we'll just see how it all works out.

The girls are doing really well at this point - for now, they're very excited about the new house and the fact that we're on the same street as one of their friends from school. I suspect that they'll feel the changes more acutely when we all settle into our new routines, but it's a big relief to be able to get through the move at least with them feeling good about things.

As of 1:00 this afternoon

I have discovered that Mason jars are strong but not invincible and, alas, have cut my fair Pinky upon one.

As of noon today

I am stunned at how much faster it is to unload a car. It's really really fast.

Back from the first run, I cast a longing look at the beer in the fridge and have some ice cream instead.

As of 10:30 this morning

Wow, it takes a long time to fill a car when things aren't packed beforehand.

On the other hand, wow. A car holds a lot.

As of 8:30 this morning

Now it is raining, and when I went out to toss my half of the toilet paper, trash bags, paper towels, etc., into the trunk (and close it against the rain), I found Scruffy sitting in the trunk.

You know what, little dog? I was already very consciously aware that I was not going to miss you. If you peed in there, there will be hell to pay.

As of 7:30 this morning

I have a key. I'm paid up through July 1. I know when trash day is. I've packed my ceremonial First Box.

And it's not even raining yet. Time to finish off that second cup of coffee and get to The Hauling of The Goods.

Geek. Heaven.

Wow.

Google SketchUp is way too much fun for its own good. Why spend half an hour creating a basic floor plan with a pencil and paper when you can while away much of the day creating a three-dimensional model?

One way or another, it had to be done. I wasn't able to sign the contract and get the key today, but I do have an actual appointment to do so tomorrow. Early tomorrow.

In the meantime, I got permission to go in and measure the rooms because, people? This is a tiny apartment. The total dimensions are about 15.5 x 26.5 feet (that's 410 square feet).

It's tiny enough that I wasn't sure all my furniture would fit - and, indeed, it won't. Measuring the rooms and the furniture is way preferable to paying somebody to move my stuff, and then not being able to use it, and having to then pay somebody to take some of it back again.

My sewing table is made from a full 4x8-foot piece of ... whatever it's called. Masonite, maybe? Anyway, it's huge, and while it would technically fit in either the living room or the bedroom, it would be the only item I could put in whichever room, leaving the other to hold...well, more than it would be able to hold.

So I've opted for a much smaller sewing space - the top of my desk, to be shared with the computer - but the comfort of having a couch in the living room, a bookcase (or two) in the bedroom, and enough space to actually move around in any given room.

The white spaces on the floor in the graphic below are ... something I don't know the name for. I call them "vertical skylights" - they're little shafts of outdoors that run down through the place, with windows onto them, but no access. Well, I guess the downstairs apartment probably has access, but for me they're just light sources.

The space in the back there is a little utility space - laundry sink, hookup for a washing machine. I put the fridge there to save space in the kitchen, but it fits in either spot - we'll see where it actually ends up.

The big - well, okay - the tiny empty space behind the couch is the bathroom. It's L-shaped, with the shower in the space behind the skylight thingy.

The empty space between the two bedrooms is a built-in closet in each room and the "hall" created by the two doors, which face each other as opposed to opening directly onto the living room.

The front door is front and center, to the left of the desk there.

There are windows in the living room and the front bedroom (which is why I'm thinking about keeping the bunk beds toward the center of the room). The back bedroom has windows too, onto the skylight thingy and onto the utility room, so every room has an impressive amount of natural light for a space that is actually walled in on three sides.


Oh, and here are some photos for those of you interested in that sort of thing ;)

Oh, and?

We're reading The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver.

Click for the posts on Chapter 1 and Chapters 2 & 3.



I haven't forgotten about the book. In fact I intended to pre-blog Chapters 4 & 5 before leaving for the beach last Saturday, but the power went out before I could.

Why don't you all go ahead and say what you will about Chapters 4 & 5. I read them, but nothing stuck out to me at the time, and I can't go back over them right now to find quotable quotes. I don't want to let another week go by, so let's hear it.

Here, I'll get you started: Taylor and Lou Ann are just made for each other, aren't they? I love the last line of the chapter: "It's been so long," she said. "You talk just like me."

---

We'll keep going with the two chapters at a time, since 6 and 7 together are about the same length as what we've been reading so far. Hopefully I'll have more to contribute next Sunday :)

Addendum

Unrelatedly, I have it on good authority that today is Towel Day.

I didn't know about it in time to celebrate in the traditional fashion, but I have managed to follow the Guide's immortal advice all day. And since today is my last day with Alex and the day before I sign the apartment contract, it's really particularly good advice.

Gettin' Maudlin with the Muppets

Sing it, Robin. (Robin the frog, that is):



Plans are all made, but it's not quite time to carry them out yet. I'm all in-between.

And being able to whip the graphic up in a matter of minutes is pretty cool too.

Do I even have to ask you how cool it is that my parents, who live on the red dot but are presently on the aqua dot, emailed this morning to let me know they'll be calling to talk to my kids, here on the yellow dot, around lunchtime?

All for free?

Random thought of the day in case I don´t get back to the computer later on

The President of Costa Rica has been diagnosed with benign tumors on his larynx or vocal cords or something, and is under doctor´s orders not to speak for one month.

That seems like a challenging proposition for a president.

A new twist on recycling

The girls each had to do an oral report on a bird today.

Robin chose the quetzal, absorbed (and wrote down) the information we found for her, organized it by category, and practiced her 3-minute report several times.

Julia can neither take nor read notes (although she's getting there), but she colored in a map of her bird's range, drew pictures of the foods it eats and the color and number of its eggs, and learned why it was chosen as Costa Rica's national bird. And she took the empty nest (they build a new one each time) in to show the class. Yup, she picked the clay-colored robin.

More Ostional photos...How we spent our time

Casting separate shadows



Looking back on our travels together



Watching the moon, the sunset, and a distant lightning storm - all going on at the same time in different directions



Scuttling away from the waves



Exploring a totally unexpected cactus patch, rife with iguana life



Walking off into the sunset together - and then having to find our way home in the dark

Recommendation

You know what everybody should do? Everybody should visit Little Bang Theory regularly.

Start here, with the sanity. Go for the politics, the writing, the photography (I won't link a single post on that one - just go on over any old day and scroll down). And be sure to stay for dinner.

That's what everybody should do.

The two best photos

Post-Blogging: Closure

Alex and I met 17 years ago on a trip to a beach called Ostional. Over the years, we have been there with my parents, my sister and her husband, and the girls.

We decided that a final trip there would provide a sort of closure, so we went this weekend. It was a good thing to have done.

We laughed and we cried. We spent every single minute together, doing things both naughty and nice. We fought and we made up. And on Sunday afternoon, we lay on the bed in the cheapest cabinas in town, listened to the rain pouring down on the tin roof, and took the rings from each others' fingers.

Post-Blogging: Ooops

This post, written on Monday, is backdated to Saturday. Sorry, Blog 365 :)

I knew I was going to be out of town this weekend, and intended to post Saturday's entry before I left that morning, and pre-blog Sunday at the same time. That tidy plan, of course, rested on the assumption that I would have power on Saturday morning. Sadly, this was not the case from about 6:00 a.m. on.

Observation for the day on Saturday:

I remarked to Alex at some point earlier in the week that the nice thing about Crocs is that you can stub your toe and not hurt yourself. Walking briskly to the bus stop Saturday morning, I discovered that this, sadly, is only true in the sense that "we have electrical power" is true. Which is to say, it's generally true, but not invariably so. I hit one of Costa Rica's unrulier sidewalks and was able to keep myself from falling, but ... well, as I said. Crocs can only protect a toe from just so much stubbing.

I was on my way to catch a long-haul bus, too, so when I realized I had actually hurt my foot I was a little worried that I would end up sitting there for four hours with nothing to focus on but a sprained toe.

Fortunately, I had some ibuprofen in my bag and, even more fortunately, it turned out to be bruised, not sprained.

Fascinating, no? Well, Saturday was all about the travel. The posts for Sunday and Monday
will be considerably more interesting.

It's like the personals in here

Happy birthday Christina I hope the insurance company comes quickly to its senses and/or some alternate mode of transportation falls into your lap like, tonight.

Happy birthday Brave Sir Robin Thanks for the advice. And for posting the Olbermann video everyone was on about.

Safe travels to DCup I'm about a week behind you. Also? I'm sorry, but I'm so not doing that meme!

Congratulations Kona On the first week at the new job. That's some impressive mojo you've got there, BTW. I'm almost done with it.

Heartfelt best wishes to Pidomon's sister If you follow only one of these links, make it that one, y'all.

Irresistible

Erin posted some pictures of her kids yesterday and I totally recognized the second to last one.

Recognized it like, I took the exact same picture of my two kids six years ago. Right down to the brown couch cushions (even though Erin claims hers are green).

I sent her the photographic evidence and then I just kept coming back to the picture. I know Erin's kids are smiling in their picture, but I just love this one here. Can't stop looking at it.

Care to join me?

Accomplishment

We have only one television and I have no desire to take it with me when I move, so I spent the morning addressing a technical issue with the computer.

It plays CDs. Always has. It plays radio stations and songs and videos from the Internet. It plays all the little blips & bleeps programmed into Windows. It transmits our voices when we talk on Skype.

But for some reason, when I play a DVD I get no audio. I put in a music CD and it plays just fine. Swap it for a DVD and...nothing.

I tried updating drivers a few days ago, but that didn't seem to help, so today I downloaded & installed a number of different media players. A couple of them (the bigger name ones, in fact) reproduced the problem. Another one played the audio but with distractingly poor quality and a tendency to skip.

And, eventually, one worked just fine.

I enjoyed the process more than I otherwise would have because I used one of the girls' DVDs as a test subject and this was my sample track:

Special alternate version for the blog reader in a hurry:

That meme where all the answers have to start with the same letter as your name

Everybody up for a meaningless post about now? Thought so. Me too.

1. What is your name? Jennifer
   
2. A four-letter word: Junk
   
3. A vehicle: Jalopy
   
4. A city: Juneau, Alaska
   
5. A boy's name: Johnathan
   
6. A girl's name: Jessica
   
7. Alcoholic drink: Julep (mint)
   
8. An occupation: Jockey
   
9. Something you wear: Jock strap (Not me, mind you. I'm going with "top of the head" here.)
   
10. A celebrity: Janis Joplin
    
11. A food: Jerky (beef)
    
12. Something found in a bathroom: Jar (Of cotton balls maybe? Or shells? I don't know.)
    
13. Reason for being late: Jam (traffic)
    
14. Something you shout: Just a minute!
    
15. An animal: Jackal
    
16. A body part: Joints
    

Wow. Lotta tags for a post with no text.

The Bean Trees - Chapters 2 & 3

No, I didn't forget. I just had a mostly offline day.

We're reading The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver.

Here's the link to the post on Chapter 1.



Is this like when you learn a new word and suddenly start hearing it everywhere?

I swear I didn't remember anything about Angel - or even Lou Ann - when I picked this book. But there it is. A whole chapter about the ending of a marriage.

She had been thinking about herself and Angel splitting up for even longer than she had been pregnant, but didn't particularly do anything about it. That was Lou Ann's method. She expected that a divorce would just develop, like a pregnancy--that eventually they would reach some kind of agreement without having to discuss it.

I can identify with that. Her attitude is more purposeful and "it'll happen eventually" than mine ever was. But I did sometimes wonder if we would somehow drift apart or separate.

And I can certainly relate to her method: A) Notice a relationship issue (a funny noise in the car, a loose toilet seat, an idea for a quilt, the fact that the family will probably want something for dinner on any given night) and B) Proceed to go on living with it indefinitely, figuring it'll either resolve itself, I'll get used to it, or it'll be handled when it really has to be.

It's not a method that I recommend, mind you, but it's certainly a familiar one.

She wandered around the house with her grocery bag looking at the half-empty house. After four years there was very little, other than clothes, that she thought of as belonging clearly to one or the other.

This is where Lou Ann and I part ways. It may be different when it comes to actually dividing our things between two households, but after 14 years of marriage (and even more of living together) I can still look at most of our possessions - pictures on the walls, music, books (obviously, because we read in different languages), even some of the furniture - and know whose is whose.


Okay. The whole "talking about a book" think is really meant to have more to do with the actual book, isn't it?

...Except I don't really have anything to say. I missed my morning window of alertness (when I wrote the first part) so I think I'll leave you to talk amongst yourselves about how awesome Mattie is, and what you think that priest might have wanted at the tire shop, and whether you think Taylor will take a job at the burger place and leave Turtle with Sandi's son at Kid Central Station.


Let's read Chapters 4 & 5 for next week, since they're both pretty short.

Superficial

I've only even alluded to my separation from Alex twice on this blog. Three times, including this post right here.

In some ways, I'd like to comment about it more often. Other times, I'm not at all in the mood to write or talk about it, least of all publish it on the Internet.

For the most part, if/when I do say something, I'm inclined to keep it pretty light and factual. This is not, and never has been, a gut-spilling blog. As unattractive as it sounds, this is actually a pretty superficial blog in a lot of ways.

But "light and factual" turned out to be a problem, since some of the people close to the situation have felt that I was glossing over the pain, acting like it was no big deal. Taking it--or anyway presenting it--lightly.

And obviously it is a big deal. It's a big, horrible, painful deal for everyone involved, especially Alex and, soon, the girls. It's not being taken lightly by anyone, certainly not by me.

My own way of handling this is very internal and that, in itself, is hard enough for those closest to me to accept, since everyone wants to help and I'm not very accommodating about that. I'd actually rather be left alone, a lot of the time.

This is not the forum in which I choose to process the separation and, possibly as a result of that, it never occurred to me that those affected by it might want me to talk about their pain on my blog.

And to be honest, I'm not sure I can. Or that I should be expected to. I will clarify though, at least once, since I don't want to give the impression that this is a simple or easy process. This is painful for all of us. It is changing the course of our lives. I had assumed that went without saying.

Alex does not want to separate. He is torn up by this, but is being very supportive, both emotionally and materially. That part does not go without saying - lots of partners would not have handled it that way and the whole thing is orders of magnitude less horrible than it could have been if he had reacted differently. And it will make a huge difference in the way the girls experience it as well. A positive difference.

[Looks around for segue]

See, what I really wanted to post was that video way down there. And a few days ago I wanted to post some photos of the apartment I'm planning to rent.

But I haven't felt able to mention the separation at all, since the way I did it before ended up hurting people I really have no business hurting any more than I already am.

I really want to be able to post about this. Probably not a whole lot, but now and then, when I feel like it. And the things I feel like posting are very likely not going to paint a picture of the whole separation process.

Okay?

This is the kind of thing I'd like to be able to post:

Alex and I were talking about the girls this morning. How this will affect them, and the fact that they wouldn't be part of our lives if the separation had come early in our relationship.

Thinking about choosing to have children, and trying to get pregnant (which took over a year the first time), I gradually realized that Sunshine on My Shoulders, by John Denver, was playing on the radio. This was the song - the only song - that I sang to Robin every night when she was a newborn.

There is actually one additional thing to know about that.

According to the Wiki article on the American Robin (a close relative of our clay-colored robins),

A clutch consists of three to five [light blue] eggs, and is incubated by the female alone. The eggs hatch after 14 days and chicks leave the nest a further two weeks later.

Our chick would have been two weeks old today, so maybe it didn't fall out of the nest and become lunch for my dogs yesterday.

The end.

I guess that's all we'll ever know about that

It seems to me...

...that a (red) bumper sticker reading (in English in Costa Rica)

STUPIDITY DETECTOR If this sticker appears red it is being viewed by a total idiot

says rather more about the person that would stick it on his/her spiffy new oversized SUV than about the individual that might be stuck behind that vehicle in traffic long enough to read the sticker.

Get your birdie fix, right here

This is one of the parents - I don't go outside by the tree very much, but when I do, they usually let me get about this close before they split and scold me from someplace safe. That's the baby's beak, just below the parent's head, and just above the stunningly baby-bird's-beak-shaped twig sticking out of the nest there.


See? Even from this angle that twig does a pretty good Baby Bird Beak impression.


I took pretty much this same picture a few days ago and you just couldn't tell the bird was even in there, because it's the exact same color as the nest. Either the bird has grown (well, I know it has) or the light or angle is better this time, so you can pretty much tell what's what in there.

Añoranzas

Añoranzas is a restaurant that has a view of the sunset, a "museum" of antiques (and junk), a coin-covered car, and a prank poster in the ladies' room.














Oh, the poster, you ask? An alarm sounds if you peek. A loud alarm, that the people outside the bathroom can hear, so they know someone peeked. And then they watch to see who comes out of the bathroom. (There's, umm, nothing behind the trapdoor.)

The Bean Trees - Chapter 1

Come read The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver with us!


So we meet Taylor Greer. And her mom. How much do you love her mom?

Girl, I've seen you eat a worm whole when you were five. He's no better than you are, and none of them Candy Stripers either.

And then Taylor meets a child. I'm glad this happened right in the first chapter.

We did need to learn about Taylor's home town and her background. The people and events she tells about give us a very clear sense of what she's coming from. They are relevant and telling, but then we move on. This book does not take place in Kentucky.

I like the way Kingsolver is able to convey the slightly surreal quality of the encounter with the woman outside the bar. I mean, it was all very real, in the physical sense. A coherent conversation, a child being placed in a car. But life-changing events do have that other-worldly quality to them.

I waited a minute, thinking that soon my mind would clear and I would understand what she was saying.

I had a foggy understanding that I wasn't arguing the right point.

Then once she has the child, it's all reality, all the time. Because it is, with children.

Push-starting the car. Staying awake. (Well, okay, there was the brief flirtation with "what if it's dead?" but I chalk that up mainly to sleepiness and driving on and on through the nothingness.) Realizing she needs to find a place to stay. With no money. Choosing the hotel and talking the lady into letting them stay. Unpacking.

Discovering the girl's injuries did not send Taylor back into a surreal frame of mind. She was familiar with the effects of crime and abuse - and with their lifelong consequences. To the contrary, there is nothing more real than an abused child.

When the girl was thrust upon her, Taylor didn't have any choice but to take her somewhere, at least for the night. Realizing just what the girl was escaping grounded Taylor and led her to a conscious decision to keep the child.

---

Chapter 2 is quite short, so let's read both 2 and 3 this week.

---

Spend 21 seconds with this lemur. You won't be sorry.

Hat tip to The Proof is in the Pudding for the fabulous lemur!

Random observation based on recent experience

There are few things as satisfying as decisively sinking a shot (at pool) in the middle of a conversation, to punctuate your point.

Everybody think happy birdy thoughts

The next door neighbors asked permission to have some workers come into our yard to paint the outside of the neighbors' house, parts of which are built right up against the property line.

They're gonna be awfully close to the bird's nest, so everybody think calming thoughts for the local avians please.

Updated to add:

Well, it should be okay. The guys came over to look at the wall they need to paint. They seemed very sympathetic to the need to be respectful of the birds, and I have a ladder long enough that they won't have cart over and set up scaffolding, which would both take longer and be more invasive. They say the whole job should only take an hour and a half or two.

Open Letter

Dear Person Who Has Been Spamming My Business Website,

Thank you for your kind consideration. I appreciate the dedication you have displayed in filling out my "Contact Us" form approximately once an hour (business hours) over the past two days. However, I wonder if you are aware that a business "Contact Us" form is generally received by a single individual; in this case, myself, and does not, say, get posted to the Internet or broadcast to any sort of mailing list.

I would further like to point out that, happily, I do not happen to suffer from the infirmity you purport to cure, and I am, regrettably, disinclined to click on the inviting "hemorrhoids cure" photo links that you so painstakingly include in each missive. Please be assured that this is only because the link syntax appears to be incorrect and I can't abide the thought of clicking and then failing to see photographic evidence that feelings are, in fact, "sweet and tender."

Respectfully yours,
The Costa Rica Quilt Retreat Webmaster


Updated to add:

PS - The fortune cookie sayings are a lovely touch. And the most recent sentiment, "Your sense of humor reveals itself at just the right times!" is most appreciated. Still and all? We're done here. Stop wasting my form quota for the month.