Life Moves Pretty Fast. You Don't Stop And Look Around Once In A While, You Could Miss It.

The new year brings us just one more good reason to move to Costa Rica: the month of January. With January come large flocks of parrots and toucans, the chicle fruits, and explosions of bougainvillea blooms. Why January? Why now when everything is dry with no hope of rain?

As if we don’t always have multiple troupes of howler monkeys, we now have a monkey lure. It’s called a chicle tree and it bears fruit. Who knew? We have several of these protected chicle trees. Monkeys love this fruit, which is popular world-wide for human consumption, too. Just behind Rusty’s garage/play-room our closest chicle is only about 10 meters from our railing. You’d think that 35 monkeys would do some real damage to a tree, but they’re very careful in their fruit harvest. 

The parrots and toucans are less careful. Let’s have a quick tour of the birds in our neighborhood with the clear understanding that the descriptions below (while accurate as to each bird) are only my opinion; and I'm not an expert on anything.*

The Amazon kingfisher can always be spotted on a branch at the river crossing that leads up our mountain. I learned to love kingfishers in Africa. They will dive-bomb into the water to snatch a tiny minnow-type fish in that long, strong bill.

The orange-chinned parakeet looks like a parrot in size. Don't think little pet-store birds. These fellows have some heft, and they're loud. We spent weeks trying to confirm this parakeet's identity. Indeed, our birds are the orange-chinned parakeet . . . though you'll see little orange in this particular bird. The orange is most easily spotted while they are in flight passing within just a few feet of our terrace high above the forest floor.

The blue-crowned motmot is easy to spot, especially in silhouette due to his tail. But sunlight brings out his beautiful blue color.

This Is Either Madness Or Brilliance. It’s Remarkable How Often Those Two Traits Coincide.

Reason number 25 to move to Costa Rica: That happy surprise about the Tico genius and sense of humor.

I always had plans to retire in Africa. My neighbors were to be hippos in our river, baboons and vervet monkeys, and of course, the big cats. And giraffes. We would have a journey of giraffes visible as they crossed the delta. To this day, I look at our home with an eye toward making it into the style of the great camps of Botswana or Zimbabwe. Chitabe is shown here.

There may come a day when Rusty and I are unable or unwilling to perform most home and garden maintenance. That day is not today. True, I have a housekeeper to perform tasks of which I’m really not capable. For instance, I absolutely cannot immaculately clean our floors the way Janet can. My mopping action looks the same, but somehow Janet does it better. How she can clean spotlessly mirrors and glass without Windex® remains a mystery. So most every Tuesday morning Janet arrives to magically clean things that I honestly cannot clean as well as Janet. As in any home, before the mopping and vertical-glass-surface cleaning must come some amount of dusting. Now don’t picture me lounging and eating bon-bons six days a week awaiting Janet. I do a considerable amount of daily dusting and sweeping and vacuuming. If you, gentle reader, have never dusted a home, 1) you should try it, and 2) it involves picking up items and returning them to their original spot.

In Every Job That Must Be Done There Is An Element Of Fun. You Find The Fun, And Snap, The Job’s A Game

There’s this product in Costa Rica called Duranza. Think varnish. I suppose that in some areas of Costa Rica home maintenance presents only a minor challenge due to a cool, dry climate. Perhaps that maintenance issue is similar to parts of the U.S. 

In North Texas we’d semi-annually clean gutters, hose-off window screens, etc. And occasionally even a brick home requires areas of new paint – but not often. Well, living about six kilometers from the salty Pacific, less than 10-degrees north of the equator, up a mountain with wind (and now with dust in the dry season), home maintenance becomes an entirely different game. 

In this climate, just as one can sit and literally watch the grass grow, one can also watch the sun leach-out the wood’s moisture and color, not to mention its original coats of Duranza. It’s freaky. And our home is made of two things: concrete and wood. Wooden ceilings, doors, cabinets, eaves, and window trim. Obsessive-compulsive gal that I am, I made a quarterly little to-do list. Hah! Quarterly? Did I really believe that we’d only need to perform these little to-dos quarterly? Clipping shrubberies is a weekly task. And don’t get me started on weeding the majority of our 1.65 acres.

Now . . . Bring Me That Horizon.

New Year's Eve. And I'm thinking that one of the top reasons to enjoy the expat life of Costa Rica will be tonight's festivities. This, from the gal who generally hates New Year's Eve. Resolutions -- bah! That obligatory must-have-fun thing -- bah! Finding the perfect dress . . . again, bah! Why do people make resolutions for a new year? Why not for each new month, week, day? This phenomenon is completely beyond my comprehension. I've not made a resolution in years (except for that November-gain-five-pounds-by-baking thing).

I Don't Like The Way You Say With Your Face All Scrunched Up, "You're French, Aren't You?"

I'm half French, so why wouldn't I love the French? And they speak French! Not some bizarre Canadian language erroneously called French. The French speak beautiful, genuine French. 

Let’s have a little language lesson. In French the word for or is ou. In Spanish the word for or is o. Would you like steak ou chicken? Do you prefer roses o tulips? In French the word ou (for or) is pronounced ew . . . as in ew, that raw chicken is slimy. In Spanish the word o is pronounced just as it’s spelled: oh . . . as in Oh how I love France.

Rusty cannot abide my explanations of Latin-based Spanish words and sentence structure through comparison to French. He’s had it! He’s even verbalized several times this week that he is sick of hearing me say, Well, in French . . . .  

A Toast Before We Go Into Battle: True Love . . . In Whatever Shape Or Form It May Come. May We All In Our Dotage Be Proud To Say, "I Was Adored Once."

It's Christmas Eve. For those who do not celebrate Christmas (which is absolutely acceptable in my world), it's merely another date on the calendar . . . December 24th. 

We're hosting a luncheon today, and some of the invitees don't celebrate Christmas. So instead of a Christmas Eve luncheon we'll call it our December 24 luncheon. I'm thinking of making it an annual tradition -- like our Bastille Day Party (no need to be French to enjoy). After all, a successful party rarely depends on the date/holiday, nor is it about the food and drink. The measure of a gathering's or a union's success is always about the people (sometimes people and pets). Today we're blessed to be entertaining very dear friends. 

I often joke about the quantity of alcohol that I consume. As with any party, my cocktail consumption is never about the quantity . . . it's always about the quality. True, from 23 through 25 December, I do begin drinking in the mornings. . . after all, 'tis the season and Irish Coffee is de rigueur. And I happen to have a full bottle of Jameson from that trip north to Coco. When the caffeine outweighs the effect of the Irish whiskey and the Amarula, I'll switch to Greyhounds. Again . . . that trip north -- we have fresh grapefruit, which is perhaps my best Christmas gift this year . . . except for one. My husband.

We Are Protected By The Enormity Of Your Stupidity, For A Time.

Our dog constitutes 98% of my life's meaning. Rusty knows this. In fact, Jill The Pill occupies about the same percentage of Rusty's priorities in life (or so he claims) . . . which is really bizarre considering that his tools occupy about 98% of our 1.65 acres, more or less. So if we're working with percentages here, that leaves about two percent of our love and energy to devote to each other. Yep . . . sounds about right. I'm lying: last night we played a Christmas song game that Rusty found on the Internet, made Texas-style tamales, and had a generally fabulous evening. Plus, The Stars won.

Okay. So about our Sunday trip north to the Auto Mercardo -- we decided to visit the store in Coco versus Tamagringo. There is simply nothing good to be said about Tamarindo. Oh, wait . . . as my mother would say: if you can't say something nice, come sit by me. No, wait . . . . that's Sally. As my mother would say: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. So here's something nice about Tamarindo: it is far from us.

Speaking of dogs and mothers, I know parents of human children who are more devoted to their pets than children. Of course, these parents are my age with grown children requiring fewer hands-on parenting skills; but my point is that the devotion to our pets knows no bounds. Here in Samara we have Perlita the Wonder Dog. Her owners coddle her. Yeah, Bill, you know you do. Then there's Miss Marley, second cutest dog on the planet. I want Marley's life. I want to be reincarnated as C&M's dog. Such a life. And Bonga certainly leads a charmed life, but she's a Tico dog and has her own Tica agenda. This doesn't mean that she's neglected. Hardly. Bonga gets what Bonga wants; but her wants fall into the simple-life category.

You Want The Moon? Just Say The Word And I'll Throw A Lasso Around It And Pull It Down.

Ready or not, there is no stopping the arrival of Christmas. Perhaps there is no escape, anywhere, from lights, trees, tinsel, and wrapping paper. Not that I necessarily need to escape; it's just a tad incongruous think of Kris Kringle in 90-degree-plus weather with a beach view. And it's not our first Christmas spent by a tropical beach; I simply never get used to palm trees juxtaposed to Christmas trees. My failure to embrace Christmas in the tropics is odd because DFW weather can be 80 on Christmas day . . . or 25. So my usual need to decorate, evidently rooted deeply within my genes, is certainly not weather-related . . . it's merely gone missing this year.

The Beginning Of The End Of The End Of The Beginning Has Begun

 

Bam. And just like that, dry season has arrived. Our last rain was 23 November. Prior to 23 November we had rain every single day for over a week (three inches, minimum, in a 24-hour period). We’re told that rain so late in November is unusual. What is unusual to me is that one day the rain just stops. For the first time since we moved-in in May we can see 360-degrees around our home, including all the way to the horizon of the ocean without one single cloud. Look straight ahead, there's nothing but blue sky.

And with the end of the rains the winds have arrived. Some say that this is the papagayo wind, some say not. Me? I’m inclined to agree with them. Imagine hours of sustained 40-50 mile per hour winds. Our large butterfly bush snapped in half. And we’re told by expats who have lived here for years that we’ve seen nothing yet – winds can be sustained for days at 60 miles per hour. I imagine pool furniture in the pool, along with our youngest papaya tree.