146. A Beautiful Reunion

Reunion Dance GIF from Reunion GIFs Saturday 2/3- Many of you who know me know that once upon a time I was in the military. During a deployment to Iraq nearly 17 years ago (Ugh, I really feel old after saying that!) I got close to 2 battle buddies who I hope will be in my life forever. We were all young girls from MN in a military field where very few women end up and we formed a tight while trying to keep each other as sane as possible during a tough 18 months far, far from home. After the deployment we all ended up back in MN, but only saw each other about once a year. Despite not seeing each other very often, when we do get together it’s like no time has passed and we can step right back into our friendships without any problems. The last time I saw these gals was shortly before we moved down here, and ever since then we always talked about when they would come visit us. That was finally happening! We have been working on planning this for a while, and today was my & Ramie’s d

104. Down with the sickness, and visitors

Thursday 11/24- Happy Thanksgiving to our US friends & family!

What are we doing for Thanksgiving this year since we are not spending it in MN like we did last year? Well, the first thing on the agenda is to go pick up Breeze from the dog sitter. It’s been almost a week since we dropped her off so I’m sure she’s missing us (either that or she’s forgotten about us already). Of course, as always, she was excited to see us, and just as excited to go for a ride in the car.

We needed to pick up a few groceries in town, so we did that too. There was nothing else on our agenda for the day. We did some online black-Friday shopping for some Christmas gifts and items that we’ll pick up the next time we are back in the US, and otherwise, it was just a pretty laid back day.

Friday 11/25- This morning Ramie woke up sick- yes, he has the man flu!

Body aches, fatigue, coughing, difficulty breathing, everything that looks like the typical flu. I guess that means that we won’t be doing anything but taking it easy for a while, so that’s exactly what we did. We are fairly sure that he picked up a bug in the airport or on the airplane due to the timing of it. We’re just very glad that it happened on the way HOME from vacation, and not on the way TO vacation!

Saturday 11/26- Today we were supposed to have Thanksgiving with Loren, Nancy, and a small group of other friends. Nancy really likes to do the whole traditional Thanksgiving spread, but on a somewhat small scale with a small group, and we were so honored that they would include us in this group. We were super bummed that we wouldn’t be able to attend and celebrate with them, but with Ramie being sick and the health issues that Loren has been having, we definitely didn’t want to risk getting them sick. They understood but were bummed that we wouldn’t be able to come to the get-together. We promised that once we were healthy again, we would get together!

Sunday 11/27- It’s inevitable, if one of us gets sick, usually the other one does too. I woke up this morning feeling like garbage! The cough and difficulty breathing were the worst parts for me. With all of the lung issues that I deal with anyway, this just adds to it! The fatigue was no joke either, I would have been content not getting out of bed at all, but that simply wasn’t an option.

I worked my hours today, I made a big batch of soup and some dishes that were easy to warm up as leftovers, and I rested as much as I could.

For the next week we were both still wiped out. We didn’t do anything at all that we didn’t have to do. I worked all of my hours but other than that, we both rested as much as possible. We had originally planned to go to the big feria this week so I could finally stock up on my veggies again, but we weren’t feeling well enough to do that. We had also been planning to get together with Geoff & Tracy and catch up after our trip to Mexico, but haven’t been well enough to do that either. Not only were we really not feeling up to doing anything at all, but since we were feeling so miserable, we really didn’t want to pass this crap along to anyone else!!

The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of November rainfall total was 32.4 inches

Saturday 12/3-
It has been a whole week since this sickness started in our house and we still weren’t feeling 100% better, so we are taking it easy once again. Ramie decided to take a nap and I spent a big chunk of the day working on the blog. Another low-key day in the effort to feel better soon.

Sunday 12/4 through Wednesday 12/7- After resting up as much as I could this weekend, I was in for a very busy week! I worked my full hours for my main job, just as I always do, but it was time to buckle down on a project on one of my side-hustles. Side hustle? One of them? What am I talking about?

Almost a year ago I reconnected with an old colleague from my pre-Costa Rica job and he informed me that he was leaving government service as well and starting his own law firm. He asked if I would like to come aboard as the first member of his team, on an as-needed basis. Of course, this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up, and since then he has brought me on for a few projects. We were down to crunch-time on a big project, so every afternoon after I was finished with the main job, I made dinner, switched computers and started working on the other one. It was a busy week, but I made it through without too much damage to my mental health 😉

This week Ramie also got in touch with the Yamaha dealer that we ordered our UTV from to see if we could get a status update. It turns out that our machine has made its way into Costa Rica, but it’s currently stuck in customs. Since this is the very first one of this model year that is coming through, there is a whole lot of extra paperwork that must be done on this one. He told us that he’d keep us updated as he knew more, and fingers were crossed by everyone that we’d have our machine by Christmas.

Wednesday 12/7- Today we were excited to see some friends who we haven’t seen in several months. Karen & Dennis, the owners of the house we rented for the first 9 months we lived in Costa Rica, were back in town. We were excited to spend some quality time with them. We had only met them in person a few times during their visit to Costa Rica last August, but we knew them from phone conversations both before and since that visit. We looked forward to spending some time with them over the next couple of weeks while they were here. Ramie met up with them at their house this afternoon to do a little bit of work that needed to be done now that the last renter had left, and since it was their first night in town and they hadn’t made it to the grocery store yet, they invited us out to dinner to catch up.

Sorry about the shadowing, the sun was so bright!

Thursday 12/8- Since they have only ever vacationed down here for a fairly short time, Karen and Dennis haven’t spent much time in San Isidro, and certainly didn’t go there for groceries like we do. We just so happened to have a trip to the Farmers Market planned and had to run our regular errands today and they asked if they could tag along. Of course, we planned to spend time with them while they were here, and we were headed there anyway, so we rode together so we could show them around. Just like always, our first stop was the big feria. I think they were surprised by how big this farmers market actually was. We went our separate ways, stocked up on the fruits and veggies that we wanted, and then met up at the end. We then made our way around to many of the stores that we typically go to, showing them some of our favorite stops and helping them look for some of the items that they wanted or needed at their house. Our last stop, like always, was Walmart to stock up on the rest of the groceries that we came for. We once again split up, loaded up our cartload of goods, and met at the cash registers. We also happened to run into our friend Red today as well so we stopped to chat with her for a bit. Coincidentally, it was almost exactly 1 year ago when we ran into Red at Walmart the first time. These may be the only 2 times we’ve ever met up with her in person, but we have been friends on Facebook since before we moved to Costa Rica. She helped answer many of our questions about moving here early in our journey. One of these days we’ll get together outside of Walmart to socialize!

With Walmart being the last stop of the day, we loaded up our car, which was quite the carload full of stuff, and made our way back to Uvita. Today turned out to be a very nice day hanging out with friends we don’t get to see very often and even being productive in the process.

Pura Vida!


Comments