Saturday 3/1- Yes, it is once again a Saturday during tax season, which means that we are working instead of doing anything fun. I do let myself start a little bit later on Saturdays, and instead of starting at about 6am, today I logged onto the computer at a little after 7. I was also hoping not to work such a long day like I do during the week, but unfortunately it did last longer than I anticipated and didn’t get away from my computer until after 2. Then, when I finally logged off, I ate some lunch, grabbed my personal computer, and spent an hour or two in the pool with the computer sitting at the edge, and worked on the blog.
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| Skye sure looks tired... I probably look the same most of the time |
Sunday 3/2- Sunday, being a day of catching up and hopefully some rest, we started out the morning getting some chores done and batch-cooking a couple of meals and snacks for the week before we headed to Val & Marshall’s for a pool party for the afternoon. Val is a fantastic cook and made some delicious tacos, and we enjoyed their company for the afternoon.
Monday 3/3 thru Friday 3/7- Guess what, we worked. I didn’t get any breaks from the action, six more weeks and counting. Ramie was able to take some time away to work on other stuff that needed to be done, but nothing noteworthy, just regular life stuff.
Wednesday 3/5- Around 7:30 this evening after we were cleaned up and relaxing on the couch watching TV, Ramie got a call from Stuart, one of the neighbors in Karen’s neighborhood who we knew from when we lived up there. He is now renting out that house in Karen’s neighborhood as an Airbnb, and this evening he got a call from the guests letting him know that there was no water at the house. Stuart was wondering if Ramie was available to go take a look. Being the good guy that he is, he sacrificed his relax time and gathered his tools and drove to the house. It didn't take long for Ramie to find the problem; it was a pressure switch for the water pump that was so badly corroded that it had fallen apart and wont tell the pump to start. A new one will have to be installed, but the stores are not open this time of evening, so the guests are going to have to wait until morning.
Thursday 3/6- After Ramie discovered the cause of the problem last night, he told the guests that he would be back this morning around 7-7:30, once the hardware store opened and he was able to pick up the replacement part. They were more than fine with that since they just wanted running water as soon as possible. So, this morning, Ramie got up early, had a quick cup of coffee, and was off to the hardware store before 7 to pick up that part.
Once at the house, it only took him about 45 minutes to replace the switch, it would have gone faster, but he also had to repair another part of the pump that broke while he was trying to get the old switch off. It wasn’t his fault, the pump is very old and rusty and truthfully, the whole thing just really needs to be replaced. Once he got everything fixed, the guests had water once again. Ramie’s Repairs to the Rescue! (I think that should be his tagline, we’ll start a website and have all of his happy customers leave 5-star reviews!)
Just like the good, communicative handyman that he is, Ramie took a video of what he had done and sent it to Stuart to explain the work that was needed. He also mentioned that, at the end of the day, the pump and holding tank were no longer necessary since they recently had city water installed. Prior to the community being hooked up to city water, these homes had a well that they all shared, and each house needed a pump and holding tank. With the city water, this is no longer necessary and Ramie recommended that, at some point, it may not be a bad idea to remove the redundant system so that they didn’t have unnecessary problems like the one that they just had. Stuart seemed to agree, but wasn’t in any rush to do it, for now he would just keep an eye on everything and probably have Ramie remove everything later. In total, Ramie was only gone for about an hour and a half before he was home again to log on to his tax work still at a reasonable morning start-time.
Saturday 3/8- Today was more like the tax-season Saturdays that I prefer. I logged on around 7 but only worked until about noon. After a quick lunch, Ramie wanted to go back up to Stuart’s house to look at a few other things. I tagged along, and while we were in the neighborhood, we stopped at Karen & Dennis’s new build to check it out since I hadn’t seen it since…well…since it wasn’t a house. The last time I saw it, none of the walls were even up yet! Now, they’ll be back in Costa Rica in about 2 weeks permanently, and hope that it will be ready to move in to. There’s still some work to be done, but I think it will be ready by the time they get here.
Sunday 3/9- Even though it’s Sunday, a day of recovery, I started the morning by logging on to my computer and working the blog and other computer stuff. As I’ve mentioned before, I also try to do a bunch of batch cooking on Sundays so I don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking dinners in the evenings when I’m exhausted from working. One additional thing that I do is whip up some tuna salad for Ramie for his lunches so he isn’t scrounging around the fridge and eating things that I intend to make for dinners. Often I’ll try to make two different meals in large batches so we can have a little bit of variety. I haven’t gotten as fancy as making a whole bunch of things and freezing them yet, but my system seems to be working well enough. I only have to do this for 8-10 weeks a year.
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| Yes, it's hot out - 90 degrees, but chili is easy to batch cook and tastes better after a couple of days. |
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| This time of year, that's only 24 hours. 😩 |
March is our big push during tax season and I am working Monday thru Saturday, usually about 50-60 hours per week, and Ramie is working about 40 hours a week and doing most of the chores around the house, keeping up with the yard, taking care of the rentals, and helping out people that we know who have repair work that needs to be done. I know that back in the US, these are kind of normal work weeks, but life here seems to take longer. Things like going to the bank can take hours as opposed to going through the drive-through, meals and snacks are cooked from scratch instead of being pre-made off the shelf, yard work has to be taken care of regularly so the jungle doesn’t take over, and grocery shopping often has to be done at multiple stores and markets if you want to find all of the ingredients for something in particular. We also want to try to get as much work done as early in the season as we can because of our visitors who will arrive at the end of this month.
In addition to all of the things that I just mentioned, it also seems like everything else tends to happen this time of year as well. There's always something to do, people to hang out with, repairs to make, and projects, the problem is, there isn't enough time or energy to go around.
Monday 3/10 thru Sunday 3/16- Besides the expected high-intensity tax work, Ramie also had some repair jobs to take care of at the house across the street. Karen, the owner, recently moved out and has a long-term renter who moved in, and there was a list of repairs that now needed to be made; things like fixing all the screens that were torn, replacing lights that didn’t work, adjusting doors so that they latch and lock properly, things that Karen didn’t find particularly bothersome while she lived there, but the renter now wanted fixed. Ramie spent about a day working on all of those little things to get the house to a standard that the new renter wanted.
There was also our other Karen (and Dennis) who Ramie had been helping as their house was being built. You may recall many months ago, when the plans for their new house included tearing down the casita, that Ramie and Karen took apart many of the fixtures in the house and sold the things since they thought they wouldn’t be needed, as they would be demolishing the old casita. Well, that obviously changed, and the casita is still there and the new house is almost finished on a different part of the property. Yes, I said ALMOST finished. Karen and Dennis will be arriving very soon, and the main house isn’t going to be quite ready yet, so they will have to stay at the casita for a little while. Now, Ramie has been asked to put the casita back together for them.
The major things that needed to be done were to install the bathroom sink and fixtures, some kitchen items, and to make some other minor repairs. Many of the cosmetic and less critical things can wait for them to arrive, and will give Dennis something to work on.
Adam and Katie’s house, the Airbnb next door, has also finally been sold and there was a lot of back and forth communication between Ramie and Katie, and separately between Ramie and Frank and Rose, the new owners. With this sale, Ramie was more or less in charge of all of the work (and there was a ton) to get things switched from Katie’s Airbnb listing to Frank and Rose’s new listing. Let me tell you, that is a real pain in the butt! Ramie had to do a lot of communicating with the guests who had already booked under Katie’s listing in order to get everything rebooked properly. There were also some repairs that Frank and Rose asked Ramie to take care of right away.
As if this weren’t enough, even if it wasn’t tax season, Ramie had also been contacted through Airbnb by a person who wants to buy property in Costa Rica and is inquiring about having him manage it. After some back-and-forth discussion, it became clear that she was looking at buying a house, or two, or three and looking for a manager to take care of them. Ramie had not heard from her for a while, but just this week he got a message saying that she would be coming to Uvita on Monday the 10th and wanted Ramie to give his opinion on the houses that she was looking at and considering buying. The plan was to meet with her in-person on Tuesday to talk through things. She would be meeting with a realtor on Wednesday and looking at many properties with them, but Ramie has an acquaintance here, Tyler, who builds and sells houses and has one almost ready. He doesn’t use a realtor or listing agent and just sells them on his own, so Ramie worked it out with him to bring the potential buyer to that house on Tuesday as well.
This whole situation with this woman was a very interesting. She had never been to Costa Rica, her daughter recently spent 3 months on a mission trip in this area fell in love with it, and went home and told her mom that she should buy a house here. I guess, that's just what was about to happen.
Tuesday 3/11 thru Friday 3/14- Ramie met with this woman, Jana, to go over the houses that she planned to look at with the realtor. As they looked at the listings, they talked about potential pros and cons of each and things for her to look for when viewing the houses because Ramie would not be going with for that; they then went to look at Tyler’s house that wasn’t quite ready yet, but would be completed in about mid-April. She was ready to buy now, so it turned out that this one was more or less off the table.
On Wednesday she worked with the realtor, and it wasn't until Thursday that Ramie heard from her again. She had put an offer in on a house, and now she wanted to meet with Ramie to discuss managing it for her. Since she would be going back to the US very soon, the plan was to meet on Friday. When they sat down to discuss management details, Ramie learned that this lady had 7-8 houses in the US, 1 in Paris, possibly some others, and her new goal was to have 3-4 here in Costa Rica. I guess this woman has some money to play with!
After hearing how she was having the others managed and learning of her preferences, Ramie knew right away he was not the manager for her. She wanted someone that would do 100% of everything including creating the ads and listings on all the different platforms, advertise for her all over the world, screen the people that fit her criteria, handle all of the money directly (he takes all of the income, pays all of the bills from it, and sends her “what’s left”), and basically do everything like a large scale US-style management company would do. Ramie doesn’t really have the capacity or desire to do this and have all of that responsibility.
While he could probably make some really good money doing it, and it’s obvious that money is not much of an issue for this lady, in the end, that type of arrangement is just not for him. While we did consider and think about it over the weekend, in the end, it's not worth the headache of starting a bigger business here. Keeping this gig small is good!
Pura Vida!
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