Even though I still have a few more days off work before I go back to the grind on Monday, now that we are back at home, things will start to go back to a little bit of normalcy. Chores have to be done, projects that were put off from Feb through April are still waiting to be done, and all of those pesky daily life things just keep popping up.
Thursday 5/15- What would a day off at home be without working on the blog. We have a lot of catching up to do as we are still writing about January through April (and I’m now writing this May blog in July). I don’t remember getting this far behind last tax season and I would like to promise myself that I will make a point not to let this get so far behind again because it is just no fun catching up, but I’m sure that this will be an annual occurrence.
While I worked on the blog, Ramie worked in the yard. He has decided to move around some plants because he’s coming up with new visions and ideas to make our property prettier. He’s also taking steps to keep the jungle at bay because if you let the wild go for too long on its own, it creeps into places that you don’t really want it.
We finally took some time to relax in the afternoon and continued working on the Lego project. We are still building the November batch as there are a LOT of sets and pieces!! The 2nd batch of Lego purchases from February is still untouched and will remain that way until the November batch is done. We don’t want to mix things up since it’ll be easiest on us if we keep them in separate, “smaller” batches. At least we won’t get bored any time soon!
Friday 5/16- Another day off at home means another day of starting out on the computer working on the blog.It’s something easy and productive to start the morning with.
Karen, our old neighbor from across the street, recently asked Ramie if he could come up to her new house in Escaleras to help her with a project that she was unable to do on her own, plus she has been meaning to invite us up to visit and see her new house, so we spent a few hours this afternoon visiting with her and getting a tour of her new beautiful home! The project Ramie had to do only took about 10 minutes, but we spent a few hours with her for a nice visit. It’s always good to catch up with friends.
Sunday 5/18- Now that (the other) Karen & Dennis are mostly settled into their new house, we stopped by and visited them for a few hours today. Even though Ramie has been there regularly since the very beginning of the build, today I got my first official tour of the completed house. It turned out very nice! Even though it continues to need a few things fixed, finished, and finalized, just like all new builds in Costa Rica seem to need, it’s home to them now! Congratulations Karen & Dennis… one more hurdle has been cleared.
Wednesday 5/21- Do you ever have one of those nights where you just don’t sleep well? Last night was NOT a good night for me. First I couldn’t fall asleep. Then, after lying in bed awake for an hour I got cold… SO cold that I was shivering uncontrollably even though it was about 75*, and I was tossing and turning constantly. And then, finally, around midnight I dozed off until my alarm went off at 5 this morning. I almost never sleep until my alarm goes off, usually I get up at 4:30 and the 5am alarm is just my “if you aren’t up by now, you better get up” alarm. Now, instead of being cold like I was at midnight, though, I was so hot that I was sleeping in a puddle. Yeah, gross! When I woke up I had a headache, but otherwise felt mostly ok, albeit tired. I worked my regular day without any problems, but by the time evening came I wasn’t feeling so great. This was NOT looking good; unfortunately it was looking quite bad AND familiar… Maybe tonight will be better and I can fight off whatever is causing this by tomorrow.
I tried to go to bed at my normal time, but once again couldn’t fall asleep, and then came the chills and cold, followed by sweating to death. Yes, this sounds all too familiar. These are the same symptoms that I had when I got that bad kidney infection last November. UGH!
Thursday 5/22- I woke up today feeling tired and very unwell. My question to Ramie was “do I try to get a Dr. appointment, or do I just get the lab work done on my own?” This sounds like an odd question to you North Americans, I’m sure, because what is getting lab work done on my own going to do for me?
Well, for many medications for common ailments you don’t need a doctor’s prescription. All pharmacists here in Costa Rica are doctors, and can diagnose “easy” things and give you the meds pretty much over the counter. For an infection, it’s best to know what you’re dealing with so they can prescribe the best antibiotic to take care of the particular bacteria (at least that’s what I’ve learned since we lived here), so I could go get the labs done without a Dr. telling me to, save the fee of the doctor, and still, with the help of the pharmacist, quite likely get the correct antibiotic. Ramie came up with an even quicker method: How about we text the pharmacist, ask if we can use the same prescription as last time because I have all of the same symptoms, and see if that’s good enough. Ok, I’m game for that! It would also be much quicker than waiting for lab results which usually take at least a day. This was all quite early in the morning, before the pharmacy opened, so I just struggled through the morning, tried to do some work, and waited for a response from the pharmacy.
Around 9am when the pharmacy opened, they responded to Ramie’s question and said they would give me the antibiotics... SCORE! Ramie went to get them right away so I could hopefully start healing for the weekend.
This afternoon, even after taking the 1st dose, I felt AWFUL!!!
I could barely move from the couch to the bed. The water pressure from the shower hurt too badly to turn it on higher than a trickle, and the thought of food made me want to hurl. Yeah, this was not going well. I went to bed at about 6pm to try to sleep through this, and while I didn’t have uncontrollable shivering, I still couldn’t control my temperature, and I’m sure I was suffering from a fever. I was so uncomfortably hot in a room that should be fairly comfortable (at least to us in our acclimated way).
Friday 5/23- I was hoping to wake up feeling slightly better after the first 2 doses of antibiotics, but that was not the case. I let work know right away this morning that I was not doing well, and I may or may not make it very long today. I would push through this morning and just needed to put out a few more fires that lit up this week, but I wouldn’t have the energy to deal with anything “extra”. I had been working for a few hours and suddenly the power at our house went out. While, on a normal day that wouldn’t be a problem because we have the solar backup, today just happened to be the day when Ramie completely drained the solar batteries because they were doing some glitchy stuff, and, in order to reset them, we had to drain to zero, recharge to 100, and couldn’t use it in between. I messaged work to let them know that now, in addition to not feeling well, the power was out and I didn’t know how long the little battery backup that we have on the internet was going to last, so if I disappear, that was likely why. My admin guy responded “I think the universe is telling you that you shouldn’t work any more today”, or something to that effect, and I thought that was the PERFECT rationale! It’s a holiday weekend, people are probably taking a long weekend away, and I got the most important of my work accomplished, so I logged off at about 11am. I wasn’t going to do anything fun, and I spent most of the rest of the day on the couch, but I got to rest, and that’s probably what I needed. The batteries took until about 3 pm to fully discharge to zero and then another couple of hours to charge them back up to 100%, but fortunately, the power did come back on about an hour or so after it originally went out… So we weren't without power all day.
Saturday 5/24- After 2 full days on antibiotics I had REALLY high hopes for waking up this morning feeling better, and I was once again disappointed. Now the tough decision comes: do I try to find a Dr and a lab that can get me in this morning to get me on the appropriate meds, or do I trust that the antibiotics that I’m on are going to work and I just need to give it more time? Since it’s Saturday, I need to make this decision ASAP so I can try to find a Dr or lab that can help me now, because most things are only open in the mornings on Saturday, and will be closed on Sunday. I would really hate to feel this awful all weekend and into next week! I made the decision to trust the antibiotics, and if I STILL don’t feel better on Monday, I will go then. Fingers crossed!!
I took it very easy today and actually did start to feel better as the day went on. While I was still achy and running a fever, I felt I could at least function well enough to get by. I was even able to eat a normal dinner without the mere thought of food making me ill.
Today Ramie also got word from Taylor & Dylan that they have booked their flights for their August trip down here. It’s time to start planning!! We would get Dylan on his own for the first week while Taylor spent a week on the Caribbean coast volunteering with a turtle research group.
She would then join us for the 2nd week. Also, on top of that, there is talk that Dylan's family is considering visiting during that 2nd week to join in on the fun. We will see if that part actually gets booked!
Sunday 5/25- While I still wasn’t at 100%, I was getting a little bit better every day. I hoped that I would at least get to enjoy my day off work tomorrow for Memorial Day, otherwise this would make for a total bust of a long weekend. For today, though, I’ll still be taking it easy at home. I wasn’t even well enough to work on the blog these last few days, so guess what I’m doing today…
When Ramie was at the Pharmacy on Thursday getting the antibiotics for me, he asked the pharmacist if it is worrisome to get infections like this without any clear reason that they came on. The Pharmacist said that some people are just more susceptible to them. It could very well be that my body is just extra sensitive to the mold that is naturally in the air here in the tropics. When Ramie told me this, it all kind of clicked in my head. I do know that I am sensitive to mold, and my suspicion is that my body operates at a normal level that it can just barely keep in check, when something happens that changes the environment (like the beginning of rainy season), my body can’t fight off the extra irritation any more and needs some assistance from antibiotics or something like that. This also kind of explains why I got ear infections every spring & fall when we lived in MN. Stupid Science!!
Monday 5/26- Memorial Day
Since Memorial Day is a US holiday, they don’t celebrate it here, and it’s just a normal day in Costa Rica. I work for a US company, though, so I naturally got the day off work! Today I did feel better than yesterday, but was still feeling pretty slow and weak. Ramie convinced me that I was feeling well enough to leave the house for an hour or two so we went to the vivero and bought some more plants for our yard. When we got home, I even followed Ramie around the yard and helped plant them. He did all of the hard work like digging the holes, and I just handed him plants to put in the holes, kept him company, and made him electrolyte drinks so he wouldn’t get dehydrated.
Tuesday 5/27- Ramie got a call from Randall yesterday asking him to help him build pallets and get them ready to ship out. By “build pallets” I don't mean building the actual pallet, but to protect some of the things that they ship, they may have to modify the pallets to make them work better. They also "build pallets" meaning stacking all of loose things/boxes/bins, and then shrink-wrapping them. The shipping company has a client that has a ton of bins of their personal belongings that are being shipped back to the States and this should have been a simple task of stacking the bins, strapping them down, shrink wrapping and numbering the pallets, then weighing them. The problem here, however, was that the people didn't listen to the very clear instructions about what is and isn’t allowed to be shipped, and they ended up putting things in the bin that are not allowed. When this was discovered, Ramie and Randall then had to go through each and every bin looking for the contraband, removing it, and then repacking the bin. Needless to say, this job that should have been completed today will take much more time, and now Ramie is going to have to go back on Thursday to help complete it.
Wednesday 5/28- Ramie used his day away from the shipping company today to work in the yard. The grass was super long and that was the first thing to get taken care of. Once he was done with that, he worked on moving or removing some more plants around the yard, and trimmed or cut a lot of others back. Now is the time of year to do that since they seem to get an almost daily watering from the rains starting up again. He spent the majority of the day doing this.
Around 5pm, Ramie got a call from Randall saying that this evening he came home to Luna, the big white Lab that we just babysat a few weeks ago, acting very unlike herself. He and Jessica (his wife) went to Luna who was lying under a table outside by their front door and sat with her. Luna got up, walked over to Randall, laid down, and passed away in his arms. Rest in Peace Luna Girl… You were a great dog!💗
Thursday 5/29- This morning Ramie had to go back to the warehouse to finish those pallets. Before they got started Randall wanted to talk about Luna so Ramie listened and once Randall was done, Ramie told some of his favorite stories about her as well. Randall said that yesterday, about an hour earlier than they saw Luna acting differently, Lowell saw her said that she was out and about walking around and acting like her typical self earlier. Randall and Ramie agreed that it must have just been her time to go, and her heart stopped from old age. At least Randall & Jessica had the chance to say goodbye. Their conversations and story telling about Luna today was a perfect way to have a memorial for her, and work through the grieving process.
After a while it was time to start getting things together get to work. It took another full day for the guys to finish this job, and at the end of the day they had an entire pallet of bins full of stuff that they removed from the inventory. All in, they had 7 pallets built and ready to ship out. 5 of the pallets had 16 bins each, the other 2 pallets were odds and ends, paintings, etc. that wouldn’t stack well with the bins. Ramie told me that he just can't believe some of the stuff that people decide they want to ship. Most of this stuff, he said, should have been thrown away because it was gross and moldy or just complete garbage. This person literally must have just grabbed everything in sight and threw it into the bins with no rhyme, reason, or thought.
Friday 5/30- I don't remember when, but not too long ago Ramie and I were talking about how to spruce up our house, give it some character, curb appeal or whatever you want to call it. During that conversation Ramie mentioned “something like the decorative panels" that our friend Mike had removed from his house, and then the thought hit me. What ever happened to those after they were removed? Ramie reached out to Mike to ask about what happened to them and Mike responded that he had given them to Loren. Ramie then reached out to Loren to see what ever came of them, and if they are still unused, we might have an idea to use them. Ramie explained what we came up with and Loren told him that our idea was better than what he was going to use them for, and that we could have them. Ramie lined it up with Randall to haul these panels in his truck (because they were too big for ours), and got them to our house. They have since been sitting against the front of our house waiting to be worked on. After some more discussion, planning, measuring, and figuring out what we can do with these and where we can make the best use of them, we had a final plan. Today Ramie got to work on the first panel.
It took Ramie a couple of hours of crouching down in the driveway to grind off all of the paint from the panels so that he could first apply a rust preventative, then paint them. Once the paint was removed it was time to move them to the grass so he could put the rust preventer on. This was also done on the ground, crouching down. It didn't take long for that to dry and then it was time for paint (crouching down again) and to wait for that to dry.
Once he had everything from this project cleaned up and put away, it was time to get to work on another project. During most of the year we have lots of powerful sun and we hang our clothes outside on a line to dry. I mean why not, it doesn't take long and it doesn’t use any power. The problem is, though, that things that “live” outside in the elements don’t necessarily last long because of said elements. The first original clothes line that we hung wasn’t great quality and was replaced quickly. After one of our trips back to MN we brought some US line with us, but it turned out that it was not nearly as thick and strong as we thought it would be, and even though we had 2 lines of it strung together, it would still sag really bad if we had heavy things like beach towels hanging from it. When we tightened it it would be fine for one or two loads of laundry and then start to sag again. If we keep tightening it, eventually it's just going to snap. Ramie has had enough of this song and dance, so he ordered a high quality stainless steel plastic coated cable and the hardware to go with it. Down with the old and up with the new today. After he tightened it up he said that he’s pretty sure the both of us could hang from this and it wouldn't even budge. I thinks that’s quite an exaggeration, but it's definitely a huge improvement over what we had and we should hopefully never have to replace it again.
It was mid-afternoon and starting to cloud over; we could hear thunder off in the distance and it wouldn't be long before the rain would start. We went to move the panel that Ramie had painted and set it up against the house for the night, and that is when we realized that it wasn't even close to dry. Sine this was an oil based paint and the humidity here is really pretty high, this is delaying the drying process a LOT. Since it's still quite wet, we decided not to move it all the way back to lean on the house and to just move it a little way into the carport so we wouldn’t have to really grab the wet paint and so we wouldn’t leave marks on the house where it was leaned up. We set it up on some wood blocks and leaned it against the side of the carport. While this wasn’t the perfect place for it, it would keep it out of the direct rain tonight.
Saturday 5/31- This morning after our coffee and wake up time Ramie wanted to get started painting the other side of the panel. I helped him lay the panel back down in the grass and he got to work. It took less than an hour and that side was finished so we let the sun do its thing. Hopefully it's dry by the time the rain comes this time since he started so early in the day!
What did I do? Now that I’m no longer working on Saturdays and have some time and energy to start working on my projects again, today I would get started on a cushion cover project using some of the items we had shipped down with Karen and Dennis’s pallets. The cushion covers that came with our patio furniture are very light in color and are not weatherproof. They get very dirty from puppy paws and when they get wet from the rain they do get a little bit moldy. You might remember about a year ago I made some cushion covers from some fabric we purchased here in Costa Rica that was a darker color and we thought would hold up better, but the fabric is literally falling apart from the climate here, even though it is not located in direct sunlight. I decided to order a roll of high quality fabric that is made for using on sailboats and other outdoor items that take quite a beating from the sun, as well as good quality zippers, so that I could upgrade our cushions. While Ramie was painting I was doing the measurements and math to determine the size of the cuts, but I despise cutting (in my opinion, it’s the worst part of a sewing project), so I always let Ramie do the final measuring and cutting of the fabric. Once he was washed up from his painting, we moved the couch (because this is the largest space that we have) and rolled out the fabric to get to work. For now, I’m only going to do the 4 seat cushions even though I did buy enough fabric to do the backs as well, but one thing at a time. We got the 4 pieces cut from the main roll, then we had to do a bit more measuring and smaller cuts for the corners. Once we were finished with that part, it was time for me to be productive on my own and get the zippers pinned on. We’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, in Costa Rica, only plan one thing per day. I got my one thing done and it was already after lunch by the time that was taken care of, so the sewing will have to wait for another day. I’m 100% ok with that!
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of May rainfall total was 30.92 inches
Pura Vida!
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