It’s time to go through my handwritten notes from the past two days about my doings — and what I’ve been thinking about — and move what’s worth keeping here.
On January 2nd I wrote:
I got the suitcases down from Charli’s loft while she was outside and loaded one of them with absolutely everything that was in boxes. There’s still some room left in it, so I’m sure, now, they every other item of daily living that is still out will fit into the other one, which will leave just the two fans, the two disassembled cat trees, the three lamps (two of them table lamps, the other a standing lamp that I can disassemble easily), the crockpot, the rice cooker, the cat litter, and the groceries to find spots for in Marianela’s vehicle. Easy peasy! (Oh! And Charli can ride in her carrier on my lap in the front passenger seat if need be, but I don’t think that will be necessary.) I’m feeling very confident now that I won’t need to ask Jon to drive over for any “overflow.”
Edward has read today’s blog post but Lisa hasn’t yet. She’s working today. I tagged ’em both because I want them to know my thoughts re the additional costs (beyond airfare) to visiting here. I want Lisa to be sure to arrive WITH (or AFTER) her checked luggage because going back for it would be super pricey and steal a day that we could be doing other things that are more fun.
CHARLI
Charli is acting meow-y and clingy, as if she wants something from me that I’m not providing. She has water and wet and dry cat food. I don’t think she has figured out that we’re on the verge of another move. I’m being very cagey and careful about that. Unless she’s psychic and can “see” what has been going on in my brain…
I’m glad I moved the suitcases NOW so they sit around in their new locatioNs and become customary for her there.
On January 3rd I wrote:
I need to ask Deb if she’s amenable to driving me to pick up Lisa at the airport on Feb 11th. If not, my friend Adelio (Jon’s personal driver) says he can drive me from Villas Escondidas to the airport (I asked Melaney’s permission to stay there the nights of Feb 10th and 19th in case Deb doesn’t want to drive to SJO) and then to Grecia for a lot less than Dale’s and Crystal’s Uber driver quoted to them.
Fell this morning during my walk
I’m fine! But now I REALLY wanna move now because even as careful as I always am, I KNOW I can still fall — and not all falls are without serious consequences.
I have a swollen, sore left thumb and a small scrape/puncture wound on my left palm near my thumb, which took the brunt of my weight when I went down.
T-Wrecks invaded and attached Venezuela and kidnapped its president and first lady without the approval of Congress.
Breaking the international rules to get Maduro
opens the floodgates for other countries to do the same wherever they feel their best interests lie — including coming after the sitting POTUS and his VP in the United States, China’s interest in Taiwan, and Russia’s interest in Europe and the United States. You reap what you sow, you f—–g IDIOTS!
Watch Heather Cox Richardon’s report on what this illegal, anti-Constitional and anti-UN action means for the entire world here.
I hate the T-Wrecks regime with a passion
I wish someone would take IT out, top to bottom. It is corrupt, anti-democracy and anti-Constitution and Rule of Law. Odious. Felonious. Traitorous.
They should all be hung. They have injected our government with a terminal illness.
“Not my circus, not my monkeys” anymore but OMG!!! They’re still making too many of my waking moments miserable because I have loved ones there still who are in mortal peril because of the current regime’s insane, maniacal policies.
Gotta stop watching and listenting to US news. That’s all there is to it!
3:36 p.m.
My left thumb is back to normal already. Can hardly see the bruise, and the soreness is gone. I’m a heckuva healer!
Mikey (aka Mr. Fuzzy Grey Pants) is out on the porch. He almost came in but I spotted him and closed the door. Charli doesn’t like him. I think he harasses her whenever he can. I’ve caught him a couple times trailing her. She hunkers down and growls when he does that. Sometimes she screeches at him through the window screens, too.
Mikey’s gonna be sad when I — and his morning meal — disappear. Charli will NOT be sad when HE disappears from her life.
I hope Charli and Mau Mau Get along — or totally ignore each other!
Charli only seems to have hissy fits around male cats, neutered or not. That’s good. MauMau is a female, I’m pretty sure…
Lisa will be here in 39 days! WOO HOO!!!!
And I will be moved in 28 days if all goes according to plan. WOO HOO! Just gotta be sure to stay UPRIGHT on my feet until then! No more falling. I managed for 3.5 months so, with any luck at all, I can do it again for the rest of my time here. Sure sounds like a plan, anyway!
Later this week I will have lunch with Dale and Crystal again for the first time in more than three weeks. That’s too long between visits! (But I’ll be their neighbor in February, so that’s good!) Crystal will bring me the calender she got for me in Maine (a cat calendar) then. She has felt too puny since getting back to get it to me before then, so I’ve made a temporary one to keep track of my warfarin dosing schedule and the passing days.
Being retired with no regularly scheduled appointments or outings, it’s easy to lose track of what day it is. I nearly always have weekly lunches but haven’t for more than two weeks because of the two consecutive Thursday holidays, and that change has really messed me up! Today is only Saturday and I feel like it should be Monday. And yes, I know I’ve mentioned this before; I’m not getting forgetful or short term memory loss — I just don’t have anything else to report but I want to keep putting words on paper. I love the exercise of physical hand-writing. It makes me happy. So there!
I pulled down the Sunshine Burro Shower Curtain Today
This way, if anybody comes to see the casita they won’t assume it comes with it. Before too much longer I’ll probably tuck away (equally or even more regretfully!) the motmot painting that Francisco made for me, for the same reason:
THESE TREASURES BELONG TO ME!
Forever and ever, amen! Until someone (Lisa) inherits them.
I’m in my underwear only at the moment
It has warmed up in here considerably. It’s always warmest during the hour just before sundown here. But as soon as the sun sets, the temperarure quickly drops. I don’t even need the smallest fan I have after dark where I am (or where I’ll be in February), but I often put it on anyway for the white noise it produces and because mosquitoes don’t like moving air (in case any get inside).
Insect Repellent Protocol at This Elevation
I asked Diane if she puts insect repellent on daily on exposed areas. (She wears sleeveless shirts and knee-length shorts most often.) She said she rarely does unless she’s working in her yard, but she applies it then because of no-see-ums, not mosquitoes. After dark here it might be a different story, but I rarely see mosquitoes during the day even in the bosques (forests) along Calle Esteban Salas.
I’ve read that the Alajuela Province (where I rent, in both places) has one of Costa Rica’s highest incidences of dengue fever, so I do take precautions — but again, I think that occurs mostly at lower elevations. Melaney told me she caught it once and it threw her for a major loop, and I don’t know what elevation she was at when she contracted it. I suppose I should ask! It might be good to know! Am I being too anal, or just about right, to keep myself safe from tropical diseases caused by insects?
Ate One Small Chicken Burrito for Dinner
That was plenty. For breakfast, I had fish and rice plus coffee and a half cup of peach nectar. For lunch I had my usual brown rice/refried black beans/mushrooms/cheese/mixed nuts and Lizano Sauce concoction, and for the afternoon snack I had four small saltine crackers with peanut butter and honey on them. My weight is staying at 154 reliably every morning. I’m drinking enough liquids to keep my kidney happy. Occasionally I’ll have an additional half cup of fruit nectar or a cup of 2% milk. I feel GOOD! Have ever since I got here and started eating the tico way. The US food supply sucks.
I’m Really Down on the United States
After relearning American History from marginalized people’s perspective — as opposed to the “white”-washed version that we learned in elementary school — I’ve become very aware of the current narrative spewed by white male supremacists. This colonized nation was founded by Europeans who treated everyone, including their human property wives and children, black people, brown people, Chinese people, and indentured servants from Ireland and elsewhere) like soulless property and unfeeling utensils. “Raise MY children, build MY country, grow and harvest my fields, but don’t expect to own or have a stake in any of it as a result of investing your lifetime of relentless, backbreaking work. WE OWN EVERYTHING.”
The Abuse Continues to This Day
Until women demanded and received the right to vote in 1920 and until birth control became a common method of family planning in the 1960’s, and until women received the right to get credit cards in 1978 and to buy property without a male co-signer (husband, father, brother), their lives were severely circumscribed. They pretty much had to marry to be able to survive financially, which is why divorce was so rare in the generations before I was born. The system pretty much required women to obtain the resources of a man.
I used to be proud to be a U.S. citizen. Now I’m mostly just embarrassed to have fallen for the false narrative that I was fed for far too long.
But I’ve Actually Bucked The System for Most of my Life
As a civil and human rights advocate from a very early age, I’ve seen the underbelly of the beast for most of my life; I just wasn’t aware of how most women’s lives (including white women) have been thwarted and controlled by male supremacists. I escaped the usual conditioning (being trans and subscribing to MS Magazine from its inception for years) and avoided the “trap” of marriage/children/traditional career trajectories.
But it was EVIDENT everywhere around me!
I was the outlier, the aberration. I didn’t want marriage or children, ever. I had seen what these “assets” had made of mothers and wives: unpaid, underappreciated superheroes under the frequently selfish, clueless, controlling thumbs of their overlords — commonly known as husbands.
I wanted to control my own destiny — and I have!
Admittedly, it took an inordinately long time to get out the starting gate. I lived on my parents’ property (although not in their homes) until I was 30 when I first moved to Sacramento to work with the Animal Protection Institute. And I came back four years later for three years before I headed for Hollywood. But from 1989 on, I was my own person, the captain of my own ship and orchestrator of my unique symphony (destiny)!
In 2004, post-911 and four+ years after the deaths of both of my parents, I returned to Washington State — probably a BIG mistake in retrospect — because I thought that during “terrorist times” I should be closer to family members since I was a trained “first responder” and could help if and when disaster struck. That was my motive for returning, to be nearer family during troubling times.
I ended up eventually buying property with my younger sister Jackie several years later. Which is when The Malaise set in. We are polar opposites politically, so we pretty much “divorced” (relationally) but stayed on the property in our own duplex-like spaces until last year when T-Wrecks got reelected (with the votes of Jackie and her son) and I knew it was no longer safe for me to be out as a transgender, anti-T-Wrecks loudmouth and resister.
So that’s how I ended up in Costa Rica years before I had planned to move here. But the move became a very happy ending for me. When Jackie sells the property we co-own (she said within a few years from now) I’ll get half of the proceeds and be set for the rest of my life in Pura Vida.
During my unconventional lifetime…
I have adopted and shared my life with an African serval cat for more than 17 years, emptied my bucket list by working on political campaigns, working in Hollywood at Warner Bros, and other entertainment industry companies (Baywatch among them), befriended and assisted the Carolyn and DeForest Kelley, worked in animal welfare, worked with major movie stars of the animal kingdom, written 18 books, and soooo much more!
Looking back, and knowing what I know now
I think it all (even the missteps) has worked out to my benefit. It’s almost like I was able to fall into manure and grow something beautiful with the misstep, like a lotus!
I have been very fortunate, I think, to be neurodiverse
I couldn’t have been happy/fulfilled/satisfied with a “normal”/customary female life, and I knew it intuitively from a very young age. I had to find another way, or go mad. I wasn’t cut from common cloth. I needed novelty, adventure, fantastic goals to feel truly alive.
It has been a helluva ride and I have very few regrets. I wish I had understood myself sooner and embraced my personal truths earlier but, all things considered, I did all right! Everyone who came into my orbit for good or ill taught me something new about myself, about them, and about what I can embrace (or at least tolerate) and what I simply can’t, and WON’T!
I won’t tolerate
…unhealthy codependency, bigotry, white (or any other) male supremacy, lying, misusing/abusing another, cruelty, etc.
I won’t allow others to tell me who I should love/trust/tolerate/consult/avoid, etc. I will certainly take their advice and personal experiences with the individual under advisement, but I’ll make the final decision based on what I personally observe and experience with the person in question.
I’m a pretty darned good observer of the smallest of details/”tells”. I instinctively or intuitively feel people’s true vibes and motivations/goals when they interact with me, and I pay close attention to them. They have never steered me wrong to date, and that is a pretty remarkable record of success. I’ve always pretty much known who was in my life for “a reason, as season, or a lifetime” — surely within a few meetings with them. This has been a gift — sometimes a troubling, painful gift — but a gift nonetheless.
Again, it has been a helluva ride!
I wouldn’t want to do it again — or any OTHER life — but I certainly won’t complain about the life I have lived, nor will I apologize for it.
Karma?
If this lifetime has been my karmic “burden” for past lives — for acts or failures to act — I have to say I’ve been multiply blessed. I can’t imagine a more satisfying lifetime than this. I did it my way and didn’t hurt very many people in the process — at least, not intentionally. I’ve certainly been hamhanded a few times, but not intentionally cruel or callous.
I wasn’t (still am not) well-versed in handling conflict or expressing core needs
I’m emotional when I feel things passionately and not terribly diplomatic when it comes to expressing frustration or disappointment about someone’s bigotry or ignorance face-to-face. (Think “Dr. McCoy straightforwardness” and you get the general idea!)
For example, I’ll name something that’s a fact outright: “You’re delusional if you believe that.” “You’re in a cult.” “Get information from places outside your bubble/affinity group before you make an ass of yourself.”
See? I’m NOT good at political diplomacy! (Bernie Sanders, AOC and Pete Buttigieg are masters when it comes to communicating without castigating the people who have been disinformed and deluded into thinking what they think. They know how to explain in ways with the most likelihood of getting the results they want. I don’t! I’m not confrontational — I’m just too direct. I was never taught by either parent to be a coddler.)
I call it like I see it
To bigots and fearful people: “You’re projecting.”
To self-professed Christians: “What about T-Wrecks is praiseworthy or Christ-like?”
See what I mean? I’m transparent. I question people who matter to me, whose votes can literally destroy me and so many of the other people that I love. I feel there is so little (if any!) time left for diplomacy and coddling. I need to know if they’re gonna defend all people’s rights or throw some of us under the bus.
To me, these matters are existential. There is no wiggle room. “Are you strong enough and committed enough to my wellbeing and existence to stand in the gap for me when T-Wrecks’ goons come for me or my neurodiverse/LGBTQIA+ loved ones?”
In Jackie’s and Phil’s cases, I know the answer is “No, I will not defend your right to exist. I will not risk my own wellbeing to stand in the gap for you.” (Fear-based cowardice, or rock solid belief that transgender and neurodiverse people deserve to die or be institutionalized for admitting and embracing who we are??? I don’t know the answer to that reason, either, which would also make a difference in how I view them. Cowardice I can understand; T-Wrecks is a monster! The other? That answer would make THEM the monsters!)
So, those two are out as potential allies. They’re siding with the enemy and against everything Jesus taught.
There can be no middle ground when it comes to human rights
No “agree to disagree,” no truce or coy ignorance about what it all means…
So, yeah, I don’t discuss anything with them beyond property matters, and won’t. It’s pointless. A dead letter. Dead relationships.
And I view ALL current T-Wrecks supporters as equally dangerous to my wellbeing and depraved. Unfair? I don’t think so. They’ve either been deceived by a human monster/a madman or they embrace him because they’re just like him. Either way, that’s utterly HORRENDOUS, in my view.
Which brings us to TODAY/The PRESENT
I walked 8752 steps this morning. (I’m up to 8859 now, at 12:28 p.m.) Saw Homer briefly. We exchanged hugs and a brief conversation. He asked if I was cold. The sun hadn’t hit the calle yet so it was a bit cool, but nowhere near cold to me (remembering Pacific NW weather this time of year!). But for him, who has always lived here, it was cold.
After I took the usual eight laps from the bottom of my driveway to Calle Los Angeles and back, I took Diane’s dogs in the other direction on Calle Esteban Salas while she finished her coffee. When we returned to her place, she joined me for another lap in the same direction.
I wore my hiking boots today, and will every day from now on while I’m here. They help my sure-footedness more than tennis shoes do, and I must minimize fall risk as much as possible. Being on blood thinners and possibly falling and hitting my head on a rock or breaking a leg or hip could be catastrophic, and I don’t need any catastrophes befalling me here!
But I can’t stop walking entirely while I’m here
My morning walks are crucial. They start me off every day on the right foot (pun unintended). They raise my endorphins, reduce blood sugar (after a breakfast meal including brown rice), and do all kinds of good things for me physically, socially, emotionally and mentally. I enjoy the heck out of them. I’m hooked in a good way on this very good thing for me!
Immigration Status
I just checked on my immigration status online. It hasn’t moved out of the “received” category and into the “processing category” but when it does I will have a limited time period to take the additional required steps and pay the accompanying fees and I can’t miss that window of opportunity or the entire process will have to be repeated (including getting the US based documents apostilled again. UGH!!!)
So I need to check every week from now on even though the estimated time from receipt to “in process” is now around 10 months because of the backlog and thousands of new applications that come in every week here since T-Wrecks got back into office. There are a lot of terrorized marginalized people trying to get outta Dodge as fast as they can and Costa Rica is the destination for a great many of them.
My immigration numbers look like what you see below right now. Various aspects of the application appear to be sitting in various queues in various provinces, for some reason. I don’t know what it all means, but the fact that the largest queue number is 135 may mean that I’m 135th in line for processing, which doesn’t sound like a long time to have to wait…
My immigration coach may be able to decipher what these numbers mean.
I certainly have no idea and am just guessing at this stage!
135 St Joseph
133 Guapiles
75 Saraquipi
64 Liberia
25 San Carlos
20 Nicoya
18 Upala
9 Paso Canoas
3 Punterenas
2 Lemon
That’s all for this time!
(It’s quite enough, isn’t it??? SHEESH!!!)