It turns out that I have one more hurdle to jump before my pensionado resident status can be approved. I have ten business days to make it happen unless I apply for an extension.  NOT gonna apply for an extension!  I’m gonna get this done over the next two Wednesdays so I can get healthcare coverage thru CAJA and a DIMEX card as soon as possible.

What happened to my application

…is something that has happened to a lot of them recently, Jon tells me. The issuing agency that apostilled my Social Security income statement was in Washington State. It needed to be apostilled at the federal level in Washington D.C. to satisfy Costa Rica’s requirements.

That isn’t what the Social Security office in Puyallup told me when I went there (twice!!!) to get the statement.  They said they couldn’t notarize it but that I could get a notary public to notarize it.

So, I did that and then I got the Washington Secretary of State (I think) to apostille it.

Not good enough

So, my workaround is to take a printed statement to the USS Embassy in San Jose Costa Rica and have them notarize/certify it, to make the CR government happy.

So, on Wednesday morning at o dark thirty (5:00) Adilio will be picking me up here at my place and then we’ll be picking up Jon.  From there, we’ll travel to the Embassy where I have scheduled a 7:30 a.m. appointment to get this done.

And then, the following Wednesday at around 8 a.m. we will all travel to San Jose again to Migracion to submit the Social Security income document and its translated version to the powers that be there.

Pretty soon after that (maybe immediately? I dunno!) I should receive approval to go ahead and join CAJA and apply for my DIMEX card.

MORE HURDLES

After finding out all of the above, I went to the Social Security Administration website to view and get a PDF of the income statement to have printed at DIMI on Monday.

Well!!!  The site wouldn’t let me in!  I tried three times.  Then I spotted an ID.me option on their site that I could go through to register another way to get the info. So, I did that.

It collected my info and then asked which docs I would be using during a live video chat to confirm my identity. I selected passport and driver license.

Uploaded the passport info without issue, but they wanted a U.S. phone number to send me a link to upload the driver license images.

The one they have on file for me is Lisa’s phone number because I no longer have a US phone number and the system wouldn’t allow my CR phone number, so I had to call Lisa and see if she was available to receive a link so she could send the driver license images that I sent her to send to them.

Luckily, she hadn’t left for work yet so we were able to get that done.

And then I waited for 11 minutes to have the live chat with the ID.me representative to verify my docs and my own face.

So, yeah… it took well over an hour to jump through extra hoops just to get the SS statement that I will need for the Wednesday appointment.

HAVE A KILLER COLD

But because I developed a killer cold over the past two days, the additional stress of being told that some of my paperwork wasn’t in order was no help at all.

Jon talked me down from the ledge  — and from overthinking, luckily, because hyperventilating with chest congestion would probably not have been very healthy!

I sat in the loveseat all night and drank hot water and herbal tea every couple hours to keep the congestion in my sinuses and lungs from clogging up too much. I feel better today, so believe I’m over the worst of it.

But when I spotted the Resolution in my inbox this morning and saw that there was an issue, I got seriously concerned.  Until Jon said he has dealt with the exact same issue several times recently (since Trump took office again) and it’s no big deal to fix.

It’s gonna cost around $200 to fix (driver costs, Embassy fees, translation fees), which isn’t much fun to think about since I’ll be spending about $700 more soon to get CAJA and DIMEX and bank deposits for these items to make their way through the system.  I’m just glad I have enough in liquid savings to be able to afford this hiccup. I’ve been squirreling away as much as I can so I don’t fall terribly far below $3K in savings after all of this is over and done with…

TERRAMOTO/EARTHQUAKE

I dog-sat for Jon and Francsico yesterday. During the time I was there, the 7.7 Panama earthquake struck and rocked their casa for more than two minutes.

As soon as I realized it wasn’t going to stop, I turned on my phone camera and video’ed it.  You will be able to see how much it was rocking when I pan to the aquarium about 30 seconds in…

Because the dogs didn’t rouse or become alarmed, I was pretty sure it would remain sedate. And it did.  But it caused enormous damage south of the border in Panama, for sure. Older buildings and churches were destroyed.

Costa Rica has robust building standards, fortunately.

Since 1974.

What else?

Cindy and I have both been under the weather, so we haven’t gotten together or walked dogs for several days. I’m continuing to walk in my apartment 7500 steps per day, though. And drink herbal teas. And sneeze, cough and blow my nose.

It’s a process! Think I’m going to have to decline DEMS ABROAD in Tuesday, though. I need to keep my available energy (what there is of it) in reserve for the MUST DO’s that are on the horizon.  DRAT!