September 27, 2015

I knew this going in, before I signed my lease, that on November 20 the owner is coming for the Thanksgiving holiday and I have to get out for 9 days.  Considering it took me 2 days to unpack my suitcases and saved boxes, I’m less than thrilled at having to get out and repeat the process.  but Casa Pilar was far and away the nicest house for the money, so I signed on the dotted line, hoping the owner would change her plans.  Apparently not.  So I have to find somewhere to rest my bones for that period of time.  I’m thinking I can stow most everything in the storage area and just take one duffel with me.  But now I’ll have food in the refrigerator to deal with as well.  Things rent up around the holidays so I guess I should start to look around.   Almost everyone I know here has contracted a mosquito-bourne infection called chikungunya, which is described by Wikipedia thus: Chikungunya  for "that which bends up") is an infection caused by the chikungunya virus. The disease features the sudden onset of fever two to four days after exposure. The fever usually lasts two to seven days, while accompanying joint pains typically last weeks or months but sometimes years.[2][3][4]  Years????!!!!!  Daniel had it, Pauline had it, almost everyone in the office, several of my students, and a lot of the ex-pats.  It’s accompanied by high fever and killer pains in your bones and rashes over your whole body.  Daniel couldn’t walk for 2 days.  I never even heard of it until my last trip.  The city has been fumigating like mad.  People don’t usually die from chikungunya as they may from dengue, but it’s terribly uncomfortable.  I don’t want chikungunya…even though it is cute to say. The circus asked Daniel to work this evening and tomorrow evening, taking tickets for the night performances.  Usually he’s finished driving about the Managua streets with his loudspeaker car at 5 p.m.  There are no late buses back to Granada so he’ll stay in Managua.  I’m less than delighted to be left on my own for the whole weekend but he’s so happy with his job.  The circus will be in Managua for another week.  There was a chance they would then move to San Juan del Sur, too far for Daniel to commute, and he would have lost the job.  But now they’re thinking of returning to Granada for another month.  They were here for a month before I arrived.  That would give him another month of work.  Local.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him, even though they work him 7 days a week.  Just realized today would have been my parents’ wedding anniversary.  Wouldn’t they be surprised at the turn my life has taken!  Although they were avid travelers, and even lived in Europe for a while once we all were grown. Daniel’s spending the weekend w/ the circus.  I’m enjoying my solitude.  I made a quick trip to the market.  I can’t buy much when I'm alone because I can only buy what I can carry. Without Daniel’s help, because there’s a stairway from the street up to the house, I would have to leave packages on the sidewalk.  They would be gone within seconds. I bought the ultimate extravagance: chopped garlic in olive oil.  $7!  I don’t enjoy food preparation at night in Casa Pilar because the kitchen is so poorly lit.  We eat dinner in almost every night.  If someone else can chop the garlic for me, makes me happy.  Today gringa Melissa delivered her homemade lasagna, pulled pork, Boursin cheese, and a couple of pies to me.  If there were more services like Melissa’s, I’d never cook again.  Southwestern-born Melissa told me she’d have more cooking time if she could stay away from the pool table at Margarita’s Bar.  Melissa has her own pool cue.  I’ve never met a girl with her own pool cue.  She’s in the middle of a divorce from her much-older husband.  She told me he “hid the guns,” but a neighbor helped her find them.  When I’m in Los Angeles, my friends are just like me; here, no one’s like me. On Friday I went w/ Pauline after class to the weekly ex-pat Happy Hour at The Grill House.  Interesting to trade tips w/ other gringos on how to get US TV and where to buy vitamins, etc.  I usually spend all my time w/ my Nica students and Daniel, speaking just Spanish. I broke my flipflop in Los Angeles and the shoe repair wanted to charge me $12 to fix it.  I brought it here instead.  The “reparador” pulled up a milk crate for me to sit on and set to his work on two of my flipflops.  Ten minutes later, he charged me the equivalent of $2, and I was on my way. There was a bird trapped in the second bedroom yesterday.  It must have walked in the door because the big windows were closed.  By the time I realized it, there was shit all over the nice white bedspread and the floors.  I’m afraid of birds.  Not on the street, like Jamie, but I don’t want to be in a small room w/ one.  I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s movie and I totally believe that they’re plotting against us.  I put on a sombrero (as if that were going to help) and shielded myself w/ a curtain panel while I attempted to pry open the unyielding double window door.  Couldn’t do it.  I was finally able to open the double windows and I shut the door to the hallway, hoping the bird would figure it out.  I haven’t been back in there, but I don’t hear anymore flapping.  Wait until the poor cleaning lady sees the mess in the morning.  Me against the elements!