Then I took a shower. There was nothing terribly different about my shower except that it isn’t in my shower at home and there are little cockroach wings in the corner (we don’t have these at home). Then I walked out to my closet (a shelf on a bed side table) and chose from an assortment of 4 pairs of pants and 7 t-shirts to decide what I would wear for the day.
Some of my t-shirts are slightly bleached from my sweat. I do, after all, sweat a lot here and apparently, the sweat is toxic enough to bleach t-shirts.
After putting myself together completely I went downstairs and ate cereal. It is not the usual cereal that I eat. In fact, at home, I rarely eat breakfast at all. I think I may be stuffing a bit here because right now, I feel like I might die if I don’t eat breakfast. Maybe it’s the uphill running plus 5 additional hours of dance and yoga each week plus 30 minutes per day of walking that has made me a little hungrier during the day. Honestly, I don’t know.
After putting together my cereal, I started moving my furnishings out onto the balcony. The table I am using is the same exact table I once used when we lived in the RV. I would set it up in our tiny RV-sized bedroom facing the door and work at it for hours, much like I am doing now. I’m not sure how I feel about that. The chair that I’m using is very hard, but the scenery is spectacular, so I suppose I’m still moving up in the world. It’s amazing how few times during the day I look away from my computer to observe the trees or anything really, except the words I’m typing on a page.
It didn’t rain today, which was weird. About mid-afternoon I noted that it was weird and then I noted that it was weird that it was weird. When did I get used to the daily showers? I like the sun and the wind blowing today was a nice touch. But the rain cools things off and I can’t get enough of the thunder and lightning which has happened every single day so far except two: today and one that happened about 3 weeks ago before the earthquake.
Throughout the day, I saw emails come in on my phone as I was working on other projects. The dogs barked. A woman stopped by to talk with me (in Spanish) about teaching Lydian Spanish lessons. A recycling truck went by, heralded first by some kids asking for recyclables. Roosters crowed compulsively in cycles. A cat walked through the backyard. I talked to it (in Spanish) and it looked at me. Some insects were mating on the banister. I was attacked several times by ants crawling up my leg.
This was my day…which was also my 14th wedding anniversary with John.
I think we’re going to walk downtown this evening to see what we can see, which sounds peaceful… nice. We could go to yoga, but it seems like more fun just to come home and do nothing tonight. We decided not to go to the orphanage because the situation just felt scary and wrong. I think they didn’t want us there because they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to get any money (or enough money, perhaps?) out of us because we weren’t affiliated with another organization that would charge us for volunteering. I could have had a negative, but exciting day at the orphanage today, but I rather enjoyed the lack of excitement at home (and positive energy that’s here too). Without the balance of having some couch-potato time, excitement turns into trauma pretty quickly. I’ll work my way back up to wanting excitement again, but for now, I just want to hang out in my Costa Rican comfort zone.
