Life Update

Not a lot of posting lately, as life is just happening and nothing ultra exciting is going on.  Which is fine with me, as too much excitement exhausts me.

We fired our yard guy.  Well, told him we did not need his help anymore.  When we first started using him, he worked hard and for the entire day and showed up every day except Sunday.  But as time went on, a lot of things he did started to annoy us.  First, every day, Kurt would get up at 655 AM to unlock our gate.  Kurt is a light sleeper, so basically once he gets up for the morning he cannot come back to bed and sleep.  The guy started just showing sporadically.  Which annoyed Kurt since he was getting up early to let the guy in every day.  And the guy would never tell us ahead of time if he was not showing up.  We talked to him about it, asked him to let us know or text if he was not going to be over.  He did it like once then just started showing when he wanted again.  We might have been able to deal with that, however, shortly after that, his work product started to diminish.  I kept telling Kurt we were being "ticoed", which basically means someone from Costa Rica taking advantage of people not originally from here because of the language barrier or whatever.  He was supposed to work from 7 AM until 4 PM with an hour lunch.  He started showing up later and later, taking longer lunches, leaving earlier, and wanting to be paid for the 8 hour day.  And it is hard to tell if he even is there or not as he works throughout the property.  Also I have no desire to stalk my workers and follow them around to see if things are being done.  We also noticed he was bringing him one kid to work and playing with him instead of working, taking calls, talking on his cell about 50% of the time while working, and taking many breaks to talk to or hang out with the guys working across the street on the neighbor's property.  Anyway, finally enough was enough.  Kurt decided that we are going to work on our own property for a while, and if we get sick of it, hire someone else to do the job.  Lots of people around here need and want the work and will actually do it.  I am not going to pay someone to simply hang out at my property and work at 50%.

Speaking of working on the yard, I actually did some yard work.  Which is very rare.  I don't mind doing almost everything around the house, but I don't usually do yard work as I hate getting dirt on my clothes, in my nails, etc. We had a huge storm the other day and a lot of branches, bromeliads, and leaves fell in the yard.  Kurt was napping, and I went out with the wheelbarrow and started picking everything up.  Once Kurt woke up, he came out and helped me and we got it all done pretty quickly.  The lawn guy would have take an entire day or more I think.  He would pick up a branch, drag it to a pile while talking on his phone.  Take a break, get water, take another call.  Anyway, the yard work is exhausting!  Like another work out for the day.  I could really feel it in my legs the next day as I was working different muscles than a normal workout.

I have been cooking and baking a LOT.  I made mashed potatoes from scratch for the first time in my life the other day.  Kurt was thrilled as mashed potatoes are one of his fav foods.  I also have been making a ton of different muffins and breads as snacks for us.  I also finally bought the ingredients to make my chickpea cookie dough here and its nice to have that snack around again.

We went on this crazy hunt today for a dehumidifier.  Annoying.  Could not find one anywhere, and Kurt was driving me insane as he was getting more and more annoyed.  Certain things that would be simple to find in seconds or order online in the States are difficult to find here sometimes.  I told him to just let me post online on one of my boards and I would figure it out quickly, but instead, we went to like 10 places looking.  Of course, as soon as we got home, I figured it out pretty quickly.  Have a couple leads for used ones we will check out, or we will buy closer to San Jose on our next trip out there.

Still dogsitting for another week or so.  The cats will be happy when this is done with, as they have been stuck in one room since the dogsitting started. Poor kitties.

I found this app that lets me call the States for free on my phone called MagicJack.  Love it.  I am now calling my Mom every Monday night as Kurt is cohosting a radio show with a friend.  He is going to be hosting another show on Fridays soon as well.  I was so excited to find a way to call the States free of charge.

We are going to get an estimate for getting solar power at our house.  The most expensive bill by far here is the electric bill per month.  Supposedly with solar power you can reduce your electric bill by 75% plus.  So we are going to get info on it.

Pura Vida!