December 2017 – Mermaid on a Raft

12/17/2017 Yes, it’s still been raining and I am damn sick and tired of it. We have recently had a few nice days, the first for awhile, sunshine and blue skies! The pool got drained too low but it rained enough to fill it back up. I have not been in for a few months, which is really odd. I was in almost daily last winter. Just goes to show this was an ugly rainy season.

So, the election happened country-wide. The island made out well, Dorn, the mindless mayor is gone, hopefully for good, and Jerry Hynds is the new mayor of the west end of the island and we fortunately still have Carson. Between the two mayors we should be able to get this island rolling again. The last mayor of the west end, I’ll refer to him as MM, did nothing in four years except waste taxpayers hard-earned money. It’s really a shame to say but he was totally worthless, everything he did was half assed and made no sense. Not one major accomplishment in 4 years. The mayor on the east end needs pages to list what he did with his 4 years in office. He did A LOT! The new mayor has his work cut out for him but he is an established businessman and can get things done. There is hope. My friend Nidia was selected for city council. This is great because we need a strong woman like her on our side.

However the Presidential election is not over. It was Nov 26th but they can’t seem to come to a conclusion on who won. I read they had one month, so the day after Christmas. There have been riots in the cities on the mainland, mass looting, tear gas, shots fired, people killed, police officers wounded, it’s ugly as hell over there. It has also disrupted service to the island. The ferry was shut down for a day or so because the roads to get to it were blocked by rioters, bridges were closed and a national curfew was put in place. The curfew was lifted for the Bay Islands if we could remain peaceful with NO marches or rallies.

They did a recount and still have not finished, or so they say. It’s really the lesser of two evils, the current President had “special” congressmen appointed after others were fired. They allowed him to run again, despite the fact the office was previously limited to one four-year term. The incumbent President is linked to Mel Zelaya who was ousted by the US. He’s a bad guy (so they say, what do I know, I live on an island) and the opposition is in his ring. Not good. I’m just happy we live here and not on the mainland, two different worlds. Here is an article on the situation if you are interested.

Enough with politics, I honestly hate them and am thrilled for the people who won on the island. It can only get better.

This is the beginning of busy season and initiating a curfew to tourists who just arrived is a sucky thing to do. So we escaped with no curfew, not that I care, I wasn’t going anywhere anyhow. It seems to have all leveled out and things are running as dysfunctionally normal as usual. Not a bad thing, just island life.

I saw someone post on FB that they were looking for a puppy for their family. I sent them photos of one of the pups we found. After the family saw the photos, they wanted her. Bill and I met them in Oak Ridge. Turns out when she said where they lived I knew the house and the color of it. They have 3 grown kids, Wyatt, Sidney and Abby(i)? Sweet kids, mom Gretta is thrilled to have this pup and her husband is in love with her also. It’s a definite win win for the dog and the family.

Abby and Bailey (that’s the name they chose for her)

I get FB messages from Gretta, the mother of the 3 kids and they feel their family has been blessed with Bailey. They absolutely adore her and are already making her dog treats. She is spoiled and loving it.

I’ve still been a homebody, spend more time here than anywhere. I would rather be with the dogs. Or the beach. With the weather being so miserable, I stay home. That and the fact my car’s rear end was practically falling off. All of the bushings were shot, even the differential had to be pulled. The car was rattling even before I hit any potholes. And let me tell you about the potholes. They are EPIC. There are spots in the road that you have to crawl and maneuver through at speeds slow enough to stall the damn car. I’m driving along, almost stalling and the whole right side of my car disappears into the cow burying sized rut in the side of the road. The view out the side window is mud and rocks and garbage. It’s not pretty. And you know what? I’m not lying or exaggerating at all. I am so sadly serious.

Ok, I’m currently having a dilemma. Inside this colored keyboard that Bill bought me is a

.—————————————jiiii++jkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkjkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

kkkkkkkkkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjk

jkjkjkkjkk—-

bug (the typing above is me trying to kill it). It’s crawling around and I can see it and it’s driving me crazy. I have used half a can of compressed air. It’s still alive. I’ve tried to stab it with the canned air nozzle thingy, still alive. I’m ready to hose this keyboard down! I have not seen it scurry amongst the lighted keys recently so I may not go overboard this evening. Unle, aaaaggggh. It’s still alive. ioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivv00-0—0. I got a steak knife and I think I stabbed it. Bill said it wasn’t a good idea to be murdering a bug in my keyboard with a steak knife. But hey, you do what you gotta do. Extremely annoying.

I follow a woman on Instagram called mrs_angemi, follow her!! She has a website called iheartautopsy.com. She posts crazy (gory kind of) photos of stupid shit people do or unusual accidents, broken bones, gun shot victims. I don’t find it gross at all, it’s so educational to see all the body parts she shows. Like this woman who decided to rinse her hands off WITH THE PRESSURE WASHER. Hello, did she NOT read my blog? Well, she turned the pressure way down but SOMEHOW it got turned way up and she blasted the hell out of her hand. The Doctors had to slice the hand up more than it was ripped to get the imbedded dirt out of it, then they sewed and stapled it closed. EeEeWWW. I was so freaking lucky. And we need to pressure wash again, this time I will wear my rain boots, promise.

*The next day

Before I could get carried away blogging last evening, my computer locked up again. It said I had no more space. I deleted my recycle bin which had 20,454 items in it. That took FOREVVVVER. So I went to bed. Bill informed me that I have photos from 2002 on my computer so he has me going through and deleting them to free up space. I made it to 2011 and quit, too boring and exhausting. It’s similar to work.

On Wed. a friend messaged me about a sick dog, I had no car so I messaged my friend Ana. She went and got the dog and took him to the vet. He was on his last legs, couldn’t even stand up.

How a human being can allow a dog to get to this condition baffles me. It makes me sick.

Look at his hip bones. I seriously could hurt whoever did this to this poor defenseless animal.

He was starving and severely dehydrated. Doc gave him several IV’s because the dog couldn’t swallow. Ana took him to her house and made him a bed of towels. Remember, this guy has been abandoned by some idiot and was left starving on the streets on Roatan. He was unable to keep food down so she was feeding him broth. He could barely swallow. Ana was giving him liquids with a syringe. Finally he was able to drink some broth the next day. When Ana would approach him he would wag his tail although he was still unable to get up. She messaged me this morning that he passed away last night. She is devastated as am I and all of the other dog lovers who were following this story on FB. So very sad. Ana blessed him with Holy Water and buried him in their pet cemetery. So heartbroken over the senseless cruelty animals endure at the hands of man.

I picked my car up at 5 on Wednesday so that I could do a Christmas thing with Nidia. All the rattles are fixed but now there is a weird noise in the brakes. I’ll take it back in next week.

When Nidia says she’s taking you somewhere you have never been, be prepared. I picked Andrea and Kenzie up at LFK after their day excursion from the cruise ship and we met Nidia at Bojangles. Andrea and Kenzie brought a TON of Santa hats and 43 backpacks filled with school supplies. (backpacks will be passed out when school begins again) We went to the Franco Flats area of Coxen Hole. When I parked my car I asked if we were walking up that and Nidia said yes and smiled. Knowing full well that my knee hates all hills.

The first thing I see is this poor iguana tied to the boys shirt. I wanted to steal it and take it to the iguana farm so it can live to be an old iguana.

This was the hill we had to climb. I had on flip flops. It was slippery mud. Some politician at some point laid a big concrete slab in the middle of the muddy hill. You can’t drive to it nor can you drive off of it up top. In fact you have to jump off the top. Utterly ridiculous waste of $$.

Kids carrying stuff up the hill. See the beach ball the kid on the left has? Denna brought a lot of them, I blew them up the other day and we had the kids help carry them up the hill. Bad idea. They vanished. Think of this when you see the little boy pouting.

View from the top. I did not walk up the road, my shoes were muddy and wet, too steep.

We had the adorable kids come down and carry stuff for us. Once we made it up this hill we had an incredible downhill to go.

We had just gotten to the top of the first hill, walked through here, passed a store on the right. Then we began the downhill part of the event.

this is going back up the hill from hell, and you can’t even see the worst part of it where the muddy steps were. I think I held onto a barbed wire fence carefully for support.

We walked through an area that had been devastated by the floods. The majority but not all of the homes down here are on stilts. The ones that aren’t didn’t fare too well.

A hammock in the mango tree. All you need is a bucket of water and a towel to wipe and rinse the mango juice off of your elbows.

The hill had steps made of slippery mud. Nidia said if I fell to land on my boobs so I would bounce. That works. We had to cross a few streams to get to our destination.

Stream 3, I didn’t take a pic of stream 2, which had you stepping on rice sacks filled with dirt to try to keep your feet dry. Stream 3 crossing required us to jump up a muddy bank on the other higher side of the stream with not a lot of area to land on. I set my sights on a fence rail wrapped in barbed wire. I told myself I was not grabbing the barbed wire and I did not touch it. Stream 4 was a recrossing of this same one, except we had a bridge made from the door of an old appliance, I think. As soon as you stepped across the appliance part and were on the mud again, there was a home right there. Sticking out of the home was a loop of barbed wire. And there was a tree on the roof and the wall fell over when the kids leaned on it.

This is the home right by the bridge made with the appliance door

This beauty found a bench to sit on and eat her hot dog

They all want their photos taken and then they want to see it. I love showing them photos of themselves.

This whole area was severely flooded in both of the recent floods. It was evident everywhere we went. Homes had ruts under them, the unlucky ones on ground level were still filled with mud. Not fit for anyone to live in. Once the kids got organized, we passed out Santa hats, hot dogs and juice, toys for the smaller kids and flip-flops to everyone we could fit. The babies got the small balls and the big beach balls kind of disappeared. (Thank you Denna for the 100 pair of flip-flops you brought us along with all the balls). After we were done with the festivities, we headed back up the hill and I took Andrea and Kenzie to Mahogany Bay to catch their boat back to NOLA. Thank you Andrea and Kenzie and Denna! You made a lot of kids happy today and that’s what this whole thing is all about.

Look at these steps. They are insane. I give major kudos to the builder of these, it must have taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to build them.

OK, here’s my pouter. I thought he was mad he had to wait for a hot dog. Not so..he wanted a beach ball.

He’s an adorable child. If it weren’t so impossible to get in there I would go look for him and take him a ball. Maybe after it dries up a bit I will.

We had 100 pair of sandals my friend Denna brought. We fit everyone that we had shoes for. There are some left that will be donated at Christmas.

That’s how I rock socks and flip-flops too, Zories to my friend Jeanie. And I even spelled your name right.

This was walking back down to my car. The piece of concrete is ridiculous. I walked the mud path along the concrete because by now the treads on my sandals were caked solid with slippery mud. This is Nidia’s sister Rosemary walking down.

And here it is Sunday and I’m still not finished with this blog. We did the 3rd part of the counter top re-finish yesterday. Saying we because I add comments to what colors are needed and mop up drips, Bill does the actual work. It’s epoxy resin.

This is what the counters looked like before. They were acid stained with a clear finish. The finish was terrible stuff and did not hold up well at all, it peeled, chipped, turned white, just got downright ugly. The edges in this photo have black and white epoxy on the edges.

This is the top of the bar after he poured 2 colors of epoxy on it.

After touching it with the torch but before any sprays of different colors

This is after some sprays of 90% alcohol with no color mixed in.

After some colors were sprayed on, copper, green and brown

Really difficult to get good photos with bar lights right overhead.

This is the top-level of the bar, it’s finished.

This is the lower level prior to refinishing

Smear it around a bit with a brush, a stick, a plastic putty knife, whatever.

Like I said before, impossible to really get a photo of how gorgeous this is.

It’s sunny out today, I couldn’t force myself to go to Mega Paca, the roads and the crowds are so bad that it just makes me bitchy all day if I go. Not worth it.

Off to the pool to read with cup of tea # 2.

How cute is this guy? He made himself a little snuggle area with a towel that was on the bed and promptly settled in for a nap. Max, you are a sweetheart!

Oh yeah, this is the alien it took me a week to dig out of the hole in my ankle. It’s just extremely hard calcified skin I think. When it’s still in my ankle I can’t have a sheet touch it, it hurts that much. Once I dig it out it’s fine until another one forms. One of these days I’ll get the plates and screws removed to see if that permanently kills the alien.

Nidia and I still have 2 Christmas parties to do. I have not put up one single decoration at my house, just not feeling it this year. Could be due to the counters being done and things have to be moved and set where they don’t belong or it just could be sheer laziness. I opt for the latter. We are going to a party on Christmas day at our friends home. They live really close to us. Miguel, our island friend is going to get 3 of his kids this coming Saturday. This is a big deal so we will make sure they each have a nice gift to open for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all. It’s the time of year when I miss my family so much, especially the boys.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Month: December 2017

I killed the Alien