Things That Do Not Go Bump in the Night

Every morning before breakfast my husband dust mops the house while I cook breakfast— God, I love that man.  (He also does dishes, but I don’t want to make you too jealous.) One morning on his rounds he called me outside to our wide porch. “Look,” he said, pointing at the corner of the veranda.“What

Book Review is Live

My review of Liz Stephens’ stunning memoir The Days Are Gods is live over at The Internet Review of Books. I’ve written about this book before, so I was very pleased when IRB picked up the review. It is definitely worth reading– the book (and the review).

21 Ways You Know You’ve Lived in Rural Costa Rica Longer than “A While”

  This piece first appeared in The Costa Rican Times  August 19, 2013. It appears to have taken on a life of its own; so far it’s had 55 shares on the CRT website and who knows how many others after that. We write and send our babies out into the world where they either

Keeping Food Fresh in the Tropics

Tired of moldy cheese, weevil infested pasta, and soggy chips? My article about keeping food fresh in the tropics is live over at The Costa Rican Times.

“Franklin”

We have known him since he was small, maybe six or seven, I’d guess. If my husband and I were passing through Puerto Viejo, often as not we would find him on the side of the road with his oversized pants bunched up with a cord, his flip-flops coming apart, his thumb out. The first

Cédula Renewal Wars

Last week my husband and I endeavored to renew our Costa Rican cédulas de residencia, the national ID card. I called the Banco BCR hotline, BCRCITA (900-003-4639), for an appointment. Aside from the call costing 300 colones a minute, and being immediately put on hold because, “dear customer, all available operators are busy, please be

This, Our Year of Renewal

Allowing official documents to lapse in Costa Rica is a nightmare, which is why I keep close tabs on them. When I saw four items pop up on my computer’s calendar this past January, I groaned. My poor husband asked what was wrong. When I explained, he wasn’t very sympathetic but he never deals with

Present Tense, Two Memoirs

I am a serial reader, so more often than not I have at least two books on my bedside table (or on my Kindle). This past week I finished reading two debut memoirs, Torre DeRoche‘s Love With A Chance of Drowning and Liz Stephens‘ The Days Are Gods. These are vastly different, these two memoirs,

Gilbert, McPhee, Lamott, and the Shitty First Draft

“If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this, if your prose seems stillborn and you completely lack confidence,

Ants, and A Mild Case of Insanity

If I can get rid of ants, anyone can. As those of you who read this blog know, we live in the jungle. I’ve often said our kitchen is one inch from nature; one inch is the thickness of our single-wall constructed house and our native hardwood flooring. The One Inch precept has made me a