is there a secret i'm missing?

This 'no walking' thing is impossible with 4 horribly behaved puppies.

Especially when you wake up to great piles of crap you have to pick up.

Then, if dealing with that didn't hurt enough, at first glance, I thought there was vomit all over the couch.

Upon nearing the sofa, I found out otherwise.

No, it was my entire bag of quinoa strewn from one end to the other.

Do you know how hard it is to sweep up quinoa?

It becomes static and flies everywhere when you brush it.  It doesn't go into the sweeping pan.

You know Mexican Jumping Beans?  It's sorta the same.

So, after I picked up the great masses of dog droppings on the floor, ...

... have you SEEN the size of the thug and the donkey?!?! imagine the poops ...

... I went to work on the quinoa.

Only to find, somebody with four legs had peed on the other side of the couch.

We're back to that again now, are we?  I thought we passed that puppy phase and everyone was allowed back on the couch again!

Oh, this couch is not ours.

The crap was beside it.

The piss was on it, and yes, there was quinoa in the piddle.

The quinoa was torn apart and pushed from one end to the other, and I sure hope the Fuzzy Family had a good time with the quinoa party, destroying a good chunk of my food that I don't have the strength to get up and cook.

No, this couch is not ours.

It belongs to them.

Those stinky little bastards we love so much.

How do we love such horrible creatures?!?!?!?

I did my best and cleaned up the crap, sopped up the piss, pouring vinegar on in hopes of squelching the putrid aroma that will fester in this heat for days to come, then swept as much quinoa as the pain would allow me.

"Rest.  No walking," the surgeon said.

Right.

I'll get to that after I go speak with Our Fave's Mom and Little Angel who are at the gate.

They know how to reel me in, and I'm just not rude enough to wave people away.

Sure, I'll walk so you can show me the gorgeous little boy with eyes from the heavens that entice me into watching this little tyke grow.

Oh, make sure to bring WeeHeart with all her enchanting energy as well, so that I couldn't possibly say, "I can't talk today," and follow my doctor's orders.

And for sure, bring along someone from the village so that I can't have a private conversation with you about the fact that your family has been lying to us and we can't be godparents with dishonest people.

"Rest.  No walking."

Who the hell on this earth can do this?!?!?  Can you?!?!?  How the fuck is this even possible?!?!?

If you know how to do this, please, enlighten me.

"Rest.  No walking."

Sure, right after I let the people in to come fix the washing machine, because our clothes stink so bad, you can smell them in Canada.

"Rest.  No walking."

Oh look!  Pescado Pal is at the gate wanting to sell me his hard working wares he caught in the ocean.

I've been up since 9, but it's now 12:30 and this is the first time I've rested my ankle.

"Rest.  No walking."

Well, my foot looks pretty swollen again.  This is not a good sign.

Neither is the pain that's shooting, or the throbbing that accompanies it.

Oh, but I'll rest.

Later.

i am capable of making healthy choices

life is too short

No volunteering with medicine for dogs yesterday.

A monsoon hit!

Pool got filled, plants got fed, and me?  I spent the day in bed.

I thought I would cancel the day after I shed a few tears.

People can be so mean.

I left the queer 'community' once before, because it just seemed so toxic.

I returned thinking that perhaps it was just those that I encountered at that time of my life.

Well, this time around, I found even more poison than I did before.

I don't know what it is, but some of the meanest people I've ever met are in the queer 'community'.

At the same time, I've met some of the nicest people as well.  People that would lift me up higher than anything the nasty ones could put me down for.

With the proverbial 'mean girls', bullies and power mongers, there will never be anything I can do right.

No matter what I do in my life, they will take it, turn it, twist it into something else, to attempt to prove me to be bad and selfish.

But not the lovely people.

They confirmed what my heart knows; I'm a good person.

Nobody can take that away from me.

Apparently, I'm bad for ENJOYING teaching children for free.  If I enjoy it, then it's only for my own gain.  Of course I gain!  How could I not?  These children make me happy and I teach them a skill.  We BOTH gain.

If I buy crab and lobster from Pescado Pal, the money goes to support his family and I get a meal I could never afford in Canada.  I don't haggle with him, I pay what he asks and we BOTH gain.

And to you who tried to silence me for my honesty?  I will continue to speak for those who are too afraid to do so, for fear of being hurt and ostracized.

I'm not afraid of bullies.  They're really nothing to be afraid of, as they are just weak people who try to build themselves up and above another person because their self-esteem is so low.

Strong people lift others up, instead of trying to pull people down to their level of misery.

I'd prefer to be equal, thank you very much.

My moment of hurt was healed by splendid hearts yesterday.

Then a little more so with a good chat with my Eternal Friend later on.

I am finding that the stronger and happier we are, there will always someone who wishes to attempt to take it away from us and steal our light.

I have even seen it in this blog.

When life is pummelling me to the ground, my readership spikes and I triple the amount of hits I get.

When life is good, it's the happy people who come to see what's up in our zany life of never ending entertainment.

Some people feed off the bad.

All I know is, I'm happy, and the 5 people I deleted from my cyber life yesterday will never take that away.

Hell, I could die tomorrow!

I'm not going to waste my precious last breaths on the 'mean girls' or the Hen Peckers.

I'll vent about it today, and then tomorrow, I'll probably have something wonderful to write about in this amazing life I am only fortunate enough to have created for myself.

You can hate me for enjoying my life if you want.  It's your choice as to how much sickness you want to spread.  I used to be that angry as well.  So, I understand.

We just had an earthquake while I was writing this.  Obviously, not too horrible for me to stop writing, but scary enough that it reminds me of how short our lives can possibly be here.

I forgive everyone who is troubled enough to try to knock me down, but I really don't have time for the negativity anymore.

Life is too short to look at anything other than the positive.

I'll continue doing good and receiving good feelings from it, no matter what you think of me.

Because you know what?

people admire me

if i was a fish.

Time to get crackin' on my Spanish!!

If I learn enough that the people at Dream Project can understand me better, and vice versa, I could possibly have a job teaching music in September.

For a month, I'm going to be the teacher's aid to the man who organizes the Dominican Republic Jazz Festival, in hopes I will learn musical terms in Spanish, so I can work with the kids.

Talk about needing to step it up!  I have 2.5 months to really get going.

One woman working there gave me a really good tip to start me off: read children's books.  Perfect!

They had a free public library there, so I picked a few up and I'll be starting with the Spanish book, "If I Was a Fish."  Awesome!

If I was a fish, I wouldn't need to learn Spanish.

If I was a fish, music would be nothing to me.

If I was a tadpole, I'd be lying belly up in the relief water from our pool.

Papi and I were putting the dreaded chemicals in to clean the cesspool that was greener than my lime tree, when he yelled out, "We have a problem!"

I went to see the matter.

Oh, but did we ever have a dilemma.

Hundreds of tiny tadpoles swimming around in the overflow area of our pool, that looked like sperm looking for an egg to attack.

We were BOTH terrified that they were ALL cane toads, and that we'd have dog killers growing in our back yard.

So, somebody had to do the deed.

I just couldn't do it.

Even though I know a cane toad can kill my dogs, I just can't kill the cane toad.

Papi put the horrid, raunchy chemicals, that make me itch just thinking about them, in the water.

A short while later, there they were, dead.

Only one left with the strength to give a flick of his little tail.

It felt awful, but damn!

Then a short while later, there was the salad I made with the fresh lobster I bought from my Pescado Pal.

I had just put the onions, tomatoes and fish in when I was called out of the kitchen by Mr. Sincere, who was fixing the system to our swamp water people would normally call a pool.

I came back in and there was Pathetic Puppy on the ground, already finished all the lobster, and working on the onions and tomatoes.

Not sure if you know this, but onions can be lethal to dogs.

So never mind the cane toad.

Nope, I almost killed our puppy.

Papi and I panicked like lunatics, googling everything we could find about inducing vomit after ingesting onions and how much to give.

We crammed that hydrogen peroxide down her throat and waited for the puke to arrive.

We waited.

Nothing.

Not only is she demon spawn who destroys all my underwear, bras, papers, cords, reusable shopping bags ...

... oh the list goes on ...

... but she has a stomach of steel.

What dog doesn't puke up hydrogen peroxide?

What dog can eat half an onion and still be running around like a lunatic?!?!?!

Pathetic Puppy.

She is the devil, with an iron gut.  I'm sure SHE wouldn't die from a cane toad.

Anyway, for the time being, if the boss at Dream Project says I'm in, I will be having my transportation paid for to get to the school that is a half hour away, as well as some meals covered and perhaps a little bit to compensate for my time spent eagerly working toward a job.

Hence, I will be fervently practising my Spanish for a while.

If I work hard and all goes well, I will have my first full time job in September.

Life really is moving.

I'm ready, even if those butterflies in my tummy tell me otherwise.

i am confident of my capabilities, expertise and know-how

rubbish!!!

... your sunday sillies are HERE as for some reason, blogger can't find them.  i'll update later when it's behaving ...

I have 3 ways to beat the garbage problem so far, but it looks like I found a fourth.

First, I found a local who can use all my glass.  I've been saving the jars we use from pasta sauce, or ready to drink juices that we seem to drink aplenty in this heat.

The Housemaid knows someone who could use them to sell their wares, so with ABSOLUTE glee I put them into a bag and handed them over.

Then, I emailed the 4 people I know here who are also fortunate enough to have the money to buy ready made foods and drinks from a store, sold in glass jars.

I'll be collecting them for these folks, even I don't know who the vendors are.

Hopefully, I'll find enough people to do the same, that word will spread and other vendors will want them as well!

The second way, is after the fiesta, I learned that Our Favourite's family has pigs.

Pigs like veggie scraps.

So, I have eliminated produce scraps from the garbage, as I save them and bring them over to the pigs.

It also gives me an excuse to visit those little sty dwellers.  How I love them!  It will be a sad day when I notice one 'missing'.

Anyway, I don't have a composter here, and I'm still getting used to plain old watering of plants!

Maybe one day I'll have one, but for now, it doesn't fester in my garbage, becoming a watery mess, seeping through the bag into the bottom of the can, and the pigs get more food.

Third, I've been saving all of Papi's 1/2 gallon orange juice cartons ...

... again ... boy do we go through a lot of juice here ...

... and cutting an opening in the side, and saving them for more veggie garden space.

I'm a little afraid I now have more garden boxes than I can think of what to do with, so perhaps I'll give them to people in the village for their own little gardening projects?

I dunno.  But I keep saving them.

Then!  I had the problem of Papi's plastic pop bottles.

What to do with those gargantuan piles of trash that took up half the casita because my love has a soda addiction?!?!

Well, I thought I'd put them outside our door in a box and see if someone would take them.

Someone did!  So, I'm saving my garbage from a lot of stuff right now.

There's one problem.

We're not changing our garbage as quickly as we were, so the throw aways from that damn fish I cooked yesterday are festering in the garbage, and it's only half full.

It will take a few more days to get through this garbage bag before I can remove it from our space, unlike how we were going through one bag in two days prior to now.

I'm terrified to throw anything new away, as when the trash can opens, the stench of fish remains permeate throughout the house for a good 10 minutes.

I didn't have the time to ask Our Favourite's dad if pigs eat fish before I chopped that bugger up, so in my can it went.

I'm saving on garbage space, but stinking up the whole house.

Something that I realized as I went to cook that fresh fish from my Pescado Pal, I've never prepared a fish before.

I've seen it done a few times, but without hands on training, well, I'm definitely less than a pro.

I went through 3 knives before I found a suitable one to cut the head and tail off.

Never mind the spiky things on it's spine that were jabbing me every move I made.

Definitely good to ward of predators in the ocean.

Warding me off just fine.

I didn't do a very good job of removing the meat from the bone, but after all the trouble I went to with that food, I had a nice little meal and felt so good for having the fresh protein in my blood system.

But of course, I ate chocolate while I cooked it.

Now, I just need to find someone who wants used paper, wet animal food tins and pop cans, and plastic containers, like that of the cashews we buy every time we're in Santiago.

Bit by bit, I'm at the start of something.

Maybe one day it will be big.

i am filled with success