I am not sure how many North Americans realize just how ridiculous they look to people in other countries always trying to be Politically Correct (PC). Free speech is no longer an option in the US as there is always some joker looking over your shoulder and telling you how to think, act, and what to say… or what not to say.

Like so many things in the US, PC seemed like such a good idea at the time, but then morphed into idiocy. It just got carried too far… kinda like trade unions, women’s lib and so many other truly good ideas gone bad. Good concepts… overdone.

Of all of them, one of the dumbest (in my opinion) is one of the more popular phrases spoken by young couples regarding a woman’s pregnancy. The PC thing to say is, “We are pregnant”.

Unless it is two women speaking these words, this is perhaps the most ridiculous statement one could utter. I have news for you. WE (the men) are NOT pregnant. YOU (the women) are! I have done pregnancies and it is not the man who has to pee every 11 minutes and who knows the location and condition of every bathroom within 50 miles of his home. It is not the man who cannot sleep at night because getting comfortable just ain’t a happenin’. It is not the man with sore feet, back pain and hemorrhoids. Now I suppose an argument could be made that a woman may not suffer the above issues in silence… but that is not always the case and in fact the many pregnant women I have known tended not to make their partners miserable with constant and ongoing commentary.

This is NOT the case with menopause. Menopause is interactive!

If you men really want to share an experience with your partner, I suggest menopause! I can testify to this! When that female person in your life is entering or is in menopause (which, by the way lasts years… not nine months of which only few are nasty), you may safely say to anyone “We are in menopause” and be dead on the money! You, my man, WILL be in menopause and I can assure you that any semblance between the women you married and the women living with you now and wearing your ring is purely coincidental.

I have had the pleasure of having three such women in my life, including the normally sweet and loving women to whom I am married. With the first two, I was hit, was screamed at, had one chase me in the kitchen with a knife… the list goes on.

ML is in menopause and I can assure you with no political correctness intended that WE are in menopause. It is a truly amazing experience. One moment ML is this sweet cuddly woman who then transforms, without notice, into this…. ummmm… thing. I say “thing” because all my training and education forsake me. I feel as if Rod Serling is somehow taking me in and out of my own personal Twilight Zone. I can I see my wife clearly, then she changes and sadly, I have no idea what is coming. This does not happen in the privacy of our home. Ohhh no! This happens in restaurants, grocery stores, the car and it never seems to be the same. No action is correct. If I keep still waiting for it to pass, I get the “you’re not listening” thing. If I speak, I am being rude. Nights are the best. There is no correct temperature in the house and I am informed of this between 3 and 142 times each night. Fan ON Fan OFF Blanket ON Blanket OFF Husband Sleeping Husband UP! Hold Me! Get Away! Any semblance between this and a pregnant wife is… well… there is none.

So WE change/try medicines. We try pills and dosages (Yes, I take them all as I hope one will make me sleep until she is out of menopause. In fact I wonder if the true story was that Rip Van Winkle had a menopausal wife!).

We try natural medicines that other women say will work like magic, They lie!

We are now trying this jelly stuff that she spreads on her arm! It smells exactly like that antiseptic hand gel you can buy. Supposedly, it absorbs. It does… after an hour. It also does not work. We change dosages. We increase… we decrease. She visits her doctor who commiserates, changes medicine and dosages, then checks her mutual fund to make sure she is heavily bought in to pharmaceuticals.

I think my average reader is perhaps not at the We Are Pregnant stage but maybe more in the We Are in Menopause stage… the Autumn of life.

But for you young men who truly want to “share” your wife’s experiences… just wait a while, like maybe twenty years or so, and remember my words. Only then will you truly understand the concept of sharing.

Me? I am still experimenting with her drugs. The good news is that I no longer have to shave as much. The bad news is that none of her prescriptions make me sleep. I think five years would be enough after which WE will no longer be in menopause!

ML has invited Costa Rica to come to our home for the annual tree decorating thing. Well of course she did not invite the whole country, just her relatives which is no more then ten percent of the people here. My son, his wifey and my granddaughter are coming too, so there will be some representation from North America. I invited some childless friends to attend but they suddenly had other things to do. Even free booze could not budge them when faced with 20 plus children.

A large number of these people will be under the age of 15. Maria has been cooking for two days and the house smells super. Maritza baked a cake last night, but had to bake another one today as I sort of ate the one from yesterday. My sweet tooth coupled with chocolate is an issue around here… and especially around the holidays.

I actually love these parties. Ticos do know how to enjoy a party and my wife’s family, with a few notable exceptions, are great people. Christmas is for kids and I am generally popular with the youngsters who may confuse my stomach with that of Senior Clause, especially after that cake episode!

I am not going to rehash what it is like at these parties as I have blogged about this here and here, so you can just click those links if you need background on the cultural differences I face at party time.

I cannot believe I bought an artificial tree! When I lived up North, buying the tree was an event! We almost always traveled away from Chicago to the tree farms in northern Illinois and cut exactly the right one. It always stayed fresh and of course it was “perfect”. We returned home with frozen feet and warm hearts. I would build a fire in the fireplace and then enjoy hot chocolate with marshmallows!

Here, you too can cut it fresh, and we have done that in past years. The issue is the trees, while true “pine” trees, are skinny and just do not “look” like Christmas trees! The fresh ones lasted of course, but the lot-bought ones kinda faded early. The really good ones, imported from the US are very expensive so we just decided the go artificial.

ML picked a nice style that came with 1,000 lights. It is now in the garage awaiting the tree decorating thing tomorrow.

As there is “some” assembly required, it may be smart to go unpack it and get the tree and the lights up and ready, leaving the hanging of balls, tinsel, whatever for tomorrow. Ticos have a reputation of sorta getting sauced early, especially if the booze is free, and the thought of another badly decorated tree makes me tend to the cautious side.

So tomorrow represents our start to the Christmas holidays, and I want to wish Happy Holidays to my readers and to anyone who has mis-clicked and found this blog by accident.

I like these things. My friend Ri sent this to me, and I in turn sent it to a bunch of folks… All have had a blast. All are amazed.

ML and I see the same thing! Do you and your partner? Which way is the dancer turning? To the left (clockwise) or to the right? Can you see both?

Visit this link to read more. Have fun with this/

I have an immediate issue with this. First, I have been to Puntarenas several times over the years, mostly to take the ferry that departs from there to cross the Gulf of Nicoya to a really nice part of Costa Rica. Every time I have gone there, I told myself I will not go there again. Every time I go again, there is some overwhelming reason why I do go there again, in this case, the wife.

Might as well get this over with now as I know I am going to lose the battle. “No… I really don’t want to go. Silly to drive all the way there just for a 7 PM meeting, then return.”. “We can spend the night!”, says she. Great. Just what I want to do. “So what is the name of the hotel?” says I, knowing that Puntarenas is not a exactly hotbed of tourist activity. “The Portobello” says she “or something like that”.

It is pointless to argue this, so rather than risk the obvious result, I give in. “OK, I’ll go”. She is happy. I am…. umm, doubtful.

So I call my trusty Costa Rica based travel agent and ask if he knows this hotel. He says he has never heard of it. It is not a good sign when a travel agent actually located here in Costa Rica does not know a place.

OK, I Yahoo it (Yahoo being the only search engine that actually gives a hotel’s web site rather than 3,298 travel agents as does Google). Nothing! A few TA’s give very little info. I am now really worried.

It gets worse. We are going to leave San Jose at about 2 PM for the 2 hour trip to Puntarenas. The problem of course, is that we are in the middle of what some advertising guy has dubbed “The Green Season”, a really clever way of saying that it rains like a sonovabeech every afternoon. I am powerless to stop what I am sure will be a disastrous overnight stay.

So Thursday rolls around, and we find ourselves in the car heading for dismal, smelly Puntarenas and the probably no-star Portabello. It begins to rain as we leave the house. No biggie. Just normal for this time of year.

I hop on the Pan American Highway near our home and plug in the iPOD to ease the way. However, about 45 minutes later, as we pass San Ramon and begin the gentle ascent into the mountains, it begins to really come down hard… like no visibility hard. Traffic comes to a near halt as we edge up the mountain. We proceed at about 15 KPM (about 10 MPH) for what seems like an eternity. This two hour trip will soon be a 4 hour adventure.

Past the peak and heading down the other side, I begin to really worry about what this rain is doing to the mountains. It is very common at any time, but especially in heavy rains to be exposed to a derrumba, or landslide. Derrumba actually is a word that I think means to demolish… but here it is used to describe these landslides where earth and often huge rocks fall from great heights. I am giving this some serious thought and I conclude that if there is a landslide, our only course of action would be to place our heads between our knees and kiss our butts goodbye. There is no place to go.

As I complete this thought process, there is an E N O R M O U S crash and this huge bolder lands on the highway about 5 inches outside the passenger side door. Luisa and I jump so hard we hit our heads. The boulder does not move. Does not roll or touch the car and we glide safely on by hoping to get soon to anywhere that we can change our underwear. Another foot or so and I am a widower. Another three feet and my kids get to read the will earlier than expected. Oh well…

The rain does not let up and we eventually take the turn-off to Puntarenas. We have semi-directions that tell us that the hotel is just past the Yacht Club. To even think there is a Yacht Club in Puntarenas is pretty funny,but lo and behold, there it is. The Puntarenas Yacht Club in living color. Go figure.

Another couple of hundred yards gets us to the Portabello. We drive in to register and ML hops out to go to the registration desk. It is barely visible. I am thinking power outage, but then I realize that the light source is perhaps a 40 watt bulb suspended in the lobby. Not a good sign.

She finishes registering and we head to our room.

It is worse than I imagined. First, you could smell it before you actually got there. As my male readers undoubtedly know, many men’s bathrooms have a roundish disk emitting some “disinfectant” odor, conveniently placed in the urinals. In fact, I was always told that you could tell a really “tough bar” if you saw the men’s room sign that said, “Please do not eat the big white mint!”. Anyway…Our room has that same odor… a STRONG odor. I am wondering if there is a negative star rating.

There are two queens beds, but I am not at all comfortable with the thought of actually touching them. I say this as there are many things moving around on the walls. Some are mosquitoes… others…?

The toilet seat is not screwed down. I can tell this from my wife’s scream as one cheek plunges downward.

She wants to shower, even more so after the toilet seat incident. Sadly, all there is is a suicide shower. For those of you not knowledgeable on this, it is common in Costa Rica to NOT have a water tank for all hot water needs. Many showers (though normally NOT in hotels), are equipped with a coil type device that heats the cold water as it passes through. This might be an OK thing if you thought for one minute that this device was attached to a good earth ground, something that is found almost never in Costa Rica. Thus the term, “suicide shower”. She forgoes the shower.

I walk her to the hotel conference room that is amazingly located off a very nice looking restaurant overlooking the water! HUH? THIS is a shock and makes no sense whatsoever! Here is this very nice appearing eatery part of a hotel that you would choose only if you had no other choice. Why the hell the owners would not invest in upgrading the rooms is a question that must go unanswered. Some stuff is just inexplicable here in the tropics!

The moment she enters the conference room, I am G O N E. I jump in the car and head out looking for other accommodations knowing that there are but three chances I will sleep in that place. Slim, fat and none.

Heading back out of Puntarenas, I see a sign for the Fiesta Hotel and Casino and I lose no time in getting into the lobby to check availability. There is S P A C E! I nearly break my wrist getting my credit card out and in five minutes, I am back in my car heading back into Puntarenas to collect my wifey. While she is busy presenting, I am packing and loading the car. As she steps out of her meeting, I grab her and we are on our way to our news digs!

Now the Fiesta is an all inclusive hotel. Normally, that means crummy food and not too clean rooms. I am happy to say that our room was very clean and spacious and the food, while certainly not award winning, was at least quite acceptable. There are nice facilities, tennis courts, and maybe 38 swimming pools. In fact, the Fiesta must have the largest baby pool in the world. It covers about an acre and has islands and trees!

So… the rest of the weekend took a upward turn! We stayed a couple more days. ML aged herself nicely by the pool and returned to me every daily a darker shade of woman. Love those tan lines!

The bar had wireless so I kept my businesses going during twice a day visits while sucking down umbrella drinks.

Wudda been nice to have Internet in the rooms… but that may be asking too much… this being Puntarenas!

The bird’s name is Qui Qui. It is a yellow naped amazon parrot and it (we are not sure of the sex) is bilingual and quite likely, bi-polar. ML spends hours with the thing, singing to it, changing the cage, teaching to say new things, giving it treats. The bird hates her. I on the other hand pretty much ignore the bird. If convenient, I’ll share a nut or something.

The bird loves me. In fact, I am the only person who can even get near the thing. If I am anywhere out on the terrace, the bird will slide down the edge of its cage and walk over (can fly but prefers to walk) to wherever I am sitting and crawls up my leg and sit on my arm, shoulder… whatever.

The bird has a daily diet of the usual seeds and stuff. It also gets chicken and who knows what else. My wifey, you see, believes that parrots pretty much like anything she does, so the bird also gets toast and coffee each morning.

I have tried to communicate to her that parrots (as far as I know) do not normally consume coffee and toast in the wild and I sorta doubt that chicken, cooked or not, is on the recommended food list for parrots. I could be wrong about this of course. Anyway, it would appear the bird is now addicted to caffeine as it is positively grumpy until Maria has brought it its coffee and toast each morning.

The bird is also a thief and given the chance, will pickpocket you in a thrice. Actually, this is not accurate. It pickpockets ME and I have lost keys, cash, and other items to this creature. However, it appears very healthy and happy and looks MUCH better than nearly all of the loras (parrots) I have seen here.

Pirolina is my dog. I guess I should say she WAS my dog until “that woman” moved in (this references my wife), after which she promptly became HER dog.   This sort of irritates me as dogs are supposed to be loyal. Ha.  She was foisted off on me by my friend Beverly whose son found her 80% dead under a bridge.

Here is a home movie taken about 4 years ago (before SHE moved in and stole my dog). Like most home movies, it is boring to anyone except family. Here Piro, then just a puppy, is playing with Georgie, one of our two Abyssinian cats. Watch only if you have absolutely nothing better to do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the morning when we get up and when ML gets home from work, you cannot hear yourself think as all the animals start making noises at the same time.   I guess that is good huh?  My family circus.  Gotta love it.

As spiders meet the more-than-four leg requirement above, they fall into the “keep them the hell away from me” category.

Maria Luisa, my bride of almost two years, does not have these issues. She thinks spiders are neat, and in fact all bugs are just wonderful. This, as you may imagine, sometimes brings conflict into our relationship. I prefer the “squash ‘em now” approach, while she would invite them to dinner and prepare something special. I am not permitted to hit them with a shoe or she has told me she will hit ME with a shoe. This applies even when we are visited by humongous tarantulas the size of a baseball glove. (Click to enlarge photos)

Those of you who are parents know the various shouts and screams of your own kids. Parents can almost always tell a whiney cry from the real deal. Same thing goes with Piro our dog. So last night while we were snuggled in bed watching TV, Piro goes “Woof”. Not multiple woofs, but just one. That is NOT good sign and we ran out into the hall. Piro was in her “pointer” mode used to tell us there is some weird stuff happening and we better deal with it or she will.

There, waiving his (her) little feelers at me was this big black (later to be determined as more brownish) tarantula about the size of a cell phone but with a lot more hair.

In my head, Harry Belefonte is singing “… very deadly black tarantula…” and I am going for the shoe.

“NO!” says the bug queen. “We must capture it!”. “Oh yeah,” says I, “Like the spider you captured last night in your bare hands? The one that bit you?”. “Si!” says she, “But be careful this one doesn’t bite you! It will hurt terribly!”.

Ummm. OK… thanks for that.

In a thrice I have returned from the kitchen with plastic container with top. “NO!” Screams she. “We put food in that!”

It is good to know that my bug crazy bride has some boundaries! She gives me that disgusted wife-look known by all husbands while thinking, I am sure, “Why did I marry so far down the food chain?”, and is off to the kitchen to bring back another plastic container that we apparently do not eat from.

It is now my job to coax this monster into the cup thingy. As you might imagine, the spider has his (her) own feelings about this process, and I learn two truly important things. First, Tarantulas can move a lot faster than they do on like Animal Planet and second, I can move a faster than I ever imagined on this planet.

However, I was fairly sure that despite my wife’s thinking I was in fact higher up the food chain than spider, I could capture this baby as charged! I surround it (yeah, right) and eventually get it into the container and placed the newly punctured top in place.

I decide to take a peek at the mother! I carefully lift the top and look in. Spidey does not move. I am not sure which end is which. Niether head nor tail!

Now the dumb part…Why I ever did what I did next, I’ll never know. Maybe she was right about the food chain thing. Anyway, I decide I want to KNOW which end is which, so I reach in and touch it with a pen tip. This time I learned three important things!

First, Tarantulas can jump, second, olde people can too, and third, if you make a paste of dry detergent and water, it is useful for removing many organic based stains from underwear.

Anyway, after recapturing the damned thing, we all go to bed (the tarantulas in his/her own room) and try to sleep.

Bright and early this morning, I take the thing out to a vacant lot (but conveniently next to a neighbor we do not particularly like ) and free this fellow. The Great White Hunter again conquers the jungles of Costa Rica!

Like many of you, I have been watching closely the unfolding events surrounding the mysterious death of Anna Nicole, Ex Playboy Bunny, alleged (and successful if true) gold digger, and TV personality, whose estimated net worth is around half a billion dollars.

Of course, my thoughts are mostly with our daughter and heir to those big bucks, Dannielynn. Yes, that is not a misprint. OUR daughter.

Time to confess. I know this will come as a shock to my readers (all 12 of you), to my family and friends, but most of all to my dear wife. But I must now “come clean”. With the death of Anna, I am now released from my promise to keep mum about our brief time together and the love child we created on the white sand beaches of Costa Rica.

I feel I must now come forth and accept my paternal responsibility (AND of course my responsibility to handle the financial affairs of our child!).

Who wudda thunk that Anna Nicole was a fan of Blog’s and more important, had been following my writing since 2002. Amazing, but true!

I was so surprised to receive her email almost two years ago. She was almost shy in her approach, but clearly, she felt “connected” to the man writing about his life in Costa Rica. “We HAVE to meet!”, I could almost hear her breathlessly saying those words. My heart raced faster.

“But I am taken” sez I. “I am happily married to a beautiful Tica whom I adore”.

“I KNOW” sez she. “It was your love expressed in words that drew me to you. I want to meet you, embrace you. I cannot imagine living without you. I am planning a trip to Costa Rica, and I want you to be my personal guide”.

Well to make a long story short, we DID meet and spent a long weekend together at her deluxe hotel in Guanacaste passing much of the time on the steamy hot beach. The passion never ceased!

Sadly, we had to part. She had her life and I had mine. Two worlds that were never to be one. Some weeks later, I received the news. She was pregnant with our love child. Of course I offered to do “the right thing”, but she broke gently the news that our love could never be… that she did not want to be the person who broke up another woman’s marriage. I was crushed.

Now, I must fess up to Maria Luisa. I am fairly sure she will forgive my indiscretion, especially when she hears about the cool 500 million bucks!

Please, dear readers… wish me well.

anna nicole

Now all you North Americans, don’t even START on how sad you are that we have temps in the 50′s. If you’re still living there, it is because you want to. We Costa Rica transplants have voted NO SNOW and that includes NO COLD. We don’t even DO furnaces here.

Anyway, ML will be home soon… so that means we either go to Thanksgiving Dinner or to bed… either is fine with me!

I explained to Maria that should Shakira decide to come to Costa Rica searching desperately for a 60+, overweight Gringo with whom she could spend her declining years, I would have to consider leaving my wonderful wife… forthwith. Well I tried to say that, but I didn’t know how to say forthwith in Spanish. For those of you who know not who is shakira, read on…

Skakira is arguable THE sexiest person of the female persuasion anywhere on the face of the earth.

She is about 30, gorgeous, from Columbia, and can do things with her voice AND her body that quite frankly are not normal. It is the body stuff that sort or causes those sleepless nights.

Shakira is actually Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, born in Barranquilla, Colombia on February 2, 1977 of a Columbian mother and a Lebanese father. She is known simply as Shakira (the Arabic translation meaning “Woman of Grace”).

A quick view of the video below will prove this to be 100% accurate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The title of the song is “Hips Don’t Lie”, and I am here to tell you that HER hips will embed themselves in your mind and other locations whether you are of the male or female persuasion. Those hips are incapable of untruths!

You can have your Madonna, Brittany, whom-evers… for they are but pretenders, wannabes, and frankly… not very good ones when compared to the real thing.

Maria seems to not put much credence in my threat to leave her should Shakira come aknockin’, probably with good cause. The odds are a tad low that Shakira would ever become that desperate. That, or maybe she has some secret performer stuck in her mind.

With the enormous popularity if this video come the other pretenders like the foxy lady below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the other hand… perhaps I’ll just stick with what I have.

So off she goes, mas o menos sin ropa, to the patio where she can get a better looksy. Next thing I hear is a scream to “come quick” and in her best Ricky Ricardo Spanish (way to fast for me to understand), that “there is something big and alive in the back yard”. Clearly, this was not the pool!

So off I dash (anybody still use the word dash?) to see what this is about. Well there WAS something out there in the rain and cold and it was 1. NOT happy with the dog’s attention and 2. Crawling toward a tree in the corner of the property.

Piro had found an owl (buho) who was evidently hurt or very sick.

ML ran for the camera while I tried to find a thick towel so I could capture it. I needed the towel because something clicked in my memory that owls have strong beeks, nasty claws and an unwillingness to be captured even by those humans with good intentions. Thank you Discovery Channel or Animal Channel!
ML and I got back to the yard just in time to see our owl make it to the piña bush. For those of you who know not a piña bush, they are a nasty little tree that has a ton of sticky things and when touched, can make you a very unhappy camper indeed.

The rain was coming harder, but we had little choice but to wait until morning and try to find it again.

One thing though… it appeared to be a baby and that made sleep all the more difficult.

At 5:30 next morning we were in the back yard. ML was convinced our baby owl had fled, but I was less sure as for the brief time I saw it, it appeared to have a broken wing, and our back yard is surrounded by a ten foot concrete wall that would not be negotiable without the ability to fly.

Sure enough, our owl was perched in a low tree, wet and not looking at all happy. I reached in and dropped a bath towel around her (him?), avinding the beek and claws. It seemed though that the owl was far more interested in being wrapped in a warm towel than fighting the big gringo. It did have a broken wing though, so I am sure that effected its flight or fight reaction.

We decided the best place to take a wounded bird was Zoo Ave.

Zoo Ave is an incredible zoo here in Costa Rica, but something very few tourists ever visit. The times I have been there, it was almost all Costa Rican visitors. This is a shame as Zoo Ave is a marvelous place covering 59 hectares of beautifully landscaped grounds. It is also a wildlife rescue center for injured wildlife.

It sports a HUGE bird collection (the largest in Central America) including numerous toucans, cranes, curassows, parrots, more than 100 other Costa Rican bird species. Zoo Ave is one of only two zoos in the world to display the amazing and resplendent quetzals. (See photo left. Click it to enlarge). There are also crocodile, deer, turtles, ostrich, tapirs, peccaries, pumas, and all the indigenous monkeys in large enclosures. Anyway… Back to the bird!

I had to wait a few hours for the zoo to open, so I decided to keep our little friend in the towel inside a laundry hamper in our closet where it would be dark, quiet and catless. However, when I later went to get her, she was GONE! This, of course, was impossible as it is a small walk-in closet. After 5 minutes of searching, I found her nestled in my shoe! Well I told you she was small! (that and I have big feet).

So I head out to Zoo Ave and meet up with Ingrid who looks exactly like someone sent over from Hollywood casting when a “zoo worker” was required). Our little owl was still all wrapped up in the towel, but undaunted, Ingrid just picks her up bare handed and the bird seemed delighted to just sit on her palm. It seems our owl was very sick indeed and thus not prone to biting. She also told me our little owl was not a baby, but a full grown adult! Ingrid told be they get hundreds of owls and other wild creature brought to the zoo every year.

I signed her over to the zoo which seemed odd, but Ingrid explained that after this little owl is all better (which she assured me was very likely), the bird will be reurned to our yard! Seems they always try to return any injured animal to the placed where it was found.

We are going to wait a while and call Ingrid to get an update. Cool story huh? More later!