The Girly Gene

Right before my daughter was born, I got worried, and not just because the nurses kept telling me that she had an exceedingly large head circumference.  I was worried because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make her girly.  As a tomboy myself, I knew she wasn’t going to get the girly from me.  She definitely wasn’t going to get it from her two older brothers, who were already old enough to find burping hysterical and farting near-fatal.  I didn’t even have any friends with little girls, so the best I could let myself hope for was Tatum O’Neal in the Bad News Bears.

Six years later, and I can reveal something that not even scientists are aware of.  Or maybe they are, I can’t be bothered to check.  There is a gene – called the Girly Gene – which can determine girliness just as sure as eye color is determined by, uh, the eye-color gene.  This must be the case, because this little creature that I am raising exhibits enough girliness to make even Zsa Zsa Gabor blush.  But I’ll let the evidence speak for itself.

A few nights ago, she asked me if she could set the table for dinner.  Naturally, I agreed.  As my husband was away, the meal I was preparing for myself and the kids was informal, to say the least – vegetarian hot dogs, peas, and macaroni & cheese.  But this didn’t discourage her – she set a table that included a centerpiece of four candles, one for each of us to light, and wine glasses full of water.  Then she disappeared to her bedroom.

When she reappeared, her outfit could only have been put together by the girly gene.  She was wearing a full-length pink bridesmaid dress with butterflies embroidered in the bodice, a matching butterfly necklace, high heels, and full-length pink gloves with fur trim.  And if that wasn’t enough, she had styled her hair and placed a tiara perfectly on top of her head.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or genuflect.

In typical male fashion, the boys came through and… didn’t even notice.  They sat down and started shovelling in food, not even realizing that they were doing so in total darkness, until she passed them a lighter and insisted they light their candle.  And only when she burst into song halfway through the meal did they look up and notice her outfit, but they only rolled their eyes and then carried on eating.  They must have learned that from their dad.

If that’s not enough to convince you, though, last night the girly gene revealed itself once more.  My daughter had set up a shop in her bedroom.  The customer (her) was trying to buy the contents of the entire shop.  The greedy shopkeeper (also her) wanted infinity dollars for it.  Frustrated that she didn’t have infinity dollars, my daughter spent the next hour creating her own currency – ten crisp and beautifully colored infinity dollar bills.  If that’s not a girly solution to a girly problem, then you tell me what is – and yes, that includes the fact that one infinity dollar bill obviously wasn’t enough…

Why’d They Have To Be So Good?

I’ve got a serious problem.  In fact, I think a lot of parents have a serious problem, whether they realise it or not – we’re at risk of losing our children.  Not to a rogue gang of child-snatchers, or to a militant group of drug-pushers.  We are facing a much greater and more powerful enemy, one that is known by many names and that a great many of us have already invited into our homes, some we’ve even allowed into our kids’ bedrooms.  Who is this enemy of which I speak?

In my house, it goes by the name Playstation 3, or PS3, when there’s not enough time for the extra syllable.  Some of you might be more familiar with its equally powerful cousin, XBox 360.  And for those of you whose kids are only just dipping their toes into the waters of video gaming, you probably have only met the youngest member of the family, the Nintendo Wii.

Now before I spark a debate over which console is best, and believe me people can argue themselves into a straightjacket over this, let me clarify that, as a parent, there’s only one feature we should all be concerned about, and they all have it.  They’re too good.  Way too good.  They’re so good, they threaten to transform our bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked children into a generation of gray-faced, sunken-eyed zombies.

It’s a phenomenon that ranks right up there with childhood obesity – it only exists because we live in a society in which our financial means (or willingness to take on more debt) often exceed our ability to say no to our children.  Add to this the group mentality of, ‘Every other kids seems to have one, so how bad can it be?,’ and you’re left with a situation where buying a child a £150 plus ‘toy’ seems perfectly logical.  And let’s not forget, this is just for the consoles.  Buying one only gives you the right to spend an additional £30 to £40 every time you have the crazy notion that you might actually like to have a game to play in it.

But it’s not the money that I want to make a point of either because, let’s face it, many of us are way past that now.  The sales figures speak for themselves – as of the end of December, 2009, Microsoft had sold 39 million XBox 360 consoles worldwide.  Sony lagged slightly behind with Playstation 3 sales of 33.5 million.  As of the same date, Nintendo Wii had sold a staggering 67.45 million consoles worldwide.  And keep in mind, a huge amount of these sales will have come after the global economy crashed because none of these consoles is more than five years old.

So what did these companies do to find their way into so many of our homes?  The answer is simple, and at the same time exceedingly difficult to achieve – they created a product that offers something for everyone.  Their games can simultaneously teach you how to dance, how to care for a pet, how to fly an airplane, and how to lose weight.  Within one afternoon, you can transform yourself from a footballer to a rock star to a world-class snowboarder, without needing an ounce of talent or training.  They allow you to launch yourself from a giant slingshot just for fun, or have a teeth-rattling crash in a monster truck, without breaking every bone in your body.

It sounds fantastic, so what’s the problem?  The problem is that it’s all smoke and mirrors.  Because what you’re really doing is sitting on your backside, alone, in a room, staring at a giant screen and becoming less and less a part of the world in which you really live.  And credit to them, they have worked exceedingly hard to keep the illusion going.

The first step was to introduce a whole host of fitness games that make you think you’re exercising.  Surely, though, this is no more than the electronic world’s equivalent of offering you carrot sticks to go with your Big Mac and large fries.  Next, they created online gaming.  Suddenly, you’re not playing a game by yourself because now you have a list of potential online playmates that span the entire globe.  But how does a parent determine whether these ‘friends’ are nine or forty-nine?  And finally, as if the experience wasn’t good enough already, they have worked out that, with the use of a camera that will set you back another £20, they can actually put you and even your room into the game.

Add it all together, and these gaming systems have almost as much power to allure and overwhelm our children as the most addictive narcotic on the market.  And addicted, they are.  Just threaten to remove a console from the house and watch how quickly your children will fall into line.  Or challenge them to come up with five activities that they would like to do on a Saturday that don’t involve video games, and see their little faces go blank.  In fact, the experience is so appealing that even if you limit your children to one hour of games a week, they will spend five times that many hours strategising how to get the most out of their weekly fix.

The bottom line is, too much exposure to these games is bound to have a detrimental effect on our children.  What kind of adults will this generation of young gamers ultimately become?  If everything they learn about life were to come from the virtual world, then they will grow up believing there are no consequences for any of their actions, from stealing a car to killing an innocent bystander.  They will be under the misconception that they can be world-class athletes, race car drivers, and musicians without putting a single day’s hard work into it.  They will drive recklessly and at break-neck speeds because, after all, there is no end to the number of times you can walk away from a deadly car crash.  And they will believe that war and deadly weapons are as much a part of everyday life as turtles who can drive karts.

So what can we do to prevent this future for our children?  How do we re-engage them with the real world – the one with consequences, disappointment, and even death.  How do we convince them to ride a real snowboard, when they’re so much better at riding a virtual one?  In short, how do we compete with something so good?

The obvious answer would be to eliminate the games from your life.  But I’m a believer in balance, in letting children experience a little bit of everything, within reason of course.  Deprive your children of chocolate and fizzy drinks for the first seventeen years of their life, and you can guess what they will live on for the first year after they move out.  But we must find a middle ground – a way to let them dip their feet in the waters of video gaming without constantly worrying that they’re going to drown.  And we must find this middle ground soon, before they find a way to make their products even better.

In Defence of Twilight Moms

I read an article yesterday called ‘Why won’t grown women grow up?’ in a UK magazine which I really like called Psychologies.  In the article, the author addresses the fact that women dress like their daughters, listen to the same music as their daughters, and indulge in the same ‘adolescent fantasies’ as their daughters – and most astonishingly to her, they love Twilight.  The article theorises that women read these books to ‘escape the harsh realities of everyday life’ and ‘recreate the certainties of youth’ by partaking in the same activities that their children partake in.

To me, this is a flawed theory.  And not just because I am a Twilight Mom, but because it makes a false assumption.  It assumes that women like the same things as their children for the same reasons as their children.  But I would argue otherwise.  As someone who has read all of the Twilight books (twice) and enjoyed them immensely, I feel a need to put forward a defence for the Twilight Moms – basically, the psychology of why Twilight has captured an audience of women in their 30′s and 40′s who have become more devoted fans than their screaming teenage daughters.

The first mistake people make when pondering the phenomenon of Twilight Moms is to call the saga an adolescent fantasy.  The author, Stephenie Meyer, who is 36 years old now, was 30 and already a mother of two when the idea first came to her.  So a fantasy for sure, but not of an adolescent.  Just look at how she has crafted her vampires, and you know this is the work of a mother – vampires don’t eat food, they don’t go to the bathroom, and they are so rich they never wear the same clothes twice.  In this alone, you’ve fulfilled every mother’s dreams – no meals to cook, no toilets to clean, and no clothes to wash.  But she goes one better – Bella is never under pressure for sex, because it’s too dangerous, but when it does eventually become a possibility, it is so wild that pillows are reduced to feathers and houses to matchsticks.

Go one layer deeper and you’ll see that the underlying themes of Twilight serve to allay a woman’s fears and anxieties, and not because they allow her to hark back to her adolescence, but because they project a future of certainty and safety.  What does every mother worry about most?  The wellbeing and happiness of her family.  Meyer has created a ‘family’ in The Cullens that is every mother’s ideal – they’re caring, moral, sophisticated, fiercely loyal, and able to defend themselves against any danger they might face.  The fact that they are vampires is just a side note, and one that allows them to avoid the hassles of getting into danger, getting sick, growing old, or dying.  I don’t think we’re pining after Edward because we think he’s a hunky 17-year old, we’re pining after the concept that we can have a future with the people we love that doesn’t have to meet with the unavoidable inconveniences of illness, unhappiness, and ultimately death.

Which brings me to another point, the idea that Twilight Moms are lusting after ‘tender young flesh.’  Most of us forged our relationship with Edward through the books, so our first impression of him is that of a 108-year old man trapped in a teenager’s body.  In actual fact, it took me a while to be able to read about his feelings for Bella without thinking what a creepy old man he was.  As for Jacob, the even younger and fleshier werewolf character who really is only 17 years old, our feelings towards him are purely maternal.  This is a young man who has lost his mother, takes care of his handicapped father, and is faced with a major life-changing event that he can’t talk about with anyone – what mother wouldn’t need to reach out and hug him?

By the time you reach the end of Breaking Dawn, the fourth instalment in Meyers’ series, you realise that the climax of the entire saga revolves directly around motherhood.  In an act that at once proves her strength as a human and ultimately sees her become a vampire, Bella gives birth to an immortal baby.  And as with all new mothers, even powerful vampire mothers, the new arrival proves to be both a source of great joy and even greater vulnerability.  Surely we can all relate to that.

So perhaps the phenomenon of Twilight Moms doesn’t spell a complete breakdown in societal order as some people may believe.  And perhaps we should celebrate an author who has created some common ground for a mother and her daughter to stand on.  As for a belief that Twilight Moms are the ‘literary equivalent of grown women who keep fluffy toys on their bed,’  I say this – search my bedroom anytime and I guarantee you won’t find a single fluffy toy.  An eight inch plastic Edward doll, yes, but not one fluffy toy in sight.

The Costa Rica Adventure – Day 7 (The Final Day)

Well, just when I thought my ass couldn’t get clenched any tighter…

So we awake today in our non-air-conditioned lodge, which actually was pretty pleasant to sleep in partly due to the mountain breeze and partly due to the back-cracking that Kati gave me yesterday which cured my back pain entirely.  Kayleigh was looking slightly fevered this morning and that, combined with the howling winds and rain, should have told us what this day was going to be like.  But being ever the optimists, we looked past the weather and all joined together in the restaurant for breakfast.  We were all served a lovely fruit salad, which I promptly scraped my banana off of and passed to Mom, since she had already informed me this morning that she had suffered a leg cramp which is a sure-fire indication of potassium deficiency leading to imminent heart palpitations and possibly hospitalization, which we all know is NOT an option here.  Everyone also ordered a hot breakfast though I had none because Mom ‘forgot’ that she and I were going to share her huevos until after she had finished them all herself.  I would regret this later, as the meals here seem to get fewer and farther between.

Breakfast finished, we decided that we wouldn’t let a tropical rainstorm or 15 miles of shocking road conditions spoil our adventure up to the Volcan Tenorio, where Ryan had visions of everyone enjoying a five-hour walk and a dip in some natural hot springs.  Upon arriving at the Volcano Ranger Station, after being tossed around the 12-seater van like a bunch of Costa Rican jumping beans for 40 minutes, we were informed that the crystal blue springs were actually brown today because of the overnight rainfall.  Also, they informed us that our choice of shoes – crocs and flip flops - would probably not be suitable for walking in knee-deep mud.  A terribly helpful man (or so we thought at the time) then approached and informed us that we could actually drive a mere kilometer up the road and get to the springs without having to walk at all.  Muchas gracias for that little nugget, Senor…

Off we go in our 12-seater van to conquer this measly one kilometer, but little do we know that said kilometer ends with a terribly steep downhill section right into a one-foot-deep mud pit.  But it doesn’t stop our fearless driver – so down down down the hill we plunge.  To make a long story short, we ended up stuck in the mud, facing up the hill.  But to say we were just stuck really undersells the situation.  We started out being stuck, but after many attempts to escape the vice-like grip of the road, we ended up sliding all the way to the left of the road, so not only were we stuck, we were also about six inches from flipping over into a sheer mud wall, and another few inches from sliding further backwards down another steep hill.  Now at first, we tried to make light of the situation while Kati went and asked the only two human beings for miles if they had any suggestions on how to escape (we were incredibly lucky to have become stuck right next to a small house that two men were inside).

Fortunately, we were treated to another dose of the Tico hospitality, probably largely due to the fact that these guys were having the best laugh at our expense that they’ve ever had.  But they agreed to help and were soon on the phone to some of their buddies with 4×4 vehicles.  Someone agreed to come, so these guys start tying chains and belts to the underside of our van to ready us for being pulled out – and I should interject here that they couldn’t find anything at the front of the van to tie on to apart from the chassis of the car itself.  Eventually, our knight in shining armour appears over the top of the hill and he is in one of the smallest trucks I have ever seen – but these guys have heart, so we tied the cars together and gave it a go.

The first attempt failed, partly due to the size difference in cars and partly due to the fact that my brother forgot to release the parking brake.  The second and third attempts failed as well (even after said parking brake was released) and the sounds coming from the chassis were less than reassuring.  The gentlemen decided they needed some additional weight in the back of the tiny pick-up truck, and they couldn’t believe their luck when they spotted me (whom I swear they referred to as a Grande Senora) in the back of the van.  So I crawl into the back of their truck, and that’s when my panic attack really started.  From inside the van, it all seemed a bit comical, but when standing on the outside and looking in, it was a shocking sight to see – my mother and children in a van that is up to the doors in mud and looking about two seconds away from either flipping over or sliding down the hill and taking a dip in the brown hot springs.

I knew I could never face my husband or father again if I let anything happen to Mom and the kids, so I evacuated the car, apart from Ryan of course.  Then we stood to the side, the kids stroking disease-infested dogs (which are EVERYWHERE here) and Mom making phone calls that were costing over $2 a minute but were keeping her from certain breakdown.  After many attempts, the gentlemen, who were now covered from head to toe in mud themselves, managed to pull the van backwards out of the pit it was in, and then up the hill and out of the mud.  Such was my relief, I believe that this Grande Senora actually jumped up off the ground and punched my fist into the air.  Mom performed her own version of this gesture by profusely thanking these kind gentlemen with smiles, hugs, and wads of US Dollars.

So back down the 15 mile stretch of horrible roads we go, and all the while I’m having visions of turning up to the rental car counter tomorrow with nothing more to hand back than the key itself.  We did eventually end up finding another volcano and a small area with hot springs and mud baths, which Ryan, Kati and the boys enjoyed while Mom, Kayleigh and I made a pact to never return to these parts again.  By 7 tonight, we were all starving (as no one had eaten since breakfast) and were looking forward to a great Chinese restaurant that Ryan was taking us to in Liberia, which is where we are staying tonight as we fly out first thing tomorrow morning from here.  Turns out, it was a seafood restaurant owned by a Chinese man, which should tell you something about my brother…

So here we are now in the Hilton Garden Inn in Liberia, which is possibly the best thing we have seen in Costa Rica so far, and not only because we can see the Continental airplane from here that will take us home in the morning.  The only thing between us and that plane now is the departure tax – someone told us today that we don’t want to pay the tax with credit card because they add on an 18% surcharge, and I assured him that I would be willing to offer my body as payment if I thought it was necessary to get out of here on time.

Have we enjoyed the trip?  Without a doubt.  Are we going home tan?  Not even a little bit.  Will we be rushing to get back here?  Not for another decade, at least.  Have all the people who immigrate down here on a daily basis found some source of happiness that the rest of us are missing out on?  Not that I can see.  Is it time to go home?  Absolutely, and for several reasons:  (1)  My kids have been awesome, I can’t expect any more from them, (2) Mom has been awesome, I definitely can’t expect any more from her, and (3) My body odor now has body odor, and surely there’s no clearer sign than that…

Costa Rica Adventure – Day 6

Well just when the days were all starting to feel the same, today we went from just being really hot to being really hot and really bothered.  And even Ryan’s ass was clenched by the end of it.

We started out at 6:30am baking vegan cookies and muffins for the last time.  Now normally, I wouldn’t even contemplate waking up at that time, but when you are sleeping in a bed that has plans to annihilate your back, anything is better than being in it.  Mom wanted to eat up what was left in the fridge, as we were checking out of the rental house to head for the Volcano Tenorio, so we fed the kids a healthy breakfast of ice cream and carrot cake.  We then proceeded to pack up our things, all of which were covered in a layer of fine dust, which I fear our lungs are covered in as well.  The property management lady came to check us out, and let’s just say that the process ended in Mom telling her she was a bitch.

Kayleigh has now got some kind of ear infection, and in the absence of doctors in this country, we were forced to treat her with Ryan’s silver solution, which he assures me will fix her right up and won’t even turn her blue in the process.  We then headed to the Zen to say goodbye to the girls who work there, and I was alarmed to find that Mom has picked up some kind of accent.  She was telling one of the girls who works there about the benefits of Glucosamine, and I swear the whole conversation sounded like a Cheech and Chong movie.  But we eventually got away and went for a Mexican lunch at an open-aired restaurant called Poncho’s, and I think I can safely say that was when things started to go downhill.

To begin with, I was starving because it was 2 in the afternoon, I hadn’t had anything for breakfast apart from a spoonful of raw vegan cookie dough, and I had already lost 10 pounds in sweat.  To say the restaurant was quaint is an understatement – I mean where else but in a quaint restaurant can you step in a pile of dogshit immediately outside the bathroom door.  Which I did.  Not surprising since there was a puppy running around the place, I imagine brought in as a companion for the giant green parrot that kept shouting ‘Hola!’  I’m used to dogs in restaurants by now, and in fact we had Ryan’s dog and pony with us as well, I just couldn’t imagine a business plan that included serving food and raising a puppy on the same page.

The food eventually came, despite the fact that the power was out – it seems that in this area, you either give up electricity or water supply for at least a part of every day – and it actually looked good.  I licked my lips and started to dig in, and that’s when Ryan ran into this dude named Juan who he apparently wants to kill.  To give a brief background, this Juan is a nutjob that Ryan and Kati used to live with and he is also the reason they are currently homeless, thus the reason for the hatred.  So Ryan and Juan exchanged words and, although they were in Spanish, I got the idea.

Ryan returned to the table in one of those pumped-up rages that can only end in punches being thrown.  Concerned as I was, I shovelled my food down because you never know where your next meal might come from down here.  On a normal day, my body would convert this food into useful energy, but on this day it converted it almost immediately into diarrhoea.  Ryan was becoming increasingly agitated and Mom was trying to stare Juan down, and in my mind both scenarios were going to end in injuries that there simply aren’t doctors around to treat.  So I begged them both to take the presence of my children into account, and eventually managed to get everyone back into the van without incident.

Leaving Guiones behind, we headed for the Volcano, which was to be just over a three hour drive – not taking into account time for a car to break down.  Which yes, it did.  We had just stopped at a roadside coconut stand and were enjoying an ice cold drink of coconut water and really starting to get into the Tico lifestyle when the van started making a loud and rather alarming noise, and we were forced to pull over at the side of the road – and this was when Ryan announced that now even his ass was clenched from the stress.

Fortunately, we had pulled off and into the driveway of a small farm and we were given the opportunity to see the hospitality of the Costa Rican people.  The very nice lady who lived there took us (myself, Kati and the kids) to her mango tree and let us pick a bag full of mangos.  She then proceeded to introduce us to a tiny puppy that had just been born, and then walked us through some large cows with very big ears and introduced us to a one-month old calf.  It was a bright spot in what had been a pretty crazy day.

We walked back over to the car just as the mechanic pulled up.  I leaned against a wobbly wooden fence with my kids, and that’s when Mom decided that here, standing on the side of a dark Costa Rican road with cars whizzing past, was a good time to have the life talk with Ryan and Kati that she’d been wanting to have all week.  I just stared at the ground and tried to pretend I wasn’t there while Mom threw around phrases like ‘sell the Zen,’ ‘no more money,’ and ‘what exactly is it you do with your time?’  My kids had more than a few questions about what was going on, so I did what all good mothers do when their kids ask a difficult question – I lied to them and said that Bebe was just kidding around.

In the end, the mechanic said the problem with the van was related to a fan.  He gave us a choice – we could either carry on up the mountain in the van and just keep an eye on the temperature gauge so the car didn’t overheat, or he could bring us a replacement car which was smaller and also had a habit of blowing its tyres.  So we stuck with the devil we knew, and that van actually delivered us to our destination at around half past 8 in the evening, only about 2 ½ hours later than planned.

The place we are staying is called the Gran Tenorio lodges and is run by a French lady who had been saving dinner for us until we arrived.  So within two minutes of walking through the front door, we were served some food, which we forcibly shoved down our throats while she stood watching and making it very clear that she wanted to close up the kitchen for the night.  She then showed us to our lodges, which are lovely and are designed to make you feel at one with nature.  I guess that’s why there was a grasshopper the size of a watermelon crawling up one wall, and why the shower had a full-length window in it.

But at least we’re here, and there’s a breeze, and comfortable beds.

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 5

Only a brief entry today as we are about to brave a four-hour car ride to a volcano, Volcan Tenorio, where we will spend tonight in a non-air-conditioned lodge.  Ryan assures us it will be damn near freezing up there near that volcano, but I am having my doubts.

So Friday brought more of the same, really.  The only difference to the day was that we had added Kati, Ryan’s wife, to the group.  Well, and the dogs of course.  Sonny, the big dog, is down with the Costa Rican depression, he only perked up when we allowed him into the rental house, where he had his first taste of air conditioning, and I don’t think he’ll be going back.

The other interesting development of Friday was that they are now turning the water off in the town for four hours every day because there just hasn’t been enough rain to keep the wells full.  As you can imagine, this does not make running a Cafe very easy, but they got by with lots of bottled water and a big sign on the bathroom door that says “No H20, No Bano!”  We had a small backup supply of water at the house, so at least we had somewhere to use the toilet!

We took a very bumpy car ride to dinner, during which time I learned that you do not want to go on very bumpy car rides if someone has snuck in and broken your back in the night.  By the time we arrived at the restaurant, my back was so sore, I had no choice but to drink two margaritas, which somehow made everything better for a while.

I would just like to point out yet another conundrum I have noticed about the people who live here.  There was an American girl in the Zen today (wearing nothing but a teeny tiny thong bikini, I should tell you) and one of the British surfer dudes asked her about a retreat she was going on.  She proceeded to explain about this weekend retreat she and friends were going on to a cottage in the middle of nowhere (as if you could get any more remote than where we were) with no electricity and no plumbing and how it was going to be so awesome to be one with nature.  Then she asked the guy how he’d heard about it and he said, ‘I read about it on your facebook page.’  These people want to live this natural, at-one-with-the-earth lifestyle, but by God not without facebooking about it before and after.

Costa Rica Adventure – Day 4

As I sit to recap the events of yesterday, I am sharing the patio of our rental house with what can only be described as a small horse.  His name is Sonny and he is an enormous dog who lies around looking like maybe it’s time to move to a colder climate.  He belongs to my brother and his wife, along with a smaller dog named Drix who is currently at the beach – he apparently is free to roam and is known by everyone in town, though I’m told he doesn’t respond to Spanish as he is a Texan by birth.

The dogs arrived, along with my brother’s wife, Kati, sometime after I fell asleep last night.  Ryan finally braved the 30-mile round trip to go and collect them from the house they have all been staying in for the past few weeks.  They’ve been crashing at the house of a friend, called JP, who must surely embrace the nomad lifestyle to accept this motley crew into his house.  Personally, I am totally relieved to see Kati as she is a trained massage therapist and, although I can’t be sure, I think that somebody snuck into my bedroom last night and broke my back.  Obviously, these luxury Tico mattresses take their toll eventually.

But back to yesterday.  The boys and I awoke at half past seven and headed to the beach with our boogie boards.  After quizzing several pasty-skinned British incomers here, we have determined that the only time we can be in the sun is before 9am and after 5pm, and even then only if covered in Factor 30 SPF or higher.  So we played in the ocean from 8am until 9am and then returned home for the morning briefing from Mom – she is still micro-planning each day’s activities, though they still consist only of beach, house, and Zen Café.

We proceeded to hang out at the Zen until after lunchtime, where I had a fabulous bit of pizza on flatbread and my favourite Frappy Chino.  The kids are really getting used to the idea of having full-time waitresses ready to serve them anything they require (I guess that’s normally my role, only these girls do it without swearing), and Kayleigh has proven that she is officially addicted to Vegan Brownies.  Lucky for her, I’m the baker of said brownies, so she’ll be able to get her fix even in Scotland.

We met Ryan’s friend JP, who was raised in the states but is half Costa Rican and has lived here for the past ten years.  He has a ten-year old daughter, and knowing how many times I took my own kids to the emergency room when they were small, I asked what one does if that is required.  He calmly recounted a story of being run off the road on their motorcycle (he, his wife, and his daughter when she was three years old), and his daughter smashing into the ground face first, knocking out her three front teeth.  They were in the middle of nowhere and naturally had no phone, and therefore no way of getting any medical help.  So they just had to ‘make their way home, give her some ice cream, and rub some rosemary on her injured gums.’  It’s not surprising that so many people rely on natural remedies here – it’s pretty much that or nothing.

We visited a grocery store in the afternoon, which I always think is a fascinating experience in a foreign country.  Without doubt, this was the hottest one I’ve ever been to, and the only one where the dog food and the baby formula were on the same shelf.  Also, it was the first time that I’ve heard loudly crowing roosters throughout the entire place, though I could never quite pinpoint where they were.

We finished off the day with another trip to the beach, though this time I let Ryan take the boys out with their boogie boards, and I stayed on the beach to take some pictures.  Big mistake.  I was reminded once again just how neurotic I am.  As I watched these tiny dots get further and further out, and the sky get darker and darker above me, my heart started racing and, not to be too graphic, my nether-regions clenched tight (sorry, this is a strange biological reaction I seem to have in panic situations).  I waved frantically from the shore for them to come in for about twenty minutes, which I’m sure the locals on the beach found wildly entertaining.  Just when I was about to strip down to my underwear and swim out to rescue them, they swam in and I played it totally cool – hang loose and all that, right?

Costa Rican Lessons Learned

Just taking the opportunity, while spending a bit more time at the Zen Cafe, to put down a few lessons learned in my time in Costa Rica so far…

1.  When you are taking a Coke into the car and then driving on roads made of dirt and potholes, it is advisable to open the Coke BEFORE you get in the car.

2.  Actually, just don’t take a Coke in the car.

3.  When you are dragging a giant log from the back of a motorbike with a chain, there’s really no point in wearing a helmet.

4.  The only thing worse than visiting a country with almost no workable septic system is visiting said country and having your period at the same time.

5.  When foreign currency is so devalued that it takes thousands of units just to buy a smoothie, why not switch over to monopoly money?

6.  Who needs a mini-van when you can hang extra children, and even dogs, right off the side of your motorbike.

7.  When children who are raised in cold climates visit Costa Rica, expect chafing and rashes in parts of their bodies you didn’t even know they had.  And expect them to talk about it constantly.

8.  If you sweat continually for three days straight, you actually smell so bad, you start to smell good.

9.  Young people who are disillusioned with their own countries move to Costa Rica to be free from all the hustle and bustle of modern-day life because they don’t require anything more than a board and some good surf.  And an Imac.  And a lot of their parents’ money.  And awesome yoga clothes.

10. If you unwittingly rub an entire bottle of aloe-scented handsoap on your sunburned kids, don’t expect the sunburn to be much better in the morning.

11. If your child blocks up the toilet in a third world country and you can’t find any plumbing implements, you will be amazed what you can achieve with a stick.

12.  Driving one mile on Costa Rican roads takes an average of six hours.

13.  Due to the above, don’t plan on getting sick while visiting Costa Rica because the drive to the nearest hospital would take roughly 17 days.

13.  If you flush a frog down the toilet – twice – he’ll just keep coming back for more.

14.  The human body never runs out of sweat.

15.  My big sister is funnier than me because I haven’t made Mom wet her pants once on this whole trip.

16.  A lesson I haven’t learned yet,  but am afraid I might soon – there are enough red ants in our rental house to carry out an overweight mother of three in her sleep.

17.  Costa Rica is a place for people who don’t mind being without phones.

18.  My Mother does not fall into the above category.

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 3

We rented boogie boards for the kids last night at the Tico surf shop in town – ‘tico’ referring to things that are Costa Rican – so I decided that the morning would be a good time to put those to use.  After slathering Coppertone Factory 30 Sport cream all over the kids, we headed out.  We had to walk to the beach, which was a 10 minute walk, but I’m sure I lost six pounds in sweat getting there.  Unfortunately, I think we also lost all of our sun cream with the sweat, because after spending the hour between 10am and 11am in the ocean, we returned home to find that the kids had arms and legs the color of a tomato.  We went to the store to get some aloe to put on them, but due to our lack of Spanish-speaking ability, ended up with a bottle of aloe handsoap, which we quite happily smeared all over them.  They will bubble up like a bubble bath the next time their bodies hit water…

The majority of the afternoon was spent preparing food for Zen Café’s Indian dinner, which occurs every Wednesday night.  Ryan explained how this would take up the majority of his day, but it seemed to be Mom doing most of the chopping and peeling while Ryan once again vanished for several hours on another 10-minute journey.  Eventually, though, he had prepared a beautiful spread and we hauled it down to the café, where I was hired as a stand-in waitress for the evening.  Having never waitressed before, I thought I did a pretty fine job – my biggest challenge being to regulate my body temperature with giant cups of cold water to avoid sweating all over the plates of food.

Indian night was a success, and we made it home eventually and put my three little tomatoes to bed.  I then had a shower to wash Costa Rica off of me, and was alarmed to find that I have developed something that I thought was unique to my brother – something I like to call Tico Feet.  Basically, this country turns the bottom of your feet black, and not even a long shower can fix it.  I wonder if they’ll ever go back to normal…

Another alarming and exhilarating development of the day was that I finally learned to drive Tico style.  Someone thought it a good idea to hand the keys of the 12-seater van over to me at some point in the day, and away I went.  Of course, we only travel a 1-mile road between the Zen and the rental house, but I can tell you there are more obstacles and dangers on that stretch than in the entire length of the M6.  I took a wrong turn only once, and had quite a terrifying realisation that I (a) didn’t know where I was, (b) didn’t know how to ask for directions, and (c) didn’t even know the name of the house we were staying in if I did need to ask for directions.  But alas, we found our way back and all was well.

The more time I spend here, the more it amazes me that people want to live here, and it is several things that make me say this.  Firstly, telephones are an absolute luxury, which basically means no one can ever get in touch with each other – how someone calls an ambulance in an emergency is beyond me.  Secondly, these roads are bananas – families of four travel around on single motorbikes inhaling the constant storm of dust that is inevitably kicked up around them, the rate of asthma and other respiratory conditions must be staggering.  Thirdly, because of the state of these roads, short distances become impossible to travel – we have been here for four days and Ryan’s wife is staying somewhere only about 15 miles away and the idea of going to see her seems to be out of the question.  Fourthly, there are two months of the year here when it rains almsot constantly, and I cannot even begin to imagine how much worse these roads become when they go from being dirt roads to being mud roads.  Fifthly, I cannot even allow myself to think about how far away the nearest hospital is or how difficult it would be to get to it if it were ever required.  And lastly, give me snow any day – at least in snow, you can put coats on your kids and chuck them out the door.  In a climate like this, the sun is as scary as some psychopath that constantly pursues you and tries to burn the skin right off your bones…

Costa Rican Adventure – Day 2

My second day in Costa Rica began at 6am, which in my opinion goes against the very nature of the word vacation.  The reason for this was that my mother couldn’t sleep on ‘such a hard bed’ though by Costa Rican standards I’d say the bed is a Rolls Royce.  I guess when you’re used to sleeping on a $5,000 memory foam mattress, nothing else compares.  The bed didn’t affect my ability to sleep at all, but Mom stood above me and made chuckling sounds until I was irritated enough to wake up and join her.  Ryan had already gone surfing, so I was the only one left who could help her plan the day on an hour by hour basis, though it ultimately only consisted of going to the Zen Café and then the beach.

As for the Zen, its menu continues to satisfy and I am doing my best to eat everything on the menu before I leave here.  The Frappy Chino is absolutely delicious and I have found that it really goes a long way in reducing my internal body temperature from ‘I think I might collapse’ to ‘Jesus, it’s hot here.’  My children and I stand out like a sore thumb due to the general lack of colour on our skin and, in my case, my overwhelming size as compared to these lovely Costa Rican women.  A massage therapist offered to wrap me in banana leaves today, and I’m thinking about taking her up on it in the hope that I come out of those leaves looking like these gorgeous local women…

As for this town of Guiones, Costa Rica, I have never seen a place quite like it.  Firstly, there are far more North American and British accents here than any other.  To say these people live a Nomadic lifestyle is a huge understatement – they seem to move from house to house every couple of months and if nothing can be found, they all just pile in together in the house of whoever is lucky enough to have a roof over their head at that time.  I can’t say for sure what any of them aim to accomplish in a day, but I can say for sure that the priority of every day is surfing.  From the outside, these people look like Bohemians, but I have yet to see one of them without the latest IMac Computer in hand.

People drive around on small motorcycles or quad bikes fitted with surfboard racks on the side.  I have seen many of them come within an inch of being annihilated by the SUV’s of the wealthier incomers, yet this provokes nothing more than a laugh and a shake of the head.  Dogs and cats are welcome in the restaurants and, as far as I can tell, there are not many food preparation laws here.  Despite this, the food is delicious, if you can cope with sweating and being eaten alive by bugs while you’re eating.

From what I can tell, the people who come here to live this surfer dude lifestyle either have wealthy and very generous parents, or else they work half the year in the States, then come down here to blow those earnings the other half of the year.  I always wonder what will happen in 25 years to this generation of self-proclaimed hippies – at some point, this lifestyle will grow tedious or their wealthy parents will die, and then I imagine there will just be a lot of aged, long-haired surfer dudes hanging loose without two dimes to rub together.

But that aside, these people are here now, and they like to eat wholesome food, so I spent all of Tuesday night being the Zen Café baker.  While Mom lay in an antihistamine-induced coma on the couch, and Ryan spent four hours away running a 10-minute errand, I prepared Vegan Chocolate-Oatmeal cookies, Vegan Brownies, and Vegan Morning Glory muffins.  This was a pretty big accomplishment considering the number of giant red ants trying to become part of the batter, and the fact that I nearly blew up the house trying to light the gas cooker.  In the end, though, the mission was accomplished and I was eventually allowed to sleep…