Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Lately, I haven't been posting as much as I want to. My excuses are:

I have to finish preparing my Canadian income tax forms and have them in the mail before the end of April. For me, this is torture.

We've been experiencing a bit of a heat wave the last couple of weeks. Today the high was 92.1F. The nights and mornings are always wonderfully cool (below 70F) so we aim to do chores before 11:00am or so. This could include having the laundry done and on the line to dry, going into Atenas for groceries, cleaning the house and so on. The rest of the day, for me, will be spent lolling in my hammock doing the New York Times Sunday crosswords, watering my orchids, thinking of a cold meal to prepare for dinner ... sounds so lazy but I love the life.

We've been doing a fair bit of pet and house sitting lately and all the properties have had a pool so I can include swimming several times a day as a cooling exercise.

Good news, art wise. Our Atenas Painters Association is presently in the planning stages for our second annual art show to be held August 26th, 27th and 28th at Colinas del Sol, where we held our very first and successful art show two years ago.

I will have four large paintings on display (one pig, one goat, one Brahma, one young Hereford cow) and two smaller oxen paintings. Also hope to do a horse painting.

Look at this:

Our dear neighbor Sharon gave this to me this morning. It's a hand carved cow head made by a Costa Rica artist. I just love it. We're going to be house and dog sitting for Sharon starting this weekend (the famous Diogi Border Collie).

Our lives here are very rich.

 

Another New Year - 2016

Our friends and next door neighbors, Sharon and Gordon (guardians of Wonder Dog Diogi) took us out for dinner tonight. We went to Mar y Tierra (sea and land) which is a short drive from where we live.

Gordon and Sharon

We have eaten here before and the food is excellent. Sharon had the seafood cream soup, which I can vouch for. I opted for the garlicky seafood dish, and was happy to discover clams, shrimp and calamari nestled amongst the rice. Lance ordered shrimp pasta, with more then enough to bring home for leftovers tomorrow. I believe Gordon ordered a shrimp dish also.

They make excellent frozen Margaritas:

This is the dish I ordered.

Thank you so much, Sharon and Gordon - what a wonderful send off to the old year and a welcome to the new year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

 

Dog Sitting

We recently completed a three month dog and housing sitting assignment for our neighbors. Their house is right next door to ours so we were able to keep an eye on our house and, quite often, Lance went down there to work and to make sure everything was okay.

Here is the lovely dog we cared for. Her name is Diogi and she is a border collie ... very smart, very affectionate and lots of fun.

Every night, she slept under our bed or on her bed next to ours. We spoiled her lots. Since we are early risers (up and about around 4:00 am), she became used to an early breakfast. I cooked for her (potatoes, rice, all kinds of different vegetables, and some protein) plus she had her kibble too for a good nutritious mix of food.

We have our breakfast around 7:00 am which consists of soft boiled eggs and toast and/or tortillas. It wasn't long before Diogi was also having a soft boiled egg. Lance is the egg cooker and Diogi always hung around the kitchen waiting patiently for her portion.

Diogi's toys .... she adores squeaky toys and has them in all shapes and sizes. We'd throw them for her and off she would run to retrieve them. Except now and then they would fly down one of the steep hillsides and into the bougainvillea bushes. Here is a video of Lance trying to retrieve one for her.

Lance to the Rescue from Diana Miskell Turlock on Vimeo.

 

Our neighbors have a pool and I made full use of it.

 

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