Moving to the 'Burbs

I am escaping hell!  No more late night bars, no more 5 am buses, no more "Cebolla!  Cebolla!  Cebolla!" screaming through my living room.  No more bombas lit off in front of my car, no more feral cats fighting on the roof, and no more flooded streets spilling into my living room.  I am headed to the suburbs, about 20 minutes south of the giant metropolis of San Juan del Sur.

Ask and you shall receive.  I asked and the universe delivered me a fabulous, new home bordered by a 400 (?) acre nature reserve, just a few minutes away from my horse and a private (in that no one goes there) beach.  The owner has graciously offered us the use of his home for 10 months.  Best of all, it is off the grid.  No more Union Fenosa.  I will also have internet from a solar-powered ISP!

This house is on a lot that I wanted to purchase, but at the time, I was not ready to buy.  Now I get to live exactly where I wanted.  I can have a vegetable garden.  I have no neighbors.  When I left the house yesterday afternoon, I heard the monkeys howling in the trees.  This is going to be an incredible change.

I have a friend who rents a one-bedroom apartment to use as a studio and I will take over her lease sometime in January.  I will have a house in the country and an apartment in the city.  The apartment is about the same distance that my current home is to my store, a two-minute walk.  It is a block away from the beach.  Stepping out of the door and facing right, you can see the ocean.  It's on a side street, so there will not be a lot of traffic.  I will use it as a studio, a storage space, a spot to escape to when I do not want to be in the store, and an overnight pad if we want to hang out with friends in town at night.

When I awoke this morning, I recalled I had been dreaming about compost piles.  I so want to be in touch with nature again.  When we moved here, we were both hoping to recreate our experience living in a little cabin in the woods of Vermont 15 years ago.  We had a nice, simple life.  We hiked, rode our bikes, ran through the hills, and at the end of the day cooked fabulous meals.  We made jams, pickled peppers, and froze corn and blueberries.  We loved amongst deer, raccoons, foxes, skunks, pheasants and wild turkeys bordered by a meadow and a forest.  It was a great little place.

I wrote my business plan for a bookstore/café/gallery in that little cabin.  Fifteen years later, I have the store and soon the cabin.  I suppose it is not fair to call it a cabin, since it is a nice house.  It does have many natural elements - a cane roof, riverstone walls, and wooden doors and window frames.  I probably shouldn't write more, lest I jinx this good fortune.

As I walked down the steps to the beach this morning, I ran into a new arrival.  "I am blissing out!" she said, climbing the steps to the sidewalk.  I make my way down to the water, stopping to examine the millions of coquina-ish mollusks congealed en mass in the sand.  I took in the fabulous lush hillside, normally parched this time of year.  We have had unusual rainstorms in the dry season.  The water sparkles so bright I have to avert my eyes.  It is a beautiful morning and I reminded of my first months when I owned the beach.   Of course, it is not mine, but I knew the beachscape so well that it felt a part of me.  I watched the other beachcombers, wondering when they came to view the sands as their own.  I was glad that I had not brought my iPod with me, for I would have missed the clicking sounds of the crabs as they darted in and out of the crevices in the rocks.  I stopped to watch them go about their routines and then realized how long it had been since I had take then time to is little stretch of land I cal home.  Walking back, I wondered what else I would miss about my daily routine.  I will still see the same people, but I won't be part of the barrio.  I will miss seeing the taxista holding his little baby daughter (who isn't a baby anymore) in the morning before going to work.  The neighborhood kids won't see me walking down the street with Nikita and Isabelle, our black and white mascots we take to and from the store each day.  I'll miss the little kids who play on my porch and write their names on my dusty car.  Still, these moments are not worth enduring the lack of sleep I have had from the incessant noise pollution of a "sleep little fishing village."  As an aside, I hope the guidebook writers come up with a more appropriate description of the town, which has far more cars than fishing boats.  Yes, and here I am adding to the traffic.  I could take the bus into town and probably will at some point, but I will commute to work by car most days.

The cats will commute, too.  They have to earn their keep, so they go to the store each day to entertain the customers with cute little poses and pathetic cries implying that they are dying from lack of caloric sustenance, something that can be cured with a little piece of Canadian bacon or a sip of a latte.  Callie and Richmond are more than happy to see the playful kittens leave for the day.  I know they secretly hope that each time I leave with Nikita and Isabelle, it will be the last time they ever see the kittens.

Well, I am going to start packing y possessions.  I am counting down the days until I can sit under a black sky illuminated only by stars and lightning bugs.

Comments

[Mom]

So glad to hear that you will be living up on that hill with the spectacular view-know that you two will enjoy the serenity of your new surroundings-maybe you can put your horse closer! See you soon-Love,Mom