Future self-portait in my soon-to-be-purchased red boots if I continue to eat like this.
Jose and Mirta arrived and we went for a “typical” meal after picking up Mirta’s daughter, Stephie, from her father’s house. If this is typical, I’m in big trouble—the operative word here being BIG. Corn bread, corn tortillas, corn cake, fried bananas, chicken with melted cheese and refried beans. I think I gained more just writing it down.
There is another novella in this compound. Jose is turning his house into a bed and breakfast and is building 12 apartments in a square around the main house. There will be a park in the middle. There are several other apartments already built—4, I think. He took me through a couple of them. One houses his ex-wife (the mother of his three children) her boyfriend (novio) and one of Jose’s sons; another houses his daughter. Working in his plastics factory are his brother, his brother’s wife, his nephew, and his two sons. Everyone seems to get along well. Miri, the ex-wife, walks in and out of Jose’s house as she needs to during the day and appears on the best of terms with Mirta…Jose’s current woman.
Stephie, who is around 18, lives here with Jose and Mirta. Stephie and I danced for an hour today and we’re getting up tomorrow to do another hour at 7 a.m. She can really move. Jose took us all with him to deliver plastic toys for piñatas all over two Costa Rican provinces. I’m going to write a database for him tomorrow.
The biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen just ran in through the open door—probably pushed it open. Like it has places to go and people to meet. I hope I’m not one of them and he’s just passing through. [Book recommendation: The Roaches Have No King] We keep most of our things off the floor; I have a theory that it’s because the insects are too heavy to climb.
Stephie told me she doesn’t have a tattoo because it says in the Bible – Matthew (though it would have been cool if it had been Mark) – not to mark your body or you won’t go to heaven. Hmmm. [Note from the future: I have heard this many times in the past few years, probably directly attributable to the popularity of tattoos, but this was the first time I had heard it. What’s the reasoning behind this…need to research. Is it just a rule or is there some specific reason it was banned.]
Carmen the Chicken Killer by Sarah Curtiss 