Why have I chosen life outside the U.S.?

In case anyone was wondering why I've chosen to make my life hard, in many ways, by living in Central America, this story gives a pretty good explanation why.

When we were in the U.S., I enquired several times with different financial institutions about the possibility of adding E. either as a co-owner or beneficiary of an account. Nothing doing. Even less possible to have her on record as co-owner of our condominium. Numerous stories about lesbian and gay partners (defacto spouses) being denied hospital visitation rights--not to mention decision-making ability--gave me nightmares.

I ask again: just whom would it hurt for us to have these rights???

Thanks, mom!

This is going to seem like a ridiculously trivial subject to write about after more than three months away...But you've gotta start somewhere.

At the moment, adding to the varied collection of jobs I've held (no standard-issue CV for me, no sirree!), I am working as a temporary administrative assistant for a Danish/Indian firm that's overseeing the installation of 11 wind turbines on the road between Rivas and the Costa Rican border. So far, going into week 2, I am being vastly under-used, but I'm not complaining because a job is a job is a job!

This morning my boss asked if I could go into town to pick up some supplies. No problem, I said--I just need a vehicle. This being a construction site, essentially, almost all of my co-workers are driving pickup trucks. Very new, relatively fancy pickup trucks of course. How happy I was to be able to hop into the truck and go, without a second thought except for the fact that I'm still not quite as comfortable driving large vehicles as I am small ones.

In one of those random moments that highlight differences between U.S. and European habits, I realized that my boss hadn't even asked if I could drive a manual transmission car; he just assumed. And I thought, thanks, Mom! For insisting on teaching us how to drive a stick-shift, on the theory that it was better to be prepared in an emergency situation to drive whatever was available. It's been a very long and sinuous road since that time of creeping down Vermont Avenue in the old rusty-red Chevette...but with this and many other skills my parents imparted, I rarely hesitate to keep moving, even when it's not clear what lies around the next corner. So I'm feeling grateful on this fine sunny morning in southern Nicaragua.

Fool me once, fool me twice

When I am on my home turf in the U.S., I consider myself to be a fairly "together", competent sort of person. I have my moments of forgetfulness or carelessness, but they're not too frequent, and the consequences are minor.

I see no particular reason why this should vary due solely to a change in location, but it seems to. It's as if I leave my brain at the border. Well, this particular border (U.S.-Nicaragua) at least, since I have successfully traveled to some 15 other countries without incident.

In the past five months in San Juan, I've committed a fair number of garden-variety gaffes, like locking the keys in the car; getting another key stuck in the lock of a gate; scraping the paint on the car's sideview mirror while parking really poorly; being cheated on prices at the market; and so forth. Nothing to stop the earth's rotation, and easy enough to overcome after a day or two of mentally berating myself.

Yesterday was different. I'm filling in for the weekend at the Internet cafe where E. works full-time, providing coverage for her co-worker who's on vacation. Long story short, a group of three thieves came in last night around 7 p.m. and managed to distract me well enough to make off with one of the laptops. The good news: the boss was more than understanding, saying that he was surprised it hadn't happened before now, and that were he working here, he had no doubt he would have been scammed multiple times. Also, though crime is definitely on the rise here--as is true worldwide due to economic conditions--Nicaragua differs from most of its Central American neighbors in that actual armed crime is still relatively rare.

The bad news: the scenario of how the robbery occurred was eerily similar to an incident 4 years ago when I was robbed at the real estate office where I worked at the time, which by the way was only two doors down from here. And yet, my instincts failed me again. "Me agarraron dormida," (they caught me asleep), I would say in Spanish. To put it mildly, I feel incredibly stupid and embarrassed.

I am generally a trusting person. I don't think my trust rises to the level of, say, Anne Frank ("In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart")--I've had enough kicks in the pants to be a little more jaded than that--but for the most part I find it spiritually healthier to give people the benefit of the doubt. I have exchanged words with afore-mentioned boss more than once when he has gone off on a profanity-filled rant about the thieving, useless, lazy, dishonest Nicaraguans. (Um...why do you live here if you hate the people so much? I don't see the point. But I digress.)

A good part of my upset about last night's incident has to do with my own wounded pride. I have, up to now, thought of myself as a pretty savvy or street smart kind of person--this after my globetrotting and living in a number of big cities both in the U.S. and abroad. My time as a consular officer in Santo Domingo was particularly instructive. During my first year, in the course of interviewing more than 10,000 people for tourist visas, I heard volumes' worth of tall tales and inconsistent stories, and examined reams of fake documents. This turned me into a super-suspicious person--enough so that I was ultimately compelled to quit the job rather than lose my soul to the darkness. In my second year, when I worked in American Citizen Services, one of my major duties was to help out fellow U.S.ians who got themselves into jams in the Dominican Republic--both victims and perpetrators of crimes, mentally or physically ill people, deadbeats or otherwise destitute folks, and so on. There were some doozies, and I hoped that I would never personally have need to visit an ACS unit overseas.

When I was robbed in SJDS the first time, I chalked it up as one of those things that was bound to happen sometime in the course of my travels. But really, these latest thieves must have thought "it was like taking candy from a baby" as they laughed their way off to the black market trading post. And I don't blame them. I am 99% positive that if the same folks had come in when either E. or her co-worker had been on duty, they wouldn't have even tried.

So now my question is, how many times do I let myself be duped before I wise up? How do I find the middle ground between ingenuous and mistrustful? I thought I was there already but facts speak for themselves. Ergh.

Open message to the universe: Got a job for me in Canada, eh?

To cut to the chase: I am feeling very, very discouraged about both short- and long-term prospects for survival and happiness. Can't get a job here in SJDS; nothing is coming of the multiple apps for telecommute jobs; my Chicago condo sits empty, not selling, not renting, yet requiring that the mortgage be paid on time; really really want to try to get into Canada, somehow, someway, but fearing that a second attempt will only lead to further rejection, instability and loss of material resources.

If only the (living) Canadian part of my family had settled in Alberta or Nova Scotia instead of Quebec and Ontario, someone might be able to sponsor us for immigration.

Failing that, I need to figure out how to wrangle a permanent full-time job offer out of a Canadian employer (or New Zealander, or Dutch, or any country that recognizes same-sex relationships for immigration purposes) while I'm here in Central America. Or find a quick $400,000 to invest in a business. Uphill both ways, you might say.

I'm having a crisis: Despite all my education, I'm not qualified to undertake employment in any field where there are actually jobs these days. Why didn't I decide to be a mechanic or a petrochemical engineer, a nurse, a radiologist, or one of Canada's 38 "eligible" skilled occupations?

I need a source of inspiration, a glimmer of hope...please share if you've got one.

He was a very good kitty cat

Warning: following post may be seen as a bit self-indulgent. It also has nothing really to do with the professed themes of my blog, but it's what's on my mind.

My cat died on Tuesday night. As my dad said, he was probably ready to go, even if I wasn't entirely prepared for it. He was nearly 15 years old, and I'd had him for 10 1/2 years.

His was quite the saga: he was born, ca. 1995, into a feral cat colony outside Lorton Prison in Northern Virginia. In late 1998, a decision was made to shut down the prison; something like a dozen local humane societies mobilized to rescue the several hundred cats in the colony. The story even made People magazine.

We adopted Sammy (as he was then called) together with Sarah (yeah, her name changed too!), a slightly younger female, through the Northern Virginia SPCA after meeting them at a Petsmart adoption event. They had been fostered together, and were clearly a team, even though they couldn't have been more different in terms of personality and physical appearance. So both went home with us.

This big gray neutered tom--at the time, weighing about 15 pounds--was christened Bismarck by my ex-husband, after the Prussian military leader. As it turned out, the name didn't match the cat. Far from being bellicose and decisive, he was the meekest, scarediest kitty I had ever owned. He spent more than a year living almost full-time on top of the furnace, only sneaking out to eat at night when the house was quiet. He eventually learned to appreciate human company, although always in limited doses. He had a teeny tiny high-pitched voice, though he could get pretty loud when he was hungry. Puzzle (ex-Sarah) was definitely the alpha cat, and Bizzy (aka Big Gray, la Nena Gris) followed her lead at all times.

As it turned out, Bizzy was prone to a variety of chronic ailments as a result of inbreeding in the colony--he was basically allergic to himself, which meant lots of skin and fur issues, ear issues, and teeth issues. I lost count of how much I spent on dental surgeries over the years, but it was at least a couple thousand dollars. But overall, he was a well-behaved, sweet companion, so it was a worthwhile investment. He got fat and happy, peaking at about 18 pounds.

When I started my wanderings, Bizzy & Puzzle came along for the ride. They went to the Dominican Republic and back to the U.S.; to Nicaragua and back. I became very familiar with USDA, airline and foreign government requirements for export and import of live animals (you'd think we were talking multiple head of cattle!). I found creative ways to get around high and low temperature restrictions, learned how to bribe vets to avoid over-vaccinating my babies, and managed multiple passages through TSA checkpoints--yes, the cats had to go through the metal detector too--without anyone getting loose in the airport, which was my greatest fear.

The kitties were probably happiest during our first stint in Nicaragua, when we finally moved into our house out in the (relative) wilderness. For the first time since they were rescued, they were able to be outdoor cats again, courtesy of our fenced yard. Puzzle actually managed to jump the fence a couple of times, which was quite a feat given that it was 8-foot chain link with razor wire on top. She made it back unscathed, but I scolded her roundly. For his part, Bizzy enjoyed walking laps around the house, especially--surprisingly--when it was drizzling out. He also became expert at slaying the little frogs that often made their way into the house overnight.

When we returned to Chicago, our kitties readjusted to indoor life, though we had to be far more careful about monitoring open doors. They both enjoyed lounging on window sills whenever weather allowed.

Puzzle died suddenly and very unexpectedly in October 2007; the cause was never fully clear. I was very distraught, especially because she passed away overnight while in the care of the vet, and I had no opportunity to say my goodbyes. In any event, it was a shock, since she had always been the far livelier and healthier of the two.

Bizzy appeared to accept the life of a single cat, though he still acted more like a beta. But he continued to hang in there. At a certain point, I noticed that he was losing weight despite eating as much or more than ever. The vet eventually diagnosed him with hyperthyroidism (over-active thyroid), which is an extremely common condition among older neutered male cats. The problem was that none of the treatment options seemed like good ones for him: trying to give him two pills daily for life? Nuh-uh--he would have spent the rest of his days cowering under the couch or in the closet. Transdermal gel applied in the ears? No go either, given his hyper-sensitivity in that area. Radioactive iodine therapy? The $1,500-2,000 price tag made that impossible at the time. So, correct or not, I decided that benign neglect was the best choice as long as he didn't seem to be suffering.

Bizzy made his last trip with me in May. At that point he was down to about 10 pounds, so at least there was no trouble with him fitting in the smaller carrier required to travel in-cabin with me. Alas, the adaptation to Nicaragua seemed much harder this time. The heat, the dust, the noise--all things that bother me, but I have avoidance strategies at my disposal--seemed to be too much for him. First, he stopped eating his dry food, even the regular food I'd brought with me from the States. Then, he gradually began rejecting all the other aliments I tried--Whiskas canned food (the only kind I found here), home-cooked chicken, pork and beef (both meat and broth), Gerber chicken baby food, and finally even his most beloved tuna. I cringed to see this once-hefty fellow diminish to skin and bones, but he continued to act pretty normally--greeting us in the morning, when we came home, and generally being a nuisance anytime we were working in the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, we started to notice slight changes in his behavior--scratching around his food and water dishes, as though he were covering up his "business" in the litter box; occasionally missing the actual litter box; and generally acting a bit disoriented. He had bad days, and better days. Then came the day when he stopped eating altogether. He continued to drink water, though, at least if it was served to him fresh and cold out of the refrigerator.

On Monday morning, he snuck outside while we were sleeping--we had the back porch door open to catch a little breeze--and found a new hiding place in a rooftop storage area. E. ultimately had to drag him out (as gently as she could), since we were going to be leaving the house and didn't want to leave him there unsupervised. But to me, that was a sign that he was looking for a place to die. When we brought him downstairs into the kitchen, he drank a large quantity of water and then retreated behind the washing machine, where he spent most of the rest of the day and night. On Tuesday morning, when I went to make breakfast, he meowed his hello and came out to flop at my feet. But even that much movement was clearly an effort. And he no longer touched his water, even when I put it right in front of him.

That night, I spent a couple of hours by Bizzy's side. I gave him a good combing, caressed and talked to him, thanking him for being such a good companion and telling him that he should let go if he was ready to go. His breath was shallow and rapid, and his eyes became glassy and almost fixed. Around 9 p.m., I told E. that he wasn't going to make it until morning. She told me it was better to leave him alone, since he seemed to be fighting to stay with us as long as I was there. I went outside with E. to spend some time chatting with her grandfather and aunt, but my thoughts were with my kitty. I prayed (in my way) that he would go quietly, without suffering.

Sure enough, just over an hour later, we went back inside to find him gone. I gave him a few last pets and a kiss on the head. Then we wrapped him in fabric and took him down to the river bank, where we found a spot to bury him. I brought along Puzzle's ashes, and scattered them in the grave. Maybe that seems morbid, but it was important to me to reunite them in some way after so many years they spent together.

Even though Bizzy was never a big noise-maker, the house is far too quiet--something is simply missing. My grieving for him has been of a different sort than for Puzzle, in part because overt sadness or upset would not be culturally understood here, but mostly because I had a while to get used to the idea, and knew that his physical body was tuckered out even if his spirit persisted.

If you read this, and have a pet, please honor my kitty's memory by showing him or her or them some extra love today.