Costa Rica on My Mind

I don’t remember when I first got the idea that I wanted to live in Costa Rica. It may have been when U.S. President George W. Bush appointed a North Dakotan as ambassador to Belize that I became intrigued with Central America.

The more I read about the area, the more drawn I was to Costa Rica: a democracy, no standing army, a variety of temperate climates, located between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Sounded like my kind of place.

I tried to convince my wife, Sue that we’d move to Costa Rica after our youngest daughter graduated from college. Never one to get overly enthusiastic about leaving her tight-knit Norwegian family, Sue would usually respond with silence, sometimes with a snort.

A few years after we moved from Bismarck to Fargo, North Dakota, a series of events happened that drastically changed our lives, and my life, forever.

Life Changes Forever

A highly respected and talented addiction counselor, Sue started her own addiction treatment center in 2000, which took all of her energy and time. A couple of years later her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and moved into our home in Fargo to be close to the Roger Maris Cancer Center, where she was being treated. She died six months later.

Two-and-a-half years after that, Sue was diagnosed with a rare brain disorder and Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). I cared for her in our home with the help of Hospice and some great relatives, neighbors and friends. She died in June of 2006. Five months later I had a heart attack. Stress, the doctors said.

In December of 2007, I lost my copywriting job in advertising that I’d held for 12 years. Four months and one completed screenplay later, before my severance package ran out, I was recruited to come back into the oil business as a petroleum landman, a job I had held in the early 1980s.

So here I am in mid-2009, a widower with three grown daughters, three small grandsons, two Boston Terriers, IRAs that have tanked, and a job that requires constant travel, trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

During my journey through the mind-numbing grief over my losses, I have done much soul searching. I have decided that I’m a survivor, and as I consider my options, I keep coming back to my dream of living in Costa Rica. But where?

That brings me to my decision to move to Atenas, the city that National Geographic Magazine says has the World’s best climate.

How I am Preparing for Atenas

To prepare for my move, I have Googled Atenas, bought books on Costa Rica (I look immediately to see what each one says about Atenas), and I have taken a community education class in Spanish from a woman who refused to speak English before, during, or after the classes. I also subscribe to “Atenas Today,” and last year I took a wonderful Caravan Tours tour of Costa Rica.

To become a member of the Atenas community, I belonged for a year when it needed start-up help, to Linea Vital, the city’s private ambulance and medical service. I will become a full member the month before I step foot on Costa Rican soil. I also donated money to help the Atenas mudslide victims.

What’s next? For the time being, I continue to dream about life in Costa Rica and to work on my Spanish. Next January I will visit Atenas for a month so I can get to know the town and its residents – expats and Ticos alike. I think this will help me discover for myself if my dream is realistic or if I’d be better off living in my oldest daughter’s garage.

The World’s Best/Worst Snowblower Deal

No travel advised today due to a raging blizzard. Even the mall is closed!

While we Up North need to just “get over it” regarding snow, it is March 10, 2009 and we’re getting tired of it. Besides, no travel, no pay, so the storm is reducing my standard of living. Wonder if there’s an earmark in the stimulus package for me and my fellow landmen who lose income due to blizzards. But I digress.

Last summer when I put house on the market, I made a deal with Shane, my next-door neighbor to the south. His ancient snowblower had given up the ghost last winter and was consigned to the scrapheap. So, whenever it snowed, he would head over to my house to borrow my shiny red electric-start mid-sized machine, clear his driveway and mine, and return my snowblower to its rightful place in my garage.

Today’s modern walk-behind snowblowers are adapted from the first snow throwers used in the late 1800s by railroads to quickly and safely clear tracks in Canada and our snow belt. Another large model was first employed by cities in the 1920s to clear streets. And Toro, of lawnmower fame, introduced its homeowner snowblower in 1952, much to the relief of many backs. Except mine. My old man refused to buy one, preferring instead to have us “get some exercise” shoveling our long, steep driveway.

Anyway, fast forward to me putting my house on the market late last summer. On a hot August afternoon, feeling generous and wanting to thank Shane for being a good friend and neighbor, I pushed my snowblower over to his garage when I saw him futzing with his racing bicycle. I gave him the machine with one condition: That he would agree to clear my driveway every time it snowed until I sold my house. He happily agreed, and parked his new used snowblower in his garage. Good deal for us both. He gets a functioning snowblower; I get my driveway cleared out a couple of times. Or so we thought.

In late September 2008, I accepted the opportunity to work for a couple of weeks as a right-of-way agent in eastern South Dakota, much closer to Fargo than North Dakota’s oil patch. Weeks turn into a month and then another assignment comes up closer still. I take my house off the market. Fall turns to winter, it snows, Shane blows, and I come home every Friday to a clear driveway.

Now it’s March 2009, it’s snowing like all get out, and as I peer out at my snow-packed driveway, I know that it will be cleared out by the guy who made the world’s worst snowblower deal ever.

Lent as Purgatory

Another Lent has begun. This is Guilt Season for many of us Roman Catholics, a time to cleanse our souls, which implies that our souls are dirty. Mine is, I suppose, most evident when I dredge up the sins of my past life, which I’m not supposed to do. Oh, the guilt about guilt.

The origins of Lent are, to my simple mind, confusing. Buried at the bottom of its intro to the topic, the Catholic Encyclopedia says that in 331 A.D., St. Athanasius (luckily my parents had never heard of this saint. It was bad enough being called “Fat Pat” most of my youth) enjoined upon his flock a period of forty days of fasting preliminary to, but not inclusive of, the stricter fast of Holy Week, and secondly that in 339 the same saintly fella, after having traveled to Rome and over the greater part of Europe, wrote in the strongest terms to urge this observance upon the people of Alexandria as one that was universally practiced, "to the end that while all the world is fasting, we who are in Egypt should not become a laughing-stock as the only people who do not fast but take our pleasure in those days". Who knew that the term “laughing stock” was that old?

Okay, so that’s why we Catholics give up such treats as cotton candy, cheap Polish vodka, and lima beans for Lent. These sacrifices are meant to cleanse us here on Earth. But what of being cleansed after we travel to the great beyond? Enter Purgatory.

The same Catholic Encyclopedia informs us that Purgatory (from the Latin, "purgare", to make clean, to purify) is “a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God's grace, are, not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.”

Typical of Lutherans who convert to Catholicism, my wife, Susan, did not believe in Purgatory. Imagine her surprise when she got there! I believe God took Susan into heaven the moment she breathed her last breath because she did so much good for people and suffered so much the final year of her life. If He didn’t, then heaven is not a place I want to spend Eternity.

A final thought about Purgatory: What if we’re in Purgatory now, being cleansed for the sins of our past life? Think about it as you contemplate my eternal damnation. Oh, the guilt!

I’m staying at a fairly decent motel in Mobridge, SD, The Wrangler Inn. It has a second-story lounge and restaurant. The lounge, The Windjammer, which overlooks Lake Oahe and the Missouri River, sports three video poker machines. One machine, a rather ancient looking device, has a crawl screen which asks, “Gambling problems? Call 1-800...” This strikes me as the nanny state gone insane.

I imagine some well intentioned South Dakota legislator tacked this requirement onto the bill allowing video poker: “Madam Chairwoman, if we are going to allow lower-income gambling addicts to lose their rent money, then we must help them get help for their addiction.”

So it seems to me that AA or some alcoholism treatment center (free marketing idea) should provide bar napkins that have an ad and an 800 number for help with drinking problems.

Irish Alzheimers

Okay, I'm going to offend someone almost every day (BTW, it's two words used like this), so I may as well start right off: What is Irish Alzheimers? It's when you forget everything except the grudges.

This should give you an idea where I'm going with this "world class" blog. Can someone explain to me just what the hell "world class" anything means?

I'm a widower and it sucks. At 59.5 I'm too old to date and too young not to. Cripes! I'm also an Irish Catholic, or a Roman Catholic, or an Irish Roman Catholic. Whatever, some people tease me about Catholic guilt. I like to think of it as a healthy conscience on crack.

More later.