Republique Dominicana

We are home safe and sound from our weekend in the Dominican Republic and I want to tell you it was awesome.


I'm sure if you went to one of the may wonderful resorts in the DR everyone would speak English. We did not. We spent the weekend in what I would call downtown Santo Domingo, a city of about three million people. Almost no one spoke English. I did get to speak Spanish and French. Was I intimidate? You bet. But if you wanted to eat, sleep, get anywhere, you had absolutely no choice.


When we first got to our accommodations where no one spoke English, we found that they had given our reservations away and there was no room for us. OK. Rick was polite but persistent in both English and Spanish. Finally, they found us one room, we needed two. There was another woman traveling with us. They had big comfy chairs in the lobby, so Rick told me to take the room with our friend Rosa and he would sleep in a chair. If I learned one thing this weekend it was ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE. We had some other friends from Puerto Rico staying at the same place, when I started asking around we found that there was a room with four beds with only two women in it. Our friend Rosa was happy to stay with these two women and Rick and I had the last room left at the Inn.


I will tell you about the Dominican Republic, but first I want to tell you a little bit about our friend Rosa. It was most important that she go on this trip and do some important work. Her path was filled with obstacles. When we finally got to the airport in St. Croix, ready to leave, we were a little late. (Yeah, you guys know me) Anyway, Rick and I had only carry on luggage. Rosa had a bag that needed to be checked. TSA would not take it, because we were late. They told her she could board but she could not take her luggage. She did not know what to do. I looked her in the eye and told her I knew it was important for her to go, I suggested she leave the bag. BEFORE THIS; I had plead vehemently with the A/A check-in clerk to the point where she told me not to say another word or they would not let me on the plane. She told me not to talk to the Customs Agents or anyone else, but to shut it and go through the boarding process. (I wanted you to know that I did not tell Rosa to leave her bag behind without a fight.) ANYWAY...Rosa exercised more faith than I have ever seen before. She walked away from her luggage and boarded that plane with the clothes on her back. Once in your life I sincerely hope you can experience that. It is to stand in the presence of greatness.


In the Dominican Republic I had the opportunity to speak Spanish and French with a little bit of English thrown in. I got so used to speaking Spanish, that yesterday when we were coming through Customs in Puerto Rico, they were trying to redirect us and I asked something in Spanish, the agent let lose with a whole paragraph in Spanish. When he saw the bewildered look on my face, he apologized and said that after I spoke he did not realize that I was not fluent in Spanish. Are you kidding me? I was raised in Chicago. I'm barely fluent in English. Anyway it was a compliment.


We didn't make it to the beach. The ocean there is very different that on our little island. It is of course beautiful and just as blue, but the swells are enormous 5 - 6 ft. These are not white cap waves, just the ocean swells. That was intimidating.


No one would take dollars. We had to exchange our money and the exchange rate is not good. There's a little wake up call America. There were military types armed with automatic weapons as interesting places. Like a toll booth. I mean the toll on the highway was less than a dollar. They must be pretty serious about collecting. Interesting for me that after three days, the armed military presence ceased to bother me.


Rick and I ate out in a very posh restaurant on Friday night. Nobody in the place spoke English. Our poor waiter was very intimidate. We managed to have a wonderful dinner, and we got what we wanted. He understood my Spanish. We even had Chocolate Mousse for desert. It was in this restaurant where  I learned my most important Spanish word POSTRES ~ yeah, you guessed it that means desert. When the check came I though I was going to have to put my CPR skills to the test. Rick was hyperventilating. See a copy of the charge receipt at the bottom. NOT TO WORRY, that's in DR pesos. About $69US. We knew that, but just the sight had Rick's heart stop for a minute.Hopefully our credit card makes the right exchange, that should be interesting.


Both TSA and Customs were either on High Alert for some reason, or I look like a terrorist. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Rick hurt his back and on the way home every time he had to take his shoes off, I had to tie them up for him (he could not bend over).  All that messing with his shoes made them nervous. They kept telling me to step away from him and then he would get the once over again. I told him to wear the flip flops, but would he listen?





This turned out to be one of my most favorite "road trips" ever. I will be going back. Bad news from our kids is that they probably won't be able to come for Christmas. We are looking for cheap rates to St. Martin. We will try to go between Christmas and New Years to distract ourselves from missing the family. Hey, they speak French there. Who's up for a road trip.


Nanowrimo starts tomorrow. I can hardly wait. We'll have to see what it will be like and adjust the posting schedule accordingly.I know your waiting with baited breath.

Happy Halloween.I hope you can spend the day somewhere where "thinking is optional". I'm gonna.

TGIF and the Big Bird

It's Friday already and so I'm back here. I have to admit it has been fun going back and forth between this blog, which BTW is my personal Journal (rant) and http://www.farawayeyes1.blogspot.com which is supposed to be more about my writing and my books. Lately, I'm not so sure I can tell the difference.


I started the second blog because I was afraid I was too Politically Incorrect and often sounded a little crazy on this one. Sure I could have just toned this one down a bit, but then where would I go to get it all out. Also,I really want to be prepared to promote my books and my serious writing. Now I'm really sounding crazy.


Anyway...today when I  opened up my 'dashboard' for this blog, the title for one of the blogs that I follow was "How Much Should a Writer Blog". ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Maybe all writers are not as crazy as me, but I have to write. OK, I'm saying this out loud. It's a compulsion. Can't you tell? 


The past few weeks I have been waiting (not so patiently, I might add) for my editor to get me the second round of revisions on my first book "Far Away Eyes". The second book is done. Ideas for the third are running through my brain. I have done all of the research for "The Ghost's Story", the project I'm working on for NaNoWriMo (do I really need to tell you again, to google it) which won't start until 11/1, so this is it. Blog 1 and Blog 2. This is where I have been writing.


Starting on 11/1, I will have to cut back if I intend to put in 2,000+ words a day on "The Ghost's Story". I'm not sure what I will cut back to, but I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out. 


The first time I went to college(trust me the times I have gone to college are numerous) I was a Theater Major. In that department everyone lives for the applesauce. (Theater joke,you get it right? It's applause, but of course, Theater Majors are known to be horrible spellers among other things.) Well nothing has changed. I live for the feedback. What writer doesn't? OK,maybe there are a few. Not me. So... I want to say right here, right now, how much I appreciate each and every comment made on either of my blogs. Some days, all I do is check back looking for a comment or two. THANK YOU ALL.


That's it for today, nothing too clever, your're not surprised are you? I've got to run and go jump in the pool and workout. Then finish packing. Then head on over to the airport. Today we are getting 'off island' for a few days. Going to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. I am so excited. I'll tell you all about it on Monday(did you have any doubt). Maybe I'll even have some pictures.


If you are into "Horror" for Halloween,checkout this blog http://dravenames.blogspot.com He has had 'guest posts' of some of the most horrific short stories, that you are compelled to keep reading, this past week. Be warned it is horrific. The blog has a disclaimer about adult content at the beginning. No visuals, just pure scary stuff. 


Have a great Halloween Weekend. Remember to keep 'thinking optional".

Moral Dilemma

I like to give my characters a moral dilemma and see what they will do with it. I'm not too crazy about the idea of having my own. It's great when everything is going great and you can just blah, blah,blah your way through, but when the going gets tough and you are called on to put your money where your mouth is, look out.


On Monday I went on and on about how lucky I am to live where I do and I even had the audacity to state that if anyone heard me complaining they should slap me, please. I can't believe I said that out loud. I am the most superstitious person you have ever met. My husband calls me the resident gypsy. It is most assuredly "bad luck" to say out loud "how lucky you are". There you have it, I brought the current moral dilemma on myself.


When we lived in Florida we were very fortunate to live for one year right on the water. The second year we lived in a large house with a swimming pool in a cage, in a great neighborhood, with good schools. (I neglected to mention this Monday in my 'Room with a View' post, possibly because fate knew what was waiting for me and that I would need to bring it up today.) We, of course, were tenants in both places. That's me again, no strings. (Also fortunate, because I hated Florida and couldn't wait to get back to the Rocky Mountain West.) Anyway...back to my fortunate in Florida story, when a good friend stopped by our second house ,on the way home from closing on a nice little house they had just purchased in Bonita Springs, (without all the fine accouterments of my big rental house) she gave me these words of wisdom.


She said,"At first I wanted to be jealous,but then I realized how hard it is for you here and all of the terrible things you have to deal with and this house is payment for those sacrifices. You have here a sanctuary to come home to and get away from the nastiness you deal with on a day to day basis. I don't have that in my life, and I am grateful.  My little house is a fine sanctuary for the tranquil life I am able to live". 


I was not sure what to make of that. We were dealing with some ugly issues during that time in Florida. Issues a lot bigger than my cry baby attitude of "I don't like it here. I want to go back to the mountains. I want to live with four seasons. I miss the snow. Blah, blah, blah. (Hard to believe,today I live in the Caribbean and love it. What a difference a decade makes.)


Anyway...today I was asked to Pay It Forward. I have been blessed. I have lived a 'charmed' life. I have lived in beautiful places, that  provide incredible sanctuaries. I live in one right now,if you don't believe me checkout the previous post. I'm not being asked to leave. I am being asked to make a sacrifice. Probably a minor one at that, but for right now it seems kind of major. Will I make the right decision? I hope so. Will I learn something? I hope so. Will I expect some thing in return? I hope not, I have already been paid in full.


Crap. Moral dilemma's are fun to write. (I enjoy making the characters stretch.) They are a pain in the butt to live. I guess someone wants me to stretch also.


I have a headache. I need to get back to a place where "thinking is optional".

Room with a View

I've been having a good time reading other blogs tonight. Everybody is creepy with Halloween coming. More Ghost stories on http://www.farawayeyes1.blogspot.com tomorrow.


For today,right here, right now, I want to show you the view I roll over and wake up to every morning. Yeah that's it right over there. Is that spectacular or what?

Our condo is a two story job. Living room dining room and kitchen combo upstairs and two bedrooms with two baths downstairs. We rent the place furnished. Very little here is actually ours, but no matter. I own that view.


Upstairs in the living room and then again downstairs in the master bedroom there is a wall of windows, floor to ceiling with gigantic patio doors. We throw those patio doors open and  never close 'em. There is a galleria(deck) on each floor that is covered,so rain only comes in during a hurricane when the wind is really howling. It's like camping out every night, with a nice comfortable king size bed underneath you. We can hear the surf all night long.


Believe me I know how lucky I am and yet luck has nothing to do with it. I moved here from a ranch in the middle of nowhere Idaho. We lived in the middle of 800 acres. You could not see another house from ours. About a mile and a half of the main road and the county did not plow for us. If it weren't for a good neighbor with a big tractor we would have been snowed in until spring. It would not have bothered me a bit. More than once we snow shooed out to the highway. I was a tenant there too.


In Colorado we lived on a 400 acre ranch about a mile and a half outside a famous ski area. We lived in the old homestead house. It was about a hundred year old place. This was the homestead of a wealthy man, two stories and a great place. Compete with it's own ghost (not telling that story until December). Tenants there too.


I've been blessed beyond my capacity. We have had the good fortune to live some incredible places. These are all properties that sold for,or were on the market with a price tag in the millions. Now I'm not that rich or that clever, but I am willing to 'think outside the box'. The bottom line is that we're all tenants, ain't none of what we think we own, goin' with us in the end. 

Because we have been willing to 'think outside the box' and sometimes live 'off the map' we have lived some incredible places and it is not over yet. It's true I don't have the security of home ownership, but I am also not trapped, like so many of our friends have been the last few years with the current economy in the US. I also don't live in that little starter ranch style 1000 sq ft home we bought when we were first married. Of course, even that place was in the highest (in more ways than one) incorporated town in North America at 10,300 ft above sea level. That's Alma,Colorado, for those of you wondering, so I guess it wasn't so ordinary after all.(as a side note my husband was the mayor there. What a trip!)


I'm not posting this to brag or anything like that. I know what we do and the way my husband and I have and are still living is not for everybody. We did this when we had kids at home too. I'm grateful Oprah went off the air, because I'm sure one day one of them might show up to complain.  For me it's a great ride. I wanted to post this so that the next time I get on a self pity jag and start complaining, particularly about life in the islands,somebody slap me, please.

This is where I have breakfast every morning.

Lovin' livin' where 'thinking is optional'.

Audacity and Living Out Loud

Yesterday at www.farawayeyes1.blogspot.com I started talking about an experience up in Montana at the Little Big Horn National Monument. If your interested go there and check it out. Here today I want to talk a little bit more about the weekend at the horse sale in Billlings, Mt.


A few weeks before this trip to Billings the monthly copy of Western Horseman Magazine showed up. On the cover was a reprint of a painting done by an artist from Cody,Wyoming. It was a picture of a young Montana Cowboy. My traveling companion (daughter)on this particular trip was seriously enamored with this guys portrait. The artist recognized him on the cover. I remember his first name was Nate,but that's all I can remember.


Anyway...we're sitting at this sale, catalogs in hand,not really interested in the next ten or twelve horses coming up,when my daughter says. Oh my gosh, that guy from the cover of Western Horseman is here. Sure enough. After the gavel fell on the last sale the auctioneer mentions him and his recent fifteen minutes of fame. Daughter says, I'm gonna meet him. Now I've know this woman for all of her years. She has no trouble talking to horses, dogs, cats, even squirrels, but people, men people, are more a crash and burn situation. I'm trying to be supportive,but... Well, she gets up goes over to him, introduces herself, shakes his hand (That's a scary thing in itself. Have you ever shook the hand of a horse trainer?) and invites him to go have a drink or something like that.


Before I go any farther and tell you the outcome,I want to be sure Bubba knows what happened next. What happened next is...in the Encyclopedia of Life under the word Audacious her picture popped up with those little track lights running around it. That should happen to every woman, at least once in her life. She should be in a situation, especially a situation with a man, where she says "it's now or never". "Nothing ventured,nothing gained." Where she decides life is for living out loud. Hey Bubba, I applauded you that day and I applaud you now. Never forget that. Never let those lights go dim. You are meant to be AUDACIOUS. Life is meant to be lived OUT LOUD.


The rest of the story...Ole Nate is flattered (he should be Bubba is a pretty little blond Rodeo Queen - it's true,even if she hates that description) and married. I think he might have introduced Bubba to his wife and son. No mater. It's not about the out come,it's about the process.


Everyone of us is a work in progress. Keep moving forward, keep progressing,that's the goal. The only way you can coast is downhill and who needs that.


I am a proponent of Audacity and Living Life Out Loud. I also Hope You Dance.


Happy Weekend! I hope you spend it some place where "thinking is optional".

Dreams or Maybe NIghtmares

Today I was agonizing over what to blog about. So, instead,I started working on my Blogfest list. I can only devote so much time to it. I decided I would checkout five new blogs a day. I also decided to just start at 1 and work my way down, but then you know me. I did my five and saw one more that I just had to look at. HOLD THIS THOUGHT FOR A MINUTE.


Now, I have been going on about NaNoWriMo (don't ask,just google it),probably more on my other site, www.farawayeyes1.blogspot.com but, I know I have mentioned it here. Anyway, this is a month long writing project, where you write a novel in a month. The month of November in particular. I have been chomping at the bit to do this. The story idea is making me crazy. So crazy in fact I have been dreaming about the place where it takes place for over a month now. It's a place where I used to live. A very special ranch in Colorado.


When I sat down one morning to make some notes about the story, I wrote the last chapter of the book. I posted that on the above mentioned blog.  It's a few days old now, so if you want to look at it you will have to scroll down. the version posted was NOT edited,so be warned. I can't get this story out of my head and I keep thinking about this place and all of my time in Colorado.


NOW, BACK TO THAT THOUGHT YOU ARE HOLDING; today in my blogfest searches I click on this blog www.sivmaria.blogspot.com and there is a picture that looks familiar to me. It is a view of one of my AHA moments. That point when you reach the crest of Kenosha Pass and look into the beautiful basin that is know as South Park (Yeah,it is the same at the totally irreverent TV show by the same name. I lived there. I can identify all of their original characters with real people. This is the truth.) I was stunned. I thought Holy Crap. This is like straight out of my dreams or nightmares. When I scrolled down,it was even more incredible. Go there. Take a look. You will have to go to the right hand side of the blog and click on "My Memory Box". There is a beautiful story behind this trip. Read her blog and check it out. Leave her a comment and tell her I sent you. By the way this lady lives in Norway. Are you kidding me?


If you know me at all, you know I do NOT believe in coincidence. I have got to tell this story. I almost can't wait for November 1. I'm wondering what is up with all of this.


On a more sad note, today my wireless mouse died. This is a major bummer. I'm losing my mind trying to use that screwy mouse pad on the laptop. Ah, how quickly we forget.


On a happier note, we are going to get off island for a few days next week.  We are going to the BIG island in the Caribbean, Hispaniola. The Dominican Republic half, actually. I can hardly wait. Caribbean equivalent of a road trip. It will only take two planes.


Can't wait to see what's in store for me tonight when I close my eyes. Hopefully, a few new chapters for "The Ghost's Story".

Trying

Is it Monday already? What happened to the weekend? 


I learned a few things this weekend. 


First; on the island where I live there are two types of cars. The first type is the 'standard' and the second is the 'mash and go'. I learned to drive a standard when I was thirteen on the farm, in central Illinois. On the farm you could drive at whatever age. I didn't live on the farm. I lived in the city, but Daddy being a cop in the big city sent me to my aunts and uncles on the farm for the summer, once I was old enough to earn my way. On the farm everybody works. Did I ever mention how much I hate chickens? Due to my time on the farm, I rarely eat eggs. But, due to my time on the farm, I learned to drive 'standard' at thirteen, ride a horse and other things that farm kids learn, that I won't mention here.  Thank you Daddy.


I was in my thirties when I learned that the farm families were not really related to me. (For various reasons that's probably a good thing.) These people were good friends of my grandmother's and I was raised calling them aunt and uncle. All of the cousins were not really my cousins. Daddy was no dummy. I spent a lot of my teen years there with the 'cousins'. It was probably a good thing we all thought we were related.


As usual, I digress. I wanted to talk about driving. For years I drove a 'standard',wouldn't mind having one again. Lately I have become a mash and go kind of girl. That is probably not such a good thing cause I have a lead foot and that mash and go thing is bound to get me in trouble. I do like to turn up the rock music and 'mash and go'.


This whole mash and go thing was inspired by a Cruzan lady who was talking about buying a car at church. I love the Cruzan way of putting things. Of course, this particular lady is from Trinidad, so she refers to herself as a West Indian,not really a Cruzan, but you live here long enough "we are all Cruzan".


Tonight Rick and I went to see "Real Steel". "Rocky" for the twenty-first Century. It was fun. Everybody could use an -underdog, feel good movie- and what's not to like about Hugh Jackman.


That's it "thinking is still optional",but this post has gotten me to thinking. I may have to tell you more about my time on the farm.


Listening to Amos Lee and Willie Nelson. That's a little bit of Heaven.