what? the? fuck?

yes, i have my fair share of WTF moments, probably more so than the average person.  but this one takes the cake, BY FAR.

so let's say there is this boy. a boy who is eight years younger, a thousand times cuter, and even more fucked up than you are when it comes to relationships. (apparently some girl broke his heart when he was in his early 20's and he's still not over it. i mean, he's over her, but not it.) 

granted, if you heard the story you'd probably not be over it either, something along the lines of her making out with a girl right in front of him at a party then throwing her shoe on the roof of a tall building in NYC and this boy falling off the scaffolding in his attempts to get aforementioned shoe and breaking both of his hands which turned out to be a huge problem since he was a bartender and now couldn't work for a living but she dumped his ass anyway ....

whew.

of course i knew NONE of this when we were "hanging out" a few years ago.  i just knew that he was maddening beyond belief. but he was super cute. we had some sick chemistry. so you do that lame thing we all do in that situation and you give someone a super long leash, so they basically are in your life for MUCH longer than they should be. but thankfully it eventually fades away, you start feeling sane again... then next thing you know, it's been four years and you get a tm out of the blue:

boy:  heyyyyy. we must talk. lots to tell you!

girl: of course. (thinking that i'm kind over sleeping with him, but i could probably rally if need be.)  it's good news, i presume?

boy: not necessarily. i've gone through a major life shift that i need to tell you about in person. i'm fine, nothing to be afraid of, but we should def. talk

girl: ok, but it better be soon before the suspense kills me!

            ***crickets***24 hours of them***

girl: ok, let me guess ... you're getting married!"

boy: oh, you're good. close but soooooo wrong. much better than that. therapist helped talk me off the ledge. still want to see you but the drama is coming to a close.

what? the? FUCK?

i was going to elaborate on that sentiment but i doubt it's necessary.  however, if i spend one more minute trying to figure out what isn't 'necessarily good news', or if it's good news to him and bad news to me, and why in god's name this information must be delivered in person, i'm going to have a coronary.  but really, it's obvious, is it not?

TOTALLY GAY.

farewell costa rica

OMG IT IS SO FUCKING HOT TODAY.  that was my thought as soon as we opened the door to walk up to breakfast.  UGH.  of course this had to be the hottest day, the day that we had to actually wear clothes and be productive and carry 25lb duffle bags and sit out at the tambor airport for two hours .... UGH.

we also need to go to the bank because it turns out that we have to pay aidan cash for all of our mini-bar bebidas and the tours. and no, we still could not figure out the conversion rate (don't ask), thus agree that we need $200,000 colones each if we want $100. well, see, that turns out to be $400, not $100, and i'm pretty sure that they don't take colones at the starbucks by my house. brilliant!

seriously, the heat really did eat my brain (especially on this day in particular) because i have only the vaguest of memories of driving back to tambor, dropping off the rental car, sitting at that sketchy airport waiting for our flight, miss h. giving me a xanax that didn't work, even sketchier flight back to san jose, then just being really happy to finally be in the big air conditioned airport.

oh yes, wait -- the xanax did eventually work. it kicked in right as we were sitting down to munch on our whoppers con queso. ha ha ha ha. miss h. was definitely having lunch with a total re-re, i can assure you.

our flights leave about the same time, but mine is first. so we walk to my gate, then big hug and squish squish. i hate when vacation is over. see you next time, miss h!  see you at the all-inclusive where we have big, fluffy towels and a personal waiter!  and cable tv and no one under 21! and most importantly, NO CRABS! 

xoxo/

t$

costa rica, day 8

aka "the best of": playa hermosa, tropical latino and sushi dinner. hermosa was HOT and MUGGY.  yuck.  we got there about an hour earlier than usual, so we could see that the tide had gone all the way up to the trees that morning. crazyness! we sat in the shade, but the humidity was making the wet send underneath us feel like steam. we were over that fairly quickly so off to tropical latino for lunch & bebidas. sat in the shade here too, but it's much nicer as we have chairs.

back to moana lodge to reclaim pool from the kiddies. i think i scared them the day before with my evil-eye-death-stare, because they hung out in the jacuzzi the whole time and didn't make a peep. good!  because everyone knows that kids should be seen and not heard. 

the monkeys are back today in full force!  they actually came a lot closer than before, but by this point i already have about 200 shitty pics of them and i certainly don't need any more.

go to mary's for dinner for our last supper with the melrose place gang. it kind of feels like the end of summer camp, but the kind of summer camp where you're totally ready to go home. miss h. and i are leaving the next day, and so are matt & mary, the other kiddies from NYC. todd and stacy are still there for like 4 more days, which they did not look happy about.  i mean, all of their friends were leaving, the pool had been overtaken by screaming children, and they were in that small-ass room with no mini-bar or blow dryer.  torture! i would have changed my flight home ASAP.

miss h. and i go on a beer run after dinner, which was pretty hilarious because 1) can't remember the last time i went on a "beer run", but i'm going to guess that it was somewhere around 1985 and 2) remember we're in this little dirt road town, a la tijuana, and we're running into the liquor store wearing sundresses and acting like total city girls.

as we're winding down at the pool, saying bye to our fellow campers, adain shows up -- totally buzzed, i might add.  so he convinces us to stay a bit more and miss h. and i take that opportunity to let him know exactly what's on our mind. "so, what's up with no mini bar in the standard room?  how come you're letting kids stay here? is there a reason why you can't have a blow dryer and a full-length mirror in the small rooms as well? i mean, really, how hard could that be? and do you think that you could kill off all of the crabs?"

of course we were being very nice about it all, but you could still tell.  you could tell that he was thinking, oh god, i should have just let these crazy bitches go to bed.

:D

the candy funeral

well if you can never eat it again you might as well have a proper send off, right? at least that was my reasoning as i was feeling incredibly sorry for myself while i was at the grocery store, buying unsweetened soy milk and frozen blueberries.

*bleck*

true to form, this is when miss veruca chimes in:  please? just one more time. it will be fun. and yummy. i mean really, if you can never eat red vines again you should probably do it tonight, before you start your food journal.  the evil food nazi will never know!  oh, and you might as well go big, so get the one pound bag of red vines, not that meager and sad box that only has like 20 pieces.  she also somehow convinced me to get ben & jerry's strawberry shortcake ice cream, since dairy is now out too.

so that was the funeral. it was also my dinner.  needless to say, i had the absolute worst stomach ache ever. i also think i was in a sugar coma.  went to sleep at 9pm feeling only slightly guilty... i was still feeling way too sorry for myself to feel anything else.  

but yes, veruca was right -- it was totally fucking yummy. 

back to costa rica and augustus gloop

so once again i'm back with the disclaimer of "well, you know that NORMALLY i'm not very girly/paranoid/insert caveat here, but just in this ONE instance..."

*wHaTeVeR*

back to the day miss h. and i were at the german's hut/bar in the middle-o-nowhere:  as we are getting in the car, i see miss h. chatting up a little boy (ok, not so little, hence the nickname.) i don't think much of it since she's had a few cervezas, and her spanish tended to get better and better the more and more she drank. she is also the social one between the two of us, as you know, and lord knows my spanish is not so bueno. however, next thing i know, augustus is jumping in the back seat with his backpack.

h: "we're giving him a ride home from school!"

t: "whaaaaat?"

h: "yah, he just lives down the road!"

t: (thinking of course he lives down the road. there is only one damn road in all of costa rica!)

t: (looking at augustus) "um, hola."

a: (blank stare at me, then says something to miss h. in spanish.  i think it was "arriba!")

so we're driving down the road for like two minutes, maybe less, when he shouts "alto!" and points up this huge hill.  but you see, we are not going up that huge hill, augustus. we are staying along the agua, so i'm afraid you are on your own now.  miss h. converses with him and then explains to me, "but he lives up the hill. we have to drive him!  i mean, look at him ... there is no way he can walk."  but i'm thinking the exact opposite, i'm thinking that little augustus needs nothing more than some daily cardio. but i lose.  "tia! it will take 5 minutes."

so now back to my disclaimer of me normally not being paranoid. but i swear, i'm not!  it's just that i just so happened to read before our trip that pick-pocketing and theft was a pretty common occurrence in costa rica, on account of it being a third world country and all. seriously, they will even steal your flip flops and your flimsy-yet-totally-overpriced-towel on the beach while you're swimming, so watch out!  they also said that common "decoys" were women and kids who would chat you up, distract you, while some boy hiding in the bush would come grab your shit.  so yah, i read that as i was sitting on my $3,000 white ultra suede couch and naturally thought, "oh brother.  like that would happen to us? as if!"  i probably forgot about it five seconds later.

fast forward to augustus in the back of the car as we are driving up this knarly hill. i look back at him and decide that he looks highly suspicious. i'm also pretty confident that he no speaky ingles, so i give miss h. an earful:  "um, hello?? what are we doing? you know that i read that this is a very common thing...  little chubby boys acting as decoys, pretending to be too fat to walk home from school, but nooooooo. he's bringing us to some shed where they are going to chop us up and throw our body parts in the wood pile!  or even worse, omg, they are going to take my camera. i have like 500 pictures already!"

but this is what miss h. probably heard instead of my paranoia: "WAK WAK WHANA WAK WAK!" to her i just sounded like miss othmar, the teacher from peanuts.

ok, obviously we were neither abducted nor chopped up into multiple pieces, and it turned out that he didn't live that far up the hill. so we dropped his ungrateful ass off as he gave us very weird directions to get home.  um, no thanks augustus, we're just going to turn right around and go back in the direction from which we came. but thanks for your second yet passive attempt at getting us killed on vacation.

we did have a good laugh about that afterwards for quite a few days (being alive will do that to you, you know.) but every time we passed a hitchhiker for the rest of the trip i would have look at her and say "NOOOO! don't even THINK ABOUT IT!"

jesus.

moving on ...

forget costa rica, i'm ready to go to the seychelles! too bad this hotel (which i''m now completely obsessed with, btw) is already booked for most of 2009. (((sigh)))

costa rica, day 7

tortuga island!

"miss h. wakes up a hot tranny mess." ha! as i recall, this was from the two JUMBO pina coladas she had for oops i mean 'at' dinner. (but they are always sooooo good on the front end, aren't they?) jeez, what a day to go snorkeling. poor miss h!  but she rallies and we're off to montezuma once again.

tortuga felt like being the caribbean. gorgeous.  the snorkeling was amazing! there were so many fish (and no loch ness monster, thank god.)  first we dropped two of our guides off on the main island so they could prepare our lunch while we were off having a good time.  the guide that stayed with us jumped in and caught a puffer fish (yes, with his hands) then antagonized the hell out of him so that we could see him puffed out to the max.  yah, i felt slightly bad, tho must admit that it was totally worth the entertainment factor.

went back to the island for lunch and it wasn't as deserted as i thought it would be. it actually looked like a cross between club med and a mall in valencia.  you could see that the palm trees were intentionally planted in these perfect lines, and there was also a GIANT gift shop. cheese-o-rama. but if you were facing the water you could pretend you were in the middle of nowhere, so that's what we did.  we ate lunch (which was super yummy, btw, even tho it looked like prison food) and passed up on round II of snorkeling and instead chose to plant our lazy butts under a tree. (hey! we were very tired from all of the activity so far! this was a big day for us!)

back in montezuma, we got the best homemade ice cream, ever, even tho i knew there would be hell to pay later for little miss lactose-intolerant.  we were also quite pleased to get back to the car to find that our cheez-it's hadn't been stolen like we had anticipated.

we were definitely in agreement that this was our sweatiest and dirtiest day yet... i believe miss h's exact quote upon getting back to the car was "you know, i feel about as good as this car looks!" of course this also had to be the same day we got booted out of the deluxe zebra room and into the standard room -- aka THE VERY VERY SMALL ROOM.  (we joked that it was like moving from my apartment into hers.)  and not only was this room smaller, but there was no mini-bar. bloody hell! however, the icing on the cake had to be the four screaming monkeys in the pool -- noooo, not the cute little howler monkeys -- we're talking KIDS. yae! MY FAVORITE.  ugh. 

todd and stacy had been kicked out of their big room too that day, so we deduced that two families got our old, fancy rooms with the mini-bar and the blow dryer as we were carted off to the top of the hill. soooo unfair. quickly ran off to get sushi for dinner and hid for the rest of the night.  

but kids!?!?!?  shit, i thought we were in costa rica. not at circus-fuckin'-circus.  

torture.

costa rica, visual intermission

enjoy the silence.

costa rica, day 6

btw, all of this fascinating detail is not from memory. oh no. if i was doing this all from memory it would be about 5 sentences long, with many references to "sandra", "locked safe", "pilsen", "hot", "dirt/y", "beach" and "queso".  that would be about it.  butt miss h. and i had the brilliant idea to jot all of this stuff down so i could write about it when we got back. that was probably the most intelligent thought we had all week!

that said, i'm looking at my chicken scratch right now and next to day 6 it says "*social star*!!" 

huh? i have no idea what in the hell that means either, so why don't we both figure it out as i type my notes verbatim...

"playa hermosa es muy bonita. swim swim. rain rain. manzanillo, y miss h. chats up the german. finds out we're 4 weeks into off season. that explains it. miss h. offers augustus gloop a ride. turns out to be top of hill. my death awaits me. flor blanca hotel for g&g. bartender HOT yet dumb as rocks and slow as molasses in january. buzzalina -- knew it was going to be crazy rest of day. melrose place afternoon at pool and all race to see mama monkey with baby. other melrose place couples pair up and cheat on us singletons for dinner, but we still watch hockey later and explain we're not lesbians."

ok, that was pretty fuckin' funny! i think i'm going to have to do that for the rest of the posts.

costa rica, day 5

trip #1 to montezuma. we heart this town!  the road there sucked major ass, but i've decided that you really can't describe how awful it is to drive in costa rica.  just go check it out for yourself and get back to me.

montezuma is everything we thought mal pais would be ... cute little strip of shops, bookended by glorious beaches.  the water here is much more sapphire, more brilliant. it's beautiful.  this was actually the first day that i was in awe of costa rica, because up until this point it hadn't seemed that much different from other places along the pacific.

we walk along the beach about 200 meters (no, i don't know how far that is in my country either) where there is a hotel, the ylang ylang.  the only way to get to it is by walking on the beach. apparently they have a car that will go into "town" and get your luggage for you, but you have to walk!  it's amazing.  granted, it's not the ritz carlton, but it is a lot nicer than anything we had seen up until that point.  and obviously we were both thinking the same thing, because after we checked it out we went to the front to ask them what their rates were. not that we were going to change hotels, but you know, just in case.

costa rica, day 4

i know, i know. i'm thinking the same thing:  

"uh, we're only on day 4??? how long is this damn blog going to be, anyway?"

but i warned you that for two people who seemingly weren't doing anything, we were obviously having quite an adventure. that being said, i will try and stick to the highlight reel from now on.

the safe keys arrive!  woot!  adain sent them down on the bus (true story) and spicoli opened it up for us. i have never been so happy to see my iPod in my life.  

we decide to spend the day at tropical latino since they have a great beach, a loo, a pool and some really tasty guacamole. and now that we have our cards back it's time to head to the bank. i had heard that the atm's down there only bat about 50%, and to be prepared to go into the bank w/ your passport.  sure enough, that's what we had to do. which normally is just a pain in the ass, but down here it's a pain in the ass and pretty damn serious as well. the guard was pacing in front with a semi-automatic, and he wouldn't let us wear our hats or sunglasses inside. we also had to leave all of our "metal" with him, which includes cameras. i did pause for a moment before i put my beloved camera in the drawer and thought, "ok, do i realllllly need to go into the bank?"  but i'm sure ya'll know the answer to that question by now. 

went to sushi for dinner, which was amazing. yes it really was that good (ahi tuna & avacado salad) but it also was nice to eat something healthy for a change.  after dinner, we walked down to D&N, which was supposedly the happenin' place that night.

OMFG.  nooooooooooooo.

first of all, the whole town is dirt(y), but this bar was on a dirt road off of the main dirt road. and it was dark. and deserted. and these two teenagers we following us, trying to chat us up a bit. so we stopped mid-way to get rid of them, while we evaluated the situation. once we looked down at the bar and realized that NO ONE was there, literally no one, we were outty.  not that we went to costa rica for the nightlife, but even in the most casual sense it's pretty lame this time of year. shit, not even lame. it's a ghost town.