What iguanas do all day

Ok, here you go: They spend most of their day up in the trees. I have this on good authority from the Green Iguana Society:

"Green iguanas are generally arboreal, meaning that they live in trees. Their long claws are superb adaptations for this lifestyle. Although they may appear to be quite clumsy as they tip over your furniture, knock things off shelves and fall off of perches, they are quite good climbers. They spend the majority of the day high in the forest canopy, and venture to the ground only to move from tree to tree, to mate, and to lay eggs. They are also good swimmers and jumpers."

Son will be pleased to know I found the answer.

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Just a bit of fun for the day.

This one courtesy of Alex, one of the dads in playgroup:



Specially for Chris, who loves AC as much as I do:



For those of you old enough to remember The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and also because I love Drew Carey:

I can see clearly now

For the past few days, Tropical Storm Alma has been giving us the royal smackdown. It's been raining so much and so hard and it's been so foggy that visibility has been very low here in the Central Valley, and driving has been about out of the question. For a while, I felt like I was back in Seattle! Yesterday I braved the weather to take son to his Thursday morning playgroup, since he's been cooped up in the house (and let's face it, so was I), and we were both going stir crazy. The rain seemed to let up at one point, so we took off, and I think it was a mistake to do so. Once the rain started pounding again, it was very hard to drive and pretty scary in some areas. The traffic going into San Jose was outrageous, and I hit several flooded spots on the highway that scared the crap out of me.

On the way back home, at the toll booth before the airport, the ticker-sign thing said something like (in Spanish, of course), "MOPT has been responding to an average of 60 accidents every 3 hours -- Do not leave your house unless absolutely necessary!" Yikes.

By the time we got home, though, around 3 in the afternoon, the rain had let up. This morning, I awoke to the sounds of iguanas scrabbling around on the roof and a beautiful, bright, sunshiney day. Hooray!

On a side note, son asked me why iguanas don't like rain and where they go when it rains. While explaining the difference between endothermy and ectothermy to him was difficult, I actually had no idea where they go when it rains. That's on our knowledge quest for the day.

And on a related note, can I say how much it totally and completely sucks not to have a dryer in this weather? My dish towels and rags have been hanging on the outside line since before the storm began, I think almost a week now. Since the sun is actually out today, they may get dry. One can only hope. I had a load of clothes hanging on the line that is covered by the porch, and they still weren't completely dry after four days. If you are thinking of buying a used appliance from that guy in Santa Ana who imports them directly, can I just warn you against that? The gas dryer we bought that never worked properly is now sitting at a repair shop waiting for a $100 computer card from the U.S., which I refuse to buy, so it will be sitting there for a long, long time. In other words, if I had simply flushed $300 down the toilet instead of buying the used gas dryer, it would have been less hassle. So, I am in need of another dryer, and if anyone out there is selling a good used one under $300, please let me know. Not gas this time. I tried, I really did, but I'm not going that route. Unless, of course, you have all of the connections for it already attached. It took us six months to get the attachments to the other dryer, after which we discovered the dryer did not actually turn on. And of course it was no longer under warranty... asi es...

Here's a brilliant idea

And brought to you by some Costa Rican government agency, no doubt. The latest is that when you go to get your driver's license, you now have to get blood typed there at the DMV. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea, please raise your hand.

Besides being a massive invasion of privacy, here are a few other reasons why I think this idea sucks.

1. Of all of the people who hold Costa Rican driver's licenses, what percentage of those do you think will be in a car accident? And of that percentage, how many do you think will be in a car accident serious enough to require a blood transfusion? I'm just guessing here, but I'd think a very miniscule percentage overall. Is it worth the expense for this very small percentage of people needing a blood transfusion after a car accident to make it worthwhile?
   
2. Don't most ambulances carry "universal donor" blood anyway? Wouldn't that just be easier?
3. If you were in a serious car accident, and, let's say you're a woman like me who carries her life in her purse, would you want the paramedics scrambling to try to find your license and then find your blood type, or would you rather they just take some blood there at the scene and type it and give you the transfusion? I mean, how long does it take? A minute? Two?
   
4. What if the DMV makes a mistake in your blood typing and you end up getting the wrong blood transfusion in the ambulance? (Ooh, I know the answer to this one! You die.)
   
5. What if you're in a car with several other people and in the confusion, you end up getting the wrong blood because you look a lot like your friend, who happened to have been sitting next to you? (See answer to #4.)
   
6. Wouldn't the paramedics have to type your blood anyway, just to be safe?

Honestly, who thought this was a good idea? I can't even imagine. It's so ridiculous. My driver's license doesn't expire until 2011, so either we'll be long gone from Costa Rica by then or they'll have changed this law.

You are not a Tico

(Unless, of course, you were born here, then you are a Tico, obviously!) I was thinking about this subject the other day, because a friend of mine (who lives in Peru) asked me if I felt like a Tica now, after living here almost 8 years. The answer is, No. I feel like a Gringa in Ticolandia. I will probably always feel like a Gringa, even though I married a Tico and have a Tico son and live in a Tico neighborhood with Tico neighbors; even though I speak Spanish well enough and probably write it a lot better than many Ticos. The reason is not up to me: Ticos are never going to accept me, an "outsider," as a Tico. Never. And that's just fine by me; I'm perfectly happy with who I am and where I'm from. So forget any aspirations you might have of someday becoming a Tico, it just ain't gonna happen, and if you think that because you've lived here a while that somehow makes you Tico, you're just fooling yourself. Maybe, perhaps, possibly if you live here most of your life and marry a Tico and have Tico kids in Tico schools, maybe then you'll be accepted into Tico society, but you still won't be a Tico.

As an example. A friend of mine who has lived most her life in Costa Rica, speaks Spanish like a native, but whose parents are Gringo and Nica, is not considered a Tico. She's around my age; she's lived here just about forever. If she ever has kids, they will be considered Tico, but she never will. It's just the way things are here, culturally.

The other thing is that (and I'm saying this from my own experience plus the experience of people I know personally and people I don't but whom I've written about) it can be hard to make friends with Ticos if you're not from Latin America (and even if you are, to some degree). I don't know what it is, but Ticos are very closed off to people who are not Ticos. (They can talk quite a bit of smack in regards to Nicas, Panamanians, Mexicans, Colombians, etc., let me tell you!) Again, I think it's just cultural and I don't really let it affect me. All of my friends here are either Americans, Brits or Canadians (with a few other random nationalities thrown in the mix for good measure :-) ). I don't really take offense, and neither should you. It's just the way it is.