Vacacciones

This week is a much-needed vacation. I explained to Jay during a low point that I felt like a sandcastle that was being rained on and melting. It's just that my job, idyllic as it sounds, is draining. The guests are needy and they want to make relationships with me, but they're insidiously selfish relationships because they really only go one way. I could write a catalog of the woes of the average well-to-do American woman. And those conversations give nothing back to me, while they exhaust my sympathy. My English-speaking coworkers are frequently stressed. My Spanish-speaking coworkers don't understand me, not from a language barrier perspective (although my Spanish isn't really any better than it was) but from a cultural perspective. And the wind. When the wind lasts for hours and into days, it takes something away. From the body. Like a curse that you can't heal because you can't identify it, or what it's doing. Like leaky bowel syndrome. (Too far?). What I mean to say is that constant wind is exhausting because you have to hold onto yourself all the time.

Something fun was that my grandparents visited me at the hotel for a night. It was so nice to see family, people who love me, where I could be myself, where they were on my side no matter what. Maybe that's the thing about family: they're always on your side, in some way, even if they disagree with you and undermine you.

Had a stressful Kenny episode, wherein Bob suggested that I might be moving out of the house because things are bad in the house. This was news to me. When Bob told me that I needed to talk to Kenny, he admitted that he hates living with me because it feels like he's living with a mother again. And he HATES being told what to do. What he means is that the fact that he has to be considerate in washing his dishes, turning down the tv, and not leaving the common space a pit oppresses him. I was really taken aback, and assured him I don't care what he does as long as he does his dishes. I don't want to oppress him. He agreed it's just an unfortunate paring and we can try to work it out. God knows I don't like living with him because he's a resentful ogre who is one of the most selfish people I've ever met and it hurts my feelings that he doesn't want to be my friend. I'm just so used to community. This feels ugly and sad in comparison. So of course now Jill and Bob are thinking about moving me around for the rest of the two months, some weeks in the hotel (nice accommodations, but no space. I like to go home at the end of the day and get away) and then maybe if a massage therapist comes I can move in with her. I hate the uncertainty of it. Very stressful.

But now I'm in Monteverde visiting Evan, Debbie, and the kids. They are fostering two very sweet puppies, and my grandparents are visiting. Of course being re-socialized into family dynamics is taking its toll. Yesterday we went to the Sloth Sanctuary. For those of you who don't know, sloths are wonderful. They are peaceful, gentle, slow, friendly, and have very human faces. They also have the best body mechanics of any animal I've ever watched closely. Their core muscles are perfect, and they can gracefully and effortlessly move their entire body through the air while hanging onto a tree branch with any one limb. Later today we're going into Santa Elena to see some other animal museums. Tomorrow I am going to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast, where I plan to spend as much time being horizontal as humanly possible, aided by hammocks, preferably.