Behind The Bars, The OTHER Costa Rica...A Yenta's View

Part four of our ongoing saga about our move to lliving in Costa Rica...

Read part one HERE ...How Do We Live Our Lives? With Abandon and Lotsa Moxie!

Read part two HERE ...Wecome To Living In Costa Rica ...Your Homecoming Includes A Shakedown At Customs!

Read part three HERE ...We Arrive, We Collapse, We Move In To Paradise...Right?

Having left off in our saga with just moving in to our new house, I know by now after reading about our adventures you must be wondering what the heck kind of jewelry were we dragging around with us. Well, there was mine, there was Bryana's, there was some of mom's and some of my grandmother's estate and then there was some from Aunt Lily's estate and there was our stock that we had for sale. In our ignorance of local customs we schlepped it all down there with us never once thinking about how we would get it back up to our customers, mostly in the US, or how we would keep it safe while living there.

We needed to get our jewelry to a safe place while we settled in. Costa Rica is a sizzling irony of opposites and the idea of safety for one's belongings, not being able to buy homeowners or renters insurance, not being able to trust your household help or your drivers, the landlord, your freinds or anyone else for that matter was/is an anomoly. Paranoia was the word of the day!

It may look like paradise with palm trees swaying gently in the wind, beautiful white or black sand beaches, awe inspiring live volcanoes, chickees in bikinis and hot young men with muscles flexed. In truth Costa Rica is anything but paradise. It seeths just under the surface with anger and supression, over crowded families and people who rip each other off on a daily basis because they don't know any better. Heavy metal bars cover all windows and doors on houses, stores, high rise buildings. Ten foot high walls surround houses and many are in compounds with armed gaurds hired by the wealthy standing in front of homes while children play on the street. Theft and pickpocketing is not only the national passtime but the easiest job to get in a country where most are agonizingly poor and available work pays next to nothing per hour. We had a full time maid who came in 5 days a week for $60 a WEEK. We wanted to put her in one of our boxes and bring her back here when we returned but we couldn't figure out how to get enough food and water in with her for the trip. We still miss her every day and our house has dust bunnies and fur tumbleweeds rolling and reeling across the floors in unbridled chaos.

We were so lucky having our Canadian expats there to help us as well as a few friendly Ticos before we even arrived. They got the place clean and loaned us some furniture while we awaited the arrival of our container with the remains of our belongings. So we had a garden table and chairs two beds, a batch of mismatched but very usable kitchen gear, plates, silverware and ten thousands pounds of jewelry! What else could two girls ask for except maybe some new shoes!

First thing we learned when we arrived is NOT to ever wear jewelry in Costa Rica, or at least nothing large, bright or fancy and forget wearing gold. Never, never, never! Why? Because you are a target when you do. Either it might be ripped off your body as you walk about or you might be followed home and targetted in a home invasion! Ahhhh paradise. :-(

Hearing this right up front we had to get our goodies to a good hiding place and in a safe until we could figure out how to do it ourselves. This is not an absolute and don't get me wrong, theft doesn't happen to everyone. But caution and common sense are the words of the day and we needed to learn that quickly.

There's an agency in San Jose run by expats for expats to help them get resettled and handle all kinds of affairs that crop up when moving to a new and very foreign country. We had previously met the chief boss man on a former trip down and arranged to put some of our valuables in the safe at the agency. Getting there from our house which was almost an hour away was the trick because we had no idea where it was, how to get there, how to tell the taxi where it was and most importantly getting there without getting ripped off. But we did remember the name of the hotel we stayed at from one of our visits and it was about half a mile from the agency, so voila! We got the number of a taxi and got a ride to the hotel. It cost way too much but then again, we were the greenest of gringas and were paying the price for no Spanish.

In my brilliant logic I decided that our gobs of goodies would be safer if we carried them around in plastic grocery store bags rather than in brand new fancy schmancy knap sacks. Each of us had two large bags, one for each hand and after mustering our courage headed out from the hotel to the agency. We looked like two old yentas schlepping through the shtettle at gunpoint with our purses slung over our necks and a large, overstuffed grocery bag in each hand and our faces laced with imagined terror. The only thing that was missing was the scarf on our heads! We were half running from the hotel to this place KNOWING that everyone on the street MUST KNOW were were carrying enough junk in those bags to build them all new houses and scared shitless that we were just about to be rolled. We nearly ran in the door screaming from such a large overdose of adrenaline and were wild eyed and cranked up running on all eight pistons when we arrived.

Ticos are very laid back, matter-of-fact people who tend to take things as they come. That was the first day I was told, "tranquilo, tranquilo" by everyone we met. In other words, "chill out and calm down!" The more they told me to be tranquilo the more agitated I got. What had I gotten myself into?

We had to sit there forever waiting for the chief boss man to see us because when we got there he was out to lunch and when he returned he had a meeting that lasted until god went to his siesta that afternoon. Didn't they know we had dynomite with lit fuses in our bags for crying out loud?!

FINALLY! It was our turn. He didn't see the reason for our anxiety. He's been living there too long. He's 'one of them' now. I was talking so fast I forgot to breath and having hot flashes from the heat and humidity that kept me swimming in a puddle of middle aged moisture and my own personal rain forest. All I wanted to do was take off my clothes and stick my head in the freezer and there was no freezer near by.

Into the safe it all went, I was so relieved I nearly cried. And to this day I cannot fathom what got into my head that I would convince myself to leave thousands and thousands of dollars of jewelry in a strange man's safe in an agency run by foreigners who must know what I was carrying, in a city I had only be in only for 36 hours and why I was willing to walk away from all of it and somehow know it was safe. But the mind plays tricks for survival and I had first tricked myself into being terrorized and then into being sane... or explode.

We went home with ANOTHER taxista who was absolutely sure that where we now lived was indeed via a route through Nicaragua and Guatemala. "It's only another few minutes" two hours and dozens of dollars later. We had landed in paradise and boy were we in for it over the next two years. Pura Vida!

Secrets of worm grunting support Darwin's instincts after 127 years

Looking for a new kind of work, something different, outdoors in the fresh air? Consider this!

The secret of worm grunting, a mysterious technique used by fishermen to tempt worms to the surface, has been unearthed.Worm grunting is popular in the United States - they even hold grunting festivals - and involves driving a wooden stake into the ground and rubbing it repeatedly with a length of steel.To most people such behaviour might be regarded as, at best, eccentric but to fishermen it is a tried and tested means of providing enough bait to keep them going for hours.

A biologist intrigued by the practice has now established that the apparently suicidal behaviour of the worms in coming to the surface, where they are easy prey, is driven by a desperate desire to escape their deadliest of enemies - moles.Moles are such voratious eaters of earthworms that the invertebrates would rather risk being caught by a bird or dried up by the sun than come within range of one.Dr Ken Catania, of Vanderbilt University in the US, found that the vibrations created in the soil by rubbing steel on the stake mimicked those made by moles digging through the soil.

Fishermen had happily made use of the practice, known variously as worm grunting, tickling, snoring or charming depending on where it is done, but didn’t know why it worked.His conclusion, reached after a series of experiments in the Apalachicola National Forest, in Florida, confirmed a remark made by Charles Darwin in his 1881 book The Formation of Vegetable Mould.“It has often been said that if the ground is beaten or otherwise made to tremble, worms believe that they are pursued by a mole and leave their burrows,” he wrote.

Dr Catania, reported his findings in the online journal PLoS ONE, after carrying out a series of experiments in Apalachicola National Forest in Florida where eastern American moles, Scalopus aquaticus linnaeus, are plentiful.He said: “Eastern moles don’t come to the surface when they are foraging, so fleeing to the surface provides the worms both immediate safety and the most efficient means for getting away from them.“The moles are quite noisy. Often you can hear the sounds of a mole digging in the wild from a few feet away.”

The finding supports observation of gulls and wood turtles which have suggested the animals knew that by slapping their feet on the ground they would bring worms within reach.He found, with the help of veteran worm grunters Gary and Audrey Revell, that hundreds of earthworms came to the surface within 12 metres of the stake.“This makes it possible for an experienced worm grunter to collect thousands of worms in a day,” he added.

We Arrive, We Collapse, We Move In To Paradise...Right?

Part three of our ongoing saga about our move to living in Costa Rica...

Read Part One HERE...How Do We Live Our Lives? With Abandon and Lotsa Moxie!

Read Part Two HERE...Wecome To Living In Costa Rica ...Your Homecoming Includes A Shakedown At Customs!

Hindsight is always 20/20! Looking back now on our lives during the two years we lived there, our first few hours in Costa Rica and our experiences at the airport were warning signals of what our lives would be like and we probably should have booked a flight back to the US while we were still at the airport.
Leaving the US was for me, an opportunity to find a place where there was less government involvement and restriction in my life and a slower, more graceful way to live out my life. It was our attempt at finding a new frontier for us! Little did we know at the time that this was a huge fallacy and a total illusion created by my warped mind which has been addled over the years with too much work, too little pay back and far too many dreams of liberation. Paradise called and we were going to answer that call.

We hadn't just picked up and moved to Costa Rica sight unseen. We went to visit twice before doing the deed. We toured around, checked out houses and neighborhoods, even took a seminar about how to live and move there! Most folks there told us we should visit at least 10 times over the period of several years before making the decision to move there but who had several years? We saw houses like these and the bars were everywhere but somehow we just didn't see them in our excitement and our quest for adventure.

The contrasts are many and very wide but the bars are everywhere as is the poverty. To us at the time it was quaint. We either needed more coffee or an injection of something stronger for the wakeup call was not ringing through on the time machine. We were living the dream then and wanted it all NOW! We threw all caution and money to the wind and just jumped with nose plugs remaining still wrapped in plastic at the beach. Sometimes it really does pay to listen to those who have passed through the portals ahead of you. Sometimes you just gotta jump!

During our second visit we stayed with a nice Canadian woman who owned a B&B in the town were we wanted to live. She had been living there for many years, was fluent in Spanish...because it is easy to learn if you are first fluent in French, which she was.She knew a lota people, locals and foreign nationals and helped us to get a few things together down there while we were back in the States. That included finding us a driver who knew someone else who also had a large van and the two of them could pick us and the 27 bags, 8 cats and one dog up at the airport for a reasonable price of $100. A bit more than your usual taxi to the airport but it was two vans after all so we didn't object...until the end.

As I exited the customs conflageration I was finally allowed to go visit el banos and have never felt such relief in all my life before or since. While doing so Bryana was shouting orders to the drivers of the vans to get them loaded with our stuff and pets. I made her go on the van with the animals because I knew if I had to listen to them cry any more I would end it then and there, and I went with the luggage and the bags of jewelry which were blessedly silent.

As earlier visitors and touristas we were treated as sort-of-honored guests. We stayed in a hotel with sort-of-airconditioning and were driven around in taxis and tour busses with sort-of-airconditioning. Now that we were 'living' there all the amenities magically disappeared and driving down the highway away from the airport my tired face was assaulted by the night time air of beautiful down town Allejula, pregnant with the humidity of the rainy season and throbbing with diesel fumes. Yum! Donde esta el airconditioning?? Welcome home Dona Susan...this is it! Roll down your window and feel the breeze.

Don Pablo (not his real name) had been languishing at the air port for over six hours with his buddy Don Something-else-or-another waiting for us. Taxi drivers are used to driving folks here and there in Ticolandia (my pet name) and waiting endlessly for them so sitting there for six hours may have been a bit much, but what the heck! They were waiting for the new Gringas and that meant a new house, private school for their kids and a new wardrobe for the little woman as far as they were concerned. They coulda sat there forever.

If you don't know what Gringa means, it's the female version of Gringo, or she who is totally green around the gills, new at whatever it is, comes from America, probably the Texas oil fileds, with pockets filled with greenbacks lined with gold and stuffed in their undies. It means an opportunity and we were the ripest opportunity Don Pablo and Don Someone-or-another had seen in weeks. They were driving happily around in circles, a talent the Tico taxi drivers have perfected, with the two dumb-butt, tired gringas eventually getting us to our new home in the wee hours of the morning and adding yet another couple rooms to their new houses which they were going to purchase as soon as they had dropped us off and got paid.

Before I asked the damning question, how much?, I had them haul all our stuff inside, cats, dog, bags and jewels and put things in their right place. God bless our Canadian friend for having set up litter boxes, food and water bowls where we had requested and for making beds for us to collapse into. To this day I am in her debt. When we were finally ready to let the 'boys' leave I said it...how much? $600 Dona Susan! Whhhhhaaaaaaaattttttt! And I look back on that day and laugh about it because, after all, we WERE in Paradise, Right? Pura Vida!

We set the cats up in the 'maid's room' and closed the door. Most nicer houses in Costa Rica have a maid's room even tho' there are not many live in maids any more. We used our maid's room as our cat room and our babies were finally able to settle down peacefully and sleep it off. We tumbled into our makeshift beds and passed out cold only to be awakened the next morning at 6:00 a.m. by our neighbors who were also our landlords chattering like excited monkies in the forest who'd just found a new banana tree and getting the kids ready for school, which starts at 7:00 a.m. Since all windows must be left open because the air conditioning is non-existant there was no way to block the noise and extend our shut eye.
Still in awe of being there and not have anything to be cynical about...yet, I got up to sit on my little balcony and enjoy the early morning rooftop view from my bedroom looking over the Central Valley amidst the palm trees and the mountains. Believing then that I had found what I had been seeking all my life, I was at peace...for that moment. Yes, Virginia, we were in paradise!

End of part three...yes there is more coming.

Do You Know How Many Colored Alloys Gold Comes In?

Ever since before the beginning of recorded time gold has been considered a valuable and highly sought after substance. People the world over have lived and died and spent their entire lives immersed in one way or another in all that glitters. Whether a financier in the hallowed halls of The City in London or a South African laborer chained by the ankle to a mining site, gold has held mankind captive and captivated since our earliest memories of humanity on earth. There are stories on stone tablets written in Cuniform, the language of the Sumerians telling about the precious metal and how it was sought out and used by our ancient ancestors of prehistory. I wouldn't mind owning this 294 troy ounce Alskan gold nugget. I wouldn't even mind being chained to it by the ankle or around the neck! That's 18 pounds of pure gold!

It's often been said that one ounce of gold can buy a good man's suit and whether back in the 1930's or today, this still holds true in our world economic structure. Let's face it, gold holds its value and is the all time haven for safe investment whether through the purchase of bullion coins, mining stocks or jewelry. I'm sure you most likely already know all of this and if you do and still don't own at least a little bit of gold in your portfolio or in your jewelry box you're either watching too many hours of The Real Housewives of Atlanta or from another planet! Take the quiz to see which "Real" Atlanta Housewife you are!

But how much do you really know about how gold is made? How does it get from 24 Karat pure gold to 10 Karat and did you know there are at least six different colors of gold jewelry? It's never too late to find something you like made from gold. The prices can go from ridiculous to the sublime for jewelry, but there's nothing like it when you hold it in your hand. The magic is always present. I never tire of having gold in one form or another near by. Boullion is my favorite but I'll take it in any form, any karat and any size, large or small!


I love to touch it and wear it and it makes me smile and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Here's a few tidbits about karat gold and gold alloys to wet your whistle and help you know more about what you are buying.

Gold is a precious metal that is very soft when pure (24 Kt.). Gold is the most malleable (hammerable) and ductile (able to be made into wire) metal. Gold can be applied to things in the form of gold leaf or bent and formed into anything you can think of! Gold is alloyed (mixed with other metals, usually silver and copper) to make it less expensive and harder, thus more durable. The purity of gold jewelry is measured in karats. Some countries hallmark gold with a three-digit number that indicates the parts per thousand of gold. This system works in the following manner:

"750" means 750/1000 gold (equal to 18K) or 18K gold contains 18 parts gold and 6 parts of another metal(s), making it 75% gold.

"575" means 575/1000 gold (equal to 12K) or 14K gold contains 14 parts gold and 10 parts of other metal, making it 58.3% gold.

"335" means 335/1000 gold (equal to 9/10K) or 10K gold contains 10 parts gold and 14 parts another metal(s), making it 41.7% gold. 10K gold is the minimum karat designation that can still be called gold in the US.

Alloyed gold comes in many colors:

• Yellow Gold = gold + 50% silver and 50% copper

• White Gold = gold + nickel, zinc, copper, tin and manganese or nowadays, the addition of palladium is added to make white gold. It's more expensive than nickle thus, white gold is usually higher priced in than the other colored golds used for jewelry.

• Pink (rose) Gold = gold + copper and silver. The more copper added the deeper and rosier the color.

• Green Gold = gold + high proportion of silver or cadmium

• Blue Gold = gold + iron

• Grey Gold = gold + 15-20% iron

Black Hills Gold Jewelry is a great example of mixed alloyed gold jewelry of different colors, usually yellow, rose and green gold all in one piece. Black Hills gold jewelry is a style of said to have first been created in the 1870's by a French goldsmith named Henri LeBeauold, who is said to have dreamed about the design after passing out from thirst and starvation. Black Hills gold jewelry depicts leaves, grape clusters and vines, and is made with a combination of green, rose, and yellow gold. The jewelry must be manufactured in the Black Hills of South Dakota in order to be called Black Hills Gold Jewelry. It's beautiful, fascinating and shows off some of the many colors.

See our website, Posh Adornment or our Posh Adornement Etsy Store for a great selection of gold and gold filled antique jewelry. We specialize in gold filled Victorian pieces, usually rose gold in color, and we often have solid gold pieces for sale to fulfill your fantasies and enrich your collection of fine jewelry.

Wecome To Living In Costa Rica ...Your Homecoming Includes A Shakedown At Customs!

Go HERE for part one of this humorous series about our move to Costa Rica:

Part Two

We were standing in the heat, about a mile from the airport, on hot sticky tarmac with half a dozen Costa Ricans, also called Ticos as they refer to themselves, unloading our ten thousand bags and cats, rattling in Spanish, which to this day I still cannot speak or understand...except for a few choice words. It was probably a good thing at this point on the hot tarmac that I didn't know how to swear in Spanish.

Ticos generally don't like cats and are terrified of them thinking of them the way Americans think of rodents...which I never really 'got' the entire time I was there. So having to handle ours, even in kennels, was something to be discussed, debated endlessly, feared, but eventually accomplished. Look at these faces! How could anyone be afraid of these oversized plush toys?

Latin American is not known for its timliness or efficiency and just because they tell you Costa Rica is not really a third world country any more, you really shouldn't believe them. At best it is a second world country with serious issues around timliness among other agonizing cultural traits that just didn't mix with my North American JAQ expectations...I know gotta learn the local fare, but at that moment I still hadn't become anywhere near local.

Getting our belongings and pets ready to head off for immigration and customs was something out of a Keystone Cops movie and I was literally terrified to let my babies go without me. Just loading everything on the truck took over an hour! And by the time we were reunited with them it was another hour at least. We were put into a van clinging to the family jewels which our hosts wanted to liberate from us and take on the truck with the rest of our luggage. Since that wasn't an option we lugged the heavy bags to the terminal and awaited the arrival of cats and luggage...and waited, and waited!

I've learned through my years of travels there are several phrases I needed to memorize in the native language of whatever country I was in and 'Where is the bathroom' was always the first and most important. Donde esta el banos? Simple right? Wrong! I could not remember how to say this little tiny sentence. When I did finally get something like it out of my mouth the guys looked at me like I was from Mars. You don't get to go potty until after you go through customs. They didn't know Tiny Bladder and that I was permanently damaged from holding it in and now about 7 hours later still praying for intervention by the pee angels. I knew it would be hopeless to beg as they were unsympathetic and my Spanish was non-existent anyway. Still probably a very good thing I was unable to swear in Spanish. So my next best move was to ask for a wheel chair because it was easier to hold it in sitting.

Once again who woulda thunk we still had hours to go before I could pee and we could leave the airport! The terminal was almost empty, a total blessing. The dog was with us on the leash and no one said a thing about it except anyone who saw him wanted to pet him and of course he ate it up! He was more interested in marking the entire airport, so unlike me, he peed his way to customs in every corner on each and every chair leg and trash can. I was hoping no one was looking and wanted to drop my pants and squat at one point on the nearest kiosk but bad luck seemed to follow at every corner. My Tico escort was glued to me with no escape possible.


Our adventure in full swing, we had the unfortunate luck of being the ONLY ones going through customs at the hour we entered the country and the agents were bored and needed something to do to justify their having jobs. So they nearly strip searched us! Everyone of our 25 bags, two knap sacks, purses, fanny packs and pockets were emptied. Ooos and Ahhhhs aside, they were convinced we were theives and smugglers and the jewelry was contraband, so they confiscated it...ALL OF IT! Well, not all of it. They didin't get the stuff in the kennels. So fearful and superstitious about cats, they backed off and wouldn't go near them even to peer into the kennels. And that was good because in those cozy kennels was all the gold.

A cacphony of hysteria broke out. I started crying and wailing because that was the only way I could get their attention, the cats were howling and mewling as only cats can do, Winston was barking non-stop and Bryana stood there stunned and silent. We spent hours and hours trying to explain that the jewelry was ours and not stolen, but the customs agents were not interested nor did they understand us. I got angry, I got funny, I got hysterical, I waved my hands around like a manic in an asylum, I started threatening, I swore...in English, I pleaded, begged and tried bribery offering them each some jewelry for their wives...to no avail. Although this is not me in the video, it sure as heck coulda been...except for the Chinese part. And I bet she can't swear in Spanish either...



Someone who spoke Spanglish finally arrived and after hours of cajoling and begging, pleading and finally greased palms for the lot we came away with our things, our jewels, our pets and no dignity...and I STILL had to pee! But HELL, we were in paradise...right?


End of part two. Stay tuned, part three coming in a couple days.

Some photos "Courtesy of CostaRicaPhotos.com"
Thanks to all other internet sites whose photos I have used. Too many to mention. These are my cats tho'!

A Golden Moment of Time...

I'm sure you've noticed the price of gold lately, flirting with $1,000 an ounce again and even tempting some analysts to say it will hit $2,000 an ounce by the end of the year! Do you follow the gold price? If you don't already and would like to, I like Kitco.com for its live streaming charts 24/7 and lots of other great information.

If you haven't already stashed some away under your mattress or in your cookie jar you still have a chance to invest in gold bullion or awesome collectible gold jewelry which is also a wonderful way to protect your hard won earnings and your grand children's inheritance. And by the way, it's also obviously fun to wear! Check out this fantastic solid 14K gold vintage Swiss watch bracelet studded with diamonds and emeralds. A heavy chunk of gold went toward the custom design and elegant craftsmanship adding up to about 1 1/2 ounces.

Vintage 14K Gold Emerald Diamond Geneva Swiss Ladies Watch Bracelet

Would you like to know more about this gorgeous piece of jewelry? Click the picture or the link and have a look at the details on our Posh Adornment website or in our Posh Adornment Etsy store. We have other solid gold items for sale...and of course you'll find lots of great antique and vintage jewelry that glitters and makes you smile and isn't solid gold.

While I'm thinking about it, do you know the difference between Gold Filled, Rolled Gold, Gold Plated, Gold Vermeil, Tombak and Pinchbeck and the other gold simulants? Interested in discovering the wealth of information on alternates to solid gold? You can read about Gold and Gold Simulants in our article on the same subject on our website.

And by the way, stay tuned for part two of our adventures in Costa Rica!

How Do We Live Our Lives? With Abandon and Lotsa Moxie!

It was pouring rain as we loaded our bags into the back of the Land Rover, our Toyota and Paul's broken-down old yellow-orange VW van with failing fenders, chunks of character and 1960s bumper stickers. That is, we loaded our bags...27 of 'em, and our eight cats, one dog, one mom, one daughter and half a ton of jewelry and headed off for the airport. Of course it was raining! What else?! The gods were crying with joy and sorrow, mixed blessings and grief for our leaving our lives and climbing into the tiny cigar with wings that would take us to a new beginning, the fulfillment of a hard won dream fantasy. We were moving to Costa Rica, the whole fam damily and doing it against all odds and when no one else had the balls to do so even though everyone seemed to want to run away too!

I'm a recovered Jewish American Princess or should I say Queen, a JAQ with a serious defect in my personality. I like taking risks and adventure and don't much give a damn about status, position or clout in the community. Not into stability, the right husband, the acceptable outfit or being politically correct. I grew up having many of my dreams bashed by circumstance or by mom and dad and learned when I became an adult that taking action and bringing into reality those dreams, fulfilling them and allowing myself to live and be me was one of the most important things I could do for myself...and for my kids. And so it was and still is. My kids might not agree with this, but I sure gave it my best along the way. We are all dream makers and in our family we do our best to live them too! So, Costa Rica became a reality instead of a moment in time where we might have been left wondering what would our lives had been like if we had not actually picked up and left.

For me and Bryana, the only 'material things' we are REALLY concerned about are our pets and our jewelry...and for Bryana, being young...of course she loves the guys...not that they are material things, but sometimes I wonder what Bryana actually thinks as she flings them aside in a steady succession of collecting. I used to love collecting them too but then I got old and the only men in my life now are the ones in men!oh-pause.. But who cares? We're not talking guys here, rather jewelry and fulfilling dreams...LOTS of jewelry. Two knap sacks full, my purse, a fanny pack, the back of all 8 cat kennels and all twenty fingers, two necks, four wrists and four ears. I'm talking a LOT of jewelry!

Yep, after years of dreaming about it, being afraid to do it, wanting it, swearing up a tree about it, threatening to leave and pulling back...FINALLY we left. She quit college, bored with the idea of a stable income and great clothes from practicing law and I quit my life bored with the idea of spending the rest of my days working 'til I was carried out in a pine box and disagreeing with whatever government was in power. So we did it. We sold everything we owned...have you ever tried to do that? It sounds easy but is not so easy. Believing we would never come back, we sold EVERYTHING in the house, in the shed, in the yard, the cars, the house and the shed...and packed what we didn't sell. We were down to basically nothing and that nothing filled the 20 foot container truck from one end to the other...with 200+ boxes and my adjustable bed and of course the 25 suitcases and two knap sacks, purses and fanny packs. What was left of our entire house was packed in a big truck and off we went! No one believed we would go, but we did it and lived to tell about it for another day.

Our trip was not originally about jewelry but very soon became a jewelry odyssey and an animal story of great proportion and humor. There was no way we could get all our pets on a commercial airliner safely, feeling confident that one or more might meet its demise in the holding section down under with the luggage. And since we figured out after hours of research it would cost many thousands of dollars anyway, we solved the problem by chartering our own Learjet airplane, a very small cigar with wings. Yes we did! We lived like the rich and famous for a few moments and it was such fun! Can you see it now? Each little party puddy cat and our corgi dog in it's own seat with a tiara or a jeweled collar holding a Martini or a Champagn cocktail and a cigar and wisking off into the clouds towards Costa Rica?

Our two handsome pilots were astounded when we appeared with our paraphernalia and through all the wet muck and the rain. Even with our menagerie, our soggy clothes and dripping hair they still found time to flirt with us. OK, OK! It perked me up for a few minutes and then I fell dormant again. After they loaded the 25 bags, eight kitties and the dog we both climbed on board clinging to our two knapsacks full of jewels, purses, fanny packs and sloshing clothing to make our great escape from American tyranny as we saw it. Winston sat cheerfully soaked in Bryana's lap, the cats slumbered peacefully under a blanket of sedatives, our jewelry slumbered peacefully wrapped in miles of bubble wrap awaiting the next adventure when we got THERE; and I tried to figure out how I was going to make a 6 hour flight without a potty except for an old 5 gallon bucket I brought along for emergencies. The thought of baring my over sized butt openly with no privacy to the two jokers in the cockpit was sobering enough to jam my pipes and help me hold it in for hours. To answer your question, our plane was so small there was no bathroom and to have one would have required a larger plane and an extra $15,000. So we flew to Costa Rica and I kept my knees jammed tightly together until we arrived. It never dawned on me that I would have to hold it in another 6 hours in the airport!

End of part one. I'll be posting this story in bit sized parts over the next few days, so be sure to come back to read the next chapter in our adventure! Thanks to the many sources for the stock photos, to numerous to mention individually. These are not our animals. It was just too difficult that day to take photos on top of everything else!