Strapped and Wrapped

If you pay attention at every moment, you form a new relationship to time. In some magical way, by slowing down, you become more efficient, productive, and energetic, focusing without distraction directly on the task in front of you. Not only do you become immersed in the moment, you become that moment.

   -Michael Ray

 

I don’t know who Michael Ray is but I believe he is on to something.  So much of my life has been run, run, run, go, go, go.  One of my main objectives in life is to slow down and really see, feel and live each moment. 

 

 After raising 8 kids, while working a full time job through most of that, doing all the housework, most of the cooking, shopping, running the kids here and there, it has been a major challenge to slow myself down.  You see my ex-husband worked out of town most of the time.  In fact for five years, we only saw him one weekend a month and for one week over Christmas.  So I was basically a working, single mother of 8 kids, although some had gone to live with my previous ex-husband.  I know, it is complicated.  All in all, I had a lot of kids to raise, mostly on my own.  So I didn’t have a lot of time to smell the roses and what have you.  I was busy smelling diapers and burnt dinners.  A lot of the details of my life just slipped by me, with only minimal notice, if any.  I am sad to say, even most of my own children’s childhoods. 

 

So after years of this, you can imagine that going slow is not the pace I am conditioned for or used to.  However, I am determined to work and work at this until I get it close to perfection.  Costa Rica is a place and this is the time in my life that I really feel I can do this.  Ok, well starting now!  Ok, now!  Ok, for sure tomorrow.  And this is the reason why there has been a slight delay in this goal.

 

 If you have been following the blog, you will recall I went back to Colorado again.  And came back to Costa Rica again, and then back to Colorado again, then back to Costa Rica again, then back to Colorado again and I am now back in Costa Rica.  Try to keep up, please.  Ok, I will retrace this freaky, frenetic flying for you.

 

 Was in Costa Rica, moved here May 2013 with the two oldest sons.  Decided I needed a car down here.  They are not cheap down here.  Went back to Colorado for almost 6 months to work and earn money for a car.  While back there I came to Costa Rica for 10 days to visit friends and the boys for my birthday, knowing I would go back to Colorado to my job.  Went back to Colorado, decided it was time to make the jump.  Gave notice to my job and came back to Costa Rica just before Christmas to stay here for good this time.  While I was still in Colorado, I was waiting and waiting for the final divorce settlement money to come through.  Nothing came, so I gave the proper entity authorization to do a direct deposit into my bank when it came through, knowing sometime after that I would need to shop the rest of my household stuff and my car back to Costa Rica.  The proper entity screwed it all up and I could not take care of it properly from Costa Rica so I had to fly back to Colorado AGAIN. 

 

 I took care of the paperwork for the divorce settlement money and made arrangements for shipping my stuff to CR.  This was not quite as easy as it all sounds.  Shipping my household stuff from Colorado meant renting a truck to gather stuff from three places, get it all to my storage unit, hiring a couple guys to help me stack it all on three pallets, strapping it down, wrapping it in plastic wrap, coordinating all this in the morning of the same day that the shipping company was going to pick up the pallets.  My storage unit was not big enough to have all of the various items I had gathered in it at once.  My storage unit was also an inside unit that the trucking company could not get to with its forklift to put it in the truck.  So I had to get stuff there, get it packed up and ready all before the shipping company’s truck showed up.  Turns out we had it ready in plenty of time and the shipping truck did not come till much later in the day, while I had to sit in my car for several hours,  babysitting my pallets of plenty so no one would help themselves to my hard gathered, strapped and wrapped stuff.

 

PALLETS STRAPPED AND WRAPPED

 

Two things down, one more to go.  Shipping my car!  I found out I could save $1,200.00 dollars by driving the car to the shipper’s warehouse near Tampa, Florida.  So I bought the flight a few weeks out (also to save money), hung out at my friend Todd’s house, who so sweetly cooked and cooked for me and fattened me up nicely with cookies, candy and BBQ, and waited for it to be time to head to Florida.  Of course good old Colorado laid plenty of snow on the area before I headed out, so the morning I was to leave, Todd and I had to shovel snow for a couple hours.  Soon I was on my merry way to Florida, praying I could stay ahead of the snowstorm that was forecast.

 

 Next blog:  The drive to Floreeeda and my traveling partner, Kaobi.