Asthma Attack in Panama

Ever hear of "treasure house" dreams? That would be a dream in which, for example, you walk into a high end clothing store where everything you might ever want is on sale for $20.

Well, how about a medical treasure house?  My buddy Dennis, who is currently visiting and speaks no Spanish, had a bad asthma attack last night. When he knocked on my door, choking, to say he needed to go to the hospital, I called a taxi and we raced to the Urgencia entrance of the hospital here in Las Tablas (Panama). There, they immediately shooed him into the treatment area, hooked him up to an oxygen feed, gave him a breathing treatment, an injection of something powerful, and two more breathing treatments over the course of the next two hours.  Meanwhile, I went to the reception area and paid his bill.  It was $2 - two dollars.

No, that is not a typo.

The nurses and the doctors were extremely competent, had great bedside manners and were most solicitous of his well-being.

The only potential fly in our ointment was something I came prepared for: the hospital is air conditioned to the point of refrigeration.  For whatever reason the place seems to be maintained at 40 degrees or less.  All the staff wear sweaters and jackets.  Having taken one previous trip there from which I departed with chattering teeth and incipient chilblains, I brought along a couple of blankets and we were quite cozy for the duration.

For a $2 medical bill and excellent care, I am quite willing to freeze for an hour or so.  Wouldn't you agree?

Meierz Musings: Two Five's Adventure, Part 4

A little sci-fi from Christie Meierz...

Meierz Musings: Two Five's Adventure, Part 4:       The ventilation shaft reminded Two-Five of a broodmale’s tunnel: a tight fit for an adult Slash Second. He was flat on his long b...

Neon Treats in Panama

            I love Central America! I love the flash and the verve, the willingness of the people here to live in Technicolor.

            Last night as I rode the bus home from Panamá to Las Tablas, I saw three different trucks decorated with neon.  The first was one of those enormous long-haulers, the kind with the wolf-style snouts, flat-hooded and tapering to a snub.  That snout / hood and the front of the cab above it were striped in green neon, emphasizing the sheer machismo, the size and power of the machine.

            And, of course, making it infinitely more visible on the road.  How eminently sensible, no?  As well as lots of fun.  Imagine that looming out of the darkness behind you.

            The other two trucks were  smaller, more short-haul types, with rounded noses outlined and details picked out in orange-red neon.  One was especially charming – where the green truck resembled a wolf, the cat-like qualities of this one were emphasized.  The decorator had also placed a couple of round lights on top of the cab where ears would be.  Sooo cute.  I must tell you about the buses, too.  Next time.  I do love these little treats in Central America.

A Lovely Surprise and a Surprising Reframe

When your only reference for book sales is based on JK Rowling or Stephen King or Nora Roberts or Mark Victor Hanson's runaway "Chicken Soup for the Soul," it's easy to consider your own efforts as not worth snorting at.  My novel, "A Chip in Time" was (only) downloaded approximately 1600 times, although (I confess) nearly all of them were priced at $0. But just today I ran across some very interesting  information presented by the intrepid Jonathan Fields of TribalAuthor.com.

 According to industry wonk, Morris Rosenthal, the average mainstream published book sells a mere 2,000 copies. And, though estimates vary widely, most self-published and POD books cap out at anywhere from a few copies to a few hundred.

Well, now. 

The gurus of manifesting and quantum physicists (ok, ok, the people who popularize quantum physics) all - to a man/woman - say that you get what you subconsciously expect to get.  And that telling yourself better stories is the best method for adjusting said expectations. So I am going to do exactly that, since I am obviously already a pretty successful author, hey-hey, ho-ho.

Expect to hear a lot more from me about purposefully collapsing ye old quantum wave.

Philosophizing Cows

Indies Unlimited - an unlimited source of great advice for authors - has a writing contest each week. While winning it seems directly related to your personal popularity as opposed to your prose (you have to cadge votes from friends and relatives), they suggest using your entry as a blog post.  It provides exposure after all, as well as excellent writing practice.  So here's my 250 words about a Philosopher Cow.

Henrietta stretched her lovely white face on its brown, bovine neck as far as she could. She was oh-so-careful not to move laterally – the barbed wire on the fence was inconsiderate about poking holes in a girl's hide. All she wanted was to reach that gorgeous clump of green deliciousness barely beyond reach of her mobile tongue and lips. Was that so much to ask from life?

Across the field, behind her, men loaded the unfortunates chosen for this week's 'bad ride.'  Henrietta ignored them, in spite of the piteous cries from her aging, now-barren friends Gertrude and Mildred as they were hustled into the truck.  Henrietta knew her turn would come, but before it did she wanted more from life than the desiccated hay and sparse, picked-over growths in this field. She did not know why, but she believed: the grass on the other side would surely taste better – fresher. Cleaner. Free.

Blowing a great sigh, Henrietta lifted her head and stepped back from the fence for a moment.  Beyond her painful boundaries, the fields rolled in gentle, green waves, their flow to the dusty azure of the distant mountains interrupted only by a line of trees that followed a creek.

The truck was loaded. The cowboys slammed the gates and locked them; the driver honked twice.  The herd purposefully ignored the terrified lowing of their members making the final journey.

Henrietta pushed carefully at the barbed wire again. She would taste that clump before her turn came. 

NOT SO DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, PART 2

I have a dog. She is approximately 6 inches long and 6 inches high. She weighs 3 pounds, seldom barks and is trained to use paper when we can't go outside.  Her favorite way to get around is to have me carry her in a black handbag that was built for carrying small dogs. It has a bone-shaped black mesh "window" and a clip to fasten to her harness. We also have a regulation soft-sided carrier so she can scoot under the seat on an airplane.

An airplane. Huh.  Take a dog with you on the plane?  Only if you are willing to pledge your first-born and all your back teeth and you are in a country where they aren't terrified of dogs.  Buses?  The buses want you to put your innocent little baby in the belly with the luggage and the heat and the fumes.  This seems to be especially true in countries that were once notorious for having live chickens in with the passengers.

I have smuggled her onto buses. And got caught at the other end, too. No return trip.  That's a nightmare story for another time.  This one is about getting the dogette from Costa Rica to Panama.

So, I had checked all possibilities and none of them looked good.  For one thing, I had managed to accumulate a tiny amount of stuff in Costa Rica, mostly bedding and a few pots and pans, and I was very attached to my pillows in particular, hating the thought of leaving them behind.  I concocted all sorts of elaborate schemes whereby I would roll the bedding into a black plastic bag, mash it all down really well and lash the bag to my duffle so that at the border and when changing buses I would be able to manage the duffle, the bedding bag, the backpack, my purse and the dog carrier. What folly.

In Costa Rica I had successfully smuggled the tiny dogette on both long distance and local buses many times in her closed carrier.  She is very quiet and most people don't even notice her.  However, Panama tends to be a bit more uptight about rules and regs than Costa Rica.  In Panama the enforcers are soldiers serious about their work.  In Costa Rica they did away with the military some twenty years ago.  So learning that Panama was officially no more welcoming to dogs than Costa Rica was definitely an Oh, s_ _t_  moment.

What to do?  I thought about renting a car.  Alas, not possible for various reasons.  I ran scenarios where I took taxis between towns.  That actually might have worked pretty well, looking at it in retrospect.  Taxis are less expensive in Panama than they are in Costa Rica.  It certainly wouldn't have cost more than the option I chose.

In any case, how I would get myself, my stuff and la dogette to Panama fell into the category of what Alan Tutt, an excellent teacher of manifesting, calls "The Dread Hows."  When you desire to manifest something, the instruction is to focus on the desired outcome and let the universe work on "how" to make it happen.  I have always been pretty good at manifesting for myself, but I never really realized before this very moment that IS what I do.  At first I run through all the options I can think of for accomplishing what I want and if none of them suit, I don't worry about it.  I just keep going with the other aspects of my objective and something viable invariably turns up in the empty sector.  It just sort of drops into my lap.

So I stopped fussing about modes of transportation and instead began organizing la dogette's paperwork.

Now I had already gone through an intense series of hassles with the dogette's paperwork back in the States.  Costa Rica and Panama both require a rabies shot within 1 year and a certificate of good health.  I had both those things when I left North Carolina, but the customs officer in the San Jose airport KEPT the International Health Certificate, which had cost me over $100 USD to get by the time I finished paying for the veterinary exam, the form, and Fedex both ways to get it to and from the appropriate government agency in a timely fashion.  The customs official wasn't supposed to KEEP the certificate, he was supposed to stamp it and give it back. I was so upset! But there wasn't a thing I could do about it except get another health certificate in Costa Rica.  They told me it would cost me another $100 USD.

So I put it off and put it off.  But after I finally decided on a date of departure, I realized I had to deal with it and went down to get the certificate. The vet had previously told me I should do it two weeks in advance of my departure date.

This vet, who shall remain nameless because I haven't a lot of nice things to say about him, showed up for our appointment an hour late.  His "exam" consisted of holding the dog up in the air and turning her from side to side. "Hmm, she looks good," he pronounced.  However, in spite of the fact that her rabies shot was current and did not need to be repeated for 6 months, he thought we had better give her one anyway.  The system in the US where each shot is numbered and the number is on the tag, on the certificate and recorded with the state is not good enough in Costa Rica to prove your dog has been vaccinated, so it was necessary to have a Costa Rican rabies shot or the officials would not pass the health certificate.  Or so he said.  As he was only charging me $40 for the form and another $16 for the "exam" and getting the paperwork handled, and I wasn't going to be able to get her into Panama without the shot, I agreed, for $5.  So finally I was in possession of the stamped paperwork, and then I found out that he had done only half the job!  The stamped paper had to go to San Jose and be stamped some more!

So I hopped a bus ($6) for the 3 hour trip over the "Mountain of Death" to San Jose, where I took a 15 minute taxi ride ($7) to the address provided by the consulate as the place of stamping.  But no!  Animals? No! This was the Ministry of Agriculture and "We never do animals!  Never! Never! Never!  You must take this to Zapote!"

And where is that? Someplace way out there ($13).  My taxista, who was the nicest man, got lost. To his credit once he knew he was lost he turned off the meter until we arrived.  There we first encountered folks who wanted to send us someplace else, mostly based on my bad Spanish and the taxista's limited understanding of the situation, until someone actually looked at the paperwork and realized we really were in the right place.  At that point they delivered us into the hands of one of the good Doctors in the department who, incidentally, spoke perfect English.  A very witty man, he gave me a rundown on how to get a dog across the Panamanian border.  If you fly, he told me, you must have all your t's crossed and your i's dotted.  You must have your health certificate with it's stamp, and proof of a rabies shot. You must get signatures from the correct agricultural attorneys and you must go to the Department of Exterior Relations and be stamped. Also you must be prepared to pay the "Home Quarantine F'ee" (translation: bribe) of $140 when you arrive in the airport so that your dog will not be impounded for 30 days. 

However, if you are driving, he told me, it is a different story and everything depends on the official who is working at the border that day.  You need only the health certificate and proof of rabies vaccination.  Sometimes you do need the signatures of the attorneys, sometimes not.  "Fortunately I am an attorney and since you have already paid, let's just stamp this now and I will sign it and put the embossing seal on it." 

He then told me that it has been demonstrated that you can hire someone to watch the dog while you go through the border-crossing process. Then, once you are safely on the other side you could simply whistle for the dog, which would then make the crossing on its own, sans paperwork.

A wonderful apocryphal tale, no?  Full of defiance and the derring-do of pirates and revolutionaries other scoff-laws. Personally, I would never be willing to risk my baby that way, plus the story does not say what happens at the control checkpoint where the soldiers stop your car and demand to see your processed paperwork for the car and passports.  An obvious dog passenger… hmm.

OK. So I had all the t's crossed and he insisted that I did not need to cross the final i since I was not flying.  So we skipped the Department of Exterior Relations and my taxista delivered me ($14) back to the station for my bus ride back across the Mountain of Death ($6).  Adding it up, we see that $40 + $16 + $5 + $6 + $7 + $13 +$14 +$6 = $107  which is $7 more than I would had had to pay a vet who knew his business, not to mention that I could have spent the day at the pool instead of taxiing around San Jose in the heat.  So unless you are already IN San Jose and have a car with air conditioning and all the time in the world, if you are ever offered a deal on an  international health certificate for your dog in Costa Rica, run the other way! 

To be continued…

NOT SO DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, PART 1

Many of you know that I was born in Panama.  In the city of Colon, as opposed to the city of David. Claiming the latter could have been fun, but oh-well. And then I was adopted. Anyway, the birth certificate says that Mom was British, by name one Susan Stockin, and the apocrypha says that Mom was connected with the royals in some obscure way. Who would give that the least bit of credence that if it were not for the fact that the trail has been blocked?  All traces removed?  Is stone cold?  On a Neolithic scale of freezing.  Which is to say, there is NO information about my origins.

I grew up secretly believing, as many adopted children do, that I was really a princess. This was before I ever heard the apocryphal story. At the time I was just glad I had been adopted by regular people because I thought princessing sounded like a really rotten job. From what little I could see a princess almost never got to do anything she wanted to do, she had to marry whatever dork her family picked out for her, and she had to spend an awful lot of time doing what my young self considered dumb things like christening ships, waving at people, giving interviews and looking nice while holding flowers at hospitals.

I had known I was not a biological member of the live-with family since maybe forever, in spite of all the well-meant lies they told me, but it didn't really bother me. I was never especially obsessed with finding the birth parents, as some adoptees are.  I had been adopted – that meant somebody really, really wanted me – and then I had been adopted again after my first adoptive mother died and my adoptive father remarried.  And in spite of the fact that the second mother and I were mutually not in love, I still felt sufficiently wanted and had no internal pressure to hunt down people who emphatically didn't want me.

When I was 18 I received a graduation gift of a trip to Europe.  This necessitated getting a passport. So step-adoptive mother hauled out the birth certificate and for the first time I saw my birth mother's name: Susan Stockin, British citizen.

Father: unknown. Huh. I bet Susan knew who he was.  And then the fateful line: Born out of wedlock and therefore illegitimate.  Well.

That was in 1942 when stuff like that still mattered, and if a girl was a bit fast you said she was "no better than she should be."  And everyone knew what you meant.  Old biddies in particular.  So can't you just see the pinched lips below a faint mustache on the nurse making that entry?  Can't you just see the neat, no-hair-out-of-alignment chignon under the crisp cap, and the glint of the cat's eye glasses as she wrote? 

My step-adoptive mother was mortified by that line of text. She could not deal with it, and didn't want me to have to deal with it either. Not anticipating the loose ways of the world to come, she destroyed the document after I had been safely en-passported and citizenized.  (Yes, I had been an illegal alien for 18 years and nobody had the least idea. Woohoo.)

It wasn't until Step-Adoptive Mom had been laid to rest for some years and I was in my thirties (it was about 1982) that I needed that fateful document again. I managed to use my passport for proof of birth and age. However, in the process my then sweetie, Steve, had his curiosity bump excited and with my permission he began trying to track Susan down. 

This was when we discovered the trail was blocked. 

Steve was a determined investigator.  He made phone calls to Panama. He wrote letters.  He contacted the military and the diplomatic services for Panama, Britain and the US.  He called the embassies and the consulates.  Short of physically barging into offices, he made his presence known as an investigator.

And there was nothing there.  The trail was non-existent.  It was as though I had never been born, had never even had my adoptive father push on his own commanders to obtain emergency clearance so he could take me to the states.

We both thought this was a very suspicious circumstance.  Too much TV?  Maybe.  But what was there to do about it anyway?  I was not really interested in continuing to try to meet people who so obviously did not want to meet me. I told Steve to drop it.

And so it stayed until 2010, when once again I needed my birth certificate because I wanted to teach ESL in Mexico.  I had pretty much forgotten how much trouble Steve had in his search, and sent off a letter (with a check for the very healthy fee) to the Panamanian Consulate asking for help in finding my birth certificate.  It only took a week or so for a note scribbled at the bottom of my letter to be returned to me along with the check.  "Sorry, we are unable to locate it."

Well, I thought, when I am in Mexico I will at least be closer, and perhaps I will pop down to Panama for a visa-run.  It would make a nice vacation, too. 

So toward the end of my allotted days in Mexico, I bought a ticket for Panama.  But the trip was fated not to be that year. A mere month before departure I slipped in the tiled shower of my 'habitacion' and fell.  My wrist shattered and I was forced to fly home for repairs.

It took me another year and a half to recover and save up to try again.  This time I got talked into going to Costa Rica by well-meaning friends.  It's true that Costa Rica is totally gorgeous, from the countryside to the people.  And I certainly do not regret going there, particularly since I felt some renewed connection with my first adoptive mother, who died in the jungles there. 

She and Daddy adopted me because they could have no children of their own.  Then, the frequent miracle occurred – once the pressure of desperately wanting a child was off, she became pregnant.  Unfortunately, it was a tubal pregnancy and she was on vacation in the Costa Rican jungle when my potential sibling began to make him or herself known.  So the only one of my mothers who really wanted me perished there before they could get her to medical help.  I was six months old.

Daddy pressured his commanding officers and pushed through the paperwork that allowed me to enter the US when he flew back with her ashes.  He presented us both to her mother, my beloved Gram.

Nearly 70 years later, here I was, living in Costa Rica but thinking constantly about Panama.  Panama is right next door.  Life is cheaper in Panama.  I want to see Panama. Etc.  But there so many come hithers in Costa Rica – the unequalled natural beauty of the land, the riotous bursts of flowers, the pleasure of seeing so many lovely, smiling faces wherever you look.  And the kindness of the people.  Friends.  And then there were the expelling factors – the local hacker who had been after me, the constantly rising cost of living, the bad plumbing in my cabina, the bugs that simply love to munch me. 

One day when I was half-mad from scratching a fresh set of bites from an unknown insect, had just returned from spending way too much on groceries, and opened the door to my cabina to be met with a deep whiff of sewer, I made the decision. It was time to move to Panama.

To be continued…