Still Winter With a Glimmer of Spring

Here it is February already and I don’t feel any closer to resolution on anything! Of course, weather plays a big part in how I feel and as it is still very much winter here, it doesn’t help much. This morning is frosty but it looks like it might be clear later, much as it was yesterday when I actually spent some time outside, clearing out some of the dead stuff, waiting for spring.

Some of the tulips are pushing their way out of the soil! They must be as anxious for spring as I am.

Some of the tulips are pushing their way out of the soil! They must be as anxious for spring as I am.

There are signs that spring is on its way – days getting longer, the irises are showing their heads, my pot of tulips is growing nicely so these are all signs that the world is turning as its supposed to.

My life is in a stall at the moment. With money so tight, and my eye still not really healed, I don’t go anywhere unless I absolutely have to, which means staying at home here at the end of the world with my kitties for company. This weekend I will go to Port Angeles to check the tenants out of the house there. I have an ad running for new renters and have had a couple of bites but nothing definite as I can’t show the place until the current tenants are gone. I have seen inside and they did a good job of painting and cleaning the place up, but this summer the exterior will need to be painted – cha ching!

In October, I gave myself six months to get the modifications etc. completed and here it is – basically, six weeks from the end of March, my deadline. Doesn’t look like I’m going to make that deadline after all.

Betsy suggested I test the waters with an ad to rent this house out for the summer. It’s around this time people are looking for their summer getaways. I don’t know where the kitties and I would go but right now, I am just looking at options. If someone wants to rent the place for 4-5 months, that would handle my mortgage for the year; I could just lock this place up and leave for the nasty months.

I don’t know…

My eye is slowly getting better. Once I stopped using the antibiotic cream, which it turns out I was allergic to, and just use the Kangen acid water and a moisturizer, it is so much better and it is finally healing. It’s been a month now – I normally heal so fast! So this is very frustrating.

I’ve been updating ColbyCommunications and that has been entertaining, reading all my old articles. Country Life was a lot of fun and so many of the other sailing and boating articles were good too! I’m going to be doing an interesting story in March. Some of the pilots at Kenmore Air, the seaplane company that the magazine is for, do water testing in the Puget Sound and I am going to go out with them. And another I am doing is on the Dragon Boats in Seattle. Both will be fun and although I get paid about zilch, it will be good to get my hand back into the writing game again. I am also going to track down Sandy and Andrew Butt and do an article about their olive orchard up on Pender Island. I will fly up there on one of the seaplanes, spend the night at an inn there, do a an article about the Inn and then go to the orchard. That’s my plan, I just need to contact Sandy and Andrew! This won’t be until May or so as the planes don’t fly up there until then – shut down for the winter.

Ups and Downs

It’s been a week of ups and downs. First we find a house in Bocas, we’re all excited, then it is pulled out from under us. Oh well, it obviously wasn’t the one for us.

First heirloom tomato

Then we find another which looks absolutely perfect, over the water, furnished, in our price range – everything. I even sent the deposit! Then we find out that there is an Indian (as in Panamanian) bar across the street that is VERY noisy! So nixed that one!

But I suppose everything happens for a reason. Yesterday, Susan figured out it was going to cost a fortune to take Cedar her dog, and she won’t go without her. So it’s a good thing we didn’t get the house as I would have been stuck with a rent I can’t afford.

But it threw me for a loop. And I am having doubts about going on my own. It’s getting to be the busy season down there and I don’t want to get stuck without anywhere to stay when I finish up my school. But I sure as hell don’t want to be here for the winter. If only the weather was like it is now, all year! But it’s not and the few days we have of warmth don’t make up for the misery of 10 months of gray.

So what to do? All I need is a good internet connection, my laptop and camera. And courage! I feel lacking confidence at the moment. Maybe I just need a few days to regroup and rearrange my thinking.

I could go back to South Africa for the winter and then go to Panama from there in the spring when I would be more likely to get a house I like. Or I could just go.

Damn, I thought I had it all figured out.