Rosa

It's mañana and blue sky's. I'm on my second cup of coffee and I'm sweating like a pig. That's a good thing coming from cold. I really like it. Ok, back to our adventure yesterday. Jan, my mood was great in the store. I knew we were scoring huge just to find the stuff I needed and having a bike will allow us to ride to the grocery store 10km to get what we need. I also found out salt comes in a plastic bag and I can actually get sea salt in Tamarindo at a specialty food store. I'll have to check it out. Elliot, the son of the couple who we are renting from, is a world of information. He is 21, dreads, cute as can be and moved here with his family when he was 13. His parents are in the states until July 4th so he is the only one here at the moment. I'm looking forward to meeting his parents. I'll bet they are very interesting from the looks of this paradise. They have 6 houses on their property. It's rather large. Not pretentious at all. Just super low key.
Jack said the guy who he bought the bike from has more for sale. We now need to make the treck back a few times to buy them from him. We'll all have bikes soon. One is definitely not enough. We went to the beach when we got back from Santa Cruz yesterday. I carry a backpack and the girls carry a boogie board each. It was impossible to give one a ride with the boogie board. So I ended up pushing the bike walking with the girls anyway. On the way back Jack rigged up the boogie boards so that they were resting on the handle bars. I got about half way and it really started to rain hard. Everything fell off the bike including me and I'm wallowing in the mud soaking wet trying to re-rig everything. The girls are expecting me to drop off the stuff and come back and get them. I had to push the bike the rest of the way home. Now, I'm thinking to myself, "what the heck good is having this bike when all I'm doing is pushing it?" We need to figure out a system. We need bungie cords. We all got home muddy and soaking wet. We were in good spirits. Except the girls. They didn't see the humor in any of it. Yesterday was their meltdown day. I've been expecting it. It only took 3 days. They are having a hard time adjusting to the bugs, heat, no transportaion, having no junk food, no tv, no computer, no phone, etc. It's awesome. We have tv but most of it's in Spanish. The computer thing isn't convenient. We don't have it at our casita so I have to walk over to the owners and sit on the porch and even though it's right here just a stones throw away it's still not ideal for us to just log on. Good thing, because I can see me saying yes when Jordan want's to go on the computer which would be all day. I put the computer away in the safe and lock it up for the day. Out of sight out of mind. Plus, there is just to much to see here if you just look. They have this walk in bird cage with 2 huge parrots named Rosa and Pablo. Rosa is a bully. Elliot took the girls into the cage the first day and got the birds used to them. The second day Hannah wanted me to go into the cage. What could be so scary about that, right? I'm in my flip flops and walk in and rosa comes charging at me on the ground and flippin' bites me so hard on the top of my foot. She takes a chunk out of my foot. I freak and leave the cage. Now, anyone who knows me knows that that darn bird isn't going to get the best of me. So I get my mudboots on, which go up to my knees, I wrap my shoulders in a sarong, and as far as I'm concerned, I have no skin showing. I go back in the cage and all is great. Rosa cannot get enough of me. Hannah is beaming that that bird and I have bonded. Well, I already do not like Rosa because she won't let anyone get near Pablo. She's so stinking jealous of anyone giving Pablo attention that when I walk over to Pablo she starts yacking at him like he's done something wrong. Poor guy. Well, we're all in the cage, Hannah's happy, Pablo just got chewed out, I'm looking at Rosa looking at me. Rosa flys up to this stick above our heads and Hannah says, "Oh, she's going to do her trick for you mom!" Well, the trick never came. She takes a flying leap right on my head and starts pecking the hell out of my head. I'm yelling, "get her off!! get her off!!" Hannah just stands there scared while I'm figuring Rosa is going to gauge my eyes out. Her claws were digging into my head and she's pecking away. I finally get her off of me and make a bee line to the cage door. I leave my baby, Hannah, in there and she's looking at me like I did something wrong. I finally come to my senses and tell her to get out of that cage, NOW. She obeys. We lock the cage and just stare in at them and Rosa is smirking. Pablo says in PERFECT Spanish, "Buenos Dias." He's says "Buenos Dias" about 4 more times. Needless to say, I am not making friends with the birds. The girls are fine in there though. Rosa seems to like them. Don't ask me what I ever did to Rosa. We may be eating what they think is chicken one night for dinner.