Thursday, Mar 3, 2016

I still feel like crap today, but definitely not as bad as yesterday. Thankfully Heidi and Easton do not seem to be getting whatever I have. Maybe I have Zika. Guess I will never know.

Easton went surfing again today. He is looking to buy a board and was trying one out. I guess it was quite a workout for him in the ocean. Because of the current, he found it difficult to get himself far enough out so the waves weren’t just crashing on top of him the whole time. He seemed pretty beat by the time he came home, but I think he enjoyed it all the same.

In addition to making us another great batch of yogurt today, and then churning out a bottle of fresh squeezed lime juice, my suddenly-chef wife Heidi made homemade Nutella, and a fresh pesto sauce. I can’t wait to try all of it!

We had a very nice woman come and clean our condo today. She did a really great job too! We had another woman clean our condo a couple of weeks ago; and although she cleaned some areas very well, she never cleaned our showers (even though she told me she did) and didn’t do such a great job with the bathrooms in general. In my book, bathrooms are the “big deal” areas that need to be cleaned right.

I went in search of someone else to clean and was referred to a very nice woman called Liliana, who came here for the first time today. It is frustrating not being able to communicate. I do the best I can with google translate but sometimes it just ain’t hap’nin. When she was through, I think Liliana was trying to ask me where I wanted her to clean the rags that she used. I brought her into the laundry room and showed her the washing machine, then typed into the translator, “we use the washing machine to clean the rags”.

She started asking me some more questions and it wasn’t going anywhere fast between us. So I typed out, “just do whatever you need to do”. She nodded, and I left the laundry room. I’m sitting in the living room and I can hear the washing machine start going. I thought that was weird, so I went back into the laundry room.

As I rounded the corner of the laundry room I could see the lights flashing on the washing machine, and poor Liliana looked at me, put her hands up in the air and shook her head. I guess I didn’t make it clear that we would clean the rags. I turned off the washer and said in Spanish, “we wash”. With that I got a big smile.

The going rate here to have your condo cleaned is between ten and twenty dollars. Liliana charged me $15 and she was here 4 hours. In that time she swept and mopped all the floors (including the balcony), cleaned and scrubbed the showers and bathrooms, cleaned the counters, wiped down all the cupboard doors, dusted every shelf, and cleaned the sliding glass doors and the windows above them.

I am amazed and grateful for her hard work today.

Chao.