With so much going on in the States over the 4th of July, I would think possibly one could here it in Costa Rica. I haven’t been here over this holiday in a few years. It’s a nice time. Actually one of my favorite holidays: there’s no gift giving or worry about how moist the turkey is. I mean, who cares if the Bratwurst falls on the ground? It’s casual and fun.

I took the kids to a parade. We waved the flag, like all good dual-citizens do. After a swim and a meal at grandma’s house, I tucked the kids in just as the fireworks were going off.

I set my foot on the trail and kissed it. Of all the things I miss the most about living in the States, trails - paved, windy, plotted, safe, and gorgeous - maybe is the one I miss the most. I took Coco and Addison to a trail along the Mississippi River.

Look Coco! I used to skate here with our dog!

I used to hitch up my dog - when she was younger and alive - to one of those flex leads. I’d hold on while she either pulled me or ran alongside me as I roller bladed. I described it to Coco. This is the great thing about kids: you can make any experience you’ve done seem like it was one of the greatest feats ever conquered in the world.

Wild flowers bloomed along the path. Coco touched the river and tried spelling it with the trick I gave her: M I crooked letter crooked letter I; crooked letter I crooked letter I; hump back hump back I.

The Mississippi is a grand national treasure I adore and miss as much as the trail that winds along it. We turned around after a long walk to start back for the car. Coco peered through the woods for a deer. I told her sometimes they hang out in the woods. As we continued on, a raccoon crossed right in front of us. Coco and I gave each other a high five. Addison whipped his bottle as he finished his last sip. It bounced along the path. What a perfect morning it was.

Coco has been glued to her cousin. I can safely say this in almost a literal sense. For a week, Coco has followed her big cousin everywhere she’s gone. And her big cousin has been kind and, I believe quite thrilled, to have a built in friend. The two play this Ninetendo DS thing and “chat” and train their puppies, and bark commands to the tiny screen.

Coco bought the little machine in the first few days we were here. She used her own money. I’m hoping she’ll make some sort of positive connection to buying it with her own money rather than me doling out the cash. I’m sure some of that is in there, but at the age of seven there are still plenty of moments where she comes inches to destroying it. I try to let her be responsible for it’s care and up keep (it is cheaper than a real dog, or guinea pig come to think of it!), but I’ll see it laying on the edge of an arm chair or placed in a spot her seven year old brain thought was perfectly safe. This morning, she placed an Iced Animal cookie on the screen and traced it. I suggested possibly the oil in the cookie wasn’t good for the sensitive touch-screen.

As I prepared Addison’s spinach-salmon goo for his breakfast, Coco and her cousin talked to their puppies on the screen. One time, Coco said something and her cousin didn’t understand what she said.

Is that how you say stop in Spanish? she asked.

No, she replied. Coco told Lulu her computer dog to sit. Coco then turned to her cousin and asked:

How do you say stop in English?

The two girls looked at me as I laughed and laughed. This little game machine was well worth the money.

It’s summer as I remember it. The days are long. The days are warm. I get more of a tan here than I do in Costa Rica (unless we’re at the beach of course). The colors burst every where from the trimmed grass to the drying towels on the beach chairs.

The only thing that’s a little odd is that I want to speak Spanish to people, especially in stores. I have become this cultural mutt. I could never breed Minnesota out of my blood. Much of what I do and who I am is rooted in the backyards and screen porches of my past. Sometimes I feel like speaking Spanish. Maybe I should think about barking instead - being the mutt that I am.

Throw toilet paper in the toilet bowl; sidewalks as far as the eye can see; highways with no potholes; green manicured grass - what is this paradise? Oh wait a minute, it’s a developed country. Oh yes. I’m in the United States.

Accilimating to a culture goes both ways. I’m back where I came from, yet I’m used to where I am now. Since this is not making sense, I suppose it is best to stop writing before I write something I will regret. Finding Internet cable has been a bit more challenging than I expected. Finding a moment without the kids is more challenging than I remember. No school or husband or nanny to take them off my hand for an hour or two. My relatives are super wonderful, but that special needs thing adds just that extra zip in the holiday challenge.

When I stopped in Target to get some diapers, of course the “Baby” section was on the opposite end of the store. My mom waited out in the car with a sleeping Addison and a coughing Coco. I grabbed a pair of sunglasses on my way to the check out with the mega-super size of diapers (was everything always mega-sized???). I opened the bag of M&Ms after checking out. The super-sized bag dumped into my handbag. I could hear them jiggling on the bottom as I walked out. I couldn’t get the red or black price tag off the sunglasses, so I walked out AS IS. For a second I thought: what if I meet prince charming on the way out. I shrugged. Guess he’ll have to take me AS IS.

(Special note: Since my mother’s computer came out of the box when dinosaur’s walked the planet, you may experience spelling or grammatical errors that were out of the operator’s control in fixing. I’m trying to talk her into a new one, we’ll see about that.)

Sunstruck Radio hits again with it’s second program. My great friend Anna Jordan and I put together this spiffy show about what it is like to actually make that move to the postcard you’ve always dreamed of. Cool, crazy, calm and sometimes collected, but always interesting.

Meg Latshaw shares with us what it was like to pack up those boxes and relocate from the United States to sunny Costa Rica. She’s retired and looking forward to a brand new life in Central America.

SunStruck Radio

We grab a few other voices and ask them some interesting questions on what they brought with them; what exactly do they think; and what did they leave behind.

I share a story that spins from downtown St. Paul, Minnesota where I actually lost my cookies on my journey to paradise. It’s not all that easy to pick up everything and move to another country. Even my pets had to adjust.

I hope you enjoy. Perhaps spread the word and subscribe. Paradise is really just a matter of the mind, isn’t it??

P.S. It’s all FREE! So Subscribe now!

I hate to admit it, but I am at McCafe again (just repeating the word gives me the shivers). It’s the only place with Internet close to my daughter’s gym class. I’ve still got one more meeting to go before the night is over. Did you ever have one of those days where EVERYTHING is scheduled on the same day? This morning the Internet was on for like….oh ten minutes. Rather than resort to cleaning my storage room, I went out for run. It was the only time for myself in a day of spinning events wrapped around the children.

Music presentation; gym class; birthday party; gym class; school meeting……..Oh the humanity! I even started out the day backwards and showered before I got all sweaty due to the running and high humidity. I think the nannies must thing I am a bit cuckoo at times. I mean imagine them as they watch me run around, carting kids as if I was mad, trying to get to it all on time as if I was Chicken Little in fear of the sky falling on my head. These ladies come not only from Costa Rica, but el campo. They take buses, and that alone makes what I do impossible. I can’t begin to imagine what it is like for mother’s with kids that have special needs in situations where they have to take the bus. My son is heavy, and the stroller is incredibly awkward. We’d stay home.

absorbing all this faux Italian atmosphere, and hoping the sky won’t fall on my head.

One of the advantages of having someone inside my home, working alongside me with me the kids and helping out with the chores around the house, is that I get to question my habits and the roots of my cultures right down to the sink basket. I grew up thinking that metal little catch-all-the-food gadget was for, well, catching all the food that either didn’t go in the mouth or the garbage. Without that little thing, what horror! What trouble we will have. Every time I approach the sink when either a maid or nanny has washed some dishes, the sink basket disappears. Sometimes it’s in the dish dry rack under all the dishes, and sometimes I can’t even find it.

What “heck” I would have gotten from not only my mother but myriad of landlords who would have shaken their fists at me due to all the clutter I was sending down the drain. Do you know how expensive it is to call RotoRouter?? Have you ever seen the black sludge caused from all those little bits of uneaten food?? Shame on you! Whenever I return to the sink. I dutifully put the thing back in it’s hole. When I return, the maid or nanny takes it out. Guess who’s sink clogged up more? In ten years here, I’ve never had a drain back up. In the States? Oh, the sludge I’ve slogged through.

It’s also a custom to dry all the wet towels fully open, splayed across the counter tops. I, on the other hand, installed two spiffy plastic hooks on the side of the oven. What brilliance! I thought. The wet towels will hang out of site (because even though they have cute little red checks when you get them home from the linen store, after two washing they are just plain ugly) and dry from the warmness of the oven and stove. Do you think anyone but me hangs them there? No. Without out fail, when I return to a sparkling kitchen after someone was kind enough to help with the dishes, I can’t find the sink basket and wet towels cover all the kitchen tops.

Ten years ago, I would have fumed at the missing sink basket, just like my ancestors did. This is cultural adjustment in the most basic form. Lifestyle patterns root deeply in the past, and we pass them on often without even considering if they are useful or not. A friend of mine, an anthropologist turned owner of the Don Carlos hotel in downtown San Jose, said once when I interviewed him that culture is like a ball and chain around our ankles. We just drag it along with us, accepting it as our lot. Shaking loose that ball and chain can be hard and scary. I mean THEY cut the grass differently here; THEY use a different kind of soap; THEY eat rice and beans; THEY don’t return phone calls like WE do. Culture is the music, language and artistic tradition created and carried on through generations, but I also see culture as passing on the things we need, or think we need, to make it through our day. I can now speak the language and manage the climate in Costa Rica, but it’s been a much more interesting journey to challenge my own “culture” and shake loose what I have valued as “so” important.

Working women in Costa Rica don’t have dryers. It’s all powered by the sun and not those high-tech panels that capture the energy so it can be harvested for future use. No. The actual sunshine. Flat means it gets dryer faster. Drive across any country side and you’ll see towels and clothes laying on top of bushes and even over the grass - each grabbing it’s spot on the sun in hopes of getting dry before the afternoon rain begins. A working women has no time to concern herself with a stylish kitchen. It doesn’t matter where the towels hang, as long as they get dry.

The funny thing, is not matter how I try, I can’t get myself to wash dishes without that little sink basket in the hole. I’ll dig it out plop it in there. And when the towels cover the kitchen, I take each one down. And instead of getting all worked up that things weren’t done as I would do them, I appreciate the care that went into the act and the history behind it. And the dishes pile up the the sink regardless of what I think.

I’m thinking these guys are crazy! They are going to drive down the highway like that? Up and down mountain passes, along the freeway, and through the narrow city streets?

That’s insane! Heck there’s room for one more bag up there. What were they thinking anyway?

Being a parent means I get to be an expert in everything - or at least in the eyes of my children. Coco’s learning a song for a father’s day breakfast. The moment she got off the bus, she starting singing off-key (sadly she’s inherited my genes here) to You’ve Got a Friend. I joined in. She looked up at me because not only did I know the chorus, but I knew other versus, all the versus. For a few moments - before I explained to her that the song was written by one of the most successful female song/writer singers in the last fifty years named Carol King and the album was this huge success - I was in that goddess status of: mommy knows EVERYTHING.

I waited until I got into the house to explain that Tapestry was one of the biggest albums - like ever. I mean, four Grammy Awards, Album of the Year, Song of the Year. Carole King was such a big roll model for me. She did IT back in a time when girls were stuck with imagining what life “could be” like if only we could dress, act, and be more like a man - THEN, we’ll be making some serious money and get all that respect. Carole came out as herself with this one and the world ate it up.

We sang the song a couple of times over. Coco’s already got that kereoke thing down. She tilts her head and does heart-felt hand gestures to the words. We played the song at breakfast a couple of times. Addison clapped, though I spared him the brief history of the great song writer behind the words since he’s only two and would prefer to rip the CD cover to shreds than listen to what I know. I showed Coco the album cover and she said:

She’s got a cat. She’s lucky.

The bus arrived and Coco and I mouthed the words together as she buckled up. Addison blew me kisses as he was plopped into his car seat. The door shut, and I went back inside. The house was quite. I pushed play and listened to the entire album.