More Interluding (Kind Of): Weight/More Fun With The Postal Service/Feeling Competent

I bought myself a tee-shirt today. I never buy tee-shirts or tourist crap in general*. But this one is too delightful - and true - to pass up. It makes me happy. Seeing as my morning started with finding Fidel Castro eating a massacred songbird in my courtyard right after I got up, I really needed happy.

The Irish Girl Needs To Eat.

At least eight, probably closer to ten pounds. That’s what I lost during my week of fever. I lie on my back and look like a mountain range. All my clothes are baggy. When I was out the other night two people commented on how small my arms are. Not nice.

I am not a good Nicaraguan eater to begin with. Unlike some of my friends who have packed on the pounds here, I don’t like Nica food. I don’t like fried food. I don’t like things in milk-based sauce. My tolerance for beans and rice is only so high. The only things I do really well with are the plantains and these wicked potato ball things which override my objection to fried food and would give a cardiologist the vapors.

Oh and I like the salad. That’s how you know you’ve been here too long - you actually like the vinegary cole slaw type salad with chilies on it. But the salad is a useless item right now.

But I need to put some of this back on. Quickly. I had to bust out the belt for the first time since I got here.

And so I eat. I eat and eat and eat. I flag the bakery bike guys down whenever I cross their paths, getting big bags of pan dulce and fried doughy things. The anti-Atkins diet. I go to the European café and eat paninis and gelato. I sit on the corner with Katherine and suck down fried potato balls.** My roommate brings home hamburgers from Chicken Sandwich Family and I destroy them. When I go to the Chicken Lady I tell her to double down on the plantains. I can’t bring myself to do the mayonesa they throw on everything that even resembles a sandwich here but avocados? Extra please.

My usual diet of fruit all day during the heat and Chicken Lady for dinner goes out the window. I eat three meals a day, stomach aches be damned. I suck down the juice, all of which here is full of extra sugar. Nicaragua is set up for people who want to put weight on. Just not for me to put weight back on.

No avail.

In the states I would have already packed the pounds back on. Thai food. Sushi. Italian food. Here it’s a constant fight to find the few things I like eating. And I’m not a huge eater in the heat to begin with so I fight with myself. And I walk everywhere so I burn calories like a motherfucker. I spend the .60 and take cabs.

Today after a noodle salad at 11 AM I give up. The belt can hang around for a bit longer. I’ll deal with the mountain range and protruding hipbones. It’s going to have to come back organically. All the food in this heat is making me tired. I can’t deal with one more stomach ache, one more sugar high and crash.

Except for the potato balls. I’ll keep working the potato balls.

More Postal Fun.

I go to the post office yesterday. I know at least two packages were sent to me over a week ago and they should be here by now. I’ve long since given up on having people sending stuff to my actual address - I tell them to send them to the post office in Granada. The mail service here is never going to send me anything letting me know there’s a package for me anyways so maybe I can win points by not even expecting it anymore. Save them the step.

It’s gotten to the point where they know my name. I walk in and go directly to the back, where the packages are. There are packages piled everywhere - outgoing, incoming, all in big mixed pile. The ancient file cabinet bulges with envelopes. And this is the room I can see. I know there’s another hidden room back there - on several occasions they’ve pulled packages for me out of the secret room after swearing they don’t have them.

As usual there’s a million people working there, standing around. When I walk in, before I even say a word the guy starts shaking his head. He doesn’t look through any of the piles or the clipboard that has a partial inventory of what‘s come in.. He doesn’t even offer to look. What’s your name? He asks me in Spanish. Feeent? No packages today.

Finn. I tell him. Finnegan. Not Feent. I offer him my passport. He doesn’t take it.

He just keeps shaking his head sadly. He looks so sympathetic I almost forget that I am standing in a room full of un-inventoried packages, any one of which could be mine.

You live on Calle Santa Lucia, right?

I am famous. I am fucking famous in this post office now. They know where I live. I explain that I just had my friends send stuff to general delivery. So they don’t even have to worry about a notice. It should just come right there. No need to send a notice. I’ll come and pick it up. Nice and easy. No fuss, no muss. I just want my clif bars. Please. Just the clif bars and whatever other ridiculous things my friends have shoved into a box and spent small fortunes mailing to me.

More sad head shaking. A few of the other package people have come out of the secret room. I look at them hopefully. They’re shaking their heads, too.

On a few occasions they’ve just had me go through the packages in the front room. They don’t even offer me that option today. They just shake their heads sadly. No clif bars for you.

I don’t get it. My friend Kathy has gotten every piece of mail ever sent to her. Every piece of mail - every single one, letter, package, postcard - I’ve had to wrest from the maw of the postal service. And every time I find that it’s been sitting there for weeks while I’ve been waiting for it. I don’t know if they don’t like my name, my address, my predilection for receiving actual packages. I don’t know. Nothing has ever been opened or stolen. It’s just been, well, not delivered. Left to rot in the secret room until I reach a point of near desperation.

Posiblement Lunes, the man says hopefully. Regressa en Lunes. Maybe Monday. Come back on Monday.

Maybe they just really like me and enjoy having me around. I don’t know. I just want my damn mail.

Maybe Monday I’ll act like I might cry. That works sometimes.

Back in the Saddle Again.

Nick and Toni have been doing mornings and hence Minnow’s ivermectin injections since I’ve been sick. Now that I’m better they’ve kept it up - gotten into a schedule they kind of like. This weekend they’ve had guests so Katherine and I have been holding down the fort again. Not hard with only three dogs. Katherine comes at night with me, in the morning I go alone.

It’s been weeks since I’ve done an injection. Yesterday I have to do it by myself. Minnow is not happy but she cooperates. Something about the needle makes me feel like I’m really back at work. Not that pills in hot dogs, tick picking and meals aren’t work but this is what I know how to do. I’ve been injecting animals since I was 17 years old - vaccinating and microchipping and giving fluids and taking blood. I went through the euth cert process in Florida and Colorado to do IV‘s, IP‘s, everything. A sub-q ivermectin shot is nothing. But it makes me feel competent.***

Today I am dropping off a cat trap with Lucy on my way to the clinic. Lucy is a huge supporter of the clinic and an all around fabulous person. She owns a beautiful hotel, Bohemian Paradise, that I’ve been lucky enough to stay in. And she cares. She cares about the street animals, she cares about the environment, she cares about the women that make the soap they use in the hotel. If you ever come to Granada you need to stay at her place. Honestly - http://www.seecentralamerica.com/hotel-nicaragua/index.php .

And she cares about the roof cats. There’s about five ex-roof cats that live there now, lounging on the benches and hanging around the fountain. And she traps and neuters the ones that try to pop in.

When I’m dropping off the trap this morning there’s a lovely family from Tulsa staying there. I get to talking with them. This is Finn, Lucy introduces me, she’s with the animal clinic here. The family starts telling me about how they’re active with the shelters in Tulsa. They want to see the clinic, meet the dogs. I offer to bring them with me.

They come with me. I recruit the grandfather to hold Minnow while I do the injection. I show him my preferred hold - head over his shoulder, back legs braced. Minimum of force but no chance of her whipping around. He’s no Mandy but he holds like a pro. Minnow doesn’t whimper. It takes a split second. .4 cc’s and we’re done.

Is that it? He asks. Are you done?

That is it. I am done. But I scratch Minnow’s now-hairy little head and it feels good.


*That said order your rum and machetes now while I still have money. And while the tourist market in the Masaya does have taxidermied fighting cocks I am not trying to get one of those back into the states, no matter how much I love you. I’m sorry.

** I have, Katherine tells me at the clinic, been thinking about potato balls all day. She leaves in a week and a half and I just introduced her to the potato ball. I feel both good and bad about this. Good in that I had something useful to share with her. Bad in that I gave her a nasty jones a week before she leaves. And there ain’t no potato balls in Victoria.

What is a Potato Ball? A Potato Ball is proof that there is a higher power in the universe and occasionally it likes you. You take mashed potatoes and add about 50 lbs of butter and cheese. Like real cheese, not salty, rubbery Nica cheese. Then you make a softball out of it. Then you dip it in batter and boil it - literally boil it - in oil over an open fire. When someone orders one, you take the already deep fried potato ball and dump it back in the oil - a re-fry, essentially. Then you wrap it in a banana leaf and hand it to a gringa.

I realize this sounds absolutely repugnant. I really do. The first time my roommate showed me The Chicken Lady Who Also Has Potato Balls And Is Henceforth Known As The Potato Ball Lady I swore that was gross. Then I ate one. Don’t ask me why, I just did. And all it takes is one potato ball. It’s like heroin. Fried tacos, empanadas, gallo pinto - no thank you. But the Potato Ball, oh god the Potato Ball. I’ve come close to the point of tears on nights when the Potato Ball Lady has taken an unexpected evening off and I’ve had one of those days where I just need a fucking potato ball.

I don’t know what I’ll do without chicken ladies, potato balls and maduras.

*** One of the states - I can’t remember which - even gave me a certificate, frame-able, that I am euthanasia certified in that state. I remember finding that incredibly screwed up at the time. What exactly do you expect me to do with that? Put it on the wall next to my BA? And who does the calligraphy for the you-are-certified-to-kill-things certificates anyway? And for the love of god, why?