Dominican Housewife Chronicles - Mosquitoes and other pests

Well folks since we last talked some great things have happened in my life.  The first and most important I think is that my husband and I have been married for 6 months.  YAY.  Okay maybe you're thinking that's nothing right but for me the one who swore she would never get married again.  This is huge.  I'm usually done and packing up my things after 3 months of dating so I think this one might stick LOL.  Here's a picture that we took on our 6 month wedding anniversary while at a party.

No my husband isn't in jail (notice the barbed wire in the background).  I posted this picture on Instagram and one of my friends commented about it so I thought I should explain here in case anyone else wondered.  It's just what they do here in the Dominican Republic.  For the most part all of the houses here are surrounded by barbed wire fences.

The second fairly significant thing this week was that I finally realized my purpose.  For the past few years I have been struggling to identify my purpose.  I believe that we are all here on this earth to fulfill at least one purpose if not more.  So here it goes.  I have realized that I am here to feed the mosquitoes.  Yep I'm mosquito food.  That's why I'm  here it seems.  I have spent hours researching, buying and concocting homemade potions to get rid of these little blood suckers.  I've studied them.  I know how they think now.  So I'm pretty sure the ones around my house have organized into a little union or maybe it's a gang (definitely the bloods LOL) I'm not sure what's going on but they are working together.  It is no longer a solo attack.  At least one if not multiple mosquitoes fly at my face while others attack my legs or back.  I have mosquito bites in places I cannot mention here.  My daughter saw some homemade concoction on Facebook and sent it to me.  It was easy enough to make, you use mouthwash, stale beer (there's no such thing as stale beer in this country by the way so I had to improvise) and Epsom Salt.  You mix this together and spray your yard and it's supposed to last for months.  Hmm well I made my batch and after trying to explain to my husband why I used three bottles of perfectly good beer I went outside and sprayed the yard.  I see a gang of them in my laundry area every time I go to wash clothes so I started there.  I was so proud of myself because the next day it seemed to have worked.  There were very few mosquitoes in the house.  It was very strange but nice.  Apparently those little buggers were just somewhere having a convention and planning their retaliation because the following day they returned with a vengeance and they brought their friends the flies too.  I felt like I was fighting for my life in here that day.  I'm here alone during the day while my husband works and I'm sure the neighbors must think I'm crazy because I talk to them, the bugs. I say things like, I see you.  Oh yeah it's on now buddy.  Just wait until I catch you you little blood sucker.  They are mocking me by landing on the bug spray bottle.  I'm in the kitchen trying to cook and I see mosquitoes land on my arm while a fly dive bombs my head. 
A few days after I sprayed the outside laundry area I went outside to wash clothes.  I'm pretty sure that homemade concoction caused them to grow because I was greeted by a swarm of some of the biggest mosquitoes I've ever seen in my life.  So after spending money on bug spray, repellent and making the homemade concoction I was sitting in my bedroom applying after bite to 90% of my body when a mosquito decided to attack.  I was at my wits end and I reached for the closest thing I could find which happen to be a bottle of Febreze.  I sprayed the mosquito mid flight and low and behold he fell straight down to the floor.  Could I have possibly found the answer to my mosquito problems?  It sure seems that way.  I carry the bottle around the house with me and spray them and they drop dead right there.  The best part about it is that my house smells great all the time now. 

The next exciting thing that happened this week was I made a decision on my book cover for my book that I'm finishing up now.  It's called Passport Wife and it's a compilation of my journal entries from the time I met my husband up until two months after our wedding.  Many of my Facebook friends have remarked that my wedding pictures and some of my pictures I post from time to time remind them of a fairy tale.  Well I'm here to tell you that it's not quite a fairy tale at least not all the time.  This book will take you behind the scenes or shall I say behind the smiles as I navigated my way through this surprise of a lifetime relationship with my husband.  Always asking myself how did I get here?


Release date still TBD in 2018.

Dominican Housewife Chronicles - Swiffer vs Broom War

This week I got the green light to walk along the waterfront in the mornings.  My husband is comfortable with my ability to communicate with others in Spanish now and it's a safe place to walk as it's very heavily patrolled by the police.  I've missed walking so this new morning routine has made me very happy.  I made a short video of the sights along my walk one morning.

I can finally say that I am settled into the new house.  The water issues have somewhat been resolved.  There was an issue preventing the water tank from holding the water.  Now that it has been fixed things are much better.  The kitchen is still small but I'm learning how to navigate my way through cooking with limited counter space.  Speaking of cooking this has been an interesting week for me.  Just when I had gotten comfortable in the kitchen my husband throws me a curve ball.  There are several other dishes that he likes that he wants me to learn how to make.  Pinterest is my new best friend.  I found several variations of the dishes he wants and printed them out.  We sat down and reviewed the ingredients together and he gave me the yay or nay on them.  When all was said and done I had my own version of Locrio de Pollo (Rice and chicken) the first of the new dishes I tried.  I was nervous but I've learned his taste so I was able to add some seasonings along the way as I tasted it so it turned out well.  He enjoyed it and now I am moving onto other recipes that are on his list.

Washing clothes here in the new house is so much better.  The outside laundry area is perfect.  There is a utility sink and a small covered area as well as a nice area outside to hang the clothes to dry.  My biggest challenge now with laundry is getting my husband to actually put his dirty clothes in the hamper.  I know that many others struggle with this issue but it is quite annoying.  When my husband is looking for something to wear he literally unfolds everything on the shelf in the closet and/or takes everything off the hangers. Once he has found something he throws everything in the closet on the shelf.  This also applies to clothes that have been worn that may or may not be considered dirty.  I was losing my mind trying to sift through his closet to find what might be dirty so I gave up.  I told him if it's not in the hamper, near the hamper or visibly dirty and somewhere between the hamper and the wash area outside I'm not including it in the wash.  I refuse to play hide and go seek for his dirty clothes. I even give him a twelve hour warning that laundry will be washed the following day and to make sure that everything that he wants washed is in the hamper.  Thus far we've had one little mishap with this rule.  He neglected to put his dirty baseball pants in the pile to be washed.  He came home from work frantically looking for his uniform for his game that night.  He found his pants right where he left them in his baseball bag.  The other issue with laundry is that I was so happy to find my favorite detergent here, Woolite dark but it's a little pricey so I don't use it for all of the dark clothes only the special ones.  While I was in PA the last time my husband discovered this new cleaner and decided it was great to use to clean EVERYTHING including the car that he washes at least once a day even in the rain. 

Now let's talk about cleaning the house.  This house is bigger than our previous house and there's ceramic tile floors throughout the entire house.  On one of my recent trips back to PA I decided to purchase a swiffer vacuum and put it in my checked back to use here to clean the floors.  Who knew that this little device could cause such a ruckus in my house.  My husband absolutely hates the swiffer.  I think it's the vacuum noise that he doesn't like but I cannot use the swiffer in his presence.  He becomes very annoyed and one time he told me to turn it off and that he would clean the floors as he grabbed the broom.  The first time I used it I was so proud of myself and I showed him the dirty swiffer pad and he said that I should have swept and mopped the floor first LOL.  Um that's kinda the point of using the swiffer to not have to sweep the tile floors every five minutes.  I'm only exaggerating a little bit.  The doors are usually open at least when my husband is home and all types of dust blows in.  The floors need to be swept at least 2 to 3 times a day.  I've hidden the swiffer and when my husband is at work I use it.  When he's here I use the old fashion method, the broom. 

Speaking of brooms let me tell you about something else that happened this week.  In case you haven't figured it out by now I'm pretty sure that I have at least a mild case of OCD.  Here at the new house we have a car port, driveway and front porch to sweep and keep clean.  I didn't like using the same broom for inside the house and outside.  Maybe I'm a nut case but it's my preference to have different brooms.  I bought a new broom for use inside the house.  I knew I was going to have to explain this to my husband and made sure that I got a different type of color so as not to confuse him.  He actually understood perfectly and uses the red broom for outside cleaning and the blue broom is for inside cleaning.  Enter in his niece.  At least once every two weeks his niece comes to the house to "assist" me with deep cleaning the house.  According to my husband this is way too much work for me to do alone so this week his niece came to "assist" me with cleaning.  I'm using the quotes around assist because she actually does everything.  I'm not allowed to do anything while she's here.  Anyway the first thing she did was bring the red broom inside and start sweeping the living room.  As soon as I became aware of what was happening I attempted to explain to her about the two brooms.  I should mention that she doesn't speak English at all so we have to rely on my Spanish or try to google translate it.  As I explained I handed her the blue broom to use in the house and she nodded and said she understood.  About thirty minutes later she was outside on the porch sweeping up the leaves with the blue broom.  So now I have two outside brooms and a swiffer hiding in the closet. 



This week was the one year anniversary of me retiring from my job as an IT Director.  If someone had told me a year ago that I would be married again and living in the Dominican Republic as a housewife I would have called them crazy but here I am.  I am putting the finishing touches on my journey from there to here in my book titled Passport Wife which will be released later this year.

Make every moment count

Since my last post I’ve spent time jotting down notes about the things I wanted to talk about in my next post.  On March 21st a friend who I’ve known for over 25 years died suddenly.  He was only 44 years old and he had a heart attack while shoveling snow.  Everything that I thought I wanted to talk about went out the window.  Since his death I’ve been unable to focus enough to write anything.  I’ve spent a lot of time just thinking.  I’ve literally been sitting and remembering everything I could about my friend. We had a very long history.  I thought about our last conversation which was about a year ago. I thought about his last everything.  I prayed to God that he didn’t suffer.  I prayed for his wife and their two boys.  What happened to my friend is very sad and I realize that things like this happen all the time. The point for me is that we all must remember that our time here is brief and for some it’s briefer than others.  The unfortunate part is that we don’t know when our time here will be up.  Sure, we can take really good care of our bodies and take extra precautions in every aspect of our lives but at the end of the day we have very little say as to when our time will be up.  We have to try to make every breath we take and minute we get here count. Live life to its fullest with no regrets.  All of this reminded me of a poem I wrote a few years ago.  It’s titled “If I died today”

If I died today

What would people say?

Would they talk about my work?

How well I did my job?

Would they talk about my love for music, my angelic voice?

Would they talk about the books I’ve written and published?

If I died today

What would people say?

Would they talk about me the person?

Would they talk about how my life meant something?

How my life changed the lives of others

If I died today what would people say?

Would people sit and wonder

What the purpose of my life was

Or would it be clear for everyone to see

That I came

I lived

I fulfilled my purpose

And now I’ve gone on

If I died today

I wonder what people would say

*****

When someone passes suddenly people always say I just saw him or her or something like that.  I wish I could say that I Just saw you or I just talked to you but it’s not true.  I can’t remember exactly the last time we spoke, but it’s probably been almost a year now, and I’m so sad about that now because now I can’t hear your voice or laugh anymore.  When the news about your passing came through to me it took a few seconds for it to really sink in.  Immediately all the memories that we shared came back to me.  I remember your smile and your laugh.  I remember the shy young man I met when you first came to work at Health America and the more confident man you became. I have literally watched you grow up over the years.  Your marriage, your kids, your losses, your challenges and your successes. All of it came flooding back to my memory in what felt like an instant.  I’ve shed so many tears today for you and my heart aches for your wife, Laurie and children.  RIP my friend you will be missed.

Scott when I attended your funeral service I was in awe at the turnout and felt honored to have known you, a man who touched the lives of so many people in such a short period of time.  Everyone loved you differently, but it was all love, nonetheless.  Although we shed tears, and many thought, and some said aloud how tragic it was that your life was cut short, you made a difference.  It was evident to me buy what I observed at your service.  I felt sad that it took your death to make us all realize just how special you were to us all. 

I implore all of you to take a moment after you read this post and think about your life. Are you making every breath and minute count?  Are you being the absolute best you that you can be?  We only get this one brief life to live.   Tell everyone now how you feel about them, what they mean to you.  You might blink and miss the opportunity to do so.  Do everything you can to make it count, make a difference.