Just back from the beach

And ahh, it’s grand. A great day, waves powerful although average height, wind and noise creating a world of individual solitude. River was fascinated and there were birds to boot! We watched surfers and a windsurfer who flew across the water. We had a beer under a ratty umbrella and it was pretty bloody perfect. We talked about our old life and whether we had a thing to regret but the answer was no for both of us, Houston is gone which is more than okay – that is also pretty bloody perfect. A few people but other than that, nope.

I locked us out the other day. The Portuguese take security very seriously (see our house lock below) and the door’s automatically deadlock. Now I remember that from Germany when our mother locked us out of our first house there and kept yelling to the landlord that we had lost our onion (schweibel = onion, schlussel = key). Anyway I knew it as it happened but it was too late and our landlord is visiting up north for the week and it was after five pm…so we met our friendly relatively local locksmith and spent $100.00, damn. Took an over an hour and our dog and groceries sat on the other side of the door. On a positive note, River didn’t eat the food and was quiet as a churchmouse until the locksmith worked with the door – some of you know just how good that is with our separation anxiety afflicted hound!

We still don’t have any real structure to our new lives. That will come when Mark can play golf again. His shoulder is still tender so doctor time soon although they’ll probably say time will heal that pinched nerve but, maybe not. I have a doctor now that he can see and we have our insurance cards, yeehaw. Details are being worked out daily. Our latest discovery is that an immigration agent can, and is supposed to, deny entry of any drugs, prescribed or not, coming into the country. Mark had been getting them from the VA and forwarded from Houston with all our other mail (we have a service that does this for us) and the first one went like clockwork. The second, nope, had to send everything back at great expense and now everything else in said package will have to be resent. Now the VA has sent his prescriptions by email and he had no trouble having the filled at the local pharmacy! Live and learn.

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