There have been some new challenges in the past month or two. There's Felipe/Leroy, of course, whose rehabilitation from near death has been time-consuming but rewarding. During an overlapping period of time, Trudy became very ill with a urinary tract and liver infection, so the kitchen counter looked like a pharmacy for several weeks. Both were prescribed expensive and virtually unobtainable dogs foods (they're obtainable in David now and again at extraordinary cost), so for the most part I've been cooking up dog food every few days to meet their dietary needs. This has been offset, however, by the fact that I'm no longer cooking lunch for Edwin. I told him it was just too restrictive on my time and bartered letting him go an hour earlier. He appears fine with the new arrangement.
On the other hand, my time again has been restricted because I allowed myself to be persuaded to co-chair the annual Bid4Boquete auction, sale, and activities--sort of the United Way of this area--which benefits four local organizations devoted to charitable causes. It's held the first week of December, but the planning is extensive and goes on all year. It began this year in February, and so far I have had in excess of 500 e-mails and 28 meetings. My fellow co-chairs are Penny Barrett and Martine Heyer, two formidable ladies. Penny is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney from Michigan. Martine is Dutch, with a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne, who came here from Palo Alto, California, where she founded a French school (she fluently speaks five languages), was a meeting planner, and had a successful real estate firm. Both have extensive business interests here in Boquete, travel often to all parts of the world, and are actively involved in other local organizations. But that hasn't kept them from giving hours and hours to the Bid4Boquete effort. We've already upped last year's goal from $20,000 (of which $18,000 was actually realized) to $30,000 and have made significant changes. The undertaking involves seventeen committees and over a hundred volunteers, and activities will stretch over an entire weekend. There's a fancy wine-tasting evening, a live auction of luxury goods and services, a silent auction of somewhat lesser goods and services, food, drinks, a rummage sale, a book sale, a bake sale, childrens' activities galore, and raffles. We've established a legal foundation, ferreted out corporate donors, and figured out how to make cash contributions tax exempt for both Panamanian and American donors. We even have a website and Facebook page. Big doings.
I also just completed plans for my first return trip to the States (not counting my brief stay in Louisiana on the way to China) since we moved here in February 2007. The occasion is nephew Hardy's impending wedding on June 26, which Derek and his main squeeze Wah Wah also will attend. For those of you who do not know about Wah Wah from other contacts with me, she is a post-doctoral student in biomedical research at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore; she formerly was at the University of Louisiana, where she met Derek, but relocated to Baltimore last November for a better position. She is from Burma (now called Myanmar) but, as I understand it, has spent most of her life and was schooled in Thailand. I'm eager to meet her. And I'm eager to see what all of you in Tallahassee have been up to and how you've fared without me.
Larry is staying here to hold down the fort and the animals. He's been feeling peaked of late and, this very morning, ventured down to the local clinic in hopes of obtaining a B-12 injection. Instead, the doctor there noted that he had a fever of 101 and sent him down the street for a blood test, following which he was diagnosed with a relatively mild case of dengue fever. (A full-fledged case would have him delirious with fever, bleeding from the gums, vomiting, agonizingly aching all over, and covered with a rash.) He came home with a bagful of prescription medicines designed only to relieve symptoms and keep him hydrated. Dengue is a virus for which there is no "cure." As it is spread by mosquitoes and we seldom to never see mosquitoes up here in the mountains, how he contracted it is puzzling. There are plenty of mosquitoes in lowland David, but Larry hasn't been there in months; that's my job. And I've never encountered a mosquito in David that I recall. I'm getting a lot of, "I told you I was sick." Now I suppose I have to let the naps and the reclining in front of the t.v. pass without comment for a while. (Actually, I did know he was sick because he has played golf only twice in six weeks.)
Kitty Kitty (formally Juanita Bonita) still rules the house, but Felipe hasn't learned the rules yet and keeps a perpetually bloody nose. Chyna has grown remarkably good-natured in her dotage and allows Felipe all sorts of liberties she never would have tolerated in her heyday, while Trudy, having always been good-natured, endures all of his puppyish overtures without complaint. Both Kitty Kitty and Felipe are pains in the butt, but it's good to have some youthfulness in the house. I still find it hard to accept how utterly smitten Larry is with Kitty. He even went so far as to say one evening, without provocation, that she's "a delight." I can't recall him ever having used that word before.
The photo is of one of five huge bunches of bananas we have at present.
