The highway to David...very busy and dangerous...has a couple of stretches with major potholes. As buses or trucks approach the holes, they swerve around them, into on-coming traffic. This conveniently forces you to the edge of the road or worse off the road.
It sure pisses me off when this happens but that's the way it is.
On Friday, they patched the holes. Not with sand or gravel or rocks, but with actual asphalt. You know, the black sticky stuff that holds up over time.
Will wonders never cease!
Now on to the not so fun stuff.
We had a couple of bad days. It is always exacerbated by the construction problems.
It this case, Yella and I are arm wrestling over how to proceed finishing our house which means how do we badger, push, entice, threaten, berate, stomp, sucker punch, beg, cajole or plead with the builder to F#$@!!% finish the damn thing, OK!
We have diametrically opposed approaches.
As the problems arose, we started fighting and the fighting got worse and worse, culminating in a full blown BIG ONE.
At times like this, we wonder if we are going to make it down here.
The stress of living in a strange land is so threatening that it takes normal marriage differences and escalates them into marriage breakers.
We discussed sending Yella home...for good. In other words, throwing in the towel but Yella decided to stay.
We are still a little raw over the whole ordeal. We are speaking and tentatively liking each other but it is touch and go.
As in many fights, some good things come out of it.
This relocating to "paradise" is a tough one, for sure.
Heres the kicker, the clutch in the car went out. Now we have to fix the car. As you may recall, we have a problem starting the damn thing which has never been resolved.
This is the on-going case of the stuck glow plug. It seems there is no mechanic with the right tool to extract the broken glow plug. Except, the gringo mechanic at the mission.
He suckered me into taking the car back to him. He approached me at the music benefit last weekend and told me he would fix it if I leave the car for a day.
Well, you know how this is going. I left it Friday afternoon and he hasn't fixed it.
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. How could I be so stupid to take it back to him. I am kicking myself in the pants for this. What a screw up.
So we have a car without a clutch and it doesn't start, so why do we need a clutch anyway.
This is an enormous problem. Now I have to go to the mission, try to start the car (unlikely), find a friend with a chain to tow it to a hill, try to compression start it, drive it to David to a high dollar mechanic, get a translator to talk to him, he may or may not be able to fix it. And, we will start the Panamanian, "tell them what they want to hear" bullshit and it will take for ever to get it fixed if it ever gets fixed.
F#$#@!!% I hate this!
This is the part of being in Panama that I could do without.
All the uncertainty, the run around, the never getting anything DONE!
And it is getting expensive in the relationship department.
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