For some reason, the little girls like me. To a grumpy old man (which I CAN be) this can be rather off-putting. It’s been a long long time since our girls were this little. But we made some pretty good memories at the time and I think I made some good memories with the two latest young girls in my life.

A while back Abby came to visit from Tennessee along with her Granny who is raising her. Abby is eight. We had a great time while she was here, mostly because she isn’t your normal 8 year old girl. (Is there such a thing?)  Abby didn’t bug me, she didn’t whine, she wasn’t demanding, she loved to help – and she followed directions. Remember the line from On Golden Pond?

What’s the point of having a dwarf if they don’t do chores?

When Abby was around the hardest thing for me was finding chores for her. She can’t mow the lawn or clean the gutters, so she was the designated pool-cleaner.

Now Nazareth, the 7 year old daughter of our housecleaner, has taken a liking to me.  I put her to work running some Spanish flashcards by Nancy. She shows Nancy the card with a word and then pronounces it very slowly. Amarillo is AH-MA-REE-JO. She surprised us by then saying Yellow.  I guess she’s been holding out on us that she knows some English. Not uncommon, just as we are reluctant to use Spanish, many Spanish speakers are hesitant to use English.

Today, she sat with me at the table and colored in her Little Mermaid book. She gave me a refresher course in Spanish of the colors.

When I got tired of that I started her pool-cleaning internship.

She should be in school. Hanging around me she’ll only pick up bad habits.

I started her tutorial on pool-cleaning.

SIR-BAY-SAH.

As Bulbous pointed out: We are not old enough to be regulars on the bingo circuit. But one evening we passed by the school as the bingo game was breaking up and we commented that it might be kind of fun to do bingo.

We got the chance Saturday afternoon as Pat invited us to go with them to the church in their neighborhood to play bingo.

Since Pat is fluent, she promised she would help with the numbers.

Did you know Bingo callers have their own lingo when it comes to numbers? I think I knew that from U.S. bingo games… or maybe something I’ve seen on the big number program on the satellite teevee.

The caller in Atenas liked “solito” before the single digit numbers and “redondo” before 20, 30, 40, etc. (the round one.) That’s about it except for hyping the cards for the big screen teevee and the refrigerator prizes (which didn’t exist.)  The prizes were donated by parishioners and were in the category of a dozen fresh eggs, etc.

Yaddi, the best waitress in Atenas, told us that where her Mother lives the caller sings the numbers!  Now that would be cool.

We found our way to the church about 2:30 and they had already played a few games. Which is pretty remarkable because it seems that nothing in Costa Rica starts on time. The scheduled start time was 2 p.m., so the gambling bug must have bitten pretty hard for them to be rolling within 30 minutes.

Everybody was huddled around tables under big tents with a card or two in front of them. No big multi-card players here like in the states. Two seemed to be the max. Each card costs the equivalent of fifty cents.  Some used plastic discs for markers, but most used the corn kernals as we did. They provide the corn.

Bingo?  Nope. Buena! is the call when the numbers are covered correctly.

And after the card is checked the caller would say… Esta Buena! 

Nobody – out of six at our table – Buena‘d. Nada. Zilch. Pfffbbt. We must have played 100 games and we changed cards and we changed corn, I even played standing up once…all the tricks of the Bingo trade.

Hmmmmmm. Just had a thought. Bribery is supposedly the way of the world here. Wonder if that applied to church bingo? May give that a try next time.

Bribes for Bingo Buena.

Pura Vida.

OK, OK, first you lean a ladder up against an Irwin Mango tree… what I should have said was how to “choose” an Irwin Mango after somebody has already picked them.

I wasn’t a mango fan until I was introduced by Clara to the Irwin Mango. They have a grove of mango trees including a few Irwin Mango trees just down the road from us. When they had us for breakfast, Clara insisted we try their Irwin Mangos.

Oh, Yum. Yum.

They are delish and I am officially hooked on them. They are in season now and four mangos weigh about two kilos which sell for a “mil” (one thousand colones – about $2) at the local feria. Just a little further down the road from Clara’s grove,  near Orotina, we saw them even cheaper. (Orotina calls themselves the “fruit capital” of Costa Rica.)

The original ‘Irwin’ tree was a seedling of the ‘Lippens’ cultivar that was open-cross pollinated with ‘Haden’, planted on the property of F.D. Irwin in Miami, Florida in 1939. The tree first bore fruit in 1945 and was named and described in 1949. The fruit gained commercial acceptance due to its good production, flavor, relative disease resistance, and attractive color. ‘Irwin’ has also been sold as a nursery stock tree for home growing in Florida.

My first venture at picking out mangoes home was a typical gringo move: I asked the street vendor to give me two kilos. He stuck me with a bad mango. The tico increased his profit because of my ignorance.

Wasn’t the first time. Won’t be the last.

Now I know how to pick out good mango and I am flush with bravado as I stroll up to the vendors in the market and start poking and squeezing their mangoes.

(insert your own filthy joke here)

Here’s my method:

• Don’t go large: try to stick to between baseball and softball size.
• Skin should be a little maroonish blending into greenish yellow.
• Just a little soft, not mushy soft but pleasingly firm.
• No bruises or black spots.

Irwin Mangoes have a monster seed, so that one softball mango will yield one normal size serving. I always peel two. Warning: you may notice some juice leakage from the unpeeled mango from the stem. Clara says this will stain clothing. Otherwise the mangoes are a juicy delight. If you are peel and eat fan like I am, be sure you have a place where the drips can fall unrestricted. I like to stand on the pool pump house and let the juice drip off my elbows.

Yum. Yum.

UPDATE:

Nancy was up bright and early this morning (Saturday), but didn’t investigate when Derby charged out of the house at 7 a.m. barking up a storm.

Too bad! Clara had stopped by with a bag full of fresh-picked-from-her-trees Irwin Mangoes.

Clara told me later that the season was about to end, but she was hopeful for a second season this year about August.

It’s nice to have nice neighbors.  (The note inside said Good Morning Neighbors!)

Yum. Yum. Yum.

Indiana unceremoniously “retired” one of the few statesmen left in the U.S. Senate, Richard Lugar, when they decided that the Tea Party candidate had a better chance of retaining the office against the dems in the election.

Lugar had served 36 years in the Senate and was highly regarded by Washington pundits as a sensible compromiser and political centrist especially when it came to matters of foreign policy.

for this Hoosier frequently endeavored to forge bipartisan coalitions to advance national security priorities.

But the dopes in Indiana decided that what Washington needs is MORE partisanship and less compromise. So they threw out Lugar by a huge 20 point margin.

Lugar wasn’t my favorite Senator for sure. He did some bone-headed things – the kind of things a candidate does when s/he becomes complacent – ie: Lugar no longer kept his main residence in Indiana!

The senator and his wife live in suburban Washington, having sold their house in Indiana years ago.

That became an issue when election officials ruled him ineligible to vote in his former home district. The Marion County election board voted that he no longer meets the residency requirements needed to vote in the county.

Those of us who would wish that Mitch McConnell would become as complacent and therefore vulnerable to a primary challenge at first might seem heartened by the Lugar loss.

But we quickly realize that Lugar’s loss only adds power to the already Mighty Mitch McConnell, whose stated goal as leader of the Senate is to insure the defeat of Barack Obama in the upcoming election.

McConnell was instrumental in changing the Senate rules to eliminate “majority-rules” when making laws. McConnell has the power and the backing to call for a “super majority” of 60 votes in the Senate before any bill becomes law, otherwise McConnell will rally a filibuster.

McConnell is woefully out of touch with the common Kentuckians that keep re-electing him. Imagine, the tenth richest Senator in the United States represents Kentucky one of the poorest states in the union.

But with Lugar gone, the voice of moderation and reason and compromise in the Senate, McConnell can now command Lugar’s followers to get back in line behind him.

All the political chits that Lugar collected over the 36 years he served disappeared overnight, and McConnell will be there to reward his new Senate backers by doling out power and PAC money.

Lugar loses, McConnell wins.