July 4

Today is Monday. Last week, Nuria decided that she needs a car. I think the thought has been percolating in her brain for a while, and now it must be acted upon. So we drove to a used car dealership in Richmond. She knew what she wanted and how much she wanted to pay, so the deal didn't take long to accomplish. But the Richmond traffic was enough to drive a sane person irrational. Of course, it was "Friday before July 4th," which didn't occur to me at the time and certainly contributed to the high volume of traffic on the highways. Anyway, at the dealership a car was selected and a down payment was paid, and now we have to wait while they do the paperwork and detail the car. She has to get insurance on the car, and the dealer has paperwork to do with the DMV, so we have to go back to get the car. Thursday is the target date.

Nuria intends to pay for the car, but transferring money from her bank in Costa Rica to her bank in the US is complicated and involves high fees. So when we pick up the car, the plan is for me to pay for the car now and Nuria will repay me with funds that she transfers here from Costa Rica by steamship. I've got my fingers crossed that there won't be too many hiccups along the way.

Nuria made July 4th decorations for the front porch.The porch's cast-iron railings are wound with strings of red, white, and blue tinsel stars, and there are decorations hanging from the flag holder. I have a flag that fits in the holder, but I think it would simply rip the flag holder off the brick. It's an old thing, made of very weathered wood, and I could probably rip it off the brick with my fingers.

I think Nuria, though she comes from Costa Rica, is probably more USA-patriotic than 95% of our own citizens. I don't know why that is, but maybe it's because she comes from a foreign land, and has lived there, and therefore she can see the difference between the two countries, whereas most Americans have no other country to compare to America. Although I never hang July 4th decorations on my porch, I always think about doing it. Does thinking about it make me semi-patriotic?  No, it probably doesn't do anything at all except waste time.

We've been watching reruns of Lost, a TV series that I saw back in 2004-2010, and even then I didn't like it enough to watch more than maybe a third of the series. Nuria seems to like it, and I put it into the "OK" category, so we kill time watching TV and eating popcorn and pizza until we find something better to kill time doing. Like, maybe I can convince Nuria that driving the lawn tractor all over the yard is really a lot of fun and she should try it.

Sure, that sounds do-able. In my dreams.