Sheep Guarding Llama

Liesl totally forgot that she had to go to Managua this morning for some blood work at the clinic and stayed awake all night. She was just going to bed when I stopped in to check on her about fifteen minutes before she was scheduled to get in the car to go! That was a rough morning for her, just going to bed and instead going to Managua, again.

Dominica was running late and it was nearly nine when the “definitely before eight” trip was out the door. They stopped to get Marcela (but only after I reminded her – she was already zipping straight by without stopping) and all went out to Managua. Just Luciana and I (and Aida) in the house today with the menagerie.

It was a long day of work for me. Luciana was sick last night. She coughed so much that, like Marcela, it made her sick to her stomach. But overall she’s not feeling that much worse.

I had to run out to the beach to deliver some money today. So that cut into my afternoon. But I managed to record today’s video out on the beach, so that was a nice change of pace. We have Canal 8 out filming on the beach again tomorrow, too.

I just worked this evening. Liesl got home from Managua and just crashed, having had zero sleep last night. Luciana is tired from being so sick and needs to work on school. I was in meetings until very late and was tired as well. So we just decided to all go to bed early tonight instead of hanging out.

Today is a first, the first time that I will ever go to any embassy; and the first time that we are renewing passports while living overseas. We’ve lived abroad for so long but have always been able to deal with passports while at home. But now we cannot, both girls have their passports expiring very soon (and honestly, ours are too.) So we needed to get that taken care of right away. Because they are minors we have to renew at the US Embassy in Managua, it’s the only option. We are scheduled for 1:30PM for Luciana and 2:00 PM for Liesl. But the embassy knows that they are sisters and already addressed that so we just show up and do them together at 1:30.

Liesl had an appointment at her toe doctor in Altamira in the morning. So we got up and drove to Managua early. Dominica doesn’t trust how fast I drive and things I’m ridiculously slow so even with her being ready late, we were an hour early for the appointment. We found a new cafe called Cha Cha Matcha that is right next to her doctor and quite fancy. So we went there and hung out for two hours. It’s a great find. We really like the place. They have Dubai Chocolate Croissants, too. Very recommended.

Luciana and I stayed in the cafe while Dominica took Liesl to the doctor. Then we drove across town to Molino at Plaza La Fe and we had a quick lunch there. I love their cæser salad and basil hummus.

The secret to going to the embassy is parking at Plaza La Fe and taking an InDrive from there. Just C$220 for the whole family to zip down there at peak hours. There is no parking whatsoever at the embassy so having a driver is a necessity. This process made it so easy.

The entire experience at the embassy itself was great, too. All of the staff was very friendly, efficient, and helpful. Things were easy and moved quickly. Of course we were well prepared, but that wasn’t what did it. The staff there were just really good and it was all handled really well. I was so impressed.

After the passport paperwork was filed we went outside, grabbed an InDrive, and returned to Plaza La Fe. We were going to head straight back home, but Luciana wanted to use the bathroom and we stumbled on another cafe there called Latte Latte and so popped in and checked it out, too.

We were headed home at a very reasonable time. So I was able to get home and work all evening. Customers were, of course, looking for me all day. So it was a busy night for me. Plus I had to do an emergency run to Palí because we were out of toilet paper in the house.

Dominica and Liesl are going back to Managua tomorrow for blood work and to stop at PriceSmart. Luciana and I will stay home with the dogs and cats.

Wednesday. It’s been one week since our kitten was killed. The girls are still very noticeably sad. But there is improvement. Having the other two kittens in the house all of the time helps. They know that they are safe, and they have a distraction, but also a reminder.

The dad cat that we call Cruller is slowly getting braver. He comes closer and closer and meows at us all of the time. Fritter, the very pregnant mother, is still here daily for her supply of kibble. She remains very affectionate. She’s a very good cat.

Tomorrow we have to spend the day in Managua getting the girls’ passports renewed. It’s our first time going to the embassy. We had to do lots of paperwork today to make sure that we were ready and I spoke with the embassy on the phone: they call to check that we’ve done all of our paperwork ahead of time.

I recorded several videos today getting ready for the time away. No live stream tomorrow as we will be traveling all day.

I ended up with the time to do a live stream tonight so just did one. We talked a bit about the forum. I’m very excited about that. I didn’t get a chance to talk about it a week ago, it went live just a few hours before the Chocolate Milk incident happened. But I built the open source forum package A Parliament of Owls last week and we’ve been using it for an Expats of Nicaragua forum group that replaced our WhatsApp group that we’ve had most of the last year. So far, I like it so much better. It’s so much more chill. People can’t just hop on and spam and cause problems with the community the way that they could before.

We used it to replace MangoLassi / Republic of IT as well. Those have been running on NodeBB since March, 2014 and it has served us well, but recently its MongoDB database has become untenable and the application has gotten so slow and it needs a lot of maintenance. It seemed problematic to try to keep maintaining, so we moved that entire platform with 800,000 posts, millions of users per month, hundreds of millions of object requests and twelve years of activity over to APOO and so far, it is working great. It’s got better spam control, everything renders so much faster and while there are fewer features, things are far better tuned for our real world needs. The site is busy again and fun to use.

We’ve got about fifty people on the new Expats forum already which is a lot considering it is so new. The old ML site we eliminated as many accounts as we could and have about 1,550 remaining. It’s hard to believe that MangoCon was ten years ago, too!

It was almost three in the morning when I managed to fall asleep after having driven to Managua and back in the middle of the night. Marcela had not yet gotten in to see the doctor by the time that I was home and getting into bed with the dogs.

I actually was up decently early considering how late I was out last night. I got up around seven and got right to work. There is so much to do. I’m very busy with work and it’s feeling a bit overwhelming. I had been looking forward to an evening of hanging out with Liesl and Luciana last night as we had planned, but I had to drive to Managua instead so a night of relaxing turned into a very exhausting night instead.

Today I pretty much had to camp out in the office. I’m working on several projects in parallel. It’s exhausting, but I got a lot of good work done today at least.

The girls hung out all afternoon playing video games together. We are really hoping to get a Steam Machine this year. We’ve been limping as far as video game machines here for a long time now.

Luciana has not felt that she could handle watching The Expanse again, because it is so heavy, or playing Dungeons & Dragons all week because she’s so sad about Chocolate Milk.

I worked until very late.

Monday. The kittens are still thriving and happy in Liesl’s room. They’ve never had so much attention and so many toys as they do now and they seem to be very happy with all of the soft surfaces to sleep on. They’ve taken over.

Very busy work day today. I’ve got so many projects in motion, it’s absolutely crazy. I’m feeling a bit exhausted.

The girls moved into the game room this afternoon and hung out together all afternoon. Liesl played Hades on the computer while Luciana used the Nintendo Switch to play Animal Crossing while they snuggled with the dogs.

Marcela was feeling really sick today, as she has been for weeks. I went down to check on her and to bring some food down. We tried to watch a movie but only made it about ten minutes before she needed to go to the hospital. She basically has a cough so strong that she coughs until she vomits and because that’s been going on for three weeks it’s just become a pattern and she can’t keep food or liquids down for any length of time. So she is just getting weaker and weaker from lack of nutrients. She’s not sleeping great, either.

So we finally got out the door around eleven and run to Managua to get her to her hospital at Militar. Thankfully that is on our side of the capital. Roads were clear and traffic was really moving so it took just over an hour and a half to drive her to the hospital. I went it and got her checked in and made sure that she got through triage and then left her and got back in the car and raced back home so that I could arrive before I fall asleep.

It was just a little after two or two thirty in the morning when I pulled into the house. The girls couldn’t believe that I was back already and thought that I hadn’t even gone. They thought that I would be gone all night. I made great time.

I’ve been reading “So You Want to Be a Dungeon Master” via Audible while driving, which really helps to keep me awake.