Monday May 20, 2024, 12:15pm

We’re in flight on our way to Costa Rica. I’m in an aisle seat and our daughter is next to the window, her back to the oval shutter, her head resting sideways on the headrest, and her socked, Birkenstocked feet in the empty seat between us. The flight from Charlotte to Liberia is half empty.

I’m reading Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder again, and it’s so good. It’s set in the humid wilds of the Brazilian Amazon, where insects are mammoth and mosquitos carry fatal fevers. I hope our bug repellant works.

The plane is vibrating and the journal’s paper feels ticklish under my hand.

I also brought Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird to help me get in the mood to write. Right now I mostly just want to read, though. And eat. I wonder if there will be a snack service at least. American Airlines is not as nice as Delta, there aren’t even screens to watch on an international flight.

Wednesday May 22, 2024 5:11pm

I’m in our Airbnb at the first stop in Costa Rica, Playa Potrero. The kids and Brian walked out to the beach for a sunset swim, and I stayed back. My arches hurt from walking in sand. Also, I finished reading State of Wonder and now I’m grumpy because I finished my book, which was excellent and exactly what I wanted for being here, but now it’s over and I don’t have a replacement.

We saw monkeys our first night here, just running and swinging through the trees above our Airbnb.

The sun is dropping and I want to go look for monkeys. I’m going up on the roof. Maybe I’ll see the sun set, too.

I’m going to read Bird by Bird again.

5:51pm

I’m inside the house in a little glass-walled alcove between the living room and our bedroom. I’m on monkey watch. I went out on the roof alone because the light was low and dusky, and I thought they might come out early; when we saw them Monday night, it was after we’d swum until the sun set, and then came up to the house, and then saw monkeys.

I stood on the roof alone about 15 minutes but saw nothing. I came back in after observing the neighborhood from above and snapping a couple of photos of a vine climbing a palm tree across the street.

There’s not a breath of wind out there. I’m inside because I’ve already showered and I don’t want to put bug spray on.

Thursday May 23, 2024 5:01am

We did not see monkeys last night. I waited by the windows until sunset, then went outside when Brian and the kids got home. I watched the treetops for several minutes outside. They talked about how it wasn’t guaranteed that the monkeys would show up again at the same time and place, but I really wanted to believe they would. I watched more from outside, then moved inside to watch, and I never saw any more.

We leave for our next Airbnb this morning. I’ve got a lot of packing to do. I completely unpacked my suitcase — I hung my clothes or folded them on shelves. I also gutted my backpack. The charts for my eye therapy are in the little glass alcove. My sketchpads, laptop, and watercolors are on the table in the alcove, too. My pen bag is sitting on the concrete island in the kitchen where I sat to write. I will need to put all these things away. Bird by Bird. My kobo.

It’s lighter out now. I’d like to sit outside to write. I’ll need to take the bug spray with me.

I’m outside now and stink of Deep Woods OFF. Gross. I can hear the pounding of surf on the beach, the cawing of tropical birds, the occasional gutteral growling of unknown animals.

A raccoon just passed through on the back deck. It looked at me and I looked at it. It walked on by while I remained lounging in the lounge chair.

I just heard the whirr of wings, like the sound I heard on the first night when large insects slammed into my chest in the dusky dark, large insects I imagined to be golf-ball sized cockroaches.

I’m eager for our next house. It has a gorgeous pool that I imagine spending a lot of time next to when we’re there.

There’s no breeze out here today; the air is very still. I wonder what it will be like in La Fortuna. Brian said the car ride could be bad. I felt sick yesterday when we drove to Brasilito and I sat in the back seat. Our neighborhood road is rocky and rutted and very bouncy in the car, and then the paved roads are winding and have intermittent sharp speed bumps, all of which are nauseating in the cramped back seat of the Suzuki. It’s not going to be a comfortable ride. We’ll go to the pharmacy next to the coffee shop to get motion sickness pills. I want another smoothie bowl as well.

Our son made us pasta last night for dinner. We had bowtie noodles, parmesan, and an under-ripe tomato. Brian and I drank some cold white wine with it. We all lined up at the concrete island on the too high barstools and ate it side by side while we listened to music on the bluetooth speaker Brian packed. I don’t remember what we listened to.

Brian’s out here now. He’s in the lounge chair next to me. He just clapped his hands together, presumably to kill a bug. A couple of minutes ago, we heard a crashing in the trees above us. I watched the swaying branches for a monkey, but it was just a squirrel.

I just rubbed my face, and I’m so greasy.

The squirrel is knocking things out of the trees and they’re thunking to the ground after rustling through palm fronds as they fall. I’m not sure what it is that it’s dropping. Maybe sea grapes, or pieces of coconuts.

8:30am

I watch the treetops across the “river.” I watch for them to twitch or sway. This is a sign of monkeys. In a densely leafed tree across the way, I see a black-brown lump turn a head and drop a curled tail, then move hand over hand on all fours to leap to another branch across the water. The limb dips low under the weight of the monkey, then straightens as the moneky scrambles to a thicker, sturdier part of the limb close to the trunk.

Now I see no movement. Even the single compound leaf that waved to me in some localized eddy of breeze has stilled. I hear the high-pitched whine of a shop-vac, the buzz of cicadas, the grind of a chainsaw, the squeak of someone rubbing glass that won’t come clean. Yellow butterflies flutter ditzily over the still water. Birds chortle across the way. If I listen hard, I hear the swoosh of waves on the beach.

My skin is sticky with sweat and bug spray. A fly lands on my shin and I twitch it away. I swept the deck yesterday, and the table out here as well, and both are littered again with tiny oval leaves the size of my pinky nails.

Something nearby is making a repeated “hwaa” sound. I don’t know what kind of animal it is. I hear the thwack of a nail-gun. I hear the sweep of a broom across pavers.