I’ve been a bad blogger lately. That is, my blog has been defined by deafening silence. I have plenty to say, just not enough time. Being a papa x2 has been taking its toll.
Fatherhood, coupled with work and Nica-life has taxed me of late. Heck, just living in Nicaragua is enough to sap a guy of his strength. Case in point, for those of you that follow this blog….err, all 3 of you…. Remember the maid that we [fired/let go/mutually decided to leave the evil Americans] a couple of months ago, for lying, stealing, refusing to work, et al.? Well, she has re-emerged, trying to extort money out of us. Armed with a couple of ‘lawyers’, she recently ’suggested’ via email that I acquiesce to her demands (a year’s worth of salary for no good reason), or else she will go on the Nica version of Sally Jesse Raphael, and expose the ‘psychological and verbal abuses’ that I, a ‘terrible American’, meted out over our brief time together. So, in fairness to you, the reader, I will spell those out….
-For starters, when I first hired her, I agreed to pay about 4 months of health benefits that had fallen into arrears, a gift of sorts…..Of course, this was part of my master plan, to ensnare her in a false sense of security with the mean, nasty foreigner…..the deceitful American.
-Then, in a fit of fiendish tomfoolery, I went through all of our son’s clothes and toys, donating everything that couldn’t be used by him (believe me, it was a lot) to her, and her family.
-Blinded by rage, or perhaps Nicaraguan rum, I looked the other way for much of the ensuing 10 months, while she planted herself in her room, glued to the television that I explicitly bought for her to enjoy. An aside…it is funny, when I was within her line of sight, she would jump up like Gomer Pyle, eager and attentive, to the incredulous gaze of Sergeant Carter.
-As if I hadn’t spelled out my evil intentions enough, I spent more money on her and her daughters’ Christmas gifts than I did on my own son, esnuring that they had ample clothes for school, and paying their bus fare, when they had a hankering to pilfer our cupboards, all under the guise of ‘playing with my son’.
-I pretended not to know, perhaps in a fit of ‘evil American’ diabolicism, when she stripped all of my fruit trees bare, all the while blaming the gardener and night guards….or, when she consistently made long distance phone calls on my dime.
Of course, you may ask, ‘Why did you put up with her for so long?’ Well, the short answer is this…..We hired her to help take care of our son….and by all indications, she actually did a good job of that. The long answer is that, ironically enough, I felt pity for her…..she has two young daughters…and very little financial security. I was paralyzed by the image of her returning to her daughters with no job, while I was missing a couple silly ole mangoes from my trees. In the end, the theft of mangoes was symptomatic of a greater problem, which has now threatened to thrust me into the throes of Nica daytime TV drama.
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