Box #221 was added to the manifest this morning and stacked up in the garage ready for our forty foot shipping container to arrive prior to moving our crap to Costa Rica.

Still no confirmation from the woman who is in charge of our shipping container. This is the same women who prides herself on her great communication skills.

I understand the business of Tico Time: Everything moves slowly in Costa Rica. But I’m still on Gringo Time. Nancy is frantically loading boxes and I’m sealing, inventorying and stacking them. The last time I heard (May 5) our contact wrote:

I should think June 28 would work well.

Should work? How about WILL work?  (I thought to myself.)

Then nothing for two weeks.  I expressed my chagrin that I hadn’t heard from her she was very apologetic

And, truly, apologies for leaving you hanging.  (This is normally my real strength — communication! — so it’s so out-of-character for me to be behind in this regard!)

What should I do because it’s happening again? Her strength is communication. This is out of character. Maybe she has been eaten by a bug? I should feel sorry for her?

If I was Steven Tyler, I wouldn’t have this problem.

There are three shippers that specialize in Costa Rica. One didn’t respond at all to my emails, and the second is very slow… our choices are somewhat limited and time is winding down. I won’t have a place to live come July 1.

I explained to her that I’m being a nervous-nelly – but only because I. HAVE. NEVER. DONE. THIS. BEFORE.

And this morning this showed up in my inbox:

UPDATE: The power of blogs. I had just posted this when I got an email response. She in fact HAD emailed me on Monday and I did not get it (and I did check my spam folder.) This does nothing for my confidence that future communication from Costa Rica to the rest of the world will be good.

Pura Vida.