The Blondes DR Blog

It has been a very long time between posts - my most sincere apologies.......... so much to do so little time......

Hmmm where to start. Well it seems I am the only blogger left. I was incredibly busy with no internet at home and it just was not happening...........

Work is good. Dancing is awesome as always. Play is fun. Love life is awesome.

The others - well Dr. Blonde is still around but I am not sure she has much time anymore.

Larimar Blonde is not blogging.

Long Distance Blonde is working through the issues of having a very sick family member. We send her our good thoughts. She will be back.

Life as a blonde is still good. Here in the Dominican Republic it is hard to hide when you are a blonde. It is hard to go un noticed, under the radar........ everyone knows everything about you................

There are other blondes around lately. One night we were out dancing and I swear there were more blondes then normal - natural blondes, frizzy blondes, bad dye job blondes, heavily streaked brunette - almost blondes............

There is a lot of responsibility being blonde. WE have a lot of pressure on us to hold up the standard - but - YES blondes do have more fun.

I promise - on my honor as a blonde - to blog more frequently!!!! Stay tuned.........

Yes it has been a very very long time.............. I will apologize for all of us blondes but not make any excuses..................

All is good in the world of blonde. This one - me - Dancing Blonde - is still dancing - working - dancing etc.

Larimar - is home in Canada for a visit but due back tomorrow.....

Dr Blonde - missing in action but I know where to find her.

Tall blonde - missing in action and not likely to post....

BUT we will add a new blonde - she is nameless..................

AND I will look to recruit another new blonde - doing some work with us right now..........

SO - I hope we will post regular and often!!!!

All I can do is my best folks. For now - blonde is not just a hair colour it is a state of mind.....

Stay well and for those of you who wish - you too can be blonde.....

Well it is time for us to update you all. I will start by saying it has been a very busy time, work wise, personally and socially………..

Where do we start – Ok – Dancing Blonde – me – has her cast off. A large collective – Yeah please….. Now, physio – ouch. I am supposed to go 3 to 5 times a week. A couple things got in the way of that. It is a little tough to find the time to get it done. By the time I leave what I am doing, drive there, wait my turn (appointments – are you kidding me???) get my physio, pay and return to whatever I was doing - you are looking at a good 2 hours! The actual physio takes 30 to 40 minutes.

The last time I went this woman HURT me. I think physio should be uncomfortable but it should not hurt. Here is what happened. You all know what a slant board is? It goes up against a wall and you stand on it. The first thing I did was stand on my bad foot (1 footed) and then lean into the wall in front of me to stretch the ankle and calf. It felt very good. You can do a similar thing hanging off a step or ledge and drop your ankle.
Then she tells me to do one footed toe raises. So, on my bad ankle, raise up on my toes bearing all my weight (not it isn’t THAT much weight)! She wanted me to do 10 of these. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? All of you right now, stand on the flat floor, one footed and do 10 toe raises! Hurry up!!!! Not easy is it. Now try that on a slant board on a bad ankle. NO WAY! I could only do 5 and it HURT. I stopped. My recuperation has been set back a full week by this bozo! She does not get to touch me again.

But I have managed to get a little bit of dancing in………… Double Yeah………

Larimar had her mom and aunt visit her. They are wonderful people and now all of us understand where she gets her sense of humour and idiosyncrasies from! Hurry back both of you.

Of course that kept her busy playing tour guide, hanging out and spending time with family. They had more then one adventure and I am sure we can convince her to post about them.

We have been working very hard too. With anything in this country, there are always issues, concerns, crisis, successes, etc etc. All have been dealt with for now………..LOL But just wait till tomorrow, there will be more.

From some of my work I connected with some tourists from San Francisco. Zain, Susan and Rachel came here to discover the country and do some Latin dancing. We had some plans in place and were ready to go. Friday I did the very girly thing and got my hair done – it looked fabulous. Side note – of the last 6 times I have had my hair done – I have spent 5 of them at home! The universe is conspiring against me – each time there is SOME reason why we can’t or don’t go out. This Friday was no different but certainly the reason was different.

Friday night – in a 2 hour period – we had more rain then I have ever seen in my entire life. Now, I have seen torrential rain for – oh say – 10 or 20 minutes. But never 2 hours…. I left the salon – it was raining. I drove home 1.5 KM or about 1 mile - I could hardly see out my windows. I could not see the holes in the road. I could not see the massive puddles. In fact, the roads now looked like rivers. I followed a big truck, going really slow, hoping he would not stop! IF he stopped my car my have stalled out and been stuck.
By the time I reached home it was unbelievable. I live on a bit of a hill (at the base of Mt. Isabella here) so the street slopes downward. The water running down my street was up to my knees! It carried garbage, rocks, small logs (no kidding) coconuts and anything else in its path downhill. Of course, I was wearing fairly new black suede flats! When I left in the morning it was not raining, the sun was shining.

So, I get to the front gate – put my key in the lock to open it – and get thrown 2 feet by the electrical shock I received. Right on my ass in the disgusting water! And I dropped my keys. To digress one second – I have a running disagreement with the landlord here over the amount of the electrical bill. Seems I was right – there is a power drain from the circuit and it goes into the damn gate and front fence! All that water was a super conductor and I got zapped badly. I am lucky not to have been seriously injured.

I did get into my apartment and had water (only about an inch or so) in half my apartment. Not a big deal compared to many! By the way –I used another gate to get in after I fished my keys out of the yucky cold water.

Okay so, Puerto Plata was a mess!!! The amount of water was incredible, entire neighbourhoods flooded out. Check these links for photos!

http://www.puertoplatadigital.net/noti/noticias/Fotosinundacion2.htm


http://www.puertoplatadigital.net/noti/noticias/Fotosinundacion.htm

It is actually 2 different links so check them both out. Our dancing was curtailed both Friday and Saturday nights needless to say.Our weather has not been very nice since. Not as bad as that but rain every day, sometimes all day. The good news is it is still better then most other places……….

We managed to get out and have some fun on Sunday night and it was nice to see lots of locals out too!!! The government has responded quickly with help for people here. As I find out more I will post about it.

That is probably enough for today. Check out those photos!

PS It is raining right now again.......... ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hi everyone. Sorry we have not blogged in so long. We will really really try to blog more often. I know some people miss us when we don't blog.

What's going on? Hmmmm where to start. Okay, dancing blonde, me, has a broken ankle. NOT dancing, not having a good time at all. But I have slowed down a bit which is most likely why I broke the damn thing. I can't drive, can't go out in the rain ........... and everything takes longer to do. But I am resting (sort of) and spending more time at home.

Larimar - had 2 friends visit for one week and enjoyed playing tour guide. Now her mom and her aunt are here and they arrived with her precious cat with them. She is a happy girl. Tomorrow she is off on a jeep safari with them.

The weather here has been stunning. In 3 weeks of having a cast we have only had 3 days with any rain at all and only 1 bad day. So, not too bad.

Our friend CRASH is back with his dad for 2 weeks as well. Nice people. Today we all went to Field of Dreams for breakfast together along with W & M from Canada. There were 9 of us in total for breakfast and a bit of time by the pool. No pool time for me, the heat is bad for the ankle while it is in the cast. Only 5 more days folks.

So remember the Larimar Blonde and the AMET officer??? If you don't remember you have to go to a previous blog to find that story. The bottom line - Dancing Blonde flirted outrageously and sweet talked her way out of the problem. But, I promised the AMET officer a date. Several days before I broke the ankle, I went on that date. First of all he was really easy on the eyes, oh baby. We had a nice evening and maybe in a different time it might have worked out but he is just too young........... Oh well. At least Larimar didn't have any more problems and I had a nice evening......

This past week we did recognize International Woman's Day here. Larimar went a little further then most. She had to go to the hotel where her mom is staying. The head concierge informed her she was not allowed to park her car where she left it. She smiled nicely and asked if he knew it was " la dia de mujeres?" or the day of women... Well of course he said and of course you can park your car there, you are a woman.........LOL I am pretty sure that was not the intent of womans day but what the heck.....

Today North America went on daylight savings time. Yeah. We never change our time. So, when you go off daylight savings time our TV schedule gets all messed up. We catch news from both New York and Chicago on our cable. It is hard to wait till midnight to watch the late news. And I like watching Regis and Kelly............ now it is on at 9 am again ............ Double yeah.

That is it for today. We will post some photos and more stories soon.

Larimar has another run in with AMET

Well, obviously I did not learn my lesson about not driving without an original driver’s license, is it with me today, no, but later today it will be. First, after I got my car back from the mechanic, who sold me the vehicle, had a problem when on my way to work, it overheated, hole in rad, well, a fairly dishonest mechanic and a week later, the damage to my pocket book has been RD$16,000. I digress, anyhow, the mechanic told me that the placa, which is a sticker in the window of the vehicle, similar to a licence plate sticker renewal in Canada, had expired and that I needed to purchase another one, instead of going right away, because I was told that the office was only open in the morning, and I was working from 9 to 1, I did not buy the sticker.

Okay, so we had to go shopping for a baby gift, a friend from Canada and his Dominican girlfriend had a beautiful baby girl in January. As we are leaving Casa Nelson, our version of Walmart, I asked Dancing Blonde to show me where I had to go to get my sticker, as I was told it was near that store. She pointed out to me where to go, and we proceeded half a block down the street, where the AMET, basically traffic police were checking vehicles. I was first asked for my driver’s license, which I could only provide a photocopy, AGAIN, thinking that $RD200 would get me out of this spot again, I was not too worried. He then questioned the placa, a registration/inspection sticker, that was in my window not being valid, oh no, then to make matters worse, he asked that I pull around the corner.

Luckily Dancing Blonde knew we were in trouble, and got out of the back seat to help. We played dumb for a while, but then were told that the revista, another sticker on the windshield, was a fake. The AMET officer took Dancing Blonde down the street to show her what a real one looks like. Well, needless to say, she was on the phone to the mechanic, who will not longer be doing any work for us, and put the AMET officer on the phone with him so that HE could explain why the vehicle he sold me had a fake revista, obviously this worked in our favor. That was a very good thing because at that point the officer told us that my car was going to his office to be IMPOUNDED. As Dancing Blonde had the unfortunate experience of having her car towed and impounded only days before by the police, due to a mechanical problem, I knew that the minimum fine was going to be $RD2,000.

Well, now the AMET’s friend came along, so we had double the trouble, or double the propina (pay off money) to get us out of this. Anyhow, Dancing Blonde strikes up a conversation with the original AMET officer, finds out he can dance, well, she exchanged phone numbers, and a few harmless flirtations, and we were told we could leave, no fine, no car impounded, just need to go back and show them that everything is in order, and Dancing Blonde may have a new dance partner, he is good looking, has called her once, and as he said, it is always a good thing to have a friend who works for AMET!! Wow, Monday I talked to a lawyer about possible recourse, basically, there is none, so I went out and did the necessary running around and my vehicle is now legal, my driver’s license is not, and my lawyer basically told me there is nothing I can do about that until I get my residencia here.

By the way, on the way back from said “baby shower” we see the same AMET officer, get waived down to confirm possible date details……

Caribbean World Series baseball – we won!

Last game tonight is just a technicality, basically a victory lap. The first game of the series was on a Friday night, a dancing night, but we decided in the 11th inning that we would wait to go out until after the game. Well, the game finally became exciting in the 18th inning when Puerto Rico got a run to go ahead 3–2. We had last bat and basically Puerto Rico lost the game with overthrows to second, etc. and we won 4-2. Sunday night, while Dancing Blonde was dancing, Larimar was too busy watching the game to dance. But we won the game, actually it ended up not even being close. Monday afternoon, 4 pm was game time again, we decided it would be fun to be out somewhere to watch the game. After driving to all of the usual hot spots and some not so hot, we could not find anyone watching the game, so we had to come home and watch it, luckily we had beer and rum, so we felt like we were part of the crowd. When the Aquillas won the local series to advance to the Caribbean world series, there were parades, people running through the bars waving flags, horns honking, and anything that would make noise tied to motorcycles. Anticipating a repeat of this type of behavior tonight, don’t you all wish you were here to experience this??

** note from Dancing Blonde - it is very difficult to dance and watch the game at the same time. Damn men are selfish and keep us turned so they see the game on the big screen. Luckily I am multi talented and can watch baseball and dance at the same time.

Long Distance Blonde - five things about me

1. When I was 4 years old, the doctors thought that I had polio because I could not move a muscle for a week. The doctor came everyday to the house. Fortunately after 3 days I could move my head slightly so the doctor knew that I was going to be ok. Polio was very common then and I had been playing with a girl up the street who did end up paralyzed with polio. It gave my parents quite a scare. Thankfully, I made a complete recovery.

2. I have 2 university degrees - a four years Honours B. A. in Family Studies from Ryerson and a Batchelor of Education from the University of Toronto.

3. I have a very small family. My mother was a British War bride and she only had 1 brother who never had children. I don't know anyone else from England, but they would be far removed cousins. I have one brother - he has 3 children, but they live 3000 miles away. I have 1 daughter who is not married yet. So family gatherings consist of 2 - 4 people at the most. Holidays are rather quiet.

4. Cats are my choice of pet over any other animal as they are independent like me.

5. Activities I enjoy are travelling around the world, dancing, down hill skiing, sewing, reading, movies, live theatre, wine making, driving fast cars, throwing large parties, and spending time with friends.

Now you know a few things about me.

At times I get some very funny things sent to me and I like to share them.....

HOW TO SPEAK ABOUT WOMEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT:

1 She is not a "BABE" or a "CHICK" - She is a "BREASTED AMERICAN."

2. She is not "EASY" - She is "HORIZONTALLY ACCESSIBLE."

3. She is not a "DUMB BLOND" - She is a "LIGHT-HAIRED DETOUR OFF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY."

4. She has not "BEEN AROUND" - She is a "PREVIOUSLY-ENJOYED COMPANION."

5 . She does not "NAG" you - She becomes "VERBALLY REPETITIVE."

6. She is not a "TWO-BIT HOOKER" - She is a "LOW COST PROVIDER."

HOW TO SPEAK ABOUT MEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT:

1. He doe s not have a "BEER GUT" - He has developed a "LIQUID GRAIN STORAGE FACILITY."

2. He is not a "BAD DANCER" - He is "OVERLY CAUCASIAN."

3. He does not "GET LOST ALL THE TIME" - He "INVESTIGATES ALTERNATIVE DESTINATIONS."

4. He is not "BALDING" - He is in "FOLLICLE REGRESSION."

5. He does not act like a "TOTAL ASS" - He develops a case of RECTAL-CRANIAL INVERSION."

6. It's not his "CRACK" you see hanging out of his pants - It's "REAR CLEAVAGE."

These gave me, Dancing Blonde, a good laugh when I really really needed one.

Shortly I will post the 5 things from Long Distance Blonde.

I am still working on mine as is Larimar........