Square Peg, meet round hole.

 All Summer we've been considering the possibility/desire/opportunities of moving to an Island Locale, Caribbean Destination. We both have long had a dream of living in a very warm place surrounded by blue waters and excellent fishing/diving/(insert water activity). The concept of waking up to the sound of the waves and screeching wildlife has a certain appeal. Lizards in the living room, monkeys rearranging the closets, coconut concussions....can't you see how fun that would be? Completely different lifestyle from the one we currently live in Central Alabama.

But, a certain anxiety has accompanied all this consideration. An unease, that I chalked up to excitement and all the logistical machinations of moving to another country during A Pandemic. They are myriad. What to do with the dog and cat? Can we actually work there or do we have to remain a tourist spending tourist dollars? About the only thing that was completely certain was the wardrobe options: very simple. 

I was looking for...I don't know what to call it....a sign, perhaps. Some sort of confirmation of Yay or Nay to tell me This Is The Thing or This Is Not The Thing. 

We had these plans to check out Panama, the Bocas Del Toro province, which is an archipelago on the western end of the country, near Costa Rica and Belize. It's all about fishing and diving and cheap cost of living. We'd talked to a real estate agent there who was going to help us find affordable places to live, an attorney who would help us with all the immigration, and a logistics person to help with the moving of stuff. No contracts signed or anything, just preliminary feelers put out like some sort of octopus poking out a tentacle to see if the water is fine. 

Anyway, we were due to leave on Tuesday, August 10. Plane tickets, hotel reservations, all the right things were in place and good to go. We'd been gone the weekend for Capt to run a few charters for a friend who hadn't had a day off all Summer, and came home Sunday evening. Monday was meant to be spent packing, getting $300 worth of COVID testing (ouch...what a racket that is), dog to the boarding place, ad infinitum. Only, Monday I woke up with a cough, sinus congestion, and a low grade fever. 

You know darn well I'd be treated like I was wiping my Ebola infected blood all over everyone's lips if I'd tried to go into the Atlanta Airport, or get on a plane, and the Panamanian Authorities....I have NO idea what they would do but I doubt a 4-star hotel would be involved.  

So...the trip was postponed. We lost the deposits (1 night's stay) on the hotel rooms, and the plane tickets could only be transferred. Fortunately the COVID tests hadn't been done, and the dog boarding situation was easy enough to cancel. 

We spent most of Monday and Tuesday discussing the situation. Are we really supposed to be leaving the country? Why are we wanting to leave? (Me: Political situation, cultural issues in this country, general disillusionment with the USA and where it seems to be headed, lower cost of living) What would be required to get our selves in order once we're there, and enable us to do the things we REALLY want to do? He wants to lead fly fishing charters. He has a beautiful new boat meant to do just that. He'd have to get the boat there, fish the areas for a year to learn them, before ever even starting the charters. I'm not even sure what I'd be doing. Most of what I enjoy doing are the sorts of things the locals would be doing and last thing I want to do is take work away from people who really need it. Logistically it would be really, really complicated.  We both felt a degree of anxiety, that I was chalking up to excitement but maybe it was unease, or the discomfort of trying to maneuver that square peg. I kept trying to shave off the corners to make it fit in my mind.

Thing is, I am a very firm believer that God opens and shuts doors. He's done so all my life and the times I've shoved through that door, or tried climbing through a window, it's never really gone well.  The times I've recognized a door, either open or shut, and walked through it, or sat down and waited, it has gone exceedingly well. You think I'd have learned by now. We both came to the conclusion that we weren't supposed to be going to Panama right now.  My father called with a "why the hell do you want to go to Panama right now? State Dept issued a No Travel warning!" (are you nuts??...he didn't actually say that out loud but I knew he was thinking it). 

And the funny thing is, once we made the No decision on Panama, moving that is, we both felt a sense of relief. The anxiety I was interpreting as excitement wafted away. Capt enjoyed those charters he ran so very much. He already has people lined up to hire him for fly fishing trips on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The people who are customizing his boat want him to enter it into a boat show in Mobile. He can't do that if it's in Panama (or Belize/Costa Rica/ Enter Caribbean Locale). I will be reachable by my family and can come back up to here (Central Alabama) regularly. We already have a piece of land in Florida that will be simple to get set up for parking the RV and making into a second homesite. It's big enough we can make a second RV parking spot to rent out or let family use. There's so much here that we can easily do without having to involve agents and attorneys and immigration officials. The ONLY issue I have is that...well...I'm so very disillusioned with the way our culture and society seem to be headed and I don't want to participate in it anymore. That, of course, is a whole 'nother topic.

So I've quit trying to fit the square peg into the round hole. Now we're going to go with Plan A...the one we'd originally made before I got an attitude about the way I think Society is crumbling around us. The location of the land in Florida is in a very politically compatible area, there's plenty of work for Capt on easily accessible waterways, it's close enough for family to visit if we ever decide to tell them exactly where we are, and I can keep my embroidery business intact.  Round hole, meet round peg.