I Live With One Hundred Parrots.

When we moved here to Ocean Beach in the beginning of March we were quite excited, but knew our new 1 bedroom would be a little tight for 4 people. (Yes, you heard me right). We decided it was worth it  since we would be a block to the beach and would be living in an awesome community. A neighborhood that hosts poetry readings and trivia night at the bars as well as a ton of live bands. Believe me, in Southern California if you can get away from the girls making themselves up in jewelery and flat ironing their hair for a day at the beach and the guys looking like carbon copies in their ugly, striped going out shirts you are pretty freaking happy. This is basically a hippy paradise – lots of variety, lots of diversity, lots of dogs, lots of people you think might be homeless but aren’t, lots of cute boys (of course i would only notice this if i was single), tons of tide-pools, a huge beach, a long pier and an awesome main street filled with antique stores and old cocktail bars serving $2 G &T’s to the old men sitting in them. It’s rad! (I had to say that).

Anyway, it’s pretty cool and we were really psyched when we saw the apartment we rented since it looks like one large enclosed
porch and it’s painted really beautifully. The catch is that it only has 1 bedroom. However it also has a huge 2 car garage below it and a small unfinished room off that which used to be an office and has laundry, etc. Bridgette & mike wanted the garage for their office and i wanted the one giant, awesome room (coolest room i have ever had) so we decided to take it and somehow make the unfinished laundry room their bedroom.

The ocean breezes cool us at night as we hear the waves crash and sit out on a great patio with a little chiminea. We love this place but with everything good comes the bad. In this case the bad is the laundry room/bedroom, the postage sized kitchen & a stove from circa 1972. Because we didn’t want the negatives to get on us after a while we decided that we would pretend that we were living in Central America for 6 months. With this rationalization we could deal with the crappy stove that burns everything and the tight quarters without any complaints. We decided in the summer we would sleep on hammocks in the patio just to make it even more of an experience. So everyday we decide if we’re living in Costa Rica or Honduras and instead of getting irritated with the little stuff we say things like “well, in Honduras this would be an amazing kitchen and this stove would be considered like new there!”.

Strangely, this actually really does work. As it turns out on our second day here Bridgette (my sister) said she saw a
parrot fly over the house. I have seen parakeets in San Diego but never parrots and i said “wow, we really are in Costa Rica!” Mike (Bridgette’s husband) and Randy don’t like to play the Central America game as much as we do and didn’t believe that a parrot flew over the house.  However, the next morning we all woke up to the sound of complete chaos outside. My first thought was that it was monkeys making all the ruckus and since we live in Central America this is a real possibility. Well Randy really wasn’t buying that so I suggested that maybe it was parrots which Randy decided it definitely was not. . The four of us talked about it that day and no one could really figure out what it was. At that precise moment, as he was doing the dishes, Mike looked out the window and saw 3 bright green parrots fly over our house. hmmm…

Bridgette started doing some research and as it turns out we do live in Central America since there are over 100 parrots that live in our neighborhood! How exciting – huh? i’m pretty happy about it. 😉

There are conflicting ideas as to whether or not they flew up from Central America or if they are the descendants of a pet store that burned down in the 50’s. In any case, people come here to study them and they are sure to wake you up bright and early every morning as they make their rounds through the neighborhood. Having them here makes our little Central America daydream so much more realistic!

Click on this link if you want to read more about them.