in any case, the chocolate mousse cake from sunflour cafe is decadently good.
we hole up at an airbnb, thanks to Y's research, us two middle-agers more attuned to hotel breakfasts and turn-down service than to self-servicing on vacation.
here's the conclusion:
here's the dryer contraption at the airbnb. no-frills luddite-compatible totally effective warm air delivery set-up.
the washer takes a lot of guess work coupled with google translate, as usual. but the dryer inspires me to do another load soon!
excellent food lovely view great company. one of those evenings where you feel the cup runneth over.
am thankful.
soul-sister to chatuchak mongkok and various other haggle-centrals in the world.
we discover there are 3 levels of prices for the goods:
three long-desired catch-up-with-people thanksgiving-with-turkey-and-the-works dinners in a row and finally now the long-awaited aftermath of disengagement and silence.
note to self: do not agree to host three dinners in succession ever again. the body the mind the oven the kitchen sink and pipes and the 'fridge groan in unison. also, the meat thermometer died in service of the last turkey. thank God for O for her calm dependability.
in thanksgiving:
recent errors abandoned halfway:
slice-of-life meets bildungsroman meets time travel meets spare japanese esthetic in a series of interconnected entangled threads. refreshing and enchanting.
feeling just a tad weepy thinking about the stalled renovation up-ended schedules and tussles with the unhappy management committee and then remembering that:
i babysit A for a couple hours all by my own self.
here is what we do on a loop:
totter up the steps and come down the slide
look for the turtles who are stubbornly hiding in the crevice
roll the ball to each other
fling the wine glass tokens and gather them back
all in 15 minutes.
the rest of the hours pass by verrrrry slowly.
i begin to realize that baby A is the impish tornado of thermodynamic energy that God sends to keep me from becoming fossilized in neatness and order.
the prevailing philosophy, it appears, is let-the-child-feed-herself.
unfortunately HOM and i subscribe to the keep-the-food-off-the-floor-and-the-grease-off-the-furniture school. our nerves forbearance and fortitude are tested.
fortunately the perpetrator is charming.
communion service today, and i look around the sanctuary at the dear faces of the people. we were young lithe and strong together, as we are thickened and heavier and slower together now. our children were babies together, and they have babies of their own now. how deep is the father's love for us.
and so the christmas music begins.
today we hear the strains of a jazzed up jingle bells adorning our grocery run at cold storage. it's enough to make you think of snow covered sidewalks and skaters on the pond. if this is not clockwork scheduling i don't know what is.
as of tomorrow, family medicine becomes a recognized specialty.
thirty years in the making. i feel simultaneously glad grateful and deeply satisfied. after they grandmother me in, i tell my old friend, i am going to retire in peace. like the old wuxia guy who finally retreats to his deepest mountain lair.
stop work order.
3 little words to chill the intrepid home owner's heart.
'nuff said.
the volvo is back from the workshop and the damage comes in under 3 figures. we all have different ideas about blessings and mercy but this certainly jibes with ours.
also, HOM and i realize that although we want to go green and take the bus more often we are more like yellow just yet.
pressing on with the count:
11. the main con continues to be elusive
12. HOM to the rescue as de facto project manager troubleshooting guy and part-time electrician. his earlier education coming in useful, i say
13. another permit appears to be missing
14. and the cabinet measurements need rescuing
in other news, and in the fine tradition of murphy's law as applied to home renovations, the car breaks down today in the course of duty.
i meet him after work.
me in a dress, he in longs.
we pay the peak-hour toll into town.
we dine on sake and sashimi.
and head home for coffee.
niceeee.
we plan a quickie trip across the causeway for the long weekend, HOM and i.
wake up early zip over have breakfast at ah koong coffee at oriental shop at mid-valley lunch at new lucky then massage. don't forget the hanjuku cheesecake from lavender. good plan, eh!
we manage the wake up early bit. the live traffic camera shows a solid line of car lights to the border.
we go back to bed.
in additional news, the cement screed is finally poured. yesssss. one month late, but i tell HOM it definitely feels like we are renovating and progressing now.
my friend comes back from the camino walk. i begin to realize, with something of a dawning pain, that i may have a list of dreams more than a to-do list:
the whole point about forgiving someone, i realize, is not to figure out if they deserve it or not but to remember that i do not but am freely forgiven anyway. it helps to also remember that forgiving is not forgetting and i need not heroically try to inflict amnesia upon myself.
if i don't watch out i will really become a crotchety old woman. the old bit is already there i just need to be crotchety.
it is amazing how many of my ruminations circle around the elders. when i become a venerated elder i really hope i do not need to be served up with a garnish of helpless forbearance.
at the exams today and a number of people tell me separately that i examined them at various points in the past.
when you've been around the block several times your past eventually catches up with you, is wot i say.
i also say my bark is worse than my bite, as evidenced by the fact that i do not recall actually examining any of these present luminaries of the fraternity, as well as the fact that i consider them my friends these days.
continuing the list:
6. we discover neighbor's pipes in our home (ikr, who designs things this way?)
7. neighbor's pipes (in our home) might be leaking. cue near-apoplexy on everyone's part
8. work stops because you need water to cut the walls, apparently (duh?)
9. smart wall switches are sized differently from regular switches (the wall cutter did not know this either)
10. and the dji robot vacuum narrowly avoids being barred from export due to them thinking we are processing a drone
this is a good place to quote Ps. 94:17, slightly out of context: unless the LORD had given me help, i would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
sand in my sock.
the modern twist to the princess and the pea.
and the update to the sand in my shoe. considerably harder to remediate too.
and there was evening, and there was morning, another day. quite breathtaking.
and the renovations plod on.
here is E when he does not want to walk.
clearly a dog who knows what he does not want.
1. stop work order
2. main con sprains his back
3. a/c con punctures the water pipe
4. main con's grandma dies
5. super typhoon ragasa
and counting.
unless the LORD build the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Ps. 127:1
after a week of categorically slower internet speeds HOM contacts M1 and then runs through a complex series of fruitless trouble-shooting over the next couple hours before the young man at the other end says, you need to upgrade your router firm-ware. at which HOM climbs to where we stash the router digs out the 8-year-old credentials and presses on the update button and voila! we are back in action!
all of this to say, always know where you squirrel away your device passwords and know what to do when the young man says you need to upgrade your firm-ware. either that, or you marry the local IT support guy.
plodding and ponderous and also page-turningly tense.
the characters are truly unlikeable: the victim wholly deserves his desserts three out of four siblings are hypomanic or personality disordered and the hangers-on are unprepossessing and unreal.
the overarching theme appears to be the old wuxia revenge worked out in a western clime. if i were an asian immigrant to the u.s. this book would totally depress me.
HOM scratches thru the nite.
he: i must be catching your chronic urticaria.
me: huh? <smashes a fat mosquito.>
recently abandoned books:
the trust - m.c. eccleston (2022). i pick this up because the blurb says for fans of richard osman but she in no way writes with osman's flair.
the way of all flesh - ambrose perry (2018). wordy, like alphabet pea-soup.
the killer across the table - douglas & olshaker (2019). not sure what the writer is trying to achieve with a most uncharismatic subject.
people from my neighborhood - kawakami (2016). bizarre without kawaii. that's all.
the woman who wanted more - vicky zimmerman (2016). depressingly middle-class american. for recipes and food, stick to ruth reichl, i say.
in my seventh decade i no longer feel obligated to finish a book once i begin it.
i discover a pretty hair clip in the deep recesses of the car.
me: nice! i must have dropped this some time back.
HOM: is that yours? i don't recall you having something like this.
me: is it not better that i should have lost something like this?
fascinating and quirky ode to that lifelong dream of mine, to do nothing.
morimoto is unapologetically vegetative in his approach to exertion and involvement. the fascinating bit is how he strikes a chord in so many souls who take pleasure in helping him do nothing. the quirky bit is the unexpected nature of his many endeavors: providing a warm body to file divorce papers with or being the recipient of rambling monologues or simply being a human alarm clock. for someone so against the tide of industry he is insightful and warm in his observations of human nature.
what i don't understand is how he ever exerted himself enough to marry his wife.
another couple strings snap in the piano. this is happening with painful regularity.
and yet it is greatly beloved well treasured and lovingly played, this stately beauty of ours.
even if the piano tuner knows us better than most other people.
God and God alone created all these things we call our own
from the mighty to the small the glory in them all is God's and God's alone
God and God alone is fit to take the universe's throne
let everything that lives reserve its truest praise for God and God alone
God and God alone reveals the truth of all we call unknown
and the best and worst of men won't change the Master's plan
it's God's and God's alone
- phil mchugh
flipping thru my old song sheets and found this. painfully and comfortingly apt in the face of turmoil and mindless oppression.
