Summer Doldrums

Hi, friends! We've had a couple of very television- and computer-game-intensive days around here, but I don't mind that at all! It feels like there's been a lot going on, and when Mal complained about having to take D to banjo lessons on Monday (he'd been to meet a friend at McDonald's earlier, and said, "I only want to go one place per day!"), I promised him we could stay home for the next two whole days... so far, he's mostly wanted to veg. We've played LEGOs and Disney Cars and Numberblocks, too. But he is in no hurry to leave. I don't blame him. It's been really hot! In fact, although I'm speaking with D's therapist alone tomorrow, I was going to take Mal with me, because he could just play in her office while she shows me some test results. However, he asked that I have my parents come stay with him, because he's all about being a homebody at the moment.

I'm glad! He usually loves just running around, which is fine. But I remember giant swaths of time when D was little that we'd be home all day for days. It's a nice change!

Our chickens are about 19 weeks old. James told me today that egg color is sometimes related to earlobe color (there are exceptions), and that's cool. I was noticing the other day that one of the chickens has very green ears, and another lighter green/yellow ones. They haven't really shown until recently, so maybe they're getting close. We're in no hurry. They're great pets, even without eggs.

See the yellow/green tint? But also, most of them seem to have red earlobes, which means brown eggs. The two "puffy cheek" ones should have some kind of pastel eggs. I can't see their earlobes. They're pretty obscured by fluff.

It was markedly cooler yesterday than in the past six weeks or so, and I could tell the chickens were feeling it. They had a great day roaming the yard under cloud cover, instead of avoiding the sun. Also, we used a lot of non-solar-generated electricity, but whatever. It was a nice break. Here are the chickens taking evening "baths" on the fence.

And the other day, out in the back part of the yard. They've been getting over the fence more and more, but they're understanding how to get back without my opening the gate. They look like wild birds!

Our grass is pretty much shot, and they go over the tiny patches of green first thing in the morning, so it's good for them to have other places to forage. As long as they don't cross the street or make it back to our neighbor's yard! He hasn't started building yet, and I don't want them to get into the habit of going back there!

When I lived in Sherman, one time I came home on a Saturday and there was a guinea sitting on top of our opened garage door. Interestingly, I still have a picture of it. It was October 13, 2007.

We were confounded until a few hours later, our neighbor from two doors down knocked on our door. He asked if we'd seen one of his birds, and we took him out to the garage, but it had moved on. He said it was his son's birthday, and they were getting ready to make his birthday dinner with the guinea, and he thought that the bird knew, so ran away. What's funny is that I didn't even know he had these birds, and they're really loud! Oh well. Wonder what happened to it.

Anyway, I don't want our neighbors here to have a plump, juicy chicken show up and think, "Hey! Free lunch!" Our chickens are friends, not food. I haven't gotten to the point that I can't eat other chicken, but D's been there ever since the pigeons got killed. I think it's permanent.

I'm super excited, because I love planning stuff. And I love traveling. But travel is kind of expensive, so it's not something we do a whole lot of. However, since our Hawaii trip got called off (boo!), it's allowed us to take a couple of smaller trips, and then also both James and I have a single-parent weekend with Mal in the works. I mean, of course, I'm planning both of those, too, but that's just how I like it.

We're going to see James's parents for his birthday (kind of like Mal and I did last year, but with James this time... and we're going late enough that we'll miss the Christmas parade, which stinks... but we'll hit the premier of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, so that's something), then next spring, we're going to go ahead and take Mal to LEGOLAND, like we'd discussed visiting on our way to Hawaii. We found amazing deals on two different hotels there, one of which we had to prepay, but we'd taken out travel insurance when we'd booked our flights, so we felt okay doing that. It's such a treat for me to now watch the prices on the same rooms we've reserved go up, little by little. I'm always on the lookout for deals, and am ready to change the reservation we didn't have to prepay, but it really seems like we got an amazing price, and I'll end up being super glad I do stuff as early as I do.

They're finally starting on building a house across the street from us. They cleared it at the beginning of the year, and it seems like it probably just took a long time to get permits. It's kind of noisy, and a contractor parked in front of our mailbox earlier this week, so we didn't get delivery that day. But it's fun to watch from the comfort of our air conditioned front rooms. Yesterday, we got to watch some workplace rough-housing as three guys were filling sandbags with gravel and a fourth drove the Bobcat over, got the scoop close enough to one guy that he hopped up on the form wall to get out of the way, then the driver raised the scoop up just under his neck! It was precision driving. Pretty impressive, but I might not have the same sense of humor if it had been done to me. Mal laughed, though, and wanted an encore.

By the end of the year, we should have houses on both free corners. The caddy-corner from us is a neighbor's back yard. Unless he sells it because of property taxes, it should remain undeveloped. He has it set up like a park; it's so beautiful. I hope he doesn't. If so, though, we'll always have our back yard!

You might have realized that I will turn 47 in a mere two days. "What?!" you say. "You can't be older than 32!" But it's true. I'm old. I feel it in my reflection and pictures, but I don't care. And I don't feel any older/more decrepit than when I was 18. That's good. I need reading glasses. There is only 1.5 years more difference in my age from my younger child and my sister's age from her only grandchild, but... well, that one kind of makes me want to take up drinking but otherwise... no complaints. Having lunch with a friend and really hoping for a cool cake. That's about it. I don't want for anything else, so am pretty lucky. Actually, I *did* tell James I'd love to have the back porch power-washed. Love those chickens, but they're pooping up a storm out there. So I guess you could say, I have it really great. Happy birthday to me.

Haiti, Days Five and Six: Building in Guibert

June 12, 2013: Wednesday; and June 13, 2013: Thursday
We got up and made sandwiches for our lunches, then headed to Guibert to do what we could to help with the construction on the house being built there in the village.

When we got to the site, we separated and worked on two different things: some of us hammered (and rocked) at cinder blocks to open up any filled-in parts so that rebar and cement could go through them. The rest of us went up a hill to sift rocks from pebbles and transport the sandier stuff down the hill to be used in the concrete mix.

Our teammate Jerry Espinosa captured this video, which is from the second day. It pretty much sums up our activities.



The lady in the pink slacks is the homeowner. She was a machine. The first day, she shoveled and shoveled and directed everyone else's activities as they sifted and hauled. Her two kids ran wheelbarrows down the hill, often with sound effects, and at speeds that caused us leery grown-ups to cringe. But even when they wiped out, they were smiling, then back up and back at the running with a load of "sand."

So, the homeowner would shovel these giant loads into the pails and wheelbarrow if her kids or other Haitians were hauling. When it was the Americans' turn, she would do half loads and then smile and chuckle when we asked for more. If we did something that was less efficient than it could have been, she let us know by directing our feet or moving buckets or taking over. Her work ethic, like all we encountered during the week, was humbling.

On the first day, at around 11:00 AM, women from the village started bringing the men working on the house their food. We took that as our cue to go to lunch, also. We walked about a mile to the school to eat lunch at tables. It was beautiful. I love the Guibert countryside.

There were several dogs at the school who kept us company during lunch. They were polite but pitiful. I mentioned that we'd made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but one of the sammies that I made him was peanut butter, bacon, and banana. I think it gave him the necessary energy to make it through the afternoon that was shortened by a rainstorm, which turned into a thunderstorm, which meant we all huddled inside an enclosed porch until we were relatively confident that we wouldn't be struck by lightning before walking another mile in the opposite direction to get to the van.

By the way, a couple of the best "honeymoon" moments happened on the walk back. Everyone had handed their precious electronics over to Kendi, who was the only one of us bright enough to bring a poncho. As we headed up the hill to the main road, it was still pouring, and I was more than a little nervous about slipping (which I didn't, and a much younger man than I am did, but he made it look good). Once we got to the road, though, it was a gorgeous walk. At one point, Rachel pointed out a "mudfall" to our left. Earlier in the day and the week, we'd seen a trickling waterfall where the team had hiked last year. But now, with the rain, it looked like a chocolate waterfall straight out of Willy Wonka. It was beautiful, but you'll have to take my word for it since my camera was a quarter mile up the road in Kendi's pack. Stunning. James and I both just stood and started at it for a few moments.

Then, a bit further down the road, we got to a little clearing where water was running off of the road and down the side of the hill we were on. I stopped and made some joke about it being our own personal mudfall, and then we just stood there watching the water rush down in front of us, a light rain falling, and we kissed under our hats (my big ugly one, I left in Haiti; thanks again, Jadey! I loved it!). I told James that we could not have had a more romantic honeymoon.

The next day, we went back to the same site. We'd busted up all of the blocks, so we mostly worked with sifting and hauling. The house went up very quickly, and it seemed like after a third day, all of the walls should have been done. The actual construction is done by paid Haitian workers. Of the $2000 we had to raise for the trip, $500 went into the local economy directly, much of it to pay for these supplies and craftsmen. We tried to find a balance between helping them expedite the work for the family and not taking billable hours away from them.

On the second day at the build site, the first time we saw the homeowner, she was running a long bent piece of rebar down the road (as shown at the end of the video above). That encounter left mud on my shoe, and it  was tempting not to wash it when I got home. She did supervise some of our sifting that day, but she also ran more rebar and apparently had to work in her garden, so we didn't see as much of her. Although we didn't see her in her garden, we did have the privilege of working next to this lady. I was shoveling, and James was trying to be surreptitious, but you still get the general idea.

After working our second day, we went to a convenience store for some world-famous Prestige beer (winner of the World Beer Cup!). Fortunately for James, I don't like beer. I did order one and tried it, and guess what? Really good beer is still beer and it's not my favorite. So, James got two beers for the price of one. :) We had to drink it in the parking lot of the convenience store (which, fortunately, had a gorgeous overlook, so it's not as ghetto as it sounds) since our hosts are not imbibers of alcohol.

The store was interesting. There was an armed security guard at the front door, for starters. The products inside were fun to try to decipher. There were a bunch of bags of differently-flavored farina (like Malt-o-Meal) that was designed to be baby food, but that also said it was good for "ages 1 to 100." I was interested in the banana meal, but it was pretty expensive. Most of their "typical American" items were a lot more expensive there than here in the US.

We did end up buying a bag of Caribbean-produced Oreo-like sandwich cookies, except that the cookies weren't as dark and they were square, and the filling was peanut butter. Also, they were wrapped in 4-cookie packs. They cost over $4, even though the price tag in gourdes would have translated into closer to $3... but maybe that was also for tax. Now, too, I feel like a goober for eating them all and not having taken a picture!

When I was in the back of the store, a young man working in produce noticed that I had a camera and asked me to take his photo. I did, showed him, he thanked me, and that was it. People love having and then seeing their pictures made.

Which reminds me of something else: When we'd pass anyone on the street, we'd say "bon jour" or "bon soir." Actually, in Creole, it's "bonjou" and "bonswa" but, of course, those sounds the exact same; they're just spelled phonetically. In fact, if you look at this list, it's very easy to see the French spelled as it sounds. Interestingly, to me, I see that there's a different phrase asking where the bathroom is, but I was able to ask with "Ou est la toilette?" and the lady at the orphanage understood me. :) I guess "toilet" is pretty universal, too, though. Also, I did hear our interpreters asking "Ca va?" so I did that, too, and the response was usually "Yes, well, thank you. And you?" So I'm assuming that means more, "You're doing well, yes?" than "How are you?"

Wednesday and Thursday, James and I did stay up to play games. Something about being very active during the day gives me more energy at night.

I got a slight sun... I hesitate to say "burn," so will just say "kiss" on Thursday, and it's a total farmer's thing, but the sun was not as bad as I had expected it to be. I only applied sunscreen in the morning, but it didn't ever feel like it was bearing down on me. I credit the hat, too, of course.

Only one full day left in Haiti. Thanks for traveling with me!