Tricks and Treats

          

Raja found a tiny little coconut on our roof so we had it for a snack. He pulled all the furry stuff off using that big, blunt knife. This was a wise choice because using a steak knife to open a coconut sometimes results in requiring stitches. Right, Raj? Remember that, Hon? Your coconut finger? And what about when you practiced your golf swing under a light fixture? Stitches then too, huh? Well, if you didn't want me to bring that up on my blog then maybe you should have replaced that light fixture with something NOT thrifted from the 70's. 

BOOM

I shouldn't tease him because he was able to crack that adorable coconut open in a way that made the water pour right into a cup for me to drink because it's full of vitamins but not especially tasty. He's so talented! He honestly never ceases to amaze me. But I've also made some contributions to our decade-long marriage. For example, I like to call him horrible names sometimes to be hilarious but when he turned the tables on me the other day, ouch! That joke isn't as funny as I thought! I'm probably rehabilitated from that particular habit now, asshole.

This guy has taken such good care of us here out of pure guilt love. He impressed me so much when he had to navigate through our time in Hyderabad speaking 4 languages in one day! And I don't even think he was faking any of them! Ight-ray, Oney-hay?!

Maya is enjoying some delicious coconut. Um, how long does it take to grow out bangs? Please tell me just a couple weeks because I'm sick of dealing with this. I never wanted to give her bangs ('a fringe' for my British readers- imaginary as they may be) in the first place but her hair grows forward and I wanted her to be able to see so she could do things like learn to read and not walk into walls. Now we're growing them out for vanity. Literacy is so overrated, amirite? 

Teja also enjoyed some of our snack from off the roof. We stayed in our jammies until mid-afternoon today. At which point we bathed and got dressed into clean jammies. I can't wait to take a real shower again! Dumping water from a bucket onto your head with a pitcher is exotic and refreshing but oh-so time consuming. My sister-in-law had shower heads in her bathrooms but, PRANK! they weren't connected to the hot water heater. Good one, India.

Ammon takes his job as a mosquito-killer very seriously. The ceilings are all 12 feet tall here (to deal with the heat) so when the little buggers hang out up there, my boy swats them down with a broom and then zaps them with the tennis racket. When he didn't have the racket, I asked him to give a particular mosquito a round of applause. He got up and clapped it dead and said that was a standing ovation. Yesterday we walked by a house playing some kind of ceremonial music and I wondered aloud if it was a birthday, wedding or funeral. "Or an exorcism," he helpfully suggested. He makes me laugh a lot but other times I get scared because I thought I could be a Mom and just be myself but somehow trick my kids into growing up to be normal. It's become increasingly evident that that's not the case. Seriously kids, stop reflecting my worst attributes back at me! It burns!

Little Vera doesn't eat coconut so she is enjoying a Kinder egg. Here they are called Kinder Joy and divided into two. One half has the toy and the other half has a little spoon and some really sweet gooey stuff with two choco-ball thingies on top. She is mostly interested in the toy as eating is her least favourite past time. Do daily gummy vitamins provide children with all the essential nutrients required for growth and health? I guess we'll find out! Thanks for the ongoing stress, Vera! By the way, Vera was named after my maternal Grandma but Raja just found out his Grandma's Father was named Vera too. Win-win. And he also found out his Mom is left-handed but was punished until she used her right. So that's how Teja became a little Lefty-Lu-Lu. It's neat to see different characteristics my kids got from Raja's side of the family.

After the delicious adventure of finding delicious produce and eating it, I was feeling adventurous/greedy and wanted to try a lime off the tree branches that grow over our fence. That tree always has butterflies all over it and it smells so good. I've never stolen harvested a lime before and these guys were pretty small (didn't get a picture in case it could be used against me in a court of law ;) so I figured they weren't ripe. But I didn't let that stop me. They're green no matter what, right? Well, it smelled divine even before I cut it into quarters and then guess what? It tasted just like a lime! But there was the added bonus of a severe burning sensation on my lips because that is what the peel of unripe citrus fruit does, you big, dumb idiot Renee! (See? Name-calling is fun when I do it). There's a lesson in all of this and I think it has to do with karma or nirvana or thou shalt not partake of the fruit of the tree of lime or some kind of jazz like that but I'm frankly too tired to delve too deep here so I'm just going leave you with this to ponder.