Category — Laughing Makes You Taller

(A friend of mine used to say that, about candy bars or prayers or a nice gas price.)

I am very busy today. VERY busy. My friend is hosting a Yeshu Kirtan tonight at her house and I will be there with bells on, singing my heart out. I’m making rajma and masoor dahl and rice.

But I just couldn’t help myself. I had to put these up because they are my favorite silliness on the Internet right now. (You may have seen them, but hopefully it’s new for some of you.)

Double Rainbow guy. (Very familiar. I feel like I know him.)

And the extremely awesome subsequent Double Rainbow Song, which Chinua and I listened to no less than four times yesterday, and which he put on and danced around the living room with me to, when I was tearful and sad. (It did the trick.)

So intense!

Today was an up/down/up/down kind of day.  I believe that this what they call a roller coaster. (I’ve heard of roller coasters; I think they exist in that mythical land called The WEST.)

First I had some highly skilled parenting moments in which I had the following conversation:

Me: “Kid A, will you please water the garden for me?  We need to go and meet Claudia at the beach and I’m running late.”

Kid A: “I can’t.  I’m too tired, and I don’t want to.”

Me: “Fine then!  Just wait until the next time you want help!  I’m not going to help you!”

Kid A: “What?”  (Genuinely baffled.)

Your welcome for the stellar example of boundary setting, including a nice wallop of impossible consequences. No help for you, kiddo!  That’s what you get for being so unhelpful!  Of course, I blame my lapse on the fact that I sometimes turn into a nine-year-old, without warning. It’s not my fault!

But then the kids and I made it out and met my friend for breakfast on the beach.  She was leaving today to go traveling to other places in India (with Renee! Ack, Renee-less and Claudia-less!  Double blow!) and we had coffee and peered at the ocean in the distance and tried to tell each other how much we mean to one another. (That was an awkward sentence, that.)

The kids played, and Solo tackled the other babies, just like I’ve trained him to.  I’ve tried to warn him, though.  Go for the toddlers that have elder brothers and sisters!  Because those first-time parents can be lethally protective.  To his credit, he doesn’t mean to attack the toddlers.  He just gives really big hugs and then if you start pulling him away because the other kid is shrieking, he kicks at them, for good measure. Sigh.

A man yelled at me for getting in his way in traffic.  I cried.

Then we ate grapes and cheese and bread and I had a blissful hour of doing embroidery work on a skirt I was making for Claudia while listening to This American Life.  I think it may be my favorite way to spend an afternoon.

Then Solo pulled a mayonnaise jar off of the counter and it shattered on the floor.  Let me tell you, my friends, that you haven’t experienced the true bliss of life until you’ve combed your fingers through gelatin-like mayonnaise on a marble floor, pulling pieces of glass out. There is nothing to equal the greasiness, the potential danger, the pure fatty sharpness of it.

And then it was time to say goodbye at the taxi.  Big hugs and kisses and Claudia and Renee spun off, a little late, to catch their train. I love my friends.  I will miss them.

Back to the house and while I was making dinner, Solo broke my favorite coffee cup, which was nice because I loved it and I didn’t want it anyways!  Stupid coffee cup!  So smooth in the hand, so brown, so perfectly sized and shaped.  I’m glad I’m rid of it!

But around the dinner table I was filled with this warm rush of love for all their crazy selves.  I love this family.  I love these kids.  I even love these kinds of days, when Solo makes me crazy, and then runs into the room, teeth first in that way he has, just to throw his arms around my legs and try to kiss my knee cap. I love that he lets me pinch his cheeks (gently and ceaselessly) and I love the conversation that never stops swelling and ebbing all around me. I love goodbyes sometimes, because we try to say what we feel shy to say at other times.

Also, I love Ira Glass and my blooming bougainvillea and going to the vegetable stand to find the perfect purple cabbage. Life, in other words.  God and His eternal goodness.

It was Kid A’s first barber shop haircut.

His Superstar dad usually cuts his hair, but I grew impatient and his hair was getting to that point where it gathers lint and makes my life unnecessarily difficult.

So off we went to the village barber.  There was a drunk man outside of the barber shop, which made me feel like I was in a novel.

Maybe I am.

Kid A had the best flinchy faces the whole time.  Like the barber was pulling his hair out instead of using a pair of scissors.

The excitement was almost too much.  We were all in awe of the coolness of the barbershop.

And the coolness of the large face brush.  I would like one, please, for home.  Just for those moments when you want to run some soft bristles over your face, you know?

You may be surprised that we stuck with the original plan of getting Kid A a haircut, and didn’t get a massage at the Body,Face Massage counter. What the photo doesn’t show is that this is the door to a room that was approximately 1 inch x 2 inches.

I also declined a cold wax.

Though it was tempting.

Because someone’s husband spent an hour fixing the bad quality photograph she took of this doodle.

Which turns it into a labor of love.

Of course, I didn’t get all of the things on my list done.  But I did do several things that weren’t on the list (like school and writing and diaper changing and talking to my neighbors and bandaging owies and pulling the clothes on the line in and out of the house because of rain) and now I am summoning my most adventurous self for this trip to Delhi.

(If you want to take a closer look at the drawing, you can click on it and then click “All Sizes” on the Flickr page– top left hand corner of the image.)

1. We are going on a little adventure tomorrow.  I’m ready for a way out of here for a few days.  It’s true that we live in India, (which is adventurous) but it’s also true that we rarely venture beyond walking distance, and if that, only to buy paper, go to the tailor, or get some cough drops.  (Though sometimes we drop in at the local Korean restaurant.)

Tomorrow our jeep will pick us up at the nearby road.  We will walk along the stony path, down the stairs, by the creekbed, and up the hill, and then off we go in the jeep to Manali.  I think the journey takes 7 hours, but I don’t think that’s calculated for children.

2. It was quiet, today, in the Stage Carriage, until Cate asked if I had heard that Michael Jackson died.  She was sitting in front of me, beside a Tibetan woman wearing the traditional chupa.  The Stage Carriage is a jeep for public transportation.  It has three bench seats, and doesn’t drive for anything less than four people per row.  It’s a cozy ride, to say the least.  (And it’s really called a Stage Carriage.)  For 10 rupees, you can hop in the Stage Carriage in McLeod Ganj and ride to Lower Dharamsala, where you can find a tailor to make you yet more children’s clothes which your children will grow out of in six months.

Anyways. Suddenly the jeep was alive with discussion.  The Tibetan woman beside Cate shook her head.  “It’s because he was trying to make himself whiter,” she said.  A Polish Buddhist nun in maroon robes was sitting next to me.  “His music was so so beautiful.  Did you like him?”

“I liked his music very much,” I said.  “But I think his story is very sad.  He got too famous, too young.”

“Yes,” the Polish Buddhist nun continued, “he gave all of himself away, and had nothing left for him.”

Cate was still talking with the Tibetan lady up front.  “Yes, he was very young, it’s very sad,” she said.

“Everyone, everywhere, is sad,” said the Tibetan lady.

“And did you ever see his dvds?  He was such a great dancer,” added the Buddhist nun.

And I shook my head.  Reminiscing about Michael Jackson in India in the Stage Carriage with these two ladies was almost too much for my grip on reality to handle.

I popped over to my friend Carrien’s blog to see if she had written about one special afternoon, many years ago, when we sat outside Michael Jackson’s gate on top of our van, singing worship songs with gusto. (She had.)  My best friend Dori had such a strong sympathy for him, and she desperately wanted to try to tell him that God loved him.  We weren’t allowed in, so the four of us sang with the rolling hills of Los Olivos swelling all around us. Dori also wrote him a letter.  I do hope it was delivered.

3. I should have known better.

Sometimes when your husband is away and you are tired and not getting a lot of sleep and you live somewhere far from where you have lived before, you might have a small crisis and cut your hair.

But the good news is, you only cut off the bottom half.  You emerge from the bathroom with a handful of dreadlocks that have been with you for almost seven years.  Your neck is much cooler, but you need it cleaned up, made the same length, so you head to the barber.

You should have known better.

What part of “I just want it tidied up” sounds like “Go ahead and shave it.”

I couldn’t really find a good after pic, probably because it only looks different from the very back.

I should have known better, but at least I can say I’ve been to an Indian barber.  And it’s SO much cooler.

(First 3 pics taken by Becca, and the last one was taken by Chinua)

Some of you may be wondering how my new set up with groceries and babysitting is working.

Groceries:  Awesome.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.  This morning I called down, and forty-five minutes later the groceries were delivered to my door.  I’m paying the coolie personally, and a little more than is normal, so the whole employment bit feels good too.

The only thing:  today I asked for two bhaingan (eggplant), and they heard two kilos. Eggplant is not particularly heavy, so now I have a fridge FULL of eggplant.  I batter fried slices of two of them tonight, and said to my sister… two down, only thirty-two to go.  I exaggerate.   But Kid A couldn’t get enough of the batter-fried bhaingan, so that’s a silver lining.  You gotta love a kid who loves eggplant.  (I was not one of them.)

(Of course, as I said to my husband on that fateful day nine years ago when we ate the cockroach in Bangkok, anything tastes good when it’s fried with garlic and salt.)

Babysitting:  Sometimes I want to pull my hair out.  My writing times tend to be full of so many interruptions that I am tempted to crawl under my bed and never come out at all.  There are water problems, a puppy runs into the house, Solo wakes up. Somebody needs me at the door and it turns out to be some weird masseuse guy with dirty bottles of oil.  “Why did you interrupt me for that?” I ask Ankit. “He said you called him here,” he replied.  Which is a strange business strategy for a masseuse: the outright lie.  Like I’d say, “Oh?  I called you here?  I guess I just forgot!  Okay!  Massage away with your dusty oils and strange tools!”

But there is something about employing someone so that I can write.  I’ve turned into a machine.  I WILL GET MY 1000 WORDS OUT TODAY OR DIE TRYING.  No matter how many interruptions, I’ve been managing.  It’s been good.

Tonight was another story, though.  I asked Ankit to come over at 8:00 so that I could go out with my sister for a little while. He came, and sat patiently while I tried for what seemed like forever to put Solo to bed.  This is how the evening went.

8:30- Finally Solo gets off to sleep. My back is breaking.  (Have I mentioned that this is a very heavy child?)

8:34- I am trying to play a dvd on my computer for Ankit.  I have the wrong hard drive.  Arggh.

8:36- YaYa is “itchy.”  She heard a bug.  Something was on her forehead and that makes her want to cry and cry and cry, because something was on her forehead.  She’s scared of her bed now.  She can’t sleep.

8:46- I’m lying in bed beside YaYa, stroking her face.  She’s still crying, clutching me every few minutes, saying, “I’m sooorrrry,” and “I can’t sleep.”  Finally I ask her if she wants to sleep in my bed.  I move her and it’s like magic; all her itches go away, and sleep comes quickly.

8:56- Success with the dvd for Ankit!

9:00- Finally out the door with Becca, I heave a huge frustrated sigh and refrain from throwing rocks.  Where should we go?  I’m so tired, Solo is teething and I haven’t been getting much sleep.  It seems too hard to walk down the mountain, so we decide to walk over to the closer village.  Maybe we can have a lassi or something.

9:20- “Becca,” I say, “this restaurant seems depressing to me.”  We hand the menus back and decide to walk back over to the restaurant near our house.  It’s familiar.

9:35- When we get back to the restaurant, I have to go to the bathroom.  When I get out I see Tripta (the restaurant is on her rooftop) and she laughs at me because my hair is up in a wrap.  She thinks it looks silly.

9:40- The phone rings.  I can hear Solo crying.  “I’ll be right there,” I say.

*

Well, we had a nice hike through the moonlight.  So, that’s how that’s going.  But I’m sure it’s the same for any parents of young children anywhere.  It’s funny, isn’t it?  I feel as though I can stretch so far, with my kids, but when they are up past their bedtimes, I’m like, wait, what?  I was with you all day!  I fed you and watered you and we read together and played!  Now that part’s done!  What’s going ON?

Stttreeeeetttch.  I will one day be the most flexible person ever to roam this earth.  Metaphorically speaking. (Rubs aching back)  Maybe I should get that masseuse back here.

When I want to live vicariously, I do so here. (These are my dear friends, and their home is very close to my old home.  But their lives have always been super cool, even before I left for the other side of the world.)

Some other incredible friends of mine just up and moved to Ethiopia to take care of kids who were in serious danger.

The brave and wonderful NieNie has a great story about marital love.

And the funny stuff:

Awkward Family Photos.  Okay, when I tell you that I looked at every. single. photo. please remember that they’ve only been posting since April.  But I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.  My personal faves:

the Bon Family

Mommy-the-Pooh

The Pile-on

*

Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy : Funny, sad, true

Pride and Twitterverse :  this is genius

And the last is not a link, but another definition by the Leafy Boy:

“Leafy, what does cute mean?”

“Cute means… when a wittle baby needs to be snuggled.”

Oh, he’s good.

I woke up that day and knew right away that it was pointless to get out of bed. I turned to my husband.

“I just want to die,” I said.

“That’s a bit of an extreme reaction, don’t you think, Rae?” he said, mildly.

“No. No, I don’t think.”

*

When the time came, we all assembled on the rooftop/veranda, against a stunning backdrop of blue sky and green hills with one little lone wooden house tucked in an impossibly vertical location. (Every day I look at that house with awe.) There were boulders strewn over the hillside like the seeds of mountain peaks, and we were armed with a large plastic bucket, several plastic bags, (black market items here, since plastic bags are outlawed) and many towels.

Renee, who quite honestly was behaving as though this was some kind of party, told me she liked my outfit.

I frowned.

“I’m going to start wearing only black and grey,” I replied. I was morose.

Becca, Renee, and Cat all smiled indulgently. My head felt like it would pop off. And good riddance if it did.

*

Chinua poured the special solution made of half vinegar and half rubbing alcohol over the hair of the first victims. He moved from a hairdresser routine for the girls to vomiting sounds for the kids. “I’m a blue whale and I just ate but.. blleheheeeheheheh,” he said, pouring the solution over their hair while everyone giggled uncontrollably.

I may have cracked a smile.

*

With the plastic bags on our heads and towels and scarves draped over the bags, we had a collective style reminiscent of a headgear cult. Leafy was sporting a red checked towel, very Arab in style, Renee had the look of a woman smoking a cigarette beside her garden gnomes and baby deer on the veranda of her trailer, Cat had a glazed cult follower look, and Becca had rosy cheeks and looked beautiful. I tied Chinua’s plastic bag in a Tupac style, and me?

My hair has the incredible ability to soak up a lot of fluid, which leaked slowly into my bag, creating a puddle in the bag which I hung over my shoulder. It nestled just over my collarbone. Like a small pet draped around my neck. Or a breast implant, gone horrifically awry and fleeing north. As the day went on, I began to feel protective of my lump, speaking softly to it to comfort it.

*

We huddled in my bedroom, watching shows on the computer and eating ice cream, while we waited the requisite three hours before we could wash the stuff out of our hair. It was not a bad way to pass an afternoon, all of us lined up and glazing over at a stand up comic who was quipping his way unintelligibly around the computer screen.

And then the internet guys showed up to help us connect to the new wireless signal that has been installed. A man from Israel and a Tibetan man born in India. It was interesting timing, to say the least, all of us huddled and turbaned. They needed to come into the back bedroom to work on the computer there. I tried to hide in the bathroom.

*

When I realized that hiding in the bathroom probably wouldn’t work, I decided that talking about it was the next best thing.

“Lice.”

We all commiserated. Little jerks, chomping on your head. The Israeli man was sitting at the computer, while the Tibetan man was sitting crosslegged on my bedroom floor, typing away at his laptop. The girls and I were still all slouched against the wall, and kids trickled in and out with their curiously large heads. I mimed the cult mother behind the man on the computer, talking to my bag of water and listening to the instructions it gave me.

The Israeli man had grown up on a kibbutz. “We used to use kerosene,” he said. Our lot looked better.

Okay fine. I decided to be a good hostess.

“Chai?” I asked.

(Photos by Chinua, in case you didn’t notice him in the mirror…)

When I was in France last year (I guess it was actually the year before last-WEIRD) with friends, we noted that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the kissing. Sometimes when greeting, someone would kiss us once, on both cheeks. But then sometimes there was a RETURN to the first cheek thrown in there, and we were all, WHa-whoA-well-Okay. And then, sometimes. Four. Two for each cheek.

As my Italian friend said to me here, This is just too much.

But we kiss a lot here. North Americans tend to be huggers, but here in our International Community, there is such a conglomeration of Europeans, North Americans, Aussies, Russians, and people from the Middle East, not to mention Koreans and Japanese, that, well, the consensus seems to be kissing. Unfortunately for us, we are the least practiced. Maybe Korean people are less practised, I don’t know.  A lot of Indian people kiss, and a lot simply smile, and some shake hands.

The thing is, when you say hello or goodbye with kisses, and you happen to be Not Practiced, ANY NUMBER of AWKWARDNESSES can befall you. Here are some examples.

1. The duck and collide. You go for a hug, they go for a kiss, and you end up smashing them in the nose with your pointy shoulder. It’s not only awkward, it’s a little aggressive, you.

2. The h-h-h-hello. You second guess yourself so many times that you do a little hen dance, trying to decide which cheek to aim for. Then you are embarrassed, so you end up saying, Awwww… in your cute awkward lovey voice. (The Awwww is totally unnecessary, by the way.)

3. The ear explosion. This happens when you aim too far back, and end up making a lip smacking noise at the exact angle perfect for puncture of the ear drum. You know you’ve done this when the person backs away from you with a look of surprised injury. They are wondering why you hurt them like this.

4. The accidental lippist. Perhaps the worst of the bunch, this is what happens when angles are all wrong, again, except that when you go to make your move, you overcorrect and end up catching the corner of the person’s mouth. At this point you back away without meeting their eyes.

5. Then there are all manner of awkward ducks and dodges, beard rubbings and half hugs and the question of two? three? Oh, are we going for another? Okay!

I’ve compiled a few tips that you may find helpful.

1. Air kissing is so superficial. Make contact, at least with your cheeks.

2. Sound helps. You need a nice MWAH.

3. Greeting kisses are not meant to be wet. Keep it dry and quick. You’ll know if you have lips that are too moist if you catch people surreptitiously wiping their cheeks with the back of their hands after you kiss them.

4. I’d say that your best bet is two. Don’t second guess, just go for a smooth swooping motion. Aim midway, definitely not too far back. Be the leader. Your kissing mate will follow your lead. Only go for three if the person you are kissing is French.

If you are really good friends, a little hug at the same time is always sweet. But trying to combine sideways hugs and greeting kisses is the SUREST path to awkwardness. Avoid this at all costs.

Over time, with practice, you may get to a point where you can keep from embarrassing yourself. Too much.

Although Leafy’s way of taking part is just ironic on any number of levels.