Category — Grace In Small Things

1. Cat and Becca making crépes in my kitchen for a goodbye brunch for Jocelyn.  Strawberries, mango, and cream on top.

2. Fresh basil in eggs.  (Hey, this is turning out to be about food again!)

3. Leafy saying, “I’m a CUDDO monster!” (cuddle monster) in his best monster voice.

4. Singing together.

5. That moment when the fans come back on after being off all day because of a planned power cut.  It’s a hallelujah moment, a blissed out sigh as we turn our faces up and the moving air helps that sweat on our upper lips to dry off.

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This will not be the only way I write forever and ever, but right now it is helping me to post daily, something I haven’t done for quite some time.  Maybe that’s number six.

1. Since there were power cuts last night that had the kids up and crying at three AM, (they hate the dark) they slept in until 8:30 this morning, giving me tons of time to write before they woke up. Beautiful.

(Sidenote: I don’t know if you grow tired of hearing about my book and my writing life, but I will blather on. It occurred to me today that it is taking me precisely the right amount of time to write this book. I have moved past loving the book for the sake of being a writer or hopefully being published and now love it for the story’s sake. I feel that I have to finish it because I love the story and the characters, and don’t want to give up on them before their story is told. These fictional people in this fictional world where I spend a lot of my time. I wasn’t here two years ago. I was still thinking too much about what a writing life should look like. I am now a bit more practical, and so I commence writing in the morning when it is just me and the ants, and there is not a candle to be seen, nor a flowing pen, nor a cabin in the mountains. Just dishes from last night.)

2. Mendhi on the kids. On their hands and whiskers on their faces. A beautiful woman who came over for lunch yesterday took the time to doodle on everyone with henna.

3. I’ve been taking Saturday mornings to go off by myself, sometimes for a ride on the scooter, or sometimes for a walk on the beach. I need it after a week of school and community life and work. Today Becca and I went for a swim together and then we lay on the beach for awhile, which I’ve never actually done here. It was like heaven.

4. Jocelyn, a girl from Canada who has been with us for three weeks and now is going back to Canada, sang a duet with Chinua at a concert tonight. There were people sitting on pillows and lanterns everywhere, dim light that lit the faces up all around. I love Jocelyn’s voice and her music and the two of them sounded beautiful together. (By far the most talented people there… cough cough, did I say that out loud?) I wish she wasn’t going home. But she’s in a band called Treelight Room, and they’re doing this mildly important thing called “touring” when she gets home, so. There’s that.

5. And then, at the point in the concert when Leafy was so tired that he was dropping, and Solo was wide awake in the sling for a few too many hours, banging his little head against my chest, I called my landlord, who is a taxi driver, to see if he could get me home. I walked to the concert, but didn’t feel like I could make it back with the sleepies. He came, and drove us home, and then he didn’t charge me. Grace!

Grace in Small Things:

1. People in the village have this thing about brushing their teeth outside, so that in the morning you can look any which way and see someone brushing his or her teeth.  Today I was out on the scooter on the way to the veggie stall and I saw a man on his scooter with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, which was taking it to a whole other level.  It made me smile.

2. Speaking of the veggie stall, I was buying veggies there today, since it was my day for cooking lunch. (We eat lunch together every day and alternate with the cooking.  People often join us, so there is always a different crowd around the circle.)

As I was about to leave, with my potatoes and tomatoes and spinach and onions and chillies, one of the guys who works there said, “Wait.  Oranges?”  Because I hadn’t got my daily dose of mandarins to supply my children with for their orange habit.  And I love to buy food from people who remember my children’s orange habit.

3. One of my guests brought me some strudel last night, and we didn’t end up eating it together, so I had some for breakfast.  Strudel for breakfast is really yummy.

Except that the ants had got to it, and there were dozens of them, so I had ant strudel.  I put it in the fridge to stun them first, and then got as many as I could off, then just closed my eyes to eat the rest.

And now I am explaining how I stun ants by refrigerating them and then eat them.  Just when you thought it couldn’t get any stranger here.

The point is strudel for breakfast.  Yum.

4. My neighbor told me that I can use the curry leaves from her plant anytime that I need them.  Fresh curry leaves from just over the wall.

5. Hummous for dinner that wasn’t quite creamy enough, but still delicious.

1. Pesto with cashews is really really good. (There are no pine nuts that I know of in India, and if they were, they’d probably be too expensive.)

2. Our friends who came over for dinner showed us pictures of where they live on the Isle of Mull in Scotland.  We have one more place on our map of Must Visit.

3. Renee and the Canadian girls (Becca, Cat, and Jocelyn) took the kids to their house for a few hours of fun this afternoon.  They played games (Leafy invented a version of Duck Duck Goose called Cake Cake GHOST!) and ate yummy stuff.  I stayed home and…

4. Worked on my book, which I actually fell in love with all over again.  I think I love it.  I love the characters.  (I’m not saying you will love it, but I do.)

5. Now that we have government water, the laundry smells nice again!  (The water in the well had all sorts of stink.)

I think that I have decided to join Schmutzie’s Grace in Small Things challenge.

I say I think because I am not so great at following through with thingy-ma-jigs that fall in sequence. But any number of days that I notice five positive things and write them down is better than no days, right?

And it might just jog me out of this blog apathy that is not really apathy, but a desire to say so many things and the fear that I won’t be able to say them. (Oh no, there I go with the fear again.)

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So here goes: (The rules are: list five positive things every day. Simple, eh?)

1. I was having a stern talk with Kid A this morning about the need to be kind to his little brother, the Leafy Boy, and to think about his brother rather than just doing whatever he wants and ending up hurting him. All the while Leafy was piping in with, “Hugging is kind, right Mama? Kissing is kind, right?”

2. Tonight after I got the baby to sleep, my Superstar Husband put the kids to bed so that I could head back out on the scooter to join the girls at their favorite coffee shop. (The only coffee shop.)

3. While we were there, we were discussing the differences in age between siblings in my family, and I said that my younger sister and brother are exactly two years apart. My sister, the ever zesty Becca, shot me a look and said, “Two years and one day,” and then mouthed threateningly and absurdly, Not EXACTLY two years!

I collapsed in giggles, something I haven’t done in a while.

4. After our community lunch today a few of us sat and created some things together. I worked on a drawing and then wrote a letter to someone who is leaving tomorrow. The kids painted on paper, the floor, and themselves, Renee mixed colours and kept exclaiming, “I LOVE painting. I LOVE painting!” And we all just played and listened to music for a couple of hours. It was nice.

5. I didn’t make it down to the beach in time to dance, but I did watch the dancers with the late afternoon sun and the water behind them. The kids drew in the sand with sticks. I met some new people. I invited some people over for dinner tomorrow. I will make pesto and attempt to use cashews. We’ll see how it goes.