5 Things Day Seven: Snake Headaches and Pirates
1. This morning I woke up with an iron snake headache. There was an iron snake curled all the way around my brain and it was squeezing me up. Normally I don’t like to even acknowledge headaches, I don’t like anything that stops me for any length of time. But this was something I couldn’t see through, like a too small grey sweater that you can’t get over your head. I went back to bed.
2. I proceeded to sleep all morning, pausing my sleeping to drag myself back to the surface of the day and nurse my baby wallaby (he likes to kick and punch, lately, while nursing. I hold his little hands and coach him in gentleness, but he smiles and waves his wallaby paws around) and then be dragged back to sleep. At lunchtime, Chinua brought me this.
He loves to make food beautiful (especially when it's for me) and I find that very romantic, but also very inspiring. (I tend to be more of a "throw it on a plate" girl myself.)
3. I’m feeling marginally better this evening, which is good because I’m trying to keep a rhythm going, don’t you know, headache, you usurper? I blame today’s sickness for yesterday’s fits of fear and lack of belief in myself. It could be today’s sickness or it could be the ant bites. I stepped in yet ANOTHER red ant nest the other day, trying to hang laundry behind the kitchen building. They were the type that climb on your legs and then somehow all bite at once. Not that my legs were ever all that beautiful, but lately they’re all covered in bites and it’s painfully evident on their pale white moon-brightness. Also, mosquitoes love me best of all. I don’t even have to spray Isaac with bug repellent, I only have to stay close to him. I am the perfect bug repellent— where I am, mosquitoes want no one else. It’s a reason you want to have me at your party, even if I’m not the best at small talk.
4. I think there are pirates that live in this neighborhood, because sometimes I’m scootering down the street and I swear I see pirates sitting at tables and talking to each other. Or maybe they are only my idea of pirates and I shouldn't judge people and say, “You look like a pirate” anymore, but if you have a peg leg and your nose is smushed all to one side, I might think you’re a pirate. Except I don’t know if this guy had a peg leg because his legs were under the table, but his arms made him look like the kind of guy who has a peg leg.
And there is at least ONE pirate in the neighborhood, and his name is Captain Jack Sparrow, and every night he sets up a little stand at the end of my street and sometimes even poses for pictures. One day when I was scootering by he winked at me. (Have I told you that before? It was an exciting day.) Perhaps I’ll see if he’ll take a picture with me, one of these days.
5. Speaking of peg legs, there was a rat with a peg leg in my ceiling the other night and it was keeping me awake at the 3:00 hour, which enraged me. Tap tap tap echoed the rat on the teak ceiling. Our house is made of the same material that drums are made of. We live in a large drum. We caught one of the rats in our live trap and Leafy got incredibly worried about setting it free in the jungle. “That’s basically sending it out to get killed,” he said, and I had to assert that there is only so far that our charity goes- we can’t set him free in a house rat retirement community or something. The kids fetched him food and water while we waited for Chinua to get up and take him out to the jungle, because that’s how it goes when we catch pests in the Ford home. We also don’t kill flies or spiders. We kill ants and mosquitoes, and sometimes Leafy and Kenya even get upset about that. But later Leafy cheered up and said that it would be more like the rat was Bear Grylls.