I’m tired this morning. The alarm went off at 4:45 am. Too early. We have guests, Peter and Isabel, here and they were heading out on a delivery trip with our workers today. The truck pulls out of the driveway at 5:30 am, so everyone needed to be fed and watered before leaving. I have to admit, I was impressed with my hosting savviness. I got everything ready last night, right down to setting the table. I’ve never done that before and I have to admit, it was worth the extra couple minutes work last night to be able to work on auto pilot this morning. That is, until the power blipped off when I turned the coffee maker on. Our batteries are on their last legs, though they’ve been doing a decent job of limping through, so we had to start the generator way early, but it all worked out.
Peter and Isabel are from Canada and are here to get a first hand feel of what we’re doing. They’ve got some big fundraising efforts in the works and wanted to be able to speak first hand about us. Last night as we were talking about BC and Alberta and all things in between I let the sink overflow. A lot. And we were sitting 20 feet away from it. Looking right at it actually. The thing is, the old tap made more noise when it ran. This new one makes almost no noise, so I forget about it. We had a big rain last night so after dinner I was making a pot of hot chocolate, while I was at the same time trying to get Olivia in the tub. And apparently starting to do the dishes. Chris was visiting. I blame him. I was trying to do too many things at one time and several things all gave. The hot chocolate boiled over. The sink eventually overflowed. Olivia didn’t drown. I guess that was the upside. It all sounds terrible, but I laughed.
Yesterday Chris learned a very valuable lesson. He learned that there are reasons why people wear gloves when touching razor wire. He was in the yard and went to move a roll of the stuff he had bought just the day before. In his annoyance with it being put in exactly the wrong place he just threw it to it’s new home. In the process he sliced his finger open. For the record, he makes a lousy patient. Whatever instructions I told him, he did the opposite. When you have a bleeding gash it’s always good to be calm and slow your heart rate down so you don’t pump blood like crazy. Chris? No, he had to walk around. It’s also good to elevate the wound above your heart. Chris? He kept holding it out and down. Apparently he didn’t want to get blood on his clothes. He succeeded. We managed to get him bandaged up enough to stop the bleeding and so he could get himself to Montrouis so Elsie could sew him up. Good news is they didn’t have to amputate. Just 5 stitches. Goon.
Olivia bit me on the leg this morning. In her defense it wasn’t intentional. She was hiding from Daddy and as Daddy closed in on her the excitement was just too much to bear and chomp! Yesterday afternoon she was in such a good/crazy mood. She was so happy. It was a nice break from being stuck to us like glue.
Have I mentioned that I love living in the new place? I keep making a mental list of all the things I love…
- I love having space in the kitchen where we can all be in the same room, if we want to be, and not getting in each others way.
- I love that the kitchen and living room are open to each other. We used to have to yell in the old place. Very little yelling going on, and much less annoyance because of it.
- Everything is so bright. Love that.
- I love having a bedroom door. I can actually take a nap now. And sleep, rather than pretending to sleep. And Chris can be up in the night and I don’t have to be. It’s so great.
- I love being up a level and being a spectator on the world rather than the main attraction. It’s nice because people don’t by nature look up here. We can see the whole property and keep an eye on things in a very unobtrusive way. I also like that the view is so different. Last night in the rain I could see how it affected the neighborhood in a way that I haven’t before. I feel like our world has just gotten bigger because we can see more.
- I love having a clean kitchen. I mean, I want to do the dishes after meals now. The other one was just so little and cut off that I think I tried to spend the least amount of time in there as possible. Now I like looking over and seeing things tidy. It’s like I’ve come into my own again.
- I love having places to put things. Places that make sense. And we have room to grow.
Okay, I think that’s enough randomness for one post. Sorry about the lack of pictures recently, I just haven’t taken much.
~Leslie
Rollings in Haiti 