salve.

This weekend was good. Almost like salve on a burn.

If I was looking from the outside of our lives, here is what I would see:

We came home Thursday night to our kitchen flooding. The roof has been leaking little bits for a couple months, so we told our office manager to pass on to our landlord. It didn’t seem urgent, until this downpour. We spent the evening mopping up the mess with quick-dry towels–not ideal for such a situation–and our much-more-effective sarongs.

The next morning, I left for the hospital around 8am with the old woman receiving treatment for rabies. This was trip three of five. Since she only needed a shot, the hope was that it would take about thirty minutes, as it did last Friday, and I could pick up the volunteers at 8:45. Fail. It took two hours.

I also received a call about thirty minutes into our visit. It was our office manager, and the conversation went like this:

“Kelli, where are you? The landlord is at your house. He says he cannot go in.”

“I’m at the hospital. We didn’t know he was coming, so we left. And locked the door.”

“Can you go home now?”

“Not really…”

…And the roof was fixed later that day.

On Saturday, we learned that our credit card had been hacked. New one on the way.

And then today, I went over to speak with our neighbor lady, Mong Ey. I am trying to arrange to have tea with the Karen-speaking women so that I can practice my Karen. Due to the nature of our lives and theirs, a scheduled tea isn’t really possible. I told her around 8:30am that I would be home this morning if she and the Karen-speaking women wanted to come over to talk.

She asked what hour, and I said any time this morning. She could choose. Then she said “19”, which in Karen could be “10, 9” or “19.” I came back to tell Stephen: They might come at 9am. Or 10am. or 7:00pm. Or they might not come at all.

We decided to stay around the house as much as possible to see how it played out.

And the verdict for today: not come at all. I guess we’ll try again tomorrow.

A group did come over about 8:00pm tonight. A woman had fallen from her bicycle, hurt her leg, and was in a whole lot of pain. Stephen took her to the hospital, and we ate our dinner at about 10:30pm when he returned.

(With this large of a community, taking them to the doctor–even just for emergency situations–could become a full-time job, it seems.)

And somehow, with all the unplanned and plenty of unwanted, this weekend was a salve.

I’m not entirely sure why.