never a dull moment.

It is never, ever dull around here.

Some days–most days recently–I would really love just a dull, boring, no-blood day.

Not so, my friends. Or not yet, anyway.

I keep writing posts and then don’t even get them published before life moves forward and surprises us!

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We were sick over Easter weekend and then drug ourselves out of bed and up to Chiang Mai for a few meetings. We got back to Mae Sot on Wednesday to begin installing a water purification system for the neighborhood!

That two-day project turned into five, and we’re just now finishing it up. But that entire project deserves a post to itself.

Amidst this installation, Stephen was chopping wood to make biochar, when the machete went down just a bit to the left. He lost a small portion of his thumb, which we guesstimated was about 4%.

Not a big loss, but a loss none-the-less.

There wasn’t anything to stitch up, so he really just needed a bandage. However, we ended up going to the hospital so that we could get a tetanus shot. But they wouldn’t give us a tetanus shot, insisting that it was a “clean cut.” We argued back that yes, it was a “clean cut” because we had washed it, but it was still cut with a dirty machete. We had no luck. We ended up paying for an over-priced bandage I could have put on at home.

We did manage to track down a clinic that would give us tetanus shots by Monday, by which point we had also learned that both of our tetanus vaccinations were out of date for living in Thailand, where tetanus is still prevalent.

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After over two long days in the sun working on the water purification system, we headed off to birthday dinner with friends on Saturday night. Stephen &  my friend, Kellie, were so sweet to pull together a sweet little outing at a nice restaurant outside of town.

It was a lovely, relaxed dinner out after a long day of work in the sun.

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It would have been really nice if that just rolled into my birthday the next day.

Instead, we hadn’t been home ten minutes when there was a knock at the door. One of the neighbors had a stab wound on his back, and he was bleeding profusely.

I honestly will probably never forget that moment and the thoughts that ran through my mind. I was suddenly very aware of my pretty dress that I didn’t want blood on; the blood everywhere–more blood than I personally had ever seen from one person; telling myself not to pass out; trying to decipher in Karen what had happened; and asking myself, Where do we live?

We learned that he had been drinking and arguing with his wife. The stories differ, but it appears that he was beating her and she ended up stabbing him. We don’t know how it all went down, but only the end result.

They had already taken him to Mae Tao, the Burmese clinic, while we were gone. The Mae Tao staff had told them they couldn’t handle it, but put a basic bandage on it and sent him to the public Thai hospital. The neighbors then decided to return home and wait for us, which left us to find a bloody mess…

…Which we then put in our car.

I tried to put down trash bags, but it wasn’t really successful. {We are thankful for the leather seats, even when they make us stiflingly hot.} We made it to the hospital without him passing out, and they wheeled him back for treatment. Stephen and I sat down in the ER exhausted, and then fell asleep.

We awoke to someone calling “Kelli!”–I guess he told them our names?–and went back to see the situation. He didn’t have any internal damage, but he did have a fever and they wanted to monitor him for a couple days.

So we saw him admitted and then headed home just as it had rolled around to my birthday.

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As we climbed into the car, I got in the back to avoid the blood-covered front seat.  I reached up to shut the door and then jerked my hand out of the way. Unfortunately, all of my hand managed to get out of the way, except for my recently-broken-and-healed ring finger. It got smashed between the door and seat, stuck.

While I screamed, Stephen helped me get the door open and get my finger out.

By the time we were home, I was crying with a throbbing finger, Stephen’s thumb was still throbbing from his earlier injury, and we were both exhausted.

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Then we woke up to my birthday.

Stephen worked so hard to really make it a lovely day. He had bought me a waffle maker, which we used to have waffles late that morning. We spent some time at the swimming pool, and I got to open two birthday packages from America!

Stephen had also reserved a room for us at a local guesthouse, which really turned out to be just the best idea yet. After many conversations about the stabbing situation and a couple trips to the hospital that morning, I was so grateful to be able to tell the neighbors we would be gone for a night but be back tomorrow.

So lovely. It meant that no one came to the door, I didn’t have to clean up blood, I didn’t have to cook, and I didn’t have to feel guilty if we left the aircon on for hours.

We rested, even if just for a night, before we jumped back into the chaos.

Because there is never a dull moment!