Oops.

We have a big, blue water reserve in our back yard that, well, reserves water for our washer, sink, shower, toilet, etc.  The city water usually comes in each evening, and we can let it fill up.  We don’t typically go through the whole reserve in a day, though, so we simply check on it and “open” the valve to let it fill up if needed. We try not to let it get to full, because it will run over the top and cost us money in our water bill.

Before we went to Chiang Mai on Wednesday, we [wisely] turned the water off to save money & water.

But then [not so wisely] forgot to turn it back on.

And now it’s empty. I was taking my afternoon shower after a long day in the heat–in our house, where I sweat while I cooked, cleaned, studied Karen, and simply sat; all sweating–when the water started sputtering and splattering.

Like I said, oops.

Unfortunately, I had already started an elaborate dinner for our friends coming over.  Stephen & I had both been cooking all day to make: hummus (after cooking chickpeas & mashing them with mortar & pestle), babaganoush (after making tahini from scratch, plus mashing it all, again, with mortar & pestle), naan, Greek rice, falafel (chickpeas cooked first, & mashed…), and brownies for dessert.

I really loved the cooking, and Stephen was a wonderful help with the mortar & pestle mashing. But this is quite an elaborate meal to then have no water to wash dishes with. Our kitchen now looks like this:

Oops.

As of 9:10pm, the water hasn’t come on yet, either.

Don’t worry: we’ll survive. We have plenty of drinking water. We just may not be taking showers in the hottest month of the year, and we may start using Germ-X more than we’d like. We’re just hoping the water comes on before too long!

This is just a collection of things I’ve been meaning to get out and never got around to until now.

We decided to go out this Saturday to begin our garden. We thought we should start by picking up trash, which turned out to be plentiful, and took about an hour.  This includes the three times we had to stop and pick a few dozen thorns out of our feet and ankles from this lovely, harmless looking plant that is stalking our yard. Stephen dug up three of the thorny things with a broken hoe (part of the trash we discovered).

We were also trying to determine how we’d fence around our garden to keep out the mangy street dogs out.  Part of the trash pile we found included a stash of broken bricks (assumably those that didn’t make the cut for our house).  We decided that would be an easy and free way to fence around our compost at least, again to keep the mangy dogs out.

It seemed like such a good idea.

By the end, we determined a few things:

There weren’t as many bricks as we thought, thus leaving the wall about a foot or two lower than we’d pictured.

We also thought more of them were more whole than it turned out.

I’m more of an artist than an engineer, but I’m not much of either.

We’re just hoping it holds up…for a little while.  It was a nice day to be out in the sun, despite the sweltering heat. And we decided since we were inside of our yard with the wall & closed gate, it’d be okay for me to wear a tank top & shorts (I know, scandalous!).  Well, in the end we both ended up burnt to a crisp. And we saw someone from a second story staring at us, so I’ll be wearing capris and a tshirt next time…

And it is officially hot season.  So begins the month everyone has warned us about: “You just want to die. And then it rains.”

We also had the joy this weekend of putting together this amazing gift from the Helmicks–

They sent us a package last week (I know, two in one week?!) full of many different treasures, including this photo puzzle. It was my favorite! I’ve been telling everyone at work about it, and they all thought it was a wonderful idea, too.  We loved putting it together and seeing the pieces, thinking, “That’s my mouth!” and “That’s Keri’s eye!”

And we’re back in the swing of things this week, studying our Karen and organizing teams. We’re also headed back to Chiang Mai again on Wednesday–we found out we have to have our marriage license “approved” with a signed affidavit from the US Consulate. We got our work permit sorted out, but now we have to change our visas to fit with our work permit (we don’t really understand, but the lady in the office in charge of our visas tells us this…).  Anyway, we’re headed up Wednesday, have an appointment Thursday morning, and we’re headed back. Kind of a hassle to mess with the bus, and I can’t imagine the US Consulate being fun or cheap. Oh, well.

We also have Friday off of work for a holiday, and all of next week off for Songkran. It’s the annual water festival–it’s actually a Buddhist holiday, but really it just means that everything closes down for the week so that everyone can participate in a country-wide (and really Southeast Asia-wide) water fight.  We’re not sure yet if we’ll be in town, but we’ll keep you posted on the fun.

Unrelated–has anyone heard of Rebecca Black? Is she cool now? I saw something about her on Facebook and we looked up her “Friday” music video. It was awful. I thought she sounded like a nasally bubble machine.

…and that’s a wrap.

We’ve been adding a few touches to our house in the last few weeks in an attempt to make it more of a home.

And I think it’s working. We’re much more convinced.

As you can see, we’ve added our couch! We decided to go for it, and we’re already so thankful we did. About a week after we ordered it, we realized that other than our bed, there is no place for to sit near each other.

We also added photo collages on three walls. It allows us to have tons of photos of family, friends, and supporters, and provided a cheap way to decorate! Then the wall behind Stephen has two 11×14 photos of our families. The blank wall across from Stephen (in the top photo) will ideally have an embroidery piece I have plans to work on sometime soon…

We had the cushions on our chairs recovered by Pi Pranee, who oversees sewing at the Partners office.  We picked out material–

–the same fabric in three colors. (I’d say they coordinate; others might disagree.)  She made us covers for seven large, flat cushions: two red and two purple to make our four chairs comfortable, and then three green ones for additional floor seating. We also have some smaller pillows on the way to add some color to the couch. With the cream wall, cream tile, and cream couch…we needed to add a little color.

And then we wanted to use the fabric in other ways, so we covered buttons and used those on our photo collages, like this:

And thus, we continue to chase the illusion of home 🙂

We got to Skype with our lovely Karen friends in Oklahoma today!  It was a wonderful way to start the morning, particularly since we hadn’t seen their faces in months.  They are lovely, as always, and made us smile. We spoke a little Karen to them and did a lot of laughing. I miss them like crazy, but it was wonderful.

A couple things to celebrate today:

A package!  We got a package from the Spurlocks in the mail today, filled with my favorite puzzle (of Cinderella’s castle), a few packs of Rook (Stephen’s favorite game), TWO boxes of Thin Mints (!), Ziploc bags, and an Arkansas magnet for our fridge!

Also, please note my sweater and jeans–in March!  It was very chilly today, and we enjoyed it.  Around lunch time we were joking about not having a fireplace and maybe I’d have to bake something so we could curl up by the oven. Granted, we’re kind of turning into pansies here, and it was probably around 70 degrees with a breezy wind. But considering its typically well above 100 every day in April, we’re loving this.

And last, we found a new market today!  It’s really just an extension of the market we usually buy our veggies in, but it’s far enough back that it’s much cheaper. Look what we found:

That’s one pumpkin, one gourd, three ears of corn, six small tomatoes, one head of cabbage, and a whole lot of green beans. And can you guess how much all this was?  59 baht, or just $1.94!  That’s about half price of the other market, and I loved it.

Other than these small joys, it’s been a rough day and very rough start to the week. We’d love your prayers this week 🙂