Dominic wakes up from his morning nap at 8 AM (so you can imagine how early he was up the first time). On the way into his room I almost step in dog puke – Zulu’s clearly been begging food from the neighbors again. Dominic’s clothes are wet when I pick him up, despite the fact that his diaper was changed less than two hours earlier. These cloth diapers appear to be leaking more than I had thought they would, perhaps because we have no running hot water to wash them in as per the manufacturing instructions.
Dominic is grumpy and there’s at least an hour to go before I wanted to feed him next, so I put him in the stroller and walk fifteen minutes down to the tiny grocery store that I’m hoping will have the ingredients I want. No. No cream cheese, or hoisin sauce, or fennel. I think about buying one of the two imported tubs of vanilla icing on display (I’ve been flirting with the idea of trying to make a chocolate cake in the toaster oven) but I don’t. Nine dollars is a bit of a stretch for icing, even if it did wing its way here from the U.S.
Dominic starts to fuss. I can’t fit the stroller into the small store, so I pick him up and try to juggle baby, basket, and picking up necessities. That doesn’t go well and I cut the expedition short. As I’m trying to hold Dominic and pay, my phone rings. It’s Mike. He says there’s no electricity at the office all day and he’ll be working from home if there’s electricity there – is there electricity there? I say I don’t know.
But.
It’s cloudy and cool as I walk home and Dominic falls asleep in the stroller as motorcycles zoom past us. Back at the house there is electricity. My bed has been made and my laundry done by a dear woman who shows up five days a week to do these thing for us. When I arrive she is busy squeezing four kilos of oranges that Mike bought off the back of a truck last night for $1.25.
Mike made fun of me for thinking that cream cheese, hoisin sauce, and dried fennel would be available in our town but I would like it noted that I was being an optimist. Have you written a life unmasked-esque post lately? Leave the link below.
8 comments
Clearly, Dominic adores you, Lisa. Yes, I do understand this is both the best and the worst of news.
Thanks for reporting.
Oh, he may have just been checking out where his big mammals were. He gets a bit edgy if we stay out of sight for too long in the night market, which is fair enough, the night market can overwhelm ME with all that colour.
Love this photo – this is a keeper for reminding Dominic of where he spent his early days
The night market makes such a good backdrop. And as a plus, it’s Asia’s chillest night market. So little hassling!!
i love these life-unmasked posts. all the little, raw, seemingly unimportant details (ie. no running water, or $9 for icing) really help paint the picture of your life. i’m sitting here wondering what i would share about my “average normal” morning that would actually be of any interest to my readers. or to me! 🙂
Oh I must jump in here and say we do have running water, just not running hot water – downstairs, at least. In the shower upstairs we have a wall mounted electric heater so we’re not hot-waterless for the showers (usually, anyway). Oh, and I see you picked dating life as the life unmasked topic of the week. GOod one, I always love other people’s dating stories 🙂
As for the cloth diapers (or nappies, as we call them in New Zealand!), I’ve used them for all 4 of my kids, but only during the day. And I was astounded at how much wetter my first son got compared to my daughter – think it’s got something to do with different anatomy. It took a lot of searching before I found something that he couldn’t soak through. Such a relief when I didn’t have to change him from the skin out every few hours! And as for washing nappies in hot water, I’ve never done that either – cold water works fine, we never have tummy upsets or problems with nappy rash, so I’m assuming that drying them outside in the sun kills all the bugs just as well.
Thanks for that. I hadn’t thought about the bugs issue, I thought there was something in the hot water that “Washed” them better, but if it is a bugs issue I think you’re right – sunshine would work. We’ve only had one nappy rash episode so it’s not a major problem so far either.
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