Welcome Home Gifts

Thanks for remembering me, even though I’ve been gone for a while. About the time I recovered from the Nepal Nasties, we had our first visitor from the States, and then Arthur Dent came down with some unidentified illness. Regardless, I’m back in the blogsphere and, if I can remember them all, I have lots of good stories for you. Let’s start with our return from Nepal, shall we??

If you recall, I came home from Nepal dreadfully ill. So ill, in fact, that I didn’t find out until after I recovered just how worried The International Man of Intrigue was about my health. Apparently the part where my face started going numb scared him more than it scared me…but thanks to the modern miracle of antibiotics, that’s all a story for another day. The story for today revolves around our return to the Intrigue Compound.

We got back from Nepal sometime in the wee hours of the morning. I was still feeling ten times worse than awful and the hour van ride from the airport was spent with me concentrating on making it home without making the van driver pull over. Rather than stick around and high-five The International Man of Intrigue or the van driver to celebrate my success, I rushed in the house, intent on making it to my own bed and bathroom. I opened the door to the house and just about fell over. At first, I thought the smell was perhaps from the leaky roof. Maybe the dining room lake had mildewed and spread the smell through the house? Then it hit me. That was the smell of dead things. Oh, Grilled Cheesus, that smell was a dead squirrel. I ordered the Little Explorers to stay directly behind me, took a deep breath, and headed upstairs. To my relief, the smell was less overwhelming up there. When I reached the upstairs old-west-shootout-style balcony, I could see why. There was the body, downstairs, behind the dining room table. It was impossible from upstairs to determine the cause of death. At this point, I did what any self respecting mom with three kids and an intestinal parasite would do: I took the kids to their rooms, shut the doors, and got them ready for bed, counting on the fact that my husband was awesome enough to just take care of the disposal of the body. He was is. He did. He assured me the squirrel’s death was accidental, probably caused by either a fall or being trapped downstairs with no way out. I believed him and went to bed.

The next morning dawned bright and way too early and we realized how wrong we were. A squirrel kept running through the house on the rafters. It was tweeting constantly, and I don’t mean #partyattheintrigues. The high pitched noises woke us up and made us immediately suspicious. Was what we assumed had been a horrible accident actually…murder? Had the squirrel been pushed to his death? I just knew CSI:Colombo was going to show up any minute and arrest us for disposing of the body and disrupting the crime scene. How much trouble were we in for cleaning up all the sticks and rocks and other nasty stuff the squirrels had dropped from the ceiling? I asked The International Man of Intrigue how well he’d hidden the body. He said he’d left it on the curb in a plastic bag for the garbage men to pick up. Since the garbage men secretly hate us, I knew the gig was up.

While the cause of death of Mr. Squirrel was never determined, luckily for us, the punishment for tampering with evidence and all the other crimes we committed is sharing our house with squirrels. Since the squirrels have made it clear by their tweets (#movingintotheintrigues) that they’re not going anywhere, I think our punishment is being carried out.

Poop is Poop

Sorry to leave you for so long, Fellow Adventurers. We just got back last night from a trip to Nepal. I really loved it. I got to celebrate Mothers' Day and my thirty-sixth er...thirtieth er...twenty fifth birthday there. There was just one negative. I got a horrible third world intestinal parasite for my birthday. It's bound to happen eventually, when you live in this part of the world. The fact that I (and the rest of the Intrigue Family) made it four and a half months without it is actually pretty astounding. In honor of that, and because I'm home but not at all on the mend (although the antibiotics should kick in soon) here's a little list of the places we've been and the stomach/intestinal illness names associated with them.

Dhaka, Bangladesh: Dhaka Caca
Delhi, India: Delhi Belly
Pokhara, Nepal: Pokhara Poops
Kathmandu, Nepal: The Kathmandoodoos

I'll be back soon, hopefully feeling like a whole new person. Until then, what are some other place/illness nicknames?

Baby, You Can Drive My Car.

On Wednesday, I went to get my Sri Lankan drivers’ license. Here, the place you get your license is not called the Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s called the Department of Motor Transportation. When we pulled in the gates, I was pretty sure it was going to be different. There was a Buddhist shrine front and center between the buildings. That alone told me this wasn’t going to be a typical DMV (or DMT) experience.

Actually, it turns out, with the exception of the ability to be able to give an offering to Buddha before the big driving test, it was pretty much the same as a Stateside DMV. You walk in, wait in line to get a number to wait in more lines. Once you reach the front of said line, a bored bureaucrat watching the clock and counting the minutes until his or her next break does a little something and sends you to the next line. Luckily for us, since we’re here in an official capacity, we have a little help with the process. Still, in the end, it comes down to paying your fee and sitting in a cubicle with a public servant who has perfected her disaffected sigh. She takes your fingerprint with a scanner and takes the most unflattering picture of you possible, using a webcam, and you’re done. Just like back home.

So, now I’m legal to drive…well, mostly. That is another small difference. Here, you don’t get your license on the spot. I would have had it Friday, but it’s another holiday around here, as usual, so perhaps Tuesday.

Being mostly legal, I thought I should finally try my hand at driving this weekend. I drove to Church this morning. This was my first time ever driving in a vehicle with right side steering and driving on the left side of the road. Did I mention the Terios is also a manual transmission? I only almost got run over by one bus (luckily, not a red bus), turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal four or five times, burst into tears once, and made us five minutes late for Church. I’m going to go ahead and call that a success, mmmmmkay?

Another Animal in the House.

So, today I was just sitting at my computer when I heard a strange noise behind me. I stopped. I heard it again. I turned around and saw something completely unexpected. This is one animal I was not prepared to have crawling around on my floor:





I'm not one to post tons of pictures of my kids and be all like, "OMG, just look at how cuuuute they are, y'all!" This, however, made me laugh out loud. It was totally out of the blue and Amelia Earhart played it completely in character. Luckily, she knows her mommy and waited very patiently to have her picture taken. Good tiger. I think we'll keep her.

Bangladesh passport stamp? Check.

We just got back from a five day trip to Dhaka. For those of you who aren’t fluent in geography or political history, Dhaka is the capitol of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is almost completely surrounded by India, other than touching a tiny piece of Myanmar (Burma), and, until 1971, was part of Pakistan. It’s a third world country.

There were several high points of our trip. The first was the airport in Delhi, India. The restrooms were clean. In a third world country developing nation, most restrooms are on the shady side of filling station clean, so this was a very pleasant change. There was also a myriad of fast food and other things to eat and buy. We got McDonald's! The International Man of Intrigue had a Chicken Maharaja Mac and I had a spicy veggie burger that was delicious. The Little Explorers were content with chicken nuggets, fries, and a Sprite to share. All that, and still time to catch our flight to Dhaka.

Oh, there was one more bright spot. All the way home from the Colombo airport, I was terrified of unlocking the door and finding who-knows-what going on in our house. I pictured the squirrels building a lakeside resort in the flooded dining room. Nope! The house was dry and squirrel free. I guess they’re good at cleaning up their post-party messes, at least.

The rest of the trip? With the exception of lots of time with our friends, the Madlingers, and bringing back a cooler full of cheddar and jack cheese from the American Embassy’s commissary in Dhaka, it was no fun. Really, it was all that we expected it to be. It definitely lived up to its hype as a third world country. I’m going to need a few days to find the funny in it all, besides the part where Dhaka rhymes with caca. As you know, Fellow Adventurers, a poop joke is always funny.

Squirrel Update

Happy Earth Day. We celebrated yesterday and today by helping to release squirrels into the wild.

That’s right, apparently sealing up the attic only resulted in the squirrels coming into the main part of the house. The first was yesterday during lunch. I walked around the corner to get Arthur Dent some water and saw a squirrel in the kitchen. I squealed, it squealed. I ran, it ran. Unfortunately for it, and us, it ran through the family dining room where we were eating and there was more squealing. The little guy ran into the sitting room and disappeared. We opened the front door and tried to find it to chase it out, but it was nowhere to be found. A half hour or so later, The International Man of Intrigue found it cowering in a window gate and helped it out the front door, like a proper visitor.

Tonight during dinner, we heard a high pitched whistling sound coming from the formal dining room. It was at this point my mind flashed to the gopher in Caddy Shack. Were the squirrels out to get us? Upon further investigation, we discovered a squirrel running around the skylight area and back and forth across the rafters. We tried to encourage it to leave, but the high whistling sound continued. It was obvious the little guy was in distress for some reason. We assumed it couldn’t figure out how to leave, until The International Man of Intrigue went to the other side of the dining room for a better look and discovered another squirrel hovered in the doorway. It had either fallen or climbed down and couldn’t get back up. The International Man of Intrigue walked softly closer, speaking in a calm voice, assuring the little squirrel he was only going to open the door so it could go back outside. Too bad she wasn’t buying it. She darted across the dining room as he opened the door. Luckily, she seemed young and confused and didn’t hide, so she was quickly herded back outside.

It’s at this point I have to wonder where this whole squirrel hotel business is heading. Do they expect continental breakfast? It’s possible they only come in because Arthur Dent’s angry scream sounds exactly like a squirrel distress call. If that’s the case, I need him to figure out how to screech, “I’m fine, please go back outside.” If they’re here because they’re staying, I’d like them to pay some rent, or at least move back into the attic.

Interestingly enough, as I was researching these little guys, it turns out that some Sri Lankans keep them as pets. I think I’ll pass on that one, if I’m given a choice in the matter. Happy Earth Day to you, Fellow Adventurers. Go forth and make friends with a squirrel today.

By the way, "squirrel" is one of those words, that, after you type it a dozen or so times, suddenly looks really weird and wrong, like when you're a kid and you say a word over and over until it sounds like nonsense. I'd almost convinced myself I'd misspelled it, but it's just a weird looking word.

Our House is a Zoo

I don’t think it’s come up in conversation with you, but I am not what you'd call an “outdoorsy type.” I would rather hike through the pages of a good book than along a trail. I grew up in the country, practically the middle of nowhere, so you’d think I’d have an appreciation for the great outdoors. Nope. When my mom would force me outside, I would often take a book and sit and read on the front step, when I wasn’t convincing my little brother that it would be epic if he’d take his Big Wheel and do a Dukes of Hazard style jump off of our 6 foot tall front porch railing. Since that story has lasted well over 25 years, I’d say it was epic, indeed!

All of this hasn’t changed much as I’ve gotten older. I do have an appreciation for nature, but hiking and bird watching aren’t my thing. That being said, we have gotten to live in some amazing places when it comes to nature. Our last home was in Monterey Bay, California. We saw whales, otters, sea stars, and more in the wild. Sri Lanka is really determined to one up that. We have seen monkeys and monitor lizards in the wild. My kids have held newly hatched sea turtles. Gertrude Bell even got to take one fresh from the sand to the tank. The International Man of Intrigue and I saw a giant saltwater crocodile swimming down a river once when we were driving. It still makes my stomach turn, as I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t this guy, although I do think the one we saw was bigger.

So now we’ve established that Sri Lanka is an amazingly biodiverse ecosystem. The really interesting part is that our house is as well. Just before I sat down to type this, I was rocking Arthur Dent to sleep before his nap and I could see a parrot out in the tree. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the really interesting biodiverse ecosystem lives inside of our house. There are all kinds of bugs, including mosquitos, ants, and, most disgustingly, roaches. Once, I ran downstairs to let our gardener in to sweep the balcony. When I ran back up the stairs to our family room about forty seconds later, Arthur Dent had a tropical roach clutched in his little hand. I screamed and grabbed him, but I couldn’t bring myself to pry his fingers open and touch the roach. I shook his arm at the elbow and shrieked . The gardener looked at me like he wasn’t sure whether to offer assistance or go sweep. He finally raised one eyebrow and headed out to the patio. I’m sure he was thinking, “There’s a whole lot of crazy in this house.” Eventually, after a grueling 10 seconds or so, Arthur Dent dropped the roach and I took him to the bathroom to scrub his little hand until it was pink and germ free.

We also have little geckos that live all over the house. Arthur Dent delights in them and points and babbles every time he spots one. The rest of us enjoy them as well. I say, as long as they promise to enjoy the all-you-can-eat mosquito buffet our house offers, they are more than welcome to stay.

As I type this, the landlady’s henchmen are on the roof and the wraparound balcony trying to seal up the holes that are allowing tropical squirrels (which look a little like chipmunks) to nest in our attic and family room. Yes, adorable little tropical squirrels have taken up residence in our house. One day one was running industriously back and forth from a little hole high up the wall in our family room, along the rafters, through our bedroom and into our bathroom and presumably up to the attic. Gertrude Bell exclaimed, “Get me a ladder and I will climb up and catch it!” I sighed and hoped the thing wasn’t about to have babies in the wall. Last night after The International Man of Intrigue and I went to bed, we could hear the squirrel chirping in the attic. My big fear today is that the landlady’s henchmen have sealed up the openings to the outside without driving out our little friend. The last thing I need is a dead squirrel in the attic. I much prefer my attic squirrels alive, thank you.

The final animal I want to tell you about doesn’t live in the house. She’s my favorite, though. She’s some sort of tropical bird whose loud call is pretty distinctive. She must be semi-nocturnal, as I sometimes hear her during the night when I’m awake with Arthur Dent, and she used to wake me up every morning at the crack of dawn, rooster style. Since she has such a distinctive call, and try as I might, I’ve never seen her, I named her Kevin. The International Man of Intrigue finds my naming of Kevin alternately amusing and crazy. (Luckily, he also finds my particular brand of amusing and crazy to be irresistible.) I’m thinking of trying to catch a glimpse of Kevin by baiting her with chocolate. I’ll keep you posted.