New moon dawn

“What are you writing about for the blog?” Mike asked.

“Um,” I said. “I started out by writing about how it’s a full moon because I found that cool photo you took of the full moon over the temple. Then I wrote about how you were doing the grocery shopping on a bicycle. Then I wrote about the dog.”

Mike looked at me blankly.

“That’s totally random,” he said.

“I know,” I said, a bit defensive. “I’m having a hard time getting my head back in blogging territory after the last week of being only in resilience report territory.”

“You should call it Lisa Gets Her Groove Back,” Mike said.

“But I haven’t gotten it back,” I pointed out. “I’m still firmly in the Lisa Is Random zone.”

“Yeah, Mike said. “Maybe you’ll get it back next week.”

Maybe.

In the meantime here are the Lisa Is Random offerings:

It’s a full moon here tonight, so tomorrow morning the monks will get double (or triple?) their regular offerings of sticky rice and other food. Apparently it’s particularly auspicious to offer alms to the monks when the moon is full. Vendors line the streets for a couple of days before-hand selling incense and little cones made out of leaves topped with orange flowers. I think those are for the temple offerings, the food given to the monks is made by women who rise before dawn to prepare it and then venture out to gain merit for their families. If you go out here at dawn you’ll see women (usually) kneeling alongside the road at various points in the town, waiting to make their silent offerings to the monks as they file past.

On a full moon dawns there are so many people making offerings to the monks that they are each followed by a young boy carrying another pot to store their loot – sort of the Buddhist equivalent of an altar boy, I guess.

But all of that is tomorrow, and today Mike is out doing the grocery shopping by bicycle. We are without vehicle this weekend (sometimes we can borrow an organization vehicle and pay mileage, but this weekend they’re all out in the projects). We have now not owned a vehicle of any sort since the first week of June, which bothers me not at all. We will buy a motorcycle in January, but I’m in no hurry. I have a love/hate relationships with motorcycles. They are undoubtedly good fun, but I am also scared of them. Whenever Mike makes fun of me for this I point out that in comparison to being scared of flying, or being hit by lightening, or being eaten by sharks, it is perfectly rational to be scared of having a motorcycle accident. Given Mike’s respect for logical and reason you would think this would stop him making fun of me. No.

By the way, I am a little bit scared of being eaten by sharks, but not much. Really. Except when I am swimming in the ocean I am much more scared of motorcycles than sharks.

So Mike’s ridden off on his bicycle (with a helmet on) and I am puppy sitting.

Zulu has already woken us up before seven this morning. He has ripped a newspaper to shreds, chewed the leg of his toy puppy wide open, refused to eat his breakfast until we warmed it up, and moaned piteously whenever we left the room (and anytime we entered the kitchen). He has stuck his nose in a tiled corner and licked it furiously for ten minutes. He is, as Mike pointed out this morning, “a stinky puppy,” and later today he will be getting a thorough bath with jasmine rice scented puppy shampoo, which he will loathe.

He has also wagged his tail furiously in greeting whenever we reappear from somewhere, rolled over so that we can scratch his belly, climbed into my lap and looked up at me as if he had just entered doggie heaven, and taken himself outside to the toilet. I think we’ll keep him.

That’s it from me for now. Maybe I’ll get my groove back next week, maybe not. But I’ll see you then.

PS, This is what Zulu looks like most of the time…