Something is wrong with me lately. Pretty much everything is getting on my nerves. Yet at the same time, I am thinking in my head, "I am such a bad person for having these annoyed thoughts right now."
Pretty neurotic, eh?
I did make an interesting discovery. I'm not a beer drinker, but I found that one can produce a loaf of bread using only three ingredients:
1 can of room temperature beer
2 tablespoons of sugar
3 cups self rising flour
You just combine the three and then put it in a greased loaf pan to bake for 1 hour at 350 F.
It came out pretty good. I felt kind of secretly guilty because I made it for a religious type gathering and there were some nuns present who I saw partaking. I didn't tell anyone about my secret ingredient.
And if you don't have self-rising flour you can just use regular flour and add 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1 1/2 tsp of salt. I had to do that myself.
Nick and I are putting the romance back in our marriage, so last night we watched half of the movie "The Killing Fields." Pretty romantic, huh? Actually it got me feeling even more melancholy because we have been to Cambodia and also have friends who work there. I could just imagine something like that happening here in Laos. We only watched half of it, but the scene that got me was when Phnom Phen was falling to the Khmer Rouge and all of the Americans were evacuating. They could arrange to evacuate some of their Cambodian friends as well. I was thinking "Who would I try to evacuate, out of all of my friends here?"
We have other drama of our own here in the neighborhood. Our next door neighbor has a "mia noi" also known as a second wife. It kind of seems like that is really just the Lao way to explain a mistress. This mistress is 20 years old. The husband's oldest daughter is 18 if that gives you any idea how creepy it is. Anyway, a couple of nights ago the real wife and the cheater husband got in a big fight over it complete with breaking dishes and screaming at 4 a.m. I heard their children crying. Neither of their cars has left the house in the 2 days since. I don't know what to think. What will happen next?
Oopps...my own family duties are calling me. I have a sleepy baby and a newly repaired Vespa to tend to. Maybe even simultaneously.
Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006 at 5:35 PM
