Valentines 2021

 How many ways was this year's February 14 unique?

1) We remembered to mark it! All too often it has passed us by in the flurry of normal or not so normal life.  All we managed to do was a simple "I love you because..." heart each, on which we each write a few reasons for each other. A small thing, but so easily significant!

2) Having remembered the day, it would have been nice to carry through on the casually offered date - but as there is currently no dining in or hanging out anywhere in public, it would be hard to feel like it was a date!

3) So we celebrated as a family. After all, this last week's schedule has been pretty ragged, and we needed time together. The girls read books in a pile on the couch for the hot part of the afternoon, and then we did something all together.

4) We went to a new beach (making sure not to travel together - only one biker at a time allowed ?! - and to go to a deserted place) and climbed rocks. Dad was a good sport but his soft feet didn't do well with the oyster-mussel-barnacle covered rocks in murky waves, so once we made it to a relatively smooth, high rock, Mom and Dad stayed there and the kids went on around the shore. So we kinda got an alone date anyhow :-) 

5) Though it would have been nice to remain and watch the sunset as we so often do, we headed home before dark as there is an unofficial curfew of 8pm being enforced.

6) We had take out burgers for supper! Dad agreed to stop on the way home and buy food and he brought home burgers! Not as good as YeaYea's burgers by far, but still a delicious treat for us usually vegetarian, Asian food eaters :o)

And so ends January

 And there goes January in the daily rhythms 

Of calling kids late out of bed after late night bedtime chats run long

Of mornings with computers and books, pencils and paper for school

Of scattered "I'm not really hungry" lunch times because we're housebound

Of beautiful views of sea and sky from our balcony

Of afternoons of either eerie peace because Aiden's at his friends' place or... 

Of sword skirmishes romping through the house

Or epic battles of either Lego or whatever else is on hand scattering over the living room

Of newly flowering trees discovered on infrequent evening walks

Of now online Chinese classes that resort to lots of grunt work

Of 7pm or later dinners when people are finally hungry and interested in food

Of puzzlement - a ground floor "neighbour" is randomly dropping off meals for us without stopping to give an explanation or enjoy with us

Of church services gathered around a computer and stray thoughts of the neighbours who must surely hear our vigorous singing echoing out the door and windows and down the halls as we sing along

Of over and beyond art assignment completion - "I have to draw the eyes, but I just can't stop there!"

Of story writing, editing, browsing

Of exploration into videography, cinematography, voice recording, etc. for the next even better song video

And here ends January with some broken rhythms:

Mom not so mobile with a suspected torn ligament so market shopping is put off, morning routines a little turned around

Jasmin down and out with a dragging cold and its accompanying fatigue

Hope and rumors vying for the upper hand - will life continue as is or will the restrictions be eased Feb 4 when the current Movement Control Order is set to end?

Things You Learn Unexpectedly

 The palm trees in the garden of our condo complex are roughly 22ft tall. Aiden and I discovered this fact through today's botany lesson's project (that was all math actually!)

...because cool contrast and color

The Movement Control Order we've been under for two weeks already actually includes a soft curfew of 8pm. We discovered this yesterday coming home from an impromptu beach supper... shortly after 8pm we were waiting for the bus home when some police stopped by and informed us so. While they were conferring with each other what to do, the bus showed up

so we were just ushered on and reminded to stay home!

Sparrows in the kitchen is not a cute, fun thing to delight in. There is a pair of sparrows that have grown bold - after years of taking shortcuts through our laundry area, they now stop by our kitchen hunting crumbs...and leaving unwelcome presents. As it is already a fulltime job to keep the kitchen passably clean for food prep, we don't really want the added need to clear up sparrow poo! 

Tension bars can wildly vary in price. A project in underway to hang a curtain of recycled straws in the doorway between kitchen and laundry area to deter the sparrows so we need a tension bar to fit the doorway. The one found online was so cheap (about $1.50) the shipping cost almost double the bar itself, so to the store we went. Where we could find cheap bars - of all the wrong length. The one we could find of the right length was aluminum and nearly $7!

Straws are not of a uniform length and are annoyingly just under 9 inches. Cutting straws to make the curtain discovered this. Despite sitting in a bag looking pleasantly uniform, when you measure and curt them into inch segments, some get 8 pieces plus a smidgen shorter 9th piece and some get 8 pieces and an unusable too short 9th piece.

Living with artists garners some interesting images and perspectives:

...because what do you see in the embers?

...because dramatic lighting...

...because could be a cool drawing. We didn't see the ball till we looked at the photo after.

Carrying a bike is super awkward. Mom went shopping at Tesco. Came out, loaded up her bike - and discovered 2 very flat tires. She had to basically carry it to the bike store down the road as the tires were so flat that just pushing it along loaded with shopping  would shred the tire between the rims and the road. Of course, the store was closed when she got there! But with Dad over the phone she arranged things with the store for a fix in the morning and bussed home. Her back was not happy with the nearly 1km bike carry walk so Grace met her off the bus and carried the shopping home for her.

Living with Jasmin you can never be sure where a smile will surprise you next. I discovered this happy bunch of eggs this morning.

A slow start to 2021

     No one felt like starting school this week, so we did a soft start: music and Chinese lessons and 1 hour of homeschool a day. Other than that, The girls got in another week of sleeping in, story writing, and reading. We discovered 1 hour doesn't go very far in accomplishing much school work! Aiden raced through his hours of school work before 10 am and took off to spend the day with his friends in sword fighting, Lego, and whatever else took their fancy.

    Mom tried to start her Chinese lessons, but a miscommunication meant her teacher didn't show up so the bike ride there and back became simply the day's exercise. The girls enjoyed teasing Aiden and his friend with hiding their weapons when they leave them lying around. We raggedly attempted to reinstitute daily music and language practices, and restart the household routines of school time with not a whole lot of success.

    Christmas décor got put away (except we forgot the Advent numbers pinned to our John verses on the wall). A patchwork blanket of old shirts got finished, along with another months-long crochet blanket project that was supposed to be a Christmas gift for a friend. The last week of hurried finishing up was quite the marathon. Grace and Jasmin eased mom along with taking turns reading aloud. Being late with the gift was ok, as giving it this last Sunday was the first time we'd met in over a month anyhow.

    Grace and Mom restarted going to the Chinese Bible study group last night. Mom fumbled around with language - rusty from a month long break - and made some very puzzling sentences with a mishmash of Chinese, Khmer, and Thai words!  The sentences made sense if you knew all three languages, but it wasn't much use for communicating to Chinese/English speakers. Grace did better, but felt odd realizing she was no longer considered a kid and invited into the adult circle.

    Mom is once again contemplating where God wants her to invest her time, as she has received a number of new invitations: to join a startup for an afterschool program for ESL kids in the local international schools, to teach an ESL student in exchange for Chinese practice 1-on-1, to take more of a lead role in homeschool mom community building,  and, and, and -! And, of course, a few she can find brewing in her heart on her own...

    We met with our church small group this week again after a month break also. It was good to see everyone again. It might be our only meeting for a while though as we are waiting for a Monday announcement of expected new restrictions in light of the huge jump in covid cases over Christmas time since the last lockdown was lifted at the beginning of December. Rumor has it that a strict complete lockdown is being contemplated... meaning we might not be leaving home much soon.