settling of scores.

I must begin with an apology for the lack of posting recently. Woodstock campus was thrown amuck last week when 13 computers blew out and off the network all due to a faulty 'airport' wireless connection somewhere on campus. Of course, that wireless port was ours and considering our lack of technology skills, it was an accident (at least on my half of things). As a result, Midlands Duplex has been unplugged for the past week and it was quite nice to drop out of the system for a while.
As of today we are back in action.

Following are the events of last Sunday.
After feeding the coolie a banana and unloading the food from the absurdly large metal crate he had just carried to my house on his back; distributing majority of the weight over the small span of his forehead, he downs three glasses of panne (water) and is out the door.
Thing is, he must not have closed the door completely. Perhaps if he had, or if he had just been ten minutes later, the day would have ended up much differently and maybe, just maybe, my heart would go back to normal.
As I am in the kitchen putting the museli and oatmeal digestive into the cupboards, the ginger and sweet potatoes on the rack, and the garbanzo beans in the fridge, I hear Nan rummaging around with a bag in the living room..

me: "what should we have for dinner?"
-no response
"are we almost out of tp, I think I forgot to order some"
-no response
"Nan, is there any room outside on the drying rack?"
-no response
"what the hell, why are you ignoring me?"
-no response

At this point, I am sure I must have done something horribly wrong and was receiving the silent treatment as punishment. Venturing out of my new found lair in the kitchen, I leave prepared to apologize on hands and knees for whatever it was I had done wrong.
The second I step through the doors into the room, I can sense something is off. two primary factors tripped this brilliant revelation .
Firstly: it was silent, eerily silent- far too silent. Secondly: there was not six foot blonde Scandinavian anywhere to be found.

Glancing down, I find the root of the problem: one quite large and overweight alpha male rhesus mackaw monkey forcefully digging through a bag of art supplies- in our living room.
For a breif moment we made eye contact. Him looking like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and me like a handicapped deer caught in the headlights.

Obviously, this is not the monkey in my house. But he did look like this..

I cannot be entirely sure what happened next. My heart started to beat somewhere around 250 beats per minute, and I immediately began to sweat. Sensing my bodily changes and responding to my shouts of 'nan.....NAN...and a quite creative string of obscenities, he decided it was time for action.
There was a lot of screaming, arm flailing and kicking that ensued. Somehow, I must have managed to at least look a little bit intimidating because he bolted to the front door. It is far more likely that I resembled a tantric schictozphrenic octupus and he felt the urgent need to gather his friends and have them get a load of the spectacle.
As he finds himself at the door, aware that this is final chance to be in contact with the crazy lady and therefore he should probably man up and at least do something threatening to assert his alpha male dominince, he bares his teeth while leaning forward with his shoulders square as if to say 'bring it'
and oh did I bring it. I dead sprinted to the front door, kicked him and slammed the door in his face. Problem solved. I thought.

Sadly, on account of the two pots of coffee and care package full of Korean candy I had consummed prior to the incident, my heart continued to beat at a much higher than average pace. Going outside once I had my breathing under control, I surveyed the scene realizing my favorite scarf from the leoprasy mission which had been nicely draped over the clothesline was no longer there. Turns out the monkey had the last word. Searching both in the top most brnches and down the cud- even considerably away from the house, it was absolutely no where to be found. 
At least for a few days.

Nan was the one to spot the scarf Thursday morning high in a tree. We figured it would be no big deal, that I could climb the tree after school and it would provide us with a few laughs and ultimately be a success. This is not the case.
I have attempted three times now, to retrieve the scarf and it is proving to be impossible.
The looks are deceiving, it looks as if the scarf is on a branch just ten feet away from the fence. This might be true, but in the expanse of that ten feet, there is a 30 foot drop straight down the cud.
After much deliberation I have decided my options are:
1. Take a running leap off of the fence and grab onto the tree limb from which I can easily climb up to the scarf. Problems here:
-if I miss the tree I will either fall down the cud or impale myself on a nearby tree
-even if I do get to the limb, how will I get down?
-I have a fear of climbing fences ever since I broke my arm climbing one...how the heck am I supposed to leap off of one?
-I am not a monkey and would likely not even come close to catching the branch.

2. Get to the base of the tree and climb up. This seems simple enough, but the problem is, my scarf is on the lowest branch, 25 feet up from the ground. This means I would have to shimmy my way up the tree, having no branches or limbs to help aid in my journey. Problems here:
-I am not a shimmeyer, every year during the rope climb in elementary P.E. class I ended up either injuring myself, crying in public, loosing an entire layer of my hand skin or was at home 'sick'
-I do not have super human grip considering I am just an average person
-I do not have anything closely resembling 'hops' so would not even be able to get a head start

3. Get a ridiculously large pole or branch and try to fish it out. Problems here:
-any branch that large is also very heavy and awkward to maneuver
-After searching all over my lawn and down the hill, I wasn't able to find anything long enough, other than a bit of our Christmas tree from last year, which I tried tossing like a javelen to the scarf, I also tried throwing a few rocks: no success.

After a morning of failed attempts, I decided I would just take a few pictures and blog about it, hoping that some epiphany would strike me while reflecting on the situation. It has not. And, on top of everything, after sucking up my fence climbing fear in order to get a few photos in, I tumbled down the cud, almost breaking my camera, ripping my pants and severely bruising myself in numerous places. I didn't even make it to the base of the tree...

I guess I will just have to leave it as it is for now, hoping that the monkey will feel sorry for me one of these days, forgive me for kicking him, and will nicely put the scarf back on the clothesline.

rummaging with rubbish.

I am a horrible person. Knowing full well that the watery death trap works just fine for quickly killing mice, I still set out rat poision, subjecting this probably very nice and charismatic mouse to a slow and painful death.

One night, our neighbor Katie, got a late night hankering to make scones, and came by our place...because we trade amenities (washer for oven).
I left her to her business and went to bed. It must not have been too much longer afterward that I awoke and stumbled in a stupor to the bathroom. When I opened the door, Katie was standing there with an oven mitt on, a pan in one hand and a cookie sheet in the other.
"emmmily- there is a mouse downstairs"
"yea. i know, don't worry we set up watery death trap to take care of it"
"...do you want me to kill it or trap it in the pan?"
"if you want, otherwise it can just drown"
and then i passed back out, forgetting about the entire conversation instantly.

I am not much of a morning person and as I staggered into the kitchen at five am to get my coffee brewing, not yet capable of opening my eyes, I thought nothing about the frantic mouse..
..and then I saw it.
I figured that Katie had clobbered him down, but was too lazy to move him outside,
This produced a quite hilarious mental image and resulted in me standing in the kitchen laughing for a good five minutes.
When I saw Katie that morning at the staff meeting, she whispered, "did you see the dead mouse on the floor?"
"yes I did, did you kill it?"
"nooooo, I stood watching him for about 30 minutes and he was acting like he was drunk, staggering all over the place and running into things until he finally just fell over"
Turns out, three days after consumption of poison, the mouse finally gave in to its powers. I think I can now officially say that our mice days have ended.

My students have been on a role lately as well.
Here is an example of a real life conversation I had with a group of eighth graders just the other day.
"Ms. Shriver, is it true that in America, you can drink the tap water?"
"it sure is...in fact, if you want, you can drink from the hose in someone's backyard"
"seriously?!"
"yes, and in America, they put a special substance called flouride in the tap water that helps to make you healthy"
It took a while for this to really resonate with the students, and even then, they still thought that I was pulling their legs and describing the latest distopian young adult fiction book I had been reading as opposed to an actual occurrence, and ironically, I can see why they would think that... That same day I had a student come up to me, dead serious, and ask "Ms. Shriver, how do you spell friendshipness?" This was on a traditional school celebration of friendship day, in which the seniors dress the ninth graders up however they want. This day is a bit warped and ends up with many boys dressed as girls and girls dressed as mythical creatures. Because the boy who asked me about friendshipness was dressed as Quasimodo, tights and all, I did my very best to not laugh in his face, explaining that friendshipness is in fact, not a word.

October is once again proving to be my favorite month here; the weather is absolutely perfect- the rain ceases, the sun shines, and it is warm enough to wear sandals. If my calculations are correct I have about 24 days until the cold sets in, and I plan on utilizing every single moment of it.Today we decided it would be demolding day, and between the two houses of the duplex, we put out the most nasty mold ridden items we could find. This ended up resembling a white trash rummage sale, when in fact, nothing was for sale. However, there is not a doubt in my mind that if we had actually priced our items, we could have made at least four dollars each.
It would have been a one of kind sale, that is for sure. Here are some of the 'high' priced items we would have had to offer...

Luggage set complete with space boots

A bedding set with two 'organ warmers' (think leg warmers, but for your kidneys)

White trash selling a gorgeous vest and water bottle cover

Passport anyone?

Stamps for printmaking are a definite best seller..

She is faking the amount of fun she is having..

I spend a solid 12 hours today moving items into the direct sunshine and wiping mold from surfaces high and low. Rather than spring cleaning, we have monsoon cleaning...and it may just take 3 more weekends of diligent attention before the house starts smelling normal again. Luckily, I am motivated and ready to do what it takes to erase all monsoon traces from my life.

contrast.

I would not describe myself as a 'colorful' person.
I do not mean colorful as in 'well rounded' or 'diversely aware' or 'enlightened'..and yes,
I do realize this might have a few connotations, or possibly even a few negative associations;

but i mean colorful as in bright, in your face, vibrant, gleaming colors.
Those of you who know me well will likely wholeheartedly agree.
When you think of Emily Shriver, pink is the last thing that comes to mind.

I prefer the quiet subtlety of earth tones.
Now this is reflected in a number of ways: everything from the color of ink I choose to write in, the clothes I wear, the car I drove, the adjectives I use, sometimes even through the food I eat. It is likely that before coming to India, the brightest thing I owned was my nose ring...

India is chalk-full of color. Not only is everything ridiculously green on account of monsoon, but there are times when I have been walking on a dirt path, surrounded by dust, poverty and pollution and an Indian woman will pass by, decked out head to toe in every shade of orange known to man. Colors I have never even seen before. This constantly amazes me and leaves me wondering what America is doing to be such a bland place.

There are many examples I could give to support my case, but this weekend was an exceptional one..I experienced first hand the contrast between an American wedding and an Indian wedding.
We have already finished the first quarter of school, and due to that, and Gandhi Gi's birthday, we have a two day break from school.
Noel and I had every intention to travel to Dharamshala for the break, until we decided (last minute of course) that we didnt want to go to the 'bus' station in the middle of nowhere and wait for a 14 hour overnight city bus that may or may not show up and that may or may not have room for two white girls.

Our reasoning: why not actually have a break for once and not pull four all nighters in a row, pulling into Wednesday morning parent teacher conferences thirty minutes ahead of time...
and if we stuck around, we could attend the wedding of two fellow staff members.
The wedding consisted of two celebrations: Friday night was the Mehndi, and Saturday afternoon the Western wedding. Mehndi is a traditional Indian wedding ceremony involving the application of henna to arms and hands, as well as more dancing than I have ever witnessed at a wedding, excellent food, the groom arriving on a horse, elaborately detailed decorations, a diversity in clothing that can only be found in India, and BRIGHT colors..lots of them.

Which brings me back to my point that India is colorful. No matter how many times I reiterate this, people seem to just not get it. Perhaps these photos will help justify my point.
It was an all around party- basically the reception..but before the wedding.


The next afternoon was the exact opposite: the traditional Western wedding. Seeing the contrast between the two was astonishing. Even with the diversity in the crowd and the mixture of Indian and Western dress, everything seemed to be in black and white in comparison (the dress and tux included).

This got me thinking: maybe I should become more of a colorful person..
and perhaps India has already colored me in more ways than I realize.

On an unrelated note:

The girls next door all left for break, leaving me with a key to their place and full access to a washing machine AND dryer for the weekend. This is exciting for many reasons. If you remember my post about the mice, you will know that I have to bucket wash all my clothes. For the past year, I have managed just fine, often going quite a long time (as in more than is acceptable) before doing a load, but making it by. And if someone offers me washing machine access...let alone plus a dryer..i am going to pee my pants a bit in excitement.
Bucket washing does not get clothes that clean (unless you are crazy diligent and wash one load for half a day, changing the water every 20 minutes and furiously beating the clothes against the wall..which I do not do). Bending awkwardly over the bucket strains leg muscles I have never before used, usually clothes leak dye onto one another, and it is all around a huge pain.
I have been doing laundry like crazy, determined to wash every mold infested item in the house..which amounts to almost everything.
There is one downfall to this situation: there is only one plug for two machines. So, to do an entire load of laundry and get it all the way dry it takes 3 hours and 17 minutes (I timed the last load). Next time you do an easy load of laundry at home, please think of me and realize how easy you have it...