Random Thoughts

· Wilder’s favorite thing to do now in the car is to ask, “Are we there yet?” over and over with intermittent chuckles (thank you, Donkey from Shrek). Since it takes forever to get anywhere because the roads don't allow you out of second gear, our newest Zen response is: “Yes, we’re there. The great thing is that wherever we go, we’re always somewhere.”

· This morning as I cleaned, I swept up the usual detritus of six-legged creatures that had made their way into the house the night before and died trying to conquer the brightness of our lightbulbs. The majority of creepy crawlies that adorn our floors are these little green and gold irridescent beetles that fly around in mass quantities at night. We try to keep things closed up, but their entry is inevitable. I find them both dead and alive, and I find it hard to kill those still living. With so many of them, and survival of the fittest being what it is, their intentional deaths would not be enough to cause their extinction, yet I am loathe to crush these little creatures. Firstly, to kill them would necessitate a large, crunching pinch with my fingers on either side of a very thin paper towel(Ew). Secondly, because of their numbers, killing every live one I find would culminate in a mass carnage sure to mar my karma. (If I came back a beetle, I would like to think that my demise had more purpose than forethought.) So I’ve spent much time sliding these little beetles onto bits of paper or into plastic bags or cups and releasing them outside – probably just to ensure that they will return again. Considering the millions of bugs that populate the rainforest, this very well could be the most pointless exercise of all time. Yet, my kismet remains in tact!

· We received a stack of magazines from the States replete with all the celebrity news we’d been missing since our departure before the holidays. (Thanks, Shannon!) We relish in the frivolity of it all, and when we need a little break from reality, we pick one up and thumb through. The magazines are already a couple of months old, so all the new news to us is actually already old news. And Chris and I have been reading them at different intervals. As Chris called out a snippet to me today (“Hey, did you know that Sylvester Stallone is making another Rocky movie?”) I had to chuckle, imagining that six months from now, we’ll still be reading the same magazines with the same gusto and saying, “Hey, did you know Brad and Jennifer broke up?!"