MORE RAIN

OK, so it has been a long time. We have been busy. Really busy. It rains every day. Mom is roasting all the time and I have work piled up to my ears. The kids are getting bigger and learning all sorts of ways to circumvent parental authority in favor of childhood anarchy.

Doug stapled his fingers together a couple of days ago, just to see what would happen.

I don't think he will do it again any time soon.

Tiger, our cat, did not really have nine lives after all. He got hit by a car, coughed up blood and tried to catch his breath for about an hour and failed. Kids haven't figured out he is really gone yet, but we will probably have a sit down with them the next day or two.

He was a good cat and we will miss him. He let the kids drag him around by the tail, a leg or an ear, whatever was handy to grab onto. He seemed to enjoy it. You could tied him up in knots and hand him upside down and he would just purr and look at you with sleepy eyes.

We won't be without a cat for long as Tiger actually had a job, a real purpose. He was a mouser for the coffee storage area. He was very good at it. A very important job in the rainy season. The lot our house on is elevated and we have empty lots all around us that are pretty much swamp this time of year. That means the denizens of these lots are all looking for a dry place to hang out from June to November and our house and yard are it. We get many surprise visitors. Remind me later to tell you about the 7 foot rat snake that came last year and was mistaken for a cobra. Poor snake.

Anyway - looks like we will be picking up one or two kittens this weekend. Same mother as Tiger.

R.I.P. Tiger

Our friend Marie is visiting from Germany. She has brought a photo and love notes from her nephew Max (age 6?) to give to Mali. Mali is playing it cool and not committing herself at this point. I figure she should wait another few years until she starts thinking about boys - until maybe she is 25 or so.

Lots of fun with bureaucracy this week of both the Thai and the US variety. Took the kids in to get passports. They will each have two passports - one for each country. The US Consulate visit for the US passports did not take all that long, but you had to get forms in advance and have a lot of supporting documents, proof of this and that and translations. The Thai version was chaos, long lines everywhere - but all things considered it went pretty smooth. They did not ask for that much documentation and they didn't seem interested in checking it closely.

After practicing four or five times, Mali actually signed her Thai passport. Doug couldn't be bothered, so he was fingerprinted.

Both stops done on the same day. The same LONG day.


CAREER UPDATES:

This week Mali wants to be a nurse - primarily because her little friend at school wants to be a nurse. Douglas Pai wants to be a superhero. He is not providing additional clarification on that, but he is doing a lot of research via cartoons.