The lock down blues

 

The state of affairs in Myanmar is much the same as the rest of the world. The details might not match exactly but things are not as much fun as they could be! We are under a stay at home order. We can go out in our neighborhood for walks and runs. We can go to the store for food and we can get takeout. But mostly we just have been working and hanging at home. We don't really have the blues- we feel very fortunate to be where we are and have each other and to be in good health, the title of the blog just came from that feeling of... which room should I go sit in now- blah feeling. During one of these blah moments I started flicking thru the pics on my phone and realized I haven't just been moping from room to room.

My bike used to belong to Ted Gould. It has one gear and there was a time in my life I thought I might be able to rock the single speed. The day he sold it to me, Ted took my straight up Abrahms gulch and almost killed me. That was not the day I was to rock the single speed. But over here? I got that one gear! (topographers note: Myanmar is quite flat) I now have various baskets and bungee cords and like to see what I can load up.

This day found fruit in the baskets and flowers on the rack, I felt quite lovely as I pedaled home. 

I also saw this guy heading home with 2 fuel tanks loaded on! Easily 100lbs!

When you can't freely explore the city and country, you look on a smaller scale for cool things. Lisa found this: snail on squished fruit.

Since the store is a place I can go, I have been pulled in by the promos. Did you know if you buy a bag of RICH powdered coffee you get a cup and saucer?

                                                                                                      I did,

Did you know if you buy 3 beer bottles you get a beer glass? or buy a bottle of rum and you get an umbrella?

I did.

I also took a short cooking class. Shin Nyo and Pinky are two lovely people that come to our house and work (though not much now!) I asked for a tutorial on how to make coconut noodle soup and got a great one! They had all the ingredients laid out and showed me the steps. My next test is to try it on my own. Then I'll make some for you.

Around the corner from our house is a construction site and they have been working on the wall out front. The basic flow for constructing walls of any sort here is to stack red bricks, reinforce with re-bar, cover outside with concrete. There was a guy putting these finishing touches on the wall with a butter knife! He was amazing. Here is before:

During

And after:

Lisa has found a key to feeling joyful is petting dogs. When she is able she goes to the Yangon Animal Shelter with the amazing Terry Just. And just a few days ago came across these little scamps near our house so is bringing them food and making sure they have water.

the scamps

And as always, we seem to find ourselves outside each evening having a drink (not always with alcohol). We chat, we laugh, we watch Luca scooter around. We spend alot of time talking about our friends and how we hope they are doing well. We talk of home, we talk about where we want to travel to next, we miss our family, we fret over Wilder (even though she is doing great-we are parents after all) Its quite nice actually, the blues are there but they aren't too bad. 

Love to you all as you battle the covid blues