THE ADVENTURES OF THE JAC ATTACK!

A Blog about a clever boy and a mom determined to out-smart him.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Back in the Swing of Things

I haven't written a blog post in over a week and I have so many interesting things to write about.  Every once in a while I fall into a writing slump and the only way to get out of it is to start writing.  I need to write about tiger sitings, a trip to the zoo, the Marine Corps Ball and the Holidays away from home.  But, I think it is time to write a "Why I Love My Husband Post."  I try to do this every few months because I feel there is an unfortunate shortage of people unabashedly loving their spouses.  Jess takes great pleasure in finding these posts hidden between stories of our kid and antidotes about my daily adventures.  So, here it goes - Why I love my husband in December:

1. He lets me drive.  Over Thanksgiving we took a long road trip to southern Nepal.  The road wound through the country treacherously and brightly decorated trucks passed without hesitation on blind curves.  We had several near death moments but Jess maintained unwavering confidence in my abilities.  His confidence in me empowers me to be stronger and more capable.

2. He supports my adventures.  I'm heading to India for four days.  JAC will spend the weekend with his dad and they already have plans to visit Santa.  I can't wait to see a bit of India.  Even after working a long week Jess was willing to chip in so I could experience India.

3. He embraces Joy.  We purchased our Christmas tree yesterday.  I can't wait to take a few pictures after we decorate it.  I think you'll like it.  We will turn on Christmas music, wear our pajamas and drink cocoa.  Its our family tradition and Jess and I are both really excited.  Its a small event but we both find so much happiness in it.

4. Our morning routine.  I sleep in until seven every weekday morning while Jess hangs out with JAC.  I wake up to fresh coffee and JAC has been fed breakfast.  On the weekend I take over but five days a week I stay warm under the covers.

Now it is your turn.  Why do you love your significant other today?

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Offering

The water buffalo stood tied with a golden rope to a golden statue.  Two horns curled in the shape of a "C" at the top of its head and its black coat speckled in brown dirt glistened in the sun.  His front hooves were tied together but the animal did not struggle.  It breathed easily, eyes blinking sleepily in the sun.

I snapped a quick photo marveling that the animal's owner would choose to tie it to a statue.  The guard standing nearby laughed at me and I moved on to admire a larger temple.  This small shrine seemed insignificant in the shadow of the three story pagoda style temple nearby.

I held my small son's hand and walked over a hundred steps to the top.  He enthusiastically pulled me forward up the narrow steps and we stood together at the summit.  We admired the view.  Everything seemed to be versions of brown.  Buildings were build in red brown brick and topped with deep brown roofs.  The square was paved in gray brown stones and the tourists in white t-shirts reminded me of aphids on a green leaf.

I looked for the peaceful bull tied to a temple and saw only a small crowd of young men near the temple.  From our height the men seemed to be one entity moving together - all with the same dark hair.  As we descended a drum beat near the grouping of men followed by chanting and singing.

Curious I passed my child's small hand to my husband waiting at the bottom and walked over for a closer look.  I pushed through the crowd until I was shoulder to shoulder and part of the moving group.  Standing on my toes I found the water buffalo in two pieces.  Its head was removed without the animal making a sound. The body was still twitching and the hooves fluttering in some false effort to run.

Sickened I looked at me feet now realizing they were planted in a puddle of sticky red blood.  I stood too crowed in to move and watched as they butchered slices of buffalo presenting it to the golden statue of the deity.  As men sang the priest scooped blood from the animal's body and from the ground tossing in on the temple.  Blood covered his hands, arms and chest. Speckles clung to his sparse black beard.  The once brown temple was now an all crimson spot on the landscape.  I pulled away, unwilling to watch but still morbidly fascinated.

As I lay awake at night I hear cows mooing in my neighborhood.  They wander listlessly eating from piles of trash.  Cows are sacred to most Nepalis.  They will not eat beef and many will not eat water buffalo because they consider it nearly a cow.  The cattle in my neighborhood have been abandoned.  Bull calves offer little value to an owner unwilling to slaughter them and cows who do not give milk are equally worthless.  They are left to fend for themselves in a bustling city without grass.  Owners do not want to feed a useless animal and cost for disposing of dead livestock is a further deterrent to caring for them.

This is Nepal.  It is a country of stark contrast.  Here in Nepal the sacred are allowed to eat trash and the nearly sacred are beheaded in front of singing young men. 

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Normal

I am flopped on my belly, hiding in the bedroom listening to my favorite radio show on the computer.  It starts and stops, broken up by poor internet service.  I listened to show every Saturday morning in my sunny little kitchen.  Now I listen staring out into the darkness, annoyed by the never ending dog barking.

Two months ago we moved to Kathmandu, Nepal.  For two months it has been some extended  vacation.  We have visited every historic site.  We have eaten weird food and met new friends and somewhere in the middle we are treading water attempting to find our new normal.

For three weeks my son has been horrible.  He hits and punches.  He screams at me and no punishment motivates him to comply.  His defiance is finally stronger than my will power and today my throat was in a constant knot.  I swallowed a glass of cheap red wine attempting to overcome the drowning feeling in my throat.  Today I do not want to be a mother.  Many days pass without gratification.  I wake only to meet the endless demands of a small annoying child.

Last week my son asked me every day to "go home."  I explained over and over that we no live here in Kathmandu - together.  Finally he broke down crying, "I want my small house."  My whole body hurt in sympathy.

On Wed. I made the best beef soup.  It was heavy with vegetables, thick with broth and aromatic from half a cup of red wine.  JAC ate with out protest.  He and I ate soup leftovers on the couch together for two nights while his dad worked late.  For the first time in many nights I felt normal and I have grasped for that feeling every day since.

 Somewhere, perhaps in a few weeks JAC will stop asking for home and I won't spend Sunday nights hiding in my bedroom.  We will no longer be tourists but residents in our new home town.  I am not sure how we will get there.  Now it feels like we are wading through some cloudy swamp of reality and emotion.  Our normal is a nomad's state of movement and we take solace in the small familiar pieces of our past as we grow accustomed to our current surroundings.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Language

Mero naam Toni ho!  It took me an hour to master this sentence.  It means, "My name is Toni" in Nepali.  I think it was an hour well spent because when I practiced the sentence with our staff they seemed absolutely thrilled.

I'm taking Nepali courses three days a week.  I will not be the star pupil.  I'm missing that gene that allows people to learn languages with ease.  By older brother has this gene and I'm beginning to realize my parents gave all the good genes to my siblings.  Every other member of the class is nearing sixty and the teacher patiently waits, slightly annoyed while we laugh at our ineptitude.  All of us agree.  We will not master Nepali in this short time but we wanted to try.  Nepalis are a people who value inclusion.  They appreciate our efforts to belong.

Today we have a crystal clear view of the snow capped Himalayas.  Before moving here I looked forward to seeing the mountains daily but quickly learned smog or cloud cover frequently obstruct your view.  Instead Jess and I keep watch and when we see the Himalayas we race to the roof for a better look.

JAC and I spent the morning listening to Indie Rock videos on YouTube.  I read last week the Indie scene is now the music of the middle aged.  It seems fitting that as I near middle age I am just discovering the genre.

My son never stops moving.  In one hour today he demonstrated a long list of prepositions.  He was on top of the bed.  He was in the bed.  He was under the bed.  He jumped on the bed.  He followed this by running around in circles and shooting his stick gun.  The wooden stick stained with dirt is constantly in his hands as he makes shooting noises chasing any onlookers. 



When the Didi (house cleaner/ kid watcher extraordinaire) arrived I gladly handed off and enjoyed a nice long lukewarm shower.  It is growing colder here and though our solar panels are working at capacity I will not enjoy a hot shower until summer.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Writers Block

I have a serious case of writers block.  I'm not sure what to do about it but in the mean time here are a few pictures from our Friday Adventure.  We went to an old Palace complex called Patan.  On an ordinary day this would be very interesting but I have a case of temple saturation.  I've seen enough temples to last me a life time.  Maybe next week we'll forget the historical sites and just visit the zoo.

There is one thing about Nepal's historical sites that always strikes me as funny.  You will be visiting an very old place and see motorcycles parked in the middle of the site.  Or perhaps adjacent to a temple will be loud advertisements for a school or bar.  This is typical Kathmandu.  It is some complex pairing of present and past.



Thursday, November 3, 2011

Amusing

The atmosphere has seemed almost human in its restlessness - like a man struggling with the answer to a perplexing question.  These are the days when I pace, waiting to see what will happen, wishing to exert pressure and cause change.

My normally intuitive son paced himself to sleep. My nervous energy surrounded him like a heavy weight. His never ending motion collapsed face first on the blankets.  His toes twitched refusing to admit defeat. 

Still, I paced until I couldn't breath.  I grabbed my guidebook and escaped to the car and the freedom it promised.  I didn't care where we went but I needed to satiate my deep craving for motion.

Ramesh must have felt the air.  He was waiting, eager to leave the confines of our compound.  He drove me to place that did not belong in Nepal.  It was a setting that felt like a scab on the landscape.  The greyness of the gates matched the thin gray clouds hovering over Nepal.  Yellow and red paint peeled off of every concrete surface.  Ramesh instructed me to wait by the car.

He returned with two tickets to Fun Land.  Without me by his side he was able to secure tickets without the added tax charged to white faced foreigners.  We walked under a crumbling sign.  First was and outdoor bingo pavillion stationed adjacent to two caged Emus.  The Emus shared an overgrown yard with a few inhabited shacks.  A series of game booths followed with invented games.  On featured six cylindrical clay jars each perched on an empty soda bottle.  You could shoot the jars with a plastic toy gun.  Ponies stood nearby, saddled in a dirt lot, looking annoyed at the hovering flies, waiting for riders.


We walked down the path and a gray pond hosted  three rubber inflatable boats each piled deep with laughing coeds skipping class.  A giant Ferris Wheel towered overhead attached to a rotary engine. This grandparent of a ride was compelled to fierce speeds, groaning while circling squealing couples around. A merry go ride limped through its paces. Child sized rides mixed next to larger rides and intermingled between were the components of rides past their prime.  A pile of rusted mettle once spun cheering patrons.  A dirt covered wooden duck lay on its side, its one eye staring vacantly back at me. 


The largest ride filled with passengers.  Couples sat hand in hand on the deck of a ship attached to a pinnacle.  The ship rocked back and forth, gaining momentum.  It peaked in each direction and I imagined someone tumbling out.  At the height of its speed, the passengers stood up embracing the thrill.  I queried Ramesh about seat belts, but there were no seat belts.  This was Funland in Nepal.  This creepy amusement park, governed by no rules housed the kinetic energy I was seeking.  It was a spectacle to my American eye but only a reason to skip school for the average Nepali. 

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Stories Told

Nepal is a land filled with stories.  They swirl around like the wind and permeate the souls of the people.  Over the weekend we visited two temples.  The first, a towering white-washed mount topped with a golden eye is Buddhist.   It is called the Boudhanath and legend says the gods demanded a suitable sacrifice to end a long drought.  When the drought failed to end after several sacrifices the king decided he himself was the only worthy sacrifice.  He instructed his son to go to the site at dark and sacrifice the shrouded figure, decapitating it with one single stroke.  When the son removed the shroud he learned he had killed his own father.  To atone for the sin he built the Boudhanath.

The second temple was Hindu and place near the top of the mountain.  We wound through villages on a narrow road and arrived at the Chungunaryan.  The oldest stone carvings in Nepal are featured here and date back to 746 A.D.  The story is told that a farmer had a cow that would give no milk.  When he followed the cow he learned a small boy living in a tree would come out of the woods each morning and drink the cow’s milk.  The farmer thought the boy was an evil spirit and cut the tree down.  Unfortunately the tree housed a trapped deity who was killed.  The temple was built in atonement.

Every festival in Nepal boasts a similarly entertaining story and when I told my staff yesterday that it was an American holiday they immediately asked what the story was.  Truthfully, I don’t know the story of Halloween and I’m not sure it would matter to me.  I tried to explain this to my driver but he seemed ultimately confused by my lack of background information.

Nevertheless, when I explained that we would be building a pirate ship in the back of our car for "trunk or treat" the driver and gardener embraced the idea enthusiastically.  Each person contributed design ideas.  I spent hours trying to explain what a pirate was and even pulled up pictures on the internet.  In the end we all agreed, “A pirate was a scary man on a ship.”  We were all very proud of our finished product but when I walked out in my pirate costume with JAC dressed as a miniature pirate they seemed thrilled.  

In two years we will leave and I wonder what will be said about the crazy American dressed like a pirate.  Almost daily I find something strange about Nepali customs, but a girl dressed in an eye patch for a holiday without a story must seem so odd to them too.