It never rains...

but it pours!

the neighbors have been waiting all these long quarantine months. waiting to enjoy the air? waiting for a trip to the seaside?

no! waiting to rennovate! just as soon as they could, they called in the demolition guys and started breaking walls down.

now, i shouldn't get excited. every spring and summer, home rennovations are almost a tradition. i used to joke with my kids, that the drills heard from upstairs and the drills far off in the distance are just mating calls of a rare and beutiful bird and in fact, many poets have written emotionally stirring works on those enchanting bird calls.

well , the joke’s over. the noise is too much for a baby. lucky for me, school is out so we can spend the day running with the baby outside. keeping her happy and eating.

but it can’t be just one thing. so we got a thunderstorm and a monsoon. I ran to get our nice big umbrella but it broke apart as i opened it. i dug around and finally found a working one, only very small. i got very wet that day..

so...we went to a nice , air-conditioned shopping mall.

i opened the trunk to take out the stroller, and hit my head on the door.

then we got inside, and walked in the supermarket. my baby loves fish, so the seafood section has all these nice, big aquariuns, with big fishies swimming around, waving their fins. so my baby waves back.

we do that for a while, then it’s time to sleep. sophia should get her nap. we park it in an empty starbucks and i go crazy for the smell. i havent had real coffee in a looong time..but we can’t do anything before the baby sleeps. and she’s toooo excited from her day trip.

worried that we’ll lose the nice quiet spot, my wife stays with the stroller and the bags and i take my little one walkies for a while.

we go to the second floor and walk among the shops, till the unmistakable aroma of my little ones’ early creations hits my nosteils. i feel that even with the mask on! i hurry back to the starbucks, only to find the upstairs entrance locked. more running , and suddenly a group of girls stop me. they remind me that i taught them once, a few years ago, and seem upset that i don’t recognize them after sooo long, so many students AND their dust masks on...

more running, even faster, up, down, until we find the restroom and change, putting the bomb safely away. hope it doesn't fall into the wrong hands...

you’d think this would be the end, right?

sophia still doesnt want her nap after the change. we keep walking, going home.

when we get home, the “birds” are still crowing. so we go doenstairs again . baby finally sleeps in the shade of the community park, and i stay to wave off the mosquittos. my wife goes to cook. but she soon calls me , telling me that the power is out in all rooms but the bedroom...

by then the baby is up again, feeling refreshed and rambunxious. she is having a wonderful day...

i check and see that this is not merely a simple fuse thing and call the electrician. but you see, i got it wrong, it’s not that there was no power. air cons and fridge were happily humming away. it’s just that ALL the light switches somehow didn’t get power!

the electrician told me he couldnt do a thing about it for the evening. so the rest of the evening we did in the hallway outside the bathroom, which of all places didn’t get turned off. but it did get a ton of plaster and paint from the walls falling down because of the humidity and the hammering upstairs.

sophia ate well, at least, of the leftovers i warmed in the darkness of the kitchen.

we put her down to sleep finally and i started to clean things up, when i found that the bananas i bought that morning when we were in the supemarket , turned to a very sloppy mush in the heat.

crazy days are beautiful in a way. because they show how inventive this world can be to squish you..