A Million Words

When I was in college, I spent a semester in Nepal.  I lived with a family in a small farming village on the edge of the city of Kathmandu.  A lot of things were different there -- among them a lack of indoor plumbing and, outside of the city, a general absence of diapers.  Years later, when I taught English in China, I again noticed the lack of diapers.  Babies wore split-crotch pants and their little bums hung out into the cold.  They seemed quite comfortable that way, more comfortable than a kid in a dirty diaper back home.   I knew that I didn't like diapers as a way of dealing with waste.  After all, would you want to sit in your pee or poo a large part of the day?  Of course not.  Although it's not culturally acceptable to have kids running around here with naked bottoms here in the postmodern west, there is a small fringe movement aimed at keeping babies' bottoms clean by helping them use the toilet, potty, or sink instead of their pants, at least some of the time.  ...

It's a quiet day under a grey sky.  The seascape is dominated by rain and hail, lightened with occasional sunshine through the clouds.  At the moment there are no large ships in port, and the lock is closed.  Last night someone was welding on one of the smaller boats berthed along the near edge of the harbor.  The pilot boat is parked by the lock.  Stillness.

We have officially been in our new place for a week and a half.  I am getting used to the view, and also getting used to spending most mornings around the house waiting for the plumber/electrician/tiler/landlord/NTL installer.  The list of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo which we have to deal with never seems to get any shorter, no matter how many items I cross off the list.  Piles of boxes still clutter the apartment. Still, some semblance of routine is creeping in.  Nova and I spend most mornings here, doing laundry and having breakfast, then wander around town socializing and maybe doing a few errands until Mike comes home a little after five.  Sometimes I manage to write a little.  I've been to aikido a couple of times in the evening.  I'm getting used to line-drying the cloth diapers.  I have a pretty good idea of where to find 80% of the groceries I want.  I am spending much less time with Mike's mum, which is good for my sense of independence.   I think that this week I wil...

This week has been a total loss in terms of writing.  Not only were we moving, but we didn't have an internet connection until yesterday afternoon, and we've been dealing with the byzantine Irish bureaucracy so we can get married.  There has also been a stream of tradesmen coming and going from the apartment, fixing the hot water and the showers, the heaters and fans, etc.  I think I've spent half the week waiting to let them in and texting the landlord about what has or hasn't been done.   And then, there is the laundry.  It's not so bad, just a load or two every morning, but I think I had become accustomed to the help of Nova's grandmothers in that area, not to mention the convenience of having a dryer.  Here, we have lots of light and air and I've bought an enormous clothes drying rack which would hold probably three days worth of diapers at a stretch, but because there's always something else to wash and they do get stinky lying around, I've been...