why do pictures take so long to load anyways?

i don't know.

i'm trying to upload them, but if it doesn't happen here's some pictures painted with words:

Yeah! My computer is alive! Silly me thought the battery was dead when it was actually the charger that was caput. New charger, new battery, and we're in business, apostrophes and all.

It is a cool and rainy spring here in Chiquimula, keeping the laundry from drying and us from leaving the house, as well as the perpetual need to mop the floors- my favorite! It's good exercise I chant to myself as I heave and ho scrubbing duck sh*t three times a day. Yes remember I mentioned our adorable little duckling? It is now considerably larger, drastically uglier and creating immensely greater volumes of black oozing excrement. I can hear the sound it makes coming out and I shudder while grabbing the broom. Cristian says he's going to buy some mesh fencing to corral the duck away from the house, so now my job is to bug him about it until he actually buys it and installs it.

So, what else is new? I have one less tooth! One less wisdom tooth that is, with three still hanging out in the rafters waiting for an inconvenient time to budge on down. The wisdom tooth that was removed was on the lower, right hand side and had emerged partially roughly 6 months ago. It wasn't bothering me at all so I just let it be, disregarding the dentist's warning of infection, cheek inflammation, and looming pain. Roughly 2 weeks ago I started to feel some discomfort, but figured the tooth was maybe just growing in a little more, so I took some pain pills and forgot about it. After two or three days it got worse and had spread from my temple to my throat, the whole right side of my face full of a pulsing, tender ache. I went to a dentist, waited roughly 2 hours to be seen, spent less than one minute in the chair because the woman informed me that I needed surgery, something beyond the capabilities of that particular office. I gave her my number and she said she would call when the surgeon was in town. In the meantime I didn't eat very much and brushed my teeth at least 5 times a day. Finally she called, the next week, to tell me that in fact the surgeon wasn't coming, but she recommended another dentist in town. I gave him a call, and he said “Sure, come in tomorrow at 9 o'clock.” I figured I was in for another wait-for-an-hour-only-to-make-another-appointment-after-he-looks-at-my-tooth, so I brought Ezra and we planned to go shopping at the market afterwards. Well, I did have to wait roughly a half hour, but once in the hot seat just as soon as I opened my mouth I was getting shot up with anesthetic. While we waited for my mouth to go numb, we talked about general things (kids, how to get them to brush their teeth, language, etc.). The whole time Ezra is sitting in the dentist office on the floor in a corner looking slightly mortified until the dentist hands him some toothpaste and he is completely content. So after the alloted amount of time and my tongue has gone partially numb he gets out the big wrench like tool and extracts the tooth with amazing quickness (for Guatemala especially where everything takes forever- I'll tell another story about that in a minute). After he has removed the tooth he places a wad of gauze in my mouth and tells me that I should not eat, drink or talk for the next hour. Doh, what? I can't talk? Now is the time I have many questions, and I cannot talk? So there we were, Ezra and me, in downtown Chiquimula on the busiest street in town, me spitting blood every few feet and Ezra watching me quizzically, no doubt wondering why I am grunting at him rather than talking. I tried to call Cristian to have him come and pick us up, but he didn't understand my grunting. A lesson to all, if you drop someone off at the dentist and they call you a little while later unable to talk, please just assume you need to go pick them up. They are not calling to grunt at you. Anyhow, we had to go find my medication (to prevent infection and ease the pain) which meant visiting several pharmacies all the while wiping blood onto the single napkin the dentist provided me. By the way, the tooth was in this napkin.

We did get the medicine and I managed to communicate well enough with my monosyllabic humphs to get us home in one piece. It was an awkward morning to be sure, and I sure do hope to not have to go through it again. If the situation does repeat itself however, I will know to ask all my questions before extraction, as well as inform my son I will not be able to talk. To be honest I think he enjoyed the vacation from hearing me urge him to hurry up, put that down, get away from there, and no you cannot have a soda pop. It was rather cheap, approximately $40, although the medication cost roughly the same so at the end of the day it cost about a week's salary of a Guatemalan motorcycle mechanic.

Ezra is really making great strides in speaking Spanish! Today he said “donde esta?” which is his first complete sentence. He also said “lluvia” for the first time today, and yesterday he said “pelota” . He knows perhaps 15 words in Spanish, which is pretty darn good if I do say so myself. I think now he will start catching on faster. It is pretty special to hear him speaking more or less with his father, as well as neighborhood characters. For example today we went to the store by our house and Ezra said “Por favor chocola-tay” to the man behind the counter. Guess who got a chocolate bar? How's that for motivation.

Other than the language he's more and more curious everyday. He wants to know how everything works (doors, locks, computers, extension cords, gates, etc.) and he is also very into textures. He spends hours playing with dirt, picking up hand fulls and dumping them in another location (he says he's “dumping garbage”). One funny story about his dirt is one day when it was raining he came out of the house to look at the patch of dirt where he always plays. His shoulders slumped and his lower lip puffed out he said, “Awwww, it's raining on my dirt, now my dirt is covered with mud.” He was really distraught. Another thing that causes him to be extremely distraught is when he is under a blanket but his feet are sticking out. He wails, “Mama, my feet are not snuzzleing!” and totally looses it until his feet are properly snuzzled.

He is still very much into books, something I am very happy about. I was worried because of the lack of library here, but we have been able to subsidize the selection with help from grandma's care packages and trips to Copan. In fact we went to Copan just last weekend and had a terrific time. There is just something that makes me feel good about being there, and I'm not sure if it is the gringo presence, the comparable modernity of the houses there (screens on the windows, attached bathrooms, running water!!), or the small town feel with mountain vista. We saw some old friends and made some new ones, especially Ezra. He makes so many friends everywhere we go! We took ourselves out to lunch and by the time our order arrived he was having a tea party with three new friends. I had to tear him away to eat his French fries and burger! Later at the park a little girl came up and insisted Ezra play with her pink, squishy ball while she gave me the third degree (“Where's his father? How did you get here? What time? When will you leave? Etc.”) Her father called her a 'placticadora' which means she likes to talk a lot. I told him it was okay by me, I know several placticadoras, including myself and Ezra. Well, he would be a placticadoro of course.

I just heard the Bunsy boy wake up from his nap, and it just started raining again. Better move the laundry and make sure Ezra hasn't dismantled the television. Oh and I just heard the . Oy vay.

*The next day: the duck has left us to go live at the abuelo's house. I miss it the tiniest bit.