SINGE AU PEANUT BUTTER

The countdown to homerentership is on, with three intriguing houses in the lineup: they're all more or less on the beach, we haven't seen any of them on the inside, and we don't know how much any of them rent for. So it's a little up in the air, and probably will be until the day we leave, when we're stressed beyond belief about all the things we still need to do that we should have done earlier but didn't, like find a house to live so we don't have to sleep in a vacant lot with the boa constrictor when we get back from Texas.

Did you notice that I said "the boa constrictor," as in, a particular boa constrictor that was seen yesterday in Samara, on the road to Lula's school? Yes, that's the one I was talking about. The 10-foot-long one. The one they just prodded with a stick until it slithered into the bushes, the bushes that are about 500 yards away from our house, with a nice vacant lot in between. Last night when Lapis and Diablo wanted to go outside I stepped out with them at first--I thought I should watch over them--but then I was like, forget it, you guys are on your own. I ran back inside and watched out the window to see if a long dark shape was moving along the top of the fence towards my furry babies, but nope! Everyone peed without mishap and got home safely.

Later, while I was wiping the kitchen counter, Lula picked up the broom and told me she was going to help clean up. I thanked her and as she swept behind me she said matter-of-factly, "I'm cleaning all the shit Astrid left here." All the what? The shit? Do you mean, like, literal shit, or figurative shit? And you're familiar with that word because...you've heard it before? From your mother? When she's...cleaning? Ok--makes perfect sense! It took me a minute to realize she meant "shed," like, all this hair, this goddamn hair, Astrid sheds. All this hair she sheds all day long. All this shitty dog hair this damn dog sheds!

This weekend we're going to deep-clean the house, which is still somewhat disgusting from an unintentionally big barbecue that happened here Wednesday night, a barbecue that was very fun, for the most part, and exciting in that one person got a cut on her forehead, one person got bit by a spider, one person fell off the bed, one person peed in his pants, and many other people kept walking into our kitchen looking for beer. We met a bunch of our landlord Pierre's friends, many of whom are long-time Samarans, and generally ate a copious amount of delicious charred food. It was good practice for the New Year's Eve party we're having, the one YOU still have to reserve your spot for!

We had some non-human visitors yesterday. They were making noise in the trees outside the house, and when we went out to look two of them, a mother and a baby, acted very interested in my peanut butter-on-cinnamon-bread sandwich. It makes me vaguely sick now to think I encouraged them to climb around on those wires (I put my sandwich on that ledge they're sitting on), but luckily the photo shoot did NOT go in the direction of "Why monkeys and wires don't mix"--THAT would have been horrific. Anyway, some are a little blurry, but you can still see the peanut butter on the baby's knuckles and in their chin hairs.

And I thought I was the only monkey with peanut butter in her chin hairs!