Valentines Day 2009 and Free Maid Service

Another year, another non-eventful Valentines Day. I had actually stayed up very late last night making a nice, friendly card for a certain gal, but in the end I totally chickened out and decided not to give it to her, even though I'm 110% sure it would have been received very happily. I've had so many bad experiences with this sort of thing before - seriously, every time I get completely, utterly obliterated - so I decided to hold onto it for myself. It's actually quite a nice card, and since I've only twice received a valentine card since my fellow classmates were forced to drop one in my horribly-designed bag during elementary school (thanks Mom and a very awesome, much-missed friend who also delivered a large box of scrumptious chocolates - you guys are great!), I'm keeping that card for myself... unless I come to my senses and give it a day or too late, which is lame, but not as lame as not giving it at all.

Whatever happens, this year's Valentines Day is much preferable to last year's version when I was discarded (ok, that's really harsh, it wasn't exactly like that) the day before. Anyway, if things had gone much further I probably wouldn't be in Kenya today and seeing and experiencing a whole different way of life. I am not going to make a judgment call on which path would have been better because I think both could have been really awesome - but it was definitely a critical point in my life. Two paths diverging in 180-degree directions. Sometimes I like to think about what would have happened if things would have turned out differently in my last relationship (for those keeping count, that would be only #2 - can't wait to see what sort of comments this generates!), there are a million variables in life, more than a few of which we aren't even in control of ourselves (directly, that is). There are about three to five critical points in my life where I think an either/or decision has influenced the rest of that pathway (i.e., my life). Someone once tried to make this same an analogy with a tree, which I thought made pretty good sense. At the bottom it goes pretty much one way (up!), then the trunk splits into several large branches, and then progressively smaller branches and then twigs all the way up. Depending on what direction you take at each opportunity you encounter a new branch or twig, you can end up in a different part of the tree - or back on the ground :( I don't think I need to explain how this relates to the paths one can take in life. But the one change I would make to this analogy is that I like to think of myself as a monkey (a very daft and well-mannered monkey, of course) that is able to make the leap to another branch far away and actually hold on when I get there, even though I may be dangling upside down hanging on by three toes. If you can't tell, for all of my complaining - which I do a lot of - I actually love getting myself into difficult situations and then figuring them out/getting through them and being successful to boot, well, most of the time... ok ok, maybe half the time. :)

One thing I wasn't quite sure how I'd handle was the return to an extremely frugal way of life. I wasn't living like a king when I was in Lafayette, California, but it was freakin' California!!! You can't help living it up a little when you are there for 10 years and you are making a really decent living. I didn't really think about the price of things too much - if I wanted something, my litmus test was if I would use it a lot or it "increased net happiness" (a totally stolen phrase, thanks you-know-who :) ) - things that would either make me or my family & friends happy; for me personally, things like my carbon-frame road bike, 12 pairs of running shoes every year, 15 - 20 yogurts a week, my fast Acura, - excesses that I certainly didn't need, but made life much more enjoyable on a daily basis. Anyway, those things are given away or on hold/in storage until/if I return to the U.S. Yes, I said "if", remember that tree analogy - who knows what's going to happen in two years - there are a lot of distant branches and other trees I've got my eye on. :)

It makes me happy that I pay 15 shillings (about 20 cents) for lunch most days, and that is my "big" meal. When I go into the supermarket, I debate whether I should get the 35-shilling bottle of yogurt (not even 50 cents US), and I when I want candy, I eat the baking chocolate instead of the regular chocolate because it costs 20 shillings less (i.e., a handful of pennies). I have no shelves or table in my "kitchen"/sitting room and just shove my food into a pile of plastic tupper-ware type containers, which I label and stack neatly in rows and columns on the floor (shout-out to my older brother Jeremy - OH YEAH! You know what I'm talkin' about!). I've shopped around for shelves and they are at least 2000 - 3000 shillings (i.e. the equivalent of about 40 US Dollars, which is nothing), but I'd have to haul them awkwardly uphill three or four kilometers, so the containers are just fine. And those ants I was complaining about in an earlier post, they are actually my best friends. Not only do they not bite me, but they act as a free maid service. If I drop food on the floor in the morning and come back in the evening, it is completely gone. This morning, some kind of maggot-type worm fell from the ceiling and landed on my buttered bread - which I totally ate without a second thought, btw. I tossed him on the floor, gave him a little tappy-tappy with my sandals, and left him for my friends. Before I left for work, they had already descended upon him.

Tomorrow I'm really going to write that post that I've been meaning to write for a while about the very important project I'm working on with my really good friend Chris. So, please check back in tomorrow!!! Goodnight... er, morning!