the farang is useful after all

p'ganniga and the boys have been looking after me for just over a month now, and i must admit that i'm pretty much useless. i can't cook anything that they'd like to eat, i don't know how the washing machine works, i only do a semi-adequate job of washing dishes, and when i've got the boys to myself on saturday nights, i kind of don't get them to bed on time. today, though, i proved my worth. we've never really had a bug problem (there was a cockroach one time, and i made golf kill it for me, but he was even more afraid of it than i was, and so i think the thing's still alive somewhere), but today we had a mini-swarm (probably 30 or so) ants engulfing a mislaid drop of food. i scooped up the food with a tissue, and then ganniga and i sat on the floor and squished the ants with our fingers, chanting 'die, die' (words cannot express how funny this was. just know that the thai are a tidy, reserved, mostly buddhist-and-so-do-not-kill-living-things people, and they certainly never sit on the floor, delightedly killing ants). 'all die,' says ganniga. 'all dead,' say i. but no! not all dead, nor all die neither!! coming out of the wall and scampering across the floor to who knows where (probably the now-false rumor of food) was a mega-swarm (something in the hundreds) of ants!!! 'ah, so much!' says ganniga! 'ah, so many,' say i! i make a squirt-gunning motion and the accompanying sound effect towards the ants. 'kchss kchss, spray?' 'yes, kchss kchss...die...no have' says ganniga. so we don't have any raid or whatall, but i've cleaned the windows many a time back home, and i know from experience that windex (being pure chemicals) kills bugs...DEAD! just as well as any spray designated for that purpose. besides, i've seen 'my big fat greek wedding.' 'do you have any spray *kchss kchss* to clean *makes wiping motions* windows *points to windows*?' 'ah, chai, chai (yes, yes).' pulls out generic thai window cleaner. a couple of sprays later, the ants were writhing in their own chemically froth, and little max charged through with a mop. 'all die!! clean clean!!!' he cried, and the farang felt that she had earned her keep for the day.

now, as a pleasant deviation from my tense-shifting stories, here are some pictures of my mum as a pirate...

isn't she hilarious? don't you wish she was YOUR mum?

and this is her faithful sidekick, cookie crumble, who i have to admit isn't quite as cool, having no pink ruffly coat and so forth.

i'm sorry i'm missing all this, mum. send me a picture of your parrot.