pickety pics

confirmation please that above child is the cutest in the universe. she has a snaggle tooth which is probably going to have to get fixed one of these days, but in the meantime, it just adds to her charm.
nada mucho to report today: L. staggered in at an astonishing 2:30 a.m. last night, which just goes to show that there is a social life to be had in AC, i am clearly just not part of it. i am a slave to my circadian rhythms. bed when it's dark. it feels good.
another hour long run this morning (these aliens are very persistent. they seem to be relenting a bit and giving me back some control over the weather, however; glorious sunshine), followed by seventyfive minutes avec le sadiste de yoga oh my god i hate that guy. he makes you do the most impossible things and you are just about falling over with the pain and wobbliness of whatever ridiculous position you have contorted yourself into and he goes on about ujai breathing and finding your spiritual center and all you can think is oh god please let us get soon to the bit where we get to lie face down on the floor. that's my favourite part of yoga, i have decided.
in other breaking news, i made myself go back and work some more on the money changer and his wife painting; my procrastination on that particular project was getting worse and worse, until i was avoiding even looking at that half of my bedroom. but i screwed my courage to the sticking place, plugged in l'ipod, inhaled some turpentine fumes to get myself in the mood, and nailed my bum to the chair. all but the bottom 6" x 6" square is done now, and i can inshallah finish that tomorrow during lunch, thereby staying On Track for my goal of one master copy per week. huzzah!

walk with L this afternoon to go and say bonjour to le donkey in the sunshine (she actually calls out, bonjour donkey! when she sees it, and has learned when she throws an apple to him and he fails to notice it (because he is not a super bright donkey, as donkeys go), to call out, donkey, pomme la bas! which is just the cutest thing EVER in her chinese accent.).

we are entering week five of the shopi boycott; i made stock for soup today, boiling up leeks and carrots and chicken bones like a good housewife. the thing i am most whimpering about at the moment is refined sugar (i want it to make cocoa with) but even i recognize that sugar would be a pathetic thing to cross my own picket line for. if i am going to cave in, it should at least be for something that theoretically i could die of some horrible vitamin deficiency without. scurvy. beriberi. something. i will not die without refined sugar to put in my cocoa, i will not.

i did however have dinner from the pizza truck, more because of the entertainment value than the quality of the food: the pizza truck which arrives in town every saturday night is the only thing apart from the town fair three weeks ago that i have seen here that draws more than three people. normally this town is dead as a doornail; you can walk around for an hour and not see a single solitary soul on the street. come saturday night, however, at the roundabout, they come out of the woodwork; there are maybe forty or fifty people hanging out eating pizza next to this grotty pizza truck, where they are making the pizzas (by hand, from locally grown pizza trees, so i am allowed), teenagers, old people, everyone, and it really makes you wonder where all these people GO during the rest of the week. maybe they're all vampires with no kitchens. who knows.
i also noticed today that one of the biggest pompes funebres shops actually shares a storefront with the ambulance dispatch service.

after pizza, G&H, C and i watched the VP debate. if you didn't pay attention to what she was actually saying, i was depressed to feel that sarah palin actually came off as the more appealing candidate. i stopped watching after 45 minutes because i just couldn't stand it any more. vaguely related (biden mentioned pakistani schools vs. madrassas briefly), i am reading "three cups of tea," which EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW. i am going to send him money as soon as i get home and have a reliable internet connection and so should you. he is working to build schools for girls in the sketchiest parts of pakistan and afghanistan, and he is amazing. i started tearing up over my sandwich while i was reading it during lunch today.