Baby dog enjoying some morning loving

Must. Stop. Posting. Pictures. Of. Spike.

Really I do have a life.

He makes me do it.

My boys

Dom. Spike. Love.

The labels say it all really.

Spot the puppy

He is redonkulous, which is as you know, significantly more absurd than ridiculous.

New tattoo

I love tattoos. This is my fourth - a wolf and raven totem. The artwork is based on a glass sculpture by Alano Edzerza, a Tahltan artist. For me it symbolizes us. Dom and I. Wolf and Goddess.

Got to keep him now.

Paul's leaving do

Those who haven't left. Yet.

Goodbye Paul, we'll miss you!

Paul is leaving. About time too. He has been at the British Council in Chiang Mai far too long. TEFL is a gypsy job and staying in one place for too long is unhealthy. You start noticing details like, how badly paid you are and how crap the job is. If you are going to get stuck you may as well get stuck in a regular life with a decent salary, a pension and all the 2.5 kids / mortgage accessories that go with it. If you choose TEFL you need to change the scenery often, ruthlessly and with no regrets.

New toy

With much naughty potential!

Dom is such a perv, you have to love him.

The old ways

Mum and dad are moving from my beloved childhood home. Times change. They are getting old and moving into a bungalow in Hucknall, closer to family. Their family: brothers, sisters. After all, what good am I (and my sentimental longing for my childhood) a useless child of 39 and half a world away? Thus the floor boards, and cardboard boxes. And this old typewriter which mum used to use to bang out dad's invoices.

When dad worked, when mum typed, when I was a child.

I rescued it from a charity shop end. When I have a home I will take it and keep it there.

Luminous beauty

I have been reading, on the recommendation of a friend, A New Earth by Ekhart Tolle. Among the many lessons in this book. one stands out. The world as we perceive it is an illusion created by our thoughts. This little piece of enlightenment isn't Ekhart's - it is Buddhist.

I can illustrate it in this image. When I took and blogged this photo 6 months ago I named it 'luminous beauty' entranced by how the setting sun had lit the petals. As I revisit this blog today (April 12, 09) and am inspired to add some reawakening narrative my thoughts are less generous: 'meh give me the humble snowdrop anyday'.

You see I am a different person today. I am less in love with my Thai past and increasingly enamored by my American future. Ironically neither exist. They are both illusions I have painted over a present that has become as hard to find as the holy grail. The flowers (luminous orchids or humble snowdrops) are essentially invisible to me until I learn how to be present.

One day.

Now.

The Lily

Sitting pretty

Lily is Roso's sister. A friend of ours had taken care of a stray while she had kittens and we agreed to take one (or possibly two) and someone else would take the third. We had the first choice and I immediately chose Lily. Roso betwitched Dom into choosing her by doing this cute thing of pretending to gaze up at him adoringly. Guys dig that.

The odd thing about cats is that you can pursuade yourself all you like that they are your pets, but give the situation even a modicum of objective relfection and it is so obviously untrue it is embarrassing. Cats own you.

Anyway, we'd had them for a few weeks when they traded owners for some private
femalefeline reason. I became Roso's agent of evil and Dom became Princess Lily's adoring slave. Lily (like all women with taste) has a serious 'collector's' passion for wolves and so she naturally conquered Spike within days of sending us out to buy him. "Oh, are you two going shopping? Bring me a small male T'ing that will follow me around all day and look at me adoringly, even when I hit him. Hard. Repeatedly."

And we did.

Never underestimate a
womancat.

The Roso

Givin' teh meen face

I awoke this morning and slowly opened my eyes to find this face inches from my own. This face with these eyes. I read somewhere that, unlike dogs, cats don't have facial expressions. They are however able to communicate without words, and the effect is the same as our smile, or frown or (as in this case) psychotic gaze. The thoughts Roso was downloading into my sleeping cerebral cortex went something like: 'You will do great evil in my name. You will conquer the world and call it Roso. Oh. And. By the way, get rid of T'ing'.

'T'ing' is Roso and Lily's name for Spike.

Don't ask how we know that.

Tree planting

For the world or karma?

To celebrate Asalha Puja Day had a tree planting morning at Huay Tung Tao in Chiang Mai. A 'bit of a do' orgnaised by the local staff at work. I wasn't sure whether this was a merit making exercise or simply a chance to make the world a better place. Let's go with the latter, I can live with that.

An aside: for all the spiritual journeying I don't get merit making. I understand the need to quieten karma... like stilling the ripples on a pond. But to buy fish or turtles in order to release them perplexes me. The small lives wouldn't be trapped if there wasn't a market in the merit of their release. It is like making people sick in order to cure them.

Anyway we arrived to find sapplings leaning weakly in pre-dug holes. Which we lovingly (and then hastily as it began to rain) filled with chunks of gritty earth.

I didn't feel much better for it so I hope the world is feeling a little greener.

Garden glimpses 2

Bird of Paradise

A bit flashy, these flowers are the egomaniacs of our garden. Lurid orange creatures shouting "Look at us, we are beautiful!". And they are, but no one likes a show off. I miss the delicate unassuming flowers of England: snowdrops, crocuses, violets, london pride, forget me nots, snapdragons and bluebells. Flowers that know that mid-shin is plenty high enough, that there is secret power in making people bend over to admire you. But deep down I think you get what you deserve. I deserve these gaudy tropical idiots, outrageous bougainvillea, dizzying frangipani - I am too robust for delicate blossoms. In the other(imaginary / parallel) life, where I remained in England and was a spinster with a houseful of cats I almost certainly had a garden full of hollyhocks.

Waist high and mad with colour.

Garden glimpses

White orchids

I find it magical how flowers suddenly appear in my garden. One day I have a bunch of green and then suddenly there is a flower - brief and beautiful. Likewise I find Dom's utter indifference to flowers astonishing. How can someone so sensitive not be moved to find a small exquisite thing is sharing a moment of existence with us?

How can you cry at films and be blind to the fragile emotion of a flower?

New gadget alert

Drawing Tablet

Dom thinks I am an artist so when he found a drawing tablet he urged me to get it. I have been looking at them for a few months off and on (more off). I don't know I feel less of an artist now than I ever have - but that may be a reaction to the fact that Dom decided to have faith in me as one. I am tired of the label that I briefly in a moment of false confidence agreed to. I don't understand the need to label. Artist. Writer. Like giving yourself the word makes any difference. Dom thinks by calling me an artist I will be one. I think an artist is a person who makes art. I don't. But hey I might with this new gadget.

Anyway, new gadget. Gadgets are good.

Foot massage

Our Saturday treat

Almost every Saturday we go to Kad Suan Kaew after work and (after a Starbucks latte) get a foot massage. Dom was an addict from the very first massage and can't bear to go a week without a fix. I don't know how he will manage when we move away from massage land. I am more ambivalent. It bothers me that someone is able to put me soundly to sleep by pressing the 'soul' of my foot. I hate feeling like I am waking from the dead as I rouse myself at the end of the massage. I also don't know what good it is doing. But it feels powerful, in a strange way. It is one of those things I enjoy, but mostly I do it for Dom because for whatever reason - I suspect he just likes attention from women (even old ones) and takes a wolf-like pleasure in being petted - he loves it.

And I love him.

Morning coffee

At Wawee

When we feel we have obscenely over-patronised Starbucks we come to Wawee. We love coffee, well Dom loves coffee and I have a love/hate relationship with it - at least in its fresh incarnation. In this picture Dom is hiding behind his coffee cup because we have had an argument. We do this a lot of two people who are self-proclaimed soul mates. The reasons are legion and I won't go into them in this post but it is worth noting. We are in love but we don't have the idyllic relationship some people assume (possibly in response to our projection). We tend to keep our dirty laundry private - but it does exist.

Basketful after basketful.

I really can't believe...

...Dom and I work here

So the previous picture was taken from the first (US second floor) just beyond that corner room (which is Jon, my boss's, office). I do feel privileged to work in such a gorgeous environment but then again I think that the beauty makes up for the fact that I can only derive moderate enjoyment out of my job. Nothing to do with the organisation or the usual moans and groans about TEFL. But I am a manager of a group of people who want nothing more than to be left alone. The are great people who can and do wonderfully well without me, but they are happy where they are. They are in such harmony with this building. They want a manager who is willing to do what they want when they want it done, but who otherwise minds their own managerial business. Whereas I really need to work with people, or more importantly situations where change is needed - I loved managing start ups for Bell and have never really recovered from the exhilaration. It is a daily conflict of interests in the loveliest of surroundings.

But at least we make a great postcard.

Work...

...looks so nice when the room is empty

This is the view from my desk, looking down the long thin length of the teachers' room. The British Council in Chiang Mai is in an old Thai style house. Creaky wooden floors and shutters. But is it as empty as it looks? About a month ago, I was walking across that very piece of floor you see in the picture when a 'ghost' moved through me - just at the point of passing the chair on the right. I am not Dom, I don't 'do' dead people... but that was unmistakable - the sense that someone walked through my very space. I felt where they began and where they ended. I sensed their puzzlement as they turned and looked for their ghost as I looked for mine. No malice, no sadness, no haunting "but I don't want to be dead"ness of the cliched restless spirit. Just someone going about the business in another plane or time, but sharing our space.

Altogether a rather lovely first contact with the otherside.

More Spikeyness

Doing the cute face

He is actually ridiculous in his mastery of cute faces, because it is clearly just so much ham... designed especially to maximize the amount of attention, loving and treats he can wheedle from us. He even has Dom giving him people food (unheard of) and letting him lick clean empty yoghurt pots and cereal bowls. He has even slowly but inexorably won over the cats; although Roso manages to retain a semblance of puppy-indifferent dignity - at least when we are watching.

Spike

Aka baby dog, the pike

We don’t like small dogs. We like big ones: Siberian Huskies; Great Danes; Irish Wolfhounds.

Wolves.

Spike conned us.

We were walking past a pet-shop in the car park of Kad Suan Kaew shopping mall when he produced a flourish of attitude. He woofed and stomped in his food bowl (possibly it was dinner time) and stood there all energy and focus. We were smitten.

We went into the mall and sat in Pizza Company, amidst cheese and slice, listing the variety of reasons why we shouldn’t have a dog, before returning downstairs and buying him.

For weeks Dom couldn’t say the word Chihuahua. Spike (who spent about 24 hours named Viking but it wouldn’t stick) was ‘a mixed breed’ to anyone who enquired (and many did). But he patiently taught us to be proud of him regardless of size – and now we are happy to declare to anyone who will listen: we have a Chihuahua!

The place we currently call...

...homeOf course home is also where the heart is, but this little corner of northern Thailand is where we lay our heads if not our hats.

Apologies for the cramped image; large house + small soi = not enough space to take a photo. I think this is the largest space I have ever lived in: three bedrooms, three bathrooms (four if you count the maid's room which is full of dismantled bed as we don't have a live in maid), large living room, kitchen and laundry room. It is detached with a small but florabundant garden.

The house is a stone's throw from the river Ping, which is great until it bursts it banks. Luckily that hasn't happened in our tenure. So far.

I am a real home person so my roosting place is quite important to me. Dom would live happily in a box. I could... but would rather not and I try not to compromise even though renting. Admittedly, everywhere has a little bit of compromise, this is rather inconvieniently located and is very unfortunately next door to an incinerator. Had we known this we would probably not signed the contract. But the house itself is perfect - a little big for two (when we were making the decision about where to live we were hoping for guests) but with the cats and puppy scampering round it is definitely home.

For now.

Your new phone cost...

...how much?In truth, Dom's shocked face wasn't a reaction to the cost of my new phone (Sony Ericsson S500i, 7,990 baht plus an extra 1,500 for a 2 gig memory upgrade). He fully supports my spendthrift urges especially when it comes to gadget aquisition. He has been "encouraging" me to buy a new phone for months and in fact it was he who made the actual purchase this time, while I was at work.

So this image has an element of poetic license (see quote/unquote) as it enabled me to introduce the new phone + photo-blog theme.

What actually prompted Dom's expression was me, post dinner (Art Cafe, Tha Phae gate. Her: avacado sandwich on 5 grain bread with cottage fries and a diet coke Him: Open faced chilli-burger and a large Heineken) casually playing with my phone while waiting for the bill . I scrolled through the functions, set the camera raised the lens pointed it at Dom and said conversationally (as one is able to do with someone with whom one is deeply intimate): "Oh, we have to go home soon - I need to poo".

So that's the face I captured...

"OMG you said poo!"