yes please

9:34am July 6, 2009

I’ve got a little ritual down here for my mornings. I wake up, like clockwork, at about 7am. I lie in bed for a few minutes, absorbing that I’m in Bali, thinking about my dreams, listening to the sounds outside. I get up, bathe, dress, and walk up the road toward the monkey forest to get breakfast. I pass the woodcarver a few doors up from my house and he smiles and gives me the thumbs up. I smile and give him the thumbs up and say “Selamat pagi!” (good morning) and he says “jalan jalan?” (where are you walking?) and I mime coffee and he nods and smiles and gives me a thumbs up. I grin, fully from ear to ear, for the next half mile. This routine mostly continues, verbatim, with everyone I meet along the road. Everyone wants to know where I’m going, everyone wants to say hello, everyone wants to smile. I love this about Bali.

I usually walk into Ubud for breakfast, which entails walking through the monkey forest, along the road that doubles as the motorbike road. It’s a little stressful sometimes navigating the motorbikes coming in both directions and keeping a respectful distance from the monkeys that, I won’t lie, scare me a little bit. The walking is nice, since I drive almost everywhere at home, and because its so warm and lovely here. Breakfast is usually fresh blended fruit juice of some kind (it is official as of yesterday that I’m totally DONE with watermelon juice. I beat my love for that into the ground) and a bowl of fruit with yogurt, or an omelet.

I’ve officially given up milk and coffee, which is a huge bummer for me, but I figure will be easier to do here, so I can adjust more easily when I get home. I recognize that milk and I (as Austin would say) do not get along. My acupuncturists at home keep telling me that I suffer from “damp heat” and have told me repeatedly that it’s largely due to the amount of milk (half and half, actually) I drink and the amount of cheese I eat that I feel so crappy. But I haven’t been willing to give it up because I drink so much tea and so much coffee, and I cannot drink either without copious amounts of half and half in it. But, according to my new acupuncturist friend Danielle, coffee contributes huge amounts of heat into my body. So, the fact that I’m suffering from damp heat, means that every time I’m drinking a cup of coffee drenched with half and half, I’m introducing more of exactly what keeps me sick into my body. Mostly I only drink milk with my coffee or tea, so to eliminate coffee and tea means that 90% of my milk consumption will be taken care of. And, no, I’m not willing to try drinking my tea black. What’s the point? I live for half and half. I drink tea as an excuse to guzzle half and half. I told Danielle, I’d happily lie on a beach with a cold pint of half and half and a straw and be perfectly content. So I’ve given it up. Love and light to you, cream and coffee. I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry we can’t be together anymore.

I had a pretty magical day yesterday, which did not involve me setting foot in the clinic even once. I had my morning breakfast date with myself and then planned to head to the clinic but ended up kidnapped by Danielle on a crazy adventure to an organic restaurant hidden in a field of rice paddies, and then running into friends and listening to their stories about visiting the psychic who lives across from the clinic and Javanese medicine men, and then, of course, I needed a nap. And then, because we’d been doing nothing but sleeping and eating all day, Danielle and I felt we deserved a nice dinner so we went to a really great restaurant where we ordered $5 seared Ahi steaks (heck of delicious) and a huge piece of chocolate mousse cake and fried bananas. Our waiter kept setting dishes down in front of us saying, “yes please” which kills me. I’m basically not starving in Bali. On the way back, Danielle and I stopped outside a bar where a Balinese reggae band was playing --once again adorable beyond words, and spent the walk giggling at how many times we heard “Need transport? Taxi lady? Nice tattoo!” We started telling stories about bummer bugs, lizard, snakes, etc. and ended up scaring ourselves silly on our walk through the dark monkey forest when a dog ran up behind us. We think we scared the dog too, because when we both screamed, he stopped dead in his tracks and didn't move until we started walking again, doubled over from hysterical embarrassed laughter and how silly we were being. The dog ended up trotting along side us all the way home and tried to follow us into the family compound and we had to shut the wooden doors and latch them to prevent him from getting in. I went to bed feeling guilty that I had done nothing that day that related at all to my purpose here, but decided to let myself off the hook. I need to recount the story of my time in the acupuncture and prenatal clinics the other night still but I think I’ll wait. For now, I’ll say it was amazing and I worked really hard and I learned a lot. And yesterday was only day 4 and everyone takes Sunday off in Bali, and I’m still settling in and today is going to be a non stop clinic slog, so I declare that my day of eating and sleeping was okay. I’ve just got to be careful to not turn my trip into nothing but doing that. I fell asleep to a Balinese sing along of Hotel California being sung next door, the dog scratching on the wooden doors of the compound, and the sound of it beginning to rain.

Miss you guys. Wish you were here.