Happy Birthday Daddy!!!

Happy birthday, Daddy!!! Imagine, me remembering someone’s birthday! I know it’s not exactly the right date, but I’m going away tomorrow for another field trip, this time to Michinji, so I might not get another chance soon, and phone is pretty temperamental – like myself!

Happy multiple-21st, Diddy-Papa, hope you have a good one!! I don’t know how you manage to be the same age every single year, but I guess it’s just because you’re special? Have good day anyway, I hear the weather at home is magnificent right now so get out there and enjoy it! Maybe cycle to visit me for a while? Might take you a few months but it would be nice! You’d get a marvellous tan as well...

So – right. What have I been up to lately? Well, good question. Mainly I’ve been preoccupied with being eaten alive by a variety of small insects. Mosquitoes, ants... you name it, it’s probably bitten me. My left ankle, in particular, now very closely resembles a Martian landscape. All red and bumpy... I’m afraid to count them, and the itching is driving me demented, slowly but surely. But sure, it’s better than being bitten by a snake.

I’m trying to keep things in perspective here.

Work-wise, I’m knackered. I have been on more field trips than I can think of off-hand, and boy am I tired. I’m feeling a bit run-down to tell you the truth. It’s been go, go, go for the last few weeks at least, and now I just feel like lying down in a cold and darkened room and hibernating. I’ve had a niggling headache since Sunday evening and I feel roasting hot sometimes and freezing others. Very weird. And my back is sore. And I’m a bit of a “Moaning Michael” today (no offence, little bro!) as a result.

I’m feeling better than I was, though. I think for the last few days, especially, I was just really exhausted emotionally and a bit lonely. I think you never realise just how much you rely on friends and family for support and comfort until suddenly you are utterly without any of them. It’s tough. I’m coping ok though, and I think my mood has picked up a bit today. So thank God for that! I’m feeling a bit more positive.

On a lighter note, though, my good old German buddy is back from doing a tour of various parishes around the country, and one of the dogs here has had a litter of puppies!! Anyone with so much as the vaguest acquaintance with me will know what a sucker I am for anything small and/or fluffy, so you will well know how excited I am by this! It’s almost too much cuteness to behold in one go! There’s EIGHT of them! Not ONE puppy, but EIGHT!!! Eight little fluffy balls of cuteness and love. And the crazy dog is gone – we used to have three adult dogs in the parish, two male, one female, and one of the males was more or less the canine equivalent of a raging sociopath. Seriously, he’d bitten people really aggressively about 4 or 5 times before they eventually got rid of him. I was terrified of him, he was totally loco... but now he’s gone to stay with someone else. Don’t laugh at me! Seriously, he is. That’s what they told me.

Oh, and I’ve been thinking lately about how much I simply CANNOT believe I have been here for over two months already. I think it bodes well for me that it feels like I touched down yesterday – I’d say ye’re all having a ball at home without me, but it surprises me how much time is flying at my end! I have only three and a bit months left here... it’s really strange to think about, because when I left, it felt like I was going to be away for aeons. Turns out time really does fly, when you’re (mostly) having fun.

Mad Ted.