Day 407: She's Cut Off

By lara, lara@trippingonwords.com

 

Well, we aren’t at the orphanage any longer. In the interest of Renee’s health and our own mental health we have relocated to the nearby guesthouse. This means no urphans for the last couple of days. Not surprisingly, we miss the monsters, particularly as we know that until we get home they will be all a-flutter with a vague anxiety that we have somehow left without saying goodbye. We have dispatched messengers to stop them “from fearing” but we know the reunion will be sweet nonetheless.

 

So it has been all work, little play, and lots of first aid for us. Renee is being the biggest champ in the land, coping with a first trip to Africa, extensive complications about hospitalization and drug interactions, and lots of goop for burn treatment. She can’t really move, so is stuck on her back in a house with no TV other than occasional music videos from the early 90’s. Which are a punishment in and of themselves.

 

So I “sacrificed” myself to her entertainment. We talked about celebrity gossip, read magazines, and played a new card game that I LOVE called phase 10 in between dressing changes and phone calls about what exactly they had prescribed her. If all patients were like her, this bedside manner stuff would be no problem. Who doesn’t want to talk about Gwen Stefani’s pants for half an hour?

 

As a result, I didn’t get on my actual email for most of the day. I saw the consequences of this day of treatment when I opened my email. I had 52 messages.

 

Further inspection revealed that I had 34 from Christ Church Unity’s accidental mailing list to people who had not yet received purple bracelets. I was as confused as you probably are. We must backtrack:

 

On the plane ride over, Claire read an article about a man who gave out free purple bracelets to encourage positivity. In her never ending search for such a quality, Claire decided that we should email the people and try to get some of these free bracelets for the kids and everyone else here. For reasons still unclear to me, the email went from my email account. So I got to deal with the weekly Christ Church Unity updates (Claire’s becoming an email evangelist…) and today’s deluge. The upshot of today’s emails was that it was an accidental mass message sent only to people who not yet received any bracelets. The email chain quickly turned into a “Reply All” orgy of anger at the church and general proof that these purple positivity bracelets were in fact quite necessary. The upshot of this message for us is that there is a slight chance that 300 purple bracelets will show up inexplicably months after Claire and I have left. Oh well.

 

The rest of my inbox made perfect sense.

 

I had 12 from Claire, and one from a man named TingaTinga:

 

DEAR CLAIR [sic]

 

PLEASE CALL ME URGENTLY

 

TINGATINGA

 

I honestly don’t know why I let her onto the internet…

 

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