Days we relish

in Lombok, Indonesia

Solo journaling tonight. The boys are sleeping, or rather, it’s lights out. We started reading The Hobbit aloud in preparation for our next stop - New Zealand. Leo started us off reading, but we didn’t make it through even the first chapter. We stopped as the dwarfs and Gandalf were eating, drinking, and singing merrily in Bilbo’s tunneled home, uninvited. They stayed and stayed, ate and ate, suggested more specific types of cakes and drinks, announced they needed some time to sing before moving onto the “business” of the evening. As an introvert, I was filled with dread as imagined being in Bilbo’s place with overstaying guests.

Another day in semi-structured paradise. Waking up without an alarm and heading to breakfast around 8:30, dressed in our swimsuits, we eat a leisurely buffet breakfast then lay by and play in the pool. Ari was up last night at first with a “tiny bad dream,” then again around 1am because he couldn’t sleep. I gave in to his cajoling and he slept in our bed until 4:15am, when I woke up and sent him back to his bed. Days in a row without schedule, able to catch up from a crummy night’s sleep - it is a luxury I am relishing.

Today a woman on her motor scooter showed up at the hotel at 11:30 as promised to collect our 13 kilos of dirty laundry. She stacked and tucked our four plastic bags of dirty clothes (and Leo’s pillow) between her knees on the scooter platform and drove off. She’ll drop it off tomorrow, same time, clean, dry, and folded for about $18 USD. I wish she lived on Benjamin Street!