Yes, You Heard a Rooster and Yes, I Outsourced Breakfast

My only complaint about Bali and where we're currently staying is the iffy internet (in quality and speed) as it makes it difficult to do a lot online. For example, posting a picture of our current house could take up to four days and generally I just don't have the patience for such things.

So, sadly, I have been unable to put up a picture of our current bedroom, where yards of white mosquito netting drapes romantically around the bed (or playfully, as Fyo thinks it is his personal fort and loves to play hide and seek in the folds of fabric). Or a picture of our bathroom where the shower tiled with white river rocks is nestled into a plant covered rock wall.

When Kent and I looked at the house, between the bedroom and the bathroom - even though the bathroom lacks a bathtub - I sighed that sigh I usually sigh when we've found the house we have been looking for.

There were a couple things I failed to notice, because I couldn't see them at the time. On the plus side, I didn't see that the house comes with breakfast service. This means that between 8 and 9 am, saronged women come into your kitchen to make you breakfast. Generally, they make you coffee (if for some reason you haven't already had three cups) or tea, fruit salad, banana pancakes or fried eggs and toast. According to our neighbors, they will also make you anything else you want if you have the ingredients on hand. They then do all the dishes in the sink as well as the breakfast dishes.

On the down side. I didn't anticipate the war I would have to launch against mosquitoes and ants. After my husband took Fyo to school yesterday morning, I attacked the house and all offending creatures with the Indonesian equivalent of Raid. I gave up any hope of ever becoming a Buddhist in the process, but was immediately grateful to the toxic chemicals in the blue and orange can as I could then walk across the floor without cringing.

I also did not suspect I would find a frog in the desk drawer or on a shelf in the bookcase. After I found a frog in my desk drawer, I went downstairs to tell Kent, and found him and Fyo herding an even bigger frog out of the dining room. That night, before I crawled into bed to snuggle with my husband and baby, I saw what I swore was a baby iguana perched on the wall next to the light. Kent took a look and said it was actually a large gecko. When we told those lovely breakfast-making-saronged women the size of what Kent still claims is a gecko, they told us that was still on the small side.

Gecko. Baby iguana. Whatever, as long as it eats bugs and mosquitoes, I don't care what it's called.

But the mouse I saw exiting the kitchen window? And then saw again in the bathroom where it charged at me while I sat utterly defenseless and pantless on the toilet? Now I have a problem. I am considering getting a cat and donating it to the property.

This morning we were skyping with Kent's sister (in a brief moment of internet bliss) and in the middle of the conversation, she stopped and said, "Did I just hear a rooster?"

Yes, you did. And now we're so used to them we just take them for granted. Along with the ducks, the cows that actually sound like hippos, the clicking of the bamboo cow bells, the dogs barking, the pigs, the chickens, and the butterflies the size of dinner plates flying through our nonexistent windows.

I haven't spent much time in Bali, but I have yet to be out of earshot of a rooster. Turns out they don't just crow in the morning.

But since I am no longer making my own breakfast or my own bed, I think I can forgive the roosters.