We continue to get rain, although it slacked off a little in the past week. For us it means more clouds and slightly cooler weather. When there's no sun, we have no hot water since we have only solar-heated water. Showering isn't such a problem except when you don't feel well -- a hot shower is really nice when you're about to get sick. The problem is, illnesses often occur when it rains a lot and the weather is slightly cooler. Lots of people are not well in our area at the moment, myself included, but I don't think it's Covid. Certainly hope not. There's coughing, but not dry coughing. No fevers that I know of. Anyway, dishes are the big hot water issue at the moment for me. I'm lazy and really don't want to boil water for dishes after cooking, but the extra effort removes the cooking oil, grease and butter from dishes, pans and metal chopsticks. (I wonder if there's a way we could inject boiling water and dish soap into our bodies to remove the unhealthy stuff that clogs our veins and arteries. We should look into that.)
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We're doing our best to be ecologically responsible, such as using metal chopsticks and re-useable cloth grocery bags, and recycling plastic bottles, We've been recycling cardboard as well as plastic, which means giving all the items to a lady on a bicycle who comes by our house once or twice a week. I also walk everywhere, but that's more a function of safety than anything else. But it's not really that safe to walk since motorbikes and now cars ride on sidewalks, and motorbikes and cars always cut turns so they're driving into oncoming traffic. This means that when you cross the street in a striped zone and look to make sure oncoming traffic doesn't speed up to hit or threaten you, a car or bike will rip around a corner and possibly hit your blindside because it's shortcutting across the wrong lane on a turn. Happens all the time. I've been hit twice -- not hard -- in the past two months by this illegal but routine motorist technique. Then the motorists will glare at you when they're wrong because you made them either slow down or swerve to avoid having an accident, thereby damaging their bikes. The motorbike issue also exists in the park, which I thought was for pedestrians. I don't care when I'm alone because I use a walking stick due to back and safety issues, but I worry about my daughter Joanna, who wrongly assumes people will do the right thing and slow down when they see pedestrians.
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The bikes and cars on the sidewalk were especially worrisome for me when I picked up our daughter Joanna from school every day. She would come bounding out of school and face danger from bikes riding right up to the school stairs, and from cars riding down the sidewalk. The bikes and cars aggressively honked their horns at us (often from behind) as we walked home on the sidewalk. That particular issue is moot now. I took Joanna out of the school. I won't address the reasons. For now, I'm providing instruction. When I can get her off video, she shows real signs of being able to read. She knows lots of sight words (am, are, see, I, my, etc.). I've found some wonderful sites online where you can download books, and I resumed paying crazy prices to get books shipped here from the U.S. to Vietnam. We're taking photos of snails, red ants, stink bugs, lizards, spiders and butterflies on our walks. She's got a remarkable eye for spotting little critters.
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Our son Elijah is extremely close to crawling, getting up on his haunches and rocking back and forth. He's got two bottom teeth, produced with much anguish. He's also learned to lead with his left, knocking off my glasses twice and popping out lenses both times. Fun guy!
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Hope all U.S. citizens vote on Tuesday if you haven't voted already. We have CNN on every waking hour, even if we're not home or in the room ... hate waiting for the TV to "warm up." The results of this election could have a real impact on our family.

Phuong Pham Millman:🧡Subscribe: https://bit.ly/3uXkQGo
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Cloudy with chance of ... sidewalks, insects, ready to crawl
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