Another Tax Deduction

We're expecting another tax deduction in August of this year. Janice is pretty adamant that we'll have enough tax deductions after this.

"I'm too old for this," she says. I don't feel like I have much standing to argue otherwise since I'm not the one giving birth. I guess she's almost right. Scientifically speaking, this pregnancy is considered "geriatric" which means if it was person it'd be wearing dentures, using a cane, and wearing shoes with velcro straps on them.

Adi, Elliot, and Oliver are all super excited. It's the most anticipated child yet, but I'm not playing favorites. It's just simple math. When you're expecting your first baby, you and your wife are excited. When you're expecting your second baby, three people are now excited. When you're expecting the third baby, there's four people excited about it. When you expect your fourth, there's five people excited about it. And so on. Each child brings more excitement. Maybe once you have five or six you can't help but keep going because it's so exciting. I'll have to ask my brother Matt. His family just welcomed their tenth child a week ago. Congratulations!

"I'm happy for them, but don't get any ideas," says Janice, making sure I'm paying attention. "I'm too old for this."

It's hard to hide a pregnancy when you live in a little missionary compound. Not that we're ashamed to be pregnant but sometimes, in a world where it's hard to have boundaries, it's nice to cling to something you don't have to share, even if it's only information. But at a certain point, people start to get suspicious.

Our pantry, along with the local stores, had run out of pickles. So Janice asked our neighbor, Mary, if they had any pickles we could buy from them.

"No," Mary said.

"Do you have any leftover juice?," Janice said. "I'd take leftover juice if you had any."

"Why do you need pickle juice?"

"Just kind of been thirst for it lately, I guess."

Mary narrowed her eyes suspiciously as she considered why anyone would want to drink pickle juice. She put two and two together and came up with four. "Are you...?"

"Yes, I am." Said Janice, "Now give me the pickle juice, please."

When Janice was expecting Adilene, she craved pickle juice and other things with vinegar. When she was expecting the two boys, she craved sour things. Now she's craving vinegar again. Based on that trend, we're having another girl. But that's just a scientific hypothesis. It's not provable... yet. It will be soon, if we can find an ultrasound tech who knows what they're looking for. I mean, we all know what we're looking for, we just need someone who knows what they're looking at it when they see it.

Our other neighbor, Sarah, along with a smattering of children, came over to give Janice an ultrasound using a portable probe hooked up to an iPad. As she greased up Janice's belly, Sarah looked around at the onlookers in our living room and said something like, "We know more about each other than anyone should." It's true. It has its blessings and curses.

The ultrasound looked just as good as any other ultrasound I've seen, all of which cost hundreds of dollars more. Then again, none of us could tell if we were looking at a boy, a girl, or a kidney. I'm exaggerating, of course. I don't want to offend Sarah. She did a great job. The jury is still out on the gender though.

We went to the Boram Haus Sik, the local hospital, to get a "professional" ultrasound. That wasn't helpful either.

"The power has buggered up our good machine," the doctor said. It didn't surprise me. Anything hooked up to the PNG electrical grid has a way of dying. Electricity is complicated so I'll use an analogy. Say your job was to wash a car but the water pressure in your hose (like the electricity in an outlet) switched from, say, a fire hose to a drinking straw and then back again several times a minute, you'd probably throw down the hose and quit. Electrical appliances do the same thing.

That wasn't the only reason she didn't reveal the baby's gender. "We had it happen where we told someone the baby's gender and they didn't like is so they tried to do their own abortion in the village. So now we only give the gender in the third trimester." I was a little taken aback by the tragic nature of the comment, and also that she seemed to think we might try it ourselves. At any rate, we didn't find out the gender.

Janice is twenty weeks along so at this point Sarah's iPad should be able to pick up all the clues we need to figure out the gender. It's just hard to find a moment where everyone involved has five minutes to spare at the same time. The iPad also has to be charged. The app has to be updated. It's basically impossible to have all those things happen at once. Stay tuned.

Living on a little base has its challenges. They say that the leading cause of missionaries leaving the field is other missionaries. With that in mind, the logical course of action would be to keep missionaries as far apart as possible. Instead, we've been jammed into a shoebox. And since real estate in PNG is ridiculously expensive, we get charged a lot of money for the pleasure. This means that everything outside the front door, and even the space ten feet inside our front door, is public domain inhabited by others and their children. We have a great team here but that doesn't prevent us from getting tired of each other. You could live with Mother Theresa and you'd still find things that make you sigh deeply.

"Why does she make so much noise when she prays at four in the morning?"

"Why are there so many orphans around? My children are trying to nap!"

You get the idea.

New Base

Our organization is working on addressing the space problem. We've purchased a bigger property and have been digging holes, buying kit homes, and employing half the town in an effort to get the new base up and running. But Papua New Guinea refuses to be hurried.

Plus, the new base will still be pretty full of people. If you're an introvert, there's nowhere to hide.

Before I began dating Janice, I had bought ten acres in Alaska and was planning on being a hermit. That desire resurfaces frequently. I was looking at parcels of land the other day. "Look, you can buy forty acres easy," I said.

Janice wasn't convinced. "You'll have to move there without me. Besides, last time we were there you complained about the cold. Now help me with the dishes."

Jogging

I haven't complained about being cold lately. The heat has been killing me, especially since I've taken up jogging.

I've taken it up with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner of war digging trenches in a work camp.

Several times in the last few months, I stayed awake most of the night having heart palpitations, which is less fun than it sounds. So I visited a clinic in Port Moresby where I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I was also told that, due to all those things, my heart was a bit enlarged. In Dr. Suess's story, The Grinch, the main character undergoes an emotional transformation which causes his tiny heart to grow three sizes bigger. In real life, your heart growing larger is a bad thing. "Have you been under stress recently?" She asked.

"Yes," I said, "It started when I packed up Charlie in Ohio. It hasn't really stopped since." She looked a little curious as to who Charlie was and why I was packing him or her up. She didn't ask, so I didn't bother telling her that Charlie was an airplane.

"Well, it wouldn't hurt to lose some weight," she said.

She was wrong. It's been hurting an awful lot. I've been jogging in the tropics because I figured either I'll die or get skinny trying. Like normal, I was wrong. Neither has happened.

I'll typically jog around the dirt road that circles our peninsula. The scene plays out the same every time. I'll be lurching up behind a local who is meandering innocently down the street. As I draw closer, they hear my lungs rattling and my feet dragging behind them. Thinking something horrible is about to befall them, they'll turn and gasp just a bit as they step aside. Then they politely wave. "Apinun." A guttural whisper is all they get in return. I closely resemble a wounded animal, triggering the instinctual urges in the neighborhood dogs to run me down and finish me off as an easy meal. When I come in the front door, my supportive wife gags, climbs up onto the counter (which is a remarkable feat for a geriatric pregnant women), and points to the hallway. "Go take a shower! Stop dripping on my floor!"

Oh, doesn't it feel good to be alive.