This new room is crawling with ants.  Lots and lots of ants.  They are the tiniest little ‘sugar ants’ but annoying all the same.  They are in my bed, and twice last night woke me when I felt something biting me.  This morning I looked in the glass of water here on the bedside table and it had about 10 dead ants floating in it.  Do I dare tell the manager yet another complaint?  What is the worst they can do?  I’ll have a think about it.

I awoke at 3.48 this morning and was, again, unable to go back to sleep.  Lack of sleep makes everything else even less tolerable.  If it doesn’t improve this weekend I will talk to the doctor about it on Monday when I see him for my regular weekly check up.

Halconia and ginger flowers

Gary and Ivy picked me up at 8am and we went off to the Parap Markets again.  The Thai Sweets stall was there and I got my black sticky rice with palm sugar topping and the little coconut patties that are so nice.  Also Mary, Don’s former student, made me a Laksa with no onion and then I bought a dish of fresh red papaya.  It was all so nice and it is now feeling like old times

Local papaya, chilies and bananas

when we used to come to Parap every Saturday when we were first married and we had our favorites and knew some of the stall holders by name.  Somewhere I have a photo of Allison as a tiny baby in a carrier strapped onto Don when we brought her to the Parap Markets.  It was one of the very first outings we brought her on after she was born.

Gary and Ivy dropped me in town after Parap.  I had an appointment to have my hair trimmed and also to meet Sabina and Jo for coffee at the Four Birds Café.  Sabina and Jo are good friends from Alice Springs who have moved to Darwin.  I love the name ‘Four Birds Café’.  As I recall from reading about it in a local magazine, it is four women who are the ‘four birds’ and run the café.  They have  very good coffee and one of my favorite gluten free cakes, almond and orange, and so I had a piece of that wrapped up to take away and have later.  It was a fun visit and Jo brought me a sweet little glass hummingbird ornament to hang in my room.  A bird memento of three ‘birds’ who met at the ‘four birds’.

I picked up a few grocery items and some vitamins and when I got to the taxi queue, there were actually several taxis there so I had one bring me back here.  Curious thing… his fare was $8.30… the last taxi I took from the exact same queue to this exact place was only $6.80.  How does that work???

I had my delicious markets food and then my piece of orange and almond cake and a rest, sort of… as much as I seem able to have at the moment… and the remainder of the day should flow lazily by as I relax and read and kill an ant here and there and contemplate a thing or two.