Just a thought

Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy.

Today I felt pretty normal. I visited one of our preschools, so it was a good day (the younger kids make my job way more fun). I stopped by my host family's house to drop off some food and my host mom cried, but it was a normal cry instead of a sad cry (but that's another story I will eventually get to), so that was an improvement. And my clothes dried before the rain came. And, I bought a ton of veggies in the market: onions, tomatoes, green beans, carrots (really giant carrots), and spinach, and to balance out my diet a little I took advantage of the dwindling apple season to pick some slightly bruised but hopefully still delicious apples. I had a nice conversation with one of my neighbors walking up the giant hill (we chatted about the weather, of course). I cooked a nice stir fry with some tofu I bought in the city on Saturday (who knew I would find fresh extra-firm tofu in Guatemala?). And I settled in for some work, reading and cleaning, like any normal afternoon.

Just now, though, I was going to fold my clothes (I was too lazy to fold them when I had first taken them down from my roof) and I noticed one of my new shirts was missing. I don't normally pay a lot of attention to clothes, but this shirt was one I had just bought on Saturday to replace my super-raggedy black shirts that have gross white pit stains. I layer a lot because it is normally cold here in the morning, so I was happy to find a nice black shirt in good shape for less than a dollar. This morning I went to wash some clothes, along with this shirt, and didn't notice it was gone until just now putting my clothes away. I searched everywhere, retracing the few steps from my roof to the rooms I inhabit in my house. I searched through my dirty clothes hamper, the clothes hanging up around the house to dry, the kitchen, the bathroom, the roof again. Nowhere to be found. I even checked to see that the clipped off tag was in the trash to reassure myself that I didn't lose it on the way home on Saturday and that it indeed did exist this morning. The tag was in the trash can, where I left it this morning, but the shirt was nowhere to be found.

This bugs me because a similar thing happened last week. I had just washed a few things, including this blue shirt that I've had for ages. I have really good memories of things I've done in this blue shirt-helping out at a minga in Ecuador and shopping in Otavalo, walking around dusty Uganda, attending a Mayan ceremony here in Guatemala and burning a little hole in the bottom with one of my lit candles. This shirt has literally been everywhere with me because it's a really nice shirt, made with quick-dry material that is super light. And it just disappeared from my roof. I thought that maybe the wind blew it away, but that has never happened, and it was never dry during the period it was on my roof (one of those lovely rainy periods when my clothes stay wet for days), so it wouldn't be floating around. I can visualize it hanging on my clothesline with two clothespins holding it in place. And one afternoon I went to take the stuff inside to try to dry it, and it was gone. The same thing happened quite some time ago but I didn't think anything of it. Yet again I thought this one shirt had just flown off the roof, but recent events have led me to believe that my clothes are either disintegrating or there is someone behind these disappearances.

I don't really know what to think. The only way to get on my roof is from my neighbor's house. Do I knock on their door and ask if someone has been sporting some new clothes lately? I don't want to start problems up, especially with only six months left. Or maybe since there isn't much time left, it wouldn't matter if my neighbors thought I was framing them for stealing clothes. I guess I'll see if anything else goes missing and I'll have to be more careful with my favorite clothes, maybe only drying them inside. Again, my clothes don't matter all that much to me, only that most of my clothes are in pretty bad shape and when something nice goes missing, I definitely notice it. And I feel like maybe I just imagined everything.

Just wanted to share the newest strange happenings here in Guatemala. Hope all is well. Happy Wednesday!