Hot weather and Hope

People are often surprised when I tell them that I do not like hot weather. Just because I come from Yangon doesn’t mean that I must like the hot and humid weather. Many of them are perfectly happy to announce they hate cold weather because they are from Michigan or Minnesota. Well, I wouldn’t go to that extreme level of emotion to express my dislike for a particular type of temperature or season but of course I have a preference. I get super sweaty and smelly and perfume can’t hide it easily. I take multiple showers a day which may contribute to my ever increasing pile of laundry. No, thank you, if possible, to hot season.

Anyway, I am back in South East Asia and it is mostly hot. Hey I will get used to it, no big deal. I will just complain for a bit until I have other things to complain about, like coughing a lot. Preference, no preference, it doesn’t matter when I have to follow my spouse. He is really, really nice by the way. He is not an alcoholic, a womanizer or a gambler and in Myanmar, we have to choose from one of those three types; oh my brother hates my description of men in Myanmar. Luckily for me, my husband is not one of those types.

Anyway, back to Hanoi, we were here 11 days ago for two nights. Now we are back for good for at least two years, maybe longer, who knows. The life of a wife of a diplomat. So much adventure or uncertainty: depends on my mood and how annoyed I am with my husband.

Do you know who is super happy to see us? Rob? Of course! But I think Hope, our dog, is happier than him. She must be so lonely during the day when we are not around and Rob goes to work. When I am around, she harasses me to either play with her or get on my lap. She does play fetch, maybe half the time. For example, I throw a ball or a toy she likes and she goes and fetches it and bring it back to somewhere not near me. So if I feel like playing her game, I have to go and fetch it from her so I can throw it and she can do the same thing again. Every now and then she changes her mind and plays along. She brings it back to me and we play the game smoothly for 10-20 times until one of us gets bored.

Can you guess who picked this dog, Hope? Leave a comment with your answer.

No, I did not pick her. Rob did. There are multiple angles to this adopting dog business. One is that Rob loves me so much that he finds another me in a dog. She is loud, slightly unpredictable, a little hyper yet calm at times, really?, very, very crazy or a little crazy depending on her mood.

Another angle is that he, Rob, worries about our health because of our allergy problems, which he does, I am not joking. So he searched and searched for a perfect dog to adopt. It’s not easy to find a poodle and he is not a fan of terriers. So he searched for six months, maybe more, to find a perfect terrier pretending to be a poodle. She is adopted from Puerto Rico and we have no idea what she is. A little bit of poodle and maybe a lot of terrier. Either way, we drove four hours to adopt her from Pittsburg and it was not easy to return her. So we are stuck with each other like a marriage. Non refundable and non replaceable. Of course, you can, if you really, really want to. But there is just too much hassle in driving four hours back to Pittsburg and now she has been with us for over a year. And we love her. I will tell you about Hanoi another time.