So it is Vietnamese New Year soon, aka Chinese New Year, aka lunar new year. That is the time where you clean up the house, like "winter cleaning" the less-popular cousin of "spring cleaning". Anyways, we have a little Buddhist altar high up on the wall where my wife burns incense. She says she's not really Buddhist, but likes to do it for good luck. So it came time to clear the altar of a year's worth of ashes, so I thought I would help her out (she is 9 months pregnant, after all) and get up on the chair and take the dustpan and clean everything. So she came walking by and starting yelling at me why I was using the dustpan and that it was dirty! I tried explaining, ok sorry it got some ashes on it, but no big deal, we can wash the dustpan before using it to clean the house again, right? Well, it took some more yelling and a lot of punches for me to realize that she was trying to explain that the dustpan is the most dirty object in the world, and you shouldn't touch it to the altar. I guess it was like the equivalent of peeing in the holy water!
After that, she was worried all day that something bad would happen to me as punishment... And sure enough, that night when we came back home after a walk, I put my key in the lock, and it wouldn't budge. It was like a ghost was holding the door handle and wouldn't let me come in! I tried for like 10 minutes to turn the key or even get it back out, but it was totally stuck, the first time that has ever happened. The neighbours came and put WD40 everywhere and still it didn't work for another 30 minutes. But the best part is that with 5 people standing around the locked door trying so hard to get it open, suddenly the neighbour's daughter who just learned to walk comes over by herself and hands us her parent's house keys. Heheh smart girl! Eventually after about 45 minutes we did get it open, and it has been fine ever since. Thao says it opened exactly when she said a prayer apologizing for my mistake.... hmmmmm....
