Month: April 2011

Sometimes having your family employed by the government feels a lot like trying to get something done at the DMV. Add in an 8-11 hour time change and only 3 overlapping work days and that just sweetens the deal.

Right now we have 4 outstanding administrative issues waiting to be resolved. 2 of them are months old and have required countless emails back and forth, extra paperwork (which is awesome when you don’t have a printer or a scanner, but things need to be printed, signed, and scanned), lots of emotional energy, and just general irritation.

The two more recent ones are similar in nature, and will probably follow the same pattern: need more info, need more paperwork, need more *something* that they really don’t need, but whatever.

Add to that the extra administrative hoops involved with our move, the shipment of our Egypt stuff, and the shipment of our car and it’s a little much. BTW, our car did get on a ship, but what we thought would take a week or two is actually going to take a month because it is being transported on 3 different ships, which means our kids will continue to fight every time we get in the car. I can’t really blame them though. Look at this pitiful picture of them on the way home from buying a drying rack for our clothes. (yes, that is the rack that they are holding up.)

 

We could rent a bigger car, but it would cost about $100/day instead of $400 for the month. For that kind of price difference we can put up with a little pushing and shoving in the back seat. Besides, the bigger car only had seatbelts for 5, so we wouldn’t be much better off anyway.

And then today I realized that we’ve been here for a month already — 1/2 of the time that we were in Egypt, but I don’t feel comfortable and settled here like we did there. I’m sure it’s because we were in a hotel for over two weeks in a different area of town, so I shouldn’t even start to compare until we’ve been in our house for a month, but still . . .

The best part is that baby isn’t sleeping because of her teeth and I’m not sleeping because of the baby and Josh isn’t sleeping because of both of us and because of the mattress so I’m just having a big unreasonable cranky pity party today. So I thought I’d share.

***blah, blah, blah, I’m fine and I’m thankful that we’re all healthy, well fed, have a beautiful place to live, insert any number of things I could write in a gratitude journal here ________. I’m just irritated with a lot of little things today, including the fact that my daughter is happy with everyone else, but starts crying every time she sees me because she wants to nurse, probably cause her mouth hurts, but it still drives me crazy.

or in this country, a Sultan. One of the not-so-nice things about our house here in Oman is our mattress. Because we were a last minute addition to the embassy here, the office Josh is associated with had to beg and borrow the furniture for our house from different departments to supplement the few pieces that they had available. And the furniture in our house is perfect – except for our mattress. It is b-a-d. Like, time to be put out on the curb bad. I’m not terribly picky, but when I pulled off the sheets and saw how skeevy it was I insisted that we had to go buy a new one. That day. On the bright side, we finally decided to upgrade to a king size bed. All these years we have stuck with a queen mattress because we have lived in so many different houses and many of our bedrooms wouldn’t fit a king size mattress. But hopefully Josh has been promoted enough times to rate a house with a big enough bedroom for a king bed. Cause after all these years of 3 and even 4 bodies squished together, I am done sharing such a small space.Perfect right? Not so fast. Unfortunately it takes 2 weeks to get the mattress, so in the meantime I’m sleeping on the scary, gross one and trying not to think about what made it scary and gross. :happy thoughts, happy thoughts:

 

I got tired of looking at the same background every day and wanted to brighten things up. Still deciding if this is a permanent look or just temporary while I design something else . . .

I’m sure you’re wondering, “Why make peanut butter when you can just buy it at the store?” Well, we’ve been eating natural peanut butter for years, since Calvin was old enough to eat PB&Js because it doesn’t have any sugar or hydrogenated nasty stuff in it. Yes, the oil on the top is annoying and yes, it does tend to slosh over the side the first time you try to mix up a jar, but I’ve found that storing it upside-down helps to keep the oil at the bottom and I’d rather work a little harder at mixing peanut butter than eat chemically altered oil that is going to harden my arteries. I’ll leave that job to bacon.

So anyway, we’ve been eating Trader Joe’s natural peanut butter for the last 3 years and have gotten spoiled. Alas, there is no TJ’s here and the only natural brand of peanut butter looked a little bit sad. No big deal, we bought it anyway and are going to try it. But then when we were walking through the bulk barrels section of Carrefour where they have actual open barrels of spices, nuts, grains, seeds, etc, I had the wild idea of making my own peanut butter. I guess that’s what happens when you have extra time and energy on your hands because someone else is doing all the laundry, mopping and most of the dishes.

So I bought 1/2 a kilo of roasted, salted peanuts. That’s about a pound for those of you not using the metric system. Yes, I know raw unsalted peanuts are better for you, but I like salt.

Then at home I got out my hand blender (new, since my trusty Braun is in Egypt somewhere – but at least this one is 220v so I don’t need to use a converter now), that has a mini food processor attachment and threw in some peanuts.

I would normally add some peanut oil, but I couldn’t find any at the store so I used grapeseed oil (a healthy oil with no taste that is great for cooking that I used to buy at TJs).

Hmm, super salty. It tasted very peanutty, but also like you just ate an entire bag of baseball peanuts and sucked on the shells. Yummy, but too strong. Next time I’ll do 50/50 salted/unsalted. But for now? I have some unsalted almonds and even though I’ve never had it, TJ’s carries natural almond butter right next to the peanut butter. So I know it is possible to make almond butter. Maybe mixing them would work?

Add enough oil to make it spreadable, mix them together and refrigerate.  The almonds reduced the saltiness and added a nice sweetness. Win. Win. I’ll have to do a taste test between mine and the store brand and see which one we like better. At least this way we don’t have to stir in the oil that sits at the top of the jar!

as a mom and an employer after going to the pool yesterday and seeing a nanny/maid go swimming with the kid while the mom sat in a deck chair relaxing with her ipad. Oh, and did I mention the nanny was fully clothed? Yep, she plodded into the pool in pants and a polo shirt so the little girl (about 5 years old) could swim.

Nanny looked like she didn’t mind (except for the cold water), but how uncomfortable to swim in heavy wet pants and a shirt? Poor nanny.

Walking down our street toward the pool. It’s only about 2 blocks away from our house so it’s easy to throw on suits and head over there for an hour. The dude in the background is some guy the landlord hired to paint the metal detail on the fence and around the house. This relatively small job took him two full days. Needless to say, we found out he was being paid by the hour.

Camille loves to float in the boat — especially when her brothers or dad do cannonballs and we can ride the waves created by the big splashes.

 

 

Mmm, yummy pool water. :shudder:

I did get in the pool (in an actual swimsuit — no swimming in clothes for me!), but I had put the camera away by then. It was a little too cold for my taste, but Camille and I had fun floating around on her boat. When we left, nanny was still swimming and I was really hoping she had dry clothes to change into for the walk/drive home!