Month: May 2011

Yes, I said poop truck. Have you ever played the Bug Game? (aka as Slug Bug, but we have to play it without the slugging in our family, because it made mom want to slug everyone after refereeing one too many fights while driving).

In our version the person to spot the bug has to call out the color before anyone else in order to get the points (1 point for new bugs, 2 points for classics). After hundreds of “yellow bug! red bug! black bug!” and being directed how to drive home so we would pass particular high value old bugs that they knew were parked in particular places and then having to referee whether the child actually could see the bug when they called it or if they just “knew” it was coming up and called it prematurely and then having to decide if a car had a cover over it so you couldn’t actually see the car body, but you knew a bug was parked under it if that should be allowable . . . I had had enough.  

So for a while the Bug Game wasn’t allowed. And then we permitted a variation called the Silent Bug Game. In this version you spotted as many bugs as possible during the course of the drive, but you weren’t allowed to call them out. You had to privately keep your tally and then announce your total points at the end of each trip. I thought this was a win win win situation, but it wasn’t successful since Caleb quickly figured out that all he had to do was wait until everyone else said their totals, then just say he had one more than the the leader and he would win. Then fights would ensue over whether it was even possible to spot 18 bugs on a 10 minute drive and I just curled up in the corner and cried in defeat.

The Bug Game has reemerged in Oman, but in a slightly different form. Since Oman doesn’t have an underground sewage system (they are working on creating one), they handle sewage by having trucks come and pump out the holding tanks. While we were staying at the hotel, the truck came by at least once a week, so they aren’t like septic tanks that we have in the US. I think since we are in a newer part of town (our area was wiped out by a hurricane in 2007) we are on a regular sewer and water system because I don’t see the trucks in our immediate neighborhood.

The boys think that seeing a truck driving around with poop in it is hilarious and awesome so they’ve made a game out of spotting the poop trucks. There are hundreds of bright yellow poop trucks cruising up and down the roads here — a wealth of points to be gathered. Another reason this game works is because daddy is around to referee (and play) the Poop Truck Game, so mom can zone out and pretend she’s not there. There are also tons of bright blue water trucks that deliver water to homes that aren’t on a central pipe system, but I guess it’s a lot more fun to yell out “poop truck!” than “water truck!”

and so humid you have to swim through the front yard to get to the car:

You take turns being blindfolded, tied up (arms and legs), and shut in a closet under the stairs

 

you lounge on pool toys

until you subdue them

 

I love dark chocolate. The other night I wanted something sweet, but not too sweet, but also salty and kind of snacky. . . I went rummaging through my cupboards, but nothing was calling my name. Then I started dreaming about dark chocolate covered potato chips. I didn’t know if anyone had ever had that idea before, (they had according to the seller on Amazon who will ship you a pound of them for $20), but I decided to create my own.

3/4 of a bar of dark chocolate, melted in a double boiler type contraption (I rig my own using a pot of water with a metal bowl balanced on top). Once the chocolate is melted, add a small amount of oil to thin it so the chocolate layer isn’t too thick.

I coated about half of each chip because it gives you an area to hold without getting melted chocolate all over your hands and because it made for a better chip/chocolate ratio. Then in a normal house you would let them sit on the counter until they firm up, but we had to pop them in the fridge because in our warm house they’d never get past the melty stage. It would be better for the crispiness of the chip to not be exposed to the humidity of the fridge, but we’ve got a lot of humidity here so it won’t make much difference. 

Then eat up! Next time I would use a little darker chocolate (this one was 52%) and get a chip that was a little bit saltier for more contrast between the sweet and the salty. They were really good and exactly what I was looking for. I don’t know if I would go through the process to make them again or just go for the same effect by eating chips and chocolate at the same time.

It does help if you have a clean-up crew to lick the bowl and eat all the leftover broken chip pieces.

Except by the time they were finished, the clean-up crew needed a clean-up crew of their own.

but no tears . . . yet. The boys are loving rugby, but the season is almost over. The past two weeks Caleb and Carter’s teams haven’t had practice because of the heat and in a week or two all the age groups will break for summer.

Hot or not, they love it. The running, the tackling, the competition, the mouthguards  . . . and I love that it wears them out. Too bad they can’t play every day. This trapped indoors stuff is not good for their mental health or mine. We’ve all been missing our yard in Egypt. I would send them outside to play soccer, baseball, or basketball every day. Here they have the small cement patio, but it’s so hot now that you’ll burn your feet if you’re not wearing shoes. And they can’t seem to play more than five minutes without kicking the ball over the wall, so that’s sort of a downer. 

They’re already excited about playing rugby again when it starts in September. I’m counting the days until school starts and they’ll be able to have PE, after school sports, and rugby . . .

 

and so is their #2 fan.

So Josh was involved in our inaugural middle eastern car accident. We’ve had plenty of near misses, but up until now we had gotten through unscathed. Unfortunately, our rental car is now a little bit “scathed.”

One of the problems with driving in Oman is there are traffic laws that people generally follow, but there are a lot of bad drivers here and plenty of people who are impatient and think the rules don’t apply to them. So you’ll be driving along and all of a sudden someone will pull out to make a left turn and stop right in front of you. Like the big truck that we were sitting behind, waiting to make a left turn onto the freeway. The way was clear at first, but the truck driver sat for about 30 seconds, waited until the oncoming car was about 20 yards away and then decided to turn left right in front of it. Go figure.

So Josh is in the grocery store parking lot, meeting the guy who was going to adjust our satellite dish, when a guy in a Lexus tries to squeeze behind him and smacks into the back end of the rental car. Other driver hops out of the car and wants to pay cash for the damage, but since it’s a rental car there are paperwork issues involved, but the guy didn’t want to wait for the embassy representative or the police so Josh got his info and dude took off.

Long story short, Josh spent the entire afternoon doing paperwork and working with the rental company getting the estimate for the repair and then the rental company had the other driver come down to the body shop, they haggled over the cost of the repair and then the dude went to the ATM, withdrew the cash and paid for the damage. It was a headache, but at least Josh got to speak Arabic to the Omanis at the rental car agency and at the Nissan dealership all afternoon.

As a funny aside, Josh and a guy from the rental agency had to follow the Lexus guy to the ATM and he proved over and over again what a bad driver he was: speeding, weaving in and out of other cars, etc. It was clear to the guy riding with Josh that the other guy caused the accident and wasn’t worried about causing another one. They also suspect that he didn’t have insurance because he was insistent on paying cash and not getting the cops or the insurance company involved.

After getting that car drama solved, the next day Josh was able to pick up our car from the embassy. When they got home, Carter walked in the house and announced, “We almost got in a crash on the way home.” Josh was driving along at 45 mph and a chick in a tiny car full of women slowly pulled out of a shopping center parking lot right into his lane and he would have munched her if the lane next to him hadn’t been open. Thankfully for her and her passengers he was able to swerve into the open lane and miss her. He says he doesn’t know if she even noticed that she was almost crushed by a much bigger car.

In Egypt the drivers were much more skilled and confident. There were no rules to follow other than the unwritten rule of “if my bumper is ahead of yours I have the right of way,” but the majority of people drove confidently, aggressively, and attentively. It made for a finely choreographed dance that seemed to work more often than not, especially since everyone moved at half the speed in much less powerful cars. Here everyone drives new, fast cars, they like to speed, and they don’t pay attention. Not a great combination.