Month: October 2011

weather

The last few days the sky has gotten really dark, thunder has been rolling, and the humidity has been so thick that we’re positive it’s going to rain. It doesn’t. But this afternoon the boys were out playing handball in the front yard after school and suddenly Carter busts in the front door yelling, “Mom! You gotta see this!”

I go out front to see the sky has turned completely dark — the sky is so black that our security lights have been tricked into thinking it’s nighttime, but the darkness is from the dirt falling from the sky. The kids are running around screaming, “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”

I grabbed my camera and shot this really quickly. The camera lens lightened up the sky quite a bit, but you can still see how much dirt is in the air when I focus on the security light. It really was raining dirt. It was crazy and gritty.

About 10 minutes later the sky started lightening up again because it started raining and the water washed all the dirt out of the air. It didn’t rain much and it didn’t last long, but to feel actual water fall from the sky was a novelty. We went back outside and stood under the sparse drops like we do every time it rains in the desert.

We’re planning to go camping tomorrow unless it’s raining up on the mountain. Normally that wouldn’t be likely, but while we’ve been teased with rain here, it’s been pouring up there so we’ll have to see what the weather is like in the morning.

Q&A

Sometimes people ask questions in the comments, and I never know whether to answer in the comments because who knows if people ever go back and re-read the comments? Anyway, for today I’m answering here:

Having a drink with the shop owner in the sook — in this culture it is traditional to sit and have a cup of tea while haggling over a big purchase. This knife wasn’t a big purchase, but in the past we bought a beautiful chess table from him and we go in and visit with him every time we go to the sook because he is from Syria and speaks Arabic with Josh so he always offers us a drink. Here the drink of choice is NesCafe (highly sweetened instant coffee) and the boys get Pepsis. 
Have we figured out the allergy yet? Yes and no. Carter is doing better after being on Allegra for several days. After rugby practice on Sunday night he only has a few mild red patches, most of them old. Caleb is fine — even though I can see some redness around his ears, he doesn’t seem bothered by it. On the other hand, my mango mouth turned into mango eyes and for the past 4 days my eyelids have been itchy and swollen and have tiny blisters on them. It’s totally crazy. I also picked up another one of those crazy bugbites that swells up like I have elephantitis or something. I would take a picture of it if it were on my arm or somewhere photographable, but I’m not putting photos of my stomach on the internet. Take my word for it, the swelling covers an area the size of my hand. 
I finally broke down and started taking Allegra today (medicine phobia, remember?) so hopefully I’ll be feeling better soon. Josh came home from work and thought I had been crying until he realized that my eyes just look that bad. I had to go to a parent meeting at school this morning and they probably all wondered what was up with the weepy-eyed lady. Oh well, we’re not here long enough for me to care. 
Speaking of not being here that long, Egypt is up in arms again with protests and riots and marshal law . . . our friends who are back in Maadi are probably waiting on pins and needles to see if they’ll have to be evacuated again. I guess the ambassador has changed since we were there so who knows if he or she will be so quick to pull the trigger this time? I still miss it there, but I’m glad we don’t have to have bags at the ready, waiting for someone to decide if we get to stay or have to leave. 
And for my dad: I totally don’t remember coming home and asking what F*@! meant, but I do remember hearing you explain it every year to the youth group in the legendary “Hix on Sex” series. Totally not embarrassing at all. I could have used you yesterday when Calvin came home and asked me what a “b*** j**” was. Yep, he’s getting quite the education. 30k worth. 

Old MacRobin had a farm . . .

Someday, I hope. For now it’s just a small garden:

Everything sprouted really fast here because of the heat. Two days after planting I could already see green shoots popping out of the ground.

Cherry tomatoes. Planted at the same time. That one plant is really happy.

Zucchini squash. I’m already getting little flower buds, but no squash have set yet.

Watermelon and sweet melon plants. I don’t remember which are which and the leaves look the same so I’ll just have to be surprised once the melons appear.

They are outgrowing the bed and running along the ground. As long as the roots have dirt it shouldn’t matter where the melons end up.

Arugula grows great here in the heat. These came up overnight and were ready to start harvesting after only one month.

Lucy makes a fantastic chopped salad with arugula, romaine, cucumbers and whatever else we have on hand (tomatoes, carrots, fresh parsley). When I make a salad I usually throw in the arugula leaves whole, tear up the lettuce, cut up the tomatoes, etc, but Lucy chops it up so all the ingredients are the same size. I love it that way. Just one more thing to add to the long list titled, “Things Lucy Does Better Than Me.”  

A very wise person recently reminded me that my children will go beyond where I take them. Ah yes, the reminder that I’m not in control of much in my life. Funny how I always seem to forget that. And the idea that in a few short years these small humans will be in charge of their own lives, earning their own money (hopefully), and having families of their own seems crazy to me in light of the fact that I still have to remind them to brush their teeth and flush the toilet.

Josh married me at 22 (I was older and wiser at 23). In 10 years Calvin will be 22. And yes, I had to remind him to brush his teeth this morning before he left for school. I also got to explain what a condom was because his friends were talking about 8th grade health class where they learn to put a condom on a banana. The kid can’t find his rugby jersey that is folded and put away on the shelf in his closet, but we think kids that age can learn to use a condom properly? Hilarious.

One area where my parents excelled was in the area of sex education. I never felt out of the loop, misinformed. or in the dark. In fact, I always felt more informed and more prepared than any of my friends. I remember being in High School and going to the assembly where they tried to scare us straight by showing us pictures of diseased private parts infected by various STDs (that was also where the banana/condom instruction took place). The photos were supposed to be shocking, but they were tame compared to the textbook my mom had at home from one of her nursing classes. Photo after photo of private parts that were cracking, swollen, ready to fall off, bug infested . . . as my mom was studying for her STD tests we would look through the book and pick out the most disgusting photos and worst looking diseases on each page. I guess my mom was homeschooling before it was cool.

Anyway, we’ve taken a similar “free access to information” approach in our family and Calvin has known all the details of the birds and the bees for a long time, but I guess when you do it that early, you don’t think to discuss birth control. So I explained that purpose of the “love glove” is to keep the sperm from getting to the egg and making a baby. And to keep people from catching diseases (too bad I didn’t have any photos to use as a visual aid). I was rewarded for my efforts with, “Gross.” Then the bus came and they were off.

I’m not going to be able to take him very far in 10 short years. Good thing he isn’t limited to that.

Allergic to Oman

There are all sorts of things we miss about Monterey, but one of the things we were happy to leave behind was the poison oak that plagued us every winter. Like clockwork, every October the identifying leaves would fall and the boys would somehow come in contact with the “dead” twigs that remained and pick up a fresh case of it. Horrible, horrible stuff.

It always played out the same way — a mystery “bug bite” that overnight turned into an explosion of rashes, swollen eyes and mouths, and ended with trips to the doctor for steroids, money spent on creams and scrubs to get rid of the oils, and a very unhappy mom who was always infected just as badly as the original victims. 
So yea for desert climates and no poison oak! Except . . . it’s October 8th and for the past week Carter has had crazy itching, swelling, and rashes all over his body. We think it’s related to the rugby field because 2 weeks ago all the kids were itchy and red after practice, lasting even into the next day. But since practice last Sunday Carter has been miserable. His one eye has been swollen 1/2 shut, he has tiny blisters and a raised rash all over his torso and under his arms, and he can hardly sleep at night. Omani “benedryl” doesn’t seem to be helping, so for the past two days he’s been getting doses of Josh’s Allegra. The longer it goes, the more it looks like how his body reacts to poison oak. And I don’t know the source. 
He’s never had grass allergies. He played on that field for 2 months when we first arrived and never had an issue. I’ve been getting these crazy bug bites where the swelling is the size of my palm and looks just like the bullseye rashes you get with lyme disease. Yeah, I looked it up using Google images — it looks just like it, but Lyme disease doesn’t happen here. Supposedly. So I don’t know if Carter is reacting to an exotic bug bite, a particular fertilizer that they use on the field, something that he’s eating . . . totally puzzled. 
Especially since I’m now noticing vague allergy symptoms in the other kids and myself. Calvin has red patches on his face that have persisted for a month, in spite of the various creams I’ve tried on them. My mouth has what my sisters and I identify as “mango mouth” where my lips feel chapped and burning and I have tiny blisters above my upper lip. Even Caleb has had a similar rash to Carter after each practice, only not nearly as severe or as long lasting. 
Josh seems to be the only one unaffected by the mysterious allergy thing we have going on at our house, but even he isn’t immune to the itching. He never gets bug bites, but he’s been getting eaten alive here and it’s driving him crazy. We left the poison oak behind in Monterey, but October 2011 has been just as itchy as Octobers 2008, 2009, and 2010.

I think it’s time to head back to 29 Palms . . .