It’s like we’re on vacation, but without the touring. Josh is working every day so we’ve been hotel bound. Not because we don’t have a car, but because I have no idea where I’m going.
I took the boys to register for school yesterday and I was really glad I had Carter with me. Even though we’ve driven by it a million times I still needed help: Go down this one way street and where you see the graffiti, turn left . . . No photos of the outside of the school for security reasons (it even says no photos), but it’s not much to see from the outside anyway. It looks like a prison with high cement walls and barbed wire fencing. The school is in a Shia area (or borders a Shia area — not sure, just that there is a lot of graffiti and tire burning going on) so they aren’t messing around.
I’ve been bouncing between contentment and feeling disorganized and unmotivated. It’s not like there’s anything I *can* do, my only job right now is to keep the kids from tearing up the hotel room and each other. And really, both of those are pretty impossible tasks.
I invented a new game for myself because I have to find some way to entertain myself in spite of all the stupid movies they show on the English language channels here. It’s more of a compulsion actually — I can’t help but try and figure out what is playing. With my best friend Google I haven’t been beat yet. Even the vaguest details like: “young Reece Witherspoon wild horses song” gives me “Fear” (poor Reece makes out with a scary Mark Wahlberg). Or “George Michael arrested” gets me the actor’s name and then it’s a quick “Michael Cera blue haired girl movie” brings me right to “Scott Pilgrim vs the World.”
It’s not like I want to watch any of these movies, I just keep flipping channels in hopes of finding some American tv that isn’t According To Jim or Rules of Engagement and like a train wreck, I can’t look away from the B movie until I figure out what movie Katie Holmes was in with that guy who looks familiar . . . (“Katie Holmes movie sitting against tree” — The Romantics — isn’t Google amazing?)
While I’ve been playing stupid tv games the boys have been building a fort in their bedroom, creating monster bubble baths using all the hotel shampoo, and working on an art project. They aren’t always this motivated, it’s the result of a 48 hour electronics ban.
