I’m probably breaking some important parenting rule when I call my girlie a “junkie,” but there really is no other way to describe it. She is relentless in her pursuit of a sugar fix. She’ll ask for chocolate, ice cream, candy or anything else with a bit of sweetness a million times a day (once I found her hiding under the table having her way with the ketchup bottle) and it doesn’t ever sink in that my answer is never going to be “yes.” (Probably because sometimes it actually is yes — I’m not running a “dry” household and sometimes I want a little chocolate too.)
It’s no use trying to do a detox because she has a willing dealer with an endless supply. Josie is her go-to girl. As soon as I leave the house they skip off to the cold store together and Camille gets loaded up with all of her favorite things: Oreos, tic-tacs, bubble gum (she’ll chew an entire pack in a morning), chocolate milk, and lollipops. The war on drugs has been lost here.
We are on day 3 or 4 of storms here — I don’t know if this is the leftovers from the hurricane that hit the Philippines, but we haven’t seen this much rain or this many days of rain in the past 3 years.
Rain in the Middle East is amazing because it’s as if the mothership came to visit and dropped tiny alien beings from the sky. From the way people drive, you know it’s alien. Dodging puddles like they’re the Wicked Witch of the West and even a drop will cause them to melt, driving 20 miles an hour, hunched over the wheel like my grandma, and a general puzzlement over all this wet stuff. And we’ve got a lot of it.
The roads are a mess, small cars are getting swamped, and we’re going to have mud for weeks. Things don’t dry out quickly here so I expect to see stagnant lakes into December.
I joke about how there is no concept of time here in the Middle East, but I don’t know if you all truly understand the extent to which time is meaningless (unless you are stopped at a traffic light — then all of a sudden time becomes so important that, by all means, please cut in front of everyone and run the light).
We ran out of propane last month. That is our cooking gas that runs the stove. Josh called to have it delivered: “Inshalla, tomorrow.” Josh called two more times over the next two days (because of course it wasn’t delivered “tomorrow” and the response was always the same, “Inshalla, tomorrow.” Finally he got someone higher up on the chain who said, “Yes, we can bring it today.” Josh gave them instructions to come anytime except between 12 and 2. When did they come? Sometime between 12 and 2 according to the “you were not here” sticker that was left on my gate when I arrived home. We eventually got cooking gas after about a week.
We moved into this house in August of 2012. One of the things that needed to be fixed was the hood over the stove. Part of it was broken so the screen was hanging down. Someone came by and took some measurements and we never heard from them again. Another day a random repairman came by and used a twisted up paperclip to keep the screen in place. Huh, I guess that works. I haven’t thought about it again until today, 15 months after moving into this house, the doorbell rings and a guy holding a big metal thing is standing at my front gate. I wasn’t even sure what he wanted — it’s not like anyone called to see if I would be home before coming over. So I let him in and he goes into the kitchen . . . ah, the stove hood repair!
The man inspected the current hood, looked at the size of the hood he brought and made some uncertain clucking noises. I guess maybe he didn’t think it would be the right size for the existing space? He asked, “It works? You want?” At this point I wasn’t replacing my half broke working hood for one for an untested one and I didn’t want him tearing up my kitchen to check it so I replied, “It’s fine.” He shrugged, “Ok.” And left. Inshalla indeed.
The boys have been taking Taekwondo since February and have fallen in love with fighting.
They enjoy performing the different forms (choreographed movements that they are tested on before they can advance in belt rank), but they recently were promoted to the rank that allows them to start sparring.
