June 2014 – robinchartier

small victories

Calvin finally has an ID. We went in on Friday after church, secretly suspecting that they wouldn’t be open, but they actually were. It felt like going to the DMV on a Sunday — only 2 other people knew of the best kept secret on base. We were out of there in about 30 minutes (a friend waited 5 hours for a new ID card the other day). I’ll never go during the week again.

I also got the boys set up with bank accounts/debit cards. Calvin needed an account for direct deposit for his job so like everything we do, we did it in bulk. They all now have usernames/passwords/PIN numbers and security codes. It took over an hour to get each kid set up with online banking. It’s funny how their different personalities shine through in everything we do. Calvin was straightforward and mature in his choices — standard security questions about grandparents and school, no surprises. Carter wanted his username to be coolboy973 (no meaning to the number), but I convinced him to choose a form of his name for something as important as a bank account. When it was finally Caleb’s turn he read through the security questions and instantly selected “The name of your first girlfriend.” Really? The kid has had a girlfriend? When he typed in the name, I laughed and suggested that he needed to be able to spell the name correctly to use it for security purposes. So he switched to grandmother and typed in “barbra.” In the end, he settled on Pam. Spelling isn’t his strong suit.

But now the kids can spend to their heart’s content and I only have to hear “can we buy ______?” half as much. At the rate they are going, they will be broke in a few weeks. They only have a bunch to spend at the moment because Josh and I never had cash to give them their allowance so we kept a running tally. A forced savings plan, if you will. They better figure out how to save on their own pretty quickly.

Ramadan starts tonight. The stores are packed with Ramadan specials. Twin packs of Nutella? Yes, please. It’s funny that a holiday that is centered around fasting has all sorts of bulk food sales (rice/sugar/tomato paste/pasta — all the staples are put in Ramadan packaging), but I guess all the extra special dinners and eating at night means extra shopping for people.

Camille had her birthday this past week. I can’t believe we made it to 4. We did our traditional birthday breakfast for dinner, but Camille wanted mint chip ice cream too. She basically had bacon and ice cream for dinner. It’s good to be 4.

She loved being the birthday girl and spent the day saying things like, “The birthday girl doesn’t want to watch that on TV!” and “The birthday girl doesn’t like being splashed in the pool.” She adored all of her presents and now every time we’re in a store she asks for things “for my birthday.” Sorry kid. It’s birthDAY not birthMONTH (even though your Auntie Kristy is all about the month).

We have a new doctor in the house!

And a princess.

We’ve both aged a ton in the past 4 years.

Happy Birthday to us!

. . . and repeat

Feeling a bit sad today – Josh is
happy and content at the embassy in Iraq (seriously, he’s chatting it up in Arabic with the local embassy employees and that’s his version of Disneyland), but my life feels a bit
like groundhog day. Wake up – drive child somewhere. Get home, pick
up other children, drive them somewhere. Kill time with Camille on
base so I don’t have to drive anywhere else for two hours. She sits
at a table and plays with toys while I . . . I don’t know what I do.
I guess this. When I have 3 of the 4 kids back with me we could go
home, but why not kill a bit more time and wait for Calvin to finish
work so I don’t have to drive on base for the 3rd time in
one day?

Entertainment thanks to Play-Doh and Polly Pockets

Yes, my child is an actual employee.
He applied for the summer internship work program and was accepted.
They went through classes on resume writing, interviewing, and
workplace ethics. He’s filled out employment forms and tax forms and
will spend the next 9 weeks working with the School Age Care program
at the child care center on base (SAC). And yes, with three boys in
the house I’ve heard more testicle jokes in the past week than I ever
thought possible. Starting with, “Calvin, how’s your SAC today?”
and devolving from there.

I’ve become a non-glorified taxi driver
and keeper of the $$$. “Mom, can I get ________?” and “Can we
________?” are the never-ending refrains. I think I’m most bugged
by the fact that we’ve spent more hours on base this past week than
in the past month, yet Josh isn’t here to eat lunch with, run into,
or drive the kids home at the end of a long day.

Everyone has been extra-nice and
supportive. “Let me know if you need anything.” “Call me if
there’s anything I can do for you.” “We are always there for you
and the kids.” I joke that it’s survivor’s guilt. Everyone who is
still here or has a husband here is so thankful that it’s not them
this time that they are happy to do whatever they can. We’ve all been
there before. Thankfully, I haven’t needed much and it’s nice to know that people care.

We’ve been killing time in the
afternoons in the base movie theater so at least the kids are getting
the most out of our time on base. How to Train Your Dragon 2,
Maleficent, and todays’ showing is Million Dollar Arm. I can
recommend the first 2, especially Maleficent (and now that the movie
is over, I can heartily recommend Million Dollar Arm too. Especially if you’ve ever
been to India or lived in an area with a large Indian population.
It’s funny and cute and sweet).

Bob just leaned over in the theater and
said to me, “Mom, I know you’re not a movie mama, so thank you.
We’ve seen 3 movies in a row!” OK. Now it’s all worth it!

Since we had an hour to wait for Calvin, they pooled their savings and bought a lego set

I’ve got people coming over for Bible
Study at our house tonight and I haven’t figured out what we are
doing. Usually we have a long term plan, but we finished up our
previous study a few weeks ago and then people moved and went on
vacation without deciding what to read/discuss/watch next so I’m
having to wing it. I kind of want to watch one of Rob Bell’s old
Nooma videos because I love them, and they are thought provoking, but
I know he’s currently outside of the circle of accepted beliefs and
practices and I don’t want to freak anybody out. I’m probably going
to go with it because it’s where I felt drawn this morning. (Watched
it, discussed it, all was fine. It’s hard because so many people are
away that the few of us left here kind of sit around and look at each
other with much less to say than usual.)

My day started with me feeling kind of sad, but ended
well. I guess that’s all I can hope for. I’m trying to switch things
up tomorrow and do a little more driving back and forth so we do a
bit less sitting on base and waiting. One more day and then another weekend. Did I mention that I just took over as the volunteer Children’s Church director at church? (They asked. I figured that was a sign to say yes, since I never would have come up with that idea on my own.) Yes, my life is a bit nuts. (Go ahead and make a SAC joke. You know you want to!)

swimming through sand

I’m plenty progressive, but in our
family’s division of labor there are some things that I leave
exclusively to Josh. I hear about wives going to this office on base
or that one – tracking down elusive signatures and filling out
endless government forms, but all of that is Josh’s domain.

First of all, he works for the
government so he’s being paid to be given the runaround. If he wastes
an hour jumping through hoops to get the parking passes updated at
least his frustration is putting pennies in our pockets.

Second, because rank has its
privileges. And I mean any rank. When trying to get things done on a
military base I have found that things go a lot more quickly and with
half the effort if it’s the service member doing the asking. So why
fight it?

But here I am with a kid without an ID
card (since his wallet was stolen a few weeks ago at school) and five
expired residence visas that have to be renewed. Armed with manilla
file folders fat with documents establishing my authority, I set out
to tackle the mountain.

First an ID for the kid. He’s been
cramping my style ever since it went missing because without it he
can’t walk to base after school, he can’t enter the NEX, and he’s big
enough that they can ask for his ID when we drive on base together so
I’ve had to act as his personal escort everywhere. We had been
holding out for Josh to come home from Jordan and apply for a new
card for him, but we all know how that turned out.

The ID system is a first come, first
serve kind of DMV hell. The only way to escape it is to get there as
soon as they open at 7:30am which is my own personal hell. But in the
interest of setting the man-child free and making my life easier, we
arrived first thing Sunday morning, prepared to sit there until
Calvin was official once again. Our plan worked. Maybe a bit too well. We walked into the
waiting room at 7:45 to find it empty and dark. It appeared we had
even beaten the ID department employees. We settled in and read
newspapers for 15 minutes and saw people arriving in the other
offices when I became suspicious and checked the sign on the door:

Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Yes, that looks normal to you, but
Sunday is our Monday. The day when everything that you’ve been
waiting all weekend to accomplish must be done and DONE NOW. It’s
like having the Post Office closed every Monday. What is the sense in
that?! Everything here is Sunday through Thursday – even the bank
and the Post Office are open on Sunday and closed on Friday. It
didn’t even occur to me that they wouldn’t be open since the military
ID is such an essential part of life.

Oh well, at least since I was on base, I could turn in our stack of immigration paperwork that I spent
two hours filling out the night before. It had to be submitted
online, pieced together with information and numbers from our
passports, CPR cards (not the life saving kind — our Bahrain residence
identification), and a photocopied instruction sheet.

The process looked like this: Fumble
through five identical passports to find the identification page –
nope, wrong person. Nope, not this one either. The last one I pick up
is always the one that I need. Find the passport number and input
that. Put the passport down and flip through five identification
papers looking for the corresponding CPR number. Hmm, it says this
number is supposed to be 9 digits long. This kid has an 8 digit
number. Screw it and put in an extra zero and cross my fingers that
it will work out. Find the correct passport again and locate all the
dates of issue/expiration/birth/etc all to be submitted in European
form like this: 13/12/73 – that will twist up your brain. Figure
out which blank needs which piece of information since the webpage
has been translated from Arabic and “holdover date” must mean the
date that it expires, right?

And what sort of visa am I
applying for? Residence yes, but work? Family? We are here for Josh’s
work, but we aren’t working. So family . . . does that mean that I am
a family member of an approved worker or that I have family here in
Bahrain? I just know I’m going to go through all this to have them kicked back
because I picked the wrong kind of visa . . .

At the end I had to print bazillions of
pages in color (each application was 4 pages, multiplied by 5) but my
printer was running out of ink. You better hold out because if I
lose momentum on this project I will never start again . .

But I got it all
finished and printed and I was fully prepared with my special folder when I left the ID office and wandered over in
the direction of where the Immigration office supposedly was (never
been there – Josh’s domain). I wandered around in-between 30 identical
metal trailers (they look like metal shipping containers stacked on
top of each other) until I found the one that says “Immigration.”
Happy day!

Open 9am. Awesome.
It’s 8:02 and 100+ degrees outside. Too bad I’m not getting paid for
this.

camels

This sign in one of the compounds always makes me laugh. Did they really have to show the poop dropping out of the dog’s butt?

Last Saturday, Carter and I went to mosaic class together. The boys all wanted to go, but Carter’s friend is moving back to the US and he and his mom were going to be at class so that made the decision of who to bring very easy. We both decided to make camels. Carter went for a multicolored approach and got straight to work.

From the previous class I had my eye on these particular red, gold, and brown glass tiles. I wanted to make a black camel since I had seen one running through the desert a few weeks ago. Until then I didn’t know there was such a thing as a black camel. They are very dark reddish brown, almost black.

(not my photo)

Complete. I was racing to finish at the end, gluing little bits here and there to fill in the spaces before grouting. Carter helped by finding a perfect stone for the camel’s tail and the two glitter pieces for the top of the camel blanket. He finished early and had time to play soccer outside with his friend while his camel dried.

Carter’s camel with blue legs and a green saddle blanket. I think his turned out great.

With the black grout — time to polish all the little tiles.

Getting rid of all of the excess grout takes forever, but it’s fun to see the final project take shape.

All cleaned and sparkling!

We made them so they could face each other if we hang them on a wall. We need to take them to the framer and have a wire installed on the backs. Carter was fun to have along. He works fast and doesn’t mess around. He always seems like the quiet one until you get him by himself and then he can’t stop talking. We had a great day together.

I love FaceTime. God bless Steve Jobs. For the longest time I thought it was a waste of money to pay more for “the apple name,” but I’ve been converted. The ease of use and integration with everything makes it so WORTH IT.

Josh is happy he is there. That sounds weird, but if he were here and all of this was going on it would be more stressful for everyone. This way he’s gone and we’re not left wondering if he’s going to get a call at any moment to leave. Every military wife I know thinks the worst part of a deployment are the days leading up to it. Once they are gone, the countdown is on for their homecoming!

This girlie turns 4 tomorrow! Unbelievable.

True Impact writeup

I don’t have any more information about Josh, what he’s doing, or what we will do this summer, but I can say that all is well. We’ve had one sleepover here, another boy farmed out, and a second sleepover happening tonight. Camille has had her fill of Girl Scout cookies and chocolate, so everyone is happy. I can almost guarantee that we won’t be going to Italy as planned since contrary to popular belief, I am not superwoman, and can’t see myself trucking 4 kids around Italy by myself. Technically, I probably could, but that sounds like much more work and much less of a vacation than I had planned. My hope is that we can shift the trip to later in the summer (or even fall if we have to).

I got this in my email the other day and thought some of you might like to read another write up on Calvin’s trip to Uganda and see some more photos of the home and the kids. You know, since Calvin never got past writing about day 2. This was written by our dear friend from Oman, Ross, who invited Calvin to join them on the trip. True Impact