Month: October 2018

I know, I’ve been MIA for a few weeks. I’ve had a lot on my mind and have been analyzing an issue that has used all of my brain power and time lately. I think it’s almost been resolved and I’ll be able to put it behind me and then we can return to our regular episodes of Crazy Housewife of Abu Dhabi. For now, a long overdue post on the boys’ play . . .

On Tuesday (two weeks ago) I had the pleasure of watching my favorite supporting actors perform in the school play. The auditorium was set up as a theater in the round, as it would have been in Shakespeare’s day, and we got to see all of the on and offstage antics of this cast of misfits.

The page, delivering the lines for a “Hamlet-off.” Carter was the director of music (the songsmith) with a drinking problem.Caleb had only one line, but provided comic relief through his non-verbal expression. (Playing a single note on the triangle at just the right moment). Carter spent the entire show stumbling, fumbling, and staggering for his footing while trying to sneak in some Adele and other modern music in spite of the director’s insistence for “Gilbert and Sullivan only!”

That wraps up theater season just in time for cross-country season to begin. The boys have started training runs on their own and official team practices start next week. Hopefully I can get my brain back and compose some coherent writing soon!

I have noticed that my clothes feel a little looser these days and I thought it was because I had developed more muscle over the summer, which supposedly burns more calories at rest, but this morning I cracked the code. We have empty pantry shelves in our new house because we haven’t been able to stock up on staples over time and everything we do get has been consumed within 5 minutes of being brought through the front door.

I went to make breakfast this morning — we’re down to 2 eggs. Carter gets one and Camille gets the other. (On a normal morning they each have at least 2, which is why we run out of eggs every other day). Caleb always makes himself a shake for breakfast with yogurt, peanut butter and frozen strawberries. I can’t imagine that combo either, but it must be good enough if the other 2 are always fighting over the extra.

I had a little bit of milk left for my coffee, yay for that. But an hour later I got hungry for “breakfast” and what did I end up with? A mixed greens salad with a can of white beans seasoned with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was either that or leftover sweet potato and cauliflower curry, which I wasn’t feeling at 8:30am. Literally nothing left in the house. Dog peanut butter (so he takes his medicine) and some trail mix. Living large.
Some squash and sweet potatoes for lunch perhaps? Now a normal person would probably go to the grocery store, but I really hate food shopping here. I have to make too many uneducated decisions, like are these eggs actually from chickens that get to run free outside or am I getting scammed by those farms that have overcrowded houses with one tiny door that the chickens can never find? (By the way, I researched and learned that Irish organic eggs are legit free range and that makes paying $7 for 10 eggs a little less painful.)

Since we need food I’ll go online and order produce and meat from my favorite place — they are a large supplier out of Dubai and recently opened up orders to individuals, not just grocery stores. And by tonight I’ll have a fridge full of veg, fruit and meat for less than it would cost at the grocery store, but the cupboards will still be pretty bare. I guess that’s the secret — no trips to the store means no junk food (or enjoyable food) purchases and then I really do only eat when I’m hungry. Because no one is getting out of bed at 10 pm to snack on cauliflower rice.

I love my house. Cardboard shelves, bins for clothes, and all. It’s still bigger than what we need, but it feels more cozy and homey than our last house. It’s not as divided (as is the traditional Arab way) and it has a kitchen that we can live in. It reminds me of our house in Bahrain in all the best ways.

We’ve always been kitchen people. Gathering around the island in this house and actually having room to sit and eat together (well, there are chairs for 3, a step-stool for one, and one can stand) is the biggest change from our last house. There, the kitchen was a closet of cupboards and appliances as it was designed to be a kitchen for household help to work in, not as a family room. Here the kids can come down in the morning, actually hungry for breakfast because they aren’t rushing to catch the bus at 7. They eat, argue over whose turn it is to walk the dog and whose turn it is to walk Camille to school, and leave around 7:30. I can even make them go back upstairs to pick wet towels up off the floor — running late now just means they’ll be late, not that they’ll miss the bus. Freedom.

Same with dinner. As kids come and go with play practice, sports, and church activities, we feed them on a rotating schedule at our kitchen island. I’m in there with the food and the baby birds fly in, eat, and fly back out. The play starts tomorrow night and we get to go watch both boys perform — 

in a comedy about a troupe of Shakespearean actors who are a bunch of misfits. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from overhearing rehearsals for the past month — the auditorium is next to the library and I’ve gotten an earful of it every day. 

We are still adjusting, but each week it’s feeling more and more like home.

We are settling into a rhythm this week, our first “normal” week in our house. Josh is back in the UAE, figuring out his job, the kids are walking or riding to school every day, and I’m on my gym in the am, library in the pm schedule instead of unpacking every morning.We spent 95% of our weekend finishing up the house — Josh and Carter installed lights (replacing the single bulb hanging from the ceiling with some brighter, more homey looking options. The jail cell minimalism look wasn’t doing it for me. Good thing we bought them before we went on our essentials-only spending plan or I would be learning to embrace the single bulb right now. Ah, my Turkish lamps. They always make me smile. In the background are free curtains that came as part of Camille’s canopy bed, but we stole them to screen our windows that face the street. Clearly the last 5% of work to be done needs to take place in this room. Ugh.
Inventive storage solutions — take that IKEA! (though this ended up being temporary as I found a better shelf from the living room and moved my cardboard box masterpiece to Camille’s room where she can stuff it with all of the knick-knacks that she can’t bear to part with. It’s nice to feel settled and I’m amazed by how much we been able to repurpose without buying anything else. And miracle of miracles, someone asked me this week, “Do you need a wardrobe? Because we have one that we need to get rid of.” God providing, right and left. This wardrobe is huge, and it holds all of the boys’ clothes, turning their room from a disaster of piles into a streamlined space that doesn’t make me want to weep when I walk through the door.

It took me all week to compose this post and thankfully, I find myself at the weekend again. We have been moving through life non-stop and I need the break. There is nothing on the schedule for this weekend (other than that last 5% of house organizing) and I’m happy to stop and catch my breath!

I’ve written about it before, but there’s a term to describe the experience in the Middle East compared to living in America: Not Quite Right. In other words, “Close, but no cigar.” Friends of ours joked about it before we ever moved overseas with examples of ordering pizza and it arriving with corn kernels as a surprise topping (yes, really) or being in a store and wanting to buy something, but the cashier is unable to sell it to you because it doesn’t have a price tag on it. Even if there is another item (but broken) with tags, they can’t take the price of the same item and apply it to the thing that you want to buy. Been there at the Sultan Center in Oman with a table that I wanted and had to walk away from because they couldn’t/wouldn’t take my money . . . so NQR.

Sometimes it seems that things are almost normal, especially here in Abu Dhabi, but the NQR lurks right under the surface. Today Josh and I went to IKEA to grab the most minimal of things (adhering to our spending only on essentials challenge) to pick up sheets for the boys’ beds that would hopefully fit. (Spoiler alert: they do, butI like my fitted sheets to be *tight* and these fit, but are baggy, even though they are supposedly the right size. Oh well. #overit). Anyway, we also needed a curtain rod to hang our Qum (carpet art for the wall) so we found a basic black one and got out of there before the need for MORE STUFF hit.

When we got to the car I realized the curtain rod hadn’t made it into our bag so I went back to the register to get it. The cashier said, “Oh, it’s your curtain rod! You need to pay this man for it since he paid for it already” (pointing to another customer). Say what now? The cashier had missed it on our order and put it on the transaction behind us. Normal people would expect the store to refund him and charge me, but at IKEA, an international, major company, they wanted to avoid the paperwork and just have me hand over cash to a stranger and walk off with my curtain rod. That is NQR in action.

It probably would have been fine, but I wasn’t having any of that today. I’ve used up all of my “roll with it” energy for the month, or maybe even for the year. I said, “No, I’m not paying him anything. I’ll pay you.” And all was fine and I went home with my curtain rod while poor customer was still waiting for his refund and Josh and I laughed at the things here that are crazy, but masquerade as normal.