Month: December 2018

We headed out to the desert on Christmas Eve, hoping for calm skies and no need to use our newly acquired air compressor (for reinflating car tires after getting stuck in the sand). The getting stuck story is in the long promised, still to come, post about our first camping trip. Of course after all this time it will be underwhelming, but I promise that it will appear soon(ish).

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The weather was perfect, the new tents popped up easily, and the kids ran around sliding down the dunes and racing back up.

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The sand sled was slow, the sandboard was fast, but heavy, and the boogie board was the best of both. Each time we camp we learn a better way to do something.

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Our campout was a success: a dinner of South African Boerewors (sausage) with flatbread and our version of smores using dark chocolate covered digestives (cookies) as a sub for the graham crackers and chocolate (better than the original!)

Breakfast was sausage, eggs, coffee and hot chocolate. Eggs get cracked at home into a protein shake container and stored overnight on ice — no need to worry about breaking eggs in transit.

Our camping gear worked great — except our middle age bones would appreciate sleeping mats. Yes, we’re on sand, but the sand is surprisingly hard and gets chilly.

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Thankfully this trip held no adventures except for the adventure of being in the middle of nowhere together. A few more runs up and down the dunes and then back to the city. Merry Christmas to us!

A year ago we were on the edge of change, with retirement 6 months in the future. This December we are on the other side of the retirement divide, but still wandering through the fog. The path is not clear beyond one step at a time.

Things are still unsettled at work with aftershocks happening regularly. Josh still has a job, but no boss. The only assurance he’s been given is “keep doing what you’re doing and we’ll hopefully find a place for you.” Between that and receiving messages with potential job listings, I’d say our future is as uncertain now as it was a year ago.

Strangely enough I’m at peace with that, but the general fatigue that comes from living in a state of uncertainty is wearing on me (and him, and probably the kids too). Every time Josh gets a text or phone call from work I find myself playing detective, seeing if I can tell what will be happening to us based on one half of the conversation. Its very similar in feel to being part of a deployable unit and waiting for that phone call giving us the time to go.

In reality, no matter what happens with his job, we can technically stay here through the summer. Rent is paid until September, school is paid for the year, and we could do visa runs to stay current if our residence visas were cancelled (cross over into Oman every 30 days, renewing a tourist visa each time).

Not much more to share, just laughing that this year has been one big CRAZY ball of unknown. And that a year ago I was dreaming that things would be settled and we’d be on track for Adult Life 2.0 by now. Not even close!! Oh well. It keeps us praying and keeps me flexible. 21 years of military life was perfect preparation for this.

I’m enjoying having all of us back under one roof for these 3 weeks. We aren’t doing presents, but instead have budgeted to do fun things together. #1 was a visit to Motiongate in Dubai where Camille was finally tall enough to ride the Capitol Train (she’s been waiting for 12 months).

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I’m calling this year the 1/2 way mark, give or take, with a bunch of inshallahs thrown in for good measure. 45 years. I don’t think it sounds that old unless you’re a teen who thinks 25 sounds old. I remember those days. And other than my stupid eyeballs and my dependency on reading glasses, I don’t feel any older at 45 than I did at 35.

What did I do to celebrate my birthday this year? Well Josh was traveling (bless him, he’s been gone a lot this past month), but he flew in around 8pm and took me to my favorite restaurant for dinner.

Then we spent the next 2 days in Dubai watching some of the fittest people in the world compete for a spot at the summer CrossFit games. 40 men, 40 women and 10 teams. It’s not what I would necessarily choose to do for my birthday, but it was an opportunity that we couldn’t miss. A 2-day pass only cost $13 each and we got our money’s worth. Front row seats for 7 events because the stadium was half empty and we had our choice of where to sit. (Nothing is advertised here — we only knew about it because we read an announcement for it from the US).

We were so close I could have hopped onto the floor and started working out next to them, not that I would have wanted to — way too hard! #life goals to be able to handstand walk and do a muscle up (a pull up where you get your hips onto the bar), but I need to be able to do a handstand and several solid pull-ups first. I’ve got a l o n g way to go. Maybe by 50?

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Day 2 was more of the same, but with more money on the line and even harder workouts. 

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By the end they had given away around 700,000 USD and the reigning Fittest Man in the World had won 7 out of 10 events. You can see his trophies lined up in the photo below. The top woman finisher is 36 years old, beating a field of 20-somethings, which gives this mid-life lady inspiration.
We’re going to watch to see if we show up in any of the highlight footage since we were right there during all the filming. We’ve already spotted Camille’s legs on Instagram. 🙂 

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And then my final birthday present arrived via airmail: 

I got it. I finally figured out how to upload photos to my blog. It still won’t work the normal way (I get an empty file message) or the alternate way, but in my million and 1st attempt at trying anything, I figured out that I can get around the broken system by dragging images from my Photos file and dropping them into my blog’s media library. 

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Which is why you can now see this fantastic view of the airshow that flies right past our house as part of the National Day celebration (the 1st weekend in December). And the fireworks that are in full view from our rooftop. 

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Since I only figured this out at 11pm (of course), I’m getting this quick post up and heading to bed. Josh is traveling for work again this week — I think it’s the 4th week in a row?! But we are looking forward to a good Christmas break starting next week when Calvin comes to visit. 

I’m online with my webhost help and they still can’t fix my photo upload problem. They have brought in the “specialists” who will hopefully figure out what is wrong with it. 

They did update WordPress to 5.0 and I figure it has something to do with that. I’m testing by trying to upload random photos. Some go through and others fail. My desert camping photos all fail. 

I’m annoyed that I spent over an hour with tech support and it’s still not working the way it used to. I can upload from my desktop, but not from my photos folder that syncs with icloud. Better than nothing though. I’ll have to try again tomorrow since I’ve used up all of my mental energy for today. 

Ironically, I finished my annual calendar, it has already arrived at my parent’s house, and I still haven’t figure out the blog bug. 😛 

Since I don’t know if I’ll ever get these photos to upload, at least you can see from my calendar layout what we did for National Day weekend. We went out on a boat with friends and watched the air show over the city skyline.