You know you’re not in Kansas anymore . . .

Please don’t read this and freak out. These things are all true, but the risk to us is low. 

. . . when you spend 20 minutes debating whether going to church would be considered “essential travel” since you’ve been told to stay put except for necessary outings. 

. . . when it turns out that it doesn’t matter either way since church has been cancelled because police have closed the roads leading to and from church. 

. . . when your 8 year old gingerly steps around trash lying in the street whispering, “that could be a bomb . . . that could be a bomb.” 

. . . when you wake up to check the latest security notices and see that your house is now firmly planted in the middle of the red zone, making it “off limits.” (we can still live here, but are supposed to do all of our shopping, eating, etc outside of the red zone.)

. . . when you laugh at this warning poster put out by the government:

(not because I think bombs are funny, but who wouldn’t report the propane tank with wires hanging off of it? Hello, obvious!)

. . . when you ask your husband to check twitter before driving anywhere because you don’t want to be stuck behind a wall of burning tires.

. . . when you have to have The Talk with the kids and it’s not about sex, but explosives.

The big development this week was in addition to the normal protests, burning tires, and road closures, there were 5 or 6 small pipe bombs that were planted in and near the area where we live. The closest one was a few blocks away. They were either disguised as trash or planted on the ground near dumpsters. One or two of them exploded and killed 2 people, the rest detonated without any injuries.

My resident expert is not concerned for our personal safety for several reasons that I don’t want to share publicly, but if you want to know his theories of what’s going on, email me and I’ll go into more detail for you.

We are just as safe here as we are anywhere else in the world. If they offered a voluntary evacuation at this point, as much as I would LOVE to go hang out in California for a few months, I wouldn’t take it. We are fine. Things are fine. I miss Oman and I miss California, but that is more about missing the beach and the mountains than being worried that I’m going to get blown up.

I could have ignored this subject entirely because I know there are family members who don’t have a clue this stuff is going on (I’m looking at you, Kristy), but I know other people regularly get Bahrain news through Google Alerts and I don’t want you to be worried for no reason. I’m not, so you shouldn’t be either.