Author: Robin Chartier

Another day of ups and downs here in Abu Dhabi. I should be on top of the world, but I’ve contracted COVID fatigue. It’s what I’m calling the sickness that comes from being over the masks, gloves, sanitizing, testing, distancing and all the other rules that go along with this pandemic that is less fatal than driving here. (whether it’s an accident with a car or a tree, twice as many people are dying in fatal car crashes, and yet, we’re not spending millions of aed solving that problem.)

As the Brits would say, “It feels like we’ve lost the plot.” There’s mass hysteria here because cases have gone up to 700 per day (for 10 million people) but our fatalities have been almost zero for the past 2 months. Thank God, but it makes the black box house arrest wristbands for those who are returning from traveling (who have already tested negative twice, once before flying and again upon landing here) for mandatory 14 day quarantine seem like overkill. And before anyone says, “whatever it takes to be safe . . .” NO. Life is not safe. Everything we do is associated with a measurement of risk and we are prioritizing the risk of contracting a virus above many other more detrimental effects: loss of jobs, compromised mental health, delayed treatment for chronic or emergent health issues, loss of personal connections/family bonds . . . all of these things have a death toll associated with them and yet, they all are sacrificed for the sake of COVID prevention. Passing over dollars to pick up pennies.

ANYWAY, that’s my rant for today. (** this is a lie. The rant continues. lol) The latest news is that if anyone tests positive, even if they are asymptomatic, they will have to quarantine in a field hospital for 14 days and then have 2 negative results before being allowed to return home. That is obscene and nonsensical and would be the last straw for me, a mother with a household and children and pets to care for. That would be our two weeks notice and as soon as I got out of the field hospital, I’d be on a plane back home. Well I don’t have a home, so I’d be on a plane back to America where I would find a home and do God knows what, but at least I’d be free.

Let’s try this again: Anyway, that’s my rant for today. I think. Hmm, do I have any more anger brewing inside of me? I think it hit especially hard today because I was talking to my favorite oldest son and trying to figure out how we could see each other at Christmas this year. Him coming here to quarantine for 14 days makes zero sense and us going there to quarantine for 14 days upon return here is impractical. But we could go to Dubai for the 2 weeks and he wouldn’t have to quarantine and we would only have to take Covid tests to return home . . . maybe that’s a possibility. The only reason we are able to live overseas is because we’ve had the freedom to go home and be with family. If they take that away, we’ll have to change our home.

Moving on . . . to the good news. Remember the tree/car fiasco?

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These are the trees that were being cut down when one landed on Josh’s car. Yes, those very tall trees. Amazing that no one thought to worry about them falling across the multi-lane road, isn’t it?

3 days later they are still working on the trees, but they are no longer working on Josh’s car. That’s right. Someone did some wizardry and Josh’s car came back in 72 hours looking absolutely untouched. I don’t know how they did it. The paint is matched perfectly — they must have purchased a new hood, lights, front fenders, and bumper and who knows where they found the parts . . . I’m absolutely amazed. It shows how when you have money and connections here, things happen. Something that should have been a major inconvenience was barely noticed by us at all. I think on one occasion Josh had to drop me off at the gym and pick me up after. That’s it. 3 days is barely enough time for the paint to dry. They must have had people working on it 24 hours a day to get it done so quickly. VIP indeed. The last time we had an accident like this (in Oman), it took 6 weeks to get our car fixed because they couldn’t find the parts.

So I’m going to try and focus on God’s provision and his miraculous protection of us and not worry about quarantines and testing positive (oh yeah, I had to get tested again today — every two weeks school staff gets stabbed up the nose and the nurse was terrible at it today, ugh) and hope that I recover quickly from my COVID fatigue. Happy weekend.

in the middle of your car, does it make a sound? Josh can confirm that it most certainly does. If only I had a photo . . . :side eyes Josh:

He’s excused from failing to capture photographic proof of the craziest thing to happen this week as he was a bit shook up by the entire event. Josh was driving home from the gym and waiting at a stoplight. When it turned green, he turned left, saw a guy on the sidewalk with his hands up and next thing he knew, there was a bang and a crunch and a big tree fell across the entire hood and front of his car.

How does that happen? Someone was doing tree cutting on a major road and didn’t think to close off the lanes that would be affected if a branch (or in fact, an entire trunk) were to fall after it was cut. That, my friends, is exactly what I mean when I say NQR. I don’t know how someone doesn’t think to assess the 2nd and 3rd order effects of an action, but we see it often.

Josh was furious as these things usually end up going in circles and are exercises in frustration. Since our car was imported from the US we can’t get full coverage insurance (don’t ask. It’s a long story involving salvage vehicles and the shady resale market here) on it so none of the damage would be covered by our insurance.

When there are property damage issues here or other grievances such as would show up in Judge Judy’s court, it doesn’t work the way we would expect it to. There’s no mechanism for suing someone. I mean, there might be, but I’ve heard it costs more to file a case than most could afford and is probably a waste of money, effort, and energy. If you pursue it with management of a company you suspect (or find out) that it’s actually the minimum wage worker who will be paying the price, which isn’t something you want on your conscience. Often it ends with a “sorry” and there is nothing to be done but move on and take care of it yourself.

Anyway, Josh called me while waiting for the police to come and we prayed that he would handle it peacefully and not be angry, since it’s just a car. Thank God he wasn’t a few seconds later or it could have hit his windshield and hurt him! To ease his stress I suggested that maybe the mechanic could pop out the dent in the hood and we could drive it all scratched up and he laughed at me and said, “the car is crushed. I don’t even know if it’s mechanically sound anymore” (it is, thankfully).

Now for the good news. The person cutting down the trees works for a VIP, who agreed to take care of the damage. The police saw the scene, the tree (and was shocked by the amount of damage), and wrote the police report: Car damaged on hood, bumper, front, right and left sides. XXX has agreed to pay for the damage. Amazing.

A minion took Josh’s car directly from the police station to the mechanic where we assume they will have much difficulty sourcing body parts for a Subaru Forrester, but that’s on them. The police told Josh that he could come back to them if there were any issues and commented how lucky he was that the person was accepting responsibility for the damage without any pushback. (Yes, we know!)

So we’re down to 1 car these days, and may be for many days, but since Josh works from home and I ride my bike to school that’s not exactly a hardship. #thanksCovid

In other news . . .

Camille at school! This is in her library/technology class where they are learning about coding and creating podcasts this week. (Photo snagged from Instagram)

First full day of school with her entire class (minus the ones that are choosing remote learning for now). Follow those dots!

One of the things that sustains our sanity while living in the Middle East is reminding ourselves that it’s Not Quite Right. Whether it’s corn on pizza (really, I’ve seen it) or a rule requiring mask wearing while driving alone, certain things don’t make sense to us. I know NQR is a judgment that could come from a mindset of western superiority, but I promise you, it’s not that. It’s just a way to remember that things don’t work the same way here as they do at home and to try to not let it upset us. Generally after 10 years overseas I don’t have many NQR moments anymore, but this summer has been full of them — all related to COVID and travel and testing and school requirements. :sigh:

The latest headache was a few weeks ago and I lost the energy to write about it, but in short, the requirements for school opening were outlined in July, school admin had spent 6 weeks working out a way to get kids back to in person classes within the restrictions (they removed walls to enlarge classrooms to allow appropriate spacing, etc) and then a week before school was to start, the guidelines were changed again (via the official channel of Instagram) meaning that Caleb would have to start the year with 4 weeks of remote learning (among other things).

Thankfully our school is “nimble” (the word they are emphasizing for this year) and they scrambled to create “classrooms” that would meet the new rule of no more than 15 kids per class.

One of the adaptations is a magical shower curtain that allows a class of 20 to be divided into two classes of 10. The teacher can teach both sides, but kids are only allowed to play with the kids in their “class” at recess. But recess is only once a day for 20 minutes and they have to stay within a square marked on the ground and not touch each other and they eat their snack and lunch at their desks, so . . . not sure how much playing they’ll be able to do. Thankfully Camille’s teacher divided the kids so that they each have at least one friend on their side. And as crazy as the idea of a shower curtain might seem, I’m thrilled that it allows them to go back to school in person!

There’s also temperature taking, hand washing and sanitizing, mask wearing, directional signs and dots on the ground to guide spacing — whoever is in the business of producing stickers and sanitizing products is making a mint this year.

But today was Camille’s first day of 5th grade and it went well. We rode bikes to school, she sanitized her hands at the gate, parked her bike and walked off to her classroom, following the orange dots that designate the path for 5th grade to follow. She was nervous, but I think that was regular first day jitters magnified by all the changes at school. She came home proud that there were “no tears today!” which would be the first time that’s happened on a first day of school since moving to Abu Dhabi. Congrats to my girl.

Each elementary grade has their own color and since no parents are allowed on campus there are elaborate systems for pickup as well. We (my department) assigned families numbered stickers for cars and badges for walkers that correspond to kids. Guards spot the numbers and message it via walkie talkie to another guard who inputs the data which is then projected to the classroom computer. Then the kid is released and matched with their parent. I was impressed by how seamlessly things went today.

And so year 5 in Abu Dhabi begins. I’m content with where we are and I’m happy to have a bit of normalcy in our lives with school starting up again, even if it’s not normal. The entire world is all a bit NQR at this point and comparatively, UAE isn’t looking so crazy this week.

It could have been a disaster, but summer 2020 shaped up just fine. It’s the first time we haven’t escaped the heat and gone home in 4 years, but we made the best of it by joining the British Club.

When we first moved to AD we looked into it, but didn’t join because it was too expensive for us and too far from our house. Once Josh retired and we moved houses those two barriers were less of a factor, but we were too busy to make use of it. With work, sports, and church taking up any free time we had, we couldn’t imagine spending leisurely afternoons by the pool or on the beach.

And then, corona. With Camille restricted from malls and restaurants and beaches, parks and everything closed, we wanted to have some place for her to run free. We joined in mid June, right after school got out and Carter left, and a week later their beach opened and a month after that the pool opened. This change in scenery has given us exactly what we hoped for: a sense of normalcy.

Once the pool opened, the kids and I started going for a few hours at midday a few days a week. Yes, it’s the hottest time of day, but that meant no line to get in the pool (covid rules — only 20 people in the water for 20 minutes at a time). It turned out that the same type of people also showed up at that time regularly and our kids started playing together — Marco Polo, diving/somersault practice, and other versions of underwater tag. The sweetest part of it was seeing the big kids with the littles and everyone getting along.

Even my previously dedicated gamer/couch potato started asking if we could go to the club or if he could bring his bike and stay later. Hours of time spent outside in the sun and in the water was great for his energy and mood.

I’m in my last week of summer vacation and I don’t know what our schedule will look like in the next month. It’s still technically illegal to have people over to our house and there won’t be any after school sports or PE for the kids in the near future, so I don’t see our need for this space going away any time soon.

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It felt like a Bahrain morning. I might not have made the connection except a few weeks ago I was looking for a particular old post by doing a search on my blog and some my Bahrain posts popped up — bless me for living through that chaos and writing about it! Like the cat that gave birth to kittens and kept them in my laundry room, driving Micah and Zeki crazy inside my house. Or the cat that crawled into my car wheel well and died, turning my yard into the funkiest house on the block. Or when my cat turned into an angry pee-er until we gave into his demands to be an indoor/outdoor cat. Or the cat that chose my front yard as his final resting place. Are you sensing a theme here? Good.

So this morning the dogs were sleeping with us as dog mom had asked for a break and dog grandmom was happy to take over. It’s rather peaceful to have a warm fuzzy lump curled up next to my side as I sleep. Josh gets up at 6 to go to the gym and it woke the team up enough that I wanted to make sure they went outside to use the toilet, but I didn’t want to get dressed to take them on a walk.

For background, a mama cat had given birth to kitten(s? only ever seen one) in our carport utility room a few weeks earlier and mama has been slinking around our yard and catching the cool air from under the crack in our front door. But the driveway is fenced off from the yard, so no big deal.

I’m sitting in the front yard, in my robe, half asleep, as the dogs sniff all around, picking up traces of whatever animals have been passing through in the night. Suddenly Micah’s ears perk up and Star starts bouncing and I see them pounce on one of my flower pots and start howling and I see this flash of orange fur — oh dang it! The kitten must have been hiding in the plants!

I race over and see Micah with a fuzzy body in his mouth and as I grab him by the scruff, he drops it and tries to pick it up again — Star is going mad with barking and lunging at the kitten who is on its back, clawing at the air … and then mama cat to the rescue. She flew in like a blur, leaping into the fray, all teeth and claws and spitting mad. She landed on Star’s back which sent her running off whimpering and then swiped at Micah, distracting him long enough for kitten to make his escape. It sounds like it was over quickly, but it felt like life was moving in slow motion as I was frantically trying to stop both dogs from instinctually pursuing and tearing apart a moving target.

I haul 2 panting, bristling dogs back to our side yard wanting to get them inside so I can go make sure that they didn’t injure or kill the poor kitten, but I can’t let either of them go to open the sliding door because as soon as I do, they’ll be off on the trail again. So I stand with them, one collar in each hand, as I wait for them to calm down. I look at the ground and notice blood spatter all around our feet and see drips still actively hitting the ground coming from . . . oh no, Micah must have taken a bite out of the kitten and has blood dripping off of his jowls. UGH, what a disgusting beast. I turn him toward me to check out the gore and see that instead of a bloody mouth, he has a large scratch on the side of his nose that is dripping blood. Well done mama cat. Better him than the defenseless kitten. Whew!

All’s well that ends well as mama cat spent the next 24 hours boldly planted in our yard, pacing back and forth, until the kitten found his way back and then she moved him to the yard next door. Kitten was fine, just a little traumatized and wet from being mouthed (rather than bitten). No harm other than it stressed me out all day until I was assured that our dogs weren’t killers, just Team Dumb and Dumber who couldn’t resist a stray cat in their yard.

We still haven’t resolved our own cat problem. Each dog alone would be fine with the cat, but together it magnifies their chase instincts. For now Zeki prefers to hang out high above the action either in the kitchen or Caleb’s bedroom and only goes out at night. He can’t be bothered with either of them and I don’t blame him one bit.