Robin Chartier – Page 208

Old MacRobin had a farm . . .

Someday, I hope. For now it’s just a small garden:

Everything sprouted really fast here because of the heat. Two days after planting I could already see green shoots popping out of the ground.

Cherry tomatoes. Planted at the same time. That one plant is really happy.

Zucchini squash. I’m already getting little flower buds, but no squash have set yet.

Watermelon and sweet melon plants. I don’t remember which are which and the leaves look the same so I’ll just have to be surprised once the melons appear.

They are outgrowing the bed and running along the ground. As long as the roots have dirt it shouldn’t matter where the melons end up.

Arugula grows great here in the heat. These came up overnight and were ready to start harvesting after only one month.

Lucy makes a fantastic chopped salad with arugula, romaine, cucumbers and whatever else we have on hand (tomatoes, carrots, fresh parsley). When I make a salad I usually throw in the arugula leaves whole, tear up the lettuce, cut up the tomatoes, etc, but Lucy chops it up so all the ingredients are the same size. I love it that way. Just one more thing to add to the long list titled, “Things Lucy Does Better Than Me.”

A very wise person recently reminded me that my children will go beyond where I take them. Ah yes, the reminder that I’m not in control of much in my life. Funny how I always seem to forget that. And the idea that in a few short years these small humans will be in charge of their own lives, earning their own money (hopefully), and having families of their own seems crazy to me in light of the fact that I still have to remind them to brush their teeth and flush the toilet.

Josh married me at 22 (I was older and wiser at 23). In 10 years Calvin will be 22. And yes, I had to remind him to brush his teeth this morning before he left for school. I also got to explain what a condom was because his friends were talking about 8th grade health class where they learn to put a condom on a banana. The kid can’t find his rugby jersey that is folded and put away on the shelf in his closet, but we think kids that age can learn to use a condom properly? Hilarious.

One area where my parents excelled was in the area of sex education. I never felt out of the loop, misinformed. or in the dark. In fact, I always felt more informed and more prepared than any of my friends. I remember being in High School and going to the assembly where they tried to scare us straight by showing us pictures of diseased private parts infected by various STDs (that was also where the banana/condom instruction took place). The photos were supposed to be shocking, but they were tame compared to the textbook my mom had at home from one of her nursing classes. Photo after photo of private parts that were cracking, swollen, ready to fall off, bug infested . . . as my mom was studying for her STD tests we would look through the book and pick out the most disgusting photos and worst looking diseases on each page. I guess my mom was homeschooling before it was cool.

Anyway, we’ve taken a similar “free access to information” approach in our family and Calvin has known all the details of the birds and the bees for a long time, but I guess when you do it that early, you don’t think to discuss birth control. So I explained that purpose of the “love glove” is to keep the sperm from getting to the egg and making a baby. And to keep people from catching diseases (too bad I didn’t have any photos to use as a visual aid). I was rewarded for my efforts with, “Gross.” Then the bus came and they were off.

I’m not going to be able to take him very far in 10 short years. Good thing he isn’t limited to that.

Allergic to Oman

There are all sorts of things we miss about Monterey, but one of the things we were happy to leave behind was the poison oak that plagued us every winter. Like clockwork, every October the identifying leaves would fall and the boys would somehow come in contact with the “dead” twigs that remained and pick up a fresh case of it. Horrible, horrible stuff.

It always played out the same way — a mystery “bug bite” that overnight turned into an explosion of rashes, swollen eyes and mouths, and ended with trips to the doctor for steroids, money spent on creams and scrubs to get rid of the oils, and a very unhappy mom who was always infected just as badly as the original victims.

So yea for desert climates and no poison oak! Except . . . it’s October 8th and for the past week Carter has had crazy itching, swelling, and rashes all over his body. We think it’s related to the rugby field because 2 weeks ago all the kids were itchy and red after practice, lasting even into the next day. But since practice last Sunday Carter has been miserable. His one eye has been swollen 1/2 shut, he has tiny blisters and a raised rash all over his torso and under his arms, and he can hardly sleep at night. Omani “benedryl” doesn’t seem to be helping, so for the past two days he’s been getting doses of Josh’s Allegra. The longer it goes, the more it looks like how his body reacts to poison oak. And I don’t know the source.

He’s never had grass allergies. He played on that field for 2 months when we first arrived and never had an issue. I’ve been getting these crazy bug bites where the swelling is the size of my palm and looks just like the bullseye rashes you get with lyme disease. Yeah, I looked it up using Google images — it looks just like it, but Lyme disease doesn’t happen here. Supposedly. So I don’t know if Carter is reacting to an exotic bug bite, a particular fertilizer that they use on the field, something that he’s eating . . . totally puzzled.

Especially since I’m now noticing vague allergy symptoms in the other kids and myself. Calvin has red patches on his face that have persisted for a month, in spite of the various creams I’ve tried on them. My mouth has what my sisters and I identify as “mango mouth” where my lips feel chapped and burning and I have tiny blisters above my upper lip. Even Caleb has had a similar rash to Carter after each practice, only not nearly as severe or as long lasting.

Josh seems to be the only one unaffected by the mysterious allergy thing we have going on at our house, but even he isn’t immune to the itching. He never gets bug bites, but he’s been getting eaten alive here and it’s driving him crazy. We left the poison oak behind in Monterey, but October 2011 has been just as itchy as Octobers 2008, 2009, and 2010.

I think it’s time to head back to 29 Palms . . .

sook shopping

For Carter’s birthday we promised him a knife. It sounds a little strange, but there’s a traditional Omani knife with a curved blade called a khanjar that he has been wanting since we arrived and we told him when he turned 10 we would take him shopping for one.

This is an example of an antique one. They have leather sheaths that are covered by silver that has been handwoven. The more intricate the design, the more expensive they are.

So we headed to the sook which is right on the harbor. It’s so beautiful there. A hot sunny day, a breeze blowing off the water . . . the kids didn’t complain too much about our hike in the heat.

We went to a bunch of different shops in the sook and Carter checked out all the different knives. A lot of them are really expensive, as in 100s of dollars, but we found some that he liked in our price range.

A happy kid with a knife. Isn’t that what birthdays are all about?

After completing the purchase (and sharing a drink with the shop owner) we stopped by my favorite silver shop to order something special for my sisters. The shop is the size of a closet so the kids played outside while I told Mohammed what I wanted him to make for me.

By this time everyone was hot and sweaty and it was time to head home. We left the jewelry section . . .

made our way through the clothing district

and found our way out through the maze of shops. Tomorrow Mohammed should be finished with my special order so I get to make another trip to the sook to pick it up.

I should have put $20 down on “4 days” because that’s how long the dishwasher “repair” worked. As much as I tried the repair man’s super special technique of slam-the-door-as-hard-as-you-can-and-lean-into-it-with-all-your-might, the door keeps popping open. Now I have to submit another work order.

Then I feel like a big baby for being annoyed about my dishwasher being broken because I’m reading this book, Kisses From Katie, about a girl who left the US and moved to Uganda after she graduated from high school who has adopted 14 little girls and started a school sponsorship and feeding program and loves on hundreds of needy kids every day and she doesn’t have a dishwasher. Or a car. Or electricity much of the time. But she’s not complaining.

I started reading her blog, http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/, about a year ago and she quickly became my hero, a modern day Mother Teresa. I pre-ordered her book back in June and had a happy surprise when it showed up on my kindle yesterday. Her book is wonderful, but it makes me feel like a lazy, ungrateful cow.

Poor me, my dishwasher is broken on a day when I don’t have my full time maid at my beck and call, I have too many clothes to pick up off the floor, there’s nothing I feel like eating, even though there is plenty of food in the cupboard . . . meanwhile, she’s taking in kids with scabies and HIV, eating beans every day, doing mountains of laundry for her 14 children and her many extra houseguests. Oh, and did I mention she’s only 22?

Off to work on an attitude adjustment . . . and finish the book.