Author: Robin Chartier

 

 

 

 

 

I guess it’s true what they say: The skin is always better on the other side . . . I mean, the grass is always greener in the tan man’s . . . (insert some quote that has to do with being happy with what you have as I apply my “Fade Out . . . White” cream to get rid of my sunspots.)

 

Naming your hair salon “Ooooppsss!!!” That word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Going to the grocery store and getting one lb of turkey from the deli, only to get home and realize you paid $24 for a pound of sandwich meat. Good grief.

Yes, the sliced turkey cost over $40/kilo. No, it was not magic turkey or calorie free turkey or anything special turkey. That’s just the way things are here.

Yes, I said poop truck. Have you ever played the Bug Game? (aka as Slug Bug, but we have to play it without the slugging in our family, because it made mom want to slug everyone after refereeing one too many fights while driving).

In our version the person to spot the bug has to call out the color before anyone else in order to get the points (1 point for new bugs, 2 points for classics). After hundreds of “yellow bug! red bug! black bug!” and being directed how to drive home so we would pass particular high value old bugs that they knew were parked in particular places and then having to referee whether the child actually could see the bug when they called it or if they just “knew” it was coming up and called it prematurely and then having to decide if a car had a cover over it so you couldn’t actually see the car body, but you knew a bug was parked under it if that should be allowable . . . I had had enough.  

So for a while the Bug Game wasn’t allowed. And then we permitted a variation called the Silent Bug Game. In this version you spotted as many bugs as possible during the course of the drive, but you weren’t allowed to call them out. You had to privately keep your tally and then announce your total points at the end of each trip. I thought this was a win win win situation, but it wasn’t successful since Caleb quickly figured out that all he had to do was wait until everyone else said their totals, then just say he had one more than the the leader and he would win. Then fights would ensue over whether it was even possible to spot 18 bugs on a 10 minute drive and I just curled up in the corner and cried in defeat.

The Bug Game has reemerged in Oman, but in a slightly different form. Since Oman doesn’t have an underground sewage system (they are working on creating one), they handle sewage by having trucks come and pump out the holding tanks. While we were staying at the hotel, the truck came by at least once a week, so they aren’t like septic tanks that we have in the US. I think since we are in a newer part of town (our area was wiped out by a hurricane in 2007) we are on a regular sewer and water system because I don’t see the trucks in our immediate neighborhood.

The boys think that seeing a truck driving around with poop in it is hilarious and awesome so they’ve made a game out of spotting the poop trucks. There are hundreds of bright yellow poop trucks cruising up and down the roads here — a wealth of points to be gathered. Another reason this game works is because daddy is around to referee (and play) the Poop Truck Game, so mom can zone out and pretend she’s not there. There are also tons of bright blue water trucks that deliver water to homes that aren’t on a central pipe system, but I guess it’s a lot more fun to yell out “poop truck!” than “water truck!”

and so humid you have to swim through the front yard to get to the car:

You take turns being blindfolded, tied up (arms and legs), and shut in a closet under the stairs

 

you lounge on pool toys

until you subdue them

 

I love dark chocolate. The other night I wanted something sweet, but not too sweet, but also salty and kind of snacky. . . I went rummaging through my cupboards, but nothing was calling my name. Then I started dreaming about dark chocolate covered potato chips. I didn’t know if anyone had ever had that idea before, (they had according to the seller on Amazon who will ship you a pound of them for $20), but I decided to create my own.

3/4 of a bar of dark chocolate, melted in a double boiler type contraption (I rig my own using a pot of water with a metal bowl balanced on top). Once the chocolate is melted, add a small amount of oil to thin it so the chocolate layer isn’t too thick.

I coated about half of each chip because it gives you an area to hold without getting melted chocolate all over your hands and because it made for a better chip/chocolate ratio. Then in a normal house you would let them sit on the counter until they firm up, but we had to pop them in the fridge because in our warm house they’d never get past the melty stage. It would be better for the crispiness of the chip to not be exposed to the humidity of the fridge, but we’ve got a lot of humidity here so it won’t make much difference. 

Then eat up! Next time I would use a little darker chocolate (this one was 52%) and get a chip that was a little bit saltier for more contrast between the sweet and the salty. They were really good and exactly what I was looking for. I don’t know if I would go through the process to make them again or just go for the same effect by eating chips and chocolate at the same time.

It does help if you have a clean-up crew to lick the bowl and eat all the leftover broken chip pieces.

Except by the time they were finished, the clean-up crew needed a clean-up crew of their own.