an apology

It’s been a day. The girl vs. school saga continues. According to her teacher she is doing better in the classroom, but our start to each day has been going downhill rapidly. Begging and pleading to stay home, tears, and today we added screaming to the mix. 
She was a mess when we put her on the bus (and her problem is not the bus, it’s just that she’s making herself sick with worry about what is coming after the bus ride) and clung to Josh like a mussel on a rocky cliff. He was finally able to pry her hands from around his neck and shove her into the bus monitor’s arms as he ran off. 
OK, fine, whatever. New things are hard for her. I can sympathize. I had a meeting at school during the day and peeked though a window a few times and she was playing with friends and not crying. Yay. 
But when the kids got home the boys reported that she cried all the way to school and then when it was time to get off the bus she started screaming that she wasn’t going and holding on to the bus seat and the bus monitor had to unwrap her arms from around the seat and carry her off the bus. Oh hell no. Mama was pissed. You can be nervous, but you can’t be a brat. 
First up: apology letter to the bus attendant, who doesn’t get paid enough to deal with that kind of drama. Second: no more screaming. We have gone from earning rewards for good behavior to making poor behavior a punishable offense. I am done. 

Ending with a sunset — it could almost be LA if it weren’t for the Arabic signage. Happy today is over, but that means another morning bus ride is right around the corner. Oh, help.  

Beginning of the year

This about sums it up. I don’t nap, but these days I crash. The kids went back to school yesterday, Josh and I have been married 19 years today, and we are all tired. Stupid tired. Mono tired. We haven’t even done anything and we’re tired, tired. 
I suppose it’s the stress of the move catching up with us, but it feels a bit over the top. Josh’s back is half broken, neither of us are sleeping very well in our loaner Queen size bed where we keep blaming the other person for being on our side and the dog for taking up the bottom third (yes, Dad, I know you and mom share a full sized bed, but you don’t get any prizes for being crazy), and I think I’ve had a headache 5 out of 7 days this past week. I’m sure it’s from not drinking enough water because the water comes out of the faucet warm (not room temperature, but hot/warm) and has to be chilled in the fridge, and by the time it’s cold I’m not thirsty or the kids drank it because we can only find tiny pitchers to fit in our fridge and I hate drinking water anyway, and can’t someone just give me an IV already so I don’t have to be bothered with swallowing? 
We are happy. Just tired. And I keep thinking we have to move again in two years. My stuff hasn’t even arrived yet and I’m already wondering how we’re going to make it out of here. 
I’m also navigating having another person living in my house. For the most part, she is unnoticeable and a delight to have. But I’m not sure how much I should try and include her in our lives — does she want to come watch TV with us? Does she even understand that I’m inviting her to watch TV with us? She says, “OK Madame. No problem, Madame,” no matter what I say so I’m not sure when she gets it and when she doesn’t. The language barrier also means that when she says things they come as directives and not requests. “We go now” instead of “Can we go now?” or “You buy this” instead of “would you mind buying this?” I have to reword them in my head so I don’t bristle and feel like she’s bossing me around.
And I’m tired of things being Not Quite Right. Thankfully the internet has been mostly fine, except that we can’t get a signal upstairs through all our cement walls and Josh has tried for a month to get someone to come and run a wire upstairs. One guy came a few times and then dropped off the planet. Josh called him to follow up and he said. “I forgot you. Give me 10 minutes.” and then never called back. The cable box to the TV (which we have because it’s actually cheaper to get phone/internet/cable together than internet by itself. Seriously. Don’t ask why. I don’t understand it.) is buggy so we will be watching something and it will change channels all by itself, or it plays the picture from one channel with the sound from a previous channel, or I record something and it records for 2 minutes and then kicks off, or it tells me it can’t record because it’s already recording something else, but it’s not. Someone came out last night and maybe fixed it? I’m not sure because I’m afraid to try it and end up aggravated all over again. 
The kids started school yesterday and that wore me out too — we had orientation day with administration meetings for all 3 levels, plus the superintendent. Then PE uniforms to buy, classes to locate, and people to meet. All 3 boys are so excited and happy about their new school, but girlie is ready to go back to Bahrain. It has nothing to do with the new school, just that she hates new things and she’s had way too many new things lately. She didn’t cry at all when she started Kindergarten, but she cried all day in class yesterday and was already starting again as the bus approached school this morning. Her sweet teacher sent me a message that she tried to do her best all day, even through her tears. Today was day 2 of tears — if she comes home with puffy, red-rimmed eyes again I’m going to have to try some other way to get her acclimated to school. 

Headed to ACS. Smiles on 3 out of 4 kids is a decent percentage. 

Olympic Rings

If you want to know what’s going on at our house, sit on the couch, turn on the Olympics and let it run all day and into the night. Take short breaks for food and alternate your own Xbox football (soccer) competitions with watching the real thing. Cheer for America along with all the countries that never get any coverage — especially Bahrain or any of the other GCC countries (Qtar, UAE, etc). Boo at all the Russians and yell “Doper!!” every time one comes on the screen. During boring “sports” like synchronized swimming, horse dancing, trampoline, or golf play Minecraft on your computer while you keep half an eye on the TV, checking all the different sports channels every now and then in case they are airing athletics (Britishism for Track and Field), weight lifting, volleyball, football, water polo, cycling, or any of the other more interesting (and real) sports.

Not because we love the Olympics in an unnatural way, but because the alternative experience would be for you to run around your neighborhood, douse yourself with the hose, and set a blowdryer on high angled right at your face. Throw a handful of sand in the air and let it rain down over you to round out the fun. We have a pool in our compound, but the water is hot so it feels sweaty both in and out of the water.

Trying to cool down with cold water from the water bottle. No chance of cooling off in the pool.

At least all this Olympic watching has created spirited competition between the boys. The 10 meter IM. Everyone wants to be Michael Phelps. 

Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle. 

We last about 20 minutes at the pool, then retreat indoors. We’re tired of hibernating, but that’s life in August.

The third week

This week passed quickly, relatively speaking. I guess when you sleep in until 10 or 11am there’s not a lot of time left in each day. We have blackout shades in all the bedrooms and they work a little too well. Poor Nanny gets up at whatever time and cleans the downstairs and then waits for us all to wake up so she can straighten up our bedrooms. (*** Josh is not on the lazy family summer schedule. He gets up and out around 6am or something like that. I’m not sure since I’m always sound asleep.) Not like there’s a lot for her to do these days. It’s pretty empty in here aside from a few pieces of furniture in each room. No explosion of toys and clothes to manage yet.

We are hitting our stride in these days of limbo. Wake up, eat brunch, watch Olympics — we have amazing coverage, and hang out inside the house (because it’s blistering outside) until Josh gets home. Then Josh and I go to the gym together, come home, eat dinner and more Olympics until we make the kids go to bed sometime before 11pm.

Add in some yelling to get off the computers, and some yelling to go to bed, and a million requests for junk food snacks from the mini-mart/cold store that is in our compound and that about sums up our days.

Thank God for IKEA. It’s been my only real entertainment outside of the Olympics. Yes, it’s money spent, but killing several hours trying out different pieces of furniture and picking up a few things for the house is priceless. We’ve been 3 times already. The key to success is only taking one child along instead of all 4. 
The face painting in the IKEA photo is because we went to a Lebanese restaurant for lunch last weekend and the sweet Filipina face painting lady was happy to decorate Camille. She tried to keep it on her body as long as possible.
Solving the problem of my kitchen with no counterspace. Thanks IKEA! Now when Nanny wants to help me cook I shouldn’t feel like we’re fighting over the same few inches of cutting board. I’m hoping that it makes it easier for me to have someone else in the kitchen. 

What I’d like her to do all day

versus what she actually does. 
(Pringles and lollipop from our neighborhood cold store that she bought with her Tooth Fairy money)

This is our Abu Dhabi. The walk around the corner to our mall and grocery store. So thankful that we can walk to resupply our perpetually empty refrigerator or I really would go crazy. 
Josh and I drive past the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque on our way to work out every day. 
It is a huge, gorgeous building that is even more impressive in person. It reminds me of the Mormon Temple in Oakland, our own Disneyland castle (just bigger). 

Yesterday we went for our first set of meetings at the kids’ new school. Camille was in tears and didn’t want to go (even though the appointments were just for the boys) and we couldn’t figure out why (except that she always cries about new things). We finally understood when she whispered 10 minutes into the tour, “There aren’t any snakes here.” Poor girl thought because the school mascot is a sand viper that there’d be snakes and pictures of snakes all over the place and her snake phobia was on high alert. 
One of the very nice counselors gave her a coloring sheet which kept her occupied the rest of the morning while we talked about class schedules, sports and high school senior stuff. Only 10 days until Calvin starts his last year of High School. 

My car supposedly left Bahrain yesterday and should be here in a few days. That doesn’t mean that I’ll get it in a few days, but at least we’re one step closer.

A thin line between peace and apathy

Let me start by saying that I’m feeling better than I was at the end of last week, but I know I still have ups and downs ahead of me. Moving is hard. I forgot how hard it was last time, and the time before that . . . really, every time. These international moves are making our cross country moves feel like a piece of cake. Or maybe because I was younger then and had more energy/more flexibility and my sense of adventure hadn’t been satisfied yet so it felt more tolerable. Or I’m just remembering it better than it actually was.

I remember one time I called my dad crying when we arrived in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He told me to always keep my expectations low and I burst into tears all over again because I had, and it was even worse than that (a toll road to nowhere ending in pawn shops and strip joints was not an awesome introduction, but we grew to love it anyway).

I’ve always said I’d be willing to move wherever the job takes us and wherever Josh wants to go, but I’m not so sure about that these days. That shack in Iraq isn’t looking so appealing right now and I’m not feeling too resilient. The way to survive a life that I can’t control is to say that I’ll be OK with whatever happens. No need to get frustrated or mad because “God is in control.” Except that same inshallah attitude can easily slip into, “why bother getting out of bed? Nothing I do makes a difference anyway . . .”

I’m trying to make the days matter, but we are still in limbo. I’m so thankful that we didn’t have to go house hunting, but there have been some drawbacks to moving right into our home here. First off, I don’t have a purpose. When we arrived in Bahrain Josh started working right away, and my job was to find our house. We landed and I had a task to accomplish. It was a frustrating task, and it wasn’t easy, but it was a goal to achieve — something to work toward.

The other difference is that when you arrive and land in a hotel, you don’t expect to be able to get settled right away. It’s still part of the transition. Here I expected to move into our house and start operating as normal. But nothing is normal. I don’t have my stuff and I have loaner kitchen equipment so when I go to cook I’m trying to slice onions with a very dull knife on a flimsy cutting board and then I realize that I only have salt and pepper in the cupboard because I forgot to buy any seasoning or garlic at the store and where is my tzatziki seasoning that makes everything taste magical?

Over the weekend we bought a decent cutting board and a sharp knife (the pains of military moves — we always end up buying things we already own while waiting for our shipment to arrive) and I’m working on restocking my pantry so I can go back to cooking via inspiration from my cupboards. FYI, cornmeal is nowhere to be found and “corn flour” is actually corn starch. Thankful for Amazon to fill in the gaps. Baby steps.