She may look like a princess, but she’s a fighter. The situation: Carter has a candy cane — she wants some and loudly lets him know it. He tries to give her a piece of it. She takes the entire thing. Chaos ensues.
Tag: funny
want some yogurt?
I end up going to the grocery store almost every day here. In America I tried to go to the store as infrequently as possible, but in Oman I love walking up to Al Fair. I usually take the stroller and buy what we can comfortably carry home, but sometimes I get a little ambitious in my shopping and Camille ends up surrounded by piles of food that I then pack into our reusable bags and wedge them in around her — and usually I have to sling a few over my shoulder too. Good thing the walk home isn’t too far.
Today was a mountain of food day and my little eater managed to bite a hole in the bag of carrots and start gnawing on one while I was busy picking out onions. So I gave it to her. Then, while I was getting (very expensive) turkey for the boys’ lunches, she snaked one of the small yogurts and poked a small hole in the foil lid. When I saw that she was sucking the yogurt out through the top I thought, “How clever! My girly is a genius!” and I let her continue. Since I am not a genius, I failed to anticipate the small hole would eventually become a giant crevasse as curious fingers explored the foil and the yogurt. By the time I saw the mess, it was too late to salvage it.
I got a few curious looks as I walked home, but people look at us everywhere we go, so I’m pretty used to it. It was hard to tell if the one group of ladies we passed was horrified by the toddler with a carrot (choking hazard), the huge mess down her face and front, or the fact that she was squished in between bags of potatoes and eggs.
Right before we got out the hose to wash everything down. Cheers!
“your face is lopsided.”
The other day I went to see the visiting psychiatrist at the embassy because I needed a refill for my Zoloft prescription. So we’re in the middle of chatting about why I take Zoloft when he stops mid-sentence, studies me carefully and declares, “Your face is lopsided.” Say what now? He then has me go through this range of “exercises” to test something (hold hands out in front, look at ceiling, look down) before he lets me sit back down to explain what he’s talking about. He starts throwing out phrases like “bell’s palsy” and “7th nerve something or other” and asks if anyone else has ever noticed that the inside of one of my cheeks droops more than the other. The entire time he’s studying me like I’m one of those 3-D pictures that he can’t figure out.
I tell him that no, I have never noticed anything strange about my face other than those pesky frown lines in-between my eyebrows and a few sunspots from too many hours spent baking in the sun as a teenager. And that no one, including my husband who looks at my face every day has ever noticed this supposed lopsidedness that he sees. He then went on to say the odds are minuscule that it is something serious, but if my face continues to change then he would want me to get a CAT-scan or a CT-scan — one of those medical head scan things that they talk about on House every week.
I told him that it was a good thing I was taking Zoloft because back in the day if someone had said something like that to me I would have been completely freaked out and sure I had been stricken with some scary, terminal disease, but the improved me wasn’t worried at all. So I got my refill paperwork, went home, looked in the mirror, didn’t see anything, and didn’t google it at all.
So you’re all on notice: if you notice my face looking even more lopsided than it already is (see below photo for reference), you’re supposed to let me know so I can go have my brain scanned. Good grief. It’s a good thing he doesn’t work with patients who have anxiety about those sorts of things . . .
Inshallah
This morning a friend and I were going to meet some other friends at a cafe for coffee, but there were no parking spots anywhere in the area. We drove around the lot, up the street, made a U-turn, circled back around . . . nothing. Not only were all the regular spots taken, but people had resorted to pulling up on the curb, double parking, any available space was fair game. Since nothing was moving, we decided to do as the Omanis were doing.
I pulled up perpendicular to a beautiful black Porsche, took my key out of the ignition and looked around. I was semi-conditioned to the “parking-in” phenomenon during our time in Egypt where double parking was a regular and expected thing. One of our Egyptian friends there told us about a time he came out to his car to find he had been parked in and he had to wait three hours for the guy to come back. When I asked him what he did about it, he said he just sat on the trunk of his car and waited. When the guy came back to his car and drove away, then my friend was able to go about his business. Instead of being upset or angry about it, he just said, “Inshallah.” Roughly translated it means, “if God wills it, it will happen.”
Well, I wasn’t going to let a tiny thing like a parking spot stand between me and my cappuccino, so when I didn’t see an angry man or woman running toward me as I exited the car, I decided to go for it. Ever the cautious rule-breaker, I strategically positioned my car where I could keep an eye on it while I enjoyed my drink, just in case mystery Porsche owner decided to make an early return.
So we’re chatting, laughing, and drinking and after a short while I forget about the fact that I am potentially creating a barrier between someone and their very important business. Until I lean over in my chair and see that the front door to the Porsche is now open. Oops! In a flash I grab my keys and run out to the car, ready to make some very sincere apologies to the person I’ve certainly inconvenienced. As I approach the car, the Omani man standing next to the open door says, “Oh, I’m sorry! Did I interrupt your breakfast?”
Go back and reread that, but this time don’t use a sarcastic voice like you might hear in America. He was seriously apologizing to me, when I was the one who had parked him in. After reassuring him that no, I didn’t need to go back and finish my breakfast before moving my car, he got into his beautiful Porsche and drove away with a wave and a smile and I pulled into his spot. Inshallah at work.
sick Lucy
Lucy wasn’t able to come yesterday because she had to take her husband to a medical appointment at the hospital. Then last night she came down with a nasty flu so she is home again today. She called me a few minutes ago and said, “I was so worried about you this morning Madame. I knew you must have been struggling with the upstairs and the downstairs and getting the kids ready for school.” Hilarious. It’s true that she arrives and gets breakfast on the table before we come downstairs and then makes the boys’ lunches while we eat and read the bible story for the day. And she finds and fills their water bottles, makes sure their backpacks are sitting by the front door and helps the kids onto the bus.
Yes, the kids would say that I was struggling as I proceeded to burn the first 4 pancakes — I guess I’m out of practice. But other than a forgotten water bottle, I managed to get everyone fed and out the door on time. Now cleaning up the explosion that is left behind? That’s where I’ll really be struggling. I’m waiting for all those sympathy cards to start flooding my mailbox.