Today Is 123-Friday!

In honor of my 123rd post on Squarer Pegs, Rounder Holes, I thought I'd mix it up a little bit and just write about all of the little blurb-y type things as they pop into my head. How is that different from my usual postings? Well, ordinarily I would have to scrunch up my eyebrows a bit and squint my eyes and focus really hard to stay relative-ish to the one subject. And what is the relevance of the 123rd posting? I like simplicity, counting, and while the number 123 is NOT a prime number, it does consist of the first 3 prime digits and so I like that. I like math. And I do hate round numbers so much, unless it's a string of zeros on the left of a decimal point as it relates to a check made payable to me.

Justin Bieber-  Really?! I mean, yeah, I come from the generation that brought us the likes of Milli Vanilli, Nu Shooz, and Tiffany.....but they didn't walk into glass walls and doors and then threaten to walk off of an interview set. Dude! Your following will ALWAYS be 12 year old girls. Game over.

American Football- I don't follow it anymore. Living in Egypt has sort of ruined sports for me since I don't give a crap about Al-Ahly soccer team OR Zumalek soccer team. I've heard people talking about NFL teams that weren't even in existence when I left the US back in 2001. So if your refs are on strike or suck now....I'd like to be concerned, but just can't be bothered. My apologies.

I attended high school (first 3 years) in Stuttgart, Germany and right now as I type this there is an all-year alumni/faculty reunion going on IN STUTTGART in conjunction with the Stuttgarter/Canstaadt festival and some of my friends are there now, reliving memories in our old school, football field, and stomping grounds and I am SOOO jealous that I couldn't be there with them. Hope you guys all have a great time. Go Stallions! Class of 1986 RULES!

Mosquitoes- I frickin' hate them. Especially those little tiny beige almost invisible ones that you can't ever kill until after they've drained at least 2 pints of blood from your fingertips, ears, toes, and legs! And then when you finally do, they explode with YOUR blood splattering all over the walls, curtains, and your skin where you've smacked 'em.

Why do we always run out of garbage bags when there is old food in the back of the fridge that needs to be thrown out? And then you leave it in the fridge because this inevitably happens at night and if you leave it on the counter as a reminder to throw it out, your whole kitchen stinks. But then you forget that it's in the fridge and needs to be thrown out and you don't find it again until you're ...that's right!....out of garbage bags again. Oh. And as long as I'm on the refrigerator  path, could you please...someone, anyone?....tell me what is the friggin' direct correlation between every member of my family and the top shelf of the refrigerator??? I use the top shelf for tall or "careful this is spillable" things or large things that won't fit on any other shelves. My kids (and sometimes my husband) will place the following things on the top shelf:  1 egg, a tiny dessert dish with 1/2 Tablespoon of fava beans, anything that requires use of the crisper drawer (because the crisper drawer is where they apparently hide things that they don't want to share with each other,) and the empty milk container. *sigh*

Word of Advice:  Never accidentally drop the f-bomb in front of your autistic teenager, because while MOST of her verbal skills are learned from movies and tv and books, the shit you DON'T want her to say in front of her grandmother to reinforce your shitty parenting skills, is EXACTLY what will enter (full time) into her vocabulary. *Score one more on my parental WIN card.*

Pinterest is AWESOME/DEVIL- I've now managed to complete 10 items from all the thousands of pinned items on my boards. Hey. That's not so bad considering we don't have craft stores or American conveniences here like chocolate chips, instant-ANYTHING (except coffee) or cool stuff like double-sided sticky tape or stencils. The entire DIY-concept is new to Egypt.

In a conversation on Facebook with my sister, MJ, last week, I decided that my list of favorite words included:  diphthong, bracket, penultimate, frivolous, superfluous, and sublime. My list, of course, is not limited to these. She prefers crapulence, kerfuffle, hornswaggle and canoodle.

I love my family...I want to build a garden-butterfly sanctuary in my backyard one day. Can someone tell me why leg hair after 40 is less frequently in need of shaving but some single damn chin WIRE because it's too coarse to be hair continues to pop out ever week or so no matter how often you pull the f***er out?! Will health insurance cover operations that shave bunions off your feet using lasers so it can be done outpatient? And why can't Rush Limbaugh just frickin' overdose already or spontaneously explode into little tiny piles of Rush-lets that only spew minute bits of bullshit at a time and are all polarized so that they can never be in the same place at the same time like tiny magnets? I think the movie "Idiocracy" should be run as a public service announcement to get intelligent people to do their civic duty and repopulate the planet with more intelligent life and stop waiting so damn long to have kids. You're NEVER going to be better "financially prepared" for kids. They will just suck MORE money out of you if you have more of it. Poor people know this. Just have them.

And I'll leave you with one last irrelevant thought:  Kids who are wearing their very last pair of hole-free jeans three weeks before payday will ALWAYS be able to find a tree to climb and "slide out" of it hooking the ass of their pants on that single spot of tree trunk that ISN'T smooth and rip a hole in the back. Murphy's Law? Yes. Me and Murph go way back.

Alphabet Soup

I've mentioned before that I'm a military BRAT. Growing up around the Army, acronyms were just the norm for us. While most kids on a playground can tell you about ABC-gum and understand what "You'd better XYZPDQ" means, BRATs are familiar with so much more, usually even before the third grade. Also, our  parents when saying things like 'As Soon As Possible' did not spell out A.S.A.P. but usually pronounced it ay-sap. By the time we were in high school, we knew that a letter from DODDS addressed to our fathers was probably CC'd to him and actually addressed to his C.O. and that we must be nailed for ditching school and life as we knew it was now FUBAR (that's Foo-Bar.)

What's that? OH...right. Translation:

DODDS:   Department of Defense Dependent Schools
CC:           Courtesy Copy (you should know this from email headers, come on!)
C.O.:         Commanding Officer
FUBAR:    F*#!ed Up Beyond All Recognition

So, when I got caught, along with 65 of my closest friends, drinking apple schnapps on the school bus and the driver, Frank (not really his name but since Frank and Stoeckl own the bus company we called ALL of our bus drivers Frank) drove us to the MP station and the DSCC held all of us there for over 4 hours without allowing us to contact our parents. I finally was the ballsiest and picked up a phone and called my dad, who came immediately with my friends parents in tow and OMG did the S.H.T.F!  My dad calmly went in and told the DSCC, "Colonel, I would like to press charges." The colonel was shocked thinking that my dad wanted to press charges against me for under-age drinking. He contended this was a matter best left for the  parents to handle since I was not military and they could not hold me in a military cell or discipline me in anyway. Dad clarified. "I want to press charges for kidnapping." That got the Colonel's attention.

DSCC:   "Against whom?"
D.A.D:   "You, Sir."
DSCC:   "Come again?"
D.A.D:   "Sir, you have held my daughter against her will, without her parents knowledge and refused to
               her any contact with her parents. According to any dictionary, that is the definition of kidnapping,
               Sir, and I'd like to press charges."
DSCC:   "But she and her friends were drinking on the bus!"
D.A.D:    "True, Sir. But as you've indicated, that would be a matter best left to her parents to handle since
                she is a dependent and not a military member and thus outside your jurisdiction. Isn't that correct,
                Sir?"
DSCC:    "Uh, well......uhm, see that she never does this again, Chief!"
D.A.D:     "I can guaran-damn-tee it, Sir."
DSCC:    "Then I'll just release her into your custody and we'll pretend this never happened?"
D.A.D:    "That's affirmative, Sir."

I thought my dad was the coolest thing ever. The DSCC released the rest of the students with a stern warning and only my two best friends got suspended from the bus and had to take the train for two weeks. (That's because they'd bought the booze in the first place.) And I was just the big hero. MY dad had pretty much gotten everyone off the hook and put the DSCC in his place, etc. Until we got in the car. And I was placed on restriction for the next 2 weeks and only allowed to leave my room for KP, laundry, meals and school. SNAFU. I was also warned that if I were to EVER embarrass my father via his chain of command again, that I would see the 4 walls of my room until we PCS'd. I was scared. That meant no more DYA sports, no more AFN, no more kissing boys behind the BOQ, no more watching movies at the AAFES theater and no more hanging out at the snack bar in the PX. So, I followed my father's advice and got my "head out of my ass" and walked the straight and narrow until he came home one day and said, 'FIGMO'.

For those of you, not familiar with military life overseas, more translation:

MP:        Military Police
DSCC:   Deputy Sub-Community Commander (the MFWIC of the smaller of two American military
              communities that are closely situated.)
MFWIC: Mother F*#!er What's In Charge
OMG:     Really? You have to ask this in the age of Twitter?
S.H.T.F:  Sh** Hit the Fan
KP:         Kitchen Police
SNAFU:  Situation Normal-All F*#!ed Up
PCS'd:    Permanent Change of Station (to move)
DYA:      Dependent Youth Association
AFN:      Armed Forces Network (tv and radio station; aka AFRTS or Ay-Farts which is Armed Forces
                Radio and Television Service)
BOQ:     Billeting of Quarters (a military sort of hotel where members and families sometimes stay
               temporarily, after they've cleared quarters prior to PCSing and/or while on TDY - Temporary
               Duty)
AAFES:  Army Air Force Exchange Services (they ARE the dept store/fast food/bowling alley/theater/ on
               any Army or Air Force military compound.)
PX:         Post Exchange (you'll sometimes hear someone say BX and that is the same thing only they're
               usually Navy or Air Force because they have BASES instead of  POSTS so it would be Base
               Exchange....which I find really weird because Marines are assigned to CAMPS but they don't say
               CX for Camp Exchange....I think they also have BXes. Of course, no one credits the Marines for
               being big readers anyway so if you just say "the exchange" to them they'll know what you're talking
               about and reply in the affirmative, "Oo-rah."
FIGMO:  F*#! It. Got My Orders (means I don't care....I'm PCSing soon and already have orders to leave)

      

The Memory of Scent

I was just going to close up on here and let my kids have a turn on the computer. But then suddenly I smelled the night jasmine coming in from the balcony door on the other side of the house. The doorman has a night jasmine tree planted just under our balcony. It's LOVELY when the wind blows in off the Mediterranean Sea (which is about 12 blocks away) and hits that tree. We get to reap the benefits. It reminds me of walking in Amman, Jordan in the evenings on my way home from work.

Scents always trigger memory quicker than any word or song or  picture. The smell of Old Spice cologne makes me think of my dad. And whenever we walk past the pastry wholesale shop on our way to the butcher, I smell the aroma of cooking sugar and butter and immediately I'm back in Nikaia, Greece in KAIROS bakery where my husband worked when we first started dating. The smell of rain makes me think of shopping in Germany with my sister. And the smell of freshly cut grass can take me to any number of softball fields where I played on various teams growing up.  The smell of "Sweet Honesty" perfume by Avon makes me think of my mom in the summertime when I was only 8 and the smell of tangerines takes me back to St. Nicklaus' Tag in Germany and putting my boots outside the door for treats.

The smell of peppermint candy makes me think of my paternal grandfather, Buddy Nicholas. And the smell of  pine trees, Frito's, or pecan pie is an instantaneous trip to Mobile, Alabama. The smell of iced tea makes me think of my Aunt Ginger.  The smell of Baby Magic lotion makes me think of my firstborn son and how he loved to take a bath in the kitchen sink.

The smell of lemon Carpet Fresh makes me laugh, because my cousin, Jim, empty an entire box of it on the rug in the den one time and even after we vacuumed it all up, no one could walk into the den without their eyes tearing up for about three weeks. The smell of Poison perfume makes me want to vomit. (Someone bathed in it at work when I was pregnant with my first baby.)  And the smell of popcorn makes me think of sitting around our living room watching movies together.

The jasmine is filling up my head and reminding me that it's not my turn on the computer anymore. It's lovely. I'm going to go sit closer to the balcony door to enjoy it and the other scents of Summer.

Hollywood's Actually Got Me Thinking

As an Army brat, I attended 15 schools in 12 years. (16 schools if you include the night classes that I took at the local community college during my senior year in high school.) Most of the teachers that I had were pretty good but most never left any major impressions on me. Weirdly, I remember most of my teachers names from the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DODDS) that I attended. But the teachers that I had in the U.S. are a mere blur. With the exception of Sister Carita Ulm, my kindergarten teacher from Rosenburg, Texas, who taught me to read, and Sister Mary Katherine, my 2nd grade teacher, from El Paso, Texas, who I really only remember because she nearly clawed my arms off from the elbows down because I kicked some boy named Raul off of the top of the slide for looking up my skirt while I was in line in front of him.  I don't know why I remember all of my DODDS teachers so much better than the civilian school teachers. I remember Mrs. Ball, 8th grade Social Studies teacher from Ozark, Alabama because she smelled like cigarettes and Dentyne gum. And Mr. Ken Korn, my 7th grade speech teacher from El Paso, Texas. I liked Mr. Korn because he was actually a good teacher and demanded our respect in his class. He also said that the word was not BECUZZZZZ but "beCAUSE...rhymes with JAWS."  Oh, and Mr. Whitaker, from my 7th grade Talented and Gifted class in El Paso. Mr. Whitaker made an impression because he worked us do death mathematically and because we got to design cool bridges made mostly out of toothpicks which we then destroyed by hanging weights off of them. Mine, of course, was the first one to snap in half. Most of the other teachers in El Paso were known only as "Mees" and "Meester", even by us anglo kids. I always wondered if any of them had surnames.

I remember the DODDS teachers most, I think, because they actually challenged us to think and to problem solve. Even the really crappy teachers still had an edge over most of the ones that I had in the civilian world. (With the exception of 3rd grade on Fort Bliss...if I had had an orangutan for a teacher in that class I couldn't tell you, it was THAT memorable a school.) Anyway, what got me thinking about teachers vs. GREAT teachers was that movie from 1988, "Stand and Deliver" starring Edward James Olmos as a math teacher, Jaime Escalante, who decided to challenge the kids in his Garfield High School class to learn calculus and take the Advanced Placement exam. It was like a lot of the "based on a true story" movies showing how disadvantaged kids in East Los Angeles, when given a teacher who gives a damn and works to get and keep their attention while still earning their respect, can overcome all odds and get themselves on the right educational track. Other examples are "Freedom Writers" with Hillary Swank, "Race the Sun" with Halle Berry and James Belushi, and "Dangerous Minds" with Michelle Pfeiffer. All are loosely based on true stories. All seem to indicate only one teacher in an entire high school full of teachers gives a damn. Wow. Our public education system must REALLY suck.

At Stuttgart American High School, which was located in Ludwigsburg, Germany just outside of Stuttgart, the opposite was true. For every average teacher I had in a 6-period day, I had 4 really good ones and one who stood out among the rest. My freshman year, my favorite teacher was Mr. Pike in Biology. He was corny and funny and smart and challenged us and made us laugh and think and expected 150% in all of his classes. My sophomore year, my favorite teacher was Dr. S.E. Lewis, Honors English. He was a little flighty and we could play some whopper practical jokes on him. But he challenged us with reading assignments and made us dig deep into Shakespeare and I swear I read more than 30 books that  year alone in his class. My junior year, I had two favorite teachers. Mrs. Bourland was my Honors English teacher and she was tough with her reading lists and composition assignments. She inspired my love of the American authrs like Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Poe. She was 10 times stricter about the term papers she assigned than Dr. Lewis was the year before. But she was compassionate toward me when I almost lost my mom to cancer that year. Mr. Mazzei was also a favorite that year. In his humanities class, I was introduced to art and architecture in history and it made all of those boring old history classes that I'd had for years make sense to me. I fell in love with the flying buttresses of Gothic architecture and did two term papers for him on two different cathedrals in the town I where I lived. My overseas education in DODDS schools really made me a deeply cultured person.

When we returned to the US, my dad was stationed at an airfield on Fort Meade, Maryland and my sister and I were enrolled in Meade Senior High School. This is actually a county school that happens to be on post. But I think we lucked out and ended up with some  pretty good teachers there, too. My absolute favorite teacher there was Ms. Patty Diaz (she married after I graduated but I don't know her new last name.) She was my dance teacher and introduced us to contemporary/modern dance. It was a great release for me with all the stress I was going through at home. Ms. Diaz was laid back and creative and cool, but still demanded our attention and respect. As for academics, I had a few favorites. Mr. Bill Shepard was my speech teacher and he was also the faculty adviser for the school newspaper. When Mr. Shepard heard about my mom being terminal with cancer, he asked me to write an article about it for the school paper. I did, but anonymously. Being in high school is hard enough without everyone staring at you for the added reason of your mom dying in order to point and call you a freak. Then there was Mrs. Sharp, my Algebra II teacher who was very good at explaining the tougher points while still keeping a little sarcastic wit for those who were not paying attention. And then there was Mr. Pelham. I was in his Advanced Placement English class for seemingly 5 minutes before I got moved to a different class because my dad insisted that I drop Sociology and re-take Algebra II that I'd passed in Germany with a 'C'. (Dad's reasoning was that if I'd made a 'C' the first time around, that I could easily make a 'B' or even an 'A' the second time around. That's how I met Mrs. Sharp. And as great a teacher as she was, I still made another 'C' in Algebra II. I think I just didn't want to be there....I digress.)

Mr. Pelham seemed to be going through some changes in 1985. I didn't know him before that class. So, I guess I'm the last to judge. But he seemed sort of disillusioned with American youth. In my first week in his class he said something that didn't sit right with me. He said that "Americans have no culture at all." Of course, most of the class took issue with this statement and began calling out various things that they thought made them "cultured." Sadly, I began to see what he was talking about. Pretty much, most of the stuff that my classmates used as examples were things from Elvis Presley's era until present...well, present-day 1985. I guess those of us who had gone to school overseas and visited places like the Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, skied the Alps of Bavaria and Switzerland, visited  Anne Frank's hiding place in Amsterdam, and touched the walls of the shower rooms and smelled the stench of the crematorium still present at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany could be the exception to his rule. I still liked Elvis Presley and Jazz and hamburgers and pizza, though. So maybe Mr. Pelham was right and I was uncultured. Whatever. He made an impression on me. He was an excellent English teacher, even if I was only in his class a brief time. Honestly, I wish I hadn't dropped his class. The nameless, faceless English teacher I ended up with now falls into the "blur pit" of other civilian world teachers that I had throughout my years in school.

But I'd like to take this opportunity to thank those teachers who have made a difference in the lives of their students. Teachers who challenge their students to think, to take that nearly but not absolutely impossible first step toward self-improvement, to go further than they thought possible, and to THINK for themselves....these are our true heroes. Thank you, Sister Carita, Mr. Korn, Mr. Whitaker, Mr. Pike, Dr. Lewis, Mrs. Bourland, Mr. Mazzei, Ms. Diaz, Mr. Shepard, and Mr. Pelham. You helped shape me.

We're Back!

It only took fifteen hours, two planes, three barf bags and a trip to the

McDonald's drive through, but we made it back to the great state of
TEXAS!

We left for Cairo on 18 January in two cars. We had to shove the kids
and 12 suitcases and 7 carry-on bags and me, two drivers, a cousin and
one sister-in-law into the vehicles and then drive 3 hours to the airport.
Once we checked the luggage with only ONE protest from one security
guard who noticed and questioned why I was carrying 14 kilos of tools
in one suitcase, I hustled the children onto the plane and got everyone
buckled into their seats and handed out cookies and chips and hoped
they'd all fall asleep. Yeah, right. Not in MY life. Anyway, so everyone,
even Randa, was doing fine...until about 45 minutes before we got to
Frankfurt. That's when she decided to have her autistic meltdown.

Now Germans tend to be a bit on the judgemental side when seeing
people freaking out. They like order and sense. Well, autism just does
NOT fit into this neat and tidy box when sensory overload happens.
So, Randa had a freak out session and then I freaked out when the

flight attendant put. her. hands. on. my. child. So, I mentally flashed

through the scenario of grabbing her by the hair and slinging her into

the tight little closet of a bathroom and giving her a blue swirly, but

then I flashed to me and my autistic child being flung from the wheel

bays below sans parachutes and my other 4 kids waving with at least

one of them asking, "Does this mean we can get more sodas when the

drink cart comes by?" so I shook my head and returned to reality

where I told her through my teeth as politely as I could, "DON'T

touch her. You're making it worse. She is autistic and she cannot

deal with loud people in her face. I can calm her down if you will just

back off and let me!" She did. I did. Everything calm and happy with

the exception of every nasty airline employee eyeball giving me the

stink eye. OH WELL.

And ya know, for the nastiness endured on THAT flight with only one

small meltdown, the next leg of the trip was worse on our behavioral

part (NOT my fault) but the flight attendants were the exact opposite

of the first leg of the trip. They were sooo nice. Like Bizarro World nice.

They put us on first. Gave the kids pretzels and color books and games

and puzzles and kindly explained to them that while the stuff in their

kiddie basket is very cool, they have to have enough for the other kids

on the flight. Fortunately, these were the nice guys. Had we still been

on with the first group of attendants, they'd have handed them sticks

and paper bags to play with and then shouted, "ZAT'S ENOUGH

TOYS FUR YOU, YOU GREEDY DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY OF

AMERICANS!" But we weren't on that flight. We were with Bizarro

World.

Now, under normal circumstances, I would never give my kids medicine

to make them fall asleep. But if Randa couldn't handle a 4 hour flight

without a panic attack, how could she handle a 9 hour flight? Usually, in

our experience, her outbursts are louder and longer and her panic more

pronounced when she has several meltdowns in one day. Add to the mix

that she hadn't slept in over 24 hours and I was totally digging through

my carry-on bag for a serious cold capsule. It worked. She fell asleep

just after take-off and woke up about 20 minutes before landing. Poor

baby. So seemingly, this flight was a piece of cake, right? Silly readers.

This is MY life we're talking about here. Of COURSE not.

So, a couple of hours into the flight they started serving the meals. Now

I was traveling alone with 5 kids and it's not like they've got 6 seats all

across from each other or better, little compartments like on trains.

So I had us seated strategically like this:

seat1 seat2 -aisle- Hamo Ismail Samiya -aisle- seat6 seat7

seat8 seat9 -aisle- Aiman Randa Me -aisle- seat10 seat11

There is a reason for this. Hamo and Ismail listen better in public.

Samiya, who ALWAYS has to go to the bathroom while traveling EVEN

just to the grocery store, needed to be on an aisle. Aiman, the youngest,

needs to be reeled in now and then, and Randa, well, we already know

about her issues. So, they put a tray in front of all the kids but Randa

and then serve me last. So we were wearing our heaviest winter coats in

an effort to alleviate some of the suitcase weight and it was really

crowded in our seats. Then all of a sudden Hamo started barfing. He

filled one barf bag and then took Ismail's and began to vomit into it.

Samiya yelled over the high seat back, "Hamo's sick! Hamo's sick!"

To which I could do nothing at all to help since I was belted in, Randa's

unconscious head on my shoulder snoring, Aiman still excited about

having a caffeinated soda with his lunch and afraid that if he moved to

help his brother someone would take away his tray and that would be

the end of his brown liquid delight. I tried to put back my chair back so

I could rest Randa's head in the crack there, but got protests from the

portly man behind me who was also trying to eat and got the tray

pushed into his midsection. By now, the smell of puke reaches Samiya,

who proceeded to grab her own barf bag. Ismail's chair started to shake

and I was afraid that he was going to start his own hurl-fest until I heard

him guffaw. Samiya then started punching him while shouting, "Do you

(yak!) (punch) think (yak!) (punch) that it's funny (yak!) ( punch) that

we're (yak!) (punch) sick??!! (yak!)" This of course made him laugh even

harder to the point that he could barely breathe and was on the verge

of an asthma attack. I tried to get up at this point and of course, the

drink cart was blocking me in. Then the brain started working again and

I grabbed the guy by his sleeve and said, "Excuse me, but my son is

vomitting and I can't get to him and he's out of barf bags!" Klaus, or

whatever his name was, sprung into action. He flew to the back of the

plane and reappeared almost instantaneously with 3 new bags. He

handed Hamo and Samiya new barf bags and gave Ismail some tissue

because he'd now reached to point of laughter where there is no sound

made and only tears streaming from his eyes. I thanked him when they

brough Hamo a soda to calm his stomach and we landed about 45

minutes after that. Yup. Never a dull moment with this group.

So then in the car on the way home from the airport, Hamo began

complaining about the guy across the aisle from him (seat2, see map

above) and how he was making a mean face at him like it was HIS

fault for throwing up on the plane. I gently reminded my son that

while the man understood that he didn't want to be sick he was

still grossed out because a) he WAS trying to eat his dinner while

you were practicing for the Upchuck Olympics and more importantly

b) when one uses a barf bag, it is customary to hold it as close to

one's mouth as possible and try to discreetly spew so as not to disgust

the other passengers. "What do you mean?" asked Hamo.

"Well, Son," I replied, "You held the bag about arm's length from your

face and proceeded to aim via projectile vomiting in an effort to hit

the bag. He had every right to be grossed out and give you the stink

eye. This would also explain Ismail's laughter. He was looking at the

whole picture and seeing the guy's reaction to you and THAT was

where the hilarity originated and NOT the fact that you were sick."

We arrived at bribery point number two (fast food drive thru window)

that we used to convince Randa to get on the plane in the first place.

"Do you want anything to eat, Hamo?"

"NO THANKS!" He responded. Good thing. Compact cars don't usually

have barf bags in the seat pocket.