My Life's Work

Raising children has got to be the most rewarding, difficult job that doesn't involve hazard pay. It's loud and screamy and a little head-achy and sometimes poopy and vomity. But a lot of the time it isn't. A lot of the time it's funny and laughing and giggly and loving. Today is one of those really good days where I feel like I've succeeded at the "mom gig."

While I'm nowhere near finished with my "job," I know that I'm on the right track. There are some members of my extended family who have criticized my kids and the way I raise them. Do I care about those opinions? Not enough to change what I'm doing. Did those opinions hurt? Hell yes. But here's the thing. I. know. that. I. have. great. kids. Not good. GREAT!

Yes, they fight. There are FIVE of them and they are all extremely close in age and in a less than 1000 square foot 3-bedroom apartment. They have 5 extremely different personalities and interests and tolerance levels. They are all pretty vocal and equal on the teasing playing field. They all have great senses of humor complete with sarcastic rapier wit. They fight over the t.v., the computer and whose turn it is to do dishes. What kids don't? Do they fist fight? Yes. Do I allow it? No. Do they do it anyway? Yes. But I break it up and hand out punishments by taking away privileges.

For whatever fighting, teasing or tattling that they do, they are also extraordinarily helpful. My kids are the ones that see a woman struggling with bags of groceries and walk up and take the bags from her hands so that she can get out her keys to open the front door. They won't carry the groceries upstairs to her apartment because they aren't allowed to. But they will set them inside the door of the building. Unless it's someone that we know or unless they yell up to our balcony and let me know what they're doing first. My kids help with dishes...some of them without being told. Others help on the threat of no computer time. One actually gets bored and cleans out closets. Another will clean the stove top (a job that I abhor.) And one got sick of the handprints in the hallway and actually scrubbed down the walls for me 2 nights ago.

I still have to yell to get anyone to get the dirty laundry INTO the hamper as opposed to under the beds, but I never said they were perfect. My youngest buys me little things that he thinks I might like. If he gets 5 pounds spending money from his father, he immediately asks one of his older brothers to take him to the corner shop to "buy stuff." He almost always comes back with a can of diet soda or a  piece of gum or a package of ramen noodles for me. I don't have the heart to tell him that I cannot stand the thought of ramen noodles after living on them for nearly two semesters of college. I get love notes from them. My 13-yr old leaves me "I'm sorry" and "I love you" notes when I'm having a bad day. My oldest likes to text his love notes to me...usually after we have one of those "teenage angst" days together. My younger daughter will just go make my bed or wash a load of dishes if she's attempting to apologize. And my youngest is just a big hugger. My older daughter will tell me "Sorry, Mommy. Give me a hug." For an autistic kid, she's starting to learn empathy.

I know that I have put a lot on here about the OMG they're running me nuts times....but I guess that's because I use this blog as a sort of creative outlet to my own stress to keep from having an aneurysm or ripping out all of my eyebrows which are both inconvenient and terribly unattractive....especially when I get that nervous twitch in my face. But all in all, I have great kids who are learning to deal with other personality types in small spaces on a daily basis. And if they fight well, they make up better. And that's something that a lot of adults STILL need to learn how to do. Clearly, I'm doing something right.

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.

FEELING USED....Again.

I used to think that this was a pretty good picture of me. Apparently, this is not how most people see me.

Yeah, THIS is what they actually see when they look at me. Just another TOOL to be used. I know that a lot of the time I come off as a kind of crusty, hardshell exterior to a hard ass interior wrapped around the semblance of a Liberal heart. I guess that is sometimes true.  But I try really hard to live my life as a constant example to the young minds God blessed me with to mold and shape into true, good and productive humans; humans who have empathy for others and will, without a second thought, offer help to those in need, provided it does not leave their own family destitute. After all, charity DOES begin at home.

We do what we can to help families in need. And this is not a "please pat me on the back for being so generous" request. I don't think that this is anything to brag about. In fact, I don't really want to put that on here because I feel it now has taken away from any blessings that we may later be entitled to from God in the Hereafter. But without that statement, I can't explain why I feel like such a tool. When I help someone with either food, handed-down clothes that my kids can no longer fit, or money, etc, it is because I see that there is a need and we have the means to fill that need. It makes us more grateful to God for the things that He has blessed us with. I know that I'm more grateful every day that my husband is the one that God chose for me because he works hard and makes sacrifices for me and our kids; because he is grateful to God for all that we've earned and have been given.

But when one of the recipients of your generosity sends his/her kids over to your house to ask for a "spare curtain rod" that they noticed in your bedroom on one of their visits to your house where they wandered around nosing through stuff.............I'm left with the thought:  Really?! A spare curtain rod? I pay for those things by the meter and you want I should send one over to you? What's next? My curtains? My t.v.? Get the hell out of here!

I told her kids that I don't have a spare curtain rod and sent them home. But you know, after a day of the usual "usage" by my own kids with their constant barrage of "get me" and "I need" and "I want" and a huge dose of "he said" followed by "she hit," THIS was not a needed request at all. Ungrateful and greedy people make it difficult to be generous. This is probably going to be viewed by a lot of my readers as snarky on my part...and maybe they're right. But feelings are not right or wrong. They just ARE. And I'm feeling a little on the stabby side now so I'm hoping that this  person doesn't send her kids back over here. They don't know what Halloween is here, so I can't explain away the butcher knife. Can I?

Be Careful What You Wish For...

Last night I was in a really shitty mood. I know. Language, language. But I don't know that there is a better adjective to use than 'shitty.' So I'm not editing.

So you know how when everything in your life as a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) becomes rote and goes on in a sort of "autopilot" mode and you wake up the same everyday and brush your teeth the same everyday and buy bread the same everyday and take the kids to school the same everyday and yell about watching cartoons before homework the same everyday and you're late with dinner the same everyday and you consider jumping from the balcony the same everyday only to argue yourself out of it the same everyday because let's face it a dive off the first floor balcony is only gonna get you into a cast and not into a dirt nap and then life would be the same everyday only in a friggin' cast which would just complicate shit and not really solve anything or give the same selfish result that ultimately you want anyway and that would be that the people in your life THINK ABOUT YOU more than just to locate some lost random item like a backpack, cigarette lighter, or adapter to charge a mobile phone. And it would be really itchy and hard to walk.

So you just suck it up day after day thinking "it's going to get better...it has to....I chose the SAHM life and I love my kids and my family and I wouldn't trade it for the world." And you know that deep down you never would trade your husband or children for one of those hot firemen calendar poster guys on a big red fire engine with his ropes and hoses....oh my! Although there would probably be a big long 'pros' and 'cons' list, if only mentally. But in the end, the SAHM-gig would still win out. Because after all, you ARE making a difference in the world by repopulating the planet with intelligent, kind and productive people. And you love them and they love you. And that husband, even after all these years, is still really hot. And he's seen you in the throws of childbirth and helped you during a really messy miscarriage and helped change the poopy diapers and made you dark-chocolate covered baklava for your birthday and he's seen you in bad flourescent lighting with all your stretchmarks and 'still planning on losing this' pregnancy fat and hasn't run screaming down the street in search of a younger, hotter version of you....AND STILL WANTS YOU.

But from time to time that overwhelming, 'oh dear God help me not to puke from boredom' feeling  hits you. And this is how I felt last night. And I told my husband that I was bored. And his answer was, "Go to bed."
NOT what I was hoping for. But men aren't intuitive like women. We have to lay it on the line with them. No hints-dropping because they're not designed to pick up on that sort of stuff. If we want flowers, then we have to say: "Hey, Honey. My birthday is Saturday and I want red roses with daisies mixed in and I want a gold bracelet and if you get me another kitchen gadget that plugs in, you can also hire me a divorce lawyer."
That's how you get what you want from men. Telling them stuff like, "I am bored with my life and I need a change," is NOT going to get you a hired babysitter and a night out on the town. I know this. But I hoped for a fleeting moment. And instead of living up to my weird female expectations, he lived up to the reality that is male. So I went to bed.


This morning I decided to wash the curtains in the foyer for a change of pace. So, I climbed up on the four foot wooden painter's ladder and took the curtains down. Randa was complaining because her brother farted next to her and it stunk. (The computer is in the foyer and she was playing on the computer.) So I told her to turn on the ceiling fan judging that I was at least a foot or more out of reach of the blades. She told me, "Be careful, Mommy." I thought, "How sweet. My little girl has overcome the autism speech issues enough to worry about my concern." And then I noticed that the curtain was stuck to the wooden splinters on the ladder so I lifted my arm out to pull the fabric away and stuck my damn hand right in the path of the metal ceiling fan that was on high.

I don't know about you, but five stitches in my index finger before noon definitely counts as a change in my regular routine. Think I'll keep my mouth shut from now on and just count my blessings.

Chest Pains, Homeschool and Housework, OhMy!

Saturday I posted on Facebook that I was again experiencing serious chest pains and that my husband took me to the emergency room and of course, no cardiologist was on duty. That was on Friday night. We paid for an appointment for Sunday night. And I went Sunday night with his cousin (because he had an appointment with the dentist to complete some dental work already started.) And the stupid cardiologist called in sick and we proceeded to walk about 8 miles in circles through about 4 hospitals in the area looking for one with a cardiologist. And of course, NO JOY.

I got home sweaty and hot and really pissed off, wondering if I were to drop dead of a heart attack would anyone in the Egyptian medical community give a crap. Probably not. I decided to contact my best friend, Sara, who I had neglected to bother with all of this because she just had her third baby and has enough crap on her plate with getting used to having 3 kids, going back to work as a surgical nurse after maternity leave, school for her oldest son just starting within the last few weeks and her mother-in-law living upstairs from her. But the whole "surgical nurse" thing and a plethora of knowledge as to where to find specialists in this city trumped all of her problems. So she told me to call the "heart center" downtown Alexandria. I did. And I have an appointment tomorrow at 5:30pm YAY. But what to do with the rest of my day?

So, while I was trying to track down the "heart center" phone numbers online today, Aiman started yelping and howling about ants "eating" his legs. Apparently one ant climbed on his foot and he freaked out. He IS my bug-fearing germophobe. I sent him to shower and then found out what the problem was. Aiman was charged with sweeping the living room last night after dinner and Mohamed was charged with wiping down the coffee table. (Our place is too small to have a dining room unless we want to lose a bedroom....so we opted to just eat in the living room at the coffee table.) Mohamed got his usual case of TWC's (Table-washing cramps) and had to go poop for about an hour or so. Of course, by the time he got out of the john, he'd lost 2 pounds, was light-headed and completely forgot about the task he'd been assigned. Aiman just said, "I don't want to" and went to bed. I was pretty much in pain and had already gone to sleep so it didn't get done. At any rate, I pushed furniture around, swept the house and mopped the house with kerosene water (kills bugs and as long as I don't smoke while I'm doing it, it's not dangerous provided the house is well-ventilated.) I swept off all the area rugs and put them back, returned the furniture and then made my phone calls to the hospital while sucking down the coffee I hadn't had due to Mop-mania Ant-Killing Mission.

I did three loads of laundry, "homeschooled" for math because no one went to school today because my husband was afraid that the ongoing in-fighting had reached our outskirt area of town. WHAT DID I EVER DO TO HIM TO DESERVE THAT??? Truth be told he thought he had it on good authority that it was unsafe to send the kids to school today. When I found out that his source was one of his cousins who barely understands the evening news, I reminded him that she was the same one who dragged his nieces down to my apartment when she was babysitting them and had all of them terrified that Israel had attacked Alexandria and were currently bombing our neighborhood. Why? Because the people on the block behind ours were having a wedding and shot off about 30 bottle rockets all at once. They'd never seen this type of fireworks before (they're illegal here) and freaked out and ran downstairs terrified and crying while my kids were staring out the bedroom window going, "Ooooh!....Aaaaaah!" So, while I shifted gears between 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th grade levels of geometry and algebra, I managed to fold and put away another 2 loads of laundry, solve a Rubik's cube (by popping all of the pieces out and putting it back together so that the kids all think I'm a genius), pick all the pubic hair off of the bar of soap in the shower (far too many males in this household) and get the dishes washed up. I sent the boys out to pick up the stuff I needed for dinner and got the kids fed and MOST of the homework done before my husband got out of bed at 2.

I try to keep busy because activity actually makes my chest hurt less. So, it's not exercise-induced. I'm thinking it's stress. But with the high-cholesterol levels and this houseful of teenagers, I really need to have it checked. Here's to my health.

I'm Going to be Bald by 2012

I woke up feeling like someone had pounded the snot out of me with a Louisville Slugger this morning. I guess it's time to pull the blankets out of the closet. Or maybe just turn the ceiling fan off at night. But that hyperactive ovary has me doing the pre-menopausal night sweat dance. You know the one. Where you are hot as hell and feeling like your clothes are choking all the oxygen out of you even though you're only wearing a thin cotton nightshirt and going commando in case your husband decides to wake you up for a zesty session once the kids finally fall asleep. And then after about 10 minutes of comfortable sleep once you've kicked the covers off your sweaty body, the ceiling fan cools you off from comfortable to "damn, I feel like someone jammed an icicle through my spine" and then of course, you can't find the bedspread that you kicked across the room only moments earlier. And the mad vicious circle continues all night.

So after little to no real sleep, I awoke to a vicious headache and pretzel-like muscles. Then my kids started the  "he was supposed to be third today on the computer and I was supposed to be first"--"No, you're a butthole liar" routine not only before coffee...but before I'd had my morning pee. This was my first clue to Suckfest 2011. I asked the kids to please be merciful and quiet since I had all the signs of an oncoming migraine and they promised they would just before the youngest two decided to host an indoor soccer match in the boys' room. The two older boys engaged in mortal combat for the remainder of the day and well into the evening. (As a matter of fact, they only called a truce about 20  minutes ago when "Hancock" came on tv and sat down on opposite ends of the couch to watch it together.)

I was supposed to take Randa back to the dentist tonight. He tried like hell to get her broken molar out yesterday but he made a mistake and let her see the needle before I got her sunglasses with the electrical tape on the outside lenses on her. And she said, "Dentist is jackass! No way, Jose! Wanna go home!" and  proceeded to argue with him for the next half hour as he tried to coax her into opening her mouth. He started to come at her with the needle and she actually yelled, "No. No. I love you." at him. At which point all he could do was crack up laughing and ask me to try and bring her back tonight. I tried to prepare her all day for it. I poked her in the gums with my fingernail several times and said, "See? 2 small needles here and here and then the dentist will pull out your tooth." And she answered each time differently. "No way," turned into "Uhm, no thanks," and then "Maybe later, Dear," and then finally, "Okay." Then she went to sleep about 7:30pm. I went in to wake her at 8:15 so we could be at the dentists by 8:30. I asked her one more time, "Are you going to let the dentist give you a needle here and here and then pull out your broke tooth so it won't hurt anymore?" And she said, "No way, Jose! It's sleepy time."

Screw it. If she finally gets sick of it hurting, she'll let him do it. Or we'll wait until it comes loose and falls out on its own. Either way, I'm tired of pulling my hair out over it...and everything else.

Coffee Poser

For lack of youth and natural energy, there is caffeine. This is a well known fact for mothers. (And I mean  'mothers,' not 'Muthas.') I started drinking coffee long before I became a mother. I started drinking coffee regularly and in huge quantities while working the night shifts when I was 18. Quality was not even an optional vocabulary word at that job. Coffee was not something that we had an actual taste for. It was merely another tool for the job. We used pens to log information in a log book. We used computers to store pertinent information. We used air conditioners to keep the computers cold. We used coffee to stay awake all night.

If a more accurate word to describe the shit we drank was to be chosen, I'd probably use something like
"swill," or "jet fuel," or "motor oil," or perhaps "mud." But we called it coffee simply because it was easily understood that we meant that really thick, hot, black liquid that tasted like cigarette smoke smells. It did the job. I stayed awake. Even.when.I.didn't.want.to. Honestly, I am quite certain that I still have trace amounts of that stuff in my body now....twenty-five years later. It may be the secret to my insomnia.

Since then I've developed a taste for GOOD coffee...the kind that doesn't make you close your eyes and think happy thoughts in order to choke it down. I mean, that's not the only criteria for my definition of "good coffee" but it is the first. So I tried a variety of the canned brands and decided that I preferred Folgers over Maxwell House, Dunkin' Donuts over Starbucks, store brands over all because they were good and cheaper (at least in the world of choose the beans, grind them yourself and you can even choose flavors.) Personally, I think that Starbucks tastes like cat pee smells. I guess it's personal preference. I have one sister who agrees and shares Dunkin' Donuts coffee with me. My other sister is a total Starbucks fan. Who knew?
I hear Tim Hortons is good but I think travelling to Canada is a bit extreme for a good cup of coffee. I know that they have American franchises now but not in Texas. Really, what difference does it make? I live in Egypt now.

I started drinking German coffee in Georgia because I worked with a Coffee-nazi . It was fantastic. I re-entered the world of cappuccino and espresso and frappe slowly, as I could afford. Then when we moved to Greece, we bought an automatic drip coffee maker and German coffee. I loved it. Then we moved to Egypt. And it became increasingly difficult to find good coffee. Arabs seemingly prefer not just dark roasted coffee beans but burned coffee beans. So I packed away my coffee pot and went with the only available option that was not Turkish: instant. I know. I know. GROSS! EWWW! What a sacrilege to the coffee world. Well, here's the thing: It.ain't. tea.

So Nescafe has been my main means of caffeine intake over the last 10 years. Except when my sweet and wonderful husband brings me a kilo of German coffee back from Greece or a couple of pounds of Dunkin' Donuts coffee beans from the US. I am a miserly sort. I store the bags in the freezer and only make drip coffee on special occasions so as not to suck it all down and be forced to go back to the instant with no other options. Recently, I discovered a store that sells instant Maxwell House. YES! Score. It's soooo much better than Nescafe rock gut that brings all those midnight watch coffee horror memories flooding back with the overly acidic aftertaste. Is it still instant? Yes. Is it still not up to par with the stuff I've got stashed in the freezer? You betcha. BUT it's NOT Nescafe and it's not making me shut my eyes and think happy thoughts in order to choke it down.

p.s. This is not a whine page in an effort to "beat-around-the-bush" begging for sympathy coffee mailed to me. It is what it is. My thoughts on caffeine and my means to getting it short of a melt-proof plastic bag and IV drip. Thank you for your well-intended thoughts about mailing me some. God willing we'll get back to the US in the next couple of years and then you can meet me and buy me a cup at the local coffee house!