Finding Ismail

Finding Ismail

Everyone goes through that pre-teen/teenager 
search time in his or her life. Some earlier than 
others. My third child, Ismail, is ten years old. And
I'm a little confused as to why HE is hanging out 
in the "personality fitting room" of life instead of 
his 14 year old brother. I mean, I expect my teenager
to be trying on "the gangster" or "the emo" person-
alities right now. When I was his age, I wore "the 
jock-ette" and "the sharp witted clown" suits quite
comfortably. In fact, I never took them off. But Hamo
seems to be content still in his "artist pajamas" from
way back in kindergarten. Ismail, on the other hand,
has a rotisserie style of personalities (from the sales
racks, I might add) that include ensembles from 
"thug," "wannabe rap artist (hold the rhythm)," "bossy
McBosspants," "sweet, helper boy," "mean bully guy."
I don't understand the attraction to most of his favorite
designs. I REALLY like "sweet, helper boy." This is
the guy who does the dishes for me without being 
asked, volunteers to take out the trash or pick up what
I need from the market. He defends his sisters, brothers,
neighbors and cousins and even picks up trash off of the 
stairs when his slovenly cousins toss it from upper 
floors. 
"Bossy McBosspants" seems to be setting up coup
attempts daily in an effort to overthrow Hamo from his
current position as Oldest Brother. This guy jumps up and
yells out orders to the younger siblings and gets everyone
motivated to clean up their rooms and get dressed quickly
on days we're scheduled to go out on family field trips.
"Thug" gets on my LAST nerve. He has a fascination with
knives and swearing and fighting. He is not a welcome 
personality in this house at all. In fact, he and "mean, bully
guy" have been the reason Ismail has lost computer 
privileges so many times this summer alone.
"Wannabe rap artist" would be tolerable if only he could
keep a beat. Ever see that Steve Martin movie "The Jerk"?
You know, where they were dancing around on the front 
porch and everyone was on time but him? Yeah...that's my
boy. He knows it, too. He's asked his eight year old brother,
Aiman, several times to teach him how to dance and Aiman
just looks at him and says, "I've tried. You just like to shake
your crotch. And that's NOT krumping." (Just a sidenote, I'd
like to thank stupid Nickelodeon and the show "Just Jordan"
for even adding KRUMPING to my little boy's dance moves
repetoire. As though "booty popping" wasn't enough.) Ismail
listens in awe anytime I'm going through my "oh I remember
THAT song" moments and has begged me to teach him the
lyrics to "The Rapper's Delight", "Parents Just Don't Understand"
and songs like "Freakazoid." (Yeah, I know I'm showing my age.)
I guess all I can really do is encourage him to tear off just 
the positive pieces of each of these personality-suits and stitch
them into his own unique pattern to fit Ismail. All the rest of us 
did it. And now it's my turn to just stand back like the changing
room attendants at Macy's and hope he opts for the classics
rather than the passing fads.

Re-post: How Do YOU Spell Relief?

Due to my busy schedule of oversleeping and not getting my kids
to school on time and then fighting them to study along with my 
writing schedule for my new novel, I've kind of blown off my blog.
And that's just not cool. SO, I thought I'd re-post some of my "best
of" posts from a previous blog just to keep you entertained while I
settle into my new ridiculous schedule.  Here's something that some
of you (probably very few of you) didn't know about me: I fart.


And what's with this green
font, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. I'm quite gassy....and I am feeling a 
little on the green side.
Yeah, ewwww gross! Well, there's no reason to pretend here. I come
from a long line of farters. I'll omit their names to protect the (not-so)
innocent. BUT I inherited the fart-gene, baby....from BOTH sides of 
the family. Now I've not yet inherited the gaseous genetic trait where
I race to the bathroom with lower cheeks pinched tightly leaving a "pop-
pop-pop-pop" sound trail behind me. (Our family has actually named
this trait after one of the family elders, however, since I'm attempting to
protect the family fart tree, I guess I'll have to omit that too.)
Anyway, we've got 'em all in our family: the loud, the louder, the machine
gun, the "oh, hell, who stepped on the dog", the not-so smelly, the smelly,
the s.b.d. and the "WHAT crawled up your ass and died". ANY type of 
fart ever known to man can be claimed by anyone (or several) in my family.
My brother recently chewed me out on facebook for discussing his "rancid
ass" on the internet. Hmmmmmm. Truth be told, HE brought it up when he
reminded me of a fart he "dropped in my ear" during a trip we took together
to Arizona. My husband has been known to hear my bom-booferous,
window shakers from over two window unit air-conditioners (with about 8
spoons shoved inside each....THAT is another story that I'll call Why My
Kids and Spoons Caused Me to Declare Bankruptcy), a ceiling fan, a 
snoring congested 1 year old and the movie DIE HARD cranked up on the
tv. I lied in my room laughing for 15 minutes after my own fart only to finally
think, "He must not have heard me. Maybe it wasn't as loud as I thought."
Only to have him poke his head in the bedroom door about 30 seconds later
and ask, "Are you okay? Did the roof fall on you?" DAMN. How embarrassing.
Well...THAT was nothing.
TODAY I was peeling potatoes for dinner and the washing machine was 
making it's usual jet engine noises in the spin cycle and I had a CD playing 
in the kitchen. I looked around to make sure my husband wasn't around (kids
are fair game...I'll fart around them just to get even for them walking in on me
in the bathroom or only peeing on MY side of the bed!) and I let 'er rip.
Well, I don't know what a ripped spleen or ruptured small intestine actually 
feel like but I imagined it today. OH MY WORD! I doubled over and cried 
against the sink it hurt my abdomen so bad. I must have shrieked without 
realizing it because Hamo and my husband came running in thinking that I must
have cut myself. Then through the tears I started laughing. My husband asked
what happened and I told him he didn't want to know. He looked puzzled. So
somewhat embarrassed I told him, "I farted so hard I hurt my intestines."
He just rolled his eyes and muttered something in Arabic about "giving him 
strength." 
At least my son felt for me. He hugged me and said, "I'm sorry your farts are 
so strong they fight back." Little snot. He snickered as he walked out. Laugh
if they must. But I may be the first person in history to ever end up in traction
due to bad gas!

SURPRISE...I Cooked.

Waking up to the smell of breakfast used to be a pleasant surprise that would have me stretching and getting out of bed with a big fat smile on my face.  I would put on my robe and slippers and go to the kitchen with that same dopey smile and have coffee and breakfast and ..............and what?  Then I'd go back to my room and get dressed before kissing my parents and heading out the door to high school!

I'm the mom here.  Who the hell is in my kitchen?  My husband makes coffee...for himself.  Unless I'm already up and then he'll make me a cup.  But breakfast?  Hell-to the- No.  Seemingly that is MY job and mine alone.  I have to tell someone "There's a cure for that," when they complain about being hungry.  (I mean NOW that they are all ambulatory and in their teens, of course.)

So when I smelled frying breakfast meats this morning, I got half of my dopey grin on....and then panicked!  I ran out the bedroom door and into the kitchen and found RANDA blocking the kitchen door.  She burped in my face.  "Randa, did you make breakfast for yourself?" I asked.  The rest of the exchange went something like this:

Randa:                 Uh, yeah!
Me:                      Randa, do we have anymore bastarma (Egyptian garlic-cured beef)?
Randa:                 Nope.  It's gone.
Me:                      Randa, you ate a half pound of bastarma by yourself?
Randa:                 (flutters eyes around...in some autistic kids, refusing eye-contact means
                            "I can't hear you" when clearly, they can AND DO understand they're
                            in trouble.)
Me:                      Did you eat?  Do you feel better now?
Randa:                  Uh, yeah.  All better.  Sleepy.  Go to bed now. (She doesn't refer to herself
                             in the first person much.)
Me:                       (looking past her toward the sink) LOOK AT THIS BIG FAT MESS!!
Randa:                   Oops.
Me:                       Randa, did you make cookies? Oh.My.God. There's batter in every mixing
                             bowl.  Did you use all the bakers chocolate?  Did you bake?
Randa:                  (mimicking me and laughing?) ...bakers chocolate?  Did you bake?
Me:                       That's not funny.
Randa:                   That's not funny.
Me:                       You wanna wash the dishes?
Randa:                  You wanna wash the dishes?
Me:                       You are so grounded. Look at this big fat mess!
Randa:                  Yeah, it's big fat mess. Mommy clean up.  Sweet dreams.

And so it begins.  Pre-coffee.                        

Prelude to Sleeping In

Exams week has been whippin' my ass.  I am up by 6:30 a.m. each morning and out the door dragging two half-asleep kids a mile up the main street in order to put the boy on the bus to his school and then drag the girl another mile to her school.  Usually, I just sit and wait for her to finish and then we buy groceries and come home.  (I could go home and wait...but the wait would be long enough to use the bathroom and then put my shoes back on and head back. So why bother?)

It has rained every.single.day.this.week.  I now have a throat infection and little to no sleep is not helping matters.  But the kids are doing okay on their tests.  I think Mohamed has some concerns about his Advanced Algebra/Calculus test from today.  Tomorrow is a day off.  It is 25 January and the one year anniversary of the biggest youth uprising ever in Egypt that eventually succeeded in forcing Mohamed Hosni Mubarak to step down from his 30 year sham of a presidency. (Yay, Egyptians!)  And because we are still living under military rule until elections are complete in June, God willing, we expect that there will be demonstrations tomorrow but whether or not the thug factor pushes these demonstrations into something more, God only knows.

So, Thursday we expect to finish the testing. And then I will be able to sleep in until I wake up on my own.  You know, providing that my kids don't decide to get up at the crack of dawn to start fighting over whose turn it is to play on the computer first and for how long.  I'm so looking forward to NOT getting up before 7 in the morning.  We'll see how it  plays out.

Yeah, my blog posts are getting boring of late....but what do you do?  These exams are sucking the life out of me.  Here's hoping I at least have some weight loss due to the nerve-induced diarrhea.

YEAH.

Not Enough Hours in the Day...and Now I Know Why

It wasn't until today that I ever thought of myself as an overachiever. Maybe on some levels, I've known.  But I don't think I've ever caught a glimpse of how others see me. I'm a Facebooker. (Yeah, who isn't?) I've blogged before about how great this social network is because as a military brat, it is extremely difficult to keep in touch with friends from childhood when sometimes you can't remember what year you lived where.  Anyway, so I have subscribed to several military brat-related pages and caught up with some old friends and made some new ones.

One particular page is full of "regulars" who post daily what they've done and what they're planning to eat and other stuff that usually ends up with all of us nearly "chatting" via bulletin board-type posts.  Today I actually typed up my little laundry list of stuff I did today before 1130 hrs (that's 11:30 a.m. for you civilian types) and I think I managed to exhaust at least 3 people who typed that they were off to take a nap due to my activity.

Honestly, while I am my own biggest fan and LOVE to toot my own horn, I wasn't bragging.  In my own opinion, I managed to waste the day away with ONLY the stuff I got done, while ignoring the ginormous "to-do" list looming over my head.  I took a nap from being so damn tired. I don't get much sleep at night. As much as I blame my kids (who are TOTALLY at fault for about half of my exhaustion), ultimately it's my own damn fault.  If I wasn't such a control freak who pushes herself to complete every single thing on her never-ending list of stuff to do, I WOULD get more sleep at night, I would probably be healthier and I would have less stress in my life.  Of course, if I did that, then I wouldn't be the neurotic, selectively-OCD crazed nut-job that my family and friends have come to know and love.

I'm getting a little better. I quit wiping off the stove and now delegate that responsibility to whichever little smart-mouth gets in trouble during the day.  One step at a time...

2012 Will Bring More Randa Time

Happy New Year.  Yes, it is 2012.  Can you believe that just 12 years ago we were running around like cockroaches, backing up hard-drives, stocking up on bottled water and ramen noodles and dancing around to Prince's 1999?  Yeah, um, I didn't do that either.

Like nearly all the other New Years Eves before this one, we pretty much did nothing. Watched t.v., drank some soda, ate some peanuts, did some dishes, went to bed. Yeah, we're party animals.

But I started the year out right.  I took Randa for a long walk through the souk (open market).  I bought her a Ho-ho and some apple juice and then we bought vegetables and came home.  She thoroughly enjoyed her time out without "the kids."  She doesn't get that much one on one time with me outside the house anymore.  But I'm hoping to change that.  I miss my girl.

She calls herself my "special sauce girl."  I think that's a pretty spot-on description.

I'm Going to Kick My New Neighbor and the Good News

For the last six months we've enjoyed being one of only three occupied apartments on this 6-apartment floor. The best part is that we had no one living on our side of the hall but us. Until about 4 days ago. And of course the new tenants want to renovate before they actually move in. But in typical Egyptian fashion, they are FRIGGING NIGHT OWLS and I have kids in school who have to get up at 0530 hours every morning and there's not a lot of sleep going on at night around here thanks to these ass-clowns banging on the walls to all hours of the night.  So I may welcome them to our floor by stomping them with my husband's new steel toe boots. WELCOME (stomp) TO (stomp) THE (stomp) NEIGHBORHOOD!

I'll move on to some Good News now.

It's getting colder here in Alexandria. And humid.  And I'm wondering if I'm part labrador or something....my nose is kind of damp and cold lately. Weird.

Anyway, I've been attempting to write a novel...no, SEVERAL novels for the last ten years and I always start out with a bang but then my computer crashes and I've not backed anything up or I lose the notebook I was scrawling in or I develop writer's block or I'm just interrupted by that annoying thing I sometimes call "my life."

So I've completed pretty much about 14 chapters of several stories that add up to bird cage lining.

Until this week.

I've FINALLY got a fantastic idea and it's a subject matter that I know quite well.  My teachers always told me to write what I know. So I finally am doing just that.  I may slow up a bit on blogging for a while, but I'm still writing. Just in a different place. I will try to get something on here every 5 days or so just because I really like others patting me on the back more than doing it myself. Less cramping that way.

May all my Christian friends have a wonderful Christmas.  May my Jewish friends have a Happy Chanukah.  May my African friends have a Blessed Kwanzaa. May the peace, love and force be with you.