Consideration of Others IS Consideration of Self

RESPECT - an act of giving particular attention: Consideration

Respect is a vital ingredient to any relationship. It is needed for a healthy relationship with self, partner, parent, spouse, child, neighbor, competitor, stranger, boss, employee and even enemy. (Yes. There are enemies who hate one another but still respect one another.)

I have encountered more disrespect in the past twenty hours than I think I am able to handle. I've had a lit cigarette flicked at me while the cigarette-flicker looked right at me, been lied to by a woman who "desperately needed to buy this stuff" so she could get back to her baby that she had locked in the house by himself....only to find that 2 boxes of green tea, some toy soldiers and a  punch balloon were her emergency AND she had her 4 yr old boy in tow (I told her, "May God forgive you for lying to get ahead in life and setting a bad example for your son) and then when I went to buy a new coffee mug at a different store, the two employees there were more interested in  playing Romeo to teenage girl Juliets that they volleyed back and forth as to who was going to help me and neither did. I complained LOUDLY to the owner and reminded him that if it weren't for the customers that his employees refused to help they wouldn't be needed to work there and that I would never shop there again.

My son "borrowed" my mp3  player without permission and took it into the bathroom to listen to it while he did his business...only somehow my mp3 player fell into his "business" before he flushed and now it and more than 140 songs I'd purchased are covered in poo and the circuits inside are fried because he "rinsed it off."

I've been called upon to lift furniture and clean up a nasty dirty apartment by a woman who claims that she is my friend without warning and treated with disdain when I apologized and stated that I was not at home but in fact visiting a friend on the other side of town. I suppose she expected us to get up from the dinner table and run to her aid even though her own sisters, brother, mother and children refused to help her and she didn't say a word to them.

People! Respect is key. The base of my marriage is respect. The reason that my husband and I have been happily married for 18+ years is because we respect each other and TREAT each other with respect. We do not call names in arguments and have never raised a hand one to another. EVER. My friends can attest to the fact that I treat them with respect 100% and that even if we are arguing, I respect secrets told to me and still don't repeat them, even if the friendship ends. If I am wrong, I respect myself and friends enough to ADMIT IT and apologize.

Today, I feel that respect is something that I give to everyone right out of the gate and that I get very little to none in return. I am not a happy camper and due to the disrespect of my wishes and property by my son, I can't even plug in my headphones and sing away my blues. Instead I'm hoping to "blog it out." *sigh*

Go out of your way to treat others with respect today (and everyday.) It is a reflection of the respect you have for yourself as well as for others who share your planet.

To-Do Lists Are Not Getting To-Done

SAHMs are constant list-writers, for the most part. We have lists of things to do, things to buy, whose turn it is to do the dishes and who is grounded from computer and for how long.  Sometimes my life is so jam-packed with activity, responsibility, items we've run out of, that I have to include things that ordinary people never forget, like eating or pooping. Yes. My to-do list will actually have -go poop written on it most days.
I've given up adding the more decadent activities to my to-do list.  I now write "shave legs" and "wax mustache" to my bucket list with the hopes of experiencing these things at least once more in my life time before I kick that damn bucket which seems to be further out of sight daily.  If I could remember to refill and actually take my cholesterol medicine, I may never have to put " -go poop" on my to-do list ever again. That job will be "to-done" before I finish my first cup of coffee.

So, today I've added the following to my B.B.T.D.L. (that's Big Bad To-Do List): three official emails to write, copies of one child's entire medical history to be made, pick up oldest kid's school records and copy, and find a cyber-cafe with a working printer so that I can print off my absentee ballot and get that thing in the mail. All of these in addition to the usual grocery shop, cook, clean, break up fights, hang clothes, break up more fights, pull hairball out of bathroom  pipe, break up fights, pay whatever unexpected bill collector that shows up at the door, break up fights, make dinner, pry the remote control out of teasing 11 yr old's hand and break up fights.

Oh. Emergency to-do list interruption, "Mom, I need to go to the dentist. I have a big, huge cavity and it hurts to breathe." *sigh* 

Chocolate Rice Cereals VERBODEN

THIS is a picture of rat poop that I found on Photobucket.com.


THIS is a picture of Kellogg's Cocoa Krispies (R).

My kids tend to walk around while they eat and sometimes they spill. Do you want to know the meaning of the word PANIC ATTACK?? That would be ME seeing spilled Cocoa Krispies on the floor of my kitchen and thinking it's a bunch of rat turds.

And because of this similarity.....my kids have been forbidden to eat Cocoa Krispies or even bring them into my house. EVER.

Cold Weather Helps Show Age

Ever notice how the older you get, the deeper you find yourself buried under the covers in cold weather? My husband is hiding under a sheet, a cotton and linen bedspread, an acrylic double-thick blanket and a giant handmade comforter made of brocade and stuffed with cotton batting. Yes, cotton batting...not polyester fiber filling. It's heavy and awesome unless someone barfs or poops on it because it CANNOT go in the washing machine. It's a nightmare to clean. I'm a little off-point now. Where was I? Oh, yes. The cold.

So, each year I notice new little aches and pains and inability to jump out of bed to face the morning. Now I sort of sling my legs out of bed one at a time after forcing the ton of above-mentioned bed coverings. I half suspect that next year I'll be lifting my legs off the bed and setting them on the floor one at a time with my hands and maybe the year after that I'll need one of those handy dandy hand grip triangle things that dangle above my pillows from the ceiling by a chain. I used to wash the hand prints and foot prints and "Lord knows what" prints off of my walls about once a month a few years ago. Then I noticed it was like once every 3 months by the time I turned 40. Now I delegate either to the kids who are in super deep doo-doo with me to wash....or I tell my husband, "Hey, I think we need to paint the house."

It's not that we get lazier as we age. I think it's a combination of "I just don't have the time anymore" and "I don't give a shit that much anymore." I figure at this point in my life, if someone comes over and judges me to be a slob because I've got kids who are freakin' normal and don't believe that gravity actually works and therefore find it necessary to walk down the hallways of our home with both arms extended, hands open and dragged along each wall, then PISS ON THEM. I don't want them visiting me and my grubby walls anyway.

And the colder it gets, the louder my bed calls me. I try to ignore it. I usually make it until around 8pm sometimes later. But if all the stuff on t.v. is stuff I've seen before or if one of the kids decides that it's not "my turn" on the computer...then I usually give in and answer my bed and all 78,000 covers on it. I dive in....as carefully as I can so as not to accidentally smush my already-hibernating husband with my very muscular body that is now well-insulated under about 60 pounds of warm fat. Also, I don't want to puncture a boob on his really bony hips. Oh, yeah. He's THAT guy with the never-ending metabolism. (Mine hit a brick wall right after I got married.)

I love the winter weekends when I can sleep in. Hell, I'm actually turning into one of those bad mothers who decides, "Oh, they're not learning shit in school anyway," and slaps off the alarm clock and keeps the kids home for a nice sleep in followed by a day of resented home-schooling. But that's okay. As long as I'm rested and they pass all their exams we're good. But I need to start closing my bedroom door so that I don't hear that bed calling more and more frequently. Because honestly, once the rainy season comes, all bets are off.

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.

It's 12:30am, Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?

Hectic doesn't begin to describe my life. I have accepted this. It is
just par for my course. I have grown accustomed to standing, fully
dressed, keys in hand, purse on my shoulder, trying to herd 4 kids
out the door to school without waking the 5th kid, while handing
out backpacks and making sure someone remembers to grab the
overflowing trash bag to take downstairs on the way out the door,
only to realize that the 15 yr old is still wearing plastic flip-flops
with socks as the 12 yr old comes rushing back in announcing that
he's forgotten to "hustle up" his hair. If there is ever a woman who
can juggle cooking dinner while washing dishes and sorting laundry
as she hollers step-by-step instructions to her husband who is
attempting to restore his laptop computer to a previous setting due
to the 10 yr old who, despite being threatened with no computer
privileges until he reaches puberty and being put up for adoption,
searched for, went to, and played on a Chinese free game site that
is notorious for trojan horses and viruses, I am she.

Today,  I got up at noon. Don't roll your eyes. I wasn't "sleeping in."
I didn't go to bed until 6a.m. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.
I got up at noon. Slugged back 2 cups of coffee, washed a load
of clothes, made up the beds in the girls room and swept it out.
I WOULD HAVE made up the beds in the boys room but the
blankets had that funky aroma of feet, ball sweat and bad breath,
so I hung them all on the clothes line out the window and swept
the room. I broke up three fights, got dressed and grabbed up all
the leftover watermelon rinds, tomato and cucumbers ends, cores
to lettuce and old bread out of the refrigerator (YES, it was saved
in a bag) and dropped it off to my husband's aunt who is raising
ducks. I called the chicken vendor and had him slaughter two
chickens for me and then raced like a crazy woman to get to his
shop while trying not vomit do to the cheap cologne that the
guy sitting on the bus next to me bathed in prior to leaving his
house. HORK!  I picked up my chickens, hit the open market
and got fruit and vegetables, bought some fresh bread and beat
feet home only to find an entire sink full of damn dirty dishes.
I called in the 15 yr old and said, "YOUR TURN. I did them
before I left and I was only gone an hour." Begrudinlgy, he
did them. I cleaned the chickens and put them on to boil.
 I measured out the appropriate dosage for the 14 yr old's
nebulizer treatment, doled out the right amount of antibiotic
liquid meds for the 45 yr old with an infected molar whose
gag reflex STILL will not allow him to swallow pills
and a lot of adult meds just don't come in liquid form. (No, really.
Do you know how many pharmacists in Augusta, Georgia think
I'm either insane or an abusive parent due to my having to drive
all over the city looking for liquid morphine after his surgery?!)
I cooked a fantastic meal of chicken, Middle Eastern potato salad
and a fine watercress green salad, washed up the dishes and then
jetted down the stairs to the roof of our neighbors house in order
to scrub 6 area rugs and a hall runner.
I returned home to find my husband still poking around on the
laptop. I took over the computer doctoring, turned on the tv to
a good movie (Hitch) and threatened the lives of 4 kids who'd
been on the PC all day long if they didn't let the 14 yr old have
a turn as my husband went down to his aunt's house to help fix her
washing machine.

Five minutes after he walked out the door, the tourists across
the hall knocked and wanted to use our bathroom AND fill up
all the empty soda bottles, buckets and pots and pans with
water. Look. If you have enough money to buy a summer
beach apartment AND a refrigerator and stove to put in it,
then scrape up another 350 pounds and buy a friggin' water
pump to make sure your apartment has water. Don't have us
running from the faucet to the front door for 20 minutes
straight and THEN send your non-flushing grandmother over
to poop in our bathroom when we DON'T have a ceiling fan
in there.

We finished with the bucket brigade and then 10 minutes later,
my husband called and asked me to send the 12 yr old down
with the hammer he'd forgotten to bring with him.
He specifically said, "Send one of his brothers with him. It's after
11pm." So I suggested I'd send the 15 yr old who had been passing
gas on the back side of the oscillating fan I was sitting in front of
while trying to fix the stupid laptop and trying not to throw up.
The 11 yr old about that time, cranked up the volume on the tv as
loud as it would go, while the 14 yr old starts yelling, "TOO LOUD!"
from the bedroom. The 15 yr old starts complaining of abdominal
cramps (ya think?) and the 12 yr old started yelling at the 10 yr old.
I couldn't follow the shouted conversations, the movie or the damn
directions for finding the right restore point I wanted on the computer
so I didn't notice who went in what direction when I heard the front
door slam. After about 45 minutes the 15 yr old was sitting in the
living room again. I asked him, "Wow. You guys really went down and
came back up that fast?" Then started the yelling between the destructo
twins (10 and 11 yr olds) fighting on the couch about who was in
whose seat so I didn't hear what 15 yr old said. 14 yr old got hungry
and came out to ask me to cook her some chicken wings. I finished
making the wings and then went into the boys room to check on the
12 yr old. The room was empty. So I checked the girls room. Also
empty. I didn't think it was possible to overlook him, but I checked
the living room and my room again. Not there either. So I freaked out.
I asked the 15 yr old why he came back up without his brother.
He said he never went down with him. So then starts the argument
about what's more important? Pooping or following directions.
I decided this was not helpful and called his father to find that the boy
neglected to tell him that I a) didn't know he'd left alone and b) didn't
know that the 15 yr old had opted to go to the bathroom while the
10 yr old refused to go at all because the 12 yr old had shouted at
him. See? See what all this tuning them out because they're getting on
my nerves does? It leaves me asking at half past midnight where the
hell my 12 yr old is. But I guess if things weren't this chaotic, it
wouldn't be my life. And I'd have a mansion and eat lunch with Oprah
and I'd be thin and I'd have a personal trainer and size 5 pants that I
could actually fit in. (Because I associate calm and tranquil with
having money and a small butt.)
But the truth of the matter is, I'm not. I am relatively calm, take
tranquilizers, have a thin wallet and  wear stretch pants. Oh well.
I'm a good cook with good kids and clean rugs and a man that
understands that sanity is not all it's cracked up to be. Who could
ask for more?

Why Don't I Have the High-Metabolism?

It's so annoying to hear extremely thin people who
have difficulty gaining weight complain about what
a problem it is to never get over 50 kilos when all
they do is eat! I am married to a high-metabolism
guy and gave birth to 5 high-metabolism kids!

While yes, I agree that having an extremely high
metabolism rate can be a little problematic...imagine
having your metabolism slam into a brick wall and
all of a sudden now if you so much as SMELL fresh-
baked bread, your ass stretches out one more pants
size. THAT is a little bit of a bigger problem. No
pun intended...well, maybe just a little intended.

So I am wondering how the whole thing works. Not
metabolism. I took biology in high school. I mean,
how is that my 15 yr old son can eat seemingly non-
stop all day and night to the point his stomach
aches at bedtime. He goes to the bathroom (we call
this the mysterious TFBC's - Time For Bed Cramps;
similar to the phenomenal DWC's - DishWashing Cramps.)
And he takes nearly an hour to poop. He complains
of constipation a lot. But he never gains weight.
HOW can a body burn off all the calories and still
block its own intestines and NOT GAIN ANY WEIGHT???
It's surreal.

Me? While I've managed to lose about 7 kilos since
moving back to Egypt (mostly because I walk everywhere
and do not own a car), I still feel a little on the
round side. Now I'm not as bad as some. I know women
who are as wide as they are tall and they weigh less
or the same as I do. Fortunately, I was always very
athletic my whole life. And muscle weighs more than
fat. My muscle is still there. It's just very well-
insulated. I think it's time to take a few layers of
that off.

I'm back in the game as of tomorrow morning, God
willing. Maybe a case of grapefruits and a high-protein
diet will get me back where I need to be. Me and this
here metabolism are about to dance, Baby! Bring it on.