Ready to Fly Away
The baby pigeons are up, walking around and fluttering their wings – until I open the window to take a photo, and then they go into the if-we-hide-our-faces-she-can’t-see-us-mode. Daddy pigeon makes noises deep in his throat which I understand to mean “Go away.”
This may be the last photo. They seem to me to be getting ready to fly, and once that happens, we will clean out the area and hope they don’t come back. I love the sound of their voices, but I totally hate pigeon poop.
Photos of Chaos
. . . this is just the upstairs area. The kitchen is already good, the downstairs living room – haven’t even started. This is what chaos looks like:
” . . . And miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep.”
Enough! vs “Just in Case”
As I unpack boxes . . . and boxes . . . and boxes . . . I find myself thinking “How much is ENOUGH??”
What is it with women and shoes? Just before we moved, I told you about our short trip to France and Germany when I bought some truly yummy shoes but now, as I am putting shoes away, I wonder how many pairs of shoes I really need. I have some – the French shoes – that I actually wear all the time, in fact some of them are old friends now and really need to go to shoe heaven but I keep telling myself “Just one more time!” before I send them on their way. Others, I have bought “just in case” and they are pristine. One actually still has the shoe store tags on them. I have a lot of these, and every time I consider giving them away, I think “but what if I need to wear that particular dress that those shoes go with??” and I hold on for . . . another move.
Moving often motivates me to part with my old friends, and even with some new friends (we’re talking about shoes here) that didn’t quite make the grade. Then again, as I am unpacking, I am wondering “will I really ever wear these again?” And – once again, I hang on to them, just in case I MIGHT need them at some hypothetical time in the future.
I have finally stopped buying dressy evening clothes. I have some really cool ones, so cool that when we go out to a rare dressy event, I usually wear what I love and feel comfortable in. If you have to sparkle, you want to know you look good! I always used to buy ahead – just in case – because the time to be buying a dress is NOT when you need it; when you really, seriously NEED it, you can never find exactly what you want and you settle for something that is not quite right and sometimes at the last minute you ditch it and go back to an oldie-but-goodie that you know works for you. For us, for most Americans, serious dress events seem to becoming fewer. Even charitable events aren’t as dressy as they used to be – partly, I am guessing, because of the economy, but it may be demographics. The baby boomers are getting older – they may not care about dressing up the way they used to.
I think my Mom still has a lot of her evening gowns from the days when she and my Dad went to balls . . . 🙂 but she still loves to go shopping when a family wedding is coming up.
I’ve actually done just fine with the clothes I brought with me. If not a single item of clothing had shown up . . . well, yeh, I’d have been in trouble. I would have needed a few things. I needed an evening purse for the Army birthday ball, even though I had thought to bring the dress.
The other item both AdventureMan and I have a real problem with is books. Even though I get rid of a lot of books, I pass them along, there are still a lot we hang on to, can’t seem to give them up. We haul a lot of books around, and we still have boxes and boxes of books in storage that we haven’t seen for many years. Is there such a thing as “enough” when it comes to books?
I think I am about a third of a way through the boxes. I conceive it as creating “islands of sanity” in the midst of chaos. My kitchen is always the first island of sanity, and there is always a path to our bed and the bed itself which is clear. Today, our bedroom became another island of sanity.
Little Diamond, the guest room is an island of sanity. 🙂
The Women’s majlis (the small living room downstairs) is an island of sanity.
Where is the chaos? We spend a lot of time in our upstairs family room; it is also our office; it is also an area of utter chaos.
Our living room – I haven’t even started on the boxes in the living room. It is a bedlam of insanity. Many of the boxes contain books, and I have to have places to put all the books before I can put them away. It may stay insane for a little while.
The lady who comes to help me clean came today, and I had a list of things for her to do which mostly did not include cleaning because you can’t really clean when things are chaotic. She and I work well together, she works in her areas and I work in mine with a brief chat-chat-chat now and then when our paths cross. As she was leaving, she showed me how she had broken down all the boxes, hauled them to a small room and stored them neatly, and put all the ones full of paper outside in another holding area . . . that wasn’t on the list. She is a gem. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I’m going to have to give her a bonus this month. 🙂 She also takes care of cats when people go away, even taking them to the vet if the cat gets sick. She is worth every penny.
I start every morning around seven. I quit around five, take a shower (I need it!) and clean up. I have about an hour before AdventureMan even thinks about coming home, so I thought I would take a chance to have a chat with you.
So I ask you – what does “enough” look like? When is it prudent to buy “just in case” and when does it become consumerism?
Household Goods Arrive
Sorry, friends, I know I have been off-line, but our household goods arrived, went through customs today and were delivered this afternoon, the first day of the great Doha HUMIDITY. I really felt sorry for the guys having to carry everything in. While the current temperature reads 98°F / 37°C, the humidity is 52% – your sunglasses steam as soon as you leave your house or car. You go through about three changes of clothing a day – your clothes stick to you. You drip sweat, if you are outside for any length of time – or if your doors are open so boxes can come in. It’s pretty awful, and I am thankful that although all my stuff is pretty well baked, it was not steamed.
I got most of the kitchen stuff unpacked, and then AdventureMan and I looked at each other and laughed and said “We quit!” Moving used to be more fun.
I’ve got a couple mountains to move, and I will be back with my normal commentary.
Gross!
Our son asked how the baby pigeons are doing. They are doing fine. They are huge! Yesterday, I saw the largest one stretch his legs and take a couple steps!
I also know now how pigeons feed their babies. Pigeons are just gross, or at least these wild pigeons who have chosen my villa are gross. (I am sure that Bu Yousefs pedigreed pigeons are much more refined than these wild pigeons. 😉 ) They poop on my front porch. To feed their babies, they eat and then they come back and shake all over and make themselves throw up and the babies go wild and eat right out of their beaks.
I know, I know, it is all part of God’s perfect plan and nothing is gross . . . but it FEELS gross to me!
As we were entering the compound the other night, we saw one of the compound wild cats, young, skinny, and oh-so-proud, head high, carrying a pigeon almost as big as he/she was. You couldn’t help but laugh, even though the pigeon was sadly dead, but that cat was strutting! He/She knew he was going to have a great meal in just a minute, once he got that pigeon to a safe, secret place!
Friday Lunch with AdventureMan at Assaba
After all these years, we know each other so well.
“Where are we going to eat today?” he asks as we leave church.
“It’s your turn to choose” I tell him.
“No, no, it’s your turn,” he insists, “I chose Ruby Woo’s last Thursday night.”
“No. You didn’t. I did,” I tell him, and remind him that I also chose another place later in the week, but it was a place that he really likes.
What he wants me to do is to throw out my idea and then he shoots it down. Sometimes I throw out three ideas, and he shoots them all down!
“What are you in the mood for, what kind of food?” I ask him. Usually he doesn’t like a lot of meat, so I am surprised, really surprised, when he says Lebanese. When we lived in Kuwait, he almost never chose Lebanese except for Tanureen, where they had such good fish.
“Yeh, but now there is no good Lebanese restaurant near where I work,” he replies, “and I am missing Lebanese food.”
I know just the place. My two pool buddies took me to lunch there back in January when I visited. I THINK I know how to get there, and, as it turns out, I do! (It’s always a disaster trying to find a place when your husband is really, really hungry.) It’s called Assaba, and it is like entering a different world. They’ve taken a very humdrum building, and re-facaded and decorated the ground level and one flight up to resemble a Lebanese Village. It is a lot of fun.
We ordered mostly mezze (appetizers) and an order of shish taouk to share. (Shish taouk is boneless chicken pieces that have been marinated in lemon juice and a little garlic and yoghurt, for those who don’t know about it. It is delicious, and often served with a mighty garlic – mayonnaise. )
We agreed that the very very best dish of all was the Mohammara, a dish made of finely chopped walnuts, red peppers and a few other things. (Mishary, on Some Contrast, printed a great recipe.)
We had hummous with something that tasted a little like liver, and baba ghanoush, and meatless chickpea moussaka:
And this is how the shish taouk looks when it arrives, with hot bread to keep it warm:
It was a magnificent meal. We ate too much. It was just so pleasant, sitting there, great food, beautiful surroundings, us all relaxed after church and mellow. AdventureMan came back from washing his hands all excited – “You’ve got to go use the Ladies Room! See if they have a beaten copper sink! I want one of those!”
I did, and this is what it looks like:
I think we might have to take another trip to Damascus, and bring it back with us. Do you know what a designer in the US would charge us for a sink like that?? We can go, find a sink, spend time in a city we love and come back for what the cost of the sink would be in the US.
I want the door:
I think I had better have it made here!
Here is the shower he wants, from Robin’s House at Nkwali Camp, in Zambia:
Even Friday lunch with AdventureMan is an adventure. 🙂
Thick
Pete, also known as The Qatteri Cat, loves living back in Qatar except for one tiny little detail. Suddenly Mom, as he thinks of me, has become particularly thick.
He, on the other hand, is making things very clear.
“Miao! Mioaw! Miaow!” he hollars, winding his way through my legs, guiding me to the nearest door the the heaven he can see – OUTSIDE!
I ignore him. He is not going outside. There are some very mean street cats out there, and also some very mean people who put out poisoned fish to kill the mean street cats. Either or both would be very bad to a cream puff who has lived indoors all his life.
“Not all my life!” he assures me, remembering his origins as a street cat – well, a street kitten, abandoned on the Corniche in Doha. And, from time to time, he would break free and spend a happy half hour roaming, and then another less happy couple hours trying to figure out 1) how to get down the very tall tree or 2)how to get out of the yard he jumped into that has a high, unscalable wall or 3) where home is. We spare him those problems and keep him inside. There is lots to keep his attention, but none of it matters, he yearns to be OUTSIDE!
Poor Pete!
The Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri
Ahhh! Another book about corruption, but this one is no where near so painful for me to read as The Appeal by John Grisham, because this one is set in Sicily, where we expect a certain level of corruption, and Italy, where the whole system operates by rules we can barely begin to comprehend, but it is ITALY, and fascinating, and funny, and another great page turner for these hot hot hot summer days.
Andrea Camilleri has a whole series of books about Inspector Montalbano, which I love almost as I love the Donna Leon series about the Venetian, Guido Brunetti. Brunetti has the edge because he is married and has a family, and it IS Venice – no competition there, Venice will always win, hands down. But Inspector Montalbano’s single status allows for a whole different flavor permeating his investigations, and he, like Guido Brunetti, shares the Italian reverence for really great food.
I didn’t want to fix dinner. I didn’t want to get out of bed. All I wanted to do was to read the whole book, and, when I finished, I wanted another one!
Inspector Montalbano is asked by a woman to find her missing brother, and he finds him almost immediately, dead, under bizarre circumstances. The brother has a very large amount of money unaccounted for, and unaccounted in terms of earnings, as well. He is a pharmaceutical representative, good at what he does – but he still has way too much money, and Inspector Montalbano finds he is rather fond of the prime suspect.
In the meantime, his office has also been tasked to find the reason several high level politicians have suddenly died, purportedly of a variety of causes, but in reality, all have died of drug overdoses. The problem is, that finding the culprit means exposing the reality of high level drug usage, and the inspector realizes the case has been dumped on his office because no one wants to take responsibility for what happens when the culprit is caught. It’s all very Italian, very Sicilian.
Between investigations, Inspector Montalbano eats some amazing meals. 🙂 He takes his glass of wine and walks in the sand out to the sea. We get to know the characters working out of his office better, and to appreciate their quirkiness. This is a great series, a lot of fun. I think I need to go to Sicily for a visit. I definitely need some Italian food and a glass of vino!
Photo courtesy of http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/)
From time to time a word or phrase would appear that required going to the back of the book where the word is not only translated, but the concept explained, something crucial when reading a novel from another culture. In this series, it is particularly valuable, as the background for the crimes and their investigations with political implications, and if you don’t understand the politics, you can miss the point of the novel.
I found this book at Amazon.com. for a mere $10.19 plus shipping.
The Little Prisoner and Child Abuse
Of all the books our book club read this year, The Little Prisoner by Jane Elliott (not her real name) was the most troublesome. The first one to finish said it was boring and repetitive. The second refused to read it at all, that the content would have images that would polute her mind. Both were right, and at the same time, if we refuse to look at what troubles us, we collude with the abuser.
I hate bullying. A man who beats and plays sexual games with a child is a bully and worse – he is a betrayer of trust. Children come into the world pure, clean slates. They can create their own mischief, their own evil, but to be corrupted by an adult – that is the absolute worst sin.
Today’s Gospel reading in The Lectionary is about this very behavior – that betrayal and/or corruption of a child is a huge sin against God:
Matthew 18:1-14
18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ 2 He called a child, whom he put among them, 3 and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
6 ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling-block comes!
8 ‘If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell* of fire.
10 ‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.* 12 What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14 So it is not the will of your* Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
The book was, in one sense, an easy read. It only took about three hours to read it. It was, as the first reader said, repetitive, but then once a bully has found a victim, the behavior does tend to be repetitive, and, as in the book, it also escalates.
The victim’s father bullied her, and he abused her sexually from the time she was four until she was seventeen. He terrorized his wife and other children, and he terrorized the neighborhood with his violence and threats of violence. To this day, the author and her family live far away, and fears her step-father finding out where she is.
I found the writer unlikeable. I wanted to feel more compassion for her than I did. I think part of my problem was that she stayed in the situation even into her teens, even into early adulthood, without seeming to rebel, without taking any steps to get herself out of the situation. She tells us straight away that she has personality defects, troubles with trust and betrayal, and that she sometimes turns to drink. A part of me knows that people who have been systematically abused over a long time can lose that ability to resist, rebel, to ask for help, but another part of me can’t understand it at all. A part of me is impatient with her weakness, I want her to stand on her feet and make her life a testament to her survival, I want her success in overcoming her childhood to be the sweetest kind of revenge. Unfortunately, life is more complicated than that, and her murky ending is probably the more realistic. Abuse leaves lasting damage.
The Little Prisoner is not an easy read in terms of content. There were times I felt she exaggerated to sell the book; to make hers just a little more interesting than the other ones out there with which her book is competing. There is a part of me that would prefer not to see, not to have those images in my mind.
We know, from all the literature, that children who are abused can grow up to be abusers. I have had friends who were abused who refused to have children at all, afraid they would perpetuate the behavior, even though they had a horror of the violence, and were gentle and peaceful people. How do we intervene, how do we break the chain of abusers begetting abusers? How do we change the behaviors? Can abusers really change?
The Little Prisoner brings up a whole host of uncomfortable questions. We can read, we can discuss – but if we choose to look the other way, aren’t we in a small way colluding with the abusers, allowing them to continue while we look the other way?
Transporting Pets in and out of Kuwait
Moving can be overwhelming, but the worst part can be worrying about how to get your pet in or out of the country you are going to/ leaving.
If you are coming or going to Kuwait – you are in luck. There is a wonderful woman, an animal lover and supporter of the Animal Friends League in Kuwait, who provides pet importation and exportation services, Pet Passage. She walks you through what you need in terms of paperwork, and helps you get the documents you must have to bring your pet in or take it out.
Pet Passage
petpassage@yahoo.com
Tel: +965 6697-5644
If you are calling from another country, yes, the phone number is correct; Kuwait phone numbers have one more number than most other countries.
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