Fashion Nightmare
One of the classic worst nightmares you can have is where you dream you have shown up somewhere naked. No, I didn’t show up naked. But I can tell you that it was the next best thing, and there was nothing I could do. And I survived it, and I never had that bad dream again.
The priest in our church had asked me if I would take a visiting nun around to show her some of the local spots in Qatar. She was doing work in Afghanistan, getting schools up and running for Afghani girls, and I was eager to hear about her work, and show her some projects in Doha. I had gladly agreed, and had a plan outlined for all the places I could take her.
When I arrived at the church house, wearing my rattiest jeans skirt and cover-up shirt, so as to be inconspicuous as we visited various places in the poorer sections of town, the priest came out and said the nun would be out in a minute, and why didn’t I come in, that there had been a “slight” change in plans and that another woman would be coming too, and she was taking us to a Palestinian project.
I don’t hold it against the priest. He lived in another world, a world so full of God and his glory that he didn’t really have any understanding of the world of women.
The other woman arrived, and she was gorgeous. She was wearing Issa Miyake, she was perfectly and subtly made up, and we were not going to a charitable project, but to a charitable fund-raising breakfast. I had thoughts of killing the priest.
The nun arrived, and she was dressed in a decent pants and shirt; neither of us appropriately dressed but off we go, to a clubhouse filled with dressed-to-the-teeth women and their daughters, raising money for popular causes on a Saturday morning. We were severely underdressed. All we could do was hold our heads high and pretend we didn’t notice. Inside, I was torn between laughing and crying.
Our hostess didn’t seem to see the fact that we were poorly dressed, and was very gracious to us, and in future days, the two of us became good friends. We often laughed about the priest, his goodness of heart and his blindness to some of life’s realities, like giving fair warning of what you are doing so you can dress appropriately. It all turned out OK.
When people come to me and tell me something terribly, horribly and publicly embarrassing that has happened to them, and ask me how they will survive, I tell them what I believe to be true – that most people are so absorbed in their own lives that they barely notice much about others, and that people have short memories. What may seem to be a huge deal today, will be yesterday’s news by tomorrow, and barely remembered in a couple months. By the time a year has gone by, some people will even think it might have been someone else who committed the faux pas.
On the other hand, in the small German village where I lived, there were two families who never mixed because their grandmothers had a huge fight many many years ago (people can’t remember exactly what it was about) but the legacy lives on.
So I wonder, how does it work in Kuwait?
What Flower Are You?
What I love about this “test” is that using a bunch of irrelevant questions, they come up with categories which identify what kind of (totally random) flower you are. Total HOOT!
The results appear unreliable and the percentages add up to more than 100%. Have some fun.
You can take the test HERE at What Flower Are You?
Your Score: Water Lily
You scored 56% exotic, 52% fragile, and 72% complex!
Traditional flower symbolism: purity of heart, wisdom, eloquence.
Your opposite is the Calla Lily.
| Link: The What Flower Are You? Test written by gnomee666 on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Three O’Clock Musings
Part of the problem is that for a few days I am totally on my own – without AdventureMan, my life is more free-form. So if I fall asleep at 7 p.m. who cares? As long as I get seven hours of sleep, it isn’t a health issue, is it? Does it matter when you get your sleep? I awoke shortly after I went to sleep however, my bed was shaking – was it just me? No, my bookstand was also rattling, and it went on for what seemed like a long time. Got my adrenelin pumping, but maybe it was just my imagination, not an earthquake. It FELT like an earthquake.
AdventureMan calls at 9:00 pm, we talk, we say goodbye and I read until 10, but am able then to go back to sleep. And then, at 2:30 am, I am wide awake. I didn’t sleep all day yesterday, but neither did I go out – most of the day I was feeling that dopey-almost dizzy headachy kind of feeling when your body knows it is supposed to be sleeping. Not a good time to be out on the road. 😉 I don’t want to endanger my Kuwaiti friends!
So I make myself stay in bed, but I can hear a roaring sound. Is someone pouring gravel, because that is what I think I am hearing? After a while, because I can, I get up and make a pot of coffee, close the kitchen door so the Qatteri Cat can’t come in, and go out on the balcony. No traffic, but I can still hear that roaring. I look out – and it is the pounding surf, I am hearing, one of my most favorite sounds in the world. There is a chilly wind, it seems to be coming from the east, and the pounding surf. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.
AdventureMan and I laugh – we both relish our time on our own – but only for a short time, and then it gets old. We talk a couple times a day or more on the phone; it isn’t the same. We have such great conversations, when we are in the same room together, or even the same city or the same country! I wonder what my life would be like without him, and I can honestly say it would be calmer, less complicated, quieter . . . and that I would miss him terribly.
He tells me his life would be more chaotic – empty refrigerator, clothes on the floor, that without me (nagging) to remind him of things, his life falls apart on the domestic front. I believe it!
I think I get over jet lag faster, though, when he is around to provide my life with greater structure. I WANT to get back on local time, but I succumb to temptation when he is not around, I take the easy way, I don’t make so much effort to adapt. I have to admit, three o’clock in the morning is MY time. I’m not the kind of night-owl who wants to stay up this late, but I love sleeping early and getting up this early, as long as I don’t have anywhere to be or anything to do in the next few days that requires my attention. At three in the morning, the world is mine!
*shares the sound of the pounding surf*
The Qatteri Cat follows me around, so happy to have his house-companion (me) back. We watches for me to sit, and if I have been running around (doing inexplicable things like unpacking, doing laundry, etc) he complains, after all – who wouldn’t rather be snuggling up with the Qatteri Cat? When I sit to blog, he snuggles as close as he can and does his singing purr . . . it’s a normal cat purr, but with the added element of cat joy; it sounds like he is singing and purring at the same time. Life is sweet.
Is it it just me, or is the internet running slowly?
Smell of the Sea
I started falling asleep last night around 8, finally turned out my light around 9:30 and – of course – was wide awake at 2:30 a.m. and HUNGRY. I finally gave up on sleeping, got up and had a small bowl of pasta (why not? I’m a grown-up, I can do what I want!) and checked around with the blog-world before going back to bed. I had just gotten back to sleep when my VOIP rang – a wrong number. I think I got another couple hours of sleep before AdventureMan called; he had waited up as long as possible to call me; these time zone issues are a (hmmmm) crock.
Got up, chased the Qatteri Cat around and hid his babies (it keeps him interested and active during the day), threw in a load of wash, grabbed a cup of coffee, shut the kitchen door (Qatteri Cat is fast, and doesn’t understand about balconies), opened the balcony door – and oh! the smell of the sea! I thought for a minute I was back in Seattle! The morning air is cool and damp, and the smell of the sea is fresh and knocks my socks off. Sixty seconds of pure bliss before it gets too chilly for me and I come back in. Thanks be to God for these small, wonderful sensory experiences – the smell of the churning sea.
Not Your Kuwait Book Store
Killing time waiting for Adventure Man to arrive. I always save Barnes and Noble for a special treat. If I go too soon, my bag is full of books, and no room for anything else. B&N is my incentive to get all my business taken care of – my special reward.
I love the bestseller, new hardcover and new paperback sections, where I can get a quick overview of what is hot.
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is out in a new paperback format; while it first came out about ten years ago, it is as delightful now as it was then. It is the Wizard of Oz story, retold from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West, a radical reformer who got bad press. It was also made into a Broadway musical that ran for years. Well worth bringing out for a new generation of readers.
Taste and See
In Psalm 34 of the bible is this verse that has always fascinated me:
O taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!
What do you think God/Allah would taste like?
I imagine a taste somewhere between caramel and French vanilla, something so sweet and tasty you barely have words to describe it, but some might think of apples or peaches or apricots –
what do YOU think?
Poor Witness
I had hoped to miss the worst of the traffic yesterday morning when I got on the highway, but for some reason, traffic was still heavy. Suddenly, in less time than it takes for me to write it and for you to read it, there were silver and red sparkles in the air, a shrieking of tires, and a car two cars in front of me trying to regain control, bouncing between two lanes.
Everything slowed to an almost halt, without – thanks be to God – any further collisions. One car, weaving in and out, had clipped another.
I’ve often been amazed at how closely these cars whip in and out without crashing. I think I’ve just never seen it happen before. That impact sends the car that’s hit totally out of control. By the grace of God, no one appeared to be physically injured.
I wondered if I should stop, but I realized I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know for sure which car had been the hitter and which had been the hittee. I would be a very poor witness. All I saw was this firework like explosion of silver and red – the tail light, I am guessing. And heard the sickening screech of tires as both cars tried to avoid a more serious collision.
A good witness isn’t someone who is guessing. I continued on. Saw the aftermath of an almost identical accident just another kilometer up the road. The good news is that it slowed down the traffic, made it more meditative. . . life is short, folks. There is nowhere we have to be in that big of a hurry.
WoooooHooooooo CO-OP!
It’s hot. It’s humid. I drive to the co-op for a few small things and holy smokes! I see a spot to park, and it’s near the door! I start to park, and I see the handicapped sign, so I go around again, and find another spot about a million miles away. It’s ok, the walk is good for me.
But as I pass the handicapped spots, a car drives in and out pops a perfectly non-handicapped young woman and her two non-handicapped, fully capable daughters!
If looks could kill!
I don’t want to waste a lot of my time on resentment, so I move on.
This week, here is what I see at the co-op:
Wooooo Hoooooooo! Handicapped spots RESERVED for those who have special needs! Blocked off, so as not to tempt the rest of us! Wooooo HOOOOOOOOO, way to go, Co-op!
“Can You Help Me Get to Bangladesh?”
I have a dilemma. I don’t know how to handle it.
I carry small bills with me, because I am often asked for money. I keep it so I always have money to give to the people who help me get groceries to my car, the people who deliver propane, people who give good service – I don’t mind. Part of the blessing of having work is the obligation to pass that blessing along to others. We know that God Almighty knows where there is real need, and he moves us to give where giving is needed; he gives us a little shove in our hearts.
Yesterday, a well dressed man with a steady job told me he wants to go home to Bangladesh to see his parents. Could I help him?
I understand about aging parents. I’ve made a few trips myself. I totally understand what it is like to be far away when crises strike. We have always had funds set aside for emergency trips, and, by the grace of God, we haven’t had to dip into those funds often.
“How can I help you?” I asked.
“I need money,” he responded.
Money for a ticket to Bangladesh – that’s not small change. Along with that thought is the thought that were I to “help” this man, word would get around, and I would have many people knocking on my door for serious help with funds.
I don’t think he wants the kind of help I could easily give – showing how to set up an account and contribute to it faithfully, letting the money accumulate until you reach your goal. I don’t think he wants to do what my parents did with me, and what we did with our son – matching funds. (You save up half and we will match your savings dollar for dollar.) He wants an outright big gift.
In our church, we sing a song that says “Freely, freely, you have received, Freely, freely give.” I’ve always believed that with all my heart, it is like a magnified spiritual Locard Exchange Principal especially for blessings; what you have received you give, and it comes back to you doubled, tripled, magnified.
We tend to give larger charitable donations to organizations that make the money work hard – Medicins Sans Frontiers, African schools, our church fund. I consider a ticket to Bangladesh a relatively large charitable donation, large especially for one individual, one individual who is well employed.
So I ask for your prayers for clear guidance. I am not feeling that shove in my heart.
Three Movies
Most of the time, I work in silence. I have a lot of things I need to think about, and the silence helps me think. When I am ready for some entertainment, I usually listen to BBC. Occasionally, as in the last three days, I turn on the TV, more for background noise than anything else.
Most of the shows I like the best have sharp women as main characters – I love Veronica Mars! I enjoy The Closer, and Crossing Jordan. I love how they overcome their dysfunctions, and how they use their smarts to solve cases. I love it that they screw up from time to time, and have to suffer the consequences, but that they overcome their screw-ups and prevail.
The last three days, I watched parts of three movies. In the first, Braveheart, we were watching Mel Gibson playing Braveheart, but I was constantly distracted by his preening. Have you seen Braveheart? It’s like he is conscious of the camera on him every minute, we the viewers are merely mirrors, absorbing and reflecting his glorious countenance – how annoying! His vanity distracted from a pretty good movie.
Then I watched segments of Dracula playing Ludwig von Beethoven. I am from a family of movie watchers; my son and husband know all the names and rush to IMDb to check out anachronisms, historical inaccuracies, goofs in continuity, etc. All I know is that every time he went to kiss one of those Viennese women, I wanted to scream “Watch your neck!”
The movie was interesting, and they made good use of all Beethoven’s most loved music, and they used it appropriately. Oldman did a good job of bringing Beethoven to life and making his deafness tragic and believable. He also shows the fickleness and cruelty of the audience for whom he made his music.
Then, yesterday, there was Jack Bauer playing Paul Gauguin! In the early parts of the movie, he lived in a luminously violet painted interior, one I am dying to copy. But that is not the point. Jack Bauer is a stoic. Stoicism is great when it comes to playing a guy who has so many bad things happen to him in the space of 24 hours.
(this is also beside the point, but can you imagine being married to a guy like Jack Bauer? Like he would never tell you what he was really up to, the most exciting times in his life are not with you and his children but off protecting the United States of America, he comes back to you addicted to heroin, or totally burned out and just when you have him all patched up again he gets a call that his services are needed, and you don’t hear from him because he is all caught up in his latest adventure and then after 24 hours he comes home again, a total wreck? What kind of family life is THAT??)
As Paul Gauguin, he leaves his stockbroker existence and becomes a starving painter, then a starving painter who somehow makes it to the South Seas to paint some of the most amazingly colored art every created but his facial expression never changes much. Paul Gauguin was all about passion – and it is just too much a stretch for Jack Bauer. He is not a believable Gauguin. He is not even a believable Frenchman. He barely moves his hands! I would watch the movie again, however, just for a glimpse of those violet colored walls.
It must be a problem for actors, especially TV actors who become too closely associated with one role. I had to look up his real name: Kiefer Sutherland. Fortunately, a new season of 24 starts in just three days. If you ever want to feel sorry for Kiefer Southerland, look at his dad’s resume’ of movies: Donald Sutherland. It wouldn’t be easy to live up to that legend.
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