Happy Birthday, Big Diamond
You were the one with all the courage, you were the one who never understood the word “no.” With your big, sunny smile, you went ahead and did just exactly what you pleased.
“Watch me! Wheeeeeeeee!” you shouted as you jumped out of the swing, breaking your arm.
“This is how you do it!” you yelled, sliding on the ice down the long wooden walk, falling and breaking the other arm.
Nothing stopped you. You look the impossible in the eye, and you spit.
And all these years later, you still do! You are the most amazing woman, indominable, unstoppable. You set a high standard for all the rest of us, with your energy, your clarity of values, and your generousity of spirit.
And today, your birthday, will also be the christening of your first grandchild.
How amazing, how wonderful. You are in my thoughts, dear sister, and I wish I could be there to celebrate with you.
Rules of Engagement
As you know, I am from a very close, very funny family. Earthling, my nephew, just got engaged.
We’ve all been waiting. Almost from the beginning, we knew this girl was THE ONE. We almost always know. They announced their engagement by sending a series of photos of a hike they took near Google Valley in California, including the photo of the bride-elect and her new ring. We are dancing for joy, that these two dear people have found one another and are committing their futures to one another.
And – the bride-to-be has started a blog called Rules of Engagement. She is a very funny, very clever writer, and will take you step by step through the travails of an American style wedding.
Enjoy!
“But We Have Final Exams!”
Kuwait Times, June 9, 2007
Three Teens Held for Rape Attempt
A source revealed that three 18 year old boys were walking on a pedestrian path in Mishref and they saw a 22 year old girl walking on the same path. The teens then tried to rape the girl, but she started crying and she tried to call police. Then the youths assaulted her. She recorded the plate number of the gang’s two cars then the teens got afraid and tried to fabricate a story and called police before her. When the police came, and saw the girl and the boys, she started crying and told police that they sexually assaulted her. First, they denied but following an intensive investigation they confessed and started BEGGING THE POLICEMEN TO RELEASE THEM BECAUSE THEY HAD EXAMS. (emphasis added by blogger) The police filed a case and referred the boys to the authorities.
My comment: You do the crime, you do the time. You have exams? What do you think you have done to this young 22 year old gal’s life??? You terrorized her!
And bravo to the judge in California who put that little ferret Paris Hilton back in jail, too.
Real Simple
It’s a quiet Friday morning and we have time to loll around before we have to get ready for church. I am focused on writing a tough entry for my blog and Adventure Man is on the couch, paging through a magazine, Real Simple.
He starts reading from an article called “Is he driving you crazy?” which lists the top five complaints of women, and then men:
Women:
He’s not affectionate enough.
He doesn’t listen to me.
He doesn’t help around the house.
He raises his voice when we argue.
He never talks about tough issues.
Men:
She’s trying to control me.
She objects when I need time alone.
We don’t have enough sex.
She criticizes me.
She treats me like an idiot.
The whole article, with all the expert solutions, is available HERE.
Two of them cracked us up.
Her Complaint: He’s not affectionate enough
Expert: Even though your partner loves you, he might express his feelings differently. Generally speaking, “men feel closer when there’s sex. For women to feel affectionate, there has to be talk.”
His complaint: We don’t have enough sex
Expert: The impulse to get romantic declines for most couples but “men are more likely to feel an urge for sex,” says (expert). “Once women get going, they enjoy it but often they don’t have the same initial urge they might have had as teenagers.” So if he’s rushing you to bed, let him know that you’d like to cuddle and talk a bit first . . . If your needs are truly mis-matched, talk about how many “relations” you’ll have in your relationship. Ask “What’s your ideal range of frequency per week? If he says three to five, and you say one to three, then aim for an average of about three times.”
Here is what got us rolling with laughter – my husband is a consumate negotiator. It doesn’t matter what the reality would be, he would up the figure. So like he might say “30 times a week” knowing that half that would be twice a day. It wouldn’t matter that he really doesn’t want sex twice a day, he would have sealed a deal that guaranteed him sex twice a day IF he wanted it.
But he knows my tricks, too, and moments later he is showered, shaved, he smells wonderful AND . . . he is making the bed! He totally knows how to get what he wants.
Kuwait Machine Gun?
From yesterday’s Kuwait Times.
Three Shot at by Teenagers
Two Kuwaiti citizens and a bedoon man were transferred to Jahra hospital after three teenagers shot them using a machine gun and ran away. The victims stressed they did not know why the assailants, who were travelling in a Japanese car, shot at them. The case is under investigation.
My comment: My husband, when I told him about this story, says that most people don’t know the difference between a machine gun and an automatic weapon, which can fire a series of shots in rapid succession. Somehow, the distinction fails to reassure me. Teenagers – children – with automatic weapons?? Where are these weapons coming from? How did they get their hands on them?
There has been a big to-do over Muna Al-Fuzai’s tongue-in-cheek article about Kuwait and subsequent defense of what she said.
Guys: Stop talking and listen for a change. Yes, Kuwait is a wonderful place, she is not saying differently. She is Kuwaiti and she loves Kuwait. She has a right to say what she sees and hears, and she has taken a courageous and controversial stand. You don’t have to agree with her, and she still has a right to her opinion. Did you notice? Her column is OPINION.
You are also entitled to your opinion.
First – Take a deep breath. Ask your mother, your wife, your sister, your maid – how safe she feels taking a taxi alone at night – if that is even an option. Ask her if she is careful where she walks. Ask her about her experiences with the police. Ask her if she will go to any ATM, or only “safe” ones.
As I see it, Kuwait has a huge bachelor population, and few options for these bachelors. Women here know to travel in groups, to be watchful, and to be wary. There is a problem.
And it’s not women, it is also children. It’s unthinkable.
Couple this with weak regard for the law and weak enforcement of the law, and you will see that there is a problem.
And where did these kids get automatic weapons? ? ? These problems are all connected to weak law enforcement, lack of respect for the law and a sense of entitlement. Entitled to take an automatic and shoot people? ? Entitled to TAKE sex from someone smaller and weaker than you? ?
It’s not just lack of respect for the law, it’s the law of the jungle.
Marriage – A Great Adventure
I remember the day we looked at each other in astonishment, the day we realized we had lived with each other longer than we had lived with our own parents. We think of family cultures as the culture we grew up in, but in our years together, we have created our own family culture, haven’t we?
We chose one another, in itself, a great adventure. We chose a life full of change and risk. We stacked the obstacles against our survival as a couple, and yet we prevailed, by the grace of God.
We laugh at how young we were to have made such a lifelong commitment. We laugh at how we walked into parenthood – no, RAN into parenthood, joyfully, with no clues as to the huge responsibilities, the agonies as well as the intense delights.
Happy Anniversary, Adventure Man. I thank God for our marriage, and our partnership.
These are for you.
Morning in the bush
Picnic Stop
The thrill of the chase
The Great Migration
Zanzibar
Some Misery Unavoidable
Accepting the bad times could make for a happy marriage
From BBC Health News
The key to a happy relationship could be accepting that some miserable times are unavoidable, experts say.
Therapists from California State University, Northridge and Virginia Tech say accepting these problems is better than striving for perfection.
And they blame cultural fairytales and modern love stories for perpetuating the myth that enjoying a perfect relationship is possible.
The report was published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.
The authors, Dr Diane Gehart and Dr Eric McCollum say it is a “myth that, with enough effort we can achieve a state without suffering.”
And they say healthcare professionals may not be helping the situation.
“The field of mental health perpetuates this myth with the very concept of “mental health,” which implies a state without suffering,” they say.
Potentially damaging
But this belief can eventually cause people to believe that with enough effort they can eliminate suffering.
And experts say this is an unrealistic aim in relationships, and striving to achieve it can lead people to feel they have failed.
Jan Parker of the Association of Family Therapy said: “The authors are right to point out that the pursuit of relationship nirvana can be potentially damaging.”
She said it was important to explore what people mean by a happy and healthy relationship, because nobody’s life or relationship can be in a permanent state of happiness – there will always be more difficult times.
She said couples need to build strengths, such as understanding, in their relationships to help them cope in these hard times and appreciate the good times.
Mrs Nadine Field, a consultant psychologist, said it was a “fantasy” that any relationship could be perfect and that striving for such an impossible state could lead to bitter disappointment.
She said this disappointment could then cause people to focus on the negative aspects of a relationship, and lead to more disappointment and resentment.
She said: “People need to try to understand their partners through communication, rather than demanding perfection of them.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Dead Man Walking
An Irish joke:
Paddy’s wife bought a new line of expensive cosmetics guaranteed to make her look years younger.
After a lengthy sitting before the mirror applying the “miracle” products she asked, “Darling, honestly what age would you say I am?”
Looking over her carefully, Paddy replied, “Judging from your skin, twenty; your hair, eighteen; and your figure, twenty-five.”
“Oh, you flatterer!” she gushed.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Paddy interrupted. “I haven’t added them up yet.”
Heat Lagging
The heat has hit me like a building crashing down around me. It changes everything I do. Somehow I don’t remember last year being so hot, but I know it was, and I think I just didn’t go out very often. Now that I am driving all over town, man, the heat KILLS me.
I just checked Weather Underground for Kuwait and the temperatures (Fahrenheit for my US readers) is going to be between 107 and 114 for the next five days. Kuwait DOES cool down at night more than Doha, but if you are outside after nine in the morning, you feel like a steak thrown into a hot frying pan to sear. It is sizzling hot!
I find myself trying to get everything done I need to get done early in the day. Sometimes when I get home, get the groceries put away – I need a NAP! I feel like I’ve run a marathon! It’s embarrassing to be so effected by the heat, but I am.
If I have had things going on and don’t get a nap, then by nine my head is nodding. I can be in the middle of a great book, a thrilling movie or a nail biting tv program . . . it doesn’t matter. Sleep calls me like a siren; I can’t resist, I crash. Around three in the morning, having had six hours of great sleep – Hey! here I am! wide awake!
Even my husband, born in the heat of the south, who gets cold easily, even my husband who never complains about the heat – told me this morning he hated the thought of having to walk today from here to there because of the heat. I can hear him wheezing a little at night. We no longer have the dust storm of earlier this week, but the residual dust has made breathing a little harder. I hear a lot of my friends wheezing mildly, too.
It’s just like jet lagging. I’ve got to get it under control, and I’m at a loss. I think most of my friends cope with the heat – by leaving! Others stay inside most of the summer – even the thought of meeting up with a friend for coffee during the day just seems like too much trouble, when I think of the hot hot hot walk from car to air conditioned mall or restaurant!
How do you cope with the heat?
Does your life change?
Do your hours change?
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