Jenyfer Matthews

It’s nearly June – half the year is nearly gone. Where does the time go?? Seemed like a good time to report on the progress of my resolutions.

Actually, I didn’t make any formal resolutions but I did set some goals: I wanted to start exercising and eating better. Self-improving but manageable, and ill-defined enough to be perfectly attainable

I admit it – I haven’t gone to Curves in months. Their open hours didn’t sync with my schedule very well, people were always deviating from the program and getting in my way (i.e. irritating me), the atmosphere was too faux-cheerful, and I didn’t find the workout enough of a challenge to continue to aggravate myself there.

I have however faithfully attended my power yoga class once a week. It was quite a challenge when I started – I often wondered about 20 minutes in just *why* I was torturing myself. But persistence has paid off – I’m pretty strong now! I can do most of the positions in class with little difficulty and in fact I did my first headstand just this morning. A proud moment!

I stopped swimming in the fall when I started doing water aerobics. I *love* that class. I have only missed it a couple of times and only in situations in which I simply could not get out of my other obligation. The teacher for that class is leaving this summer and some other students have suggested I take over the class. I do love it, but I’m not sure I want to teach it. I’m not really the rah-rah-you-can-do-it enthusiastic aerobics teacher type – not to mention that I’m not trained or certified! Teaching an exercise class is certainly a direction I never expected my life to take!

My eating goals? All I will reveal is that some days I do better than others! It would all be so much easier if chips and chocolate were included in the food pyramid.

How about you? If you set any goals at the new year, how have you done so far? If you haven’t done as well as you’d like, just remember: you still have a little more than half a year!

A friend of mine here in Cairo has this totally wonderful ring. I’ve admired it for months and even went to the store where she bought hers to see if I could get my own. No luck. I guess she finally got sick of hearing me gush about it because she suggested that maybe I could get the ring copied and very kindly allowed me to borrow her ring.

My precious…

So, I found a jeweler here in the neighborhood who said he could copy it – and if I didn’t like it when he was done, I didn’t have to pay for it. Not a bad deal, right?

Only thing is, apparently that sort of assurance isn’t *quite* good enough for me. I actually dreamed about the ring last night – that I’d gotten it back and not only wasn’t the workmanship good, but they had changed the whole design. (That actually might have come from the fact that the jeweler I spoke with kept trying to suggest changes to me to make it more “individual” when in fact I just wanted it as it was!) I woke up several times over the course of the night with these sorts of unsatisfactory scenarios playing through my brain.

The likelihood is that all will be well – and if it isn’t, I won’t have to pay. But at the end of the day, what I really want is the ring and I’ll have to wait until Friday to find out if I get it or not. I have the feeling it’s going to be a long week!

I went this morning to collect some odds and ends from some good friends who are retiring and leaving Egypt for good. We met on a weekend trip we took as part of a tour when we first arrived but our friendship really took root on a different weekend trip the following year. A twelve hour bus trip will either help you create lasting bonds or bring homicidal urges to the surface!

I really really hate saying goodbye to people. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that this morning. But their impending departure made me start thinking about the nature of friendship.

I have one friend from when I was 12 years old, and one more from when I was 14. I have friends who I rarely hear from, but when we are together again we pick up right where we left off and it’s as if we were never apart. I have friends with whom I touch base often but haven’t seen in more than a decade. I even have a few dear online friends I’ve never met in person!

Making friends as an adult isn’t always an easy process. Life becomes busy – you don’t always have the luxury of making friends with those who share your interests so much as those with whom you share an office. Since I have had children, I’ve made friends with the mothers of children my own children are friends with. If I’m lucky, they are people that I will remain friends with even if the kids fall out!

Living abroad puts a new wrinkle on making friends. Often you bond quickly with people because you are both out of your own familiar environment. And I think there is also an unconscious idea that if you like someone you better just get down to business because one or the other of you will leave soon! I’ve made some wonderful friends with people who I might never have met otherwise – some of whom are from my home state! While I love making friends of people from far flung places, it does also increase the chances that once we both leave wherever we are when we meet, that’ll be goodbye forever.

I suppose what it all boils down to is that friendship is precious. I would love to think that I will always have all the friends I hold dear in my life forever, but I know that life is not that way. So instead, I will do my best to appreciate and nurture the ones that I do have and hope that one day our paths will cross again.

As I was cleaning up in my bedroom this afternoon, I happened on a stack of boxes that had been shoved in the corner. I’d forgotten what was in them so I opened them up – and then wished I hadn’t.

One of them was full of all the school work that my children brought home at the end of the year last year.

The reason it is sitting in that box is because though my first instinct was simply to pitch it all the minute it came home, I couldn’t quite bring myself to toss it out in front of them. After all, what sort of message would that send them about school work? So I put it away and thought that at some point I’d go through it and see if there were any priceless gems that I could keep as a representative sample of their work that year. That time has come – because next month, another pile will come home.

The only question that remains is should I actually open the box and look at each item, or should I just save myself some time and assume that there is nothing worth keeping in the mix and heave the whole box into the trash sight unseen. What would you do?

I’ve mentioned before what little jocks my children are. It’s particularly noticeable in my daughter since she’s older. She’s wonderful at soccer and tennis and this week brought home three medals from a track meet : gold in hurdles and two silvers for sprinting and high jump.

I appreciate the compliments people bestow – I have eyes in my head and I can see her too. She’s pretty phenomenal for an eight year old. But I also have ears and when people ask me so where does all this athletic talent come from? I can hear the subtext of because you’re certainly not an athlete you lazy lump. It’s true – my husband and I are more likely to be found sitting behind a computer or reading a book these days. But I wish people would think before they speak. We might have been great athletes once upon a time, or at least harbor that potential. The main thing is we aren’t eight anymore.

And if you come to my yoga class sometime, I’ll kick your butt at downward dog!

I recovered and rose from my sick bed – just in time to start another busy week.

I’m also just in time for the thermometer to rise to 100F+ – after what has been a long mild winter / spring, it feels especially hot and dry. The only thing good about the weather is that it’s great for line drying clothes and I have a pile of laundry to catch up on after my “break”. Go figure.

If it weren’t for the fact that I was burning bright with a fever last night, no doubt my family would think I was shamming illness just so that I could loll in bed surrounded by books. The books are the only good thing about being bedridden.

I’ve read a number of wonderful books in the last few weeks. The first was TELL ME SOMETHING by Adele Parks, which my husband picked up for me while on a conference in England (along with a huge bar of chocolate and a couple bottles of port) I read TELL ME SOMETHING en route to see my friends in Qatar. I’m glad it was a long book because I had a four hour delay in the airport before we even began our 3 hour flight. I finished it just as we began our descent. I enjoyed the book so much I was almost grateful for the delay so that I could finish it in one sitting. Adele Parks has a marvelous way of painting human emotion and all the messy complications of life – and still comes up with a happy ending.

Bookstores in Cairo leave a lot to be desired. Sometimes I can find things at the local used bookstore, but the new stores? Hit or (mostly) miss. Imagine my surprise when I found that the bookstores in Qatar were actually pretty good! One of the first books I picked up was THIS CHARMING MAN by Marian Keyes. I’m not sure what it is about books set in Ireland but that’s one of many things I love about Marian Keyes’ books. Her depictions of big, noisy, interfering Irish families are wonderfully entertaining, but most of all I love the emotion she puts in the writing. She doesn’t just tell me that something is happy or sad – she makes me laugh and cry. And her books are satisfyingly long. Both Marian Keyes and Adele Parks simultaneously make me wonder why I bother to write at all and also make me want to dissect their books to see what makes them tick.

I’ve also read a number of books by Lisa Kleypas lately – historicals, which was all that was available by her on Ebookwise.com. I read MIDNIGHT ANGEL, ONLY WITH YOUR LOVE, BECAUSE YOU’RE MINE, and PRINCE OF DREAMS. I like Lisa Kleypas, her characters are well drawn and her stories sufficiently complicated that you just get pulled right along, although sometimes it seemed to me that her conclusions are a tad anticlimactic. Still, that didn’t put me off when I found two of her contemporary novels in a bookstore in Qatar – SUGAR DADDY and BLUE-EYED DEVIL. They are both written in first person, which I personally love. I got sucked into these stories so thoroughly that they didn’t last nearly as long as I would have liked. And little did I know that they were related stories – and I read them in reverse order! I think I preferred them that way actually. I’m looking very much forward to getting my hands on SMOOTH TALKING STRANGER. Almost makes me wish I had a Kindle.

I’ve recently discovered the J.D. Robb series with Eve and Roarke. Well, I’ve known they were there for a long time actually. When they first came out I was a bit put off by the futuristic aspect of them. Then I was put off by all the hype about how wonderful they are. I’m perverse that way. I finally gave in though and bought NAKED IN DEATH for my ebook reader. Now I’ve got three more on my reader and two paperbacks on my nightstand. They are wonderful. And the advantage to having waited more than a decade to pick them up is I have a lot of them to read before I get ahead of Nora as she writes them!

My friend loaned me a couple of books while I was visiting. The first was JULIE & JULIA: MY YEAR OF COOKING DANGEROUSLY by Julie Powell, essentially an autobiographical account of one woman’s goal to reclaim her life by cooking her way through all of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child in one year. It was both funny and kind of gross (all the butter, and the maggots) but all in all entertaining. I have to admire her to sticking to it though – and the experience certainly did change the direction of her life.

While I was feverish and nearly delusional, I finished reading THE WIFE: A NOVEL by Meg Wolitzer. The premise was one that sounded appealing, it was written in first person which is a plus to me, and there were observations and details included in the story that I found particularly amusing. Overall though the story fell a little flat for me. It may be unfair of me to critique a book I read while my body was fighting off a vicious virus, but the whole tone of the thing just seemed to be trying a little too hard to be literary to me, not to mention the fact that it ended rather predictably. The fact that the title says “a novel by” was an immediate tip-off. A good friend of mine loves her books so I wouldn’t be opposed to giving another book by her a try when I’m healthier.

Yet to be read: THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL by Elif Shafak, another loaner from my friend in Qatar, a book which caused quite a stir after it was published due to how the author depicted the massacre of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire. I’m guessing that this is a book that will require more attention and thus won’t be one I read as I drift off to sleep at night. It will however make me look rather high-brow when I pull it out of my purse to read on my lunch hour at work!

Also to be read DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS by Randa Abdel-Fattah. I admit it – I bought this book because the cover and title amused me. It’s about an Australian-Palestinian Muslim girl living in a suburb of Melbourne who decides to wear the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, full-time and all of the ramifications of that in a non-Muslim majority society. The reviews on the book as well as on Amazon say its funny. I’ll let you know

So, that’s what’s on my nightstand. What’s on yours? I’ll be needing some recommendations soon!

ETA: Also recently read THE LAST HELLION by Loretta Chase. Loved it – and love the fact that though her male characters are typical alpha males, her heroines give as good as they get. Great dialogue. And I’m happy to see there are several more titles by her that I haven’t yet read – which is the beauty of discovering an author who has been writing for a while!

I guess I finally have a day off – though not the way I would have chosen it, complete with fever, chills, and body aches. Yuck. I don’t think it’s anything to exotic or dramatic, but it’s certainly no fun either, and doesn’t it figure it’s just in time for the weekend. I hope I’ll be back up to speed soon. Like most busy women, I don’t have time to be sick!

The only good thing is I do have a stack of good books to read…more on that tomorrow.

Today we gather to mourn the passing of a faithful and enduring member of my household, our tea kettle. Manufactured in China on some unknown date, it wasn’t a fancy or even particularly attractive tea kettle, but what it lacked in style and panache was more than made up for by its endurance and longevity in the face of neglect and misuse. Over the three years it served our family, it was left unattended on the stove more than once, leading to permanent discoloration of it’s shiny silver surface. It soldiered on through heat intense enough to melt the plastic components of its spout and warp the plastic bits on the lid. Unsightly but still serviceable, it was my husband who dealt the killing blow – after an hour left forgotten on a gas flame, the poor kettle was all but cremated.

With heavy hearts we released the kettle from its Earthly service to us. We can only hope that what useful parts remain will be recycled, perhaps even into a shiny new kettle. May it find a home with more conscientious tea drinkers.

The tea kettle is survived by a small electric kettle, complete with automatic cut-off switch for easily distracted nitwits like us…

Never bring a king-sized chunky candy bar to work with you, telling yourself that it’s okay to buy such a big chocolate bar because you’ll make it last for the three days you are scheduled to work. Instead what will happen is that you’ll eat the first third and it’ll be so good that you’ll think okay, I’ll eat half. So you’ll eat a little more and a little more and by then you’ll think what the hell, I’ll just eat the rest and get rid of the temptation.

That was yesterday. Now, due to my own weak will, not only don’t I have any more chocolate for my after lunch sweet fix (breath mints just don’t cut it), but I have a couple of fresh zits as well. Nice.

I also have an unfulfilled craving for more chocolate and a vague twinge of guilt that I don’t actually feel all that guilty at all…