Jenyfer Matthews

Haven’t been to Blogthings in a while, but how could I resist this one?

You Are Humor

You love to laugh at life, and if possible, get others to laugh along with you. You believe there’s always a humorous side to everything. And your sense of humor ranges from upbeat to very dark. You are outrageous and very honest. You’re often the only one willing to say what everyone else is thinking. You are witty and verbally talented. You like to play with words and say things in interesting ways.

Here’s what I did with my weekend: the first of my two most pressing projects. I had procrastinated doing the machine quilting – do you have any idea how FAST you can mess something up? – but I have to admit, I’m pretty pleased with how it came out.

(Click image to enlarge)

Look, Ma! It’s reversible too!

Most machine quilted quilts are done on long arm machine that have large frames and computers to work out the pattern. This was just me doodling freehand on my dining room table. It was both nerve-wracking and kind of fun. To have BOTH sides look so good is just a BONUS

Nope, not talking about Mommy-brain. I’m talking about remembering something fondly from the past and how you can’t always trust those memories.

Specifically, I remembered really, really liking The Thorn Birds when I was a child. I can remember watching the mini-series on TV and then much later reading and re-reading the book. I loved it. I wanted to move to Australia. I wanted Ralph and Maggie to get together (always the romantic!) Since it is still available in print 32 years later, I must not be the only one who enjoyed the book. So when Amazon sent me an email advertising a sale on TV series DVDs I thought why not?

I really should have known better.

Admittedly, given my schedule lately, I’ve only had time to watch the first episode. But having watched the first episode, I’m not especially interested in going on. I kind of want to preserve my good memories of the series. Yet, those memories have already been compromised by the shallow characterizations and poor acting / directing that I’ve already seen. Nothing is subtle, it’s as if the director and the script writer were afraid to trust the viewer to catch on to the nuances of the storyline without slapping her across the face with it. What seemed so dramatic and captivating in 1983 seems pretty unsophisticated by today’s standards.

Add to that none of the characters save one, who are all supposed to be Irish living in Australia, has the appropriate accent AND the icky factor of a priest obsessed with a small child and it’s pretty much a matter of willpower to go on and finish the thing. I keep hoping I’ll get sucked in to the storyline like I did all those years ago, but it’s tough to do when my husband (who is watching it for the first time) keeps bursting out laughing.

When will I ever learn?

My husband, being a little older than I am, decided that he wanted to balance the children’s musical exposure by including some 70s music in the line-up. I’m certainly enjoying it – and you haven’t seen anything funnier than a 9 year old dancing hip-hop to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”!

We don’t need no education…
We don’t need no mind control…

If my children’s sports schedule weren’t enough to keep me busy, I have several quilt commissions on my list of things to finish up this month. I’m making a bed scarf for someone who is moving at the end of the month, need to finish a twin sized bed quilt, and also make a three panel wall hanging. Can’t you picture me madly quilting in all my copious downtime?

Several of these projects have lost their allure for me. That’s what happens when your hobby turns into work. But I’m going to push my way through 1) because I said I would and 2) because the sooner I finish these things up, the sooner I can start on my own projects. My little boy has asked me for a “big” quilt and I’d like to oblige him before he grows out of the sea turtle pattern I have in mind.

And in between all the rest, I am still trying to find time to write. I’m toying with the idea of bringing my laptop to tennis practice on occasion. If I can assume a suitably off-putting demeanor to discourage chit-chat, it might just be my best chance to get something done!

While I was looking forward to the children going back to school, one thing I wasn’t looking forward to was the crazy schedule that tends to go hand in hand with being back in school. Some parents do Scouts, some do music lessons. We do sports.

If it were just one sport, I’d probably manage well enough. But it’s THREE sports x TWO children. That makes for a fairly busy and complicated schedule trying to remember who has to be where at what time on which days.

Truly, I never thought I’d be that mom – the one who scheduled ever minute of their child’s day. And I know what you’re thinking – why do I let them participate in so much? I could always do what my mother did which was to say “no, no time/money”. But she worked full time so she had a built in excuse for not being able to pick me up after school, and if I had really cared I probably would have pushed harder. I have no such excuse, and you should see the puppy eyes they give me! How can I tell them no when all of the activities they are asking for are such healthy pursuits that they are also good at?

They each take tennis lessons: a sport which they can continue to play their entire lives so long as they can find one other person to play. Those lessons account for five evenings a week between the two of them.

They are both about to start playing in the community soccer league. Soccer is an excellent companion sport to tennis because they build up stamina from all the running and good footwork besides. It’s not as if I had to twist their arms either – both of them love soccer. That accounts for one evening of practice and a Saturday morning game for each child – at different locations for their different age groups of course.

The one sport I actively tried to discourage was the swim team at school. On the plus side, swimming is a wonderful exercise. On the other, it’s just one more day of practice and another obligation during an already packed schedule. I’ve reluctantly given in but if it starts to interfere too much with other things – like school work – it’s the first thing that will be cut.

They have so much going on that it’s actually beginning to interfere with my own exercise schedule. But I’m hoping that running them from one place to the next will make up the difference!

Really? So how the $%&* else are you supposed to get water out of a stack of sopping wet clothes?

I did two largish loads of clothes in my bathtub yesterday and let me say it was no fun. And I did wring AND twist them to get enough water out of them to make it reasonable to hang them up to dry and I still had a large puddle on my balcony when I was done.

I myself went on a clothes ration at the first sign of trouble – generally speaking I can wear a pair of pants several times before they need washing. Unfortunately, it is still pretty hot in Cairo so we’re all sweating. And I live with a six year old boy who is a dirt magnet. He doesn’t really even have to try very hard and he comes home covered in a layer of grime at the end of the day. Between the dirt and the sweat there is no way he can wear his clothes more than once and still look presentable.

I will never complain about hand washing my dishes again. That’s a walk in the park on a spring day compared to hand washing clothes!

Ironically, I feel as if I’ve been through the wringer. I didn’t suffer any muscle soreness after my water aerobics class on Sunday evening, nor after my power yoga class on Wednesday night, in spite of the fact I’ve done no yoga since the studio closed in late June and no formal exercise regime all summer. But every muscle in my body is sore after a day of hand washing clothes and vacuuming. I woke myself up rolling over my muscles are so achy!

Astonishingly enough, the repairman showed up late yesterday afternoon, two days before I expected him and replaced the motor and a belt for FREE – just over three years from when we purchased the machine. After experiencing hand washing, I would have gratefully paid for the parts! (Nope – not going to catch on as an exercise regime!!) It’s an LG if anyone cares. They’ve just created one loyal customer!

In an effort to shed the weight I gained over vacation – or at least sculpt it into a more pleasing shape – I’ve gotten serious this week. I’ve been watching what I eat (and drink), I enrolled in a water aerobics class, and I started back at yoga. But now I’m faced with another sort of workout that I didn’t want at all: hand washing my laundry.

I’ve known for a while that my washing machine wasn’t performing quite as it should. It’s a small, European style front loader and I use it every day, at least 2x a day, just to keep up with the laundry generated by a family of four. But lately the drum has been noisier than usual when it’s spinning. Since it was otherwise okay, I ignored it. It was only this week when it refused to do the final spin that I had to admit a service call was in order.

Now you know how that goes: the machine never acts up in front of a technician. Now add in a second language barrier and imagine how difficult it is to explain the subtleties of “yes, it’s running NOW, but it won’t do the final spin”. And because this is a digital machine, you can’t turn the knob to the appropriate place to demonstrate that – you’d have to just wait 45 minutes until it got to that point in the cycle. I was dreading making the call.

In addition, it’s Ramadan – the season of not being able to get anything done.

I admit that the whole experience went much better than I expected. The person who answered the phone spoke English and took my information, promising that a technician would be out the same day, between 5-7pm. I didn’t believe her – that is pretty much the hours of Iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast. I thought it was going to be more like 11pm, if I was lucky. I got a call about 5pm, asking for directions to my house. Then about 6pm, another call to say that since it was Iftar the technician would be a bit later, closer to 7pm. Much to my surprise he actually arrived at 7:05pm.

The technician looked at the machine and did pretty much what I expected which was shrug his shoulders and look at me like I was crazy. Then I pointed out the flashes of light (sparks?) from under the machine as it ran. That certainly got his attention. He made a call and it was decided the motor was going bad. I was happy that there was something definite diagnosed until they told me that it’s going to take several days to get another and the weekend is coming up. It’ll be Sunday before anything more is accomplished, if I’m lucky.

Now I’m wondering what the best method for hand washing clothes in the bathtub is – perhaps stomping on them in the time-honored method of wine makers? I’m afraid the laundry detergent would wreak havoc with my pedicure, so I guess it’ll be on my knees. I’m going to look at it as an upper body workout. Think it will catch on?

It’s the first day of school

I’m not the only one who is happy school is finally starting. My children are happy too! They’ve been whining about how much they miss school for a few weeks now. Little freaks! I can’t recall ever being happy that the summer was over when I was their age.

Not all of the local schools are starting however. Because most of the local news I get is word of mouth and based on rumor (and that includes the “official” news sources) apparently the Ministry of Education here in Egypt has mandated that non-foreign schools that fall under their authority will remain closed until the end of September in an effort to contain / avoid any problems with H1N1 flu.

I suppose the rationale is that a large portion of the population has been traveling over the summer and so if there is going to be an outbreak, it would be now. But a neighbor of mine who is a teacher in one of these schools said that now she’s hearing they may postpone starting until after the Eid holiday which marks the end of Ramadan at the end of September. But since people tend to travel during the Eid as well, then what? There’s another long weekend the first week in October – more travel. Then the second Eid holiday after that. Then the semester break in December followed by the New Year, followed by yet more holidays – and more travel.

Maybe they should just skip the school year just to be safe. Geez…

I guess I just have to be happy that our school *is* starting and if we get the flu, we get the flu. Things happen.