Jenyfer Matthews

Think you know how to jump rope? Really? Then take a look at this :

A truly spectacular performance!

I made it through the toddler years without even a small scissor incident – any bad haircuts the children ever sported were entirely my fault. So why did my son, only days before his 7th birthday, decide that NOW was the time to try his hand at cutting his own hair? He cut his hair very short right across the front, at a slant. I thought I’d make him wear it that way for a few days, just to have the lesson sink in.

My husband had another plan: give him a buzz cut.

It looks awful. Even with the clipper set on the “tallest” setting, he’s still pretty well bald. And since he’s a very pale redhead, I fear for the skin of his scalp. I ordered him to wear his hat outside at school until his hair grows back. Between the (temporary) tattoo of a cobra on his bicep and the buzz cut, he looks a bit like a prisoner.

I’m only glad that I got some decent pictures of him on Sunday at his father’s birthday party…and that his hair grows really fast!

I have been so focused on trying to think of what to get first my husband and then my son and then my father for their respective birthdays (why do all these MEN have to have their birthdays in the same month??) that I almost totally forgot about Halloween and the lead time I will require to get costumes together, depending on what the children request. My daughter already announced she wants to be a vampire. For her that means she wants to wear a cape we already have and slick her hair back with gel. I still need to check in with my son. I wouldn’t have thought of it at all if I hadn’t seen a bunch of great children’s costumes in a shop this morning. I was tempting to just choose one, but I didn’t know if my son would prefer to be a shark, a devil, or a knight crusader. (I liked the crusader myself) He’ll likely choose to be a pirate. Again.

I am pleased to report I finally had an idea for my husband’s birthday present and while I don’t actually have the item in hand, I have made some inquiries and hope they will pan out in time. I’ll find out one way or another on Saturday. And I even have a backup present planned as well! Either way I’m covered – and if they both work out then maybe I can even stash something for Christmas!

My husband requested a cheesecake for his birthday cake. Every year it seems he requests a cheesecake and every year every store in the neighborhood runs out of sour cream at the same time. It’s like some sort of anti-cheesecake conspiracy. I’m taking the fact that I found cream cheese this morning as a sign that all else will work fine as well!

The children have been back in school for three days and it’s wonderfully quiet at home. I’ve done some sewing and some cooking and pretty much whatever else has pleased me. Yesterday was a national holiday here in Egypt but the school canceled their scheduled day off in favor of making up lost time. I think all the parents appreciated that.

My husband had the day off however. We recently bought season seven of a TV show called The Shield. We’ve been waiting for a long time for this season to come out on DVD and since it arrived we’ve been gobbling it up. It’s a cop drama set in LA, the main character of which is an anti-hero like you’ve never seen before. He’s a totally corrupt cop and yet through the twists and turns of the story you find yourself rooting for him. All of the characters are marvelously complex and well-developed and the plot is totally convoluted and unpredictable. Even the extras are perfectly cast. It’s raw, gritty, and violent but I’ve been hooked since the pilot episode and as bummed out as I am that this is the final season, I can’t wait to find out how it ends.

And then start all over again.

My husband and I have been watching an episode (or two) every evening for the last week or so. Yesterday we made our lunch and then parked ourselves on the couch and had a marathon, watching four episodes in a row. If the children hadn’t been due to come home, we’d have kept going. As it was, we watched one more episode after they went to bed.

I’m on my own today, and it’s just as well. I’ve had a brainstorm with regard to what to buy my husband for his birthday. Of course when I went out to see if my idea was going to work, the shop I wanted to visit was closed (of course) I still have a few more days though so fingers crossed it will work out. If it doesn’t, I also have a pretty decent back-up plan. It’s a big relief just to have an idea to chase but I’ll feel better when I have a present to wrap!

I think I must have lived a former life in a deprived time because not only do I hate letting things go to waste, I get a real charge out of finding creative ways to use things. For instance, this week I had a large supply of honey flavored yogurt which I bought because the children claimed to like it. So why weren’t they eating it? I ended up using several pots of it to make them fruit smoothies – which also used up some frozen bananas I’d salvaged when no one ate them before they got overripe. I used another couple of pots making some awesome pancakes (yogurt is a great substitute for buttermilk).

Then there was the day that my son brought home a dozen lemons that he’d picked from the trees at our neighborhood club. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out since these lemons were dark green and probably ornamental, but I decided to let the children try their hand at making lemonade. They had a blast juicing the lemons, the lemonade was tasty, and they had more fun yet but taking it around our building to share. Not a bad result for a bucket of free lemons.

I’ve finally finished up with all of my commission quilts, thank goodness. The bed scarf was well received. The last transaction, for a twin sized bed quilt, actually turned a bit screwy in the end which left a bad taste in my mouth. Beyond the quilt aspect, the whole thing has caused me to question my judgment of people and who I call a friend. Right now I feel a deep need to just withdraw a bit and spend some time doing my own thing in my own company. It may be a planetary disturbance because I’ve heard a lot of people reporting they feel out of sorts lately.

Whatever the reason, I made a table runner over the weekend using a pile of small burlap bags that my wheat germ comes in and a collection of silk autumn leaves that I had bought a few years ago for another idea. It was fast, fun, and the result is pretty cheerful. And my log hedgehog bowl looks fabulous standing on it.

I’m going to tackle some of my clothes next. I just turned a pair of overly flared jeans into capris and added a row of decorative stitching at the ragged, cut-off hem. They look great and I finally learned how to program those fun stitches on my machine.

What can I say? Simple things amuse me. And soothe my soul.

I went grocery shopping over the weekend. First I caught an error in my change at the grocery store. In spite of the fancy new scanner they have installed, the cashier still calculates the change in his head – I assume so that he can palm a little extra for himself if he feels like it. I calculate the change too, just for times like these. The cashier gave me the difference with no question when I asked him about it – almost too quickly. Then I went on to my preferred vegetable market and caught the shopkeeper trying to tack on a bit extra to my bill. Not a lot, but if he did it to everyone who walked in…

It got me to thinking about shopping in Egypt, and the things you have to do to make it all easier. For instance, I choose to shop at my preferred vegetable stand because it’s convenient and because it tends to have very high quality produce. But there are many many people I know who won’t go there at all because they think the owner is a thief.

It pretty much comes down to establishing some sort of personal relationship with the shop keeper. I’ve shopped at my grocery store every week for the last three years. All the clerks know me and they don’t have to ask my address when I get delivery. Yes, once in a while I catch them out in some sort of error, intentional or not. But because they know me it seems to happen much less frequently than it does to other people. My husband hardly ever shops there and he has some sort of problem nearly every time he goes.

The same goes for my vegetable market. The shopkeeper there has a real reputation. You can look at him and see him deciding prices as he goes along. I’ve sat and shared breakfast with them, accepted their buffalo milk latte, and they treat me (pretty) well most of the time. When I ask him a price he’ll nearly always say, “for you, Madam…” To me, as an outsider, it always seems to be a struggle between pulling something over on someone once or just dealing honestly and creating a repeat customer. So many shopkeepers I have dealt with here are very shortsighted and would rather go for the kill the first time. I’m not sure why except that maybe they figure that eventually all the expats move on? It’s true, and yet we do talk to one another. Once a shop gets a bad reputation, it sticks.

I’ve also been in shops where the clerks seem almost actively hostile. Heaven forbid you touch anything – unfolding a shirt to look at it will earn a dramatic eye roll and a barely suppressed sigh. There are also clerks who have obviously been told to be “attentive” – which in their minds means shadowing your every step, as if they suspect you of being a shoplifter. I don’t want friendly sales clerks to hover around me, let alone surly ones! It all adds another layer of intrigue to shopping, what ought to be a pretty simple activity.

Shopping is on my mind this week because my husband’s birthday is coming up in a week, and as usual I haven’t got a clue what to get him. Anyone have any bright ideas?

I had a post in mind for this weekend but in the end I just can’t find the mental energy necessary to sit down and write it. Maybe next week.

On the up side, after being off all of yesterday our water has been restored. It’s kind of astonishing how much water you use in the course of a day. Toilet flushing, hand washing, dishes, laundry, showers. After the time our water was off for five days in our first year in Cairo, I keep two 20 liter jugs in case of such outages. I ended up dipping into it yesterday to do a sinkful of dishes that the ants were getting a little too interested in. I heated a stock pot of water for the washing and ended up using about 5 liters of bottled water for a scant rinse. I hated to waste bottled water that way, but it was that or let the ants have a party in my kitchen. I did the dishes in a plastic tub and then used the dishwater to force the toilet to flush so it wasn’t totally a waste!

On the down side, now I get to spend the weekend catching up on all the laundry and other household chores I didn’t get to do while I was coaching my children through research projects, book reports, spelling practice, and math activities. I’m no neat freak, but I am happier when my house is reasonably tidy. I also have an ulterior motive: if I do all this housework now, when everyone is home and I won’t have any me-time anyway, I can do whatever I like for five whole days next week. MWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Have a good weekend. I’m counting the hours until the children get on their school bus on Sunday…

We have shared our home with ants ever since we arrived. In the daytime it’s the little ones that are out and about, mostly in the kitchen and dining rooms. It’s not always easy to keep things tidy with two young children preparing their own snacks but I do my best to keep things sealed up and clean enough that the ants don’t often get too out of hand. Once in a while there are enough of them that I follow their trail back to a crack or hole and give that spot a little blast of bug spray, but usually I take a live-and-let-live approach to them.

At night, the small black ants go to bed and larger red ants come out. They don’t seem to be up to much, just checking things out. My husband steps on them when he sees them. In the morning you can see the small black ants carrying away the carcasses to wherever they live. The food chain at work!

I could spray for them I suppose, but I’m not so enthusiastic about the idea. Also, I’m not sure it would do much good. So far as I understand the construction practices here in Egypt, they fill in the floors with sand for insulation. If that’s true then the whole building is really one large ant farm!

Lately the small ants have found their way into my bedroom. Since generally speaking I don’t do any eating in bed at all, why do I keep finding them crawling on me when I’m reading at night? The fact that they are started to bite me in my sleep is just proof of their vicious and aggressive nature. Little beasts. Since I have a mild allergic reaction to their bites, I decided to find out what they were really after because sweet as I am, surely I am not the main attraction.

Turns out there were a couple of candy canes in my nightstand, from several Christmases ago.

I’ve removed them (and about a hundred ants) so I hope that takes care of the problem. I guess have to find another place to hide my treats – or else put them in a baggie before I stash them!

It’s always nice to be appreciated so imagine how pleased I was to get a notice that my blog was included in the top 100 on The Daily Reviewer site! Thanks to everyone who helped make that happen!

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I can’t remember where I found the link to the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks (sorry!) but you don’t have to be a writer to find it amusing. Then again I’m a cheap laugh these days – anything to get away from homework for a few minutes!