Jenyfer Matthews

This is pretty much what it’s been like at my house since school ended for the summer. Just so you know, if the issue is ever raised, I’m all for a year round school year.

Still, the bickering is preferable to the girl-drama that has been going on around here. There are three little girls in our building, in addition to my own DD – ages 8 & 9. Ideally, the two oldest and the two youngest would pair up and they’d all be happy and entertained. But you know that reality rarely works that way.

Instead what tends to happen is that one little girl defects and goes and plays either on her own or with a little boy. And two others compete for the affection and attention of the third (and oldest). Which always leads to trouble.

Lately, it’s been my DD who has been on the outs with them. It’s been a few weeks since she’s spent much time with any of them and I’m okay with that. Before, she would come home ranting about how she hated this one or that one – or crying because someone had said something nasty to her and excluded her from their play.

I try very hard not to get involved in these dramas, however angry it makes me to see DD hurt. They need to figure out how to deal with things themselves without parental interference. Also, what usually happens is they’ve long gotten over whatever the problem was and I’m still ticked off. If I were to involve myself the only thing that would happen is that I’d be on the outs with all their mothers.

It’s been harder to ignore recently though – particularly when the “in” girls add petty vandalism to their bag of tricks. Nothing they have done – so far – has been such a big deal. But what they don’t realize is that the items they are damaging are things that *I* bought and paid for so I have an interest in putting a stop to it.

So I did what I had to do. I told their mommies on them.

Girls can be such a pain in the butt with all their head games and cliquishness. (I know, I was a little girl once). This is one area where I think a man’s approach is better. Just slug ‘em and get over it…

I’ve been thinking about music on and off ever since we moved to Egypt – or rather, the lack of it in my life. When I’m writing, I have to have silence, so most of my musical experience was from listening to the radio in the car. Thing is, we don’t have a car anymore.

I’ve mentioned it before, but the radio here in Cairo for western music is really not worth listening to. I have a few CDs I listen to (over and over and over again) while I’m quilting, but that’s usually while the kids are in school. And since my own musical tastes run to rock, alternative, and grunge, once again many of the lyrics are not necessarily child-friendly.

I’m beginning to worry that I’m stunting my children’s growth in popular culture. Thinking back to my own childhood, I can always remember music and even now hearing certain songs will transport me back in time. I can remember sitting in the back of my parent’s giant Chevy Impala (no seatbelt!) and hearing “50 Ways to Leave your Lover” by Paul Simon and “Rhinestone Cowboy” by Glen Campbell on the radio, Olivia Newton John’s “Please Mister Please” brings back memories of summer road trips to see my grandparents, and “Grease (is the word)” was very popular the summer I rode the bus to summercamp.

My own mother would listen to music when she did housework on the weekend. She had a turntable with a very long center stick on which she would put a stack of albums, each dropping down as the last one finished. I listened to what she listened to and as a result I have a vast warehouse of lyrics by Kenny Rodgers, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Tom Jones. I also developed quite a crush on Elvis as a child. I wept buckets when he died.

When I was a little older and had money of my own, I made weekly trip to the local TG&Y to see what 45s singles were on the top ten that week. I had a small turntable in my room and would play one after another, dancing along. (I still have a stack of those in storage, no doubt melted into one big blob by now.) “Whip It”, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, and “Physical” are a few that I remember buying.

Music today is different, in part because of the digital age. With iPods and iTunes, people don’t necessarily buy albums anymore – they only buy the songs they like. And if they follow the “if you like this, you may also like” that link, they can end up with some fairly eclectic playlists. There was a party for some young teenagers recently where they were using their iPod for the music. Their choices ran from The Who (60s), Van Halen (80s), to Red Hot Chili Peppers (90s), plus a lot of more modern stuff I didn’t recognize. They picked what they liked to hear. The music for them won’t be tied to any point in time for them – other than the point that they chose to download it.

My daughter is going to be eight soon and she still likes The Wiggles. (She doesn’t seem to notice when her more worldly friends roll their eyes at her) Being innocent isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’m thinking that maybe I need to introduce some more artists into the mix. I don’t want her to be a totally stunted socially. I may have to get on iTunes myself and start their musical education…

Sarah over at Smart Bitches wrote an article for Tango magazine with her suggestions for great summer reading. As if that wasn’t temptation enough, she then posted a discussion about the best ways to buy books for less. How was I supposed to resist going shopping?

I went to my local used book store first. Not only did I have a stack of books to trade in, the selection at the UBS is better than at the full price store – and it’s closer besides. I picked up five new-to-me books. How thrilled was I to find a copy of Santa Baby which features a story by Jennifer Crusie? Think I can manage to save that one for the holidays?

When I got home, I surfed over to ebookwise.com to have a look around. Not surprisingly, I found another half dozen books to purchase there including Lord of Scoundrels and Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase. My ebookwise reader will still talk to its home planet, fortunately, even though it refuses to speak directly to my computer.

So between all these new books and Gone With the Wind, I should be set for the next several months! (What? Gone With the Wind is LONG) I was especially pleased to find a copy of Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes at the UBS. My study guide for my upcoming trip to Italy

What are you reading these days? Any recommendations for me?

My family always knows that summer is coming when the boxes and packages of items I’ve purchased online start to pile up, waiting for me to retrieve them. Shelley Munro had a Thursday Thirteen post this past weekend about shopping. And it got me to thinking that I need to start on my summertime shopping list for when I’m back in the US.

I do my best to make do with what is available locally where ever it is that I am living. And depending on where I’m living that can work better and worse. It was easier in Dubai than it is in Egypt by far! Making do with local products was what prompted me to learn to bake cakes from scratch when mixes were outrageously expensive or just not available and had me trying food I might not otherwise ever have eaten. But there are certain products that I just need on hand and when a large can of Bush’s baked beans costs $10 and a bottle of McCormick’s Pure Vanilla extract and a canister of Hershey’s cocoa go for $20 each (when you can find them at all!), you can see why I max out my luggage allowance on the way home.

I have a friend who says she goes to the Omaha Steak store and packs coolers with frozen meat to bring back with her. Another friend admits to bringing back bags full of bacon. I’m not quite that ambitious and try to restrict my groceries to specialty / long-lived / dry goods, but I do have a growing shopping list.

My shopping list, in no particular order, so far:

Quilting supplies – good cotton fabric is hard to find and that goes for thread as well. Ironically, Egypt exports most of its cotton to other countries for processing. I bought a piece of white cotton on my last trip to Dubai that was marked “Egyptian Cotton, Made in Japan”. There is no batting available locally at all. I usually have one very large, very light bag packed full of batting! I weight the bottom of the bag down with the next item on my list…

Kids shoes – because the shoes in Egypt are either 1) crap or 2) $$$ . My children are both very sporty and it’s getting to the point where one pair of cross trainers isn’t good enough. They need to specialize! I’ll have to look for all purpose sport shoes for school, soccer cleats, and a smoother bottom shoe for playing tennis on a clay court. (I am hoping for athletic scholarships but I may have spent as much on their shoes and equipment as I would have on tuition at the end of the day!)

Mom’s shoes – because a girl can never have too many pretty shoes

Baking powder – it’s available locally but is sold in teaspoon sized packets!

Baking soda – again, available locally in tiny cans for about $1.50 each. I can buy a detergent sized box in the US for not much more!

Vanilla extract- see above

Ground flaxseed – a wonderful way to pack a few extra vitamins into banana bread, pancakes, etc. Not so easy to find hippy freak food in Cairo.

Cookie sheets and baking trays – $20 is more than I want to pay for a cake pan so I’m holding out for a trip to Walmart!

Food coloring, cake decorating supplies – generally hard to find!

(There seems to be a definite baking theme emerging here!)

Wild rice – so yummy and since I’ll be in Minnesota anyway…

Canned pumpkin – $5/can in Cairo and only available around the holidays

Spices – certain spices are hard to find or aren’t exactly what you expect. “Chili powder” here is actually pure red pepper!

Duct tape – you know, I never really used it when I was living in the US, but it was sort of comforting to know I could get it if I wanted it. I imagine I could practically trade it on the black market here, land where things are repaired and repaired and repaired again.

Christmas presents - if I can leave the children with my mother for an hour or so, I’ll buy a few things for their Christmas stockings that I would NEVER find in Egypt.

That’s what I’ve come up with so far but I’m sure there will be more in my bags at the end of my stay. There are no doubt many wonderful little gadgets in the baking / cooking aisles at Walmart that I’ve not dreamed of. The quantity and variety of items available in the US can be a little overwhelming when you’ve been away from it for a time!

I’m looking forward to being overwhelmed

My children most generously shared their cold with me so my head is foggy, my nose drippy and my energy zapped. Not only can’t I write, but I’m quilt blocked as well (get it??) I have one more boy quilt to make to complete the order for four I recently received, and I’ve got nothing – no inspiration.

Not even for blogging really. So instead of writing anything witty I though I’d show you my Cornflakes box. It’s the same…but different. (Click on the image to enlarge)

Now I understand why, in this part of the world, they are stating that there are no bacon bits in the Cornflakes but what’s up with the barley alert? Anyone?

An earworm is a portion of a song that gets stuck in your head, playing endlessly on a loop, over and over and over again. You can read more about them here and over at Jennifer Crusie’s blog.

I get these all the time. My husband suffers less because he doesn’t understand most of the lyrics to the songs he hears anyway. My brain on the other hand is a repository for just about any lyric it hears, the cheesier the better.

There are songs that I never think of, then one day I hear one playing on some loop in a department store and I’m stuck with it for the next week.

There are too many to mention but a particularly insidious one for me is “All I Want to do is Make Love to You” by Heart. What is it about that song?? It’s bad enough to hear it on the radio, let alone as the background music in your brain. Other offenders are anything by Journey or Phil Collins. The only common link I can figure out about these songs is that they are all roughly from the same era (late 80s – early 90s) Is this the endless soundtrack of my adolescent years?

The only other songs that stick with such tenacity are any and all tunes by The Wiggles. Fortunately my children listen to them with much less regularity these days, but just from writing this post, I now have “Captain Feathersword” in my head.

What about you? Care to share your earworms?

(now there’s a sentence I never expected to write!)

I mentioned that my hubby was away on a conference…in Italy. A friend offered to keep the children so I could join him but it seemed like a long time to leave them, especially as it was a school holiday for them.

But just take a look at the goodie my darling hubby brought me as a consolation prize:

A red patent leather purse (and matching wallet) from Nannini

I saw an advertisement for a digital camera while I was in the airport in Dubai – a digital camera so smart that it will only take the picture when it sees a smile.

I looked it up when I got home and the Sony website says:

Smile Shutter^TM technology captures smiles the moment they happen^TM – without the need to press the shutter. The mode can be set to capture when your subject laughs, smiles or even grins, and like Face Detection is able to differentiate children and adults to set priority.

No more sad faces! Edit your life to look like everyone is having nothing but fun and good times, all the time!

But think of all the other moods you’d miss : broody, smoldering, alluring, sexy, sullen, morose. And all the shades in between. If I could only snap a picture when the camera saw a smile I’d never have gotten a picture of my best friend from high school. The minute she sees a camera, all smiles vanish.

I have a picture of my son as a two year old, with a grumpy post-nap look on his face and a runny nose. Every time my daughter sees that picture she asks why I took it. Because it is real life.It’s not that I don’t like smiles or selective memory on occasion. It’s probably more that I don’t like machines telling me what to do. I don’t even like it when my mother’s car automatically locks the doors when you start the car and don’t get me going on the annoying insistent alarm that goes off for seatbelts. The car thinks it’s so smart – it’s my purse in the passenger seat, stupid!

There’s probably a button you can press on that camera to turn off the smile feature but I’ll do one better and just not buy it.

Here they are, the latest batch of searches that have brought unwitting people to my corner of the internet. I still wonder what it was they were really looking for, and I think I have my Friday Feature guests to thank for several of these:

Shiny superheroines

Women punching kicking wearing high heels and boota

My heart bleeds for you tiniest violinist

Internet girl green eyes Anita (heh heh heh)

Vampires texture 1900 (what exactly would the texture of vampires be??)

New things to obsess over (I can certainly help you out with that!)

Living in Cairo downside (do you need an itemized list?)

Just saw this and couldn’t resist posting it here:

Its name, Beelzebufo ampinga, came from Beelzebub, the Greek for devil, and bufo — Latin for toad. Ampinga means “shield,” named for an armor-like part of its anatomy.Beelzebufo (pronounced bee-el-zeh-BOOF-oh) was 16 inches long and weighed an estimated 10 pounds (4.5 kg). (Yowza!)

It was powerfully built and possessed a very wide mouth and powerful jaws. It probably didn’t dine daintily.

“It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Beelzebufo took down lizards and mammals and smaller frogs, and even — considering its size — possibly hatchling dinosaurs,” Krause said in a telephone interview.

“It would have been quite mean,” added paleontologist Susan Evans of University College London, another of the scientists.

Okay, I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a minute (fitting for a devil frog, don’t you think?) I admire how scientists can piece together the past through remains and fossils but does that really extend to personality traits? How can they possibly know that this frog was “mean”?? I personally wouldn’t want to run into a ten pound frog even if it wasn’t aggressive, but don’t giant frogs have to eat too? Maybe he was in fact a careful eater, a gourmet of frogs.

We’ll never really know, will we?