Jenyfer Matthews

I’ve cleaned the stove top and wiped out the oven, I’ve cleaned all the cupboards in the kitchen and laid new shelf paper (Is it wrong how much I like the smell of shelf paper?). Overall, the kitchen is ready for action. The problem?

I have very limited tools with which to work.

My things in Cairo have not even been packed up yet, and as yet I have no firm date for when my storage items will be delivered either. All I have is what I came with: an enameled cast iron pot I bought in a thrift store (too beautiful to pass up!), a nonstick pan donated by a friend, and a small cast iron skillet that used to belong to my mother.

As you can see from the mug of tea in the orange pot and the butter knife laid across the cast iron pan, none of these pots is very large. Since I tend to do a lot of one-pot type cooking, it has been a bit of a challenge to produce anything decent for dinner around here lately.

Did someone say challenge?

I admit that I have bought some prepared food here and there. I can hardly help it when I’m always exhausted and crunched for time lately. I have also managed to make some fairly decent dinners. One thing I made earlier this week that was a hit was sauteed onions, garlic, zucchini, and yellow peppers over pasta, topped with a bit of Parmesan cheese. No leftovers that night. Split pea soup was also a hit. I improvised one night and made a pizza using a square boboli crust on the top of the broiler pan (it did at least have bell peppers on it). I also have a small Pyrex dish with a cover that I used to make broccoli in the microwave. Broccoli is my fall-back, make-a-meal-healthier vegetable. I want to make a new recipe I got from a friend for pumpkin chili, but I’ll have to wait until I have a bigger pot!

(Confession: If it were just me, I’d probably eat more like this.)

I miss my gas stove top from Cairo, but that is another topic all together!

Other accomplishments this week include getting phone / internet / TV service. Hmmm… maybe I could just call out for dinner…

All I ever seem to do anymore is clean.

I know, I know – B-O-R-I-N-G!! You don’t want to hear about how I had to dust the ceilings and walls because they were furry. (Boring!) You don’t want to read a description of the toxic brown sludge the steam cleaner pulled out of the carpet downstairs. (Boring – and gross!!) You probably could care less that I shed blood when I cut myself several times scrubbing baked on goo from under the burners on the stove. (Boring – and painful!)

What can I say? It’s kind of what I do these days.

My husband has movers scheduled to come and pack our things in Cairo next week, and I have a moving company working on getting our things out of (long term) storage for us. That’s kind of why I’m working so hard at the moment to get things in shape : it’s much easier to clean things when the house is mostly empty!

I hope that soon I can turn my attention to other, more interesting topics. For instance: what is up with Michigan and biscuits and white gravy for breakfast??

Since I last checked in I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing – cleaning the house. There is nothing to speak of in it yet, but there is so much to do.

Like cleaning the mini-blinds. Now I know why people so often throw them away and just buy new ones instead of cleaning them. What a pain-in-the-you-know-what. It probably took me an hour per set of blinds. They look great, and I will keep up with dusting them now, but I actually hate mini-blinds and would prefer some sort of more easily cleanable fabric shade. Another day.

On the up side, in terms of my writing and current work-in-progress, all this work to settle in is giving me a better perspective for what it is like to move in to a “new”, less than perfect, house. On the down side, it is exhausting.

This week’s goal: internet / cable service and carpet cleaning. Do I know how to have fun or what?

My time hasn’t all been spent at drudgery though. My luck prevailed and I was able to get the children registered for the local recreational soccer league. I just made the deadline for late registration. I got emails telling me what teams they were on Friday night at 9pm – first game was Saturday morning at 11:30am! We got up promptly at 8am and went out to get cleats and shin guards and showed up at the field to find the coaches. The children were both excited and nervous but quickly forgot all that in the heat of the game. They both got back into the groove and made 2 goals each in their respective games. By the end of the games, everyone knew their names if they didn’t know anyone else’s!

Overall, so far I am very happy with this move. The children like their schools – my son said he didn’t want it to be the weekend because he wanted to go to school! The neighborhood is also great – three different sets of neighbors have come over to introduce themselves and offer assistance and advice on the area. One neighbor brought me a Sunday paper when I mentioned I wasn’t sure where to buy one. No one I have talked to yet has had one bad thing to say about anything which is great – and also a little eerie. I’m actually not used to living in places where the neighbors interact!

If anyone shows up on my doorstep with a pie or a jello-mold I’ll know for sure I’ve moved to the 50s…

What can I say about this week except that it’s been busy? Moving is hard work!

The children seem to be adjusting well to their new schools. My son is a very personable sort of child and he came home on the first day with a thumbs up and an “awesome”. Can’t ask for more than that. My daughter had a locker to deal with in addition to changing classes and just the general newness of middle school so she wasn’t as enthusiastic to start, but even after the second day she came home saying that each day gets better.

What a relief. I have marvelous, adaptable children.

I myself have been busy. Some days I feel like I do nothing but run around and spend money, but yesterday I finally felt like things were coming together a bit – with what we have so far anyway.

My mythical lucky horseshoe must still be at work. For one thing, my little car keeps chugging along. It seems to get louder by the day and it occasionally belches a bit of smoke from the back, but it hasn’t left me stranded anywhere on the highway with a load of stuff and two children. Lucky!

I bought a washer and dryer this week and when I got the automated message for the delivery time, wouldn’t you know it was smack dab during the time when I go to pick the children up from school. I asked the neighbor across the street to look out for the truck, but as it turned out, they arrived at the house just between my two school run trips. Lucky!

I wrote an email to the local tennis center this week and they were able to see my daughter to “rate” her the same day. I also called the soccer club about recreational soccer. I just made it – their late registration deadline is today. Lucky! (The children are wait-listed and there may not be room for them, but they can’t say I didn’t try!)

Otherwise I have been spending a lot of time cleaning cupboards, bathrooms, and floors. I am not a neat freak, but I do like things to be clean and what better time to clean things than when you don’t have anything? I talked to a moving company about getting our things out of storage and it sounds like they might be able to do the job in the next 10 days. Lucky!

Sometimes you just have to open yourself to the universe and trust that things will work out…

For most, today is a holiday, a day of rest. A day off of work. Not so for me. I crammed as much as I could fit in my car (including my children) and headed up to our new home in Michigan. I am sorry to say that not everything fit (how did I accumulate so much in only seven months??) but I’ll worry about the rest another time.

School starts tomorrow.

The children will be going to two different schools. My son will be in what seems to be a very nice elementary school located five minutes drive from our house. We met his teacher on the day we registered him for school and she seems very nice – she basically interviewed my son about his interests and took notes. It is only my first impression, but I feel very comfortable with the school and the teacher.

On the other hand, I’m very nervous for my daughter : she’s going into middle school.

The school building is very nice – pretty mosaic murals on the walls, lovely specialty classrooms and computer labs, and no less than three full time art teachers. However, it used to be a high school so it is also very large – two stories, with every hallway lined with lockers. The contrast between the elementary school and this school was fairly extreme.

I’m trying not to show my nerves because my daughter is nervous enough on her own.

The schools my daughter has attended previously have been fairly small – this one has about 800 students. She’s never used a combination locker before – one of my recurring anxiety dreams is being back in high school and forgetting my locker combination! I keep telling her that even though some of the other kids will know each other from elementary school, all the sixth graders are new to this school and no one will know how to get around, etc.

I don’t know if I’m comforting her or me.

We went this weekend and bought her school supplies and also a small locker mirror with a dry erase board and a couple of cute magnets. Why didn’t they have such fun things when I was in school? It’s not as if magnets are a new thing!

While the children are in school, I will begin working on getting all of our utilities – including internet! – set up and start work on having our things shipped from here, there, and everywhere. Since I’m already freaked out by how much I have to move, I’m fairly certain I’m going to be appalled by how much there is when I finally have it all in one place!

It was touch and go for a while, but I did it: I found a great rental house and enrolled both the children in school (starts next week!) in only three long days of running around.

The house I ended up renting I found myself on Craigslist. Craigslist is a service I have often heard of but have never used. I admit that most of what I have heard about is the funny / sketchy things / scams people post there so when I saw the house advertised there, I was somewhat skeptical. I almost didn’t inquire about it at all – the listing seemed almost too good to be true. If the house was so great, why was it on Craigslist?

I sent off an email anyway, requesting pictures.

As it turns out, the owners had only recently moved out to follow a job to Wisconsin. The house was for sale but in the meantime they were willing to rent. I made arrangements to see it and very quickly decided that it was the house we wanted.

The landlady is new to renting and was understandably every bit as skeptical about me as I was about her – and I am sure that when she listed the house she never expected to attract a refugee of the Egyptian revolution! She asked for rental references – all of mine are pre-1999! She settled for personal references. She asked for a letter confirming my husband’s employment. Done. Then she sent me an email late on the night before we were going to sign the lease whether or not I had power of attorney to sign the lease on my husband’s behalf (since he has the job, not me).

Um…no.

I spent the next hour forwarding emails to my husband asking him to print out, sign, and fax the 20+ page lease – which is a challenging enough task on a regular day in Egypt but it was also a holiday there and he wasn’t at work. I was so anxious that I might not have been able to sleep if I hadn’t also been so exhausted. If we didn’t get the house, I couldn’t go forward with getting the kids enrolled in school and I’d have to start the process over again. (N-O-O-O-O!)

For once the time difference worked in our favor and by the time I woke up the next morning, I had a confirmation that he had sent everything back to the landlady and we were all set for our morning appointment. Phew!

I got the lease and the key and went directly to the elementary school to register my son. Our luck was still in and we got to meet his teacher too – I think he is going to be in very good hands. After lunch we went to the middle school to enroll my daughter. More on that later!

Yesterday I left the children with my friend in NW Ohio and drove down to my other friend’s house in Hamilton (southern Ohio) to collect all of the things I left there before summer. My car was cram-jammed top to bottom but I got everything in there. I’ll spend the weekend sorting and prioritizing because with the children hogging up the backseat, it is going to take multiple trips to get everything moved!

I’ve put nearly 2000 miles on my car in a week. Not. Going. Anywhere. This. Weekend!

From sitting on my hands for nearly seven months to all systems GO in a few days: that’s me.

I. AM. ON. FIRE.

My husband called to tell me he’d accepted a job in Michigan last Thursday and from that moment I started planning our move. I must have sent dozens of emails over the weekend and drove up to Michigan on Monday to meet with a realtor, planning to stay three days, two nights. My hope was to find a house and, if possible, register the children for school in our chosen districts – school starts next week, September 6th.

My sister has often said that I must have a lucky horseshoe stuck up my butt (ouch!) because I almost always find lost jewelry, find things I need on sale, etc – things just seem to come together for me. I have to say that while I had hoped to find a house, even if it meant taking something not entirely wonderful for the short term, I wondered how practical it was to expect to succeed in only two days. I resigned myself to the idea that the children might start school a bit late.

The realtor showed me half a dozen houses, based on the size and school districts I specified. A couple were awesomely cool in a Mad Men way but too small for a family of four with two very active children, a couple were too small / had no yard, and a couple were just dirty and / or stinky. I was actually still considering a stinky one because it was in the school district we wanted when I went to see one final house – one that I found listed myself on craigslist.

The house was everything that the others were not: clean, well-kept, large, big yard, quiet street, the right school district, and it even has a basketball hoop in the driveway. Given what I’d seen that day, I jumped on the opportunity. I am supposed to sign the lease today and from there I will go and get the children registered in school.

I move in Monday. We’ll be camping on air mattresses until the rest of our things arrive, but we’ll be in time for school. Am I good or what?

And how is this for a lucky coincidence: the realtor took us by the elementary school I had in mind for my son and they just happened to be having a new student orientation. We walked in and had a tour, cookies, punch, and got a school pouch backpack. A nice little school and the cookies and punch really hit the spot!

I may have accomplished what I set out to do for now, but I’m not done yet: now I have to go back to Ohio and collect my things from my friend in Hamilton (near Cincinnati), then go back (come back?!) to Michigan on Monday.

I’ve put 11,000 miles on my car since March and I’m not done yet!

That’s how fast life can change.

My husband has been looking for a job back in the US since this spring. I haven’t talked about it here because it is a long, uncertain process – also, I didn’t want to jinx anything. I’m not generally a superstitious person, but why take chances?

He went for an interview at the beginning of the month that he felt went well. Then we waited, and waited some more. His summer vacation ended and he had to head back to Cairo and we still didn’t know whether or not he’d gotten the job. I didn’t know what I was going to do because I didn’t have airline tickets to go back to Cairo, but the children were going to have to start school somewhere, soon.

It wasn’t until I was driving back to Ohio, on the highway just about to arrive at my friend’s house, that my step-mother called to tell me that my husband had sent her an email saying that he had been offered and accepted the job. I finally have a course of action: we are moving to Michigan!

It’s been a long and stressful year and it will likely get a bit more stressful as we try to coordinate an international move, but at least now we have a plan. This will be the first time in a little more than a decade that all of my stuff will be in ONE place (my fascination with glassware, dishes, and purses is about to be exposed in a big way!). Exploring the contents of the storage unit we locked up and left behind in 1999 is going to be like opening a time capsule!

I started this blog in January 2007, a few months after we’d moved to Cairo and I’ve spent much of the time since sharing the things I learned about Egypt and all the fun, frustrating, and interesting experiences I had there. Now I’ll get to share the exodus.

I’ll be in Michigan this week looking for a rental house and I hope getting things set up so the children can start school on time. Wish me luck!

I decided to retrace my route back to Ohio via the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – only this time I would stop to look around a little bit. My father recommended we see the Pictured Rocks National Park and since he is not a man to make idle suggestions I figured the scenery must be freaking amazing and worth the stop.

The day we drove from Minnesota to Munising, MI was not pretty. Rain, rain, and more rain. I was really afraid that our stay would be limited to the hotel pool but the sky was (relatively) clear Wednesday morning so we set off to see what we could see.

There was more to see in the local area that I would have thought, given how small the town is. I decided that I wanted to do the Pictured Rock boat tour in the afternoon because that particular tour time included the Spray Falls. That left the morning open to do the glass bottom boat Shipwreck tour.

Confession: I love boats. I probably would have paid someone just to take me out on a boat ride. Adding shipwrecks into the mix just made it all that much sweeter and scored me major Mom-points with my little man.

(Click any image to enlarge)

The children and I choose to sit up the upper deck – sun and scenery, duh!

I took this picture from the upper deck of the boat. So, I was probably at least 12 feet above the water level and according to the tour guide the shipwreck was 5 feet below the bottom of the boat. How clear is that water???It looks close enough to touch!

A much clearer view from the glass bottom. It’s amazing how much is left after 140 years submerged.

A historic lighthouse in Grand Island, in the Munising harbor. Was it a beautiful day or what?

I would love to do one of the kayak tours of these rocks – so beautiful! Maybe next time

All in all we visited the sites of three shipwrecks, all in shallow water. Between the scenery above and below the water it was a thoroughly enjoyable tour.

The children and I made a quick trip back to the hotel for lunch and to change into swim suits: the tour guide had pointed out a pretty sand beach nearby that I decided we should visit. Kids are a bit like dogs: they behave best and are happiest when they’ve had ample playtime / exercise!

Is that a pretty beach or what? I am so used to rock beaches on Lake Superior I was a bit disoriented by the sand and the pretty colors in the water from the shallower depths. It looked more like the Caribbean so I kept expecting salt spray!

In hindsight, I probably should have flipped my tours. The glass bottomed boat never leaves the protected waters of the harbor so it runs rain or shine – not so for the Pictured Rock tour boat. When we arrived at the ticket desk for the Pictured Rock tour, we were told that they would only do a 1/2 tour because of wind and waves – at 1/2 price. We wouldn’t see most of the rock formations or the Spray Falls but since we were leaving the next day, it was a 1/2 tour or nothing. We went for it.

The way the sky looked by the time we boarded the boat, I thought we might have a Gilligan’s Island scenario on our hands. I could see why they cut the tour short when we left the shelter of the harbor – with nearly 6 foot waves, it was more of a thrill ride than a tour. The children were howling with delight as waves slammed into the boat and spray hit us. We were some of the only people who stayed on the top deck the entire ride (in spite of rain).

This, Miner’s Castle, is the only formation we saw. I could hardly even get a picture with the boat tossing the way it was. The crew were busy handing out barf bags. What a change in weather from the morning!

After arriving safely back at dock, we tidied up before dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening at the hotel pool. The children swam while I warmed up in the sauna. It was cold on the boat!

When we left yesterday morning, the sky was dense with dark, gray clouds and the waitress at breakfast warned us away from the beaches because of wind and riptides. I guess we can consider ourselves lucky to have had such a nice day – and gee, I guess we’ll have to go back sometime and try that Pictured Rock tour again!

Considering just how much I hate to say goodbye to people, I seem to do it with great regularity.

Goodbye to friends and family in the US when I leave for Egypt; goodbye to friends in Egypt when I come to the US for a visit (or an evacuation!). Goodbye to friends in one place when I go to another. You get the idea.

Most of the time I can jolly myself out of the poignancy of the farewell by focusing on the good time ahead. It doesn’t always work so well when you have children who hate to say goodbye as much as their mother does or when you aren’t exactly sure what you are supposed to be focused on next.

Life is still uncertain.

Ah well, I have nothing to complain about really. Just feeling a bit blue because summer is once again over and we are still adrift.

Today we’ll focus on enjoying the beauty of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – a relatively easy task given what I’ve seen so far.