It’s finished. The movers came on Tuesday and spent all day packing, then came back on Wednesday to move the boxes and furniture and unpack – and by unpack I mean empty the contents of all of the boxes. Every item we own is strewn all over our new home. Guess what I’ll be doing for the next week or so? I worked steadily all of yesterday morning and sort of got the kitchen sorted out.
More reflections on moving next week…
In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys the weekend, and if you observe the holiday coming up on Sunday I hope you enjoy it. The florists in Cairo seem to be gearing up for a big day:
(click image to enlarge)
If the sight of hundreds of executed hanged teddy bears doesn’t get you in a romantic mood, nothing will.
It’s amazing how much trash you find tucked away in the nooks and crannies, put away because it might be useful one day. Well, guess what? I’M NOT MOVING IT. Throwing. It. Out. There’s plenty more where that stuff came from…
I am happy to report that the only thing injured in the process of reducing the port bottle down to pretty green glass dust were several plastic bags and my rolling pin. Even several layers of thick plastic bags are not enough to protect a wooden rolling pin from shards of glass. (The top edge of my hammer was much more effective) On one hand, I don’t use the rolling pin that much. On the other hand, I guess I’ll have to get a new one since it’s newly gauged surface won’t work as well on dough (darn it!) – unless scar-faced gingerbread men are acceptable!
I just hope that in the end, my pottery projects come out as I envision.
On another topic, housing is provided with my husband’s job and a while back we requested to be moved to a larger apartment. I’ve loved the one we are currently in for the nearly four years we lived here, however we’ve outgrown the space and the children really need their own rooms. The housing department called us on Thursday to say they had a place for us and could we move on Tuesday? My initial reaction was um…no! I’ve gotten pretty good at moving, but I’m not THAT good! The movers I called yesterday for a quote on moving our large furniture items gave me such a good quote on moving everything that I decided in the interest of my stress levels and the remaining disks in my back to let them! They also suggested they could move us on Tuesday and since they are also responsible for the packing, Tuesday it is! Fortunately, our new place is only a few blocks away so things don’t have to be packed quite as carefully as they would if we were moving countries, but it’s still a big job.
Bigger still will be the job of cleaning / sorting / unpacking on the other end!
I also wanted to report that I did try a new recipe over the weekend (February – check!) I made shrimp chowder, using a fish chowder recipe from my Jane Brody cookbook. The only things I changed were I substituted shrimp for fish, I omitted the white wine, and I added a can of corn. It was amusing how much the frozen “cooking shrimp” I bought shrunk in the process though – in the end they were so small they could have been sea monkeys! The chowder was a hit – very tasty – and I’ll definitely be making it again.
I suspect the rest of this week we’ll be eating sandwiches and pizza however!
So another interest of mine is in making pottery. I first took pottery lessons about 12 years ago and fell in love with the process. Unfortunately, it’s not such an easy hobby to take-along and so I haven’t been able work with clay since we moved abroad – until last spring when I discovered that one of the other tennis moms not only had her own equipment but also offered lessons.
So here I am, months later, getting ready to glaze my first crop of pots, and I had the great idea to add a bit of texture and shine by using bits of broken glass – specifically, the green glass of a Cockburn’s port bottle. It is a good idea and I do believe that the end result will look fabulous. The problem? Actually breaking the glass.
Because it’s not enough to just break the bottle – most of it has to be reduced to powder. I did a google search to figure out how best to accomplish this and found one site that suggested that heating glass to red hot and then plunging it in cold water would do the trick – the glass would shatter cleanly and then it was just a matter of pounding it to dust with a mortar and pestle. Easy peasy.
Forgive me, but I have my reservations. I am fully aware of how easily some glass will break when it is exposed to rapid changes in temperature, having once had a glass pitcher explode all over my kitchen while I was in the process of making iced tea. I am, however, somewhat reluctant to repeat such an experiment without safety glasses and perhaps a lead apron. Also, I think I would prefer to use non-cooking pots and instruments for the grinding process to minimize any food contamination and subsequent deaths in the pursuit of my artistic vision.
I haven’t totally formulated my plan but I’m thinking pretty low tech, perhaps involving multiple layers of plastic bags and a hammer. We’ll see what we get (besides multiple lacerations).
Back in November I replied to a post on A Home Grown Journal: Mama Pea (fulfilling a commitment she’d made to another blogger) offered to send a handmade item to the first three people to comment on the post. The catch? They in turn had to “pay it forward” by making the same offer on their own blogs.
Here are the rules: I will send a handmade gift to the first three people who leave a comment on this post requesting to participate. I can’t tell you what your gift will be, but since I’m primarily a quilter maybe you can take a wild guess as to which form the gift will take! The normal rules state that the gift has to be received within 365 days, however, I am pretty sure that whoever decides to play with me will get their gift in the summertime since that is when I will have access to reliable mail service!
So who wants to play? The only thing you have to do in return is promise to make the same offer on your own blog after you receive your gift from me. Don’t be shy – the gift does not have to be elaborate, just homemade. Do you paint? Are you a photographer? Do you crochet or make paper? You could send someone a selection of greeting cards using your own photographs, for example (insert innocent whistling here) You could crochet a pot holder or one of those magical dish rags I’ve heard about. Paint a tiny picture – or a big one. Wood working, jewelry, pottery, collage, glass blowing, sand art – only your imagination, generosity, and particular skill is the limit.
Just to be clear: none of your gifts will come to me – I give a gift to you, then you give gift to three other people. Ready? Go!
My seven year old son hates to do his homework. None of his assignments are difficult and most could be finished in under fifteen minutes if only he would settle down and just do it. Instead he complains, procrastinates, and has tantrums all of which make it a much more painful drawn out process than it has to be.
I’ve tried various ways to encourage him to get the work done and out of the way – most of which includes LOUD voices and threats. Today I decided to switch tactics: bribery. Do your homework and you can have a lollipop. I’ll let you know how it works out.
But as I was thinking of how to best motivate him to do his homework, this Chris Farley skit from Saturday Night Live popped into my brain. It still makes me laugh after all these years:
We left Chiang Mai early in the morning for our trek into the hills.
But we didn’t start walking immediately – first we stopped for a bit of play.
Our guide told us we could get a massage at the waterfall. Funny guy!
Beautiful – and bigger than I expected! Anyone trying for a massage would no doubt have lost their swimsuit!
And SO SO cold! This was one of those moments I had to steel myself to take advantage of an opportunity that would likely never present itself again. So glad I did – though it was fairly uncomfortable for those first few minutes after I got out!
After we changed back into dry clothes and had lunch, the walking began.
We were only scheduled to walk for a hour or so to the village where we would spend the first night. It didn’t sound so hard, but with each step I questioned everything that I had packed into my backpack. Did I really need an extra set of clothes? A blanket? Our guide kept telling us all things you could do with bamboo and banana leaves and I kept fantasizing that I could just abandon my pack and wrap myself in shrubbery to keep warm that night!
My roommate was speculating on just how badly she would have to injure herself before they would helicopter her out!
Civilization!
I could not have told you my location with any greater accuracy than “someplace in the northwest corner of Thailand” and yet I was incredibly pleased to be there! We stayed in a guesthouse much like this one.
This village is apparently populated by a tribe who originally migrated from China and who speak their own dialect. It was like stepping back in time.
This is how you hull rice the old fashioned way.
Like most hotels the world-over, our guesthouse was located next to the local highway!
This was the village shower – and ours as well. The sun was going down and the temperature dropping – having availed myself of one waterfall that day, I passed on this one!
This is what we did once the sun went down – fireside chatting.
Dinner began with a huge portion of vegetable spring rolls, made by members of our group, served with plum sauce. Has anything ever tasted so good? Then we sat by the fire and relaxed with our beverages of choice while dinner was prepared. Note the man in the orange hat with his pineapple.
My birthday was on the previous Sunday – the evening we were on the night train. I hadn’t told anyone except my roommate, and we just let it pass. So how surprised and pleased was I when our tour leader surprised me with this “cake”?
The Thai people are nothing short of artists with how they are able to cut fruit. This pineapple was cut into rings, then also cut into pieces inside and reassembled to look like a whole pineapple. I was able to lift the shell off to reveal the cut pieces inside. I was so touched that our guide would go to so much trouble for me – it truly was the sweetest cake I’ve ever had.
Monday: More hiking, elephant rides, the second village, and a river swim.
I love the internet. A day without internet access is an excessively frustrating day (unless of course I am not connected by choice) Without access to my email I feel totally cut-off from the world.
There’s a lot of great stuff on the internet – most of which you will not hear about here first. I admit it – I am not much of an explorer in the cyber world. I log into my email, I look at the blogs on my sidebar (with occasion forays to sites / blogs recommended on my favorite blogs), and occasionally shop. Of course I look things up when I need some information on something, but generally speaking I have a well worn rut from which I rarely stray.
And saying that, I still manage to waste plenty of time on my computer.
My husband on the other hand can spend hours on the internet looking at not much. He’ll have some sort of starting point, and then follow a link here, a link there, and suddenly it’s the middle of the night and the rest of us are sleeping. I don’t understand how he can do it. I just don’t have the patience for endless pointless clicking – because as much great stuff as is out there, there’s a whole lot of crap to sift through as well.
So, what’s your internet style? Do you stay on task or let yourself drift? What are some of your favorite fun sites? I’m open to suggestions
I’ve mentioned before that the children’s tennis coach likes to motivate and reward the children he teaches with prizes from time to time. The rewards vary widely (remember the leopard slippers?) Sometimes he might give them a few pieces of candy and other times he might come up with something high end, like a tennis bag.
Last week my son won all the matches in his group and he got what looked like a stuffed monkey as a prize. Little did I know it wasn’t just any stuffed monkey. He dances too.
I love this monkey so much I got out my tripod and figured out how to take videos with my new camera – I even registered at YouTube to share this with you. It’s amusing and absurd at the same time – I only regret that Queen isn’t being paid royalties every time I press the button on his arm. But really – overalls? Given the song lyrics, shouldn’t the monkey really be wearing a leather jacket at the very least?
I write books for fun so why is it so hard to write my own bio? I am an American currently living in Cairo, Egypt. Aside from writing, I'm a married mom of two under ten, a decent (if reluctant) cook, an encyclopedia of random scientific / medical facts, a wine lover (but not a snob!), and a Capricorn. I love to travel, spend time with good friends, and laugh at life's surprises. View of life - definitely half full.
