Jenyfer Matthews

I’ve been doing my best to settle in to my temporary home in Ohio and I think I’ve been doing okay lately in terms of not flipping out (too much) about what comes next. Distracting myself with the treasures to be found in the many thrift stores in the area helps (though I am glad my friend has a big house because I might need to store some things with her for a while!)

Considering what they went through with the upheaval and stress of the evacuation and then having a month gap before starting a new school in a new state with a new and unfamiliar curriculum, the children have been doing amazingly well. I couldn’t be prouder of how they have have settled in and how well they have adapted. My daughter wants to have straight As on her last report card of the year and I think she might just pull it off.

Overall, I have been feeling pretty good about how things have been going and about what might come next. It’s been a challenging year so far! Then I started to read back over my status updates on Facebook for the past year – of all the little day to day things that I was doing in Cairo and the friends that I saw and interacted with – and I started to feel a little homesick.

I even started to second guess everything I’ve done since February.

I still believe that we made the only decision that we could have made at the time by leaving Egypt when we did. The situation was simply too uncertain to risk staying to see how things played out, especially with the children to think of. In hindsight however, I kind of wish the children and I had gone back when my husband did at the end of February. It would make things so much less complicated in so many ways.

One of the biggest complications is that the children’s school in Cairo is pushing us to commit to whether we will be back in the fall term. I know that they need to plan for class sizes and staff, but how am I supposed to know what will happen in three months? It isn’t as if all the news from Egypt these days is good. And it is more than just saying “yes” or “no” – if we say “yes” we have to pay a hefty deposit per child to secure their places. The fee is an every year thing, but the difference this year is that my husband is looking for a job in the US. If we are lucky he’ll find something before next fall – which would be great only we’d lose the deposit with the school (which is more than I paid for my car – ouch!). If we say “no” and just take our chances, there is a possibility that he wouldn’t get a job and we would also lose their places at the school.

If I stay in the US, our family remains in limbo. If I go back to Egypt, we have to hope things remain safe enough until we can make a permanent move elsewhere. There are many other minor complications like what to do with my car – if I go back to Cairo in September, I’ll have to sell it. I feel lucky to have found it so I’d rather keep it. What can you do?

I never expected or planned to make my life in Egypt for the long term so in many ways I am ready to move on, however I don’t think I’m quite done with the place yet either. I never got to say goodbye after all.

I am coming to you live from a new laptop. There are no smilies accompanying this announcement because it was an unplanned, unbudgeted event.

My old laptop survived the trip from Cairo to Istanbul in my checked baggage when we left Egypt, and while getting older and slower, was managing to get along just fine (a bit like myself really). I liked it fine, knew my way around it, and was willing to make allowances for what it could and could not do. So why did I end up replacing it? Because my copy of Windows needed to be replaced and spending $$$ to buy a new copy of Windows for an old computer did not make sense for a computer that might only last another year or so.

And when I say it needed to be replaced, I mean that Windows started trying to hold my stored data hostage. Nice.

Between all the doctor visits, my new glasses, and now this new computer I feel a bit sick at all the money that is so rapidly flowing out of our pockets these days. That doesn’t even take into account all my various thrift store finds recently – or the money a Spanish pick-pocket relieved my husband of on a train in Barcelona last month. Guess what I told my children when they asked me for new video games at the electronics store yesterday?

I still have a lot to be grateful for – at least I *could* afford to pay for all of these various expenses as they came up. It’s a good thing my children like pasta though because I see a lot of that in our immediate future.

I am pleased to say that I finally made my way through the proofing of ONE CRAZY SUMMER and all of the digital editions have been updated. Now all that remains to be done is to format the file for print. So far I am on track to have that completed by the end of the month, fingers crossed…

It’s been another run-around-town morning. I dropped the kids at school, went for another appointment with the dermatologist (this time she cut a suspicious mole off my leg), and then to drop off the donations for the tornado victims. Now I have to tend to my son’s new pet.

The children have been asking for a pet for a long time and I have been resisting. I had two cats before I had children and I loved them dearly. The problem was that the cats did not love the children. By the time we were preparing to move to Egypt the situation had gotten so bad that I had to keep one of cats secluded in my bedroom and run a happy-cat phermone plug-in just to keep her from marking all of my things (guess who she blamed for bringing the children into the house??) I was at my wits end with what to do with the cats. They were clearly not happy with us and they were aging to boot – and Egypt does not have very good veterinary care for house pets. I was extremely lucky that at just about the same time a friend from North Carolina wrote me an email and told me her cats had just died and she wanted to adopt two older cats. Is that good timing or what? We went back and forth a few more times to iron out details and then I shipped her two aging cats. It was harder than I would have thought to let them go, but it was for the best. That was nearly six years ago and the cats have been restored to their former spoiled status and are living out their golden years in style. I still get status reports from time to time.

So no more cats. I’ve also vetoed dogs. Not only don’t I want to be stuck with the responsibility of walking a dog several times a day while the children are in school, but can you imagine having a dog with what has been my lifestyle for the last decade? How could I leave a dog for nearly two months every summer? I would go broke with kennel fees and the dog would go nuts. I have friends who bring their dogs with them when they travel but I have enough to keep track of with two children and six suitcases thank-you-very-much.

I have also nixed birds, rodents, and fish. I don’t think that birds belong in cages and there is the same problem with the vacation schedule. Also, who do you think would ultimately be stuck cleaning out the cage / tank? No thanks. I have many better things to do with my time!

Last weekend, my son found a pet that I could find no immediate objection to: a Venus Flytrap. It’s inexpensive, quiet, does not require walking, and eats bugs. What’s not to like? We’ll see how it goes. If there is one pitfall it is the frequency with which my son wants to feed it. If Venus Flytraps can become obese, ours will. It’s a good thing the new pot I found for it it is roomy…

It’s been gray and cold and drizzly almost the entire time I’ve been in Ohio, but I think that spring has *finally* arrived for real because I’ve been struck with an undeniable urge to clean and organize.

I’m hardly a neat freak, but once the level of clutter gets to a certain point I have to clear it up or I can’t think. My bedroom was awash in piles of clothes – items that the children have (already) outgrown, donations for me and the children that didn’t work out for one reason or another, and winter clothes. Today I sorted through everything and made piles for the consignment store and for donation.

The winter clothes will be donated locally and the rest will be donated to a local church that is collecting things to be taken to the tornado victims in the South. I was incredibly fortunate to have a huge outpouring of support for myself and my children when we arrived in Ohio with what little we brought with us when we evacuated Egypt so I’m really happy to be paying it forward by contributing clothes and toiletries to others in need now.

I am also still working on getting all of my books proofed and formatted for paperback. HERE TO STAY is now available in print on Amazon and I’m hoping to have ONE CRAZY SUMMER proofed by the end of the month. I’d like to say it will be formatted but let’s just keep that as a goal instead of a promise!

One thing I have always loved to do is to haunt thrift stores. It is amazing to me what great stuff people give away. I think it is amazing to my family and friends how much pleasure I get from finding something I love in a thrift store. I was nearly giddy last week after getting my daughter two pairs of name-brand jeans for $.37/each.

Given the fact that I still don’t have a very clear idea of where I’ll be living in the near future, I had been trying to restrain myself – to only purchase necessary and useful items of clothing. Then I went to visit a long-time friend who lives in northern Ohio over spring break. She has a collection of colorful vintage water goblets that she used on the table for Easter dinner. It was so pretty and I liked them so much that I decided I’d like to get a few myself. She took me to a local antique mall and here’s what we got:

It looks like a modest start, but I will admit that there are multiples of a couple of these. All in all I ended up with nine.

This second collection is the result of an all day shopping trip I took with the friend that I’ve been staying with – in her 100+ year old house. (See – I never really stood a chance!) It’s funny how now that I’m looking for them, I see these goblets everywhere. Just between you and me, this isn’t even all of them. How could I resist the lone olive green goblet I saw sitting on the shelf at Goodwill for $.50? Or the set of amber goblets I found, with a matching relish tray, at the thrift store for a grand total of $5? The prettier colors are harder to find and cost more of course. My mission now is to try and find a few more in colors I don’t have (dark blue and another purple).

I can only imagine how my grandmother would laugh to see me collecting all the old dishes that she no doubt gladly got rid of.

I went to visit my friend in northern Ohio again this weekend and I could not resist going back to the antique mall, just to look. This time however I was drawn to dishtowels and tablecloths. It’s not a surprise particularly – as a quilter I really am a textile person. And since I have been hand-washing my dishes for the last six years, I deserve some pretty towels to amuse me.

Aren’t these great? Some of them seem to be totally unused – too pretty? Who doesn’t need a dish towel with measures and equivalents printed on it?

This linen apron was obviously well used and yet it is still in fairly good condition. They really don’t make things the way they used to.

I loved this towel the minute I saw it – so wonderfully kitsch. It even has a pocket for a dowel at one end so it can be displayed! Again, it looks unused.

Oh yes, it was a very good year

I won’t bore you with pictures of the tablecloths but they are every bit as much fun. Looking at these items made me start thinking about the evolution of how people dressed a table. My own mother used printed terry cloth tablecloths for a while before she moved to placemats. I suppose people stopped using nice tablecloths when women started working more and didn’t have time for ironing. Dishtowels went out with dishwashers. Kind of a shame really.

I may or may not be able to use the glassware and the linens for their intended purpose in the near future, but if nothing else I can wrap the goblets in the linens for storage and / or transport. See – there is a method to my madness.

And in case you were wondering, Mother’s Day was very satisfying as well. I got flowers, presents, plants, and cards plus a waffle breakfast.

I met my April goal of getting my book HERE TO STAY proofed and formatted for print (it will be available on Amazon any day now, I swear!) and now I have a new goal for May: to do the same for ONE CRAZY SUMMER. Getting the next two books into print format is especially exciting for me because they have never been available in paperback before. I love the ease and flexibility of digital books, but there really is something special about holding your own book in your hand.

What is frustrating is how many typos and errors I continue to find. These books were all first published by a small press – how many different people read them in that process? How can there still be problems? I’d love to blame all the typos on the fact that I needed glasses all this time, but I guess we would all have had to be blind for that to be the case. It’s probably the reverse – reading these books over and over and over again to find the errors is probably what did my eyes in!

This time I’m sneaking up on the typos: I’m reading the book backwards, last chapter first and so on. Keeps me on my toes and I can catch the typos unaware. So far so good. It’s only the 5th – I should reach my goal by the end of the month no problem. (Famous last words!)

Kind of fitting that I spend most of Cinco de Mayo reading a book set in Mexico – however we ate Chinese food for dinner. Go figure.

In other news, Mother’s Day is this weekend. My son apparently has big plans for me. I know this because the little man is very excited and also very bad at keeping secrets. He is desperate to tell me his plans now and I keep shushing him. What a sweetie. I wonder if his gift will live up to all his hype? Undoubtedly

It’s International Star Wars Day – get it? May the 4th? First I’ve heard of it, but I thought it was cute. In the wise words of Yoda: “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” I feel like I’ve been working on that all of this year… with mixed results.

This year has gone nothing like I hoped or expected it to. I tried to start it right, by throwing myself a birthday party for a milestone age that I wasn’t particularly thrilled about reaching, but it has pretty much been downhill since then.

Since I’m hanging out in the US right now, I decided to use this time to do all the necessary doctor appointments, one of which was for an eye exam. I’ve never worn glasses, but in the last couple of years I’ve noticed my left eye is definitely weaker than my right. Not only that, but it waters constantly. I thought at first it was allergies but then realized it was more likely eye strain. Duh. I have reading glasses for computer use, but had never gotten in the habit of using them since I can actually see.

The eye doctor did a thorough exam and gave me the verdict: not only glasses, but bifocals. First I have my face peeled off and now this. I think I’d have rather he diagnosed a cataract – at least they could remove that!

I’d more easily accept this if I couldn’t actually see pretty well anyway. I can even read tiny print without (too much) difficulty. My weepy left eye tells another story though so I guess I’ll have to suck it up, like all the rest. At least I don’t have to wear them all the time.

Homeless, precancerous skin damage, bifocals. I love the sunroof in my “new” car, but it does highlight all the white hairs colonizing the top of my head. I’m planning to go to the dentist soon. What’s next, dentures??

May the 4th be with you… because the year is still young…

First things first – I put all the names who entered to win a copy of my book HERE TO STAY in my new sun hat and the winner is: CLARISSA SOUTHWICK. Congratulations, Clarissa! Please send me an email with your address to jenyfer (at) jenyfermatthews (dot) com.

You may have noticed that there were no pictures of me in Chicago over spring break – that’s because I was actively avoiding all cameras due to unsightliness. The dermatologist initially prescribed me two creams to use for sun damage: one was quicker acting but caused redness and peeling and the other was much more subtle but had to be used for three months. I was planning to use the quicker acting one on my chest and the gentler one on my face, for obvious reasons.

After a week of using both creams, I decided to use the quicker acting cream on both my face and chest. Why? Because the ‘gentler’ cream was actually extremely irritating – it burned and itched all day long and any moisturizer I used with it just made it worse. I couldn’t stand the thought of using it 2x day for three months. Since the quicker acting cream wasn’t causing much reaction on my chest at all, I decided to bite the bullet and use it on my face as well. It was only til the end of the month after all.

Oh. My. God.

The cream only reacts with damaged / potentially cancerous skin cells and interferes with their reproduction. The skin on my face turned nearly purple almost immediately – across the forehead, down my nose, over my cheekbones, my upper lip area, and my chin. I wondered about the distribution pattern until I thought back to all the sunbathing I used to do in my teens. When you lay out, you face the sun, chin up. In addition to the alarming color, my skin started to peel and flake and get very, very dry. The only thing I could put on that didn’t irritate things further was Vaseline. Yes, I was red, scaly, and shiny. Attractive.

I had no choice but to go out and about with my red, shiny face however – I didn’t want to miss the fun in Chicago. I tried to think of it as a psychological experiment: people were sometimes startled by my appearance and fairly curious but no one remarked on it, not even children (within earshot anyway) Very polite society we live in. I was making up interesting / tragic scenarios in my head to explain what had happened to my face and never once had an opportunity to try any of them out. Oh well.

I had my follow up appointment this past Friday. The first thing my dermatologist said when she saw me was “wow”. When the doctor is impressed by the magnitude of your reaction, you know you look pretty bad. She gave me some other cream to speed my healing process and also gave me a bit of good news – in a few months I should notice an anti-aging effect. All this peeling, etc will stimulate collagen production which will in turn tighten everything up.

(She was nice enough not to say that I probably would have had that same effect if I had just stayed out of the sun in the first place.)

It was a pretty day on Saturday so I put on a cute new sun hat and prepared to take the children for a walk. My very pale, red-headed son started to complain about having to put on sunscreen – why did he have to wear it? I turned him to look at me and told him to ask me that question again. He seemed to get the message…

I made it – I got HERE TO STAY formatted for print by the end of the month, just like I resolved to do. It is beautiful, if I do say so myself. Is it perfect? Probably not – at least not by my standards – but for now I’m going to run with it.

To celebrate this momentous achievement, leave a comment from now til Sunday and you’ll be eligible to win a signed proof copy of HERE TO STAY, winner to be announced on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Our one full day in Chicago, Friday, was a gray, foggy, drippy mess. It didn’t *really* matter because we were planning on going to the Shedd Aquarium anyway. I didn’t get any pictures worth sharing in the aquarium – if you want to know what it is like, you’ll just have to go for yourself. It is totally worth the trip. We spent about three hours wandering around and still didn’t see everything. The only thing I wasn’t so impressed with was the 4D Movie. We saw Planet Earth. First of all, it wasn’t originally produced in 3D so the effects they managed to add-in were unimpressive and blowing some air on our necks, bumping our seats once, and piping in some bubbles did not WOW me into thinking I was in the Arctic. The Jellies exhibit, however, was great and the aquatic show was fun – not to mention all the regular exhibits. Overall, I highly recommend the aquarium.

Saturday morning was somewhat better weather so we took a walk down to Millennium Park to see The Bean – a Chicago landmark. How can you go to Chicago and not get a picture with The Bean? (Unless of course you happen to be in the midst of a nasty dermatological peel and flee from all cameras).

(Click any image to enlarge)

We started at my friends’ condo near the Museum Campus. Just across the street from their place is a park with these walking leg sculptures.

I think they are made of iron. Kind of strange, huh? They remind me of something out of a Roald Dahl story.

The next big scenic item we saw was Buckingham Fountain. It’s lovely, isn’t it?

I believe these are cherry blossoms, but don’t quote me on that.

Then finally we came to The Bean. Isn’t it amazing?

Even the under side was fantastic.

I can only be grateful that we got to see it on such a lovely clear day.

As you might imagine, I have several pictures of the children pretending to lift the bean. I could have taken pictures for hours with the optical illusions it created.

After walking nearly all the way back to the condo, we stopped for breakfast at Yolk, then my friends went shopping and the children and I did a whirlwind tour of The Field Museum. We didn’t see everything, but we did see dinosaur bones – a must see for any little boy in your company.

And that was the end of our time in Chicago. It might have been better if the weather had been nicer, but I have absolutely nothing to complain about. You get what you get when you visit in April!

Perhaps next time…