Jenyfer Matthews

Here it is, already November and nearly the end of the first marking period for the children’s schools.

My little man seems to be settled in nicely. He’s been happy and comfortable pretty much since day one actually. In the past he’s always given me a hard time about going to school and has had frequent, vague “stomach aches” in the mornings. Those are a thing of the past. He still enjoys the weekends more, mostly because he has a couple of school buddies who live in our neighborhood and a patch of woods off the back of the house to explore. What more could a nine-year-old boy ask for?

My daughter has had a rougher transition. For one thing, she started sixth grade: the dreaded middle school. Not only did she have to learn to use a combination locker (I still have nightmares about forgetting my combination!) but she had to figure out her schedule and switching classrooms / teachers. That made her nervous but at least that change in system was new to every sixth grader. The transition has actually been much harder socially.

Sixth grade is a rough year and can be a nasty age. Whether they acknowledge it or not, everyone is so insecure about themselves and their position in the social pecking order that they will do just about anything to anyone to make themselves feel more powerful and “seem cool”. Not a fun age at all. You couldn’t pay me to go back to sixth grade.

My daughter is new to public schools and is a real marshmallow inside. She’s also used to being fairly popular and is having a tough time figuring out how to fit into this new, much larger school with its unfamiliar social currents. She’s a girl who is a superb athlete and has a tom-boy’s fashion sense which sets her way apart from the majority of the girls in her school (according to her anyway). She’s starting to grow her hair out and is demanding braces.

But more pressing, she’s not fluent in US-speak.

She came home very down one afternoon this week, feeling stupid because there are so many things she doesn’t know. Like what a 7-11 is – or a “slushie.” Someone offered her a “pixie stick” and they were astonished when she asked what it was. It is all so minor that I find it kind of amusing, but she. does. not.

I tried to comfort her by pointing out that none of her classmates knew how to call someone a donkey in Arabic, had taken a school field trip that required a flight and a passport, had gone snorkeling in the Red Sea, or had been inside a pyramid. She smiled when I reminded her of all the things that she had already experienced in her short life and also pointed out that all of this is relative – none of this will matter in a few years.

But it’s tough when all you want is to blend into the crowd and you stand out so much.

Also funny for me to think that she did pretty much blend into the crowd in Cairo because her school required uniforms and her friends were doing all the things she was doing and more… and on that thought I guess it isn’t surprising that the girls on her soccer team who she liked best are the ones whose parents are immigrants…

Literally!

Over the years I’ve gotten used to not being able to return things. In all but the biggest stores, where I lived in the Middle East it was next to impossible to return anything once you had bought it. If you did try to return something, the transaction was always treated with extreme suspicion and usually required a manager’s approval – all done while everyone was giving you the stink-eye. In short, if you bought something, you should be prepared to keep it or put up a fight to take it back.

That also applied to anything that I purchased on my summer trips back to the US since it is awfully difficult to return something from halfway around the world or a full year later even if you do have the receipt!

Since moving back to the US, I’ve been totally bowled over by the level of customer service most stores provide. The merest whiff of dissatisfaction and the store personnel are bending over backward to make things right.

I am a receipt keeper so I have been loving the ability to buy things, mull it over, and then take it back if I change my mind. I still get that tight feeling in my gut when I approach the Returns Desk as I prepare to be grilled as to the reason for my return, but that is easing with every successful – usually totally unquestioned – transaction. I am sure that some of the customer service clerks are beginning to recognize me.

I decided to take it to another level this week. I took my car in to the dealership for a check-up in the middle of October, at which time they recommended I do a fairly expensive maintenance job. I waited a couple of weeks, then made the appointment for the work and had it done. The day after I completed the work, I got a coupon in the mail for 10% off the recommended work. I was miffed – 10% off that particular job was the equivalent to almost two tanks of gas for my car! I wasn’t sure that there was really anything to be done except express my dissatisfaction, but I decided to call the dealership anyway. Much to my surprise they told me to bring in the coupon and they would refund my 10%.

I guess it does pay to be the squeaky wheel.

This level of customer service is refreshing and I love it, but having lived abroad I can tell you that it is definitely not the norm. It is also probably the reason Americans get the reputation for being rude when traveling outside the US – because we just get used to a much higher level of customer service.

This year really didn’t go as I expected it to, and so neither did all my writing plans. I got some of the things I wanted to get done, but the big one left undone was my work-in-progress. I had really hoped that I would have that one nearly done by this point, but you already know how that went.

On the other hand, all of the upheaval and moving this year did give me some great ideas to use in my work-in-progress so perhaps there is a silver lining after all.

Instead, and to make up for the lack of a new book in some small part, I put together a digital collection of my three romance novels. Not only is money tight right now, the holidays are coming up. What could be better than one book with three three novels for one low price? Check out my home page for information and buy links.

In other news, it’s another freakishly warm November day so I am going to take advantage of it and try to get dresser #2 sanded and stained. Can’t wait to get this part of the transition to a new home over with!

Any (good) mom will tell you that one of our main job descriptions is being a kill-joy. I’m particularly good at it – just ask my children and their friends.

I love Halloween as much as my children – probably because I remember enjoying it so much as a child – but as a mom? It’s all a bit more conflicted. I love to see how excited my children are by the decorations and the month-long anticipation of dressing up and going trick-or-treating. It was especially fun this year because it was their first proper, American Halloween. I did what I could to make the holiday fun for them while living abroad – we went to their school fair and we trick-or-treated at all the participating apartments in our immediate area (usually no more than a dozen), but it wasn’t the same.

Living in a very family oriented town, in a child-dense neighborhood, the children had an incredible time. They dressed up like zombies and their dad took them out for two solid hours of trick-or-treating. They came home with no less than approximately SIX POUNDS of candy. EACH.

Here’s where the conflict comes in.

As a child, they want nothing more than free access to this unheard of bonanza of candy. I of course 1) don’t want them to eat until they vomit or 2) spend $$$ at the dentist. I let them admire their loot, supervised some trading, and then put their candy sacks away – only to be accessed under supervision.

(Do you want to clean up the puke?)

And yes, there will be dental rinse every night after brushing until this candy is gone.

The fact that I am both the person who makes the holiday fun happen in my various alter egos (Easter Bunny, Santa, etc) and also the one who puts on the brakes on candy gorging is ironic. It’s probably also the biggest reason that my children still believe in those mythical beings – because how on earth could I be both the giver and taker-awayer of candy and fun?

It would be easier to let them gorge themselves and be done with it, but I’ve never been one to take the easy way out…

It’s been a busy week, what with upacking and sorting the bits and pieces of my life.

I started by looking through the many boxes labeled “Memorabilia” from our time capsule so I could get them out of the way before our air shipment from Cairo arrived. That was amusing.

Yes, I used to care enough about wearing makeup that I had a mirror which I could set to “daytime” and “evening” lighting. I also found a cordless curling iron and two unopened BUTANE canisters for it! 1) I don’t remember owning or using such an item (though I did have a corded curling iron I used every day); 2) storing the butane canisters was a very bad idea and I’m lucky that they didn’t combust at some point; 3) a butane curling iron seems like a very bad idea – just add hair spray and POOF!

I also found this. What is it though??

I took pottery lessons way back when and according to the stamp on the bottom, I made it. I was looking at it, wondering if I had planned to display a marble at some point, and in the process of writing this post I remembered: I made it to replace the base of a glass salt shaker that had been knocked over and broken by a cat. Since it is loose and I ran across the loose shaker top, I suppose it didn’t fit!

Our air shipment arrived this week, bright and early Tuesday morning. Fourteen boxes in all, most of which looked as if they’d been run over by a truck before being delivered. It’s amazing that none of our glassware broke, but I am still glad that the box mislabeled “sewing machine” wasn’t actually my Bernina. It was my jewelry box!

Since I was not in Cairo to (micro)manage what got packed and shipped, there were some things that showed up by air that could have come a slower method – or not at all!

Hmmm… I am guessing that I was planning to make A LOT of Christmas cookies at some point. I usually bought the sugar and brought it back because you could not find it in Cairo – unless you had a friend that worked at the Embassy. I guess I better get busy this year. I am now in possession of TWO cookie guns too so no more excuses!

Apparently I also planned to make a lot of muffins! Actually, I used to stockpile these – you couldn’t always find decent muffin papers in Cairo so when I did, I snapped them up. With what I’ve bought since I’ve been in our new house I could probably make muffins and cupcakes for a couple of years and not run out!

(Note to self: make cupcakes for soccer game tomorrow!)

What surprised me most about seeing all these things is how sad it all made me. I’m glad to have my things in one place, but my – how time marches on. One group of items is from a life I put on “hold” while I went abroad. In the time we were away my husband’s mother, uncle, and grandmother died, as did my own mother and grandmother. So many memories of them surfaced as I found old letters, photos, and objects that reminded me of them. The arrival of our air shipment contains the items of a life cut-short. We never planned to stay in Egypt forever, but we never had a chance to say a proper goodbye to Egypt and all of the people who we saw on a day to day basis either.

The only thing I can try to do now is weave the strands of my lives together and hope that the new pattern is pleasing and strong…

I admit it: I have a slight addiction to purses. It first became apparent to me when we moved from our first apartment to our second in Cairo. I had way more purses tucked away in my wardrobe than I thought I did.

Looking back, I know how it started. For years and years I had a standard black leather purse and a standard brown leather purse and that was it. As a student and then a first-time-working person, I didn’t have much money for frivolous things like purses. Years later, when our financial status started to improve, I started to buy a new purse here and there – always with the rationalization “I don’t have any cute purses!”

Now I have almost nothing but cute purses. I have backpack purses in wine and teal printed with elephants that I bought on a trip to Cambodia, a couple of avocado green purses, a giraffe print purse with red trim, an eggplant colored purse, an aqua blue purse, a red patent leather purse my husband bought me in Italy, a couple of straw purses, big purses, tiny purses, evening purses, and… well, you get the idea.

It’s absurd really – I don’t even like to change my purse. I hate to move everything from one to the other and I’m always rushing around so much that I rarely leave myself time to switch purses. Once I put my stuff in a purse it usually stays there for a few months.

Absurd.

I have recently come to realize I have a similar problem with boots. I love boots but I don’t own so many for a couple of reasons. One is that there is no real winter in the Middle East so I didn’t really need boots there. Also, I’m fairly picky about my boots; I want real leather but I wasn’t about to pay real leather $$$ prices to walk everywhere through the trash on Cairo streets. I have a couple of pairs of leather anklets in brown and black but I’ve been looking for taller boots for some time now.

There are things that attract me to boots as well. I love silver studs. And fringe. A fellow soccer mom wore some cowboy style boots in a dull copper finish to a game last Saturday and I nearly swooned. (The above elements need not be included on the same boot!) I adore my new red cowboy boots so much I almost hate to wear them anywhere lest I scuff them.

I didn’t realize how transparent I am with regard to my love of boots until my friend saw these at a thrift store and bought them for me:

Every girl should have a friend who would get her such wonderful boots – did you see the fringe??? – but let’s face it: you wouldn’t look at these boots and buy them for just anyone, would you? I think she’s got my number. I haven’t worn them yet because it’s been wet and they are suede but I like just having them.

Which is of course how I ended up with so many purses…

There was a time, long ago in what seems like an alternate life, when I set a goal to try a new recipe once a month. Since this year was one long disruption, needless to say I didn’t stick to that goal. I did cook here and there, but mostly I stuck to favorite recipes that I could make from memory. Most of the time I was happy if I could make reasonably balanced meals – new and interesting wasn’t on my agenda.

With life finally settling down, last week was one of the best ones I’ve had for cooking in a long time. I made some old favorites and tried some newer things as well, including jambalaya and cream of cauliflower soup. Those are not technically “new” recipes to me, just things I don’t make all that often.

I did try one new recipe on Saturday morning though and I am pleased to say that in spite of some initial skepticism from my children, it was a total hit – Pumpkin Pancakes.

I pretty much followed the recipe as is was except that I followed the suggestion of one of the reviewers and used 2 eggs instead of 1 and upped the spices quite a bit. The result was wonderful. The pancakes were pleasantly pumpkin-y but not too sweet. The next time I make them, I’ll likely try replacing some of the white flour with wheat germ or ground flaxseed (Ssshhh!).

The rest of my kitchen equipment is due to arrive tomorrow morning from Cairo. Once I get it all organized and put away, I won’t have any more excuses not to cook (except time!). My current goal is to cook a nice meal at least 4x a week. The other three nights? I think may need to assign those nights to the other three members of my family! It may mean Cheerios for dinner but I could live with that once in a while if it meant I didn’t have to cook every night

I have always found music to be a real mood-lifter and just playing the radio while I putter around the house helps tremendously as I go about my day. This catchy little song by Andy Grammer has really been uplifting and appropriate this week:

Keep Your Head Up – Andy Grammer

The glow that the sun gives
Right around sunset
Helps me realize
This is just a journey
Drop your worries
You are gonna turn out fine.
Oh, you’ll turn out fine.
Fine, oh, you’ll turn out fine.

But you gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.
You gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.

I know it’s hard, know its hard,
To remember sometimes,
But you gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.

I still have not heard when our air shipment from Cairo will be delivered from Detroit, but since I am tired of living my life on hold I do believe that I’ll be going out and buying some paint and a paint brush to get started on the first of the dressers anyway…

To follow my instincts, that is.

Remember how I said I had planned to bring the dressers inside, off the screened in porch, so I could complete the refinishing process, but that I decided to wait so that the movers would have a place to put the boxes?

Well, what I don’t have is our shipment but what we did get was a nice soaking rain shower with wind that lasted all night. I thought I had pulled the dressers in away from the screens enough, but I was wrong. The nicer, older, darker one got wet. Not soaking, but damp enough that I can feel the wood on the newly naked and unprotected top is rough when a couple of days ago I had sanded it satin smooth.

Grrrr…

Looks like I might end up refinishing the entire body of the thing after all, but in the meantime I am moving it inside to dry off. The movers can just work around it.

This has been a long week and it’s only Wednesday.

I’ve been a bit down the last couple of days. Maybe I’m just tired. Or demoralized. I feel like I never stop bustling around doing this or that or the other thing and yet I’m still surrounded by disorder and chaos and mess. Everywhere I look there is just stuff that needs to be put away. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong exactly, except that perhaps I am trying to do too many things at the same time. I’m keeping up but seemingly not making much headway.

I am a person who likes to finish projects. When I start a quilt, I finish it. Rarely do I work on more than one at a time, unless they are different sizes and are at different stages – one might be in the quilting process when I start another. I can typically finish hand-quilting a queen sized quilt in 6-8 weeks start to finish. I hate that I had to leave my quilts behind in Cairo ten months ago, particularly one that is unfinished.

The same goes with writing books and I’ve had an unfinished manuscript hanging over me for a year now.

When I consulted with my father about how to refinish the dressers, he suggested that perhaps wasn’t the best time to take on such a project when I’m so busy otherwise. I can see his point of view but here’s the thing: we need the dressers to put away some of the stuff around here and I need the creative diversion. Yes, I admit it: I actually find the process fun and it makes a nice change of pace from washing walls and breaking down cardboard boxes.

My plan was to put down a tarp and some cardboard in what will eventually be my sewing room downstairs and bring in the dresser I intend to paint so I could work on it this week. Then the movers contacted us that our air shipment from Cairo was in Detroit and would be released from customs any day. I decided to hold off on moving the dresser because when the air shipment comes, many of those boxes will need to go into that room. I can hardly complain because the shipment contains my kitchen items and most of my quilting supplies and quilts, but it does delay my finishing the dresser project. Great – more boxes to unpack.

{Insert whining and moaning here}

And just think: if we end up finding a house to buy this spring, we’ll get to do the pack-up-and-move routine this time next year too.

Sigh…