Jenyfer Matthews

I spent much of my weekend on the floor putting together a zigsaw puzzle of a moose applique wall hanging. Summer Serenity my foot – and my aching back! This pattern was made up by a sadist who is even now laughing her butt off as countless quilters weep in frustration over the gazillion of little jagged pieces she decided to require. True enough, there is a huge map to help with placement – but you can’t see the map once the larger background pieces are down. It truly is a labor of love and a test of patience. But if you (and you know who you are) decide you want a wolf or a bear wall hanging, you’re on your own! [Smooch!]

I stopped in the jewelry store on Friday night after having dinner with some friends. The ring was ready. At first glance it came out much better than I expected. It looked much the same and the quality of the workmanship was pretty good. Except that the stones were wrong. I asked for garnets and they had put in what looked like pink glass. When I questioned it, the shop owner said he’d fix it. But it of course it made me wonder why on earth they hadn’t done it correctly in the first place. Did they think I wouldn’t notice?

One of the major irritations of living in Egypt is always having to be suspicious of every transaction. Egypt is the land of fraud. Someone is always trying to pull a fast one on you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to call my credit card company to okay a transaction because it originated in Egypt. If you live here, it really is worth trying to build a bit of a personal relationship with a shop keeper so that they realize that the potential for repeat business is worth much more than a one time scam. If you are just visiting, view every transaction with suspicion and you can still expect to be ripped off.

The shop owner blamed the factory. He also claimed that we hurt his feelings with our “accusations”. I was left with a bad feeling myself. Was he trying to fool me, or had he too been duped? Thing is though, at the end of the day it is still his responsibility to look at the item before he passes it on to the customer. Because had I not spoken up, I know he would have happily taken my money for garnets and given me pink glass.

I left the ring with him to fix and he told me that when it came back, I could take it to any other jeweler I like to have it checked out. He managed to have it done overnight! When I went back to see it, the ring looked great. But I wasn’t willing to take it at face value (fool me once…) He let me take it with me and I immediately took it to a more upscale jeweler down the street.

The second jeweler couldn’t say whether the stones were real one way or another based just on looking at it. He didn’t have the equipment – or even a jeweler’s loop. So now I get to live with the ring a day or two and see if it turns my finger green. And in the absence of such an obvious sign of trouble, then I get to decide if I want to take that leap of faith and just believe.

(Also, I want my warm and fuzzy feelings about this ring back!)

Last night I had a dream that a giant raven had stolen my cell phone and though I could hear the phone ringing from time to time, I was unable to locate the raven and retrieve my phone. I kind of think that the raven represents the shop keeper and that the phone is my feeling of not getting my message across…

A friend of mine here in Cairo has this totally wonderful ring. I’ve admired it for months and even went to the store where she bought hers to see if I could get my own. No luck. I guess she finally got sick of hearing me gush about it because she suggested that maybe I could get the ring copied and very kindly allowed me to borrow her ring.

My precious…

So, I found a jeweler here in the neighborhood who said he could copy it – and if I didn’t like it when he was done, I didn’t have to pay for it. Not a bad deal, right?

Only thing is, apparently that sort of assurance isn’t *quite* good enough for me. I actually dreamed about the ring last night – that I’d gotten it back and not only wasn’t the workmanship good, but they had changed the whole design. (That actually might have come from the fact that the jeweler I spoke with kept trying to suggest changes to me to make it more “individual” when in fact I just wanted it as it was!) I woke up several times over the course of the night with these sorts of unsatisfactory scenarios playing through my brain.

The likelihood is that all will be well – and if it isn’t, I won’t have to pay. But at the end of the day, what I really want is the ring and I’ll have to wait until Friday to find out if I get it or not. I have the feeling it’s going to be a long week!

I went this morning to collect some odds and ends from some good friends who are retiring and leaving Egypt for good. We met on a weekend trip we took as part of a tour when we first arrived but our friendship really took root on a different weekend trip the following year. A twelve hour bus trip will either help you create lasting bonds or bring homicidal urges to the surface!

I really really hate saying goodbye to people. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that this morning. But their impending departure made me start thinking about the nature of friendship.

I have one friend from when I was 12 years old, and one more from when I was 14. I have friends who I rarely hear from, but when we are together again we pick up right where we left off and it’s as if we were never apart. I have friends with whom I touch base often but haven’t seen in more than a decade. I even have a few dear online friends I’ve never met in person!

Making friends as an adult isn’t always an easy process. Life becomes busy – you don’t always have the luxury of making friends with those who share your interests so much as those with whom you share an office. Since I have had children, I’ve made friends with the mothers of children my own children are friends with. If I’m lucky, they are people that I will remain friends with even if the kids fall out!

Living abroad puts a new wrinkle on making friends. Often you bond quickly with people because you are both out of your own familiar environment. And I think there is also an unconscious idea that if you like someone you better just get down to business because one or the other of you will leave soon! I’ve made some wonderful friends with people who I might never have met otherwise – some of whom are from my home state! While I love making friends of people from far flung places, it does also increase the chances that once we both leave wherever we are when we meet, that’ll be goodbye forever.

I suppose what it all boils down to is that friendship is precious. I would love to think that I will always have all the friends I hold dear in my life forever, but I know that life is not that way. So instead, I will do my best to appreciate and nurture the ones that I do have and hope that one day our paths will cross again.

I recovered and rose from my sick bed – just in time to start another busy week.

I’m also just in time for the thermometer to rise to 100F+ – after what has been a long mild winter / spring, it feels especially hot and dry. The only thing good about the weather is that it’s great for line drying clothes and I have a pile of laundry to catch up on after my “break”. Go figure.

When the weather heats up in Cairo, there are few more pleasant pastimes than taking a felucca ride on the Nile – which is what I did with some girlfriends last weekend.

(click any image to enlarge)

A felucca on the Nile and the skyline of Cairo.

It’s not all pleasure sailing – some people are making their living.

And some are starting a new life together. One photographer was taking a picture of us, taking a picture of them!






Our felucca captain.

Sunset on the Nile.

I never get tired of sailing on the Nile, and every time I get out there I wonder why I don’t go more often.

There were times when I wondered if I would make it, but in the end I accomplished all that was on my to-do list yesterday. Cleaning the children’s room alone took me two hours.

I had a lot of time to think as I cleaned. Here are some random thoughts on house work:

* It’s not much fun

* Painting may be easier than washing walls

* If you haven’t moved your washing machine to clean under it in three years, you are in for a nasty surprise

* Unless you live alone, the moment you have one task done, another will be created for you

It’s a never ending job, but all in all, I guess I’d rather my house be reasonably clean than not. Fingers crossed we won’t have another sandstorm for a while…

PS – I’m taking the night off of cooking – and the rest of the weekend too if I can manage it

Yesterday was the first day I’ve had to myself since I got back from Qatar last week and what did I do? I spent the entire day cleaning.

My house has been slowing falling apart for the last week while I was traveling and then was busy working, but a two day sandstorm just topped things off. I have lovely French doors and windows all over my house, which are a pleasure to behold in normal circumstances but might as well not be there for all the good they do to keep the dust out during a sandstorm. Actually, that’s not totally true – they help a little. I’ve gone out and left them open only to have a sandstorm hit and that was much worse.

The sky was blue this morning (yeah!) so after I put the kids on the school bus and had breakfast, I got to work dusting, vacuuming, washing windows, doing laundry, and mopping. I even hosed off our (very) large balcony. All in all I was hard at it for about four hours and I got the kitchen, living room, dining room, and master bedroom done – roughly half our apartment. (I told you it was bad!) There was a layer of micro-fine dust coating everything. I hate to think of how much is caught in the curtains (washing those is a project for another day – after sandstorm season has passed!) I could have really used a face mask, or at least a bandanna, as I went about my duties.

Today? I’m tackling the kids’ room (that alone will take me most of the morning!), the computer room, and the bathroom. I also plan to make some banana bread and a lasagna. I am woman, hear me roar.

Or maybe that’s just the vacuum cleaner…

Since moving abroad nearly ten years ago, I haven’t worked outside the home – instead I had two babies to keep me busy. Now that they are old enough to be in school all day, it seemed like a good time to explore some options to keep my resume alive. Which is how I started working as a substitute at a neighborhood school library.

I started in January and since then, it’s been a day here, a day there. But since last week, I’ve worked five days and I have six more days scheduled this month already so far.

It’s not so much that it’s a demanding job, but when I’m there I’m not at home and when I’m not at home, a whole lot of stuff goes undone. I can’t grocery shop at my usual time, I can’t do the laundry – or any of the other hundreds of chores that go along with keeping a house with two small children in residence tidy. (Note: I live in one of the dirtiest cities on Earth and we’ve had a two day sand storm this week. Guess how much dust and grit is coating my home right now??) Homework, dinner, and bath time is a mad rush. If I’m lucky I can collapse on the couch by about 8:30 – and have an hour of chat with my husband before we both crawl off to bed.

As I said, it’s not a demanding job, but I guess I’ve become spoiled in my decade at home. I don’t like having my routine disrupted, I don’t like seeing clutter and mess all over the house, and I really don’t like not having more time to myself. I haven’t written anything new in months and I have a long list of quilting projects I need to complete in the next little while.

Yet I know that other people deal with FULL TIME jobs on top of having a family to take care of AND still find time to write. I am in awe. It makes me wonder – do they never sleep? Because that is perhaps the only way I could find any peace and quiet to do any writing or anything else.

Being a parent is like trying to solve a never ending riddle. There is no rule book – only general guidelines – and every child is different. Just when you think you’ve got it down, they enter a new phase and all you thought you knew is no longer valid.

Anyone who has read my blog regularly will have already gleaned that my daughter is something of a tomboy. She has friends of both genders, but the ones I hear about most frequently are the boys. This week the mother of one of her male friends asked if she could come over after school today for a play date – and a sleep over.

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. The play date was fine, but a sleepover? I kind of thought that most parents were on the same page as far as co-ed sleepovers went (as in NO), but these particular parents are European, apparently a much more broad-minded group of people as compared to the average American

As usual, I’m probably getting ahead of myself and over-thinking things. They’re young and I know that it’s totally innocent, but in my mind parenting is all about setting precedents. I say yes to a co-ed sleepover when she’s 8, how will I explain my “no” answer when she’s 12 or 14 or 16 and she wants her boyfriend to stay over?

I guess I’ll just keep making it all up as I go along.

Tomorrow: pictures and a recap of my recent trip to Doha, Qatar.

So my flight out of Cairo started with a five hour delay due to a technical problem. I’m all for safety, but the Cairo airport is boring under normal circumstances so the delay was especially dismaying. Thank goodness I had a great book to lose myself in (Tell Me Something, by Adele Parks)

We were finally allowed to board and I was all settled in when the flight attendant comes to me and asks if I’d like to change seats since the plane wasn’t full. It wasn’t a long flight and I was already all settled in so I declined.

The flight attendant must have known something I didn’t know. During our 3 hour flight my seatmate picked his nose, licked the underside of the foil covering of his entree and ate with his fingers, snored wetly, blew his nose on his shirt, and spit a loogey on the floor near the window. Is it any wonder I always feel the need to take a shower when I get off a plane? I wanted to wash my hair with sanitizing gel after that display!

The next time a flight attendant offers to move me to a row on my own, I’m going to do it! Anyone have a seatmate horror story to top this one? (I sincerely hope not!)