Jenyfer Matthews

I stole the post title from an email my German friend sent me, which she in turn stole from a horror movie. It seemed appropriate as my last two trips via Amsterdam have not been uneventful.

I flew from Cairo to Amsterdam and then took a city-hopper flight to Cologne. I decided to stop for my waffle cookie supply going because 1) I had time and 2) I wanted to put it in my checked back on the return flight. As it happens, it was a good thing I did.

I nearly missed my flight going to Cologne because of a long line at a snack counter. I think I was behind some sort of class trip. By the time I got back to my gate, they were preparing to start calling names and making threats on the terminal speakers. I was one of 5 who straggled up last minute, but I felt better that I had my snack and I wasn’t alone. It would have been embarrassing to get on the plane dead last because of a sandwich!

Coming back, my flight from Cologne was delayed by an hour because the plane coming from Amsterdam was delayed due to ice. Since I only had a little over an hour gap to make my connection, my only hope was that my Cairo flight would also be delayed by ice. It is the first time I’ve ever actively *wished* for a delay!

The pilot announced that anyone with a flight scheduled for 8:50 should expect to miss it. My Cairo flight was scheduled for 8:55pm, boarding to start at 7:50pm. The flight attendant I asked about my chances suggested that I run. We landed at 8:30pm. I made it into the terminal (by bus) and through passport control by 8:40pm. Then I grabbed a cart for my bags and ran from C hall across the entire airport to F hall – I even ran on the moving walkways!

I arrived at my gate breathless but in time. I am grateful that the airport staff took pity and kept the gate open longer than usual for me and a handful of others that galloped up last minute. More amazingly, my bag made it as well.

Settling in back to the routine is another story. Germany is only an hour different than Egypt, but there is always a price to be paid for going away. My price is apparently laundry…

At least in my world.

I hate holiday shopping.

Correction: I hate shopping at the holidays. There isn’t a Black Friday sale yet devised that could tempt me out of my house on the weekend after Thanksgiving.

I worked at Kmart when I was in college (and they were still solvent). During my time there, way back when the store was closed on major holidays, the store management came up with the brilliant plan to be open on Thanksgiving day. Even then I could see the writing on the wall. I used to volunteer to work on Thanksgiving day just so I could have the next day off. It only sounds like a sacrifice – I was paid time and a half plus holiday pay to work on a day when the store was empty and I was let off the hook for working the mad rush the next day.

Even then, I avoided holiday shopping as much as possible. I might have to spend most of my time working in a store, but they couldn’t make me shop. I did my best to pick up things throughout the year and stash them away, whipping them out on the proper occasions as needed. Keep in mind I was a poor college student – organization and planning were my greatest assets at the time.

Perhaps working retail all those years is what put me off shopping during the holidays, but I truly embraced online shopping in the earliest years of the internet. It was so easy! No traffic, no crowded parking lots, no lines. Just click, click, click, done. I like a sale as much as the next person, but my time and mental health are worth something too. And I don’t know about you, but my email inbox is increasing full of sale offers these days so who needs to go out and fight the crowds to get good deals?

Because I’m in Egypt, online shopping works best for shopping for family back in the US. I have to plan ahead for everyone else. Don’t hate me for what I’m about to admit: I did nearly all of my Christmas shopping for my children online before I went home this summer and picked it all up at my father’s house. That’s right – I’ve been nearly finished with my shopping since July. I’ll fill in the gaps with things I find here in Cairo, but I can deal with holiday shopping here. In Egypt, it’s simply November.

What are your plans for holiday shopping? Do you like to plan ahead or last-minute shop?

Monday is the day the new maid comes and was pretty much another wasted day. Even though she is doing all the heavy cleaning, I just can’t seem to settle down and get anything productive done while she is bustling around. Notice how I keep calling her the “new” maid, even though she’s been coming for three weeks now? I guess in my mind I’m not convinced I’m going to keep her.

Overall she does a good job and my windows have been looking really good. But I hate having to go behind her and put the knick-knacks back the way I like them or flip the sofa cushions so that the zipper is on the inside or check the latches on the windows so that they don’t fly open in a hard wind and slam into a flower pot (as happened last week) I know, I know – these are pretty small potatoes over all and not much to complain about. But I’ve notice the same staple on the floor behind the bathroom door now for two weeks. I’ve left it there just to see how long before she notices it. Another tiny reminder to me that I would be doing it all so much better.

This week I hid my dish sponge before she came. Yes, I’m sick – and very picky about how my sponges are used and for what purpose. I nearly outwitted myself as I couldn’t find it when I went to wash dishes later in the evening after dinner.

I had planned to start on a new quilting project this week. The first thing I needed to do was to wash all the fabrics I intended to use. I started that, but then began to second guess my color / pattern choices. Nearly a week later and I haven’t cut a piece. I’m still debating color choices, trying to put things together in my mind and see the answer before I cut anything. I want to use my precious balis and batiks but it’s so hard to take the plunge to cut into them.

I’ve been going to a chiropractor for a few weeks for a problem that I’ve had for years – stiff shoulders. Stiff enough that turning my neck is uncomfortable. So stiff that I’ve managed to pinch a nerve in my shoulder so that that when I lie on my back my shoulder hurts and eventually my arm will fall asleep. Taking a break from heavy cleaning is actually not a bad thing from that perspective.

I’ve had x-rays done to look for any structural issues and good news is that my upper back doesn’t look too too bad. A few degenerative disks, but given how bad my lower back is, that isn’t surprising. Nope, main problem is muscle tension. The chiropractor has twisted and cracked me very thoroughly in the last few weeks and it seems to be helping. He’s also given me a prescription: continue doing yoga and also watch my posture. Shoulders back and down.

It’s kind of ridiculous how often I have to remind myself to adjust my shoulders down. Whenever did I get in such a habit of hunching them up? It’s not only a problem when I sit over my computer or my sewing machine either. It’s all the time. My husband carries stress in his lower back, mine is all in my shoulders. Overall, my life is pretty good so it’s absolutely absurd how often I have to tell myself to relax.

Sometimes I find things to worry about and other times my daughter helpfully supplies them – like when I discovered she went behind my back and started a Facebook profile behind my back. I happened upon it by accident and when I went to check it out, her privacy controls were next to nonexistent. Is it any wonder my shoulders are stiff? Even my acid reflux flared up when I found that. She’s lucky she’s been away on a class trip for a few days to let me cool down and think things out before I confront her on her deception. She is only ten and has no idea of what she is inviting into her life by exploring the internet without a guide.

Raising children in today’s world is a stressful job and judging by my experiences with my own mother, motherhood means you never stop worrying about your children. My youngest is only eight so I anticipate much to stew about in the coming years. Yoga or not, my shoulders will likely be rigid until I die.

My children take the bus to school, which means when they lose something at school I have to rely on them to find it because I’m not at the school every day to follow them around. There is a central lost and found and most of the time they find whatever it has gone astray within a week or so. On occasion, however, there are so many things missing that I am compelled to go and look for myself.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate to lose things?

Yesterday was one of those days. On my list of missing items were several water bottles, my daughter’s swim bag (containing a towel, her swimsuit, a NEW pair of goggles and NEW swim cap), and my son’s swimsuit and goggles – which were mysteriously removed from his swim bag which he lost and then later recovered. I had little hope for the water bottles (I’ve since given up sending my daughter with “good” water bottles and instead just reuse disposable Gatorade bottles!), but I really did want to get my son’s swimsuit back. I only bought it at the beginning of the school year and it wasn’t cheap.

Every time I visit lost and found and I am astonished at what has accumulated there. How can people not notice when their children come home minus their school shoes? Their name brand jackets? How can children not notice they are missing their underwear??? The PTA eventually sells the unmarked, unclaimed uniform pieces that end up in lost and found. They must make a killing. There were piles of sweatshirts, shorts, and tops. I could outfit my kitchen with the number of unclaimed plastic containers just sitting there.

I did not find any of our water bottles, though it looks like my daughter isn’t the only one who has trouble hanging on to them. I was happy to find both my son’s swimsuit and his goggles. Why they were removed from his bag remains a mystery – especially as they were labeled with his name. While I was digging, I ran across what looked like a brand new pair of Adidas tennis shoes. Again, how do people not notice these are missing?

I have two theories that actually overlap. One is that the vast majority of the families at the children’s school are employed in the oil field ($$$) and usually have maids who look after the laundry. The maids probably don’t really pay attention to what is coming in – all the uniform pieces look the same and they just wash them and put them away. They don’t have any investment in looking to see if the item is the right size or has someone else’s name written on the collar. (I suspect that this was the fate of my daughter’s swim bag) The other theory is that most of these children probably have so much stuff that if one pair of shoes goes missing they just wear another and no one even notices the missing pair.

My own children have what they need – nothing more, nothing less. I can assure you that I would notice if their shoes went missing. Children grow fast so while it might make sense to have more than one pair of school shoes in case one pair gets lost, it doesn’t make sense financially to me to buy multiple pairs that might only be worn for a short time. Treating shoes like disposable items seems an especially conspicuous waste in a country where there are little barefoot children on the streets selling travel size packets of tissue to make their way instead of being in school. I might be taking an unnecessarily harsh view of things that has nothing to do with the reality of the situation, but every time I go to the lost and found, it’s pretty much the same situation.

To be fair, many of the women I know from the school spend a tremendous amount of time doing charitable work for the poor in Egypt. For me, it starts at home – waste not, want not.

On another note, I took this picture while I was out scouting the neighborhood for Halloween damage on Monday morning. They never even stirred as I walked up to take the picture. I suspect they kept up late the night before!

Can’t you just hear The Beatles singing “All We Need Is Love” ?

My daughter decided she was too old to trick-or-treat this year (sniff) but she still dressed up for the school Halloween fair. Doesn’t she look great?

And don’t tell him I said this, but my son was perhaps the most adorable mummy ever.

Yes, we did trick-or-treat a day early, but you have to be flexible when you live in a foreign country. The kids didn’t mind – they were too hyped up on sugar

When did Halloween get to be so complicated?

Get ready for it… I remember when I was a child, Halloween was thrillingly easy. You put on a costume, you grabbed a bag, and as soon as it looked as if it was getting the least bit dark away you went. There was a period of years where my family lived in a very child dense neighborhood and those are the Halloweens I remember the most fondly. My father would take us around a few blocks of houses, then we’d come back to our house and drop-off loot and go back out with my mom. Everything was pretty well finished and wrapped up by about nine o’clock tops. I don’t know if my memory is accurate in this respect, but I recall collecting a veritable mountain of candy. My sister and I would spend the rest of the evening sorting it out and trading things. The things neither of us liked much went to my father, LOL.

I haven’t lived in the US with my own children but I still do my best to give them a taste of the sort of experience I had. We lived for a while on a residential campus and that was easy – anyone who wanted to trick-or-treat just went out and the houses who were participating decorated their doors. That was a great night all around – and easy. My children were especially young then and it was wonderful fun to watch them toddle up to a door and then race away to the next one as fast as they could.

For several years now, I’ve been hearing how tricky (ha!) Halloween has become in the US. Communities will set times for trick-or-treating and even age restrictions. Okay, that doesn’t seem so bad or unreasonable – who wants a teenager ringing their doorbell at ten or eleven o’clock at night? Now I’m hearing about places that are actually shifting the night trick-or-treating is allowed entirely because it’s a school night or it’s on a Sunday and that might offend some people. Hmmm…last I checked no one ever shifted Christmas because it fell on a school / work day or because it landed on Saturday and that might offend orthodox Jewish people. It seems kind of crazy to me to slap all these restrictions on what really ought to be a simple event.

Unfortunately, it’s almost as difficult here in Cairo to tell the truth. Not only finding houses where the children can go to trick-or-treat but the sheer number of events. Their school hosts a Halloween fair one evening, typically the last day of the week before Halloween. There are a few parties hosted by private clubs. Tonight the big American school in the neighborhood will host their private Halloween fair, which typically also draws hundreds of Egyptian teens to the surrounding streets who focus entirely on the “trick” aspect of things – usually by throwing eggs at any hapless individual who passes by. (Last year they toppled a street light on to a car). The US Embassy has actually issued warnings about avoiding the area on the night of the fair and also on Sunday night (Lucky me, we live across the street!)

Even we have had to succumb to shifting the night of trick-or-treating to Saturday. What can I do? It’s the night when things are being organized – and it has to be organized because how else can you find the participating houses in a neighborhood full of apartment buildings primarily inhabited by people who could care less about Halloween? We’ll be issued a list of addresses to visit before we go out.

If I really wanted to go all out, I could even go back to our old building on Sunday night for one more go-round of trick-or-treating, but I don’t think I’m going to remind the children about that event. Surely by then even they will be weary of dressing up and going out? (Right???)

There are many, many things I want to teach my daughter about life, and this video represents one of those lessons. (There is one big F-bomb in the video so it probably isn’t safe for work unless you have your own office!)

I wish someone had said as much to me – I’d have eaten more as a teenager and spent less time worrying about my hair.

All week I’ve been stewing about my daughter’s soccer team. I wrote before about the children and their bad attitudes. This week it was their parents who got on my nerves.

The team has lost badly several weeks in a row, not because they cannot make goals, but because they cannot stop goals. The only thing most of them can think of is to make a goal but no one wants to put any effort into defense. I appealed to the parents to talk to their children about shifting their focus a bit, both to point out that they need to cooperate and play as a team rather than as individuals and also to realize that you can win a game with 1 or 2 goals but only if you keep the other team from scoring.

The parents are pretty much as bad as the children – they just don’t want to hear about it. One parent responded to my appeal by saying that the purpose of this league is to teach an appreciation of the game and it wasn’t about competition. I’m sorry, but why does anyone sign up for a team sport if they aren’t interested in learning to play well? If you only want to teach your child a love of the game in a non-competitive environment, watch it on TV and spare the rest of us.

It was very tempting to keep my daughter home this weekend and let them sink or swim without her to prop them up but that would be more punishment for her than for them so we went. However, we requested that they put her in a defense position this week. We played what is currently the best team in the league and due to her superb efforts in stopping goals, the team won 4-1. She was the MVP of the game – without her they would have lost by at least 15.

I myself love the beauty of the lesson we demonstrated by putting her in defense, however I doubt that anyone else will have learned a thing. We are continuing the season strictly for the love of our daughter. Only three games and the tournament to go…

Are you as tired of hearing about birthday celebrations as I am of organizing them? Today marks the end of my birthday efforts for the year. That’s it – I’m done. Obviously there are other family birthdays between now and next July, but I’m not the one in charge of organizing the celebration, the food, the gifts, or the fun for the other ones, thank goodness.

It’s exhausting. In addition to my son’s sleepover party this weekend, he attended two other parties and there are already two more invitations for the upcoming weekend.

One of the nice things about living abroad is that family and friends are a little more willing to share their signature special recipes with you because more likely than not you won’t be attending many (if any) of the same social functions. My step-mother was nice enough to share her awesome fruit pizza recipe with me, which was a huge hit with the children this summer, so that I could make it for my son’s birthday. He always asks for a “cake with fruit on top” and I think this is going to be a success, unlike the pineapple upside down cake I made last year (which we all enjoyed but my son would not even try!)

It doesn’t hurt a thing that it is also my new recipe for October either. (Yes, still on track with my New Year’s Resolution).

This pizza has a shortbread crust, cream cheese frosting topped with the fruit of your choice. It is especially pretty with strawberries on top, but since those aren’t in season yet, I went with pomegranate seeds for that extra pop of color. It would have been prettier in a round pan, but my only round pizza pan has holes in the bottom!

The little man also requested our Thanksgiving menu for his birthday dinner, mostly because he wanted cranberry sauce (are you sensing a theme of tart fruit here?) I am indulging him by making an abbreviated version of the meal today, but I hope that means we can order pizza or Chinese on Thanksgiving proper!

I am planning on spending the rest of my time this week getting back into my newest story – it was really moving til I hit the month of non-stop birthday parties.

It was touch and go for a while, but I survived the boy sleepover!

The came, they swam, they played tag, they ate, they laughed and giggled. And that was before we even got back to our house for the cake and movie!

The tent was a huge hit with the boys (patting myself on the back). Instead of a campfire and smores, they had twisted puff Cheetos and a movie, but I didn’t hear any complaints. I turned off the lights at about 10pm and if they made any noise after 11pm I didn’t hear them – I was exhausted!

Just like birds, they were up with the sun. It was an earlier start than I generally like on a weekend morning, but at least I’m off the hook for hosting birthday parties for another year…