Jenyfer Matthews

October is a busy birthday month for me, and this week is a doozy. Monday was my husband’s birthday, Thursday is my son’s party, and the following Monday is my son’s actual birthday.

Shopping for men is just a pain. By the time they get to be my husband’s age, they can already buy whatever it is they want for themselves. I’ve gone with art for many years – something he likes but won’t buy for himself – but I was tremendously pleased this year when he said he wanted a new watch and preferred to get it for himself. I knew the children would be outraged if there were NO presents for him to open though, so I went out shopping on Sunday to get a couple of presents that the children could give to him.

My plan was simple enough: go to some of the local upscale clothing shops and get him a couple of nice cotton or linen shirts for work. It seemed simple at least – cotton and linen are two fabrics Egypt specializes in. I must have gone into six different shops and came out with nothing. Everything was either too conservative or they didn’t have his size. Seriously, you’d think they were hand stitching the clothes themselves for how few items they have on hand to sell. And what is up with all the women’s clothes in what looks like a men’s shop on the outside? I guess they know who is doing the shopping!

On the way home I stopped in at a discount shop in desperation since I happened to be passing and found two nice shirts for about 1/4 of what one of shirt would have cost me in the boutiques, plus two new tops for me. Win-win.

We tried a new Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood for dinner (fabulous) and had blond brownies with ice cream for dessert. A good birthday.

My son’s birthday isn’t until Monday, but I thought I better get out and shop sooner than later so I could come up with a Plan B if my first idea didn’t work out. I had heard that the Toys R Us in a mall downtown by the Nile had bikes, for a price. I’ve got some fairly particular ideas about what I want in a kid’s bike but I decided it was worth a trip to see if they had what I wanted.

The mall where Toys R Us is located is not that far away in distance, but it took us no less than an hour in stop-and-go traffic to get there. Add in the heat and the exhaust fumes and you can imagine how awful I felt when I finally arrived. I went directly to Toys R Us to see if the trip had been worth it. Success!

They had exactly the size Huffy I wanted and I know my son will love the color combination. Yes, it cost more than it would have in the US – but it is here and it wasn’t so very much more than either shipping a bike from the US or buying a locally made bike with hand brakes so I am a very happy mom. It was worth the two hour commute and the migraine headache to think how happy the boy will be when he finally sees it.

(Don’t hate me but I also stocked up on friend birthday presents and got a little Christmas shopping done while I was there!)

I still have to survive the boy birthday party now, however I negotiated down from a full blown birthday party with twenty guests to a 3 friend sleepover on Thursday night. I even borrowed a tent to pitch in our living room to turn up the fun factor. I’m taking it as a compliment that though we are eating dinner at our club, my son has requested I make him a cake rather than ordering dessert there. Cake, popcorn, a tent, and RETURN OF THE JEDI – what more could an 8 year old boy want?

My son’s party is the first of three from his class this weekend (there are two more next weekend!) In fact, one of our guests is having a party at noon the next day. Think I can get them to settle down by 10PM? Going to give it my best shot!

Back when I was in high school, I was a champion avoider of team sports. The private Catholic school where I’d gone to middle school did not have PE class, so the two years of mandatory PE I had to endure in high school was torture. On the whole, I didn’t mind the solo-activities like aerobics so much and I enjoyed the unit on bowling we did, but I loathed the team sports because I didn’t know the rules and was not confident in my ability to perform. I’ve got a competitive streak a mile wide, but I did not want to be the weak link that would let my whole team down.

In my effort to avoid responsibility to the team, I’d usually happily volunteer to play outfield in kickball or softball games. At the time, I thought that the further back I was, the better. No pressure. Of course, what I wasn’t thinking about was that if anyone did manage to hit / kick a ball way out to the clover patch where I’d parked myself, it was my job to get that ball back into play not only as quickly as possible but also to the correct base. Let’s just say I was never carried around on the shoulders of my teammates.

At present, my whole family is the thick of soccer season. If I thought it was hard being the team mom and organizing the snack list / coach presents, that was nothing compared to the frustration of being a back-up coach. Nothing makes you appreciate your own children like working with other people’s children.

For the most part, the children are very enthusiastic about the game and also very confident in their own abilities (real or imaginary), however, they are not at all interested in being part of a team. They want to play what position they want to play and they if they don’t get their wish, at best they pout. At worst, they stomp their foot and just refuse to cooperate. If we let them have their way, we’d have eight strikers on the field and a goalie and no other defense at all. Since my daughter’s team lost last week 8-3, you can guess how that works out. When my husband attempted to point out to the children that in fact defense was very important and used the score as an example, many of the kids either denied that was the correct score or just argued that it was his fault (referring to the goalie) and they want to score, not block, goals.

My desire to avoid responsibility by hiding in the outfield also leads some of the kids to choose to be goalie – as if not having to run means that it’s not a vitally important position. There are very few places to hide on a soccer field.

One girl actually quit because she was bored playing defense and wanted to play striker. This is a girl who has never played soccer before, is afraid of the ball, and can’t kick. What on earth gave her the idea that she was entitled to play striker simply because she wanted to? I’d really like to be a fly on the wall in the homes of these children to hear what sort of constant loop of positive-reinforcement-crap they are being brainwashed with. On second thought, it would probably just make me sick. As much as I’d like to knock the heads of some of the children together, it’s really the parents I should go after for creating such egomaniacs in the first place.

It’s a community league and it’s supposed to be more about fun and exercise than competition, but why does anyone join a team when in fact they just want to play solo? Go play tennis or golf if you want all the glory to yourself. I’ve heard several stories recently about coaches who have been relieved of their posts due to bad behavior. I can sympathize with what frustrations they might have been suffering. I’d love to be able to kick some of these kids off the team for the same reason.

My daughter was on a team last season that was not only undefeated but also won first in their age division tournament. Her current team plays the team of her former coach this week. No doubt we will get slaughtered, but hey – it will be the goalie’s fault, right?

You may have noticed I have a schedule for posting – I have a schedule for most of my daily activities. With as many things / activities as I have to keep up with, if I didn’t have a schedule to follow not only would I fall hopelessly behind, but I’d also never know what day it was.

Today was armed forces day in Egypt and so schools and most offices were closed. Generally speaking, I am not a fan of mid-week school holidays. While I did enjoy being able to sleep in this morning, I know I’ll be paying for it for the next couple of days. I was already two days ahead of myself by mid-afternoon, assuming that today was Friday. You can imagine what it does to the children’s sense of time. They will not be pleased to go back to school tomorrow morning.

Oh well, a small price to pay for a truly pleasant and relaxing day spent sitting in the shade at our neighborhood club, chatting with friends while our children swam and played.

It’s only Monday and I’m already exhausted.

In part, my lack of energy has to do with having had a busy weekend. Two children, two sports activities each = much running to and fro. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know how they do it. They are, however, considerably younger than I am and almost solid muscle.

I happily sent them back to school yesterday morning and got busy with my own to-do list. After changing all the sheets and getting a few loads of laundry going, I went out to do my grocery shopping for the week. Good news was that I had a frequent shopper discount card to use at the store for 10% off my bill. Bad news was that the ATM on my way was out of cash (not an unusual phenomenon).

I tend to rely more on my credit cards when I am in the US, but in Egypt I prefer cash. Not only because Egypt is the land of fraud and my credit card companies tend to put holds on my cards when I use them here, but also because of foreign transaction fees. I only use my credit cards here sparingly. I had a bit more money than I typically need for a weekly shop so I went on my way.

Miscalculation. In addition to groceries, I bought next week’s soccer snacks, plus a few other “fancy” treats for the children’s lunches. In the end I spent nearly all the cash I had, even with the discount, and I had not yet done my produce shopping.

I didn’t let that stop me however. I have never yet taken advantage of it, but I know that my vegetable seller will give credit. I could in fact just pay up once a month if I wanted. I decided in this case that I would try another ATM on my way home and pay him when he delivered my things. When I asked him if this was okay, he not only agreed immediately but he offered to give me a loan so I could do my grocery shopping. How’s that for service?

The second ATM had money and I was able to pay them at delivery. Somehow it doesn’t bother me to pay my credit cards off once a month, but I don’t like the thought of owing the vegetable man money!

I spent the rest of my day in the kitchen washing fruit, doing dinner prep, and planning school lunches for the week – after having cleaned all of the bedrooms and floors upstairs. After the children returned home we did snacks, homework, and headed out for tennis lessons.

Readers have asked me how I come up with new story ideas. The problem is not the ideas – the problem is finding the time to write anything.

My weekend will be spent keeping the children moving in different directions and tired enough that when they are in one place, they’ll be too tired to fight.

Hope you have a great weekend!

It’s a new school year and I’ve made a resolution to take a step back from my children’s homework assignments. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

All in all, they don’t have as much homework on a daily basis as I recall having. My son typically has one worksheet a day, the subject varying by day of the week, plus a short reading book. My daughter’s assignment pattern is similar, only now that she’s a bit older the assignments are more complex and are given at the beginning of the week. It’s up to her to get them done and back when they are due.

My son still requires a fair amount of prodding and encouragement to get things done. But instead of nagging, threatening, or bribing him as I did last year, I’m backing off. If he wants help, I’ll help him. If he doesn’t want to do it, I don’t push – but I remind him that he will have to explain to his teacher and the head teacher (principal) why he didn’t get it done. He procrastinates, but has yet to shirk it all together.

The school issued my daughter a laptop this year, the idea being that they could use it in school and out to complete their assignments. In addition, she has a weekly planner. When I think what I could have accomplished in high school with a laptop and internet access! But I digress. She’s only ten – so far her favorite thing to do with her laptop is to use the webcam to make silly videos of herself and her brother.

I’m trying to stay out of her homework as well, but I haven’t been totally successful on that front. One assignment was to make an oragami crane. The instructions might as well have been written in Japanese as far as she was concerned. She colored the paper and I made the crane. Another assignment involved her finding a news article that discussed “antisocial behavior”. That topic covers a lot of ground so I admit I hovered nearby and provided guidance so that she wouldn’t run across anything too shocking or disgusting. In the end we found an article about a teenager who was arrested for shoplifting 17 tubes of toothpaste.

(Toothpaste?? I suppose he had his reasons. Makes me wonder if there is some ingredient in toothpaste that can be boiled down to crack or something)

When I was ten, my parents both worked full time so I had a key to the house to let myself in after school. I had an older sister who was usually around doing her own thing, but I remember getting my own snacks and doing my homework myself right away because I couldn’t go out to play until it was finished. No one looked over my shoulders or checked up on me but I always got all my work done (never mind the fact that I nearly failed math in third grade) It’s very hard for me to imagine my own children being so self-sufficient, however, they have recently started making their own snacks. Here’s hoping by the end of the year, they’ll both be a bit more independent. Maybe they’ll even have mastered the toaster by then!

This weekend kicks off soccer season – our first game(s) are Saturday morning. My husband volunteered me to organize snacks for my son’s first game, which I suppose is only fair since I volunteered him to be the assistant coach!

Since this is my fourth soccer season, you’d think I wouldn’t stress myself out about what to bring. Nope. I still worry myself over which way to go – healthy snacks that parents will approve of, or sugary snacks that will be popular with the kids. The only improvement this time around is that I didn’t worry about it for as long. I got two varieties of granola bars (sugar with a bit of fiber thrown in), oranges to be cut into wedges, and drink boxes. I refuse to bake because I can’t stand to see a child take a bite of something I’ve taken the time to make and then throw it away. I take it much less personally if they reject my granola bars and oranges.

The worry that I used to waste on soccer snacks has however bled into my children’s school lunches. Their school does not have a cafeteria, everyone has to bring their lunch. Generally speaking, I like that situation because at least I can send them something worthwhile. It does present some challenges on a practical level though because my son has two snack periods and my daughter, who has a longer day, has three. They are both very good eaters so I end up having to pack what amounts to a picnic for each child each and every school day.

Believe it or not, I’m not always at my best at 6am when I have to pack these lunches and I’ve gotten into a rut with packing the same cheese / PB&J sandwiches, a piece of fruit / sliced veggies, and a muffin / granola bar / cookie every day. Even children, who tend to like to eat the same things all the time, get tired of things after a couple of years of the same old things. So I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit.

I bought some small cheese pizzas from a local bakery to take the place of a sandwich, and also bought some “fancy” sandwich rolls. The cheese might be the same, but a change of bread shape adds a little pizazz, as does a slice of tomato. Last week I got some croissants and sent them to school stuffed with smoked salmon. Hummus topped with pomegranate seeds was a hit and I’m planning to make a pasta salad this week for a change of pace. Once a week or so I give them a real thrill and toss in a bag of chips or a candy bar.

It’s only the first month of school though. We’ll see how long I can keep this up.

Overall, I don’t think they have anything to complain about. I was lucky to get cheese and crackers and maybe a Little Debbie snack cake. My son prefers spreadable goat cheese with jam. How long before he starts demanding a small carafe of wine instead of his usual juice box?

As I expected, it’s been an adjustment getting used to the time change and getting up while it’s still dark outside. I’ve had to really pull myself out of bed every morning this week by sheer force of will and responsibility. If I don’t get up, the kids miss school – incentive enough to get up and going.

This morning my son woke me up at 4am – he’d sneezed out a loose tooth and felt the need to tell me about it IMMEDIATELY. I suppose that’s a good thing as I was able to help him arrange things so that the Fairy could make a last minute stop before dawn. However, while he was able to get back to sleep, I was not. Sigh.

When I was a child and had a loose tooth, I would wiggle and worry that tooth until I got it out. It sometimes required liberal applications of Now & Later candies (a sort of taffy), biting down firmly and then pulling up fast, but I was determined to get that tooth out and cash in. My own children are strangely reluctant to pull their teeth – which in turn leads to some really odd and often inconvenient retrieval situations.

My daughter’s first loose tooth was hanging by mere strings but she refused to pull it. She ended up knocking it out with the straw of her drink during a movie – which in turn meant that I was on the floor of the theater looking for it under her seat with the flashlight on my cell phone amongst all the spilled popcorn kernels. I found it and we put it under her pillow that night – which just happened to be the same night that we were going on our summer vacation and also moving away from the United Arab Emirates forever, so it’s not at if I didn’t have other things on my mind. The Tooth Fairy paid her $1US which she was determined to spend in the Dubai airport if possible (she ended up having to wait).

Her brother helped with the removal of her second tooth, while they were playing in the bathtub. He was sticking his finger in her mouth and she was trying to bite him. She got him just as he pulled back. Ouch.

Another of her teeth fell out in the middle of the night while she was at a sleepover. The only two that didn’t actually fall out because of gravity were pulled by a dentist because they were in the way and she was too passive to pull them herself. That cost so much money that I told her that I didn’t think the Tooth Fairy paid for dentist assisted extractions! She got the next couple out on her own.

My son was much more proactive about his first tooth – he was so determined to get it out that he gave it a mighty twist and just ripped it out. The blood and pain put him off of that plan for the subsequent teeth. He is on #5 now and his new strategy is to amuse his friends by twisting the loose tooth backwards and smiling. Once he’s done that trick a few times, the tooth usually falls out. Eventually.

Between them, we’ve got a whole lot of teeth to go. I wonder how long it is until one of those teeth just goes missing entirely? Or until one of them wakes up and catches the Fairy?

How much did you get for your teeth from the Tooth Fairy? I got about $0.25 and my children get $1 or 10LE (Egyptian) but a friend recently told me that her kids get $10. I hope that my children and her children never get to talking or there is going to be trouble!!

It’s been a rough landing in Cairo this year. It’s only the second week of school and my son is already taking a mental health day.

I guess I can’t be too hard on him – he has always had a hard time settling into a new school year. Even holidays throw him off. Guess what? We have a four day weekend coming up for Eid, the end of Ramadan.

(Confession: I still have that bag of food to give away!)

I haven’t had the easiest time settling in myself. I can’t concentrate on anything, yet sitting around depresses me. Having trained myself to write for an hour at night, it’s difficult to settle down in the daytime now – which brings me back to the concentration problem. I’m doing what I can to force myself to get back into the routine and for now that means tackling all the little things that have been languishing on my “to-do” list for ages, like finally hanging up those pretty applique wall hangings I bought in the Tent Makers Souk and finally, finally seasoning the cast iron waffle iron I bought last spring. Doing these things hasn’t yet done much to alleviate my flat mental state, but at least I am getting a few things done.

A few of the things I still need to do:

Clean and season my grandmother’s cast iron stew pot (it is soaking in a vinegar solution to loosen the baked on crud even as I type)
Dye two pairs of my son’s stone colored chinos (he is incompatible with light colors so I got dark brown and olive dye)
Dye two pairs of my son’s navy school shorts (they are faded)
Catch up on my children’s scrap books
Clean off my sewing table, so I can you know, use it. (this has been languishing since we moved in Feb!)

All this in addition to the usual daily chores and cooking. Sigh.

Oh well, it could be worse. I might have actually gotten that part-time job I applied for at the children’s school…that would have been three days a week right down the drain…

My poor son is the victim of his birth order and my thrifty nature. If I can get a little more use out of something by handing it down to him when his sister is done with it, I will. I’ve saved untold amounts of money from the fact that until recently my daughter was the ultimate tomboy.

The Christmas my daughter was three, Santa brought her a pretty red Huffy bike with white wall tires and chrome fenders. It was a nice sturdy bike with a pedal brake, which is much easier for a child to learn to use and not all that easy to find (not that I would know since Santa brought this one) When she outgrew it and got a new bike, I handed it down to my son, in spite of the fact that it was a “girl bike” with a downward sloping bar. I figured that was only in his favor – he is a wild boy on a bike and what engineering genius thought it was a better idea for a man to have a high crossbar anyway??

Just before my summer vacation, my son’s red bike got a flat. We tried to patch it but the tube was a loss. So were the tires – and since my daughter is now ten and those tires never gave us an ounce of trouble in SEVEN YEARS I could hardly complain. I ordered a couple of thorn resistant tubes and new tires to pick up in the US and bring back.

In the meantime, my son grew taller of course. He’s almost too big for that wonderful red bike now. He rode his sister’s larger bike recently and it looked much more size appropriate. I had thought of getting him a new bike for his birthday, and I may still, but while every toy store in town has a selection of bicycles most of them are total crap – you wouldn’t believe how many of those locally available bikes I’ve seen people buy and throw away within a year. And most have hand brakes besides.

A good friend of mine who left this summer also left two bikes behind at the building where we were neighbors before I moved in February. Her son had the same kind of Huffy bike my daughter has, with a pedal brake, so I decided to go and take a look at it, with the idea that maybe it could serve as a stop-gap for my son while I look around for a good bike in the meantime.

My friend’s son is a wild man and he rode that bike hard. Extremely hard. I knew that when I went to see it, but I figured that if it could survive my friend’s son (who was also a close friend of my son) that it must be decently constructed. That other boy makes my son look almost sedate!

The bike had a torn up seat (which it turns out was a replacement that had previously been on my son’s toddler bike), was missing its hand grips and one pedal. But since it was overall in okay condition in spite of the rough treatment it received, I decided that I could make it work. The bike is black and neon green. Now it’s a Frankenstein bike. We cannibalized a few bikes destined for the junk man and replaced the seat with a red and black one and took a purple pedal off of my son’s toddler bike. I’ll have to hunt down some hand grips and also get a new tube for the flat tire and a couple of matching pedals if I can find them, but otherwise, it’s good to go.

Lucky for me, my son doesn’t care about the hodge podge of mismatched parts – he is thrilled with his “new” bike. He’ll be even happier when I get that tire fixed…