Jenyfer Matthews

Just in case you thought I am only taking pictures of foxes and other wildlife, allow me a moment to brag on my daughter. She played her very first tennis tournament last week and won the girls under 12s category.

I admit that I was on pins and needles much of the time. Since it was her first tournament, I wanted so much for her to play well and have a good experience. She lost to a girl she should have defeated in her first match in the under 14s category and was very upset about it, so it was doubly thrilling to see her come back so strong in her second match in the under 12s category.

Putting it in perspective, there was only one other girl in her category she had to beat, but they were both very good players. They had to play the best 2 of 3 sets. My daughter won the first set in a tie breaker and took the second set easily.

Considering that it was her first tournament, she was playing on a hard court (rather than clay, which is her usual surface) in front of an audience, and she came back after a defeat, I was tremendously proud of her for doing so well even if she did only have to play one opponent. She won a $20 gift certificate to a local store for her achievement.

Her first prize money

This is what happens when mommy is too sick and tired to play with the children on a holiday weekend and allows them to play with her digital camera instead of taking them out.

They take pictures of the television.

They also took pictures of each other, but frankly, most of these were better.

See what I mean?

I’m going to need a reprieve on the new-recipe-a-month resolution thing. Pain and illness are both excellent appetite suppressants and no inspiration for cooking for others. I’ll try to do TWO in June as soon as I’m up to speed again. We’ll see how that works out…

My son is only seven, in grade two in the British system. Every year since he’s started school his teachers have expressed concern about his handwriting and his ability to “express his thoughts” in writing. When I tried once to respond to this concern by saying I thought it was quite common for little boys to have poor handwriting and that we were practicing writing his name at home, his teacher at the time gave me a serious look and said “you did give him a really long name.” As if handwriting should have been on my mind when I chose his name!

Of course, things have only progressed as he’s moved up through the grades. His handwriting hasn’t improved much, nor has his spelling, and asking him to sit down and write a couple of sentences for homework is pure torture – for both of us. This week’s assignment: Imagine a new planet where (pick a scenario) time runs backward, there is no day or night, people are tiny, etc and then explain how life is from when you wake up in the morning to when you go to sleep at night. What things are easier? What things are more difficult?

I know adults who would have trouble coming up with a decent response to such an assignment let alone a seven year old boy who’d rather be doing just about anything else but sitting still and writing an essay after a long day spent at school sitting still and doing work.

What makes it all worse is that I know my son could do it if he wanted to. He has the fine motor skills to trace detailed pictures and to color elaborate illustrations inside the lines. There are even times when he will sit down with a notebook and write himself a story out of his head, complete with illustrations. What’s the difference? Motivation. He wants to do his thing, not theirs. I get that – I can’t write someone else’s story ideas either. I, however, was always a good student and did my assignments well to please my teacher if nothing else. Hard to know how to instill that desire in my own children.

Every year I tell myself that I’ll work with the children during the summer to improve the subject they are having the most difficulty with: math for my daughter and writing for my son. Then by the end of the school year I’m so tired and fed up with fighting with them both to get through the required school work that I let it slide… for the whole summer. When will *I* learn?

As we come up to the last month of school and the end of the year, I’m dreading the next parent teacher conference where I’ll have to sit and nod while the teachers tell me about my son’s failure to perform up to their (in my opinion, ridiculous) standards in writing and how my daughter knows the math but doesn’t test well. Blah blah blah. Both of these things are well documented already. Surprise me and tell me something new, please.

Five weeks of school left and counting…

I had planned to write a thoughtful book review of The Kite Runner for today, but what with birthday party planning, manic quilting, and the usual daily chores it didn’t happen. I thought I might even be able to write it up this morning but not only didn’t I have any coherent thoughts in my head, other things got in the way.

6am – 7:30am: Get up, get the children up and ready for school
8am: Remember NOT to eat breakfast or have my morning tea because of a physical with blood work at 2pm
9am: Tennis lesson
10am: Buy birthday present for party my daughter is attending Thursday after school
11am: One hour commute to campus (where physical will take place)
12noon: Arrive campus, finally get my campus ID
2pm: Physical
3pm: SNACK
4pm: Commute one hour home
5pm: Homework, dinner
6:30pm: Yoga class (think I’ll actually make it???)

The plans for the dance party are coming together well – I have most of the food, a play list for the dancing, and a disco ball. Not making a cake – we’re doing build-your-own-sundaes. I’m supplying the space, the music, and the sugar. The children will have to supply the fun!

I haven’t been in a great mood this week. Not sure what is up exactly – at least some of it is hormones and some of it is the hot weather. The rest? I think it boils down to time.

For me, there is always a balance between finding time to get all that needs to be done accomplished and finding time for me. If I am too busy, I get stressed out. If I don’t have enough to do, I get antsy and find myself merely killing time rather than enjoying the moment which is depressing. I like to feel productive, BUT if I have too many things that are in service to other people, I start to feel resentful. If I let too many things slide in order to make more “me-time” then I feel guilty.

But wait! There’s more.

If I have to spend too much time out and about socializing, I start to feel frazzled. But if I spend too much time alone, I feel flat.

Obviously, it’s a fairly delicate balancing act on a good day – throw some hormones in there and a couple of smart-mouthed children and I guess I have the answer to why this week has been less than satisfying for me so far.

Good thing I’m going to beach on Friday…

I never participated in sports as a kid. First because the Catholic school I attended until eight grade didn’t even have PE class. Later, I was much too self-conscious to admit that I didn’t know how to play various games which was necessary before I could actually learn to play anything.

What it boils down to is that if I can’t be sure I’ll do something well, I just won’t do it at all. Instead of sports, I concentrated on my school work and was on the honor roll rather than a team.

Never in my wildest imagination did I ever expect to have two such sports-gifted children. They are amazing to watch. And after two years of watching them play tennis and making it look easy, I was sucked in to my own lessons at the suggestion of a friend.

I really ought to have known better.

It’s not that I’m bad at it. I’m okay for a beginner, even if it isn’t as easy as the children make it look. It’s that I let myself get intensely competitive about the whole thing. I want to be the best. Except why does it matter? It’s not as if I’m ever going to be a champion tennis player at my age. I’m an adult and supposed to be more mature than that, so why can’t I just relax and have fun with it instead of channeling my inner McEnroe?

The experience has given me new insight into my children’s mentality with their own tennis lessons, and not always in a good or comfortable way. Funny to think that I was on the right track as a young person by just avoiding the whole thing…

My son was watching me make a baby quilt quite a while back and complained that I “never make him anything”. He was obviously exaggerating, but looked so sad that how could I not give in? So I started on a pattern I’d had for a quite a long time and just never gotten around to making.

In my hurry-scurry last week to take care of all the loose ends before my trip, I actually managed to finish the turtle quilt. Since I hand quilted it, I also got to watch nearly three seasons of House in the process. Win win

(click image to enlarge)

I love the colorful batik fish border fabric! I used the extra fabric to make him a matching pillow case.

If you look closely, you can see the fish shapes I stitched into the open spaces.

I am as pleased with this quilt as the little man is. It’s been a long time since I made such a pretty quilt and actually kept it!

Where I hear to what lengths other parents have gone to entertain their children during school holidays, I sometimes feel a little guilty that I don’t try a little harder myself. Not having a car limits us, but I *could* make arrangements if I really wanted to. So that’s what I did this last week of their school holiday. A friend and I arranged for a van from her husband’s company and we took all of our children ice skating at a mall in another part of Cairo called Nasr City.

It’s not that far to Nasr City but once we got on the road I was immediately reminded why I don’t do such things more often – it took us a little more than an hour to get to the mall with all the (scary) traffic on the roads. The mall itself looked fairly nice – and oddly enough was decorated for Christmas. There was even a large Christmas tree right in the middle of the ice rink (which itself was in the middle of the mall) I didn’t have any time to look around however – the van needed to be back and available for employee transport by 4pm. Once we finally arrived, the children had an hour to skate before we had to jump back in the van and drive the hour back home.

But what a fun hour it was. The children had an absolute blast. They started out hanging on the rail around the rink and by the end were playing ice tag. Our time passed much, much too quickly. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t take so long to get back there. But since it does, I think next time I’ll arrange our transport a bit differently so we have the option to stay a bit longer if we wish. Skate, lunch, skate some more.

Any maybe next time I won’t have twisted my ankle the week before and will be able to join them!

The children’s tennis coach is a funny guy. One of his main objectives with younger children is to make them “love tennis” and to achieve this, he rewards them with various things. Once in a while he comes up with something practical like a tennis bag or wrist bands but most of the time he gives them candy and inexpensive stuffed animals that make LOUD animal noises and have creepy flashing eyes.

This week, the coach had an impromptu mini-tournament in my son’s group. Since my son won 4 of his 4 games, he was #1 in the tournament and won the grand prize, to be given to his mother.

(click image to enlarge – if necessary!)

As you can see, he stuck to the animal theme! They are at least a size too big for me and the sole is pretty insubstantial and squashy so my foot is always slipping off to one side – not to mention that the bottom is sort of sticky and loud when I walk.

I have a couple of nice pairs of slippers from L.L. Bean and Cabelas, but the little man is so proud I just have to wear these for a while, even if they make my feet sweat.

I suppose it could be worse – at least I can make an argument for not wearing them in public!

I hadn’t been out of the house a whole lot for any length of time while tending to the sick boy, so let me tell you it was a nice change of pace to go to my daughter’s tennis lesson Wednesday night. Only when I got home again I noticed a distinct smell. Not a rotten smell, just sort of musty. I am fairly sensitive to smells – I don’t like strong fragrances and avoid detergents and paper products with scents – so this smell, mild as it was, was disturbing to say the least.

I had been parked in front of my computer working on various writing tasks for most of the week, but yesterday I spent the morning cleaning. I had to get rid of the mysterious funk.

I went a bit above and beyond my norm. I changed my sheets and washed the shower curtain. I sprinkled baking soda on the carpets – and if you knew how much that stuff costs here, you would know how drastic a measure that was. I bring it back in my suitcases and hoard it. (I was really annoyed when I returned one summer and found that my former housekeeper had taken it upon herself to open a box in my spice cabinet to absorb odors. What odor? It’s a spice cabinet!)

I dusted and vacuumed and opened the windows briefly. Opening the windows in Cairo is a mixed bag. The air isn’t all that fresh and leaving them open for any length of time just undoes the dusting and vacuuming in record time. The last thing I did was light a scented candle – drastic measure indeed. I love candles but really can’t be trusted with them. I get distracted and leave them unattended. I’ve had a few minor fires start as a result of unattended pillar candles. This one was in a jar so it was less of a hazard.

Now it smells of “sweet pea” in here, which is a vast improvement. And my floors are clean, for now.

My children decided the time had come to make their Dear Santa Christmas lists. They were a few hours too late as I had already hit the “submit order” button at Amazon, but I left them to it to see what they came up with and whether anything on their list matched what I had chosen.

My Son:

-a pet turtle
-spiderman toy
-a big tent
-cannonbolt (ben 10)
-guitar
-”trumpit”
-sunglasses
-scooby doo 3 (does not exist!)
-a “bezuca”
-police sketchers (shoes)
-lego fire station
-lego star wars
-American football helmet and clothes

My Daughter:

-a big tent
-police sketchers
-a ds game
-a gameboy (why??? she just got a Nintendo DS for her birthday!)
-Shrek movies
-goal keeper gloves
-a gun
-a “trumpit”
-sunglasses
-Phineas and Ferb collection
-American football helmet and clothes

Okay, some of these I can work with, but in my house Santa does not give pets as presents and where exactly they thing they are each going to pitch a “big tent” is a mystery to me. And a bazooka? When I questioned that one, I got an eyeroll and the answer “just a toy one.” Like that was what I needed clarification on!

I have already done some shopping and gotten them some things they didn’t even know they wanted. Tell me – what kid wouldn’t want night vision binoculars???

Now I have to find a way to “post” the letters while secretly keeping them for posterity…