Jenyfer Matthews

It’s the end of the school year and in spite of the fact that my children will be under foot for two months asking me for snacks or entertainment, I’m kind of looking forward to the end of the year. It’s not as if I’m getting any peace and quiet with all the events going on.

Today I had to dash out early to pick up some supplies for my daughter’s birthday party which is tomorrow after school. Then it was on to my quilt group – last meeting was today – and from there to a long overdue dental appointment. It was my first visit to a dentist in Egypt. They passed my test so the children will go their first week of summer vacation In about an hour I’ll be heading up to school for end of year teacher meetings to discuss the children’s progress (or lack of) this school year. I’m sure we’ll be given homework for summer as well.

Tomorrow afternoon is DD’s 8th birthday party. Her whole class was invited (24) and so far I’ve only had one child decline. Two of her classmates are pairs of twins so that’s a +2 situation and a few are bringing siblings…suffice it to say I have no idea how many children will actually attend! I’m going to be spending the morning making cupcakes (48) and making finger sandwiches and filling party bags. I have so much stuff for the pinata that I have my doubts that we’ll even be able to hang it!

Birthday parties are a lot of work, but the advantage of this one is that it is at the school – they do the clean-up and it can only last 2 hours. And it won’t disrupt my weekend – which is full of (you guessed it) tennis lessons.

But in spite of all these things going on, I am happy to report that I have indeed finished the first draft of my latest project. It feels good…and not. Because now I have to turn back to page one and re-read it all and do some editing. And some adding. As usual, my word count is a little low – I need to add 10K. That sounds like a lot but then I realized it really only amounted to 500 words a chapter for each 20 chapters. That’s totally doable. (right??)

Party pictures Thursday!

Had a bit of excitement last night. An electrical transformer / fuse thingy next door blew up somewhere around 2am. I peeked out of the window and saw a few men running around what looked like a small bonfire that was popping and snapping. In my sleepy fog, I thought that might have been just a coincidence – perhaps they were just burning stuff or performing a bizarre ritual. This morning, there is a very large generator parked in the street hooked into the charred remains of the fire last night. Guess it was no coincidence.

Since I assume at some point they will have to unhook the generator to do some repair work, I’ve been scurrying around this morning, trying to get my laundry and dishes done before they pull the plug. When the electricity goes, so does the water!

Had a different sort of excitement over the weekend. My daughter’s tennis coach came to me to tell me that my daughter would be a champion one day. Now, it’s not news to me that she is a talented athlete. She could run and kick a soccer ball before she could speak very well, and every coach she’s ever had has praised her skills to me. But most of her coaches to date have been volunteer sports enthusiast dads. Her tennis coach is a professional who has coached many junior champions in Egypt. His own children are in the US on full tennis scholarships. So when he tells me that my daughter has the potential to be a champion as well, I pay attention.

But I also worry. (What do you want? It’s what I do.)

My husband and I have been back and forth over how best to balance pushing our children to pursue and develop their talents and not becoming pushy. It’s a fine line. At the age of 7, my daughter isn’t the best judge of what she should do with her life. She likes to play a lot of different sports and I don’t want to stifle that in her, but to really excel she’s going to have to focus. If I let her go her own way, she might never really develop her full potential. If I gave in to her every complaint and sulky moment, she might one day blame me for NOT pushing her more.

At the moment I’m trying hard to balance birthday parties and free play downtime with lessons and dedication. It’s not always easy.

The tennis coach’s approach is much simpler: Make them love tennis. In addition to praise, he uses bribery. This week that involved lots and lots of cookies.

I’m wearing red, white & blue and I have the Rice Krispie Treats ready to go. Today is international day at the school – the day my daughter has been agonizing over for two weeks now – and all because she couldn’t decide what to wear.

It’s a shame that American doesn’t really have a national dress – no lederhosen, no sari, no galabiya. Some of the other children look so exotic when they come to school in their embroidered tunics and pillbox hats. But unless I’m going to dress her up like a Pilgrim or maybe Davy Crockett, it’s pretty much just jeans and a t-shirt for good old USA.

(She wanted to dress hip-hop but I put the kibosh on that!)

She made her final decision last night – her baseball jersey and her plaid flannel pants. I bit my tongue – mostly because I knew it wasn’t really her final decision. Today she walked out of the door wearing long gray soccer shorts and a gray Nevada t-shirt decorated with wild ponies. I thought I was home free until I noticed that Sunday is the end of year party at school and is once again a non-uniform day. No theme this time, but I see lots of angst in my weekend as she tries to decide what to wear.

It’s going to be a busy weekend for me. Baseball is finished for the season but there are still tennis lessons for the month of June and there are two birthday parties this weekend. Plus I have to design a Greek tunic and leafy crown for Greek Day next week (heaven help me!) I may not be around much, but don’t despair. Marianne Stephens will be here over the weekend with her Cerridwen Press book Gone to the Dogs.

What are your weekend plans?

I’m back home again after a fantastic weekend away with friends eating good food, drinking wonderful wine, shopping, and talking talking talking. It was only three days and four nights but I feel like I was gone much longer. The power nap of vacations!

But now it’s back to real life. Hubby managed to keep the house intact and the children alive (though I heard much complaining about the quality of the school lunches he packed for them!) but the house? Let’s just say I’m going to spend my day grocery shopping and doing laundry. A small price to pay in the grand scheme I suppose, and not totally unexpected.

But it’s not just grocery shopping that is going to keep me hopping, but the children’s school and social life. My phone started ringing while I was in the taxi on the way home from the airport – another mom inviting my son on a play date after school today. Which is great because then I’ll have solo time with my daughter to catch up on three days of neglected homework! Tonight is the last meeting of my book club for the year. I read this month’s selection on the plane and liked it pretty well. Should make for an interesting discussion. And Thursday is International Day at the school. I’ll be making Rice Krispie treats and handing out hot dogs at the food tasting stall.

The glamorous life of an author!

What’s on your agenda this week?

moar funny pictures

My children’s school is having International Day next week. Do other schools do this? Basically it is a day where the children can go in dressed in their national dress and the mothers are strong armed into cooking lunch for all the children at school. I will be working the American stall handing out hot dogs and chocolate chip cookies among other things next Thursday. My contribution (other than my presence) will be Rice Krispie Treats.

But it is the national dress thing that has got my daughter in a tizzy. What to wear, what to wear?! There is no true national dress of America unless you count blue jeans and a t-shirt. I suggested her baseball jersey, jeans and baseball hat – which is pretty much her off-duty uniform anyway. That wasn’t good enough though because it wasn’t her idea.

Mommy’s (and Daddy’s) word wasn’t enough. She actually wanted to research America so she could get ideas (a ploy to get on the computer!)

As an alternative, I suggested she could dress in red, white and blue. She then went with jeans, a white Gap t-shirt and a red baseball hat – a decision which lasted a nanosecond I think. Then she announced she wanted to be a Canadian hunter, an outfit which consists of a Canada t-shirt printed with black bears and green and navy plaid flannel pants. Not sure how wearing her pajamas to school qualifies as a national dress, but whatever.

I am going away for a the weekend to visit some friends so I’ll have a break from listening to her obsess over it. I can’t wait! Every mommy needs a little downtime sometimes. There is only one month left of school and then they’ll be my shadows until the end of August. Gotta have some me-time while I can!

And as if the International day angst wasn’t enough, her grade is having a Greek day shortly as well. I have to construct her a Greek tunic and send in a bowl of olives. She’s not happy about the tunic as it is too close to a dress for her taste, nor am I since outside of Halloween I don’t relish costume design. And she did requested an olive wreath crown as well! I’m sure the teachers are getting a big laugh out of all this.

Don’t forget to stop by over the weekend. Author Sandra Cox will be here to give a taste of the books in her Amulet series.

Starting a post this way is going to make me feel and sound really old, but…

Since when did Legos go from being a toy consisting of a bag / box of various sizes of bricks limited only by the imagination of the person playing with them to being an elaborate puzzle that results in the same object each time? A puzzle that requires a map?

I remember having a flat base to which we could stick the Lego, and various other brick sizes. I would most often make houses, but I *could* make other things as the whim struck me. Modern day Lego kids seem fairly limited – and frustrating – to me. What do you do if one of the million of tiny pieces goes astray? (most often to be found in your instep as you are walking innocently past to the kitchen for a snack)

Okay. Here it is. Now what?

Another dimension of modern Lego is Lego Digital Design, a computer program in which children can design what they want to make on the computer and then send the plans in to Lego. Lego will then send the child a kit to make the toy they designed. For a price.

I have done what I can to keep my own children ignorant of this scheme. I don’t feel guilting in the least. They seem perfectly happy with the sticks and rocks in the backyard…

Wishing you all a good weekend. Author Sam Cheever will be here this weekend with an interview of the heroine of her ‘Tween series. Stop by and say hello!

If I haven’t mentioned if before, my daughter is something of a handful. She’s seven going on seventeen. Her moods will switch on a dime and though she is an extreme tom-boy, most of her angst seems to revolve around clothes.

You’d think that being a tom-boy would make things easy – shorts and sloppy t-shirt, right? Right…and wrong. It can’t just be any t-shirt. It has to be just the right t-shirt. She will spend a half an hour trying on different shirts, inspect herself in her bedroom mirror, reject and toss them back in her closet and try again. If I don’t catch her, an hour later the process will start again.

She’s already planning on what she will wear on the plane when we travel in July.

You also might think that wearing a uniform to school would make life easier. Not with my daughter. She creates problems out of nothing. Her uniform is simple: navy blue skirt, blue and white striped button shirt, white socks, black or blue shoes. (I said it was simple, not attractive)

Her first item of contention this year was her shoes. I spent hours this summer finding the right black school shoes. I decided against the Mary Jane style because sand gets inside from the top and the insides get ground to pieces as they play. I went with loafers. I heard no end of complaining about how the heel on the loafers was too high (it wasn’t) and how she couldn’t run in them (she could, I saw her do it)

She was so determined not to wear those shoes to school she started to sneak her tennis shoes in her school bag and change shoes on the bus. I never have known except that she kept arriving home in tennis shoes. No amount of fussing at her could curb this behavior. So I told her that if she did it and got in trouble for it, it was on her head.

She stopped. The fact that I also bought her a pair of sporty Mary Jane’s might have helped too.

Now she’s decided she doesn’t like her navy blue skirt. This morning she went so far as to hide it and claim she couldn’t find it. I knew she hid it because I put it out for her myself just moments before it disappeared. She finally “found it” crumpled up in a corner of her closet. That girl does keep me on my toes.

And also busy shopping for more acceptable forms of uniform wear. I’m currently trying to find a navy skort which she might like better. But if I do, what then? Will she start “losing” her shirts??

(And it makes me almost look forward to the upcoming school holiday!!)

I didn’t swim yesterday but I went this morning. I could have gone in the afternoon when I take the kids to their tennis lessons but not only will the pool be full of children at play but swimming in the afternoon interferes with cocktail hour.

It’s my week to provide snacks after the weekly baseball game. I hate snack duty. Not because it’s really all that big a deal but because, being me, I always agonize over what to bring.

My problem lies in the conflict between crowd pleasing and health consciousness. The children would love it if I brought cheetos and chocolate bars but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Since it’s an athletic event that takes place in the morning, I feel obligated to provide something at least marginally healthy.

If only all the moms felt that way then my angst would be considerably less. Last year my bananas were pitted against the popsicles the other team mom brought. What do you think was more popular with the children? My team defected in droves in favor of her popsicles.

I had thought of making the recipe I posted yesterday – who doesn’t like chocolate muffins? I could justify those as healthy since they are pumpkin smugglers. Pumpkin is good for you. Problem is that the local grocery stores don’t stock pumpkin outside of the holidays.

I could bake something else but you know how kids can be – picky picky picky. I know you can’t always please everyone, but it really ticks me off to see someone take a bite of something I’ve taken the time to bake and waste it. So instead I’m taking the easy way out.

Watermelon slices, granola bars, and juice boxes. Not exactly popsicles but my conscience will be clear.

Little league season has started in Cairo. And as much as I love watching the children play baseball, signing two children up means two more evenings a week of scheduled activities (they have tennis three other evenings) Five evenings a week when I’m not home when I would ordinarily be cooking dinner. Five evenings a week when we all come home ravenous and in no mood to wait more than a nanosecond before dinner is served.

I’m sure there are people out there who love to cook. Myself, I love to eat good food – I cook only out of necessity. All of these activities have forced me to become very organized and meal-plan focused – lest we fall into a rut of eating a rotation of my favorite fall back meals.

When I’m pressed for time / creatively tapped / brain dead / lazy, I have a few easy fall back meals that I can make in a pinch. Pizza made with pita bread as a crust is one of them. It’s great – just spread sauce, toss on a few pepper strips (if you can be bothered to wash and cut them up!), sprinkle on cheese and voila! Ten minutes later you have a meal.

Burritos is another favorite. I almost always have tortillas in the freezer and what’s easier than opening and warming up a can of beans? It feels almost gourmet if we happen to have any sour cream around or the fresh salsa I’ve been making with our homegrown cherry tomatoes. Bliss.

Frozen food is the last resort.

Since little league only started this week, so far I’m still on top of things. I made a pot of chili yesterday afternoon which we ate when we arrived home. They have tennis for the next three evenings. It’s only 8:30am Cairo time and I’m already thinking about what to make for dinner. I’m considering macaroni for the children. It’s Chinese takeout night for hubby and me.

What are your favorite go-to meals? Little league lasts eight weeks – I need all the help I can get!