Jenyfer Matthews

Just how much I have to do today, that is!

In addition to the usual housework and shopping / errand running, I have to finish up the Halloween decorations. I’ve been thinking all month about buying pumpkins but was holding off because I was warned about ravenous squirrels roaming the neighborhood who make short work of pumpkins. So I waited… and almost waited so long there weren’t any pumpkins at the store! I did finally find a few yesterday – phew! What’s Halloween without a few jack-o-lanterns?

I also foolishly volunteered to help with my son’s class party this afternoon because I somehow thought that life might be a little calmer by now! HA!

After school, it will be rush rush rush helping the kids to get themselves costumed up for their first real, genuine, American trick-or-treat. I am actually pretty excited for them. I’ve done my best to give them the Halloween experience while we were living abroad and of course they never knew what they were missing, but I did. So glad that they can have the real thing while they are both young enough to participate and old enough to remember!

Happy Halloween!

It’s been a busy week, what with upacking and sorting the bits and pieces of my life.

I started by looking through the many boxes labeled “Memorabilia” from our time capsule so I could get them out of the way before our air shipment from Cairo arrived. That was amusing.

Yes, I used to care enough about wearing makeup that I had a mirror which I could set to “daytime” and “evening” lighting. I also found a cordless curling iron and two unopened BUTANE canisters for it! 1) I don’t remember owning or using such an item (though I did have a corded curling iron I used every day); 2) storing the butane canisters was a very bad idea and I’m lucky that they didn’t combust at some point; 3) a butane curling iron seems like a very bad idea – just add hair spray and POOF!

I also found this. What is it though??

I took pottery lessons way back when and according to the stamp on the bottom, I made it. I was looking at it, wondering if I had planned to display a marble at some point, and in the process of writing this post I remembered: I made it to replace the base of a glass salt shaker that had been knocked over and broken by a cat. Since it is loose and I ran across the loose shaker top, I suppose it didn’t fit!

Our air shipment arrived this week, bright and early Tuesday morning. Fourteen boxes in all, most of which looked as if they’d been run over by a truck before being delivered. It’s amazing that none of our glassware broke, but I am still glad that the box mislabeled “sewing machine” wasn’t actually my Bernina. It was my jewelry box!

Since I was not in Cairo to (micro)manage what got packed and shipped, there were some things that showed up by air that could have come a slower method – or not at all!

Hmmm… I am guessing that I was planning to make A LOT of Christmas cookies at some point. I usually bought the sugar and brought it back because you could not find it in Cairo – unless you had a friend that worked at the Embassy. I guess I better get busy this year. I am now in possession of TWO cookie guns too so no more excuses!

Apparently I also planned to make a lot of muffins! Actually, I used to stockpile these – you couldn’t always find decent muffin papers in Cairo so when I did, I snapped them up. With what I’ve bought since I’ve been in our new house I could probably make muffins and cupcakes for a couple of years and not run out!

(Note to self: make cupcakes for soccer game tomorrow!)

What surprised me most about seeing all these things is how sad it all made me. I’m glad to have my things in one place, but my – how time marches on. One group of items is from a life I put on “hold” while I went abroad. In the time we were away my husband’s mother, uncle, and grandmother died, as did my own mother and grandmother. So many memories of them surfaced as I found old letters, photos, and objects that reminded me of them. The arrival of our air shipment contains the items of a life cut-short. We never planned to stay in Egypt forever, but we never had a chance to say a proper goodbye to Egypt and all of the people who we saw on a day to day basis either.

The only thing I can try to do now is weave the strands of my lives together and hope that the new pattern is pleasing and strong…

There was a time, long ago in what seems like an alternate life, when I set a goal to try a new recipe once a month. Since this year was one long disruption, needless to say I didn’t stick to that goal. I did cook here and there, but mostly I stuck to favorite recipes that I could make from memory. Most of the time I was happy if I could make reasonably balanced meals – new and interesting wasn’t on my agenda.

With life finally settling down, last week was one of the best ones I’ve had for cooking in a long time. I made some old favorites and tried some newer things as well, including jambalaya and cream of cauliflower soup. Those are not technically “new” recipes to me, just things I don’t make all that often.

I did try one new recipe on Saturday morning though and I am pleased to say that in spite of some initial skepticism from my children, it was a total hit – Pumpkin Pancakes.

I pretty much followed the recipe as is was except that I followed the suggestion of one of the reviewers and used 2 eggs instead of 1 and upped the spices quite a bit. The result was wonderful. The pancakes were pleasantly pumpkin-y but not too sweet. The next time I make them, I’ll likely try replacing some of the white flour with wheat germ or ground flaxseed (Ssshhh!).

The rest of my kitchen equipment is due to arrive tomorrow morning from Cairo. Once I get it all organized and put away, I won’t have any more excuses not to cook (except time!). My current goal is to cook a nice meal at least 4x a week. The other three nights? I think may need to assign those nights to the other three members of my family! It may mean Cheerios for dinner but I could live with that once in a while if it meant I didn’t have to cook every night

Sorry for the late post today, but it’s been a crazy busy weekend:

* I froze my butt off watching each child play a soccer match on Saturday morning. It was about 50F but the wind was whipping across the flat fields at about 30mph! FYI – I was not the only parent out there all bundled up like this:

(I got this coat at a church rummage sale for $2 )

* I hosted a slumber party for my son’s upcoming birthday with three little boy guests;

* As part of the party, I ate a Happy Meal at McDonald’s so that my daughter, not allowed to attend the party with the boys, could have the Halloween bucket the meal was served in;

* I stayed up later than I wanted to so that the boys could have their fun and I bit my tongue when one of them dropped his smore on my recently cleaned carpet;

(Incidentally, I am thinking of cutting off friend birthday parties at age 10!)

* I drove 2 1/2 hours one way to Toledo to meet a friend who had a BMX bike to donate to my son.

And I did all of the above while on the verge of having a major muscle spasm in my lower back from all the furniture sanding I did on Friday. Thank goodness for heated car seats…

Tomorrow is little man’s actual birthday. I’ll be making a cake and wrapping presents before I lay on the floor for a while for some back therapy.

Since I last checked in I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing – cleaning the house. There is nothing to speak of in it yet, but there is so much to do.

Like cleaning the mini-blinds. Now I know why people so often throw them away and just buy new ones instead of cleaning them. What a pain-in-the-you-know-what. It probably took me an hour per set of blinds. They look great, and I will keep up with dusting them now, but I actually hate mini-blinds and would prefer some sort of more easily cleanable fabric shade. Another day.

On the up side, in terms of my writing and current work-in-progress, all this work to settle in is giving me a better perspective for what it is like to move in to a “new”, less than perfect, house. On the down side, it is exhausting.

This week’s goal: internet / cable service and carpet cleaning. Do I know how to have fun or what?

My time hasn’t all been spent at drudgery though. My luck prevailed and I was able to get the children registered for the local recreational soccer league. I just made the deadline for late registration. I got emails telling me what teams they were on Friday night at 9pm – first game was Saturday morning at 11:30am! We got up promptly at 8am and went out to get cleats and shin guards and showed up at the field to find the coaches. The children were both excited and nervous but quickly forgot all that in the heat of the game. They both got back into the groove and made 2 goals each in their respective games. By the end of the games, everyone knew their names if they didn’t know anyone else’s!

Overall, so far I am very happy with this move. The children like their schools – my son said he didn’t want it to be the weekend because he wanted to go to school! The neighborhood is also great – three different sets of neighbors have come over to introduce themselves and offer assistance and advice on the area. One neighbor brought me a Sunday paper when I mentioned I wasn’t sure where to buy one. No one I have talked to yet has had one bad thing to say about anything which is great – and also a little eerie. I’m actually not used to living in places where the neighbors interact!

If anyone shows up on my doorstep with a pie or a jello-mold I’ll know for sure I’ve moved to the 50s…

What can I say about this week except that it’s been busy? Moving is hard work!

The children seem to be adjusting well to their new schools. My son is a very personable sort of child and he came home on the first day with a thumbs up and an “awesome”. Can’t ask for more than that. My daughter had a locker to deal with in addition to changing classes and just the general newness of middle school so she wasn’t as enthusiastic to start, but even after the second day she came home saying that each day gets better.

What a relief. I have marvelous, adaptable children.

I myself have been busy. Some days I feel like I do nothing but run around and spend money, but yesterday I finally felt like things were coming together a bit – with what we have so far anyway.

My mythical lucky horseshoe must still be at work. For one thing, my little car keeps chugging along. It seems to get louder by the day and it occasionally belches a bit of smoke from the back, but it hasn’t left me stranded anywhere on the highway with a load of stuff and two children. Lucky!

I bought a washer and dryer this week and when I got the automated message for the delivery time, wouldn’t you know it was smack dab during the time when I go to pick the children up from school. I asked the neighbor across the street to look out for the truck, but as it turned out, they arrived at the house just between my two school run trips. Lucky!

I wrote an email to the local tennis center this week and they were able to see my daughter to “rate” her the same day. I also called the soccer club about recreational soccer. I just made it – their late registration deadline is today. Lucky! (The children are wait-listed and there may not be room for them, but they can’t say I didn’t try!)

Otherwise I have been spending a lot of time cleaning cupboards, bathrooms, and floors. I am not a neat freak, but I do like things to be clean and what better time to clean things than when you don’t have anything? I talked to a moving company about getting our things out of storage and it sounds like they might be able to do the job in the next 10 days. Lucky!

Sometimes you just have to open yourself to the universe and trust that things will work out…

It was touch and go for a while, but I did it: I found a great rental house and enrolled both the children in school (starts next week!) in only three long days of running around.

The house I ended up renting I found myself on Craigslist. Craigslist is a service I have often heard of but have never used. I admit that most of what I have heard about is the funny / sketchy things / scams people post there so when I saw the house advertised there, I was somewhat skeptical. I almost didn’t inquire about it at all – the listing seemed almost too good to be true. If the house was so great, why was it on Craigslist?

I sent off an email anyway, requesting pictures.

As it turns out, the owners had only recently moved out to follow a job to Wisconsin. The house was for sale but in the meantime they were willing to rent. I made arrangements to see it and very quickly decided that it was the house we wanted.

The landlady is new to renting and was understandably every bit as skeptical about me as I was about her – and I am sure that when she listed the house she never expected to attract a refugee of the Egyptian revolution! She asked for rental references – all of mine are pre-1999! She settled for personal references. She asked for a letter confirming my husband’s employment. Done. Then she sent me an email late on the night before we were going to sign the lease whether or not I had power of attorney to sign the lease on my husband’s behalf (since he has the job, not me).

Um…no.

I spent the next hour forwarding emails to my husband asking him to print out, sign, and fax the 20+ page lease – which is a challenging enough task on a regular day in Egypt but it was also a holiday there and he wasn’t at work. I was so anxious that I might not have been able to sleep if I hadn’t also been so exhausted. If we didn’t get the house, I couldn’t go forward with getting the kids enrolled in school and I’d have to start the process over again. (N-O-O-O-O!)

For once the time difference worked in our favor and by the time I woke up the next morning, I had a confirmation that he had sent everything back to the landlady and we were all set for our morning appointment. Phew!

I got the lease and the key and went directly to the elementary school to register my son. Our luck was still in and we got to meet his teacher too – I think he is going to be in very good hands. After lunch we went to the middle school to enroll my daughter. More on that later!

Yesterday I left the children with my friend in NW Ohio and drove down to my other friend’s house in Hamilton (southern Ohio) to collect all of the things I left there before summer. My car was cram-jammed top to bottom but I got everything in there. I’ll spend the weekend sorting and prioritizing because with the children hogging up the backseat, it is going to take multiple trips to get everything moved!

I’ve put nearly 2000 miles on my car in a week. Not. Going. Anywhere. This. Weekend!

From sitting on my hands for nearly seven months to all systems GO in a few days: that’s me.

I. AM. ON. FIRE.

My husband called to tell me he’d accepted a job in Michigan last Thursday and from that moment I started planning our move. I must have sent dozens of emails over the weekend and drove up to Michigan on Monday to meet with a realtor, planning to stay three days, two nights. My hope was to find a house and, if possible, register the children for school in our chosen districts – school starts next week, September 6th.

My sister has often said that I must have a lucky horseshoe stuck up my butt (ouch!) because I almost always find lost jewelry, find things I need on sale, etc – things just seem to come together for me. I have to say that while I had hoped to find a house, even if it meant taking something not entirely wonderful for the short term, I wondered how practical it was to expect to succeed in only two days. I resigned myself to the idea that the children might start school a bit late.

The realtor showed me half a dozen houses, based on the size and school districts I specified. A couple were awesomely cool in a Mad Men way but too small for a family of four with two very active children, a couple were too small / had no yard, and a couple were just dirty and / or stinky. I was actually still considering a stinky one because it was in the school district we wanted when I went to see one final house – one that I found listed myself on craigslist.

The house was everything that the others were not: clean, well-kept, large, big yard, quiet street, the right school district, and it even has a basketball hoop in the driveway. Given what I’d seen that day, I jumped on the opportunity. I am supposed to sign the lease today and from there I will go and get the children registered in school.

I move in Monday. We’ll be camping on air mattresses until the rest of our things arrive, but we’ll be in time for school. Am I good or what?

And how is this for a lucky coincidence: the realtor took us by the elementary school I had in mind for my son and they just happened to be having a new student orientation. We walked in and had a tour, cookies, punch, and got a school pouch backpack. A nice little school and the cookies and punch really hit the spot!

I may have accomplished what I set out to do for now, but I’m not done yet: now I have to go back to Ohio and collect my things from my friend in Hamilton (near Cincinnati), then go back (come back?!) to Michigan on Monday.

I’ve put 11,000 miles on my car since March and I’m not done yet!

That’s how fast life can change.

My husband has been looking for a job back in the US since this spring. I haven’t talked about it here because it is a long, uncertain process – also, I didn’t want to jinx anything. I’m not generally a superstitious person, but why take chances?

He went for an interview at the beginning of the month that he felt went well. Then we waited, and waited some more. His summer vacation ended and he had to head back to Cairo and we still didn’t know whether or not he’d gotten the job. I didn’t know what I was going to do because I didn’t have airline tickets to go back to Cairo, but the children were going to have to start school somewhere, soon.

It wasn’t until I was driving back to Ohio, on the highway just about to arrive at my friend’s house, that my step-mother called to tell me that my husband had sent her an email saying that he had been offered and accepted the job. I finally have a course of action: we are moving to Michigan!

It’s been a long and stressful year and it will likely get a bit more stressful as we try to coordinate an international move, but at least now we have a plan. This will be the first time in a little more than a decade that all of my stuff will be in ONE place (my fascination with glassware, dishes, and purses is about to be exposed in a big way!). Exploring the contents of the storage unit we locked up and left behind in 1999 is going to be like opening a time capsule!

I started this blog in January 2007, a few months after we’d moved to Cairo and I’ve spent much of the time since sharing the things I learned about Egypt and all the fun, frustrating, and interesting experiences I had there. Now I’ll get to share the exodus.

I’ll be in Michigan this week looking for a rental house and I hope getting things set up so the children can start school on time. Wish me luck!

For anyone who cares, this is the first summer that I haven’t gained five pounds immediately upon walking through the door at my father and step-mother’s house. I guess I teased my step-mother publicly on my blog enough – she’s had the usual ice cream bars and cookies around but hasn’t made any special desserts to tempt us all. The baggy jeans I left here last summer are a bit too bit. She did tell me to remind her to make a blueberry pie this weekend however so there’s always time to fall off the wagon I guess.

I’ve had lots of people asking me what we will be doing next, after our summer vacation is done. Short answer: I don’t know. My husband is still working on finding a new job in America and what I do will depend on how that works out. If he gets one, we’ll all stay; if he doesn’t then we’ll have to quickly regroup and decide out next move. I’d like to know more for the sake of the children than myself, but right now I’m doing my best not to think about it too much – I’ve had more than enough stress in my life in the last few months without stewing about situations I have no control over.

In the meantime, we’ve all just been hanging out and doing the things you do in the summer in the north woods: skipping stones on the lake, hiking, and berry picking. Not a bad way to pass the time actually…