Jenyfer Matthews

I’ve been thinking on and off about movies we can watch for family movie nights. Usually this involves thinking about movies I watched and enjoyed as a child. Let’s face it – movies made in the 1980s were in general much tamer than movies made today. I don’t always remember them in minute detail but they are usually safe choices in terms of violence, language, and sexual content.

One movie I watched repeatedly was Gremlins. I really liked that movie – the Mogwai was so cute and it wasn’t his fault that his new owner Billy accidentally broke the how to “rules” of how to care for him and nearly destroyed his entire town. As I remember it, the movie was funny and scary both and there was a tremendous sense of relief when it all ended well.

I have no idea how the movie has aged since 1984 but given how easily spooked my daughter is, I doubt that she would enjoy it. I think it might even scare my son – he was spooked a couple of years ago by the music Peter and the Wolf and has only recently consented to go upstairs by himself! If the movie itself wasn’t enough to give them bad dreams, let’s do a little comparison. Here are two stuffed animals my daughter has in her room:

Cute, right? Now look at the Mogwai:

Am I the only one who sees the similarities – particularly the big eyes and cuddliness. I’m sure she’d like the Mogwai just fine, until he spawns this:

If I can see the similarity between her cute little animals and the Mogwai, surely she would make the leap from there on to the Gremlins. She would probably never sleep again and I’d be escorting my son up and down the stairs to his room until he’s 10!

I am planning to rent them a movie to keep them occupied upstairs during my birthday party tomorrow, but it will probably be animated!

On the rare evenings when we have no place we need to dash off to and are all at home together, I like to have a family movie night – preferably with a take-out dinner of some kind. It’s a nice way to spend an evening, especially since the children still think of it as a treat to spend time with us, but it isn’t always so easy to find a movie that we will all enjoy.

I don’t mind watching the more recent Pixar / Disney movies, but my husband isn’t as enthusiastic about those as the children are. We’ve watched some non-animated PG movies with mixed results – I did not think the original The Karate Kid held up well over time and as a result was painful to watch, though the children seemed not to notice. The new updated The Karate Kid with Jaden Smith wasn’t much better – too obviously politically correct for my taste (which I could have ignored if the acting had been better). We tried Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull middle of last week. I liked it fine, though not as much as the earlier ones, but not only did my daughter find it too scary, it’s amazing just how much historical and political context you need to bring to those movies before you can really understand what is going on. I’ll wait on the others in that series until they are a little older. We also watched The Goonies which is basically Indiana Jones for kids and that went down a bit better for all of us. It is tough to find a movie my daughter doesn’t find scary however – she even walked out on The Princess Bride because she was scared of the “rodents of unusual size” and the sword fighting!

Still, we’d like the kids to be exposed to more than just sanitized output of Disney – the best stories do have an element of suspense or danger after all – so once in a while we pick something the children would never choose on their own. This weekend it was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce (1939). I actually prefer the series with Jeremy Brett but this particular version has an innocent and goofy quality that we thought might appeal more to the children.

Overall, the plot and character development in this version was simple enough for the children to follow. In this particular episode, Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty are pitted against each other. In the beginning of the movie Professor Moriarty has just been acquitted of murder and lets Holmes know that he has big plans to commit a crime that will go down in history, right under Holmes’ nose. Then, when Professor Moriarty returns home from the courthouse, he gives his house servant a bad time because one of his plants has withered and died while he was in jail – a very minor scene just to show how nasty he can be about even small things.

Toward the end of the movie, Holmes and Dr. Watson break into Professor Moriarty’s house by way of his greenhouse. As Holmes and Watson are snooping around, trying to figure out what Professor Moriarty is up to, my son says, “They should kill all his plants! That would really make him mad!” My son said this in all earnestness but my husband and I couldn’t help but laugh. To think that my son remembered such a small detail from the beginning of the movie and also that he thought killing the plants would be an appropriate course of action!

My daughter’s verdict? Though this particular version of the movie portrays Dr. Watson as a bumbling clown which lowers the suspense element a good bit, my daughter still thought that it was too scary!

Many people decide to start the new year with resolutions to get fit, exercise and eat right – so why are we preventing our children from doing the same things?

I admit it: I don’t read or watch the news. Most of it is worthless anyway and the really newsworthy items filter back to me eventually. (It’s a good system actually) This is probably old news to many of you, but it recently came to my attention that there are cities in the US that are banning sledding, at least in public areas.

This didn’t surprise me actually, but it did make me sad. I can remember when I was 3 or 4, our house sat on the top of a fairly steep hill, at the bottom of which was a busy street and a T intersection. I spent many hours racing down that hill, skidding to a stop at the last minute with my feet, just short of the street. Talk about a rush! I’m not saying that situation was ideal or that kids should be allowed to sled out into traffic, but children shouldn’t be denied the pleasures of winter snow play because parents aren’t willing or available to supervise them.

The first time I noticed this sort of legislation, it was merry-go-rounds in playgrounds. Many of the parks in Dubai included them while most in the US do not. (Of course many of the parks in Dubai also include broken equipment and jagged posts but I digress) I suppose some children fell while running to get them going or fell / jumped off while they were spinning and hurt themselves so someone, somewhere decided merry-go-rounds were too big a risk and had to go. I don’t doubt that there have been many broken limbs and stitches caused by merry-go-rounds, but using that sort of logic what about stair railings? How many children have been hurt sliding down a railing and flying off at the bottom? Should we do away with railings, essentially a safety feature, because a few goofy kids used them in a way not intended and got hurt?

For that matter what about trees? The son of a friend of mine recently fell out of a tree in his backyard and gashed himself behind the ear on the way down and required stitches. Should we cut down all the trees to prevent accidents like this in the future? Trees clean the air, give homes to birds, and provide us with oxygen but isn’t protecting our children more important?

Statistically most accidents happen at home, in the bathroom. Shall we do away with those too? Children get hurt, even under supervision. Life’s a risk.

Dig deeper and much of the problem comes back to lawsuits. Too many people see their own bad luck at getting hurt as a get-rich-quick scheme, but until the court system in the US stops wasting time listening to people trying to blame other people for their own actions and consequences, laws prohibiting this and that will just keep popping up. Was the merry-go-round was so poorly maintained that it flew off its axis while spinning? Maybe there are grounds for a lawsuit. Did a child, lacking forethought, jump off mid-spin and land on a rock? Suck it up, pay the doctor, and go about your business.

But there’s a greater problem that comes out of all this legislation of our behavior: obesity. Obesity is a huge problem in the US among adults and children. Experts and wring their hands and point the finger at poor food choices and that is, at least, part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that children today aren’t allowed to do anything anymore. See above.

My children have been asking for a Wii ever since they came out, and so many of the parents I know who have given in and bought one use the argument that at least when the children play games / sports on Wii they are off the couch and moving. In Cairo, I can almost buy that argument because there are few good open spaces for children to run and play in this huge, overcrowded city and hardly anyone has a backyard. However, I do not believe that standing and waving a remote around the living room is a replacement for the real thing – and until I meet someone who mastered skiing on Wii and then successfully skied down a real mountain in real snow, I will remain unconvinced. Too many children I know who do have a Wii are still pudgy and uncoordinated.

(I don’t have a Wii because my children are active enough on a daily basis that I don’t begrudge them a little couch time.)

We think we’re protecting our children with all these rules and laws but what I fear is that we are raising a generation to not only lead a sedentary lifestyle but also to deny taking any responsibility for their own actions and behavior.

Christmas was a success in spite of my own foibles.

I had wrapped all of the boxed items earlier in the week, so all that remained to prepare on Christmas Eve was to put the last remaining items in gift bags and stuff the stockings. There were actually a few smaller items I would have liked to wrap, but I couldn’t find any of the tape.

The children were ready to go to bed from about noon on, if it meant they could hurry along the day, and they were busy planning what exactly they were going to leave for Santa. The gingerbread houses they’d made at our club didn’t survive beyond a few days of their creation but there were still a few straggly cookies left from the day they’d decorated them at our club. I felt a little bad about not having done any baking so after making us a nice dinner, I took the children to a bakery down the street to buy some sugar cookies. They didn’t mind staying up a little later to run that errand!

When we got home, the children made up cards and a plate of snacks for Santa and his reindeer before rushing off to bed.

In spite of the bakery box in the kitchen, the children put out the cookies they made at our club, along with a carrot for the reindeer. The cards they made were adorable, especially the fact that they signed their full names – just to be sure he would know exactly who they were from! The Santa with the sax? A goofy present from their tennis coach which pays annoyingly high pitched carols in digital beeping.

After the children went to bed and I was fairly sure they were asleep, I prepared the gift bags and brought all the presents downstairs to the tree. Then I started looking for the stocking stuffers. I found one bag with candy…but where was the other bag with the candy canes? I could remember having stashed it, but could not remember where! In the process of looking for the stocking stuffers, I found another bag I had hidden which contained some traditional Christmas cookies I brought back from Germany. If I had found that sooner, I wouldn’t have had to make the bakery run! Also found during the stocking stuffer search was a toy I bought for my son back in October when I was shopping for his birthday. Oops. I felt a bit like a squirrel, finding all these treasures I had hidden and then promptly forgotten about. I only wished I had found the toy earlier in the week because it would have really helped during my mad last minute shopping trip. Since using it now would only throw off the present count, it remains stashed for another occasion…

I did eventually find everything I intended for the stockings and finally fell into bed at a fairly reasonable time. (Is 1AM reasonable??)

The next morning I discovered where all the tape had gone: My son had wrapped up several rolls, along with most of the pencils in the house and a used lip balm for his father! Good thing I did a little back-up shopping for Dad!

The children seemed to enjoy the holiday in spite of my absentmindedness and lack of baking. According to them it was the best Christmas ever. That’s all I wanted for them. As happy as I am to be done with the season, I am already thinking ahead to next year and planning how to schedule baking, what we will eat, what decorations I need to gather… I have a whole year to get my act together but maybe this time I’ll keep a notebook telling me what I’ve bought and where I’ve hidden it!

I’ve gotten up early the last few mornings to wrap presents before the children wake up because I can’t seem to outlast them at night anymore!

I used to enjoy wrapping presents. I remember asking my mom to let me wrap her presents for her, which she was only too happy to let me do. It was fun to choose complementary paper and bows. It was something of an artistic process for me, creating a beautiful package, though I was never very good at tying pretty bows – I relied more on stick-on bows or curly ribbon or a combination of both.

So why is it that wrapping presents now is such a chore? One problem is perhaps the lack of inspiring wrapping paper. My mother had a huge selection as she bought a few new rolls every year. Nice quality wrapping paper is hard to get in Cairo and the few nice rolls I bought from a friend (who imported it from England) is fast dwindling. It doesn’t help that my son, in his early Christmas enthusiasm, got into my supply and used way more than was necessary to wrap his sister’s present and cut it badly besides. Sigh.

I do have pretty ribbon and tags, thanks to a friend in America who shipped them to me via a friend of hers at the US Embassy, but I’m still not much good at tying bows. Did you know that you could split wider flat ribbon and curl it with scissors? Maybe you already did, but I just learned that trick and used it to my advantage this morning.

I could of course just use gift bags; however, while convenient, bags are just not as tactile or fun. Children like to rip paper. Also, bags are hard to pile under the tree. A tree with only bags standing in groups under it just looks…odd.

I ran out of boxes to wrap just about the same time I ran out of patience and tape. I still have a few more things to wrap but those items will go in bags…

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” ?

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.

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…