Jenyfer Matthews

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…

I’m happy to report that the little man is on the mend. I am going to keep him home for a few more days just to ensure that no complications arise. He has a rather nasty sounding cough I’d just as soon not develop into anything else.

Little did I know exactly how many children were out sick at their school. No one is talking about it and they certainly aren’t using the “f” word to describe the illness for fear of the government swooping down to whisk your child away to be quarantined in one of the local hospitals, a horrifying thought if ever there was one. What better place to pick up a secondary infection than in a hospital full of really sick people? Also, no one wants to give the government the excuse to shut down the schools again, even if this might be an appropriate time to do so.

All this drama reminded me of the winter I was in eighth grade and there was a nasty bug going around. I can’t honestly remember what the bug was because I never caught it, but I do remember that at least a third of the class was absent on any given day for a period of about two weeks. Why didn’t I catch it? Who knows. I can’t imagine that my hand washing habits were so stellar and there were no hand gels back then. My homeroom teacher, a mentally unbalanced nun, had her theory though: she advised no one to play with me because obviously since I hadn’t contracted the virus, I must be the carrier. She didn’t do it on an individual basis either – she made an announcement in front of all three of the eighth grade classes. Fortunately, no one paid her much attention. Everyone knew she was nuts.

Fingers crossed my immunity now is as good as it was back then. It’s no fun being sick when you’re the mom…

That’s my girl – dressed as a Tudor boy. The many hours I put into making the hat and robe are almost worth it. Doesn’t she look great?

But what are the odds that the day I send my child to school wearing velvet it rains in Cairo!? Fortunately it was a short, isolated shower but still!

I admit I kind of lost it yesterday afternoon. I had just spent an hour or so fussing with getting the feather on the hat just right when my daughter comes home and announces that I need to make cookies or sandwiches for her to bring in to share with her class for their Tudor banquet. Um, no – I think not! The teachers sent home a note a week ago about the big day but never mentioned that we would need to contribute food. Daughter then had a fit because they told the class that if they didn’t contribute that they would be last in line to choose food as well.

Ok, I get the reason the teacher told the class that, to encourage them all to participate, but come on – they could have given us a bit of notice. A few extra words on the note that came home last week would have sufficed. I felt like sending in a stale loaf of coarse bread and a bit of dried meat. Maybe something from this menu:

FIRST COURSE
Miniature pastries filled either with cod liver or beef marrow
Eels in a thick spicy puree
Loach in a cold green sauce flavored with spices and sage
Saltwater fish

SECOND COURSE
Capon pasties and crisps
Bream and eel pasties
Blang Mange

THIRD COURSE
Frumenty
Venison
Lampreys with hot sauce
Roast bream and darioles
Sturgeon

I think the cod liver stuffed pastries might have expressed my displeasure quite well. Instead her father went out and bought her some chocolate cookies.

I’m not out of the woods with costumes yet since the children have their Halloween fair at the end of the week but I can guarantee you that I will be giving that minimal effort! Especially since the little ingrate didn’t even want to wear the Tudor hat once she got to school!

So I made the hat yesterday. It wasn’t really so difficult, though when the directions say “don’t iron velvet” it’s for a reason and you should just take it on faith! Many thanks to an old friend who once gave me a few yards of forest green velvet and said “you might need to make a costume one day.” How did she know? Then again, she was English

The hat pretty much looks like this. The only thing left is to track down a large plume. I’m going to the mall today to see if I can find something. Otherwise I may have to go to the zoo and mug an ostrich.

Ironically, I’m pretty sure I hat in a very similar style when I was about 20 years old, only it was black. I have no idea what might have become of that hat now, but it’s one of those times when you realize the advantage to not moving around so much and just saving old stuff for a dress-up trunk.

Since I’ve gone this far, I’m going to see about taking the remaining yardage into some sort of flowing robe / vest. It all reminds me a bit of Scarlett O’Hara making those old velvet curtains into a dress. This scrap of velvet has served as a Christmas tree skirt up til now!