Gimme an E! Gimme a....wait, what was I spelling?

Honestly, I have no idea.  I am in a bit of a fog or funk or something these last few days, largely because I am seriously tired (hey, Jet Lag, punching below the belt isn't--oof!), and life in Qatar is a series of daily adventures that seem to be taking a lot out of me.

Which is not to say we haven't had our small triumphs, because we have!  To whit:

• The boys have largely escaped jet lag after the first two unspeakable days/nights, which is a huge relief.  E is staying in his own bed most nights and can be led back when and if he does get up.  
• Our trip to the vegetable wholesale market was very fruitful (I couldn't resist!), and we cam back with nectarines, plums, peppers, rosemary, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, watermelon, mangoes, and onions for not a lot of money, particularly by Qatari standards (Qatar: where everything costs a gajillion more dollars than anywhere else!).  
• We have successfully gotten J into school and have plans to assess E for his preschool readiness (I'm secretly hoping he fails, to give him some more time to adjust--is that bad??).  In fact, school starts in a week, which is mind boggling!  
• We found a heated pool to which we have access, which is great because the pool in our compound, while the largest pool in Doha, is not yet heated (they say soon!  But they say a lot of things.) and the weather here is a tad chilly, really, truth be told.  I know, it's horrible to call it chilly in the high 60s to low 70s but at that temperature, the water is simply too cold for the boys to enjoy.
• Our house is lovely, a large two story condo with five bathroom and five bedrooms and even a backyard.  We are quite centrally located, or so I've been told (note to self: study map closely!), which will be especially nice when the school commute begins, and the largest bookstore in the city is almost within walking distance!  Okay, not really, it's over a mile away, and there are no sidewalks and NO ONE walks here and it's probably not safe to do anyway, particularly with the kids, but nonetheless, the bookstore is very close!  Huzzah!  I haven't been yet, but I will have a full report when I do!

Of course, we have also had our small annoyances, like our four hour ordeal with kids in tow to get my and the kids' residence permits.  Mine involved a chest X-ray and a blood draw and took a very long time with the kids hanging out in the parking lot with the husband and some other kids and dads while the wives/mothers who had just met got down to our skivvies gym class style for our X-rays.  Eventually, we all went to get finger pricks to be blood typed, and both our boys completely lost it in hysterical crying when they heard they needed to have their fingers poked with a needle.  E was able to pull it together long enough to have his done with relatively little fuss, though he cried pitifully for a long time afterwards that it was hurting.  J, on the other hand, required me to physically restrain him and pry his fists open so the tech could find a finger while he screamed and ranted at the top of his lungs.  Lovely.  Afterwards, of course, both boys admitted that it wasn't so bad, but by then our Egyptian handler had long since written us off.  Oh well!

And starting tomorrow I am going to have to start driving so I can be ready to act as family chauffeur once school starts a week from today.  Wish me luck!  The roads here are crazy, the drivers crazier, and the terror is high.  I will soon be conquering the roundabouts, folks, which I have to do because there are two on either side of us so I can't get home or away without running into them.  Courage!  Into the breach!  Yes!  Or something.....

We made it--get this party started!

After a week of almost total craziness, it was a relief to finally make it to the airport.  And, in fact, our flights turned out to be relatively uneventful and largely stress-free, with just a few exceptions.

I had prepped the boys endlessly about the flights and security procedures but forgot to tell them about the wait times and lines involved in travel these days.  They were most put out by all the security screenings, particularly when we got stopped at every single checkpoint because of the magna tiles in J's carry-on bag.  Note to self: large sets of magnetic blocks should go in our checked luggage from now on!

Yes, we were in first class for the trip from Cleveland to Chicago, but no, they didn't actually seat us together, preferring instead to give me and my 3 and 5 year olds all window seats on two different rows!  I'm sorry, unfortunate gentleman in aisle seat 1B, you will now be moving to a window seat in row two so I can be on the same row as these two small children!  Luckily, the kids charmed everyone when they couldn't stop laughing during take of and then quieted right down to watch Peppa Pig on Direct TV.

We had a bit of trouble navigating O'Hare, getting from the domestic arrival area to the international departure terminal and would have ended up in the wrong terminal entirely had it not been for a fortuitous encounter in an elevator with a helpful woman who pushed wheel chairs around the airport.  Thanks but no thanks United gate employees who were sending us to Terminal 5 when we really needed to be in Terminal 3!

It also took us a while to find the American Airlines Admiral's Club, a perk of our Qatar Airways tickets, but once we were there, we had to enjoy the free food, lots of lounge space, and quiet out of the holiday bustle of the rest of the airport.

We arrived at our final gate in plenty of time and were actually the first ones in line to board the plane we were denied entry because they needed to switch our boarding passes for some reason, which they did...very.......slowly, giving J time to complain about yet another line and E time to bang his head on the check-in counter.  However, we did get on the plane and the flight itself was fabulous!  I changed the boys right into their new pajamas (planes for J, Superman for E) which was prudent because E was exhausted from the day and full on the free sushi he had in O'Hare so he watched some Dora and then crashed.  J ate some sushi of his own and watched a bit more but then he, too, fell asleep before desert.  Actually, all of us thwarted the flight attendants' plans for our trip by not eating at the correct time or the correct amounts.  I thought mine was going to have a fit when I kept moving the tray over so I could get up and help the boys with their video screens or find a toy and adjust their blankets while she was trying desperately to serve me an arabic mezze platter and some cheesecake (I ate the crust and the compote, both yummy).   The Business Class schedule really isn't set up well for the 5 and under set but we persevered, charted our own path, and the kids both slept for five or 6 hours, though E did come get in with me halfway through.  Both kids weren't hungry for breakfast but they enjoyed their plane bags from Grandeur and me and quietly drew and played happily with stickers and new little toys until close to landing time, which was exactly what I had hoped would happen.

Customs in Qatar was easy but took forever, so more unhappy waiting occurred and then, finally, we were able to see the husband, at long last!  The boys were overjoyed, the husband was crying, and I was just so relieved to be done I couldn't stop smiling.  Of course, once we got to the house, E broke down in hysterical tears about wanting to go home to Shaker Heights, J woke up at 2 am raring to go for the day, and J had a meltdown first about having an artificial Christmas tree and then about not wanting to be J any more so he wouldn't have to be in the desert--but all that happened AFTER we arrived, thank goodness, so I declare our flights themselves a success!  Hooray.

Next up: our new house and grocery shopping!

Houston, we no longer have a problem...sort of

Our flights are booked!!  We leave more or less as planned on Saturday and finally, FINALLY, the surreality of all this has hit me.  I am moving to the Middle East, people.  At the end of the week.  That is CRAZY.  In all the prep work I haven't really sat down to think much about all this beyond logistical considerations and last night, after all the boxes were loaded onto the truck and the truck drove off, I did take a little time to think about something besides moving and packing and the insane boys and getting ready to go and realized that we really are going.  Now.  And I still feel good about the decision, but I also feel a little disconnected from my life, from the past two years, from the current few weeks, and certainly from the coming months and years.  I'm sure this feeling will fade, and limbo never really was my best friend, but for now I feel decidedly unsettled.

J is even worse than I am: he has been full of big feelings these past few days.  On pack up day, we got home late after dinner out and a trip to the library and he went up the stairs ahead of me.  I found him sobbing in his room, crying "it's so empty!"  Then today, he realized he wouldn't be around for next week's library day at school and he dissolved again, wailing about missing everything if he left.  It is so confusing for him, and I am at a loss as to how to help beyond admitting the confusion and hugging, which is really not as helpful as I would hope to be.  I hope we can make it through these next two days of school in something resembling calm, but I'm not at all confident we will!

Fingers crossed!

I shut down the computer tomorrow morning, so things will be sparse for a bit here.  I have the husband's iPad, but I detest typing much on that thing, so updates will be brief.  In the meantime, we found out our visas cleared so now the husband is in the midst of trying to arrange for our flights, which appears to be a little more complicated than we had anticipated (I think this will become our new catch phrase) and now we are pushing up against Qatar National Day (December 18th) and the holidays that follow when no work gets done, including purchasing tickets for poor little us.  Fingers crossed we will be out of here by Christmas!  As I have explained a few times today, I can extend the time until Christmas for a little while with the boys being none the wiser because they are young and their grasp on time is still a bit tenuous but eventually the secret will be out, so I hope I don't have to string them along for too much time!   Everyone pray for open flights quickly arranged, okay?  It will be our little Christmas miracle!

And still, life goes on: we had our last Sunday today (if we are still here next Sunday, we won't have a car and we are just going to skip church--shhhh!) and the church Christmas party last night.  Santa was there and still E was reluctant to have anything to do with him, though J was eager to tell me that he and Santa "had a little chat."  E participated in an impromptu nativity the kids put on, as a grey sheep (he was wearing a grey fleece and refused any other costume) but he was only partially engaged and wandered away half way through "because Mommy, I was tired of being a sheep!"  J didn't want to stay with the other kids and stuck by my side for the whole night. 

In fact, the big story this week has been the little balls of emotion that my boys have turned into.  Everything is heightened with them lately, and the emotional roller coasters are so quick they are giving me whiplash.  I can only imagine how they will react tomorrow when everything is in boxes or, worse, the next day when it's all GONE.  The upside to all their upheaval is I haven't got a second to spare being wistful or melancholy or anxious myself, but the downside is I feel like I'm running a 24 hour counseling center and I'm short-staffed.  It's exhausting!  My recipe for continual childhood craziness: take dramatic kids prone to loud outbursts, mix with a protracted move, add in a dash of aversion to change, shake vigorously, and extract one father and leave one harried, shrill, stressed out mother.  Results are guaranteed! 

Posting lite

We are in the home stretch and by stretch I mean the last bit of time before the movers arrive on Monday (gulp!) to pack up our house and load it into the truck on Tuesday.  After that, we will be living like squatters in our own house, with nothing left but our suitcases, my mattress, and the boys' bunk beds, and even those will be gone by Friday. 

When we ourselves will be leaving is still a mystery, as our visas have not yet been processed and our flights have not yet been booked.  I am forcing myself not to think about what happens if there is another delay in our visas and we can't actually leave when we hope to on Saturday.  La la la, I can't HEAR you! 

Besides, I really have no time to think about that anyway, what with a car to sell, suitcases to pack, a house to finish getting ready to leave, utilities to shut off, school projects to collect, class parties to attend, parent helping duties to complete, addresses to change, movers to supervise, goodbyes to be said, panic attacks to have, etc.  Everyone I talk to asks me how I am going to survive the flight and every time I look like a crazy person when I burst out laughing.  It's hard to explain that the flight itself is the least of my worries.  By the time we make it to the airport, even, the hard part(s) will be behind us.  Flying 12 hours overnight with two small boys?  Piece of cake!!  Actually, they will probably serve us multiple pieces of cake and cookies and smoothies and all sorts of yummy drinks--the flight is going to be like a spa day for me!

We just have to make it until then....

A big send off

Because Cleveland felt like maybe we were getting just a tad bit sentimental about leaving too soon, she decided to remind us why moving away might not be such a bad idea.  We have been in the midst of snowy, cold, COLD weather for days and this morning was the worst: it was 8 degrees when I took the boys to school.  The high was only 19 degrees, and I'm not even sure we made it there our here in the suburbs.  The snow that fell all day yesterday looks like it might be here to stay, with temperatures not getting above freezing for the next week at least.  Suddenly, the desert heat is looking mighty good to us!

Don't get me wrong, I have loved living here.  Really!  I know, I know, I thought what you're thinking now when I first heard there was a possibility of moving here: "Umm, Cleveland??  Are you kidding?  WHY??"  But Cleveland and Ohio and the Midwest in general and our little town, Shaker Heights, in specific have grown on me since we got here, and I can honestly say I am sad to be leaving.

I will miss this incongruous little piece of small town USA nestled right up next to the big city, where everyone knows everyone else and the city spends thousands of dollars planting trees in your front yard and hanging and watering flowers from Memorial Day through Labor day every year.

I will miss being able to walk almost everywhere I wanted or needed to go, including five playgrounds, a huge library, a grocery store, two pharmacies, a hardware store, our preschool, our elementary school, and my dentist's office.

I will miss my good friends here, friends from the neighborhood, from the schools, and from church. 

I will miss fun summer excursions all over Northeast Ohio with the boys.

I will miss the fall "color tunnel" that is our street.

I will miss the wildlife in my own backyard: deer, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, birds by the hundreds, and enough creepy crawlies to entertain the boys for hours.

I will miss the boys' swing set, given to us by our friends across the street, who inherited it from another neighbor on the street, and another before them, and another before them, and so on through 4 or 5 families.  (We passed it on to another family down the block, to keep up the tradition.)

I will miss being a short train ride away from a professional baseball stadium.

I will miss trick-or-treating through our neighborhood.

I will miss our house that we have loved for the short time we've lived here.

There are many, many more things, perhaps even more profound things I will miss, but one thing is certain: I will NOT miss the winters!  So thank you, Cleveland, for reminding me of the cold and the snow and the gray of it all just in time to stop me from waxing more nostalgic than absolutely necessary!

She sells stuff

The fabulous sale has come and gone, and I declare it a success!  In the end, with the assistance of the internets and my uber-helpful sister-in-law, we ended up putting the "silent" auction bidding on a blog just for the sale and kept it running throughout the event, which meant we ended up with quite a few folks hanging around to see if they won, buying more things while they waited.  Which was great!

Many people commented on how original and fun the idea of holding an indoor, invitation only garage sale was, and I do have to say, I highly recommend it.   The sale itself was quite festive, actually, even though I spent most of it making change and counting up items.  We had priced almost everything in advance and thank goodness for that, since it made my job the night of much easier but if I had not had the help of my aforementioned sister-in-law, I would have been sunk!  She fielded questions, kept watch over the house and chatted with folks while I was immobile at the check-out table, adding as if my life depended on it!

Eventually, we sold all but two items in the auction and massive amounts of other miscellaneous goods, though we still ended up with several carloads for the thrift store.  Since a large portion of what we took originally came from the thrift store, we have invented our own kind of Goodwill rental program!

So the last few days have been a flurry of donation runs and folks showing up to cart off the big pieces of furniture they "won."  In general, folks have been prompt about picking up their purchases, and my house is emptying out rapidly.  This is great for me, but bad for my boys, who are not dealing with the loss of possessions very well, even if the vast majority of those possessions were not theirs.  In fact, now this house is filled with only toys, beds, and a few other assorted boxes, so it could be a kid's play land, but instead my children are in mourning.  I'm sure I will get there, too, some time, but for now I am too busy reveling in the heady fumes of being done with one more big item on my endless to do list!

Checking it thrice

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a list maker.  We are, as my mother puts it, a list making people.  And moving abroad has brought me many, many opportunities to make lists.

But things have gotten a bit out of hand.

Right now, I have lists of lists, meta lists, primary, secondary, and tertiary lists, lists with sub-lists, lists in notebooks, on post-its, on the backs of envelopes, and on the refrigerator, beside my bed, in my purse, and under my books, stuck to the computer, typed on the computer, and sitting next to the computer...you get the idea. 

It's a bit of a joke, really.  When I started this process, I had dreams about finding the perfect notebook/binder/folder combo, with pockets for collecting odd sized receipts, both a notebook and loose leaf lined paper I could take out and put back in, lots of divided sections for keeping everything straight, big enough to do the job but streamlined enough I could carry it in every bag I use right now...and I found it, the holy grail of notebooks, exactly what I was looking for, at my local Target: the Mead Five Star Flex Hybrid NoteBinder.  And it was awesome!  And I carried it around for days in August while I was getting started on all this work. And I even wrote two whole lists in it, one for categories of things I should be working on (for the divided sections, you see) and one for my then upcoming parent/student/teacher conferences before J started Kindergarten.

And then I put the glorious notebook binder hybrid down and started writing on whatever was handy and that's where we are today.  It's not that I'm not organized, because I really am, in the ways that count: everything that needs to get done does in a timely manner without forgetting important parts.  However, that organization comes mainly from the act of writing, a lot, all over the place, to remind myself constantly what to do next.  And for a while, all I had were lists that spawned new lists and I never got to cross anything off the first lists and it was all too demoralizing so I think I shied away from the notebook in an attempt to avoid being overwhelmed by the exponentially increasing workload.

Of course NOW, several months in, I make lists and then just as quickly cross things off them, as per usual, and I really should get back to my lovely notebook of loveliness...but instead it's going into one of the to be shipped boxes and I will see it, along with 95% of my possessions, in 8-10 weeks in Qatar.

A (somewhat) failure to communicate

Qatar is 9 hours ahead of Cleveland. 

We have a Skype phone number but when I dial that number, my Skype account on my Cleveland home computer rings, so I can't dial it, or, if I am logged out of Skype, it goes straight to voice mail.

Skype phone service has been great, but not ideal, with lots of mysterious dropped calls and odd background noise and calls wherein only one person can hear the other.

We have wireless in our new house, but apparently the signal is strongest...in the backyard.  Which means Skype video works well only if you are sitting out there, which is difficult (so much furniture in this house, but not a bit of patio furniture), or in the "second master" bedroom at the back of the house upstairs, which will soon be the boys' room and not the place where any computers will be.

Skype itself has always been hard with the kids because if they make any noise at all, the other person cuts out, though that person never realizes this is happening and so all we see if that person continuing to talk while we hear nothing at all.  And for my children, seeing themselves on the screen somehow pushes their "bad behavior" buttons and all they want to do is perform, loudly, so conversations are really an exercise in futility to begin with. Add in the idiosyncrasies of communicating with the Middle East, and you have a recipe for frustration.

I am sure we will eventually work all these kinks out, learn what system works best and when, where, why, and how, but for now, almost every time I talk to the husband, I end up feeling thwarted one way or another.  I know, I know, first world problem, cry me a river, but still, annoying!

Thankfully, we also have email, so we fill in a lot of the gaps that way, which makes our communication a bit asynchronous but much more informative.

But really, I am over all this.  I would like to talk to the husband face to face, please.  Thank you!

Trash it?

One of the exhausting parts of moving and trying to downsize mightily is the conundrum of what to do with photos and mementos of various shapes and sizes.  So far, all but just a few photos have gone home with my parents and my in-laws (thanks again!), as have many cards, letters, certificates, baby clothes, baby blankets, and all other kinds of paper from our pasts.

But that still leaves us with boxes and boxes of other stuff.  Like, for instance, journals.  I have a lot of those, surprisingly, given my track record with keeping up with daily writing (ahem, see previous failed blog).  So what do I do with that box?  Or, even more aggravating, past papers from college and grad school, including my dissertation work (ahem, see failed PhD).  While my mother was here, I ended up chucking most of that, deciding that if I haven't looked at it since I left, which in pretty much all cases is the truth, then I am not going to look at it ever again.  I kept some papers just to prove I was once as naive and earnest as they make me seem and a few chapter drafts just to prove I once had thoughts that were unique to me and fairly interesting to a teeny, tiny segment of the population.  I kept some of my class notes because I often wrote funny things that happened in class in the margins, but mainly I discovered I took an insane amount of notes about books I will never, ever read again.  So many of the notes went, too.  I was lucky it was my mother who was here; my father never would have let me toss it all.  You see, I come by this penchant for writing and saving genetically!

While I did feel a few tiny pangs while recycling the lot, for the most part I haven't thought about it since.  Will I regret this decision one day?  I'm pretty sure not, but, if I do, I will remind myself that this was one of a collection of moments when my life changed dramatically, when I realized I was done being the person I had been, the person who wrote and saved all those papers.  In my office that day, I was tossing away relics of a former life, a life I no longer lead, will not ever lead again.  I did keep some of my old assignments and syllabi, because I may teach again, perhaps even some time soon, but really, in all truthfulness, the assignments I wrote years ago aren't going to be the assignments I want to give and read now, because, to review, I am no longer that person either.

Actually, that's what the whole process of weeding through my files and boxes from my past felt like: an excavation, during which I uncovered each of my past selves and then discarded each one, not because I was repudiating them, or anything dramatic like that, but because I realized I was through with them, though they will forever inform who I am now.  It was a strange experience, actually; it doesn't often happen to me that I have the time to process while in the middle of an experience, but going through the past 20+ years in the space of a few days gave me just enough time to do what I have told so many of my less decisive friends in the past: deal and move on!