Maybe not 1000 words....

I'm horrible about including pictures in my blog posts for many reasons, not least of which is I am horrible at taking photos, but I know that's what the people want, so I decided that every once in awhile I will give you a few shots from our everyday lives.  Not earth shattering images, by any means, but something to help you get a picture of our days.  Note: all of these photos were taken with my iPhone, usually from the car as I was stopped on the side of the road, trying not to get hit by cars zooming past, so don't judge the quality!

This is the view of our pool from the back of the clubhouse.  It's supposed to be the biggest pool in Doha, and it is IMMENSE!  But that's not a trick of the light: the water is decidedly greenish right now, and there is a lot of sand on the bottom.  We have complained and been assured that the water is fine, but you can't even see the bottom clearly where it's less than 4 feet deep, so something is definitely going on.  For now, we're avoiding it until it becomes crystal clear again.

This is looking at the back of the clubhouse from across the pool.  On the right is the entrance to the two hot tubs, one for each gender, natch!

Here's a shot from inside our house, our living room to be exact, a mixture of our old furniture and the furniture that came with the house.  Out that window is a tiny yard and a LOT of sun, so we keep those curtains closed for much of the day.

The front exterior of our house from across the street. We are the corner unit (that's a maintenance building on the right), which is nice for us, since we only have to worry about disturbing one neighbor (our neighbor happens to be a single Austrian guy next door whose kids are grown and whose wife decided not to move out with him--so sad for him to be living next to us!).  Unlike the aesthetic of much of the architecture here, which is "match the desert at all costs," our compound is grey and black and angular, which makes it feel a bit like a prison, actually, but I'm learning to live with it!

This is the outside of our compound as you are driving in.  See, lots of black and lots of angles.  The guard house is in front where the security guards control who comes in or out, and the club house is that large black glass building behind the gates.  Keep walking through the club house and you run into the pool.  Turn right after the guard house, and you run into our villa.

Our nearest mosque, right outside the walls of our compound (you can see a corner of the compound on the right back there).  The call to prayer really does ring out 5 times a day (the morning call is happening at about 3:30am right now), and we can hear it from this mosque as well as from at least two others that surround us.  

Did you know we pass a camel farm on the way to school?!  Yep, about two blocks away from us.  Don't worry, I took these pictures from the car as well.  With MERS in the air, I am not about to go anywhere near a camel for a long while!

And finally a picture of the front of the boys' school, which is built much more in the usual Qatari style.  Notice the many air-conditioning units.  There is also one in every classroom as well as some kind of central air, and it's still a bit warm inside in the afternoons.  E's classroom is on the bottom right and J is in another part of the building not pictured, which turns toward the right.  There is another matching building next door that houses the middle school, but the school is quite small. These are its temporary headquarters while much bigger facilities are being constructed.  Two years in and the ground for those buildings hasn't even been broken yet.  I'm not holding my breath!  

Culture club

I've been waiting to write about cultural differences we've run into here until I have something insightful to say...but that something doesn't seem forthcoming, so I am going to forge ahead anyway!

Living in the Middle East has been eye-opening, but not in the way I expected.  I had hoped that coming here would help me better understand the culture, geography, and religion of this region, which would, in turn, help me better understand the tensions at play between the East and the West writ large.  I thought, naively I am realizing now, that just being here would help me see the Gulf states more clearly, give me a deeper appreciation for Islam, and allow my children the chance to experience a blend of cultures even more diverse than my own experiences in Hawaii.

The reality of life here is quite different, and it's hard to put into words why this is.  Yes, my children go to school with children from the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Holland, and all over Asia and the Middle East, along with kids from other states including New York, California, and Texas.  One of J's teachers is from New Zealand, the other from Canada, while E's teachers are from Germany and Lebanon.  J is taking French with a teacher from France whose English is only slightly better than his French.  E is learning Arabic, and he comes home reciting lines from the Koran and wishing us salaam alaikhum.  (He's actually adorable when he does all this, by the way.  He LOVES Arabic and is constantly pointing out the Arabic writing all around us and knows how to write almost as many Arabic letters as he does English letters!)  So in some ways, they are getting the kind of cultural education we had hoped for them.  However, the school struggles with knowing how to integrate the first language Arabic children with the first language English children once they get out of the first year (Eli's), so there are strange divisions within the classes.  J's class has only two boys whose first language is Arabic, and they are constantly at odds with the rest of the class and are often in trouble for misbehavior.  When we arrived, the school automatically put J and E in French, because why would they want to learn Arabic, for heaven's sake?  E had an issue with the French teacher and was switched over to Arabic by default but has thrived there.  And now, finally, next year they will be offering both Arabic as a first language combined with Islamic studies (mandatory for Arabic speakers here) and Arabic as a second language for kids like E who just want to learn the language of the country in which they live!  So a melting pot the school is not!

Outside of school, I have been amazed at how few opportunities we have had to interact with Qataris, despite the fact that we live in their country.  Granted, there are only 300,000 Qataris total in the entire country, but even if they were more numerous relative to the rest of the expat residents here, I bet we would still not have met very many.  And "meeting" is a relative term: we do have a Qatari family who lives across the street from us (oddly, since many live in stand-alone villas rather than compounds like ours), and they have two boys who are each a year older than ours, but though our boys play together often and they and their older sister have been over to make s'mores in our backyard and we all play together in the pool, I have never spoken to their father, though he does nod hello on occasion, and I have seen their mother only once in all the time we have lived here.  I only just found out a few weeks ago that they have an older sister whom I have also never seen.  I interact quite often with their two nannies and their driver and various other helpers, at least three of whom also live in the house (which means there are at least 10 people in a house the same size as ours).  So even though we live very close, we seem very far away from each other.  Indeed, the divide between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds here is very deep, even though quite a few of those Muslims are quite Westernized in many ways and Qatar as a society is relatively progressive, particularly in comparison to our only neighbor, Saudi Arabia, where expats and natives alike are expected to adhere to very conservative standards of dress and behavior.

However, right now, in the run-up to Ramadan, a local modesty campaign has begun called Reflect your Respect.   As you can read here and here, in some ways the reactions of expats and natives are so much at odds with each other's way of thinking it's hard to imagine understanding ever being reached.  Personally, I think the country has the right to dictate how any of us who live here should be dressing (but I already belong to a religion that dictates that my shoulders and knees should be covered, which I realize is certainly not the norm in the West), and I think this campaign, which basically consists of women and children handing out leaflets to people who are dressed inappropriately, is a fairly non-confrontational tactic.  No one is being arrested; no one is being fined.  And Ramadan IS the most holy time here, when these standards are the most important to the locals.  So a little education won't hurt.  I do understand the conflict, particularly as temperatures continue to rise (115 degrees today!) and long black abayas and robes seems more and more anathema to someone raised in a different culture.  But I believe respect is still respect.

It's all relative

Before we left Shaker Heights, a classmate of J's from preschool and his family decided to take a leave of absence from the wife's job, buy a boat, and sail away for a year.  They took about as much time to make that decision as you took to read that last sentence, or at least it seemed that way from the outside!  Within maybe a month and a half, they had sold their house, taken their kids out of school, bought the boat, and left.  Somewhere in there, before they actually sailed away, we made the decision to move to Qatar.  I remember seeing the dad at the community pool before he left and telling him about our decision (he was a stay-at-home dad, one of several in our preschool class, so we saw each other fairly often between school and the pool).  He said that was the craziest story he had ever heard and I thought, are you kidding me?!  Have you heard your own story?

Almost a year later, I just learned (from his wife's blog) that he and his family have made it as far as Florida (many issues with the boat and several long-term stays later) and are extending their trip for another year.  In the meantime, we moved in December.  And I still think their choice was crazier than ours, which either means we were right about this move being the right one, I am getting used to being here, or I am completely delusional...it's probably a combination of all three!

But look at how much fun we're having these days!

Maiden voyage

So, we have been looking into the idea of getting a maid.  Or a nanny.  Or both.  Or something!  To be precise, we have been researching the process, learning the law, exploring our options, etc.

To be honest, I was approaching this whole idea of a live-in maid with a lot of trepidation.  A lot.  A whole, really really LOT.  My nervousness stemmed in part from a lack of knowledge about the entire process, some concern about international labor issues and Qatar's own somewhat quixotic laws particularly with regard to kefala (a labor sponsorship program), and a general unease with the idea of having someone who is not related to me living in my house.  The husband had none of these concerns, which made figuring things out a bit more touchy, but to his credit he allowed me to do all my research and calm my fears and get into the nitty gritty of the question, as I am wont to do!

We have plenty of space; that is not an issue.  Our current villa has 5 bedrooms, one of which is a smaller room with its own bathroom, en suite as they say here, located downstairs and specifically designed for a maid.  Right now, the boys refer to this bathroom as the "secret" bathroom because they didn't even realize it was here for about a month or two after we moved in.  So we clearly don't need it for ourselves.  As it is, we have three full baths upstairs and another half bath downstairs, so one for each member of our family if we wanted!  And certainly enough extra room for a maid.

But....I have so much ambivalence about the prospect of having a live-in maid/nanny.  My issues are deep:

I should be able to keep my own house clean, right?  But I so don't want to!  The happiest times in our house have been those when we have had a cleaner come in.  But having a cleaner is very different from having live-in help.

And then there is the question of giving my boys another person to appeal to, to run to, someone who will clean up after them when I want them to do it for themselves, an extra factor to figure into our already tenuous situation.

And I feel like we will feel inhibited with another person around.  Not that we're doing anything raucous...although we are pretty loud around here...I'm a yeller from way back and so are the kids, unfortunately.  But what if her presence affects us in ways we can't even anticipate?  That's not a what if, it's really a how, right?  How will a maid/nanny affect us?  In ways we don't anticipate.

So after all my vacillation, we decided to go with a compromise and get someone to come in three days a week for cleaning.  I am much more comfortable with this idea.  And having a live-out maid means we don't have to deal with figuring out what to do over vacation, which is also nice.

She has only been here a few times and already I can see the change. First of all, she is way more thorough than I have ever been even on my best cleaning days, so she finds all sorts of missing toys and game pieces and things, which is great.  Second, next time she comes, she is going to clean out the fridge, my least favorite cleaning activity EVER, so that is fabulous.  Also, she irons as well, and does a few shirts for the the husband before she leaves, so he is happier as well.  Yesterday, in my spotless kitchen, I made cookies and organized all the food on my shelves.  It was GREAT!  Next up, organizing the kids' toys.  This could be fabulous.....!

The end of the binge

I started watching The Good Wife from start to almost finish a while ago, and I have been power-watching ever since (thank you, Amazon Prime Instant Video).  Binge-watching is like reading a good book for me: I can't put it down.  Once I start a show that interests me for more than two episodes (which is actually fairly rare, perhaps for good reason), I have a hard time stopping until the series is complete or we run into the current season that isn't streaming anywhere yet.  I'm up to season 4 of The Good Wife, and I'm not actually sure why I like it.  No, that's not completely accurate, I know why I like it, but I'm watching it despite the title character, whom I kind of really don't like at all.  Weird, isn't it?  I can get on board with almost all the supporting characters but not the main one, though the trying to reform cheating almost-ex husband is grating as well.  I can't decide if it's the character or the actress or both, but she seems...wooden to me, really, really stiff, and not in an effective way, just in an annoying way.  But I watch for the supporting cast and the guest stars.  If you were ever wondering what your long lost favorite stars are doing when they are between jobs, you'll probably find them here: Nathan Lane, Michael J. Fox, Kristin Chenoweth, Maura Tierney, Brian Dennehy, Amanda Peet, Christina Ricci, Stockard Channing, Bebe Neuwirth, Audra McDonald, Matthew Perry, Jason Biggs, Martha Plimpton...and that's just a partial list of the guest appearances just in Season 4!

And still I watch.  I am unable to access Hulu for the time being (curse you, fiendishly quick VPN detecting bots!) and Netflix's television offerings are either laughable or disturbing (I had to call it quits on both Orange is the New Black and the Kevin Spacey vehicle the name of which escapes me now...oh yes, House of Cards), so I am left with Amazon to get my TV fix.  And we don't have cable here, so the channels we get are all in Arabic or other languages except for a few English news channels and a couple that run really, really, REALLY bad old American made-for-TV movies that start at odd times, like 11:10am.  Which means Amazon it is for TV!  Any suggestions for my next binge?  I hear 24 is available now, but I was never captivated by that show.  I think I made it through just a few episodes before I lost interest on its first run.  So probably not.

Anything else?  I've already seen Veronica Mars, of course, and Downton Abbey.  Maybe the new Amazon original series, plural?  Alpha House?  Betas?  Just no reality TV.  Much as I love a little reality TV brain drain, power watching Hoarders or American Pickers or what have you is just depressing.  A lot of depressing all at once is too much for me!  I'll stick with drama or comedy, thank you very much.

So help a girl out: what should I watch?  Stick with Amazon or Netflix.  What hidden gems (or even sparkly rocks) am I missing?

State of the State

We are well into the last trimester of school for the boys (I think trimesters remind me far too much of pregnancy; I don't like them) and looking forward to our triumphant (?) return to the homeland soon, so it is probably a good time to check in on ourselves and see how we are doing here in the tiny country of Qatar.  How have we adjusted?  How are we doing?  How is it all going?  In short, is it everything we thought it would be??  In a word: almost!

The Husband: It turns out opening a North American hospital in a Middle Eastern country is quite the project!  No surprise there.  The particulars are as maddening as you might imagine, marrying all sorts of bureaucracies with international corporate cultures and different cultural climates and doing it all on a tight deadline.  The husband is being a trooper and soldiering on with his tiny but dedicated staff through the many challenges and some days he feels productive and some days he feels frustrated but fortunately the former outweigh the latter!  The reality of foreign income taxes minus any real provisions for tax shelters has just hit us recently but even with all that, we still come out ahead financially, which was one of the big appeals of this job in the first place.

The Boys: Settling into a routine has been hard for them, as I have said, but school has been going well, thankfully.  This school has felt like it is held together with scotch tape at times, and I have yet to meet the mysterious missing principal, but fortunately all this lack of administrative structure has meant that there has been a lot of room for me to be a presence at the boys' school.  (Just today I was able to go in and make sure the boys are in the classrooms I want for them for the next academic year.  Sometimes being nosy and proactive has its privileges.  Okay, actually that's most times, truth be told!)  The pathetic, heart-rending cries of "I want to go back to Shaker Heights!" come less and less frequently, but the acting-out/outbursts at home are still pretty regular.  Both boys have made some friends at school, but only E has a friend in the compound...though even if there were another child J's age, I'm not sure they would be friends.  (We're working on that!)  They have also settled in at church finally, which took so much longer than we wished and was such a difficult transition for them, for some reason.  The pool and the late days at school have so far made the heat tolerable, but I don't think they will be riding their bikes again until long after we return from summer break.  They are really looking forward to leaving, and I hope will be looking forward to coming back just as much.  Fingers crossed!

Me: I am slowly, slowly finding my way here.  So slowly.... Grocery shopping is only totally aggravating about every third time (today, for instance, no lemonade, no baguettes of any kind for dinner, no medicine that was supposed to be in the pharmacy...argh!) which is really an improvement over the constant consternation of the past.  I told someone the other day that I bought 150 riyals worth of cheddar cheese when I found it unexpectedly at the store one morning and she said "you have officially adjusted to living here!" since hoarding really is the name of the game most of the time.  I have found substitutes or work-arounds for almost every ingredient I've been missing, which has made the kitchen less forbidding.  I am volunteering twice a month at a small private children's library and am liking that, though I could probably go more often and may still do so.  I feel more comfortable driving, though it's still a daily roller coaster ride...mixed with a small molotov cocktail!  I volunteered to chair a newly formed welcoming committee at church so I could convince myself I am no longer "new" and help others have a smoother transition...if at all possible!  And I spend a lot of time at the kids' school, some on purpose, some the result of an inordinate amount in the school parking lot, but it keeps me busy!

The Strange: Some days I feel like everything here has become normal to me...and then something totally unexpected happens like my child contracts scarlet freaking fever, and I remember how utterly bizarre my life really is in some ways.  Don't get me wrong, I really do think coming here was the right choice, is the right choice, and I feel we are learning so many new things, having so many new experiences, and growing in so many new ways that everything we are doing is worth all the strangeness.  But the strangeness abides, believe me!  Stay tuned....

Getting ready for summer (shopping)

One of the oddities of expat life is planning your trips back to your home country, in our case, the US.    Truthfully, I am facing the prospect with equal parts anticipation and dread.  Our trip back will be long, almost two months, the longest we've ever taken, so I'm a bit nervous about that but also looking forward to seeing everyone and playing with the boys a bunch.  However, it appears a lot of those two months will be spent shopping, so we can bring our suitcases back full to the brim of things that are hard to find or prohibitively expensive here, which should fill me with glee but really makes me nervous as well.  I think I've already talked about all this on this blog, but the planning for this next trip consumes so much of my thinking these days it's hard to keep track of what I have said, blogged, or thought about obsessively and when.  So forgive any repetition!

One way I am saving myself some time on the ground is through online shopping.  Presently, my father informs me that there is a room full of packages at his house, the contents of which he doubts we will actually be able to fit in our luggage!  This is saying something, given my father's prodigious packing prowess (I learned from the best!), but I'm not worried.  One of those boxes contains 4 very large duffle bags from The North Face, our new checked luggage of choice, because they are virtually indestructible and very lightweight, key when you have 50 lb. weight limits.  Other boxes contain several items that will be returned once we try them on when we arrive.  And, of course, most of the packages are probably much larger than they need to be, given their contents.   I'm so not worried there are a few more packages yet to come when we arrive, each of which means one less shopping trip I have to take in person this summer.  You should see my current Amazon shopping cart!  It's gigantic!  But I have to wait to order all that until closer to when I arrive so I am still within the 30 day return window.  I already had my long-suffering sister help me with another return window by trying on a bunch of dresses and skirts for me on Skype, and I don't want to have to subject her to that again, fun as it was to do a virtual fashion show!

Another time/weight saver is taking advantage of the husband's business trips.  He went to Toronto a while ago and did some shopping for us (braving a snow storm to do so); his second checked bag came back filled with all sorts of medicines and toiletries and made us all very happy.  This month, he traveled to Nashville and did the same, although this time his bags were filled with birthday and Christmas gifts for the boys, which can take up so much precious luggage space and are such a load off my mind if I don't have to think about them at all over the summer.  The poor husband has had to load up his bags in Walmart parking lots, but he has been a trooper about it all.  This last time, he even came back with a Kate Spade iPad cover for me and a new screen protector for my phone, surprises that weren't even on his gigantic list!

In the meantime, right now, I carry a notebook with me everywhere (yes, I am both analog and old school).  I have several running lists:  Grocery, Clothes, Toiletries/Misc. and Travel Gear.  I know, I am so very boring.  This is my life, folks, take it or leave it.  I do; I'm taking it!  So, I write down things as I think of them or wish I had them and cross them off when (and if) I find a suitable equivalent here that doesn't cost an arm and a leg or is so cheaply made it's liable to fall apart if I stare at it for too long.  I also have a list of every package I have ordered online and its contents, just so I don't get confused or forget something or double order.  So when we get to Utah in July, I'll remember to buy basil couscous and stain remover and white socks (these lists are literary gold, I tell you!). 

What I want now

I want an accurate, reliable, lightening fast, not overly expensive over-the-counter children’s thermometer.  Ever since I have had kids, I have been searching for this one and haven’t been able to find it.  When temperatures are so important to determining treatment for children, especially infants, you would think the inventors of the world would go out of their way to improve the products available right into gold standard-ville, but, in my experience, you would be wrong.

I want a clapper for my iPhone.  You know, one of those devices you used to be able to attach to your keys and then you would clap when you lost them and they would beep or something?  Yes, like that, but for my phone.  I used to be able to use wheresmycellphone.com to call my phone when I was in the States but no such service exists here and I am constantly misplacing my phone and we have no landline (basically the norm here, not the quasi-rebellion against the Bells it is in the US).  I need either a leash or a tether or the equivalent of a clapper for my iPhone. 

I want to find some Otter Pops or their generic equivalent.  I know they are straight sugar and filled with all sorts of evil dyes and artificial flavorings and I absolutely do. Not. Care!  If someone appeared at my door with a box or a bag full, I would pay them whatever they asked.  When we first moved here, we found something similar and equally as appealing in a store and bought a few packages and the kids ate them and loved them and they tasted like home.  Then, when it got hotter, we thought we should pick up a few more packages but they were gone…never to return.  Who knew they were a fluke when we found them?  We were too new, too naïve to realize we should have bought them all then and stored them under our beds and carefully doled them out in pre-determined intervals to the boys throughout the hottest months and beyond.  And now they are gone.  And the homemade popsicles I have tried to substitute and the triangular British iced “lollies” and the strange Indian ice pops which all seem to contain white pepper for some unfathomable reason are just not cutting it with the troops.  And it’s a crying shame!

I want to install a camera on my car.  I think if I ever get into an accident, there is a small likelihood that it will be my fault and a high likelihood that the other driver will say it is no matter what, and I think I want to have another form of insurance.  It might not help, but it might, so it might be worth it.  A camera seems very Big Brother, I know, but maybe these are the times and places in which I now live!

I want never to have heard of scarlet fever!

Scarlet letters

This past weekend, J was sick.  On Thursday night at our compound barbecue, he complained of a sore throat and said his ear hurt a little, too.  I was immediately suspicious of an ear infection and dreading the inevitable midnight fever because the husband was leaving for a business trip late Thursday night AND Friday is the Sabbath here, so very little is open, including most emergency services.

True to form, late Thursday night he appeared in my room burning up with fever and pitiful, so I kept him in bed with me and kept alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen and waking him up from his frequent and loud fever-induced nightmares.  The next day, he continued to have a fever and sore throat but seemed otherwise okay, but we skipped church because we were all very, very tired and spent much of the day in bed, playing iDevices and relaxing.  Eventually, we did go for a short walk with our neighbors and their dog, just to the end of the block and back, and it was a nice break...until J fainted and face planted in the middle of the road.  I had been looking away at the moment he fell, but I heard my neighbor gasp "Oh, S***!" and turned around to see him face down on the pavement.  By the time I got to him, he had started crying but there was a 30 second to a minute delay, so we are pretty sure he lost consciousness at that point.  He had scrapes and cuts and bruises everywhere, was white as a sheet, and acted immensely apologetic about falling, so I took him inside, cleaned him up, and gave him some water.  He was ashen for over an hour while I plied him with liquids, but eventually he perked up enough to eat some dinner and seemed more like his usual self.  I decided to see what the night brought before potentially taking him to the pediatric emergency center in the morning.

That night, he was more and more feverish and looked weaker and weaker, so in the morning I drove to the one store I remembered had Gatorade and then headed for the emergency center.  And there my experience took a turn for the surreal: this place is supposed to be the equivalent of a pediatric emergency room in the States.  Instead, it was practically a MASH unit but with permanent walls.  They gave me a number like you would get a deli counter in a supermarket, took his passport and my phone number, gave us some paperwork we were never asked to fill out that they took away anyway, and then sent me to three different places for vitals.  Eventually, I was sent to a room filled with examination beds, almost all of which were filled with parents holding tiny, tiny infants, whom I could see because no curtains were drawn, if they existed at all.  There were also babies in the hallways and all sorts of people just milling around.  No one had masks or gloves and there were very few places available to wash hands even if you had wanted to, which I saw no one do.  In short, it was kind of awful and reminded me of something from the 19th century.  A doctor showed up, looked at J, asked me some questions about his symptoms, tried to deal with J's nervous inability to lie still or cooperate during all this, and then asked "does he have a rash?"  I answered, "no, not that I know of," while the doctor pointed to his neck...and a strange red rash.  He lifted up J's shirt, and the rash was all over his back, and then he pointed to the crooks of J's elbows and knees where the rash was even more apparent.  And then the doctor said matter of factly, "Well, your son has scarlet fever."

Umm, excuse me, WHAT??! What did you just say??  All I could think was didn't we eradicate this disease in the US because people died from it?  Didn't Helen Keller go blind, deaf, and dumb because of scarlet fever??  Have I really, actually, literally stepped into the 19th century and no one has told me?  And, more importantly, is this treatable??  The doctor seemed unperturbed while I was practically apoplectic and said I needed to give him a 10-day course of antibiotics, keep him away from other children (oops, too late for that, particularly for E and all the kids at the party and our neighbors who had come over to play yesterday....and on and on and on!), and keep him home from school for two days, at which point his symptoms should be gone.  Apparently, the past cases of scarlet fever were life-threatening because we didn't have antibiotics then.  Now we can treat it quickly and easily, so he sent me to the pharmacy, where they gave me augmentin, paracetamol, and ibuprofen, 5 bottles in all, for which I paid 11QR total, which is less than $3USD.  So drugs are cheap in the third world...but they told me I had to mix up the powdered augmentin myself, following some pretty useless instructions, so I guess you get what you pay for!  The husband was beside himself when I told him I had to mix the liquid myself and how I went about  it, but I think he consoled himself with the fact that he would be home in time to mix the second bottle of antibiotic so at least half the course would be made properly.

In short, my first experience with pediatric medical services in this country was not faith-promoting to say the least.  Big, big sigh.  Huge! But only the beginning: I sent a message to his teacher to tell him he would be out for two days.  I was then contacted by a bumbling, vague school nurse who told me I had to have him medically cleared, that even after two days had passed, I had to get a medical clearance regardless, which basically meant yet another day off from school.  Then, when E got home, he was carrying an official letter from the nurse addressed to the whole school about a case of scarlet fever and the severity of the disease, the precautions to take, and a new school policy regarding medical clearances (I KNEW she didn't have a policy already in effect!).  Then Jacob's teacher sent an email locating the case in question in her class and giving a few more precautions to take.  Basically, the school had all but taken J's picture and published it in the newsletter.  Nice!  Now everyone was in a tizzy and J was getting more and more upset about missing school and it was getting harder and harder to keep the boys separated and not give our family another case of this feared disease.  So far, we have been successful both in keeping E clear and convincing J that staying home is not the end of the world...but when he does return and finds out how much he has missed, the fever will be the least of our concerns!  DRAMA all around!

In the meantime, did you know that scarlet fever can be caused by direct or indirect contact with the skin rash?  So there has been a LOT of laundry going on around here, as we try to stay ahead of the fever and keep the contamination down to a minimum.  I need a vacation!  And this sad face needs a break:

The new normal

Our house is starting to feel a lot more ours, which is so very, very nice!  We got rid of the red couches and most of the white leather and now that we've put out our brown leather couch and my green chairs and all our pillows, even the bizarre red checked curtains that somehow always seem orange actually work with the decor.  I'm really not sure how, but we're going with it.  Plus, to change out the curtains we would have to reupholster the built-in valances, and I'm just not going to do it.  Orange it is!  We've also cleared out a room and a half of furniture upstairs, which is giving me a place to put everything I was piling up all over the place in not-so-tucked away nooks and crannies.  Huzzah!

The reappearance of the desktop computer also makes me happy, since with it came all our digital photos and the printer and all the work we've done over the last few years.  Yes, the desktop is sitting on a white lacquered desk with a black glass top that is so very not me, but we can't have everything the same as it was, now can we??

Slowly, we are getting back into our old rhythms...or trying to.  The boys used to wake up at 6:30-ish every morning and come get in bed with us; I'd go down and get them started on breakfast and go take a shower while they would draw or play (but mostly draw) until it was time to get ready for school.  Then we would walk J to his school, retrace our steps, and walk E to his most days.  The majority of the time, our mornings felt very calm, almost leisurely.  But we don't have that luxury anymore.  The boys still get up early, at 5-ish and get in bed with us, but I have to get into the shower at 5:15 so I'm out and downstairs with enough time to get breakfast, pack lunches, and make sure the uniforms are ready so we can be out the door by 6:25.  There is very little time if any for play or drawing.  In addition, our drive can be agonizingly slow and therefore very stressful, and the boys have a definite time limit in the car.  After a certain point, their anxiety levels, always fairly high here, start to rise.  If we are out of the car before then, everything is fine.  If we are still in the car, then the rest of the drive and the transition into school can be rocky at best.

When J got home from school in the afternoons in Cleveland, it was late, 3:45pm or so, which meant he really only wanted to chill a little and then play a little before dinnertime.  (His Kindergarten teacher only ever gave homework on the weekends and then it was one worksheet at best, something I really appreciated.)  If I had an errand to run after school, he was NOT happy, though E was bored from being home most of the day and raring to go.  Now I pick J up at 1:40pm so we are home at 2:15 and both boys are very tired and frequently grouchy.  Playing outside helps, but we run into the problem here that most folks don't put their kids to bed until after 8pm at the earliest, despite everyone's early mornings, so there is usually no one around right after school but loads of kids cavorting in the streets at 4:30, when we usually have dinner now in order to get the kids in bed by 6:30 or 7pm at the very latest.  Which means the kids can get even crankier because now I won't let them play with their friends.  PLUS, homework for Kindergarteners is a daily thing here, so we have spelling words and reading homework and various other worksheets to get through before bedtime.  Really?

I still haven't worked out the best solution to all these scheduling issues.  J needs time to unwind after school before homework can even be attempted, but we have after school activities that he also wants to do, even needs to do in the case of swim lessons.  The neighborhood kids are always going to be outside playing much later than I can imagine letting my boys stay out.  Both boys need a lot of physical exercise in order to stay asleep at night, so playing outside or in the clubhouse or the pool is essential, despite the heat.  Neither boy has had the time or the inclination to draw for fun since they started school, and both boys complain about never having any downtime at school.  Every 45 minutes they change activities, and every block is scheduled for the entire day, no free play, hardly any recess time (it's not scheduled ever for J), no "discovery time" or rest period like J had in his last school.

We are at a bit of an impasse!  Even though our house looks more and more like our previous homes, more and more often we are realizing that we are not in Kansas...or Cleveland any more!  We will work this all out, of course, but the struggle is definitely a struggle some days!