I slept...

Silence. Silence and lots and lots of beautiful quiet
need to sleep; overwhelming
Bed envelops me and holds me in it's womb
Just the invisible hum of the heat-breathing radiator
Warmth inside, Cold everywhere else

Soft darkness with a yellow glow around the garden
Peace, safety and the loving smell of freshly laundered linens
Falling in backwards, melting into feathers of softness
In a small house, surrounded by strong trees
As the moon was welcomed into a big blue sky of stars, I slept.

I'm only happy when it rains

My husband just found me on the porch in a frantic race against the rain, swishing water out into the garden with the most useless of tools. It's not raining cats and dogs. It's raining cattle, and there are cows of rain on my porch; my safe spot. This is where I’m planning to sit on my wicker furniture, curled up drinking tea and reading a good book during the rainy holiday. This is not supposed to be the set for Water world. I was battling the puddles threatening my doorstep with such enthusiasm I raised my heart rate to cardio-training levels. Wearing cropped pants and beach slippers in the cold, I think I scared him when I turned around to explain what I was doing.

I stood there breathless with electrified frizzy hair, face pink with determination and soaking wet, holding my weapons of choice. The name eludes me now, but in one hand, I was holding that thing you use to swipe water of your shower glass door. To a passer-by I must've looked like a mad hockey player seized with dementia.

"What are you doing?" he asked.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" I answer waving my other tool, the spade-ish thingy that comes with a matching brush.
"Farah, you're going to get sick! What you're doing is pointless."
"Well, somebody has to save the house from "The Flood". Hand me that bucket will you?" I answer hysterically.
He walked back into the house shaking his head, wondering if when he wasn't looking someone switched me with a look-a-like maniac.

Three Hours Earlier

"I love it when it rains...Isn’t it amazing?" I sigh staring out the window of the car.
It felt so safe driving around, dry inside and wet and splashy outside. It's especially wonderful if you're the front-seat passenger and the executive DJ.

I had bullied my husband into plugging in my iPod, because my music was cooler. He listens to old Arabic songs that go on forever and sound to me like someone is wailing from a prison cell. I can't take it more than 3 seconds. When we were engaged I used to drown out the sound by humming in my head, trying not to be one of those people who have to have things their way. Now that he’s legally bound to me, I decided to tell him the truth.

"Nayef, I can't. It's killing me!" I mutter through clenched teeth.
"What's wrong with your face? Why is it scrunched up like that?"
"It's the music. It hurts my ears. I will die if you don't change it.” I begged, looking like a constipated Pug.

So with good music as our soundtrack, we marveled at the rain’s strength and felt the thrill of driving through big puddles spraying the sides of the streets. However, the peace I found in the rain earlier today was immediately erased when I saw my own porch flooding with pools of water gathering at the threshold, soaking up the make-shift Welcome mat. My domestic safety was vulnerable and I immediately started drawing up architectural solutions to this leakage into my covered porch, while rushing to grab for the nearest squeegee. (I just remembered the name)

Looking out of my window now, I see that the puddle has been revitalized and is collecting smugly in the corner of the porch. I realized that my insane thrashing at it earlier was futile, but either way it was satisfying.

Enjoy the long rainy weekend and “Be one with the puddles…”

GDN Letters that annoy me...

In reference to the letter linked below:

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/story.asp?Article=163674&Sn=LETT&IssueID=29261

Dear Dark Magician, (whatever the hell that means)

First of all, I got a headache from reading your jumbled letter. Nothing flows smoothly and you don’t have a single healthy sentence in the entire text. You seem to be a bit confused, trying to back your unquestioned beliefs with facts and logic that just don’t mesh with each other. In some instances, I wasn’t sure whether you were for or against something, but I figured out a little bit of your mishmash to understand that you have taken the liberty to “correct” someone by dictating that the hijab is compulsory and in fact not a personal choice.

In all logic and reason, the only people who should have the right to discuss hijab, and its wonderful protective benefits, are women. They are the ones who wear them, and they should be the ones to evaluate their effectiveness against temptation, evil and nuclear war.

I don’t see any passionate campaigns by men, telling women about the wonderful benefits of wearing bras. “Bras…because you don’t want to look like a cow” or “women and bras, unite against gravity!”

So why is it every man’s business to tell us their opinion on how liberating wearing a hijab is. I personally don’t find it liberating nor useful and never will. Others find comfort in it, the same way I am comfortable wearing jeans as opposed to hotpants. It’s my personal choice and right not to reveal my body to whomever I don’t want to reveal it to and I can say the same for every other woman. If you are not comfortable with your hair showing, cover it, and get on with your life.

But to accept that men are telling us, in the name of religion, that it is compulsory to cover your hair, THAT I don’t accept. And just to prove that it isn’t something specifically called for in the Quran, you now see this hijab propaganda gradually evolving and being redefined to include covering the face. I can only anticipate that the next step to “protecting” women will be to ban them from speaking, because their voices will be the only feminine element left to delete. The popular “Islamic” compromise which is unfortunately starting to exist in Bahrain now, is that a woman exists and has alleged “equality”, on the condition that she be covered from head to toe, with no face. This only serves one dangerous and highly poisonous purpose, which is to erase her from existence. She can offer no human feature to appeal to others and essentially becomes a faceless nameless object, easy to ignore or abuse, because she’s not familiar anymore.

You can no longer view her as a mother, a sister or a friend. She becomes your temptation that must be covered, synonymous with sin. She is now that, which will get you into hell if you touch her, think of her or look at her. Something to quickly avert your eyes from and not acknowledge, lest you have sinful thoughts and become tempted to rape, pillage and commit adultery.

I fear that we have gotten to the point where we have to modify God’s creation in order to avoid committing crimes. We no longer take responsibility for our civility, mutual respect, or self-control. If you are on a diet, every baker must close his windows and curb the smell of freshly baked bread, so that YOU don’t feel tempted to grab and devour a loaf of olive bread and get fat. We don’t care! Get fat, or don’t get fat, but pay for the damn bread or go sit in your room under your blanket.

Hair is hair. It is not inherently sexy. How attractive is it lying on the bathroom floor? Does it make you go wild, when you see hair on your carpet? What is beautiful, is the woman, who the hair belongs to. Whether she covers it or not, you cannot reduce her femininity without erasing her presence. Her features will be in your daughter’s faces, her tenderness will shine through in the way she holds your children when they cry and she will always be attractive, no matter what you cover.

Du-bai or not Dubai

First of all, I would like to apologize to my loyal readers..(hahahahah, sounds so pompous) for this literary lag I have been suffering. Life has kept me occupied with its hectic schedule and before I knew it 10 days had passed, and I've written nothing.

I'm now in Dubai attending a course. The course is great, lots of new information and no mentally-challenged mandatory exercises like my previous experiences, but the minute you have to leave the hotel, you regret not having bought your own helicopter when you had the chance...

All the taxi drivers in Dubai are drama queens. You ask them to take you somewhere two blocks away, and as you're casually sitting in the back seat, you decide to make friendly chit chat..."How long will it take to get to Sh. Zayed Road?" Rather than the usual.."Oh just a few minutes more"...You get this response.."Oooooh...Too Much Trrraffffic! Very Bad! Very Bad! Maybe ONE HOUR!"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah let me out! I can't sit in a car for one hour, and not cross a stateline, country border or a time zone. You have to realize, he's talking about a destination which I can see from the window. I sat the remainder of the trip in distress, feeling very very claustrophobic.

I learned after a while, that they exaggerate, because we arrived in 15 minutes. But that was after he stressed me out, appointments were postponed and half my hair fell out, . They make it such a big deal, I'm almost wondering if this isn't propaganda to keep people indoors.

With so much more to share, I have to leave it for another time. I fear that if I don't go to bed right now, I will be getting an involuntary banana and oats facial in my mueseli tomorrow morning...

Bon Nuit (Wish I was in Paris)

Pet tragedies in the Mattar Household

After the fifth time our pet bunny Fluffy (how creative) had violently smothered her babies to death, I was holding my dad’s hand asking him to accompany me to the mental hospital to admit Fluffy for psychotic tendencies. “She’s MAD, Baba! It’s out of control. She squashed them!”

“Oooooooh look how cuuute!” we had cooed and aaaaaaaahed over the hairless blind creatures petting them repeatedly with our fingers through the mesh wire.

“We’re going to have so many raaaaabits!” Not so much.

Next day: 8 baby bunnies found suffocated to death by big mothers fluffy butt.
Oh, the tragedy! We dragged friends and family one by one to point at the murderer in shock and horror telling them how horrible she was, secretly breathing sighs of relief that our own mother was sane and never sat on us.

Years later, I found out that we had imprinted our human smell all over the offspring and the mother wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

All the while, we had judged her for being un-maternal, and not knowing what a wonderful gift children were, it turned out that we were the real culprits.

I feel really bad now. Ignorant monkeys that we were, we killed 5 generations of rabbits.

Several years later, I got really passionately into horses. I went horse-riding every week and had posters, t-shirts, books and horsey stuff coming out of my ears. And so the next logical step was to begin a heavy whining-and-begging campaign on my father, to get my own horse.

“Its only 500 dinaaaaaaaaaars….” I wailed, lying on the floor next to his bed, as he read the newspaper after lunch.

“PLEEAAAASE.” I delivered my ‘please’ composed in several different harmonious notes, and punctuated every once in a while with a desperately groaned “BAAAAAAABA”

He was good. He ignored me so well; I started to think I wasn’t there.

“MAAAAMA?”

“What, Farah?” (Oh good, I exist.)

My mother who tried to speak to me with logic, about how we don’t have a stable, or enough space, and the high costs and demands of maintaining a horse, gave up as soon as I told her, it was going to live in my room, at which point I was swiftly but lovingly kicked out of their bedroom.

My father after feeling bad, that he couldn’t get me my own pet horse, wanted to compensate me with something else.

A few days later, he called me into the garden telling me that he had a big surprise outside. I got so excited I started running around like a headless chicken, putting on my riding pants and boots so quickly, before he could even say anything. Rushing out the back door, I almost stumbled onto my face heading to the corner of the back yard that I had envisaged as a stable. I stopped dead in my tracks, shocked as my eyes rested on my “surprise”. I was speechless and disappointed beyond belief.

Staring stupidly back at me from my “stable”, chewing some innocent nearby plant, was a scruffy, stinky brown goat. “WHAT??? THIS IS NOT WHAT I ASKED FOR, DAMNIT!”

How the hell am I supposed to ride a goat? It’s going to split in half, and besides my feet are going to be dragging on the floor and the saddle will fall off!

The sad thing is that I actually had this mental conversation after considering for a split second to make do with my consolation prize. I think the sensitive goat felt my dismay, because three weeks later, I was sat down by my mother who told me that Deodorant the goat (I was into sarcasm at an early age) unfortunately was no longer with us. Deodorant had committed suicide by banging her intelligent head into the wall. I felt partially responsible for damaging her self-esteem and blaming her that she wasn’t a horse. But it’s probably for the best that she’s now with God and nobody made her a Ghoozi.

These tragedies resulted in us not having any more pets for years, with the exception of one noisy, insomniac and hyperactive canary, which was later freed by me into the afternoon sky after my sense of righteousness, was aroused by a history lesson on slavery and the writings of John Locke.

The incidental peace and quiet was priceless.

Chorus part II

I have to just elaborate on one thing regarding Chorus and why I hated it so much.
Mr. "Wigward" as he was unaffectionately named by students, made us sing a horrible Christmas song entitled "Grandma got runover by a reindeer".

What kind of sick song is that? I loved my Grandmother and I was infuriated at the
callousness with which these people sang about their flattened Grandma...
and so I was extremely offended by the following lyrics:

Grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve

you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

she'd been drinking too much egg nog
and we begged her not to go
but she forgot her medication
and she staggered out the door into the snow

when we found her Christmas morning
at the scene of the attack
she had hoofprints on her fore head
and incriminating claus marks on her back

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

now we're all so proud of grandpa
he's been taking this so well
see him in there watching football
drinking beer and playing cards
with cousin Nel

its not christmas without grandma
all the family's dressed in black
and we just cant help but wonder
should we open up her gifts or send them back?
(send them back!)

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

now the goose is on the table
and the pudding made of fig (ah!)
and the blue and silver candles
that would just have matched the hair in grandmas wig

i've warned all our friends and neighbours
better watch out for yourselves
they should never give a license
to a man who drives a sleigh and plays
with elves

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

(sing it grandpa!)

grandma got runover by a reindeer
walking home from our house christmas eve
you could say theres no such thing as santa
but as for me and grandpa we believe

(Merry Christmas!)

Chorus; the song of life

Have you ever attended a course and wondered what the hell you were doing there? Whether it’s a seminar, a training session, or some random healing group, which claims to solve all your life problems by teaching you how to breathe, I’m sure everyone has found themselves in an unplanned environment, during which they frequently wished they could die.

I remember when I was in Eighth Grade we had a required Chorus class, yes it’s as retarded as it sounds. While all the boys were doing fun things in Tech Ed. building shelves and hot air balloons, we were stuck in a class room a kilometer away singing “Mee May Maah Moe Moo”. Yes. Moo. Can you imagine the indignity???! This exercise was supposed to make your vocal chords flexible. Well someone should tell them that…I DON’T PLAN ON ENTERING THROAT GYMNASTICS AT THE OLYMPICS!!! But there we were, with our wig-clad teacher who was sickly excited about the prospect of singing the above mooing in every bloody note on the piano.

AAAAAH!

It was only about 55 minutes of suffering but it would almost drive me to tears, every single time. When Mr. Winward fell unexpectedly off his piano bench knocking his toupee out of place, I felt guiltily responsible, although everyone could see, I was a clear 5 meters away from him, and hadn’t tampered with the screws.

Since then, I’ve been surprised, that life often throws you into Mee-May-Maah-Moe Moo-moments. One minute you’re happy and free, the next you’re stuck somewhere, and although not physically restrained from leaving, you stay the entire torturous time, silently suffering and resenting the fact that you were taught not to scream in public.

A while back I was signed up for a day long seminar about trade or export or something equally exciting like that. It was in the middle of a week, where I was close to ripping my hair out from all the impossible tasks on my plate, and yet I went anyway to broaden my horizons. On the way there, the insane traffic helped broaden my creativity in skills such as swearing and wishing evil thoughts towards my fellow commuters.

I thought that overcoming this obstacle was a big achievement, but after I arrived at the venue, and was handed a folder and the agenda for the day, I found that there was an even bigger achievement ahead of me; to make it through the day without crying.

It turned out that the seminar was suddenly something completely different. And the inept organizer had switched it to technology, and how it could make my life smoother and easier, if I was an entrepreneur. Okaaaay. But I’m not. I wish I was, because then I wouldn’t have sent myself here. I’d be in my delightful Ikea-furnished home office drinking coffee and listening to blaring music while I worked happily on my laptop, making millions. Fantasies are great, they defy logic.

Anyway, in eight grueling hours of mundane discourse, we praised the wonders of Excel, MS Project, and learned that putting together a database of contacts in your own handwriting on random pieces of paper is not an efficient business practice..HELLOOO! No Shit! Is it still 1989?

And to add insult to injury, we had to do really annoying exercises where you pretend to introduce yourself to an “American”, by keeping it “short and sweet”. They made it sound like we were acquainting ourselves with outer space beings with ADHD. I was less than enthusiastic. In fact, I used a very clever tactic to avoid being passed the microphone. I stared at my paper with such intense concentration, I almost went cross-eyed. Experience has taught me that if you avoid eye-contact, people tend to skip over you. It almost worked until my neighbor, whose method didn’t work, passed it over to me out of spite, while I was still staring profusely at my desk. My less than subtle hand signals and silent mouthing of “Get that thing away from me!” were unfortunately noticed by the instructor up front. “What’s going on back there?”

I suddenly looked up at her and gave her that sick sweet smile, you use when you’ve been caught being yourself in a public place. I wanted to disappear, but instead I just mumbled, “I’d rather not.” Grin…

My thankfully sharp partner and I finished the last exercise of the day on the computer, in 10 minutes, while others were still typing with one finger and looking for the Enter button on their keyboards. At some point we were asked to mix with others who had difficulty with technology, but we politely declined with a smile.

That might’ve been considered rude and uncooperative, but the mood I was in by then, I couldn’t have managed to kindly guide anyone through the basics of keyboarding, or teach them how to enter data into a table. I would’ve simply smacked them with the mouse and walked out.

Anyway, the moral of the story is…I’m not sure there is one. I think the next time you find yourself in a useless predicament, leave. Go back to doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because life is short and one shouldn’t spend it visualizing themselves knocking their head senseless into their desk, like I did. I leave you with my final words of wisdom: Never Mee May Maah Moe Moo, for anyone, it’s just not worth it.

Five Reasons to stay at home on the Weekends

1. If you want to watch a movie, get it on DVD. First of all, the music doesn’t go all funny on you and awkwardly skip “romantic” scenes that we already got over, when we were 11. Also, you can pause to go to the bathroom or make your own popcorn/nachos/hotdogs, whatever thrills you. And if you get an important phone call, you can discuss in painful detail what you’re going to wear to the wedding tomorrow, without shamefully being escorted out by the usher in the middle of your conversation.

2. There. Is. No. Traffic. None. If perchance you are in a hurry walking to the kitchen, and you find that the person in front of you is walking on the wrong lane at the snailish speed of 20 footsteps per hour, you can just kick them. After all, it’s your house. Also, you won’t get arrested for pelting “visitors” with rotten tomatoes for bad Road-iquette. It’s very tempting, when some moron in a big dusty car is pushing their way into the 2 centimeters in front of your car, to get out and bang their head into their steering wheel until they black out. This will usually lead to someone’s arrest.

3. You can have whatever you want for dinner and will not be restricted to a menu of limited items. Also rather than sit at a crowded table, for hours, waiting for decent service, you can eat on the comfort of your own sofa. If you want to have ketchup with your fillet mignon, no patronizing waiter is going to look at you and say, “we don’t serve ze ketsup ‘ere”. Pour it on.

4. You will not be stared at if your t-shirt is green and your shorts are pink with purple polka dots. In your house you are Anna Wintour, and you are in vogue. You don’t need to wear heels, big bunny slippers are a must.

5. And finally, nothing beats the feeling of freshly laundered pyjamas, dim lights and a fluffy blanket, curled up on the sofa watching something addictive like Prison Break with the one you love. Make sure you have it on DVD, because the fun is in watching four in a row, till sunrise and reducing the painful suspense between episodes to 30 seconds rather than seven whole days.

Note: If you are single, all of the above will seem ridiculously boring and staying at home would mean hanging out with your parents, which is socially pitiful when it’s not by choice. For this portion of my audience I will be writing you a post soon… 5 Reasons to Get Married. So now go out into the big mess of a world outdoors and meet someone nice. Good Luck.

The Whisker

My dog just came galloping down the hallway into the TV room at a frenzied pace. This can only mean one thing. She has been up to no good. In the past, this devil -is-after-me sprint into the room to look at us with an "I'm innocent" look, means that someone has been very, very naughty and has just emerged from the forbidden rooms.

The forbidden rooms are our bedroom, the dressing room, and the I-need-my-private-space room which my husband uses to smoke cigars. Usually she has snuck into the first two, which are mostly my domain. She likes my shoes. I have found her on more than one occasion making out with an innocent slipper caught in a loving embrace, saliva everywhere.

"What are you doing???" I would yell.
And then I would melt almost instantly because of the "what do you mean?" look on her face, like I just accused her of something ridiculous.

I'm telling you before I had Whisker, I would've laughed at people who describe their pet's facial expressions. But damn it, I tell you, this dog has an expressive face. Her speciality faces are the "forgive me" face and the "I'm sad you were away all day" face. I love her to bits. She's testing all my preconceived notions of how I was going to raise kids.

My husband and I are worried that we will not love our children like we love this dog. I'm so worried about this, that I want to get pregnant, just to prove us wrong.

Contrary to all my proclamations of what I would and wouldn't do if that were my child, while witnessing mothers trying to control children in supermarket aisles, I've become the soft mother.

I would bribe her with dorito crumbs so she will love me more than my husband. I would break the forbidden room rule, if she sits at the door when we go to bed, with her toy bone in her mouth wanting to play fetch. I would even wait outside the kitchen after I finally get her to go to bed, listening for her footsteps incase she was going to follow me back for the 5th time. And when she doesn't, I'm almost heartbroken, even though I've ordered her firmly to go to sleep.

Wa3alaaaaaya...7abeeeeebty. My mother, who doesn't like dogs, is constantly asking about her and dropping by to visit her. "How is Skewer??" she asked the other day.

"Mama, her name is Whisker.." It's okay, it's the thought that counts.

Anyway, back to the present moment. After she came running into the room breathless, like she was being chased by a banshee, I asked my hubby if he left the bedroom door open.

Blink blink, "forgive me" face.

He has learned that look from Skewer...I mean Whisker. I walk to the bedroom and find the door ajar, like a few inches ajar. Like a hamster couldn't make it through, ajar. But somehow the pekingese houdini slipped through. Inside the room, everything looks in place...except...

There is a slight ruffling of the shoe army I have told you about before, and lo and behold on the bed is a lone pair of my black gem-studded slippers. It has been chewed upon profusely. A confused series of miniature footprints surround Exhibit A and a tuft of hair from the only redhead in the house. "WHISKER!!!!!!"

I walk slowly back into the living room, expecting to find her in the usual spot, after her crime has been discovered. She's on the sofa, peering at me behind Nayef's leg, like he's her Embassy, and I can't go there to arrest her. She is looking at me, as I walk in and as I go to sit on the sofa. She is waiting for her 'telling-off'. But I use the guilt technique that parents use sometimes to confuse their kids. I say nothing.

I swear to you, she sat there staring at me for about five minutes, until I walked over to her held her face and told her that she was a little devil.

"Naughty Girl!"
(But I'm cute) said her face.

Oh God, I know she's adorable. Earlier today I had bought her a fuchsia and grey stripey sweater which she wore with such pride. She looked like Cindy Lauper in one of those baggy t-shirts from the 80's.

After that, she felt better, smiled at me (Yes, she smiles) and trotted off happily to her small cushion bed and fell asleep, exhausted from all the fetching, food begging, sweater-wearing and shoe-licking.

After all...Girls just wanna have fun...

The exciting adventures of Insomnia Girl

Now I know why I have insomnia, I think too much. My brain just won’t shut up. Yap yap yap yap yap! It’s like I have a little kid with a sugar overdose stuck in my medulla oblongata.

“But why mommy, why, why, why? Why can’t I go out and play, huh? huh??? Pleeeeeeese?”

“I’m not your MOMMY!, now sit there quietly and be a good brain!

As I lay in bed in the dark, pretending to be in deep slumber, there, in my head, was the equivalent of a political debate. Lots of senseless thinking, worrying and fretting. What will I do tomorrow? Why haven’t I won the lottery yet? How will I wake up so early in the morning? Will I look like a banshee, without enough sleep? When am I gonna get my ass to a gym? Did I turn of the light in the guest bathroom? I think I left the front door unlocked…THIEVES, ROBBERS, MURDERERS! Aaaand I’m up.

As I sit in front of the TV wide awake at 2am after checking the obviously locked door and the turned off stove. My husband, I envy him not, is asleep the minute his head hits the pillow. This drives me crazy further. Why not me?? Where is my sleep fairy? Is she on leave? It’s so distracting having someone so happily asleep next to you when you sit there with a furrowed brow, waiting for salvation.

The irony of it all is that tomorrow morning, around the time I’m supposed to be in the shower or getting dressed for work, my bed is going to be the sexiest thing around. I would trade my mother for an extra hour in bed. Sorry mama. And to top it all off, the monsieur is still sleeping. If you believed in the evil eye, you would see the crimson rays of envy shooting out of my eyes as I groggily stumble to the bathroom.

Scientists say you only need around 8 hours. That’s hogwash. If left unattended, I could easily do 16 in one go. Anyway, it’s getting late and I have to go sit resentfully in bed, until boredom knocks me out. I have about 5 hours. That’s the equivalent of being offered a crummy biscuit, when you’ve been fasting all day and were looking forward to a feast. Good night.

Not so good, I’m back. Yes that didn’t work out very well. I was just about to fall asleep when I heard a click from the AC right above my head, like something just got ejected out of the vent. (I have the hearing of a German Shepherd at night.) All senses alert, I feel a hard, tiny body land on my arm, I have a sneaking suspicion I know what it is so I quickly turn on the lights to confirm.

“Son of a BITCH! MOTHER #%@&%! AAAAAAAAAAAH!”

After lots of loud trucker-style swearing, followed by violent whacking of pillows (dangerously close to my husband’s face) with a tissue box, using unnecessary excessive force, I pick up the deceased BIG ASS ANT and disposed of it in the trash, very far away from my bed.

Pumped full of adrenaline from my fight or flight instincts, I sat upright in bed unable to chill out, staring at my dear spouse, who slept soundly through all the chaos, without so much as a blink. It’s a good thing I fight my own battles, because prince charming didn’t budge.

So here I am. I can’t go back to bed, it’s too dangerous. So I’ll sleep on the couch tonight. That should be fun. I have a TV and the laptop and all those books. It can be like camping but without the damned nature. I settle into my temporary refugee camp, winding down again and ready to sleep and then I make the grave mistake that all insomniacs make. I look at the time. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! It’s 3:30 am…I have 3 hours left, I realize sobbing. And so it starts all over again.

hours later...

Nice sunset...

Top 10 Signs that you're NOT a Domestic Goddess

TEN: You found your earrings that you've been missing for a year in your underwear drawer, however it was filled with T-shirts at the time.

NINE: It took you 20 minutes this morning to find the cereal, although it's a big blue box with a huge orange tiger on it. Somehow it was next to the washing detergent, and you wonder why your laundry is sometimes crispy with a crunch.

EIGHT: Vaccuming is a rare activity that you are only driven to do once a month, after you've tripped on a huge dust bunny and fell flat on your face to actually taste the dust.

SEVEN: The term 'Make the Bed', always leaves you wondering..."Make it into what??"

SIX: Your excessive shoe collection is half in the closet and the rest are lined across your bedroom wall like an army ready to march into battle and your mother calls you Imelda Marcos.

FIVE: Once a paper is removed from your usual line of sight, (ie coffee table, stuck to fridge) you've lost it forever, and will only find it 15 years from now, when the subject of the paper has either died, sued you, or is no longer valid.

FOUR: Sometimes when you look at your closet you feel like crying, but instead you go out shopping to soothe your misery. Then you stuff the new clothes into the overcrowded closet to add new woes to your next closet check up. Vicious cycle.

THREE: You've lost a child/pet/spouse at least once and later found them under a pile of clothes/shoes/towels. They looked very resentful.

TWO: You've only bought a set of six plates, so that you have an excuse for not hosting dinners/parties/emergency meetings for more than four people at a time.

And the number ONE reason, that proves that you're definately not a domestic Goddess???

You buy lots of home magazines and recipe books, and day dream of the pictures of immaculate, organized homes and neat, beautifully folded clothes in closets, and the quick ten minute dishes, only to find that you have no adequate storage space to put them away and end up tripping on them for months.

Happy Eid!

Happy Eid! It's finally over. Finally. I'm so excited that I will have steaming hot coffee tomorrow curled up on my sofa, absorbing the morning or rather noon. This is as opposed to the usual grumpy faced zombie-march I transport myself to work with. During the holy month of Ramadan I would usually wake up VERY resentful that my husband is still sleeping. After failing to annoy him out of bed, I’d go to brush my teeth, pull my hair into a semi-respectable pony tail while muttering unholy nothings under my breath.

As I drag my feet out the door, there is an evil vs. good battle raging in my head. "Go to sleep!" "Go to work!" "Go to sleep!" "Go to work!" and so it goes, all the way to the parking lot at the office. And everyday as I walk in fasting my sins away, my colleagues would look at me and giggle, because I look comically angry at the morning for ever existing. Why? Why must one wake up? It's so painful without caffeine. I hate people who look amazing so early in the day. How? Did you start last night? I look so pretty at night, everything snaps back into place at around 11pm. In the morning, my features are rearranged and slightly out of shape. My nose looks koala-ish and my eyes are unamused, my mouth goes all funny parrot beak shaped. I don't get it but I think it's genetic, because my brother has the same "booz" upon rising.

And then the challenge begins. Making important phone calls where you have to explain a lot of technical details and give historical backgrounds is very difficult when you’re running on empty, and not really embracing your fast.

“Hello?”

“blableee boo boo mumu plee plee…”

“Hello?!”

“Sorry, Good Morning, can I please…bleh fur miskru me mo?”

Dial tone…

Okay, forget verbal communication, let’s go to email. It might take an hour to type something coherent, but at least I can click send when I’m good and ready.

Yes my friends, when you fast you feel humbled. You taste the hunger of the poor and the challenges of the deprived and ultimately the stupidity of the unintelligent.

So now that Eid is upon us, I’m going back to step class, spinning and the occasional jog around the compound. The only exercise I did for the past month was leaning forward to get the remote, and then the hourly clicking from one tragedy “musalsal” to the other. That motivated me less to move, and more to cry in mourning for the non-existence of creativity in khaleeji TV productions. (This will be addressed in another post, soon, while it’s still FRESH in my mind)

But before I “happy” myself to death, I have to plan what I’m wearing tomorrow and how I’m going to survive/avoid the 247 family visits that I’m told I have to make in one morning.

Oh, didn’t I tell them? I don’t do Eid in the mornings. Eid is a noon thing. I wake up and go to lunch at my grandfather’s house, the meeting point. And then I get tired. By 5pm I want to toss my shoes off, put my hair up in a bun, and wear my tracksuit. I start falling apart like the pumpkin carriage on Cinderella’s way back home.

Wish me luck. I’ll either be home at 5pm, or sitting miserably somewhere politely smiling on the outside and nodding at people, who keep asking me who my mother is and when I’m gonna get pregnant.

Being the Big Sister.

The wisdom of my years is a result of two and a half decades of practicing my balance of power. Born into this predicament, I tried to learn from famous people in history how to control those under my rule. While learning the famous philosophy of Machiavelli; “It is better to be feared than loved”, I wasn’t thinking of anything other than how to put that into effect in my domain; the home.

Before my recent discovery, I had grown up as the eldest sibling, cousin, and grandchild on both sides. From the minute I was a mere belly, I felt very important. Never having been good at taking orders, I rescheduled my due date to fit my personal comfort and took my sweet time (2 weeks), coming out. I would imagine that after being wrapped and taken from my mother’s arms to the nursery, I had waved regally, like the Queen Mother at bystanders in the hallway of the maternity ward.

Years later when I had to greet the newcomers to my territory, I didn’t fathom that I would have to put up with so much ignorance. I was now responsible for guiding those “unwashed” masses to the light of knowledge. Teaching them how to adapt themselves into a high society was going to be a challenge.

“Would you please stop dribbling all over your stuffed giraffe,” I would kindly request with a smile. Patiently waiting for a reaction, I would get a wide eyed stare from my dear sibling, and assuming I had communicated well, would only turn around to find the unfortunate giraffe sopping in infantile saliva. But thankfully, with the progress of their language skills they came to understand better what I was saying. I didn’t want to be bossy, but I did know everything. And as absolute power corrupts, so did I.

“It’s good to be the King” was something I had pompously uttered under my breath on numerous occasions after having defeated a sibling-peasant, and proved that I was in fact “cleverer”, “bigger” and “righter”.

Of course just like history has shown us before, the “unjustly wronged” peasant, will revolt. After some time, the little rascals had formed a secret alliance based on mutiny and their infamous slogan “GET IT YOURSELF!!!” Still, my leadership persevered, sensing that they hadn’t gained enough power, because their newly found bravery had not yet enabled them to add derogatory adjectives to their protests; for example: “No, you lazy cow!”

However with the years, they realized that children born after 1980 had some sort of insidious growth hormone that made them taller and larger than those unfortunate ones born in the previous decades. With the growth spurt, came the downfall of my ill-fated Queendom. And although my administration still felt that we knew best and were in fact looking for the welfare of those ungrateful “peasants”, the menacing look was no longer an effective domestic policy.

Soon I had to look into ridiculous new tactics, like the “Ice-cream Campaign”. This failure of a plan, was based on the motivation that obedient ones were rewarded with a double scoop of Rainbow Sorbet on a cone, a dessert choice often avoided by mothers who favored non-sticky offspring. But that back fired, because when funds were low or Baskin Robbins was closed, there was always an outrageous yet creative uprising. And then due to the racket produced by the unsettled masses, I would get a menacing look from the governing forces also known as legal guardians.

I quickly found myself to be impatient and very much out of control. I had hypertension at the age of 9. Would nobody listen to my WISDOM?!!

These are the downsides to being a leader. Communicating to the ‘nitwits’ that I knew best was taxing and pointless. Trying to right their wrongs and avenge their victims always made me look like the bad guy. All I sought was justice and at the mature age of 9 ¾ I felt I was more than qualified to govern.

“Admit it!! You shaved your barbie’s HEAD????” I screamed one afternoon.

“No..” she said defiantly as if to dare me to prove it.

“Well, does she have alopecia?! Or maybe the master mind over there did it” I yelled pointing at my 2 year old brother, who turned to look at me, with a piece of cheese hanging from his mouth.

“For your information, just yesterday, I saw him giving free hair cuts to three lace pillows, a lamp shade, and the leopard rug.” Counsel was trying to present new and confusing evidence to get away with her crime.

“I know it was you. And one day I will prove it.” I walked away to put my barbies in a safe place. Until today, there has been no confession, she still claims that the culprit was indeed the cheese eating fool who was watching cartoons. He was Keyser Soze.

I love these guys.

Top 10 signs that you're lazy

TEN: You look at senior citizens riding motorized chairs with envy as they cruise the supermarket aisles.

NINE: You convince yourself that you don’t really need to go to the bathroom, and that it’s all in your head.

EIGHT: You email your colleague rather than walk up to their desk to ask for that file you wanted.

SEVEN: The minute you arrive somewhere you look for a chair/bench/sofa to sit on.

SIX: You don’t understand people who enjoy moving furniture around, just to see what the dining table would look like over there.

FIVE: You were thrilled when you read that your supermarket was prepared to deliver your groceries right to your door.

FOUR: You get tired when you watch the Olympics or the World cup.

THREE: You think gardening is drawing a plan for your gardener of where to put the petunias.

TWO: Walking your dog consists of you throwing his favorite toy and yelling fetch.

And the number ONE sign which proves you’re truly lazy…

You come up with ingenious Inspector Gadget type inventions of how to get things while sitting, like extendable arms or mini robots but never have the energy to actually create/patent/ produce the above mentioned.

Lazy Baby

On September 2nd of 1977, nine months and 10 days after my conception, my mother went to the hospital with my father, both grandfathers and my grandmother, who had all traveled to London to witness my birth, the first grandchild. When they arrived at the hospital, my mother politely asked the doctor why the hell I wasn’t out yet and that this was getting a little tedious.

This was the third time my mom and dad were turned away from the hospital and told to go back home until they had a real labor going on. I guess I was comfortable. On September 12^th, 2 weeks after my due date, the doctor seeing no sign of any initiative on my part to come out, told my mother that I was a “lazy baby” and he was going to have to get me out by way of Cesarean. And so I was rudely forced out into the cold room full of strangers staring at me. I wasn’t pleased.

From that memorable occasion, I have been branded as lazy. And I really am. I’m so lazy that I have actually tried telekinesis to will the remote control to my hand. I’ve gone hours without food, because I was too lazy to make something. That’s when Domino’s became an important part of my life in college. And like Newton’s law of Inertia states, an object at rest remains at rest until acted upon by an unbalanced force. In my case an unbalanced force would have to be fire, hurricane or earthquakes otherwise I don’t think I would ever move. I hate moving unnecessarily. Once we were in the underground and a public announcement came on to evacuate the station immediately, my mother started to panic and run, but I was still evacuating at a leisurely pace. She had to grab me from my elbow and pull me all the way out. At the time I was a teenager, so above everything I didn’t want to be all panicky and look uncool, but the bottom line is that I was lazy.

For the past five hours I’ve been sitting on the same sofa, with the laptop and as people around me move, I ask them to pass me whatever it is I want as they reach its general vicinity. I’ve even asked Whisker, my dog to turn the lights on, the other day. She didn’t respond. I have to train her better, but I can’t be bothered to repeat the same thing everyday.

In my previous life, I suspect that I was either an empress or a paraplegic. I must’ve had slaves that fed me grapes as I lay on my chaise longue watching the jesters entertain me. Ironically, though if I have to exercise, I can actually go 75 minutes in a step class, jog for 30 minutes or spinning for an hour, but once that is over, I refuse to exert additional effort. I paid my dues, and now I must rest, I’m actually quite tired.

And although I’m the queen of procrastination, once in a while I get a spurt of mysterious energy, where in the span of one hour, I would finish a painting or clean my whole room, rearrange my closet and alphabetize my DVD collection. But those are rare moments, and usually there are no witnesses. Sometimes even in those occasions, the energy spurt runs out in the middle of the project. My mother once walked into my room and found me sat in the middle of the room on the floor with all my belongings in piles around me as if I was giving them a speech. I had started to sort things out, and then got exhausted by the immense proportions of the task. I never told her this, but what I was doing, sitting there like a yogi was trying to meditate, and hoping to move my stuff back into the closets with my mind.

So at the end of the day, if left to my own devices I could sleep forever. Nothing is really worth getting out of bed for, especially in the morning. I find my bed to be sacred in that lovely peaceful time of day. It’s personal time. I don’t want to share it with others, let alone get dressed and kicked out of the house into a functioning world. On weekends, I sleep 12 hours and I enjoy every damn minute of it. I went shopping for Eid clothes the other day and came home with 2 pyjamas and water lily bath gel. So I guess my plans for the 5 day vacation are set. I will be having a mini-hibernation followed by a bath.

But I don’t know how long this is going to last. I mean, eventually I’m supposed to have children. And if you ask any mother she will give you one piece of advice.

“Sleep now. Sleep as much as you can. Because the minute you become a mother, you will never sleep again.”

Oh crap. (Long awkward silence.)

Well, anyway, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. Next summer, when I’m all slept out, I will be ready to have kids and inshallah one day I’ll be surrounded by a bunch (and by bunch I mean two) of cute mini-me’s; a few lazy babies to cuddle up with and take naps with on my big sofa. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I’ll tell you when I get there.

UoB the place to be...a clone.

This was my response to the retarded University of Bahrain law which will not accomplish jackshit.

Why is it that when I studied in a university in Boston, 10,000 kilometers away from my parents, and where your freedoms are pronounced, and enforced daily, I never dressed “skimpily”? How come the student body there looks respectable, without any Fascist or Victorian rules hung over their heads like death sentences?

I mean sure I shaved my head, at one point, and I went to my classes like that, but I soon learned that it wasn’t a good look for me. No one pulled me aside to give me a talk. راسي و كيفي. However, had I been a student in Bahrain University, I would’ve had to fake a fatal illness, to try the GI Jane look.

Could it be that the lack of detailed micro-managing rules and misbehaviour are not actually related? God forbid, someone should do something, that you personally don’t agree with. We must make up new rules to combat everything. Can you imagine if the law had to uphold some of my suggestions?

1. If you chew with your mouth open, you will be escorted to a cattle farm for 5 hours daily of labor to see how unpleasant it is, when chewed food is on display.
2. If you burp in public, you will be fined 500 BHD which will be shared equally among all the victims who heard you and were disgusted at the time of the incident.
3. Any spitting, phlegm-ejecting out of car windows will be punished by a round of spit balls from a firing squad of 10 unruly teenagers.
4. If you push in line, and don’t stand at the back of the queue you could be arrested and sentenced to 20 hours of queuing, and when you get to the end of the line, you get slapped.
5. Anyone who is rude or unkind to his wife in public, will be punished by making him kiss his wife’s feet and beg for forgiveness in front of all the local mosques, the sentence depends on the number of mosques, maatams that are in Bahrain.
6. Any woman wearing a hideous shade of purple lipstick, that is so offensive even catwalk models won’t try it, should be punished by being made to eat the above mentioned offensive lipstick.
7. All men who think it’s cute to say something perverted to girls passing by, have to be tied up and pelted with rabbit dung for 3 days by any girl who has suffered such annoyances. This will be held in the Seef Mall; the Mecca of such people.
8. People who don’t signal when turning left/right or changing lanes, have to be pulled aside and asked to do the YMCA dance, while singing during high traffic.
9. Any man who makes his wife eat in public, with a burqa, doing the garage-door move to reach her mouth, should be sentenced to eating spaghetti and peas wearing the same…for the rest of his life.
10. Anyone who smells, due to lack of showering, sweaty clothes, or lost their deodorant should be sent to a zoo to start an alternative skunk exhibit.

There. The above rules will make a lot of lives easier and more pleasant. I hope that you will all appreciate the fact that I don’t enforce them, because I’m tolerant of others. Now maybe someone should smack the University upside the head and knock some education into them.

Obesity is a state of mind

I’m starting to believe that I have cancer of the fat. My chemotherapy in this case is diet and exercise which is proving to be about as potent as spritzing melon-scented body spray at a big hairy alley rat on a dark night. Meanwhile the fat cells have their own agenda of spreading their troops and mutating to resist the normal means of burning and they are pissing me off.

In this battle my progress is non-existent. I’m starting to believe that metabolism is a mythical character from some Greek tragedy. My body is not reacting to endless spinning classes, the sweating, the running or the minimal soup for dinner. It’s as if I’m not politely excusing myself from the daily breakfast rituals of my colleagues which involves carbs upon carbs of deliciously filling food. The other day as I walked past the desk of one of my work mates, enjoying his happy meal, I spotted the small toy that came in the box. Having gone for about 2 weeks without any form of potatoes, I picked up the colorful plastic object and put it to my nose and fiercely inhaled the sinful scent of French fries right out of it. I looked like a freshly fixed crack addict. That whiff alone caused me to gain two kilos.

Since then, the evil scale in my bathroom mocks me daily with the same number. Even the most minor fluctuations only ever go upwards, if anything. One day I’m going to sacrifice that damn scale to a bonfire and then dance joyously around the flames.

And it’s not like they can find anything wrong with me. I’ve been turned away several times from the hospital staring begrudgingly at a lab result informing me that I had no thyroid problems or unnatural hormone levels, and that I was fine. Damn it!!

Most of the time, when I look at food I can hear the music from that Clint Eastwood movie in my head where he stares at the bad guys just before asking the punks if they felt lucky. It’s either you or me, buddy. While I am battling with the carrot cake to stop seducing me, others around me are happily eating what they like and stylishly donning clothes 4 times smaller than mine.

I have been trying to be thin since I was 12. Several years ago, when I was 10 kilos less than I am now, I went to a nutritionist with my little sister who was quickly following in my voluptuous footsteps. After our weights and heights were measured, we sat silently in her office staring at our feet in shame, waiting for the diagnosis. We watched eagerly as she tapped furiously at her calculator and scribbled numbers down, wondering which one of us was in more trouble with our BMI. The serious look on her face made it seem like we were here to take out a loan and she was looking at our two dollar collateral. A minute later she looked at us and smiled. She began politely explaining how she took our weight and factored it with our height and came up with our Body Mass Index. The number corresponds with different categories of fat such as ideal weight, slightly overweight, overweight, and so on.

“However”, she said sweetly: “You are both obese.”

OBEEESE! OBEEESSSSE? How can I be OBESE??? Then what’s the word they’re using these days for people who are really huge. Obeser??? Super obese? That’s it? They just add a descriptive term. I can’t believe that we’re all in the same category. So what comes after that? What do you call the really fat people we saw in Disney World drinking milkshakes out of bucket-sized cups with straws in one hand and holding a giant turkey leg in the other. Ill-proportioned?

So as you can see, it hasn’t been fun. My year long membership at the gym has just expired yesterday. When I joined the gym last year I was 8kg less. I don’t get it.

I actually went to the gym 75% of the year. It’s just like the cancerous cells that feed on the opposition they get. They are taking me over alive.

Although my husband tells me that he loves me just the way I am, my jeans evidently do not. Is it sad that I feel rejected and upset, because I’ve been dumped by my clothes. But no matter what, I will never give them away. They are neatly folded and allocated the VIP section of my closet, because if I get rid of them, then I will be embracing this new category that I’m a reluctant member of. The obese.

So today’s a new day, and I promised myself last night that I will not eat anything with sugar in it. I’ve been successful so far. But that’s only because I spent the day hiding in a closet, peeping through the cracks at the dancing chocolate soufflé, waiting for me to come out.

Air Freshener-the faux pas of the century

What is the deal with air freshener’s? Who exactly are they supposed to fool? Just how long ago was it, that man- or more probably womankind discovered the offensive “Bad Smell”?

Exactly how did that conversation go?

“You know what, I’m tired of breathing your pungent aroma, I now pronounce you STINKY.” said Neanderthal woman.

“Huh? I’ve been hunting. Lunch wasn’t going to catch itself” retorted Smelly Neanderthal man.

“That’s not an excuse! March yourself to the river at once, before I spray you with some Forest Freshness!”

Okay maybe not. But I’m sure that after a similar scenario, some genius in a chemistry lab somewhere was wondering what the chemical compound for Forest Fresh was.

What brought this about was an exchange I had sometime ago. It was a time when my car was for several weeks, committed to an insane asylum as I like to affectionately call the garage. My dignity or pride were trace elements, as I was left to the whim of my kind family members, for donations of transport. So, if everyone was using their car that day, I watched reruns of the Golden Girls. And if they were going my way, I got lucky but then later was stranded wherever I was, because they claim that they “forgot” that I needed a ride BACK home. Like I’m new, and they’re still not used to me living there for 27 years.

It was during that time that I submitted to carpooling to work with my younger yet challenging brother. And because we are both Virgos, look alike and have similar character flaws, I would say that we can only love one another from afar, because too much together time, makes one want to affectionately asphyxiate the other.

“Its better than the smell of cigarettes..” said my sensible brother.

“No…ITS NOT! I would much rather marinate in an ashtray, than smell this disgusting nuclear powered tangerine.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Throw this obscenity out of the window at once, it is an insult to my nose, my brain and real citrus fruit. For God’s sake, it’s like a gigantic orange died in the trunk.”

The obscenity I’m referring to is a little harmless looking can with a matching orange colored plastic cover, which emits a horrendous smell. I don’t know what the hell they put in there, but I’m not going to open the cover and unleash the stench further. It is so strong, you have to stick your head out of the window every five minutes, not to get violently high on it. It claims to “freshen up your car” in my case it freshened up hostility. I wanted to kill it.

In order to save the can or myself from being catapulted out of the window, it was eventually settled. The can was punished and closed away from our senses into the little box thing under the armrest where you keep pens and tissues and things you never use.

“Here, let’s see how long the tapes can take it. I bet you anything they will sprout little legs and jump out of the box shrieking in horror and running for the hills.”

Needless to say, I never saw it again on our morning rides, although I know he secretly took it out when he was alone in the car.

I also once worked in an office, where the office boy, insisted on psychotically spraying a “rose” -and I use the term loosely- aerosol freshener. I was much younger then, and less outspoken. However in my head, I could see myself snatching the spray can out of his hands and beating him senseless with it. On the outside, I silently continued typing, seething on the inside at having to be subjected to breathing poisonous flower gases until 6pm.

So far, I’ve yet to meet an air freshener, I didn’t want to destroy. I feel that if you can’t stand a smell, either get out of it’s vicinity or eliminate the source. But, for the love of God, do not, I repeat, do not try to extinguish it with a can of Summer breeze. You will only end up with a headache and a stinky season-themed scent, also you will be somehow making it more pleasant for flies to hang out with you.