Yearning to blog

I miss my blog. I miss my blog so much that even though I don't have a second to scratch my head from all the work that is being thrown at me, I snuck here for a quickie post.

I am currently imprisoned in my cubicle, typing random different things feverishly as I try to

go down my endless (and very fertile) To-Do list. Meanwhile, my mother is sending me MMS's of "the delicious one" doing a variety of CUTE things. My heart...oh my heart...it beateth for him. I post his charm, so you know how I suffer.

It is such a long bloody daaaaay!

The End.

ps. I wrote the first paragraph at 11:12 am. The second one at 3:07pm. And the last one at 4:50pm.

Cruel and Unusual punishment

…As he slowly strolled on the left side of the clear blue stream which cascaded down the side of the undulating hills of greenery, twisting and turning with the schools of fish on this hot summer day, the insects and birds covered the green shady trees of the orchard and their twittering filled the warm air and breeze. And the road swerved up ahead into the distance flowing with cars, and the madry shino pooed and the monstrous baboon fleed...bleeuh ble-bleeuh ble-bleeeeeeeeeeuh…

Oh. My. God.

If you started to doze off reading the above, I don’t blame you. I almost passed out writing it.

When I start reading a novel, I want to know the story. Its like spoiling a good piece of saucy gossip about the weird neighbors. You could squash the thrill in an instant by dwelling on the time of day, the fabric's textures on their furniture and what their barnyard animals were doing at the time. I don’t want a bloody listing of every boring detail in the background or the scenery. I don’t want a complicated and irrelevant history lesson on the house of the town’s mayor’s ex-boyfriend…(actually that might be fascinating) just because he happened to pass by it. Really, if someone is smart enough to write a book and get it published, they should have the insight to realize that WE (the readers) just want the damn story. If you want to describe the setting to death, put it in the script, when you make it into a low budget TV movie and save us all the misery.

I just want to know where the dude is going and I wish he would hurry the hell up getting there, because the strolling and the stupid insects are getting on my nerves. I am tempted to shout at the book and put it in the naughty corner until it gives me something scandalous to hang on to and motivate me to keep reading further.

I’ve started reading this story, which when summarized sounds very interesting, but having page after page of descriptions is making my hair frizz. I mean his wife had several clandestine affairs, and it surprises me that no one –COUGHauthorCOUGH- thought to follow her around and give us a detailed account of her illicit relationships. And honestly I don’t judge her for her infidelity. I mean the guy keeps strolling next to streams and trees, all silent and uninteresting. I’ve been reading about him for only a day and now I want to have an affair!

Why would I care that the fluffy bird in the tall Oak tree is pecking at the aged and crooked branch. WHY? Unless of course, the bird played a pivotal role in the plot.

For example, let’s say that the bird has OCD and had been compulsively pecking for hours, hard enough that the branch happened to break and fall with great timing onto the unfortunate head of the main character causing him instant amnesia and making him forget who he was. He would later meet a kind and beautiful nurse at the hospital and eventually make her his wife until one day when she tells him that she once survived a brutal attack and kidnapping gone wrong by what the police told her was a very dangerous serial killer who never lost a victim, and that they had been trying to track for years…which rings a bell..and the guy starts to remember…it was HIM. He was the serial killer…

If this was the bird’s role in the story, then by all means keep going with the inane descriptions of tweety’s soft feathers, curved orange beak and his elegant yet birdish posture. After all, he is my hero, for he has made this story a zillion times more exciting than the stupid stream has ever contributed. I mean, it just sits there and looks all watery. Puh.

Even I can do that.

So now I’m reading this novel out of spite. I will finish you damn it, just so I can casually say “Oh, I read that…”. Even if every painful page of overly descriptive prose tries to kill me, I will persevere and wake up from each mini coma, to find out where the guy is going, and if he’s actually got a personality hidden in there somewhere.

I miss Harry Potter.

Damn Schmeft Crappo

I hate Grand Theft Auto IV with all my heart and all the boobs who gave it a five star rating on Amazon’s Customer Rating. Somewhere below that there should be another Review section for the neglected spouses, girlfriends, and life partners of the cheese brained addicts of this dumb game. In this section we would vent our frustrations and feelings and surely this would save many men from a lot of angry shouting.

I need my husband’s attention. I admit. I need reassurance now more than ever that I’m still the cool “girlfriend” he wants to hang out with, not the “mommy” who cooks and cleans and raises the babies.

Okay. I know I don’t cook. Nor do I clean. But that’s beside the point because in a way I’m the Executive Director of the cooking and cleaning.

The week after we became a family with a baby and all, my husband bought this innocent looking PlayStation game and came home. Had I known that there was going to be a serious decline in social interaction in our house, I would’ve grabbed that evil disc from his hand and repeatedly jumped on it stamping it into a million pieces like they do in the cartoons. But I was a little busy, peeking into a diaper, wondering what else is new.

I walked into “his” room the other day only to find someone in a semi-conscious wakeful coma, with a joystick above his head and eyes glued to a screen upon which there was shooting and chasing of some very innocent looking bystanders.

“What are you doing?”
“Huh?” He mumbled back.
“Shitsawy?”

Sometimes I repeat the same thing in Arabic, as if it was a language barrier that disabled him from answering…not the fact that his brain had melted and all he could see was pixels.

I left him alone to go watch my new favorite thing on TV “Noor”. (Don’t dis it, just watch it and you’ll be a fan.) And when I came back, do you know what was on the screen? Can you guess? Well, I’ll tell you! On that screen, taking his time, which I am more worthy of, were some very morally questionable looking women and a game of snooker in a very grimy looking bar. He was playing with his PlayStation friends, while a perfectly healthy-yet furious human being was living and breathing in the same house, yearning for adult human contact.

“NAYEF! Min thailain???” I think I stamped my foot as I said this.

“Huh? Shfeech 7abeebty?”

“Shfeeeeeeny? Shfeeeeeeeeeeeeny??? It’s been a month and this game still hasn’t finished? And why are you in a strip club??”

“I have to go meet someone and pick up a car..” He said this with his concentration still fully on the damn screen.

Accompanying him on his mission, was some bitch girl who is supposedly his girlfriend and they actually go out on dates and then he ditches her to meet Brucie or Shmucie or whatever his stupid name is. Then Brucie sends him to steal a car from a garage down the street.

Now you have to see this from the point of view of a woman still in the post-partum period. For those who don’t know what that means, it’s the 6 weeks after birth, where we’re still psycho from the hormones but have no legitimate excuse because we can’t say “ But I’m pregnant” anymore. We are now simply reduced to fat women with temper problems, so in a way I can’t really compete with his e-hooker, who is wearing a few sizes smaller than I can fit into right now, and also doesn’t speak unless spoken to.

When I realized that I was wearing a tent-size jalabiya with birds printed on it and was covered with a few ounces of baby vomit, I knew that I couldn’t have this conversation with him and get any proper attention, so I smiled on the outside and told him I’d see him later. At least my hair was brushed. And that’s an accomplishment these days. I deserve a medal for walking away and not actually thumping the PlayStation violently.

I took a break from writing this entry, and walked towards the sound of sirens and speeding cars down the hallway to the “sickroom” which I now call it. I peeked in just as he was switching it off and pretending to watch TV. He realized that his imbalanced wife, wasn’t very fond of his new game. We’ve had a history of dissent, when it comes to one-player video games. The last happy memories I’ve had was with Mario Kart on the GameCube, when everyone could play and group interaction was key to the fun of racing curious little creatures against one another.

Now the only curious little creature in the house is Ali. At least he gives me his full undivided attention, especially when I’m holding a freshly warmed bottle of milk. And then to reward me for his nutrition he'll usually share some of it with me by throwing it back up on my bird print jalabiya.

I will be patient and wait for the game to self-destruct from overuse.

Maybe if I use a hairdryer.…

Oh Shit! I’ve just been caught. He knows I’m writing about him and he’s threatening to start his own blog. Now he’s eating an apple and shouting at me! Now he’s yelling at me as I type what he’s doing..hahahahahah

Oh dear, he’s stormed off. Bye, I have to go make nice.

Arrested for bad behaviour

Last week, when I innocently walked into the hospital at 11am for my weekly doctor’s appointment, I didn’t know that I would still be there two days later. I was withheld for further questioning when my doctor found that my naughty blood pressure was not favorable. Hmm… apparently 150/97 is ample cause for alarm. So placed under hospital arrest, I was. Banned from work, banned from TV and banned from being awake, I was to be put to sleep immediately and I didn’t need to go home to pack a few things. The idea was unsettling, as I made my calls to my husband and quick sms’s to friends, family and co workers, warning them of my temporary disappearance from mid-morning.

The injection they gave me to help me relax was painful, but the cloud-floating slumber that ensued was amazing. I forgave the injection for it’s savage ways and drifted into a state of bliss and unconsciousness, where life was beautiful and there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Looking back now, I’m wondering whether my high blood pressure was caused by things in my life, or simply an odd anomaly of pregnancy. I mean I do often go on a fervent cursing rampage while driving through the jungle-y roads of Bahrain. And I have been known to shout at newspapers and then draw evil moustaches and horns on certain pictures of imbeciles who say stupid things like, “this flies in the face of our culture”. The only thing that’s going to fly in your face is my shoe. Go back to your box and don’t come out till next year, when I will beat you with my shoe, again.

I don’t know where I get this quick-to-anger trait. Maybe it’s my Iraqi blood, although my grandmother didn’t get angry at stupid things. Anyhow, if my BP is not whipped into shape through medication and bed rest, Ali is to be evicted from his current home, faster than he can say: “let’s kick that rib again to see what kind of noise it makes..”

Oh shit. Can we keep him in, just a couple weeks more? I need to kind of do some baby clothes laundry and get some furniture delivered and maybe read a couple hundred pages about this project of motherhood….I’M NOT FLIPPING READY YET!

By Day two in the maternity ward, I was the only bored person, as everyone else there was either giving birth or getting to know their new baby. I may have been the only one with their child actually on the inside. The constant lying down, was part of the reason that Ali decided to move into my lungs and was suffocating me, so I was advised to go for a walk so he could descend back down where he belongs at this point. I feel like a lava lamp sometimes. Hmm…what can one do at 10pm in a hospital? I wish there were shops or a salon, or a 24 hours store, so I could buy magazines or get a manicure. The only place I could actually walk to at this point was the nursery.

There were two babies there; a cute and cuddly pink one positioned by the window, sleeping happily and the other one, to my surprise placed like a rotisserie chicken under foil and blue lights.

“What’s wrong with him? He’s so small…” I gasped to my friend, horrified.

“I can’t see his face. Are they cooking him?” She replied just as clueless.

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to put my baby in foil, it looks mean.”

We later found out that he has jaundice, he’s a normal full-term baby, and no one was trying to cook him.

Oh God I think I’m going to vomit. Inside edition just aired a segment about a woman who got scalped, because her long hair got caught in a go-kart engine. Azoo3 or what???? I’m now doing Lamaze breathing, so I don’t go into labour from sheer grossed outness. Beeeeeeu3.

This entry was written in the hospital ward at 4am when I was supposed to be asleep..Naughty Nocturnal Farah…I hope I'm not arrested tomorrow.

Le Inspecteur and ze apples

While all scientific evidence may point to the contrary, I am quite convinced that at 34 weeks, monsieur bebe, has gotten bored and figured out a way to sneak out the back door of the amniotic sac and is scouting out my internal organs as we speak.

I often feel like my insides are being examined by some kind of antiques dealer who is picking up my organs, turning them over, sometimes flicking them or squeezing them to check for quality and resilience.

“Excuse me, would you put that down?!!!”

“What?!” Nayef says startled, dropping his hairbrush. “It’s mine.”

“Not you,” I say angrily staring at my belly. “It’s him. He’s massaging my liver again.”

“Leave him alone. Let him do what he wants. He’s just a baby.”

Yeah, that’s what you all think. This one’s going to come out with a tool belt around his waist and a miners helmet, with that light thingy, pointed at the doctor and then he’s going to give her a full detailed report about the state of my insides. He hasn’t sat still since week 22. Who does he take after? I know I appreciate quiet time and rarely move unnecessarily.

According to my weekly email updates, he’s a little over 4 pounds or the size and weight of a pineapple…. Mmmm pineapple, what I would do for a big juicy slice… It seems that every time someone mentions the name of a food, I embark on a music filled fantasy of how I am going to consume that food, and then I work myself up into such a frenzy that if I don’t have that particular edible delight immediately I feel the world will end and I will die a sad and painful death. I am not exaggerating.

Two nights ago, my husband mumbled that he felt like eating an apple while we were getting into bed, and that one sentence set me off into a mad search in the fridge looking for an apple. (not for him, but for me.) My mouth was watering, knowing that if I found one, it would probably be shriveled up and really, really old because I don’t remember buying any in the recent past. My quest left me empty handed and teary eyed. I wanted that apple so bad…I fantasized about biting into it, or blending it with ice and mint, or chopping it up with other fruit and pouring orange juice all over it. That apple was my ultimate fantasy that night, and it went unsatisfied. Do not ask me how I made it through the night. Before I left the kitchen defeated, I found applesauce in the freezer, from the early morning sickness days, but by the time that defrosted I had passed out and when I woke up the next morning it did not live up to its fresh predecessor; the crunchy intact apple.

Last night however, at 11:34pm, before the closing of Midway, we ordered 4 shiny red apples, a bunch of bananas, apple juice and orange juice. By 12 midnight, I had made two smoothies using chopped apple, a banana, ice cubes, mint, apple juice and a dash of orange juice. It was scrumptious. I had to wake my husband up to drink it. He fell asleep on the couch waiting for me to come back. With one eye open, he downed the glass, told me it was amazing and then collapsed into bed.

I was so refreshed by my invention, that I was more alert than I’d ever been at any AM timing in my life. So awake was I, that at 3am, I decided the poor excuse for a “nursery” had to be neatened up. There is a box in that room, which has been there ever since we moved into the house, after our wedding. I’m talking summer 2006. In that box are miscellaneous crappy items, that I’ve lived for two years without, and yet still feel the need to dust them and keep them. In the dead of night, you could see the profile of a very big bump moving around in that room, lifting a box and carrying it all the way back to the bedroom for a long night of sifting and reminiscing. I wish there was anything of value in there. I found 12 MAC lipsticks (I don’t know why I buy them, I wore lipstick like 3 times in my life and it never worked out), 7 different eye shadow boxes, 10 lip liners, 6 eyeliners, a beaded ring that I never wore, and dental floss. I lovingly dusted everything and arranged it on my dressing table, as if they were not expired, poisonous, or never to be used anyway. I’ll throw them away some other time.

At 4am, I felt inadequate as a mother, so I started to read voraciously, with an effort to actually finish the book, What to expect the first year. This was one of the many books I had ordered since entering the third trimester and was suddenly struck by the realization that pregnancy usually ends with the arrival of a BABY!!! Being too stricken with panic to actually finish any one given book, I have a series of well-meaning book marks stuck in each one, signaling my efforts to prove that Amazon, wasn’t getting my money for nothing. What I’ve learned so far, is how not to flash people in the mall while breast feeding, and how it may or may not be that colic is caused by eating too much cauliflower.

BUT NONE OF THESE BOOKS ARE REALLY TELLING ME WHAT TO DO! I want my mommy. I’m thinking about the baby’s belly button and how to clean it. How the hell do you change a diaper? What do you dress them in for what activity, there are so many names for their clothes!!! Onesies, wraps, vests, cardigans, t-shirts, pajamas! Aren’t they all the same???

I tried to fill the baby bath tub the other day to practice and after a lot of pulling and tugging the hose thingy just wouldn’t reach the tap. Then someone told me that you only use the hose for draining the tub. If you want to fill it, you get the water to the right temperature and then do it the old fashioned way with a bucket, from the sink.

Oh.

I must calm down. I give myself the dramatic soap opera slap across the face. I stop hyperventilating. I think I’ll go to sleep now. I had barely two hours of sleep. What with the insane nesting of the third trimester and the annoying morning sickness symptoms of the first, I could barely rest last night. And since the inspector seems to be at rest, no longer fiddling around in there, it’s a good opportunity to catch some zzzzz’s.

This is getting ridiculous…

The bastards who lied to me about the average time span of morning sickness, have yet to be punished. Because after that ended…LAST WEEK… I’ve been battling with acidity that has the strength to compete with heart attacks and acute angina.

In fact, I read somewhere that heartburn often has the same symptoms as a heart attack. Lovely. A constant feeling that you’re going to die, that can often be caused by the very same foods that cure it. Not only is that fun, but it’s coupled with the lovely blossoming of my body into what I can best describe as a watermelon with legs…or rather a cluster of watermelons. Me and my vegetable stand are often seen bumping into corners, closet doors and other human beings. I no longer fit in my usual spaces. After using my car the other day my husband kindly adjusted my car seat back for my Dwarfish height. And flattered though I was at his generosity in his adjustments, being no Kate Moss, I found myself wedged between my car seat and the steering wheel, honking the horn involuntarily for all the neighbors to see. Grace is not one of my strong suits these days.

I am starting to feel hippo-esque, although friends tell me…this is nothing, wait till May. May? What’s May? I can only think of now and a minute from now. Besides the doctor rudely delayed my due date from June 4 to 5! Why? Did he get a memo from my baby that he will be in meetings all day on the fourth, and therefore the fifth is a better day for his schedule???

This blogging was interrupted by an unexpected bout of MORNING SICKNESS!!!! It’s not cute anymore.

Anyway, earlier today, while I was beached on the sofa, I had a conversation with my mother, about how I can lose weight, by tricking my body and contributing it towards the baby’s weight gain, and we had an ambitious plan on how I would eat only healthy things, and minimize carbs, and engage in a bit of brisk walking. 5 minutes after that we were both on the phone ordering a pizza, chicken wings and a Greek salad. And when it arrived, I barely waddled to go get it. Brisk walk my ass.

The baby only ever communicates with me when I sit really still, we have tapping morse code conversations, and he kicks back when I poke at him trying to get his attention. When I’m alone, he’ll kick and thump my internal organs like they were his personal punching bags. But once I invite onlookers and fans to come and feel all the action, he sits there quietly making me look like a liar, not moving a muscle. We tricked him once, and he kicked Nayef’s hand really hard. Nayef looked so surprised, as though he just got undeniable proof that there really is a baby in there, and I’m not making it up as an excuse to get fat and be mean.

So here I am, 6.754 months pregnant. If I count it in weeks, which no one understands, it’s a grand total of 27 weeks, which feels like such an achievement. I remember feeling that I was 8 weeks for like a year. Time just would not budge. Now the weeks fly by, but the individual days, I feel go on forever. By 6pm, I’m ready to end the day and start over tomorrow. Which means that at 1:30pm, I’d really like the work day to be OVER! I want to shrink everything down, except lying down time and the nights. Once I’m in my bed, which is a “mitfalsif” Japanese style bed about 2 inches off the ground, gravity and the world’s forces all conspire to keep me there forever. Even rolling around in the middle of the night, gives me flash backs of workers maneuvering extremely heavy and enormous steel structures in the Boston Big Dig.

I have 13 weeks to go to the big day or week, or however long labour is supposed to last. I’m busy hanging up curtains and choosing baby stuff, but what I really want to do is sleep until then. I don’t want to do anything demanding, mentally-challenging, or physically involving movement.

And sometimes very suddenly I stop whatever it is I’m doing and I go to sleep….

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Love is in the hair!

On a day when the profoundly intelligent mullas across the causeway are busy mangling red roses and hunting down hormonal, repressed girls in crimson, we have the liberties to enjoy the day known as Valentines Day. Now regardless of all the retarded emails of warning that I’m going to get today on “do you know what you are celebrating?” and the history of St. Valentine and what it really meant and how it is the end of Islamic civilization, if I give my husband a rose; in spite of all this stupidity, the overpriced balloons at Al Osra, and the Styrofoam hearts in restaurants, I think what today makes me think of, whether I like it or not, is love.

And I do love lots of people in my life, who I don’t really tell that I love, for fear of getting too soppy and emotional and sounding like the ending of a movie about some terminal illness.

But I have to say that today morning, on my way to work, I felt so much love that I thought I had to share it or I’d explode. I felt I should go in a chronological-ish order.

I love my mother and father. I realized this morning that they are my first loves. The first sounds I heard, and the first eyes that embraced me, loving me, even though I was a slimy little snot, that cried all the time and gave them lovely packages of poo, in return. Without them, I wouldn’t be loved by anyone else.

I love my brother and sisters. I love them so much, it’s embarrassing. So to hide it I was really mean to them, bossing them around, teasing them, making them think they were adopted, and frequently running sexist campaigns against my brother for being the only boy in the house. I felt that if they knew how much I loved them, they’d think I was weird. But I love them so much, I always have. And as their leader, mentor and pioneer, I would fight fiercely to the death to protect them from harm, pain or evil.

I love my Grandfathers and Grandmothers, for loving me and playing such great roles in my life. And as each one of them left the world, leaving me in tears at the prospect of being without them, I learned that they have taught me what they know, and I have to carry on and make them proud. I love them all. I loved when Mama Mariam made me khanfaroosh, and when Mama Rafeea told me stories about Iraq. I loved Baba Khalid’s expression when he gave us presents that made us happy, and the way Baba Ali used to pretend he was eating my ears, my nose and my tiny hands. I miss them all so much, especially these days.

I love my Aunts and Uncles, who took over when we were left without grandparents. I love them because they tie us together. I love my cousins, who make me feel like I will never be alone. I love their unborn children, whether I’m here to hold them or not. I love our gatherings on Saturdays and Eid and everything in between. They are the joys in my life, in between the difficult times and the frustrating tasks life throws at you. I hope to have lots of stupidly fun times with them, singing, boating, lounging, eating and being a family.

I love my friends. Those both near and far. Those that call a lot, and those that don’t. I love them all. I love our history together and all the memories growing up and living life’s funniest times (the teen years). I love knowing that they’re healthy, happy, and successful. I would never give them up. I have been blessed with my friends, all the boys and girls that have been a second family to me, have also made me who I am today. I am very thankful.

I love my Husband. I love that he just showed up out of nowhere one day, and proved to me that this kind of love really does exist. I love that he is with me everyday in the morning and at night, sharing movies, food and giving me his hands, when I want to hold them. For being kind, even when I’m sick, grumpy, bloated and looking like a banshee, by hugging me and telling me that I’m cute, (when I’m clearly NOT). I love that he loves the people I love. I love him for being tall, for being sweet, for being mine, for every characteristic both shallow and profound that makes him, him. I know that we will grow old together, because no one else will do.

I love my dog. Because, although she’s just a pet, I swear she loves me too. I love her when she’s sleeping like a doughnut and I love her when she’s whizzing around the house hyper from her bath. I love that she understands both Arabic and English, especially when we talk about her. I love whisker like she was my own little fluffy child….

I love the monkey in my tummy. I’m growing a new love, who kicks me swiftly from time to time to show me who’s boss. I even love the fact that he caused me horrendous morning sickness enough to make me actually lose weight in the first 3 months. My own little dietician…awww. I love that he is part Nayef and part me and part his own unique new surprise. I love that he made rude gestures with his hands during the last ultrasound and then went into fighting stance. It’s going to be fun taming him. I love him for choosing my belly as his starting point, and I hope he will grow up to love me, realizing that he had tugged on my heart strings even when he was just a dot. I love my baby boy. My own baby Ali.

Xxx love you all.

Happy Valentines Day.

Entering the Second Trimester…

Oh my God At last!!!! I waited for the day when I was exactly 12 weeks pregnant, as if like a big clock tower, ceremonious bells would ring and the disgusting feeling would officially disappear. Every other book, website, formerly pregnant woman, and self-proclaimed expert told me it shouldn’t be too bad after 12 weeks. So I rejoiced on November 21^st because I thought I would never see the day, when I could once again hold a conversation with someone, that included the words: onions, sausages, or cucumbers without grimacing, screaming out “gross” and then heading straight for the nearest throw up station that I had set up around my home.

I was done with Morning Sickness, which by the way is such an elegant name for what it really is. It should be called “your digestive abilities are on vacation, eat crackers and enjoy a constant state of acidity, heartburn and painful stomach discomfort.” I have never seen so much food in reverse. In my entire life, I have never ever been a vomiter. It probably happened to me around 4 or 5 times in my childhood, and I remember the results were always dramatic. I would immediately break out with blood freckles all over my face and my eyes would bulge out froggy-style leaving me to look stupid for a day or two. Crying was also part of the emotional drama of having your guts evict your meals. In the past 2 months, I’ve done this exercise around 30-40 times. This is why you should all go and kiss your mother’s feet. Being a mother, even before the kid is out, is very, very difficult.

I had also recently started sleeping in the TV room on the long sofa, because my bedroom stank. No one else smelled it. I pulled in a variety of people, family and friends to sniff my room usually sticking their noses into the AC vent and asking them if they wanted to die from the stench. Some felt sorry for me, some touched my head to check if I had a temperature, but most people told me that they had no idea what I was talking about. The problem was that the bad smell angered me. It was like a taunting skunk, that only I could see. Why was the bastard exclusive to my nose??? I started to feel like that cat that was constantly being molested by the uninvited advances of Pepe Le Pew. Don’t I have enough on my plate? I don’t need to be sleeping refugee-style in the living room, rudely awakened at 6:00am by an annoyingly cheerful sun, accompanied by a choir of stupid twittering birds.

But that’s all in the past. Today, I had graduated from this military camp of food intolerance and even my mood had lifted, after I had seen my 12-week scan showing the little monkey, with heart beat going strong and everything as it should be. It made me remember what I was doing, and that “tiny” over here, had no idea about all the uproar that was going on outside on a daily basis.

The next day was my brother’s wedding, and I had planned on staying up till 4am. Having gotten my hands on the menu, I was drooling in anticipation of all the yummy things I was going to taste. It had been in September probably, when I had last enjoyed eating anything and I really regretted ever having been mean to any foods, rejecting them for being too high in calories, unhealthy, or fattening. I now promised myself to never discriminate…and that all food was ultimately good and needed to be treated with respect and reverence.

The next day everything went well, I ate, I laughed, I saw people I hadn’t seen in months, and then I ate breakfast before I went home, all partied out and happily full. It was a nice ending to a very testing first trimester. But little did I know…the fat lady (not me) had not sung yet.

October/November 2007

I was supposed to keep it quiet. At least until after I went to the doctor and confirmed it was in fact a viable pregnancy. It was Ramadan and I was trying to secretly eat Tums in the office, to squash the untimely heartburn, without drawing much suspicion. At one point I was walking around starving, when I accidentally walked in on two girls illegally sharing some biscuits, and I grabbed one, thanked them and scuttled away. No one knew why I was being weird. I kept it quiet for two or three weeks, and then we finally heard the little heart beat in my tummy. That little heart beat which confirms that I am in fact capable of creating human life…that actually works. I didn't cry, but I was extremely relieved. My mother the terrible secret keeper, having witnessed this, decided that it was now safe to tell half the world, but I couldn't join in the dissemination of the news because I was busy at home enjoying the tell-tale signs of early pregnancy.

In the weeks that followed, I made my own conclusions about pregnancy. I started to believe that God had created morning sickness as a type of hazing for mothers to be. Just like the military, only the toughest will get the honor of Mommy Medal.

"Are you suuuuuure you wanna be a mother??? "

"SIR, YES SIR!!! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEU3!!"

"Okay then, you will be vomiting your guts out to prove it!!! Grab your basket and run, Sergeaaaaaaaaaant!"

By the end of Month 2, the misery was both phenomenal and contagious. At 8 weeks pregnant, I was not yet aglow with the wonders of maternity. I had been reenacting scenes from The Exorcist and in the intermissions, I was usually found hugging my trusty plastic-lined trashcan like it was my life raft out of this river of hell. Thinking that I was the last living victim of morning sickness, I was often found sputtering with tears down my face asking God: "Why Me?" As they handed me another tissue, my husband and my mother looked at each other helplessly and mouthed: "Not just you, every other woman on earth…" but they wouldn't dare say that to me out loud.

My sole purpose in life was now reduced to keeping small amounts of bland, tasteless mush down where it belonged; in the tummy, and sleeping for ungodly amounts of time, to avoid the hellish discomfort of being conscious. Work? I don' t even know what you're talking about. I simply forgot everything beyond my sofa and my TV and of course my good friend the barf bin. Also I was on so many pills, vitamins and hormones, that I'm positive that I had morphed into another being, slowly, day by day, until I had become unrecognizable.

All I would watch was MBC 4, and I had never in my life, been so in tune to the tragedies of daytime soap operas until then. ("Damn it, I knew he wasn't the real father but to sell his daughter out for the secret company files???") Yes the issues were inane, but they kept me distracted from my nausea, until the damn ad for Kraft cheese which appeared every ten minutes, showing a loving mother smearing a blasphemous amount of creamy goo on a preposterously small piece of pita bread, and giving it to her son, whose joy was seriously out of proportion. Both the over use of food and the melodrama made me sick.

It's a miracle I'm still married. My husband was the only witness to this scary phenomenon of losing his wife, who seemed to have been switched with a mean, grumpy Alsatian holding his first child hostage. And yet, through it all, he was kind, helpful, and caring to the green-faced witch lying on the couch muttering curses and swear words at all the suffering she had been subjected to. "Miskeen" Nayef. He deserves a medal.

My other savior was my mother. I never knew how much it meant to have her around, until she held my forehead, wiped my tears, and made me hot tea and toast. Without them, the world was black. I really believed I was going to die, if they left me alone with my very own "rosemary's baby".

"I'm carrying Satan's child and I'm sure that it's trying to kill me."

"Farah! Don't say that! The baby will hear you.." My mother would hush me.

Excited at being a grandmother, my mom was extremely happy that I was throwing up every other meal. She kept telling me that it's a wonderful sign and the pregnancy is strong. Beaming with pride she told me that this is what she went through, four times, and that it only lasts 3 months. Three Months??? I don't have 3 months! Sometimes 4 or 5 she would say. Five??? You are squashing all hope. I can't do this for another day. Can't they give me morphine or something?

I asked; they wouldn't. Apparently it's illegal to do recreational drugs with your baby. However, they did pat me on the back and tell me, that all my suffering is a good sign.

Sign, schmine, this baby better be a genius millionaire, and care for me when I'm old, grumpy and alone. Just like I am now.

September 24, 2007

One month into my brand new gym membership after retraining myself into maintaining a legally recognized jog for 30 minutes. I found myself wheezing , huffing and puffing like the grandmother of the big bad wolf, while climbing up some stairs.

My friend looked at me, as I looked back at her with a grin plastered on my blue, oxygen-deprived face, "I've never been good at stair climbing."

I go to the bloody gym every day, but I can't do 1 minute of upward ascending, without holding my gut and professing my doubt that I will live another minute.

"You know that's a sign of pregnancy…" she smiled.

"Yeah, but I took a test today and it said Not…" I replied, starting to doubt its quality.

Although the test claimed it was made in Holland, it had the comical name of: "Now you will know" apparently referring to the state of limbo, mothers-to-be go through when wanting to know if their eggs had in fact met the "one" and gotten engaged or rather embryoed.

After discussing the old-fashioned test I took, I was filled with suspicion. Maybe it was wrong. My friend's advice was that we should go to the pharmacy immediately and get the brand new digital tests, and maybe do another one tomorrow or the day after. So when we got the tests, I made her promise not to let me use one, because not knowing is the worst kind of temptation to use all the tests in one night. In the quest for motherhood, my curiosity and I were known to have wasted quite a number of tests unnecessarily and then sat there staring at a bunch of negatives, when one simple test would've sufficed.

My trusty guardian didn't last one minute of futile convincing. I didn't even have to try that hard.

"You know there was a second very, very, very faint blue line with the test I did earlier. Does that mean that it's still very early, or does it have to be really clear?"

The next thing I knew I was handed a test and shoved towards the bathroom and told to put us all out of our misery by just finding out once and for all. What was another negative…at least then we could enjoy the rest of the evening.

I walked out of my room holding the test and looked up at the eager face of my friend waiting for a response.. I shrugged and said: "You know, it's really early to even test, to get an accurate result, I should've waited at least another week…but even though it's early and I thought it was negative before..this digital test says… "pregnant"!

Lots of excited screaming and jumping ensued, and then immediately I got strict instructions not to ever jump like that again and to sit down for the next 9 months.

I was dizzy from disbelief, with a million things going through my mind. Grinning stupidly I looked around my house and thought, everything is going to change…I can't believe it.

I'm four weeks pregnant.

Girls and their Hair

I went to the salon the other day to get a long overdue color and haircut session. My hair had become sadly mop-like. Not the kind of mop leaning against your kitchen wall, but the kind that was tossed out with yesterday’s dinner, and had been chewed on diligently by cats. While my misshapen head was busy with the work-gym-home routine, I had forgotten about a woman’s need to maintain her hair, and the wonders that it does for the soul. It’s true. It really brings you back to life.

So I booked an appointment, but not with my usual hair dresser, because he was on vacation. I sneakily requested his competitor, who I had heard did a fabulous job. You may ask, why I don’t go to the better one anyway, and I’ll try to explain the strange loyal relationship a girl has with her hairdresser. Cheating on your hairdresser is only a tiny bit less serious than adultery. There’s this guilt of choosing the other guy at the salon, when he has stood by you and your thinning, oily scalp all these years, telling you your hair is absolutely gorgeous.

I could never face him sitting on the other side of the salon, looking in another man’s mirror.

The salon was busier than usual and the estrogen was everywhere, punctuated by a little testosterone here and there just to keep things interesting. The hormonal commotion, was coming from a bunch of scattered skinny girls, barely past the age of 16, who were all getting high on the fact that there was a man doting on them, running fingers through their hair, and telling them that he would do whatever they wanted to make them look fabulous.

I have to admit, even I like the pampering and the fact that for one hour, someone is dedicating their talents and time to make me look better than I was when I came in. However, I have never been reduced to a giggling teenage noodle by a man with scissors.

In the chair right next to me sat specimen A, from which an insane amount of giggling and flirting was spewing. I resist the urge to throw up into my coffee, while I look straight at the mirror trying not to make a face.

“No…no..give me that…” she squeals and reaches for her phone.

“Why, who’s picture is that? Hmm? Hmm?” the hair assistant says.

“Noooooobudddy…” she giggles coyly.

Can I kill them both? This is just the gay-looking hair-brushing boy and she’s all high pitched and out of control.

As I sip my coffee, with the pure intent of hiding the disapproving look on my face, my eyes peer at them from the corners, wondering how long this girl was locked in a cupboard before they sent her to get a haircut.

I was quite tempted several times, to turn around and suggest that the two of them get a room, especially since the hotel was just upstairs. But I didn’t. I kept my old-fashioned, dignified, opinions to myself.

Besides, it’s really challenging to be patronizing or judgmental when your hair is piled on top of your head, and you have an assortment of brash colored hair clips holding your hair into a fountain like arrangement. For some reason, whenever they do this to me at the hair dressers, I feel like suddenly everything on my face grows bigger and distorted like I’m looking into a fish bowl. My eyebrows start to look like two big black rainbows and my nose starts to take on the form of a root vegetable. That’s why I need my hair, to drown out the unbalanced features of my face, but for now, I must be patient and look like a post modern expressionist painting, before the unveiling of my hidden good looks.

At last my hair cut begins, and of course I have difficulty explaining what I want, because the truth is, I don’t really know what I want. Looking in the mirror for the past 20 minutes, I had shifted more towards wanting a nose job than just a meager hair cut, but I focus on the matter at hand and ask him to do something that suits me but keep it longish, as I like to pull it away from my face often.

Of course, he does nothing of what I ask, and as I see my hair being chopped up into all ungodly layers like a pine tree, I try really hard not to cry.

Meanwhile, freakshow on my right, is still making sexy eyes at the hair dresser and asking him if she can smoke. I swear she’s 12, but whatever, he lights her cigarette for her and they giggle and coo some more. What the hell do you have to smoke for in the MIDDLE of your bloody hair cut??? Are you telling me you are so addicted at this late stage in your life that if you don’t smoke now, you’re going to suffer a fit of shivers from nicotine withdrawal? Besides, she’s not even enjoying it, because he’s combed all her hair onto her face and half the time she can’t even find her mouth to inhale properly. Instead she just dangled and ashed the damn thing for 10 minutes, pretending to be Joan Collins or something. All she’s managed to do is infuse the smell into my wet freshly cut hair. Thank you, Cruella.

My hair was blow-dried to disguise all traces of the horrifying haircut I witnessed and looked magnificent. I beamed and thanked and tipped everyone who contributed to my makeover and went home pleased. Of course even if I had hated it, I would’ve done the same thing, and saved the crying for when I got to the car.

But as usual, we all know that at salons, the water is magical and the hair drying techniques are difficult to reenact at home. So the next day in the morning when I washed my hair and tried to restyle it into its former glory, I ended up looking like an over-the-hill Christmas tree, wondering if flirty flirtina’s haircut was better than mine.

Pony tail it is then, until my hairdresser comes back. Moral of the story? The hair on the other side of the bush always looks better than the mess on your head…or something like that.

Grill and Schmill

I hate Grill and Bloody Chill. I miss Dairy Queeeeeen!!!! Who's bright idea was it to change the damn menu? Okay I understand you needed to put lovely new slate tiles and cosy stone cladding on the walls to give us that nice ski lodge look, but did you have to change the chicken burger? Why? It was one of mine and many other people's favorite treats at DQ. The only chicken sandwich in all of Bahrain's fast food joints, which actually felt like all its parts belonged together. All the others were slippy, slidey and ill-fitting, like there was just something which wasn't quite right. Not the Chickee Chicken, the McChicken, nor the KFC chicken burgers had the lovely harmonious cohesion of the DQ chicken burger. It fit together as one, the crispy tender fillet was just the right size, nestled lovingly in the sesame bun, the lettuce dignified, chopped and not too overwhelming and there was none of this crappy let's include tomatoes for .0001 grams of lycopene. I'll skip the nutrients….that's why I'M AT DQ, FOR BLOODY HELL'S SAKE. Besides, did you know tomatoes are close cousins of tobacco? So thank you, since smoking is soooo late 90's, I'd like no cigarettes in my sandwich!

This tantrum was thrown last night at 12:30 am when I made my husband drive me to Dairy Queen Salmaniya for a long-awaited nostalgic meal after a week or so of having difficulty with food. Having lost the ability to keep food on the inside, I was beginning to rethink my feelings towards food, and decided that I should love it all unconditionally and never judge it. However that was before I realized that a demanding hungry woman hopped up on surging hormones will not compromise on the specifications of her all-time favorite sandwich. When we rolled up to the window I leaned all the way over my Husband's lap towards his window and gave the woman a big smile so that she would feel compelled to do as I asked.

"Hi, can I get the Crispy chicken sandwich with cheese…the way it was done befoooore?" I requested as sweetly as I could.

I was met with a puzzled look and slight annoyance.

"You know, when it was delicious? Befoooore Grill & Chill?" I continued, hopeful.

"Chopped letooooos?" She said, resigned to the fact that she couldn't play dumb anymore.

"Yes." I answered happily, recognizing that there was a stream of underground Grill & Chill haters who have probably been requesting the very same thing since the stupid change.

We added an ice cream treat for Nayef and one for me for being so polite, as she proceeded to yell the order into the microphone referring to the preparation of my burger as "old style". Yes thank you! Old bloody style! Was that so hard now? Just leave it on the menu and train all those new food preparers exactly how it was made, keep the memory alive damn it. Don't forget him…my "oldstyle" chicken burger with cheese. Oh I want to weep and so will you when I tell you what happened next.

As we drove home, and I blissfully embraced my food, sneaking fries here and there, I wasn't aware, that in that bag, in the darkness of the night's highways was none other than…THE BASTARD REPLACEMENT IMPOSTER FAKE WANNABE crispy stupid chicken WITH BIG LETTUCE! Oh but the screaming and cursing when I sat down on the sofa to open my treasure.

"THOSE BASTARD, MOTHER@#$$%$, SONS OF @#$%$^^% how could they????"

As my husband stood speechless by the door, wondering whether it was safer for him to run back outside into the late night and hitchhike as far away from me as he possibly could, I yelled and cursed and strangled the pathetic excuse for a sandwich feeling the betrayal and mockery of that woman who had promised me "chopped letooooooos, old-style!"

"They put a goddamn tomato!!! Why?? Tell me? Can we go back?"

"No, Farah, just throw the tomato out. Like hell we're going back." He bravely stood his ground, not knowing what the results would be.

"But it made a print…on the cheese, and look at this bed sheet sized lettuce!" I groaned going all noodly and floppy like kids do when they know they have no convincing case.

Of course, since we were all here, and no one was going to drive me back to wreak havoc on the chilling grill, I decided to bite into this idiot sandwich which bore no resemblance to it's beautiful predecessor. I thought, you know, it might be just fine, and perhaps I did over react…a tad.

Nope! It sucks. The chicken fillet tastes like a boot, it's hard and oddly shaped long-wise, sticking out of both sides of the new thicker, unnecessarily bouncier bread buns. The wings of lettuce made the sandwich look like it could fly away, if only they stayed put as you bit into it. But instead of being one with the sandwich they kept shooting out the sides, lubricated by the oddly spread mayonnaise. The cheese looked sad hugging the fillet, as if it had been killed on it, rather than melted with the warmth of 15 candles. And last but not least, I glared with contempt at the stupid slice of tomato which served no purpose, but to soggy up the bread and increase the velocity of the lettuce on its way out. Chopped letoooos my ass.

As I tossed the dissected mess into the box, I decided that the battle was over. The people behind the scenes that night at Grill & Smell had no idea what "old style" was. I will never again revive my old pal the DQ chicken sandwich with cheese. I'm going to have to find a way to recreate it at home, for those once in a while nostalgic feelings of being in high school again.

Oh well, nothing lasts forever.

Aging is good

I’m not suffering from writer’s block, nor am I lacking in entertaining writing material, but somehow I haven’t written anything non-work related since July 2^nd. I am very disappointed with myself. But I have to say, that it’s been a tumultuous, revelation-filled, mind-turning, epiphany-infested sort of year for me. I have spiraled upwards into a higher level of life experiences and as they all say… you find yourself at 30.

Well, I haven’t quite turned 30 yet, but I will in a few weeks.
I don’t feel 30 nor do I think I look 30, but I do feel a substantial inkling that I finally know exactly who I am. Which is what’s supposed to happen. You suddenly just “know” things.

I know what I’m supposed to say, when I’m supposed to say it, how I’m supposed to say it and when to keep my mouth tightly shut. (Although sometimes against my own better judgement, I keep blabbering on…like now for instance.)

But throughout the intensive thinking and pondering, which was keeping me busy from my blogging, here is what I have found out about myself and probably a million other women on the cusp of their third decade.

Three important things:

I no longer let petty office work enslave me nor fret over menial tasks. It is not the most important thing on earth. If you make mistakes, that’s great; they’re effective crash courses minus the boring lectures. Make informed decisions, stand by what you know, and do the best you can in the allocated time. That’s it. Then go home and have a fulfilling life.

I don’t have to be polite all the time, because ultimately, that will lead me to be an internally rude person with lots of road rage. Rather than just smile and swear on the inside, I am going to simply say “no” to unreasonable requests, imposing demands, and time-wasting activities.

I’m no longer afraid of looking stupid. In fact, I don’t really care anymore what people think. I have recognized that I am wonderful and my faults are just like anyone else’s. Self-esteem sky rockets after this revelation. It’s the best part.

And since at 30 you require more sleep than a 20 year old, (or look like a panda if you don’t get enough) I will now go pass out so that I can go to work tomorrow and continue my silent protest towards corporate slavery…Bon Nuit.

Top ten signs you're a workaholic

Ten: You don’t understand what people are saying on the phone, because you’re zoned into a screen where you have 10 windows open that you have to either, revise, proof read, or reformat into a 16 column table and email to someone in the next 3 minutes.

Nine: Lunch time gets exciting when you order a pathetic sandwich and get to eat it on the center meeting table.

Eight : You tell your husband/wife, you’ll be home in 10 minutes, for lunch but hours later, you’re still knee-deep in work and you’re no where near packing up…to go have dinner.

Seven: The guy who empties the trash cans at the end of each day, has to wheel you and your chair aside to get to it, because after seven ‘excuse me’s’ you still had no idea how he snuck up on you. He then asks you to lock up on your way out.

Six: You email your colleagues little to-do notes, reminders and annoying task-like assignments, at midnight, instead of going to sleep and telling them tomorrow--in person.

Five: You feel guilty when you’re sick, on vacation, or dying.

Four: You dream that you’re being chased by members of senior management holding papers in their hands, and questioning your loyalty to your job. You hide in a milk box.

Three: Your boss shoo’s you out of the office on his/her way out.

Two: When you go home you talk about work, your colleagues, how you have so much to do tomorrow while your spouse silently slips into a coma. You don’t notice.

And the number One reason is…

One: You don’t have time to blog, but when you do, you’re so tired that all you can come up with is this lame top-ten crap. You find the typing keyboard sounds soothing.

You too can be a Desperate Housewife

My domestication was like a big slap in the face, I wasn’t prepared and it became the most overwhelming month of my life. Our house had been pretty much functional as an evening hang out, prior to moving in. But now that we actually lived here and had to adhere to marriage protocol, i.e. providing lunch and processing laundry, we found that we were missing thousands of items.

In order to grill our first chicken, I had to go to the supermarket four times. I now know, that only red onions are used for cooking. Well, someone should’ve bloody written that on the list. I’m not psychic. Also, I’ve become an expert technician in the inner workings of Gas-Electric combination ovens.

Needless to say, lunch consisted of sandwiches, eaten on the kitchen floor with 8 different instruction manuals spread around and a lot of peering into the oven. After much consulting with one another, as well as with the naked chicken, obediently sitting in it’s brand new oven dish, Henrietta was finally grilled by dinner time.

Doing laundry was also a big adventure. The last time I did laundry, was in Boston, in the basement of my building. I was 18-21 and excited about putting quarters into the big machine as it spun my clothes towards mountain freshness. I had moral support from Esmat, and we ate Doritos as the clothes dried and then played “Roman Times” with the bed sheets. This was usually done at midnight while normal people slept. After three years of waltzing around with underwear on our heads in the laundry room, we discovered the security camera.

In my new house, after a few weeks back, I received my new washer and dryer, an exciting house warming gift from my uncle. Finally, I can wash my own clothes and not drag a huge hamper sack home every Friday lunch.

Doing the first load of laundry took 5 hours. I spent 2 hours alone in the supermarket staring at all the different things I could put into my washing machine, and all the magical smells and cool effects that they would produce. After sniffing everything, I called Mama’s hotline, and discovered that Comfort was only a softener and not a detergent. After being mocked and laughed at, I bought all the right ingredients and went home.

The test drive involved towels and inexpensive items such as old socks and worn out tank tops. This process also involved a lot of sticking my head behind the machines to make sure everything was connected and that no water was going to gush out onto my kitchen floor and ruin everything.

According to the salesman, this washer has a sixth sense. Wonderful! This machine was actually designed and built to protect itself from the freshman housewife. It will pre-wash when it feels necessary and rinse and spin as it pleases.

“I have nothing to do with it, if your shirt is now 3 sizes smaller. Whirlpool did it.”

Choosing the linens was a very stressful time in my life. It was like doing the SATs. I would touch one fabric, then put it back in the plastic and open another pillowcase and inspect the stitching. Would it be weird if I put my cheek on it and closed my eyes? Can I open it up and snuggle with it for a while? Aren’t I entitled to a mini-simulation? You know, we are going to be sleeping together.

And as for pillows, I came from a bed that was a little smaller than a full size. However, it was populated with 8soft feather pillows. I HATE foam pillows. I want to kill them. They are offensive and insolent bastards and a punishment to your neck. No I don’t think I’m a princess. But my pillows have to be the way I like them, or I just sit up all night stewing in anger. You can imagine my horror when my lovely groom introduced me to his stiff foamy pillows, which he says he loves as opposed to the annoying feathery ones. Well fine then, I thought, we shouldn’t have a problem. If he doesn’t like my pillows, he won’t want to use them. Oh, how I was wrong…

Now that we are sharing a bed, jealousy has started to rear its ugly head. Although I only have four now, and he also has four, including his foamies from home, someone is starting to question the system.

“How come you have all the nice pillows and I only have these ugly ones? And why are you setting up your pillows around the edge of the bed, are you building a fortress?”

“They’re my pillows. And it’s a low bed, I don’t want any ants wandering into my ears.”

Well, it’s true, I can’t sleep with all this open space around my head. The other day I found a squashed ant, near my head. What was it doing??? Who squashed it??!!

Several times, Nayef was caught red handed trying to steal my color-coded pillows. I had a strict system of pillow case identification. You don’t want to know about the big identifying party that happened after laundry day when all the pillow cases were switched around. I sat there for 20 minutes cursing as I unstuffed and restuffed into the correct pillow cases. I did not rest until all my beloved pillows were back in their clothes.

“They’re MINE!”

Nayef loves Bree on Desperate Housewives, but he doesn’t realize that I have some of her crazy and none of her domesticity…

No pillows or husbands were hurt in the writing of this post

How to lose a bed in ten days

When one has a large dependence on an everyday object, it is very difficult to have to deal with the sudden malfunction of this thing. Many of you might be familiar with the feeling of having your car break down for the first time, after years of safely delivering you to and from your destinations. You feel betrayed. “Hey, I thought we were friends…” you may mumble at your engine, through the smoke as passing vehicles smugly looked over at your misery, glad that it wasn’t them.

Well, there are degrees of importance in the roles of our daily inanimate partners. For example, your AC, your shower, your hairdryer, your car, your telephone, your microwave…and last but not least your bed, they all have different percentages of love, dependence, whatever. I mean, you can pie-chart it and the biggest chunk always goes to Mr. Bed.

Extremely important, in allowing you to enjoy all the other activities in life, sleep is a precious, precious thing. When a virus invades your motherboard and your computer becomes a paper weight, you can cry, shout, scream and have a glorious breakdown, but when you are chock full of valium and eventually escorted by a sympathetic relative away from the rubble of technology, it will be to your bed.

However, when it is the bed who has “et-tu-brute’d” you, where the hell do you go? I mean, let’s face it, you can’t have a breakdown on your microwave. So my friend, you are now, without peace.

As you are gathering, my bed-disaster in 2004 was very traumatic because I have a rather special relationship with sleep. I had 8 categorized pillows. The Royal Four, which were feather goose down, had been with me since 1995 when I was in Boston studying, and I was in love with them. They were supposed to come with me when I got married. The Secondary Two were “pity” pillows, to fill up the space left over and block sinister looking gaps between the headboards. The Final Duo I somehow acquired in Bahrain, in my days of pirating and pillaging my sisters’ rooms. I think I was trying to create a crowded feeling in the bed.

Ah yes, single hood… good times.

Next came the bed which was a funky hand carved redwood and something-else-wood piece of art done by a “self-proclaimed insane” Egyptian artist, which I managed to acquire by whining and whimpering for 3 working days at my father’s feet about my plight as a single struggling artist readjusting to the customs of Bahrain with nowhere fashionable to sleep. Eventually I wore him down, so he grumbled all the way to the exhibition, bought it and left.

I was ecstatic. It was soooo me. Something my bed has today, ceased to be. It was only last year that I started to get bed troubles. One night, at around 2:30am, I decided that nothing exciting was happening on my left side so I turned onto my right side and faced the wall; a routine exercise. Just as I was settling into my new cosy spot, I suddenly..Booov! Houston, we have a problem. My middle has collapsed.

Too tired and sleepy to get up and investigate, I just pretended that nothing happened and continued to fake-sleep until I got over the adrenaline rush and actually dozed off. The next morning I had post-rodeo levels of lower back pain. It was expected since I had camped on hilly terrains. So I hobbled off to work, and dealt with the crash bed later that day.

It soon became routine. Turn over one too many times and the bed will tell you to shove off. It turns out that my traditionally designed bed had boards that decided to shrink and topple over under my mattress. I eventually had to bring a carpenter home to bang it back into shape. It doesn’t collapse anymore, but sometimes I feel it’s just waiting for the right moment to piss me off again.

Several months later, I had another domestic disturbance whilst nesting late at night.

It happened while I was enjoying a particularly funny book in bed. The type with knee-slapping, loud laughter, causing siblings to look around the wall and check if you’re still sane, kind of book.

I was tired, and sleepy and about to drop the book and retire as I noted something moving to my left. Dismissing my initial instinct, I told myself, “Oh its nothing”.

But when the “nothing” moved again, I sprang on all fours, into full alert mode smashing the living daylights out of it with my novel. Needless to say, the not “nothing” was unaffected. The dark brown tick like creature eventually fell between my bed and the side table. But as always, the bastard had family.

And that was the end of my relaxing night of deep slumber. The next five hours consisted of a full scale war in my room and dismantling my bed, followed by sitting on the couch like a zombie, wondering where I had gone wrong with personal hygiene and why I had the same pest problems as the common mongrel.

For the next week, I felt like a refugee. I called work that morning and calmly explained to my boss, while still delirious from being awake 24 hours that I can’t come to work today, because I was busy all night overcoming insect trauma.

That was too creative to be untrue, so I got the day off. I put this free day to use supervising the intensive disinfecting and boiling of my bedding. My bed was taken apart, washed, vacuumed and suspiciously looked at. Pest control companies were summoned to, at once, assess the situation and assure me that there is a chemical compound strong enough to rid the world of the rude invaders, without killing me in the process. During the previous night’s war, a sampling of prisoners were captured, which I handed over in their little glass jar. I needed evidence to justify the freaked out state I was in.

I was soon assured that the “bed bugs” were there through no fault of my own and can in fact be exterminated swiftly, however I will have to find shelter else where for the next two days.

The day after the spraying, I was to sleep for the first time in my pesticide stinking bed since the invasion. I lay in bed with my eyes wide open and my bedside lamp on. The light was supposed to trick them into thinking that it’s day time, and I’m not there. After obsessively frantic research, I knew enough about them to write their biography. The sneaky freaks only come out at night when they sense human body heat and they can survive for years without food.

THEN. WHY. WERE. THEY. HERE??? The streets would’ve had the same options. Some food, or not so much food. Why am I a buffet???

Some blamed the exotic wood from Egypt, some said mattresses stored in old warehouses often come with unwelcome guests, but we never really knew where they came from.

I wasn’t quite ready to put the past behind me and it was a long time before I was able to sleep happily again, in the dark. I moved out quickly after that, before they could return. Little did I know that I was to be introduced to the exciting creatures of Jasra, where it's a bit more wild.

Last week our house maid, Emily claimed that a crocodile broke into her room. The only other witness at the time was Whisker and she didn’t look too alarmed. I pointed out that there were no nearby marshes or swamps, but only after half the workers in the compound, turned her room upside down, was she reluctantly able to go inside again.