The Day The Girl Went Beserk

So they say that it's good to be able to laugh at yourself.  Here we go!

Sometimes living here is frustrating.  Imagine that someone told you that you are not allowed to leave your neighborhood except for once a week for two hours, and when you did go out on your two-hour-once-a-week outing, you had to wear a janitor jumpsuit. 

Or imagine that your grocery store only had milk during the hours of 11am to 5pm, and any other time it's all sold out, and you can't go to the store while your husband is at work because the shopping carts can't hold children.  Also, a recent alleged mad cow scare means there is no meat available.  Also, there is a flour shortage so there is no bread.  (But bafflingly, there is plenty of flour in the baking aisle.)  No milk, no meat, no bread.  Makes it kind of hard to feed a family of five, huh?

Or imagine that your yard is community property, and anyone meandering by can throw trash or junk there.  There are only hundreds (yes, hundreds) of maintenance and groundskeeping workers also wandering all over camp, but even though they have been charged with keeping the community property clean, they only come by to dig up what few plants you have been babying in your yard.

Or imagine that moms you see around your community have Filipino nannies who keep their children.  The nannies ride in the car with the moms and kids (being driven by a driver), and when they get to preschool, the mom sits in the car while the nanny and the children get out, and the nanny takes the kids to the door, hugs them, and sees them inside.  Or better, imagine that a mom is watching her kids act out at the pool.  They splash and hit other kids, they scream and run.  The mom does nothing.  She just watches as her children are the terror of the pool.  Eventually, a nanny appears with another of the family children, presumably from the bathroom.  The mom yells at the nanny; she screams at her for letting the children misbehave. 

After nearly a year of this, you just might go crazy.  Or at least get a little frustrated.  

Today, Her Royal Highness got frustrated.  Really frustrated.  We were coming back from the mail center and I saw that the big pieces of scrap metal someone had thrown in our side yard which had been there for a week or more were STILL THERE, even though the place is CRAWLING with groundskeepers.  It made me mad.  I AM TIRED OF LIVING IN A LANDFILL.  So I got out of the car, very calmly walked over to the junk, and energetically threw it out into the middle of the street.

It looks like pieces of a stop sign that somebody left in our yard.

Ha HA!  Cars can't go over this!   Someone will have to pick it up now!  This is not my trash!  Get it out of my yard!

I still didn't feel all the way better.  I needed something bigger to take my frustrations out on.  So I went to the garage and got a hatchet.
...

...

(pause for effect)
...

...

Are you wondering what I did with the hatchet? :)   This is making a good story!   Well, it's not as bad as you think.  I went and got a hatchet...and I chopped down a tree.

With a hatchet.  Well, we don't have saw over here, and plus, when you are mad you want to hit something, not saw something. 

Unfortunately for the drama of the story, it was a small tree, and it was already dead.  I would love to tell you that I felled a giant sequoia with a hatchet, but that would have taken so long that I would still be chopping, and plus, giant sequoias don't grow over here.  The tallest tree I've seen is about 20 feet tall.  (But I was frustrated enough to fell a giant sequoia.  Or at least a date palm!  Well, maybe a small date palm.  OK, maybe just a frangipani tree.  A small one.  A small, already dead one.  Oh wait.  That's what I did.)

Mike had the foresight to know that one day I would look back at this and laugh, and that that day was not very far in the future...so he took pictures.  He even told me, "This is going to make a good blog post."  Thanks for thinking of me, honey.  Nothing like being photographed while you are really stressed out!  Ha!  (Better watch out, honey.  I am the one holding the hatchet.)

The wall is right there, so it's hard to get a good swing.

Half down!  Now for the other half.

On the outside, I was really cheerful about the whole thing.  Everett was watching.  It was ostensibly a fun and dramatic chore that we had been meaning to do.

 After the kids went to bed, I dragged it out to the street, near the junk metal.

Ta da!  I got some of the stump dug out after this, but Mike had to finish it off.  Those roots were deep.

Well, turns out this was a good way to get a little energy out.  I took out that dead tree in our yard, I cleaned up the side yard, and the place looks much better.  But next time, when I grab the hatchet, I am also going to remember to grab some work gloves!  Ouch! 

After some reflection, I think I am frustrated because the holidays are coming up and it's tough to miss out on being home.  I am worn out with all the stupidities of living here.  And I really want to hold my tiny new baby nephew, who won't be so tiny anymore by the time we finally get to see him.

I guess it's just another of the ups and downs of Our Arabian Adventure. Nowhere to go now but up!


(Yes, the title of this post is a play on the Ray Stevens classic.  See the real thing here.  Hallelujah!)

P.S.  I miss squirrels!

Something Just For Me

The last week before the Eid break, I went and did something just for me.  It was something I really, really wanted to do, but I bet it's going to sound dorky to all you people out there.  It almost feels like a confession to admit, but I'm really excited about it, so at the risk of redorkulating myself, here we go:

I joined the Dhahran Madrigal Singers.  !

(I say redorkulating because I suppose that I used to be a dork in high school, but I somehow managed to morph that into something less alienating as I grew into adulthood.  Alienation, mockery, and poor self-esteem, here we come!  Oh well, I really wanted to do this and I guess I don't care what you people think.  Maybe that means that I won't redorkulate after all.  It was always all the cool people who set the trends, right?)

For those of you who don't already know (that's probably about 98% of you), I used to do this in high school.  And I am pretty sure that none of my high school friends (one?  JARJ, are you reading this?) ever read this blog unless they are related to me (there were five of us cousins who all went to school together), so first a little background from high school:

I went to a small, private day school called Webb School of Knoxville.  Google it if you want, or go here ; it looks all fancy on the website, very utopian, a school that you might one day hope that you could afford for your children.  Academically, yes, it was great.  I came away totally prepared for college, and also with 38 hours of college course credit under my belt.  Not to mention that I got a full ride academic scholarship to Vanderbilt including money for summer study abroad in the country of my choice, additional scholarships for room and board, and a National Merit Scholarship.   It was a good school academically, with a good reputation that the college admissions offices paid attention to, and it had many really good teachers.  But socially?  Believe me, that web site is a fair facade.  Socially, it was a cruel, relentless, horrible pit of hell.  Even though I was so successful there, I hated it.  I still want to spit on the ground every time I hear the name of the school, and I would not send my worst enemy's children there for all the money in the world.  And while many of my classmates would not agree with my assessment, many would. 

The only thing that I did the entire seven years I was there that I look back on fondly (really fondly, too!) was Chamber Singers.  Chamber Singers was THE very exclusive try-out choir.  Webb Chamber Singers was always REALLY good, winning both local and out of state competitions.  They had, and presumably still have, a long and glorious tradition of excellence.  I wanted to be in it so badly that I was willing to plow through all the social risk involved with trying out, and I made it.  And one of the best things that the Chamber Singers did was the Madrigal Dinner, and we also got to sing in costume on the steps of the Tennessee Theatre for the school Christmas Concert. 

Here is a picture of the Webb Madrigal Singers, taken from their utopian landing page.  Yes, if anything on that webpage is true, it really was as fun as these kids make it look:
 

By the way, that costume with the faux fur on the right is the same one somebody used in our day.  Most of the girls have their dresses made and then keep them, but the boys all give them back to the pool and the next boy uses it the next year.  

 

I don't have any pictures of when I did it, because all my pictures are in our rental house in Tennessee.  (We only came here with the possessions that we could easily replace or walk away from in case we have to leave in a hurry due to some sort of threat or attack.)

I designed my dress myself after a lot of research into medieval and renaissance clothing.  It is red with yellow and green tapestry trim.  My mom has already stuffed it into a box and it is somewhere over the ocean at this point (thanks Mom!). I've got a Renaissance-looking gold and pearl pendant and earrings and little blue slippers, too, not to mention my matching circlet for my hair.  All that this is really about is getting to dress up like a princess and sing 500 year old songs acapella - it's so fun! 

So here we are, 18 years later (JEEZ) and I am at it again.  (And also, Ha HA!  I am 18 years older and have had three kids and I can STILL FIT IN THAT DRESS!  YEAH!)  I am one of the youngest of the Dhahran Madrigal Singers, which is nice.  I discovered the group late, and so I only have three weeks to learn all the music, but that's ok because at least half of it is exactly the same as when we did it before.  The only difference is that now I'm an alto, because that's what they needed here.  So I'm having to relearn all the notes, but the words are the same! 

I'm really enjoying it, too, because I get TWO WHOLE HOURS A WEEK outside of the house without the children.  It's something just for me!  It's fabulous!  I really enjoy the (4 minute) drive to the rehearsal and back, and it's wonderful to be doing something with other adults.

So have I redorkulated?  Be honest!  Maybe I'll hold that question until after the performance, and once you've all seen the pictures, then you all can be the judge. 

P.S. RMCW, if you are by some slim chance reading this,  I now know all your parts for Wassail, Come Bring, Sing We and Chant It, Fair Phyllis, and Boars Head!

A step toward NORMAL!

YAY!!  Life over here just got SO MUCH MORE NORMAL!

We broke down and got satellite TV today.  YAY!  (I want to put way more exclamation points than I think is reasonable!)

I am sitting on my couch typing into my blog and watching Antiques Roadshow!  How normal!!  The boys watched Jake and the Neverland Pirates before dinner tonight!  I can almost pretend that we are not living in a crazy foreign country!  We might actually be able to watch the election returns if we are awake!

We finally did this because after the hacker attack, none of our videos would stream anymore.  We used to do Amazon Prime videos for all our movies and the kids' shows, and that worked great for our needs!  But after the hacker attack, our bandwidth got, well, practically eliminated.   Our best download speed is about 100k.  And it's difficult to explain to your two year old that the reason he can't watch Wonder Pets is because you need more bandwidth to stream shows from home. 

We are now the proud recipients of more than 60 channels, most of which are not in Arabic!  We have CNN and BBC and Disney, and Disney XD, and Disney Junior, and Discovery, and Travel, and National Geographic, and History, and Cartoon Network, and it can all be paused and fast forwarded and rewinded, and we can record and store up to 140 movies.  It's very fancy.  We have never had cable or satellite the entire time we've been married - the last time I had cable was in spring of 2003 in an apartment in Austin.  We always had pretty good reception with our rabbit ears in Charlotte, getting about 30 channels, so we never really felt paying out the nose for cable was a good idea.  So this feels REALLY luxurious to have so many channels AND the DVR ability to boot.  Hooray!!



Daddy, it's safe to come back to visit us, as we have Fox News! 

It Takes Two to Trick or Treat

 OK, the following is the Halloween Commentary. 
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Let me preface this with:  Our kids had a great time on Halloween!  They are still really little.  Everett knows how it is supposed to go, and Lawrence is just catching on, but neither one has any idea of the sheer volume of candy they could potentially be getting, or how many houses are a reasonable number.  So all my comments are only from the adult perspective - it was a great night from the little kid perspective. 
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HELLO, SAUDIS.  HELLO??  Apparently, the lights are on, but no one is home.  Literally. 

GUYS.  COME ON.  IT TAKES **TWO** INTERESTED PARTIES TO TRICK OR TREAT.  We'll call the first party the "Trick or Treaters" and the second party the "Trick or Treatees."  Usually what happens is that some larger portion of the community agrees to be the Trick or Treatees, and some smaller portion agrees to be the Trick or Treaters.  The Trick or Treaters then walk through the neighborhoods and ring the doorbells of the Trick or Treatees, and the Trick or Treatees open the door and provide candy.  IT DOESN'T WORK IF EVERYBODY DECIDES TO BE A TRICK OR TREATER!   SOMEBODY HAS GOT TO STAY HOME!

It hasn't always been this way.  When the company compounds were mostly western expats, like back when Mike was growing up here, Halloween was a fantastic free-for-all.  He describes a scene in which every single house was open for business on Halloween, so much so that the parents usually sat outside on the driveways in lawn chairs to give out the candy, so you didn't even have to go up to the door.  Keep in mind that there are *thousands* of homes on the compound and most of them share walls, so the driveways are maybe 15 or 20 feet apart each.  Mike and his friends would fly around the camp on rollerblades and fill pillowcases with candy until they were practically too heavy to carry.  Wow!  He still clearly relishes the memory of those Halloweens - especially since westerners were not allowed to celebrate any other holidays...no Christmas or Easter, for example.  Halloween was the one holiday that the Company got right. 

This was before September 11 and all the expats left.  

We were not expecting it to be that plentiful.  These days, the nationality dynamic is flipped from what it was - 90% Saudi and 10% western, instead of the other way around.  But Saudis have nothing against Halloween - it's not a religious holiday after all.  (OK, you particularly picky people - yes I know it stems from an old religious holiday, but let's be realistic and face the fact that although it used to be religious, it's not anymore.) 

So we knew it would be less than before, but Mike and I were both surprised at what actually went on here on the appointed evening.   Here's how Halloween worked for us:

A few days before Halloween, we were given the heads up that there are certain streets that happen to have more westerners, so those are the streets to hit.  Luckily, most of them are immediately around our house.  (I didn't know it, but apparently we live in the most western populated part of camp.) 

Also, it's hard to tell who is willing to let you trick or treat there, because you have to go through the (closed) front gate and around a corner to see the front door.  We were told that anyone who is accepting trick or treaters has lights on or around their garage, and they stand outside on the driveway to give out the candy.  (This really bothered Everett because he was all revved up to ring doorbells like last year.) 

So we started out with a bang and got three houses on the street next to ours.  Keep in mind that I can see probably at least 20 houses from our driveway - so this already seemed sparse.  But we had been assured that our neighborhood was THE hoppin' place, so we kept going with high hopes.  We rounded the corner to the next street, and....nothing.  Not one house.  OK, keep going.  We got about five houses on the next street and maybe about three more on the street after that.  And that was it!  That's it?  There are more than 100 houses in our part of camp, and only, let's see, 3+5+3 = 11 of them were participating?  Sheesh. 

The first house we went to.  You can tell if they are trick or treatees by the lights and decorations.

People who are participating really go all-out.

Everett was really intimidated, but not my Lawrence!  He said, "I'm Captain Hook!" 

Everett got better at the second house.

We decided to power on and walk to Mike's childhood friend's parents' house, which is in a different but adjacent neighborhood.  Guess how many houses we hit on the way....ZERO!  Not one.  So we got to their house and hung out for a while, and then Lawrence and Catherine were tired, so I took Everett on.  There were several other streets I wanted to try before I gave up, especially since Everett is so much more aware of what's going on.    And he was still so excited!  We walked down one street, then another, then another.  We passed two streets that I had been told would be "good" streets, but NOT ONE was open for business. By this time, we have walked a long way and I am carrying Peter Pan on my shoulders. 

Then we got to the school.  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  We found everybody.  Security had blocked off the streets and it was FULL of Saudis in costume.  FULL!  It was like Boomsday.  (I know all you non-Knoxvillians have no idea what I am talking about, but every Labor Day, the Knoxville has this enormous fireworks show downtown called Boomsday.  I forget how many people typically attend, but I want to say it's like 500,000 people, and when they all walk on Neyland Drive together, it's this huge crush of rednecks.  While you're maneuvering in the crowd and trying not to get squished or run over, you think, "Where did all these people materialize from?!".)  The street was MOBBED.  But here's the funny thing....they were all walking, but no one was coming out or going into the crowd....and...the crowd had a self-imposed imaginary boundary.  It was the weirdest thing.  We were walking THROUGH, looking for houses to trick or treat at, and we were the only ones.  And (of course) we were the only white people to be seen.  Maybe they thought that was part of our costumes. 

Well, naturally, we found ZERO houses to trick or treat at through there (even though we had been assured otherwise, since these were the best bet streets).   I finally discovered the reason when we saw a house with orange lights.  It had DOZENS of Saudis standing outside the door, ringing the doorbell incessantly.  There was a big line out into the road.  It was obvious to me that these poor people had actually tried to give out candy, had clearly run out at some point because of the masses, and did not want to battle the crowds to come outside and turn off their lights.  But the Saudi kids kept right on ringing that doorbell.  Yeah, if they did that to me, I'd probably stop giving out candy every year, too.

Here's the deal, folks.  You have to give to get.  If you just take take take, then no one will do it anymore.  If your kids trick or treat, you should stay home and give out candy!  Saudis like the taking part, but not the giving part.  They came in and took too much, and, in Mike's words, they "ruined Halloween."  People who have lived here know this, and so they don't participate anymore.  It all falls apart unless you DO YOUR PART to contribute.  This is a good example of what we have taken to calling "typical Saudi."  No work ethic, no team playing, no striving for something better, no contributing.  How sad.   

Everett and I kept going and decided to hit a couple of houses of people we knew who were likely to be home.  The rest of the story is that we walked more than a mile through thousands of homes, and only found three more to trick or treat at.  THREE!  Everett was a real trooper, and he thought that trick or treating was great.    Sigh.  Well, at least we had a lot of one-on-one Mommy and Everett time. 

So Halloween here has changed a lot since Mike's day.  It was fun, and we certainly don't need any more candy than we got, and at least we'll have a more realistic idea of what to expect next year. 

Enjoying the spoils of war.

Halloween Pictures

Happy Halloween in Saudi! 

Last week, Everett had costume day at school.  He went as a train engineer.

Later that week, Everett and I made a pumpkin cake (just looks like a pumpkin, not really pumpkin cake). 

OK, so we had eaten half of it by the time I got around to taking the picture.  But it really DID look like a pumpkin!

Then I gave Everett the leftover icing to eat. 

Amazingly, a few days later we actually found some pumpkins here to carve!  They are really little, so we got three.  I think we paid about $50 for all three, which was pretty good.  We were just grateful to get them.  Everett and Lawrence carved theirs with Daddy on the patio and in the garage. 

 

Everett (left) wanted a cat face, and Lawrence (right) wanted a goofy face.  Nice job, Daddy and boys!

 
On Halloween night, we got the kids all dressed up.  (Thank you for sending the costumes, Gramama!)  Everett decided to be Peter Pan, Lawrence *independently* wanted to be a pirate, so with that, I gave him a hook hand and ordered a Tinkerbell costume for Catherine, and viola! Coordinating costumes!

We positively could NOT get Lawrence to cooperate for this picture!  He kept throwing his head back to knock the hat off.  And in classic Benchich-kids form, they would never all look at the camera at the same time.  We finally gave up on that! :)   Everett was all about the Peter Pan stance, though!

Halloween and trick or treating here is really different than in the States.  I will post tomorrow with thoughts on Halloween and a description of what goes on here, but I am just trying to get some pictures up at this point.  The upshot is that it's hard to find people who are willing to let you trick or treat at their house.  After 2 hours of walking, this is the stash that the boys took away.  (Lawrence bailed before the 2 hours were over.)

Everett's

Lawrence's

Phew!  Ok, some pictures are up.  More commentary tomorrow.

Hope everyone back home has a great time tonight!

Sanity Needed!!

Help!

I have lost my mind. 

I was reading through the posts on the Dhahran women's facebook page, and somebody posted the following picture with this comment:

"Here is the picture of the darling puppy we rescued on Friday. I think he may be about 2 months old. Friendly, soft, gentle, but not potty trained yet!  He needs a home. He is lonely and wants a family." 

I KNOW it does not make any sense, and I KNOW it's a bad idea, but I DESPERATELY WANT THIS DOG!  It is all I can think about all day long. Agh!  HELP!

Here are some reasons why this would be a bad idea, E:

1) I already have three small, demanding, energy- and attention-requiring children.   (This should be enough, but I'll list some more for fun.)

2) This dog is not potty trained.  (I already have two in diapers!  No more poop!  No more wee wees!)

3) Our house is small and has a TINY yard.  (This is no place for dogs; Khaki hated it when we first moved here. )

4) What in the world would we do with him on repat?  He would either have to be boarded for a month twice a year, or we would have to farm him out to friends.  (Hardly fair to a new puppy, especially right after we got him.)

5)  Graycie would never forgive me. 

Yes, I know all these things!  But I keep thinking about how this dog needs a home, and how he's probably really soft and has that sweet puppy smell.  He looks so sweet.  He is still not adopted yet (I keep checking and checking!  Agh!) We have a lot to give a dog.  And if we got him now and he lived (say) 15 years, he would be checking out about the same time the kids were headed to college, and then Mike and I would be free and clear.  (Which would be better than getting another dog when the kids are older, because then we would be stuck with the family dog as empty-nesters wanting to travel.) 

I think I would feel better if someone would just go on and adopt him, because then it would no longer be an option.  Not that it's really an option now.  It's not an option!  But here I am, still entertaining the idea.  

How do I shake this?   

Musing at Eid

I have been taking a break from blogging for the past few days because we have been on vacation!  Well, Mike has been on vacation, which is to say that he has had the days off of work.  And we really just did a stay-cation, because it's just too darn hard to lug the three kiddos around and still keep everyone napping on schedule.  (C is every day from 9:00-10:45 and from 2:00-4:00, L is every day from 12:30-3:00, and E is Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from 1:00-3:00.  Ugh, we are never going to get to go anywhere ever again!)

So anyway, the reason for this week-long holiday is the Muslim celebration of Eid. 

All I know about Eid is that there are two of them:  one at the end of Ramadan called Eid al Fitr, and it's a great big four day party to celebrate the end of a month of fasting.  It's rather like Easter at the end of Lent, but without all the Jesus stuff.  This year, that Eid was in August.  I was not here to witness the revelry, but the big events include that the mall stays open all night long.  Yay, sounds great. 

The Eid we're having right now is called Eid al Adha, which is the celebration to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac.  It is supposedly a bigger celebration, but so far all I'm seeing of celebration is that they have strung up those colorful triangular strings of flags on every major chain link fence, like in a used car lot.  And that's it!  Happy Eid, or "Eid Mubarak"!  What's it gonna take to get you in this car TODAY? 

Oh well, at least Mike has had the week off.  It's been great!  We've been to the pool, and to the beach at Half Moon Bay, and to Ras Tanura, and we've gone to the "big park" (the big park on camp that has THREE playsets in it!) and had friends over for dinner, and we went to the Dining Hall for the breakfast buffet, and we went to the grocery store in Khobar, and we had a lazy DVD watching day.  We've tried really hard to plan things and keep busy, because it's easy for it to get really boring around here.  (No school, no playgroups, no music class or T-ball, lots of friends gone to Bahrain for the week, no TV, and still decently hot outside.)

(Speaking of Bahrain, several expats have said that over this week there was a lot of civil unrest, and several people had to drive through areas where they were throwing maltov cocktails.  YIKES!  No, we will not be going there again any time soon.)

Well, yes, still decently hot, but today was better!  It was probably only mid 90s and this morning, I wore jeans to the commissary because it was only 86!  Yes, 86!  Break out the jeans and jackets, people, we are below 90!  I have been chilly all day and it was overcast (!) nearly all day, so it felt cold, like curl-up-in-a-chair-with-your-cocoa-and-a-book kind of day.  Yes, I am a cold-blooded lizard and I need my rock to sun on.  Yes, I have completely adjusted to this hot temperature.  Yes, I am going to be in a bad way when I go home for Christmas. And I keep watching videos of reporters talking about Sandy, and my first thought is, "Wow, he must be hot with that coat on," until I remember that "Oh, yeah, it's cold at home." 

So all you Sandy folks (you know who you are), let us know if things get hairy.  We will try to be watching from here, but I think we will be sleeping for the worst of it tonight.  Good luck!  We'll try to send some dry, warm air your way!


PS The best part of Eid - NO JETS!! YES!!  
And they have installed a new oil drilling rig about 1000 yards from our house, and it blasts these "all clear" signals all day long.  Sounds like the horn of a cruise ship.  SO loud.  But it's been off, too!  NO JETS AND NO HORNS!  YAY!!  HAPPY EID!  EID MUBARAK!