Fuscia Hair, Sinus Infections and Final Exams

My hair is still fuscia...but it's growing out a little at the roots. I'm going to dye it
again probably next week. Fuscia...I'm starting to actually like it. And why the
hell not? Men have their mid-life crises at 40 and no one really questions it. I'm
entitled to mine. And since I am married I can't exactly run right out and find some
19 yr old idiot to hang off my arm ("Shut up, Darling. I'm not with you for your intel-
ligent conversation!") and it's more of a male trait to run out and buy a sports car,
I'll just settle for dyeing my hair some spectacularly bizarre color. So there!

Sinus infection.......actually, PRE-sinus infection.......both suck. But luckily I got to
the doctor before the full-blown infection and got wonderful drugs and now I'm
able to breathe and blink with the lights on in the room without blinding pain. Yay.
The week is beginning to improve. Well, it would were it not for final exams coming
up in the next 2 weeks. DAMN the teachers here in Egypt. I have to complete teach-
ing Samiya the last two entire UNITS in her math book. Do not even ask me why they
didn't finish the book before giving the kids the last month "off for final exams study"???
Who the hell sends an elementary student home to "study on his own?" Hello? Smoke
crack much? They don't study during the school year when you assign homework and
smack their hands for not writing it. WHY would they do it on their own? Whatever.
So, I have to force all 4 of them to study and that includes Hamo's French lessons.
I speak FIVE languages...and of course, FRENCH isn't one of them. Fortunately for me,
I'm good at faking it, speak Spanish and have a savant-like ability to memorize word
origins. So, my non-Frog-studying boy is in luck and I won't allow him to fail.
Ismail may be s.o.l. as to Egyptian social studies, though. There's just too much in there
I know nothing about. *sigh* God be with them all this year on their tests.

And just as long as I'm on a rambling tangent here, I must say that even with all of the above
crap going on this week, it's been fine. We only broke 3 dishes this week, lost one plant due
to overwatering by helpful children, got the damn sink in the kitchen fixed and stopped all
knock-down-drag out fights before any serious injuries could be caused...with the exception of
a nasty scratch on Samiya's chin. And I'm going to make fish for dinner tomorrow.
Yeah, okay, this is boring. No more blogs after 4am.

Why My Life is soooooo Expensive....THIS Week

There is a direct correlation between my husband's business trips out
of the country and the general maintenance and upkeep of our flat! What
I mean to say is, THERE IS A FRIGGIN' CONSPIRACY GOING ON HERE!
No, really. I mean it. He left for Greece 10 days ago and 9 days ago, Randa
pulled the slide bolt lock off the front door...which I still haven't put back on.
I have to unscrew the entire mount off the door in order to get the slide bolt
back on it. So, of course, I've procrastinated.

The week before he left, I pointed out to Mohamed that the kitchen sink was
draining a little bit slowly. He told me to just run some hot water down the
drain and whatever was stuck would free itself up. So, I went ahead with my
life as usual and figured it'll just be a little slow, no big deal. Then Samiya and
Aiman got this bright idea to help me. They figured that something was stuck
in the drain and took one of the 20-inch skewers from my grill and jammed
it into the drain of the sink, attempting to knock whatever food particle down
and saving the plumbing day! Well, they were not aware that we removed the
metal pipes that we'd originally installed and replaced them with these little
plastic accordion type pipes. So when they jammed the skewer down, they
punctured 4 or 5 holes into it which did fix the water clogged in the sink....but
it all came out onto the kitchen floor. *sigh* I eventually had to get a plumber
to come and snake out the pipes in the wall (yay...it's fixed) and it cost me 10
pounds.

Today I tried to take a shower to wake myself up and discovered that while
there IS hot water in the hot water heater, it comes out in a trickle. So because
I was really funky and sweaty, I had to take the world's fastest freezing cold
shower. I couldn't even wash my hair because I couldn't stand how cold it was.
I don't even know how to go about fixing this.

Ismail broke his glasses fighting with Hamo and I put them on top of the fridge
to fix them later. I cannot find them anywhere. I am afraid Randa found them
and threw them in the trash. That's all we can figure...they still haven't turned
up. That's gonna cost me another 250 pounds.

Now before all of this damage (except the slide bolt lock) I went shopping for
underwear because all of us needed them. I only buy cotton underwear. It's
healthy and it breathes and it lasts. I spent 172 pounds on underwear for all
5 kids, me, three undershirts, and one bra! Just one pair of underwear for me
was 17 pounds! Can you imagine???? Would you spend 17 dollars on one pair
of cotton panties for yourself? Outrageous.

Also, some idiot in the Egyptian government has decided to pad his bank
account or that of his relatives by killing off all the chickens in the country.
I'm 100% convinced that someone in the govt has some sort of investment
in the frozen poultry business. Since no one ever buys frozen chicken because
the fresh is cheaper, they're slaughtering all the chickens to force us to buy frozen.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't care. However, Randa has quit eating anything in the
protein dept except for chicken. So I'm forced to spend 12 pounds for a chick-sized
chicken that wouldn't feed one of us, let alone all of us. I hate corruption.

Oh, and one last thing.....I have FUSCIA hair. I know this has nothing to do with
my expensive high-maintenance home or my kids or my husband working abroad.
But I have FUSCIA hair. I'm 40 yrs old and I dyed my hair FUSCIA....What the hell
is wrong with me? I'm an American with 5 kids (one of which is autistic and shouts
a lot to herself in public) living in Egypt...THE LAST THING I NEED IS TO
DRAW MORE ATTENTION TO MYSELF!

I wonder if I can afford a week inpatient at the local mental institution.