The Never Ending Summer

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? You must
adore me, then. It's been a few weeks.

So,not much has changed here. We completed the month
of fasting for Ramadan and today is the first of three
feast days of Eid al-Fitr. The kids are all fine. I'm
fine. And school STILL....HASN'T....STARTED....YET!
What in the hell is wrong with this picture???! Randa
is so fed up with this perpetual Summer vacation thing
that she pulled all of their backpacks out of the
closet yesterday and stitched up any holes she could
find in them and threw them in a big pile on the floor
by the shoe closet and yelled, "GO TO SCHOOL NOW!"
The girl is so right that it hurts. They've been out
now since mid-May. Frankly, I'm getting a little sick
of seeing them myself.
Don't get me wrong. I love my kids. I just tire of
the "He's sticking his tongue out at me!"-"She hit me!"
routine and DON'T get me started on the "Is it my turn
yet?" regarding the computer. I had to sit through "turns"
for each of the five of them TWICE and forcibly remove
my 8 year old from the seat in order to get MY turn in.
And I'm the one trying to download the webcam software
so they can see their father when they talk to him! Silly
me. I didn't realize that "just 5 more minutes of Spider
Man" was a higher priority.
Another high point to their going back to school will
be the facilitation of my working out and dieting. I've
been trying all summer to work out. It's hard to do kick
box aerobics AND yell at your 11-year old son to stop
walking with his pants down to butt-crack level and making
"gangsta faces" at his sister. Mind you, this is all taking
place in my dining room and my heartrate is getting higher
by the second more from the aggravation factor than the
hook to the head/knee to the face combination.
One of the teachers knocked me for a loop yesterday,
though. She said that due to the high number of influenza
cases this year, they're going to be sending the kids in
grades 1-3 in the morning and the kids in grade 4-6 in the
afternoon. WHAT?! There goes my chance at free time, house
work, cooking and homeschooling Randa! I've got a third
grader, fourth grader and fifth grader. Who KNOWS what
craziness they're talking for the eighth grader? So, it's
looking like I'm stuck with kids galore for the remainder
of the year. Lucky, lucky me. Poor Randa. It's going to
take a lot more than stitching up ripped backpacks for
her to get any one-on-one time now.

THREE DOWN ONE TO GO!

WOOHOO!!!! ISMAIL PASSED TO THE FIFTH GRADE!!!!
We were a little worried for a minute or two. But he did...
by the skin of his teeth! He only passed Arabic and Maths
and Islam with the equivalent of a D but he passed, nonetheless.
Aiman got A's in Arabic, Maths, English and only a B in Islam.
Samiya got straight A's. The only one left to find out about is
Hamo. I forgot that his grades were coming out today and
didn't bother to go to the school. But I'll go first thing in the
morning, God willing! Keep him in your prayers, All.

Thanks.

What I WON'T Be Doing This Summer....

THANK GOD AND GREYHOUND, THEY'RE DONE WITH THE FINAL EXAMS!!!!!!

Finally, I thought this school year would NEVER end. It was like one
of those horrible nightmares where you think you woke up but didn't...
like the dream sequence in An American Werewolf in London. At any
rate, I'm gonna give the kids a whole two days to live it up...I'm even
planning a trip to one of the national parks here (they have HOT DOG TREE
HERE!!! yeah, they're really IS such a thing.) tomorrow for a picnic and
soccer and running around and playing with some friends of ours. THEN, I am
going to blindside them with chores. See, I let them slide all academic year long.
But summertime is "help a mother out" time. I figure it this way, if I have to
endure your asses all summer long, complete with fighting, whining, spraying
each other by pointing the bidet spray out of the toilet when someone unlocks
the bathroom door with a spoon from the outside and walks in on the other for
taking too long....then dammit I'm getting some recompense outta the situation.

Each kid will have one day a week to do dishes. While ideally I should have had
7 kids so I'd never have to do dishes, the ole uterus crapped out on me after 5,
so we had it scrapped. And since Randa is autistic and has issues with bubbles
unless she's blowing them with gum or sitting in them in the tub, I'll still be doing
dishes 3 days outta the week. BUT 4 days outta 7 I'll NOT have dishpan hands.
Woohoo.

Also, since Hamo and Ismail like to beat the hell out of one another from the
time they get up in the morning (an hour or two before I do) until they go to
bed at night, I've decided that another thing I won't be doing this summer is
buying bread. No sirree, Bob! I'll get out of bed long enough to hand each one
a bread basket and a one-pound note and send they're argumentative behinds
down the road to go stand in the bread lines for me. I'll be under the ceiling fan
dreaming blissfully of childless days of yore on the beaches of Mykonos, when
my thighs were firm and my ass hadn't fallen and hit me in the back of the knees.

The third thing I'll NOT be doing this summer is "vacationing" at my sister-in-law's
beach villa on the northern shores of Egypt. I lost 4 kilos in 10 days working my
butt off there last year and left pissed off, sunburned and not speaking to any of my
husband's relatives for 6 months afterward. No reason to burn bridges again.
Besides, I swore to God Almighty that I'd never go back to that place again. We'll
just go to the local beaches or rent a place by ourselves and have fun the way we
want with no familial differences.

What I will be doing is finishing the mosaic table top that the kids and I started two
years ago, sewing, painting with the kids, and taking them on as many outings as I can
manage without losing my so-called mind. I'm thinking museums, beach, parks, maybe
a soccer game at the local stadium provided the visiting team is NOT from the UK!
I think we'll have a boatload of fun...Happy Summer.

p.s. Only 90 more days until school starts again.