we're all making our own sense of things
The fridge beeps if the door is left open for longer than one minute.
The beeps are the kind that burrow into my brain.
Getting the celery to fit back in the vegetable drawer after taking out the capsicum and beans takes one minute and thirty seconds.
By the end of the week, I get an unhealthy pleasure out of chopping then boiling that celery.
On my way to book group a few weeks ago, I walked through a gate and found myself in front of a villa which housed two canary yellow sports cars. I beat a hasty retreat, realising that this was not the villa of my friend and walked in the gate next door.
‘You’ll never believe,’ I said to my friend. ‘They’ve got matching Ferraris!’
She laughed and said, as if this were some kind of failing, ‘You really don’t know your cars, do you? One’s a Ferrari and one’s a Porsche.’
I know a sports car from a four wheel drive, but just as I left New Zealand not knowing my league from my union, so shall I leave the Middle East unable to distinguish between a Ferrari and a Porsche.
Though having said that, a fruit salad is never diminished by the grape.
I’m a big fan of the grape. But not in a salad.
That the mister walked and talked straight through the afternoon, the black of the night and into today, is proof enough that those mojitos were not of pure Cuban descent.
The mister was even less impressed by my decision to pay for a horoscope chart than I thought he would be.
One bad thing: in typical Abu Dhabi style, the gym of which I am a member has just implemented some enormous changes without really thinking through the impact of those changes. They seem, for example, to have given reciprocal rights to members of the Ladies’ Club which means that now all of those women come over for classes. The result is that the numbers of people at the morning classes have increased to completely unsustainable levels. I think it would have been more sensible to run more classes over at the Ladies’ Club because there just isn’t room in the studio anymore and it’s getting very rough and tumble as people jostle for position. I’m enjoying the classes less and less, and every day I find myself less inclined to return. I’m not entirely sure what to do about this, as my mental wellbeing rests absolutely on my attendance at those classes, and I am not at all sporty or athletic, so don’t know what I could do in their place.
One good thing: flickr has just been unblocked. Can anyone send me the user name of my account? It’s been so long since I used it, I can’t remember who I am!
I was surprised to find my brain asking of itself, this 2010 morning, ‘Who shot JR?’, but shocked to find it answered quite uncertainly, ‘Was it Kristin?’
For a few years when it was started, I was still young enough that I was supposed to be in bed when Dallas was on, so I had to watch it through the crack of my bedroom door being careful not to shift my weight on the creaking floorboard or, without a word, my mother would push the loungeroom door closed just to the point that I could no longer see the television. In such cases, I would go back to bed, my radio under my pillow because, for some reason I never understood, our local television station, GTS BKN could also be heard on the radio.
Now of course, I can watch Dallas any old time.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0Se8NaYlE&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Yesterday, as we were watching the final soccer trials, I moved from chatting to conversation with a woman I would count amongst my Abu Dhabi friends, though I don’t know her all that well. One thing led to another, as it does, and we were discussing fortieth birthdays. She is approaching hers and, as you know, for I am fairly certain I have acquired no new readers in the last three years, I had my 40th not so long ago.
‘Did you find it difficult?’ she asked. ‘Turning forty?’
And here is where I found another sign that my state of mind is greatly improved because I felt no need whatsoever to tell her of everything that happened in the year or so leading up to my fortieth birthday. What details I did tell her, I chose carefully and consciously with absolute awareness. As I spoke I was seeking no particular reaction or response and needed nothing from her.
This time last year, I would not have thought twice about what I told her. This happened, and then this happened, and then this and this and this and before I knew it I was living in Abu Dabi, I would have said. Confession was a compulsion. I have no idea what this compulsion was supposed to achieve, but there it was, all ready at the slightest hint of an audience.
My life, or at least my focus, has expanded.
The mister must have noticed things have changed, because last night, when he came home and I said, how was your day, he said, ‘You know, so-so.’
I don’t remember the last time he told me he’d had a bad day. Or perhaps I don’t remember the last time I heard.
On the same day my child had to go to school and tell the teacher, ‘My mom threw my homework out because she thought it was rubbish trash,’* because I did and so I did, I read this in the paper.
You really need to follow that link, yes, yes you do. Read on its own, that article actually gives a false impression of higher education here in the UAE. I don’t have the figures and things to hand right now, but young women are taking up higher education opportunities at a very high rate. I would tell you more about this, but I don’t have time right now. It’s 11.26 and I have promised myself that I will be at my desk – the one without the internet connection – ready to work at 11.30.
*serious language influences at work in youngest child’s vocabulary