Fresh Fish

We usually do our shopping at Seoudi Market, which overall is a nice store. I just can't stand the butcher area. *Shudder* Or the fish stands. I usually have to hold my breath and hurry past while Andrew grabs whatever it is we need from around the meat department. Not that we ever buy meat there, because we don't. And not that hurrying past it ever helps, because it doesn't. The whole store stinks.

But we still shop there because they seem to have the best stocked shelves in Maadi, and tend to have good prices, as well.

So on Thursday when we went grocery shopping we went to Seoudi, of course. And since the pasta, and the canned goods, and the frozen goods, and the bottles of sauces, and packages of soup, and most everything on our list was right by the meat department we spent a lot of time back there.

Almost everything, actually, is by the meat department, except for the cereal and baking goods.

We spent a long time back there, trying to find the flour, which we thought would be by the sugar. It wasn't. But we spent a lot of time looking for it and while we did we heard the butchers having a conversation. Apparently a British man had come to their stand earlier in the day and asked if they had "fresh fish." They thought this was absolutely hilarious and were still joking about it hours later.

"Andik fresh fish?" (Do you have 'fresh fish?')

"Andu mish fresh fish!" (He has not 'fresh fish.')

"Andik fish?" (Do you have 'fish?')

"Andu mish fish!" (He has not 'fish.')

"Fresh fish!" (uhhh...'Fresh fish.')

"Mish fish!" (No 'fish.')

"Mish fresh fish! Mish fish! Fresh fish!" (I think you get the idea.)

They were having a great time. I almost wanted to stick around longer just to listen to them carry on about fresh fish...except that the smell was making me queasy.

Life without Internet, day 1, take 2

A while back someone cut an internet cable in the Mediterranean Sea--actually three of them-- launching the Middle East into an internet black hole.

It happened, again.

I fail to see how or why, exactly. Wouldn't they have realized it was a problem when it was cut the first time? Wouldn't they have taken measures to protect the cables better and/or route them differently?

Apparently not.

So last night, just as I was beginning to download my friend Shallee's Christmas letter, the internet died. I haven't had the chance to read Shallee's letter yet, but I'm sure it was fabulous.

We were also going to purchase some plane tickets last night--using the Lewis's fast-fast-volvo-like internet--so that we could take a trip to Spain and Morocco in January after my brother leaves. Unfortunately we are not sure how that's going to happen now given that there is no internet connectivity anywhere.

I was also planning on getting caught up at work, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen, either. It's really too bad, too, because we just got the internet in the middle of October so I haven't even been able to work all that much since we've been out here and I'm behind from not working that much in the summer because I was too busy packing and/or stressing out.

Sadly we don't even know if a cable was cut for sure because our television doesn't work, either. We are completely cut off from the world.

Today's Friday or we'd probably see what we could do to fix our television that hasn't turned on for weeks and weeks. The Schillings are coming over soon...to use our internet...they will be disappointed that all we have to offer them by way of entertainment is good ol' fashioned card games.

Anyway, I'm banking on a cut cable. It would only make sense for it to happen twice. This is Egypt, after all.

Rachel the adorable Jawa

Along with that fruit bowl, Sara bought back a little jacket for Rachel, again from Tunisia, and I can't get over how cute she looks in it. It's a traditional Berber coat and apparently everyone in Tunisia wears them. I think Sara mentioned that they're made of camel hair; I was too busy being shocked at how adorable it was to pay full attention.


Rachel was a little afraid to try it on, but that's alright because I think Sam was a little scared of his jacket, too. He doesn't like it when the hood is on.

We eventually got her to put her jacket on right before we left for tithing settlement, but only after Andrew and I each pretended to put it on. Even then she took it off once we got inside the church and refused to put it on before we left to walk back home (cold!).

I hope that she'll learn to love it because it is absolutely adorable.

Andrew says it reminds him of a little Jawa, as well it should because George Lucas seemed to have a certain fondness for Tunisia.

So while Sara and I were discussing the wonders of Tunisia--the clean, white buildings; the ocean; the clear, blue sky; the rain--and were reveling in the absolute adorableness of the little jackets, Kevan and Andrew were in some sick nerd-induced bliss, talking about Jawas and Tataouine, the namesake of Luke Skywalker's home planet, and Matmata, where Skywalker's Homestead still stands today.

I? Knew none of that. Nor did I care. The jacket is just too cute. Seriously.

I'm cold and it's not even snowing

I hate being cold; and I know what it's like to be cold, too. I remember when my family moved to Alberta, in December of all months; and I remember how excited I was to have snow that actually stuck to the ground. The excitement, however, wore off all too quickly.

When it is so cold that the snowbanks freeze and you can stand on top of them; and the wind picks up dry snow and whips it in your face like sand; and the minute you walk outside you can feel your constantly running nose stop dripping because it has frozen instead, well, then it's too cold to do anything fun.

Making snow angels and building snowmen don't sound appealing. Snowball fights and snow forts don't even cross your mind. Sledding and ice skating are absolute no-gos.

Recess, once my favorite subject in school, became my least favorite time of the day. I hated bundling up to go outside. Sweaters, coats, snow pants, long johns, extra socks, boots, gloves, mittens, scarves, tuques; I wore it all. And I could hardly move. And I hated it. Recess just wasn't fun anymore. We were supposed to have inside days if the temperature dropped too far below -20°C (-4°F). The problem was they, meaning the school district, never seemed to the wind chill factor into account. I spent many recesses jumping up and down behind huge snowballs that we'd roll to block the wind just so we could keep warm.

I don't think I ever warmed up after that first winter in Alberta. Want evidence?

My favorite place to eat ice cream is at home so that I can sit on the heater vent with my legs pulled up inside an oversized T-shirt. Need more?

I moved to Russia when I was 18, much to the shock my mother, to teach English. Russia is obviously cold, and although I hate the cold I am no stranger to it and knew I could handle it. I went with a group of girls, several of whom were from Arizona. The first week we got there they were thrilled about the snow and asked me to join them outside to build a snowman and throw snowballs. I refused and when they asked why I told them that they would see. Soon they all learned to hate the snow as much as I. Why? Because it's cold and cold is awful.

I now live in Cairo, Egypt. Today it was over 20°C (about 70°F) and I am freezing. If I lived in Alberta this would be the equivalent of a beautiful early summer day. But out here? It's cold. I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt and a fleece jacket. And I can't get enough hot apple cider. And I'm cold. My nose is cold and my toes are cold and I have goosebumps on my arms.

Perhaps I should turn on the heater. But that silly Canadian inside of me keeps telling me to suck it up, that I should be enjoying this weather in shorts and a t-shirt, not snuggled up on the couch with a blanket and book. I suppose I'll need these "cold" memories to battle the upcoming summer. At least it's not snowing.

***Written, a little apprehensively, for Scribbit at Andrew's behest. I'm always a little nervous to write "on topic."

An orange by any other name is still as orange

My friend Sara, whose children we were babysitting, brought us a beautiful bowl from Tunisia, which we promptly filled with fruit. Actually we had to go grocery shopping first since we hadn't done that in about a month, which isn't exactly all that bad until you remember that we live in Egypt and the shelf life of food here is either 2 days or 2 years. Basically we had no food in our house except for Fruity Pebbles (also a gift from Sara, but not from Tunisia) or poo milk (valid for 6 months out of the fridge). So we didn't really do much with the bowl very promptly.



When Andrew got home from The Tree, I (promptly,this time for real) put some bananas, clementines, and lemons in the bowl. He made mushroom soup for lunch and we all sat down to eat.


It's a beautiful bowl and the fruit looks 10 times more tempting in it. Perhaps now we will eat more fruit and have less of it rot at random in our fridge.... How did Sara know that a fruit bowl is exactly what we needed? Probably because Andrew spent like a half hour at her house last week rearranging the fruit in her fruit bowl after dinner. She could tell he was jealous.


Rachel thought the mushroom soup was delectable and didn't hesitate to lather it up in her hair, which is apparently genetic since that's what I did with my favorite foods as a child. She was ridiculously messy by the time she'd had her share of soup. And then she wanted an orange.


She kept pointing and grunting at the bowl of fruit until I finally clued in that she was pointing and grunting because she wanted some. Sometimes I am a little slow at picking up what she's putting down. But finally I realized that she was probably pointing at an orange, specifically, and not the fruit bowl (as pretty as it is).

"Do you want an orange?" I asked her. She nodded.

"Those aren't oranges," Andrew corrected, "They're clementines."

"Clementines are oranges," I informed him.

"No they aren't. They're clementines."

"Which is a kind of orange."

"Then why do we call them clementines?"

"I don't know. They're oranges, though. Just like apples are apples no matter what we call them."

"We only call apples apples," Andrew said.

"Golden delicious, red delicious, granny smith, fuji..." My grandpa had a farm and enjoyed grafting apple trees. That doesn't mean I can name all that many varieties of apples. I can't.

"Okay, but an apple is an apple. They have different names but we still call them apples. In multiple languages we call oranges by different names--in Italian and Arabic they do--so they probably are different fruits and not just different oranges. Otherwise we'd call them oranges."

I left the table to look some things up on Wikipedia, namely oranges. Clementines are a type of mandarins which are a type of orange. As are tangerines. And a lot of other orange-fruits that are called things other than just oranges. For the sake of Rachel, I argued, it was fine to just call a round, orange fruit an orange--even if it was technically a "clementine"--because she's too little to understand the difference between oranges and blah, blah, blah. I win.

So I grabbed an orange out of the bowl and started peeling it for Rachel, and in the true Christmas fashion I peeled it off all in one peel. It's kind of a tradition in my family, and in other families where oranges are a Christmas must. Boy, do I miss Mandarin oranges at Christmastime! Clementines will do--because clementines are Mandarins and Mandarins are oranges. For some reason the States won't import oranges from China. I don't know why since they import everything else from China, but oh, well. Clementines are local here in Egypt, and Egypt doesn't feel the need to import Mandarins as well, so we're stuck with them.

Anyway, my peel came off looking like an elephant, like it should if you do it the right way. I showed it to Rachel.

"Look!" I gloated, "Mommy peeled the orange all in one piece! It looks like an elephant!"

"Eeeeeeeeeoooooo!" said Rachel, lifting her messy hands up high to make a "trunk."

"Yeah, that's what an elephant says," I praised her, "Good girl!"

I gave her a piece of the orange clementine and she gobbled it up, squirting juice all over the place. When she was finished with that section she signed more and then said,

"Eeeeeeooo!"

"Uh-oh," I told Andrew, "I think she now thinks that oranges are elephants."

I picked up an orange and showed it to Rachel.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Eeeeeeeeooooo!" she trumpeted.

Awesomeness!

An orange is an orange, I suppose, and if she wants to call it an elephant she can, since I call it an orange and Andrew calls it a clementine.

Take Care, Sister!

Megan requested French pigtails again this morning. I did her hair up the same way yesterday and she loved it. She came home from school squealing with delight,

"Almost all the girls in my class loved my hair!"

There are like 6 girls in her class besides her. So if only "almost all" of them liked it, that really isn't a huge crowd but at least it made Megan happy.

So this morning while I was doing her hair Megan said,

"Do you know what Ms. Bridget called you?"

At the time I had no idea who Ms. Bridget was or why she'd be calling me anything so I just said, "Nope, what?"

"She called you my nanny!" and then she started cackling with laughter, "But I told her that you weren't my nanny. You were just taking care of me because you're my friend and my mom and dad aren't home."

"That's right," I told her, "So what, exactly, did Ms. Bridget and you talk about when you were talking about me?"

I'm not vain; I just like to know what's being said about me. Especially if it's a six year old doing the talking.

"She just asked who did my hair and I said, 'Sister Heiss,' and she said, 'Who's Sister Heiss?' and I said, 'She's taking care of us while our mom and dad are gone,' and she said, 'So she's your nanny?' and I said, 'No, she's just Sister Heiss,' and she said, 'But who is she?' and I said, 'She's just taking care. That's all. She's my friend.' and she said, 'Oh,' and I said, 'Yeah' because I just didn't know how to explain it all."

I totally know what Megan is talking about. She's in that stage of life where she talks fluently but doesn't grasp a lot of concepts. She doesn't understand the different between city/state/country/continent. She doesn't understand how time works. And while she may know there are different religions, she doesn't know what the differences are.

And unfortunately for her our religion has a lot of lingo that confuses people. Like "Sister."

I remember having a similar conversation with my friend Rebekah and her mom.

Rebekah: Can I stay and play a little longer? Please, please, please!

Me: No, you have to go home because Sister Loos is coming over.

Rebekah's mom (relieved that I wasn't also whining for Rebekah to stay over longer): Oh, is she a nun?

Me: A nun? What's a nun?

Rebekah's mom: You said, 'Sister Loos is coming over.' Do you call her 'sister' because she's a nun?

Me: Ummm...I don't think so. I don't even know what a nun is. She's just my friend's mom...

Rebekah's mom: So she's not a nun. You just call her 'Sister Loos?'

Me: Of course, that's her name!

Yup, I can see how that would be a difficult concept for Megan to explain to Ms. Bridget. It was difficult for me to explain when I was Megan's age because I assumed that everyone went to church and everyone called grownups "Sister" and "Brother." I didn't even grow up in Utah and I was confused about this--I knew that not everyone belonged to the LDS church, I knew that I didn't call my neighbours or teachers Sister and Brother. However, I did occasionally slip up and call them that by accident and I definitely didn't know how to explain why when I did make that mistake.

I was introduced several times at the party like this, "This is Sister Heiss. She's just takin' care!"

And then I would smile and shake hands and say, "I'm Nancy. I'm tending Megan while her parents are away."

And then Megan would nod in firm agreement.

It worked out well. I don't think we confused too many people, even with Megan saying, "She's just takin' care" and eliding "of me" every time she introduced me.

Soon she'll be able to pull a fast one, like Emma. "This is sis....Mrs....Nancy." But only after she's able to make the jump between church and secular life.

Christmas Activities at School

The guards here are never consistent. There are rules, but the rules aren't always enforced and sometimes they are too enforced, like how Andrew got yelled at yesterday for loitering. Or how it took me a good 10 minutes to get into CAC this morning for Megan's class party.

Rachel and I went to CAC three times this week. The first was to watch Jessica perform in a choir soiree--it was wonderful, if not a little strange to hear them singing about the first snow of winter. We got inside without any problems from the guards. I just told them I was waiting for a student to check me in, Jessica showed up, and we walked through--and got completely stuck in the turnstile with the stroller. Oops.

These pictures don't have anything to do with Jessica's choir concert. They are pictures of the dress she wore to introduce the character Mrs. de Winter to her English class. We didn't watch her present but she loved the dress she borrowed from the theater department and modeled it for us at home.



On Tuesday night we went to watch Emma's puppet show. Before she had even flashed her ID card the guards opened up the big gate for the stroller so that we wouldn't get stuck in the turnstile. No problems there. We went and enjoyed her puppet show. Her class is studying Native Americans right now and they retold the story of Where the Buffalo Begin. Emma has this habit of speeding through everything she has to say but when she was narrating the story she enunciated beautifully. It was a good thing her group presented first because Rachel only barely made it through their presentation before getting too fidgety; after Emma's group was finished we spent most of our time in the story corner reading books.

Introducing the story

Emma's turn narrating

Today was Megan's Christmas Openhouse. Megan would have been absolutely crushed if I didn't make it, and I almost didn't. Today, of all days, the guards at CAC decided to not let me through those gates. Jessica used up her morning break to help me try to convince the guards that I was just the babysitter and wasn't going to blow up the school or kidnap any children. They insisted that she needed permission from the principal to let me onto the schoolgrounds, which is slightly silly considering Megan's teacher knew I was coming in and didn't say anything about needing to obtain permission from the higher powers that be.

The guards had Jessica talk to the Middle School authorities who said that they couldn't give her permission to let me in since I would be visiting a kindergarten class. We then phoned the Elementary authorities who had me explain the problem not once, but twice! Grrrr! While I was in the middle of explaining the problem yet again a mother from Megan's kindergarten class walked by.

"Are you Megan's babysitter?" she asked. "I've heard all about you? Will they not let you in? Sheesh. She's my guest; she's going to my classroom. Let's sign you in, here we go."

Apparently this mother, Ms. Bridget, is an aide in Megan's kindergarten class and lucky for me she showed up just in time to let Jessica get off to class in time!

I'm glad I went because the children each got a pointer to show their 'parent' around the room--showing off all their artwork, offering them treats, introducing them to their friends, etc. It would have been pretty lonely for Megan if I hadn't shown up! She had a great time showing us around. Rachel was so excited to be in her classroom! They have a guinea pig, two budgies, and some fish. They had decorations and projects set up all over--it was like a museum! Megan read all the Christmas poems and songs hung up on the wall and showed me everything she had made and all the stations they have in their classroom.

Eating treats

Opening stockings

We even got to stay for story time in Spanish and English. Rachel sat on Megan's lap for most of that!

Megan, sporting a French ponytail, and Rachel listening to the story

Thanks for letting me come to school with you today!

We had a lot of fun, even if the guards were being anal.

I can't help but wonder, though, if we weren't missing some class party information for Jacob. Emma had to bring in treats for her Arabic class Christmas party and had her puppet show/pizza party and had to bring in presents for homeroom. Jessica had a bunch of things going on with the Middle School Performing Arts Week and had to bring treats for her choral soiree. Megan had to bring treats and presents for her class party. But Jacob had nothing of the sort. Either he's in the most boring class in the whole world or forgot to relay some messages.

Anniversary gifts at gunpoint (kind of)

Today, as Nancy will probably mention in a later blog post, is our third anniversary! It's incredible to think that we've been married for three years already!

Since today was my last day of classes and I had several large papers due today (and one tomorrow I still have to finish), and since we're babysitting the Lewises, we didn't have time to do anything special this year.

Nevertheless, I was determined to get Nancy something today. The road from Midan Victoria to the Lewis' house is lined with florists. They're selling mostly poinsettias and trimmed bushes that look like Christmas trees, but they still have a large collection of "regular" flowers.

After getting off the bus, I headed over to the closest bank so I could test my hopefully-newly-fixed debit card. For some reason UCCU had the wrong expiration date in their system so my card would never work, and would always trigger a warning call and an account freeze whenever I tried it. I finally got that fixed yesterday.

The bank is on the ground floor of an apartment building, and is next to several other offices and shops, one of which was a reputable looking florist. My plan was to test my debit card and then get some flowers for Nancy.

I passed the surly looking guard with an ancient AK-47 and went to the special private ATM booth, only to discover that the ATM was out of order. I mentally scratched that off my list of things to do and quickly left the booth, to the guard's surprise. He immediately jerked up his head and stared me down suspiciously. Apparently not getting money from a broken ATM is suspicious.

I walked past him again and over to the flower shop, his piercing stare unbroken. I stood outside the shop and looked at all the fancy flowers. There were blue ones, purple ones, yellow and red ones--it was incredible. As I stood there in my flower-induced stare, the guard yelled at me.

"Move along! Go! Leave!"

I yelled back to him and told him I was just looking. He kind of nodded and finally looked away, over to the crazy traffic on Boor Said. I looked back to the flowers, deciding if I really wanted to buy any. I don't know how flowers work; did I have to choose which color combination and/or arrangement to use?

As I worried about it more, the guard yelled at me again, this time a lot louder. I turned around and saw him pick up his gun and walk over to me. He came over to me, and indicating with his gun, said,

"I told you to get moving! Leave now!"

Not wanting to provoke him (and his gun) further, I left. I passed some other florists on my way, but I turned back and saw that the guard was still there, watching me from a distance. I figured it was probably wise to not stop again, since the guy probably thought I was a bank-robbing spy/terrorist with an affinity for flowers.

So, have a happy anniversary, Nancy, despite the lack of celebratory flora! It wasn't worth starting an international incident...

1577846.298 minutes

1577846.298 minutes. 1577846.298 moments so dear. 1577846.298 minutes. How do you measure, measure 3 years?

A little over three years ago Andrew and I were doing what any normal engaged couples does. We were going over our finances and making plans about how we could pay for school and rent and insurance and food and fun and...

How many hours would I need to work? How many hours would he need to work? How much money could we afford to spend on rent? On groceries? How in the world were we going to earn enough money to fund that crazy study abroad in Jordan? How would we ever be able to afford textbooks let alone children? How were we going to merge our schedules so that we didn't have to be driving back and forth from campus all day? How were we going to afford to put gas in our car at all?

In short, we were budgeting. You get the picture, I'm sure.

I don't really know if normal engaged couples do this, but we're both kind of nerdy and I'm a major stress case so it had to be done. Andrew is not a major stress case, but he is a nerd and is as unfond* of the idea of going into debt as I am, and so was very willing to go over finances with me. It probably was not the first time we'd drafted a budget. I think we did this several times before we actually got married. Leaving the nest was a little difficult for me.

I don't quite remember the circumstances but Andrew made a promise to me.

"Give me three years," he said, "In three years I will be a millionaire."

Now, I knew at the time this wasn't a serious promise, but it kind of became one of those things we started to say to each other all the time. Whenever we'd wish aloud something both of us knew wasn't possible we'd say, "Three years!" Kind of like code for, "You wish!"

It's been three years now and although we aren't technically millionaires (ready for the mushy line?**) we are millionaires in love and happiness.

Besides, we've recently added another "You wish!" phrase to our familial dialect. It goes like this, "After Egypt!" It gets used after a certain someone mentions a desire for a certain iPhone, but I'm not going to mention any names.*** Our original "three year" plan has been extended to include a rather indefinite time period known as "after Egypt" which is a subcategory of an even larger-scale indefinite time period known as "grad school."

We're happy, even without the iPhone, and that's what counts!

Andrew is so amazing! He works so long and hard to take care of me and Rachel. He stays up late doing homework and gets up early to go to school and still takes time to make sure that we're happy. He is such a great Daddy for Rachel. Her first word in the morning is usually "Dada!" They play so cute together. A little too rough for my taste, but still cute. Rachel loves him! He's so great with kids--even after taking care of 5 extra kids all week he's still happy and has his sense of humor about him.

He is always helpful around the house and will do the dishes or clean the bathroom or cook dinner or put out the laundry to dry or whatever I ask him to do. I don't even mind that I have to ask him to help out because a) he always helps willingly and happily and b) he's really too busy to notice that things get left undone. That said, I don't mean he never helps out without being asked, because he often surprises me with a clean kitchen or folded laundry. He's so wonderful!

Sometimes he just stares at me with an awed expression on his face until I say, "What?" and he says, "You're just so beautiful!" I love that he thinks I'm beautiful even in my sweat pants and an old t-shirt. And I love that he sometimes will pick out a necklace or earrings or a favorite shirt of mine and ask me to wear them. I think it's cute.

And I love how absolutely smart he is. He has taught me so many new words and expanded my world view and is most definitely the ridiculously good-looking knight in shining armor of my dreams. I'd go on but I've used up my quota of mushy lines for this entry. In short, I love him!

Thanks for making me a millionaire of happiness, Andrew!

*Technically not a word.
**What good is an anniversary post without a mushy line?
***Andrew, it's Andrew! Andrew wants an iPhone!

A big slice of bedtime

When ReRe came over yesterday to clean the house, neither Sam or Rachel were up yet. Sam's continued his lovely trend of waking up to terrorize the night with his screams which means he sleeps in a little later in the morning.

"They are still sleeping?" ReRe whispered when she came inside.

I told her that they were and she knocked on wood for me. How thoughtful.

"My son," she said, "wakes up at 6:00 in the morning everyday!"

"Oh, ReRe,that's awful! Rachel doesn't wake up until around 8 or 9, usually, but we put her to bed pretty late for a baby her age."

"What time do you put her to bed?" ReRe asked.

"Between 8 and 10," I said.

"And she sleeps all through the night?" she asked.

"Yes..." I trailed off when ReRe started talking again.

And this is where I remembered that I was speaking to an Arab.

"I put my boy to bed at 1:30 in the morning," she said. Her son is about a month older than Rachel, "And he sleeps until 6 in the morning and then I take him and drop him off at my friend's house and he goes back to sleep until about 1 in the afternoon."

"Oh, ReRe! How do you do it?" I asked.

"I take a nap everyday for 1 or 2 hours," she answered simply.

Optimally, so do I. Optimally I'd be in bed by 10 and up by 7 and have a nap everyday. I don't think that's happened once this semester though. It's been rough. I like my sleep.

Arabs, as a culture, seem to think they can do without it. How can ReRe go to bed after midnight, get up at 6 in the morning, take care of her son, and then show up to work by 8 AM with a smile on her face and work all day long only to go pick up her son and care for him until after midnight? And when does she nap? I try to live by the rule of not napping after dark because if I go to sleep when it's dark I want to sleep forever. ReRe must not use that rule.

When does she nap, then? When do Arabs sleep?

I've yet to figure it out. We were talking with a Palestinian taxi driver on our way home from Thanksgiving dinner (obviously a few weeks ago) and Andrew asked him if he actually gets up and goes to the mosque for the middle-of-the-night dawn adhan or if he just kind of rolls out of bed, prays, and jumps back in before the bed gets cold.

This has been a question burning in the back of my mind for years but I've always been too tired to get up at 4 AM and stumble to the mosque to check for myself. So I assigned Andrew to ask someone about it for me. And apparently they--at least this taxi driver--actually get up for the day after that prayer.

Prayer is better than sleep, after all.

I have no problem getting up early in the morning. When we lived in Burnaby my dad used to leave for work before anyone else had to be up and I would often go climb in bed with my mom after he left and would try to talk to her. She'd always tell me to go back to sleep for some reason. When I was four that didn't make much sense to me, but twenty years later I can see it's because she didn't want me chattering away to her about my favorite color at the crack of dawn.

I used to get up and go to work with my sister when she would have to open the pool by herself at 5 AM. Quite willingly, too. I would come home when my mom was coming home from dropping kids off at early morning seminary and then instead of going back to bed I'd just stay up and do my schoolwork before the day had really even started. I homeschooled myself for 2 years and usually had my schoolwork finished before Josie woke up.

Then I started early morning seminary myself and stopped going to work with my sister. But then I moved to Utah and started working opening shifts at the pool the summer I turned 16.

I have no problem getting up early. Except now. I do now. Because I love sleep so much.

All through university I tried to be in bed by 10 PM, except on weekends and holidays and extenuating (homework) circumstances (like the time my laptop crashed with my 20 page paper on it a few days before it was due and my thumb drive copy corrupted and my floppy disk copy corrupted and I just about died). And I would usually have class or work first thing in the morning.

But then I married Andrew and as much as I love sleep, I love Andrew, too. And he's a night owl.

So I switched. I learned to sleep in royally and stay up later than I've ever stayed up in my life.

Staying up for New Year's used to be torture. Now it's like midnight schmidnight.

The idea of getting up at 4 AM makes me shudder. I wake up to kiss Andrew goodbye and then I sleep in until Rachel gets up. And then when she takes naps (which is never consistent anymore--who gives up naps at 1.5 years old?) I take a nap as well. I just love sleep.

And as much as I'm a converted night owl, I'm not an Arab. I don't understand how they can have dinner at 10 or 11 or 12 at night and let their kids stay up that late and then get off to school and work in the morning. I just don't get it. When do they sleep?

As a side story, we had FHE last night and were having cake for our treat. Poor Jessica's been working hard this week. She's had several projecty things and performances this week and has been such a great help around the house. She's pretty exhausted and she likes cake, too.

Emma didn't want her cake because I put some crushed up candycane on the icing and she doesn't like peppermint so she ate the bottom of the cake and was just pushing the rest around on her plate. Jessica is a growing girl and can often be found volunteering to eat other's leftovers. This night was no different.

"Hey, Emma," she asked, "Can I have the rest of your bedtime?"

She said she was just thinking about the two things she wanted most in life at that given moment (cake and bedtime) and they just got mixed up coming out of her mouth. She still ended up with Emma's cake (and Sam's) and I told her about the dangers of eating others leftovers. I was notorious for spitting in my ice cream (to help soften it up so that I could stir it) and then not finishing it. My sister would always, always volunteer to eat it and my parents didn't clue her in until just a few years ago.

I no longer spit in my ice cream, but I do like cake with my bedtime.