One Piece Prayer Outfits and other randomness

So today I been thinking about my nifty one-piece prayer outfit. UmmZaid was talking about hers a few weeks back and the thought just came out of my subconscious where it has been lurking since I got it at a Mawlid event a few years ago after helplessly longing for one, scouring Paris for one, and finally I got one. It even has its own little bag, much like my oft-maligned Bucky pillow. I then started thinking about dhikr beads and moisturizer. I need to stop thinking. Anyway. I am not an expert, this is just my personal experience, go to real scholars with deep questions, etc.

Here is a picture of something similar (NB I do not know this site and did not get mine from them). What you are looking for is something with a hood and an elastic band (not a tie), elastic wrists with a little thumb loop, and length about a foot longer than the rest of your body. Mine stretches. I am pro one-piece prayer outfits for several reasons, and think every new convert should get one or be offered one:

1. The two-piece khimar and skirt style outfits ALWAYS fall off of me or I trip on the skirt or a random body part (arms usually) gets exposed. My MIL has mastered the technique with the khimar type, but I just can't do it. To pray with this outfit, you put it on and pray. No hijab or sock hunting required.

2. Even if you can make it happen with the khimar style, the one-piece ones are so practical for tarawih and long talks at the masjid. You just leave it on. This is also important if you want to go to the masjid but your islamic wardrobe isn't built up. Walk in the womens' entrance and throw it on.

3. If you have unexpected guests at the door and you happen to enjoy sitting around in a t-shirt and pajama pants, you don't have to run for your hijab or run for sleeves- throw it on, answer the door, do what you need to do, and then excuse yourself. I learned this from one of my SIL.

Speaking of praying (this is where my mind leads me), I learned something from my cousins and a lovely lady who gave me my first abaya. Wudu is good for your skin in that you are clean. Wudu however involves water, which dries out your skin. My arms started flaking about three months after I started praying. Anyway, my cousins and lovely lady put moisturizer on their legs and arms after wudu or after they pray. The moisturizer keeps the water on the skin. And it doesn't have to be Creme de la Mer or something, lovely lady used Nivea Cream (in the blue tub) and my cousins used baby lotion or Garnier cocoon or whatever was handy. Oh and once I had a makeup artist tell me that Nivea Cream was the best moisturizer ever made and not to waste money on the expensive stuff.

Finally, Nice Hajja taught me something about dhikr beads. Growing up in a predominately Catholic area, and as my friends can attest, I grew up with an unhealthy fascination for rosary beads, even though my family was protestant. As such, I am one of those people who collect beads. Whenever anyone goes on a trip to Back Homelandia, I always ask for beads as a present.If you ever want to get me a present, get me beads. Nice Husband and I must have twenty or so, and some of them are really nice. To quote Nice Hajja, "Keep the nice beads at home!" I had a lovely pair of some sort of garnet type beads and I made the mistake of using them as my everyday pair. They rode in my purse, in my suitcase, and so on. They broke. I restrung them but the gap is all crazy now. Go ahead and feed your bead collection (ours is very helpful when we have guests), but for your everyday dhikr needs find yourself a pair that meets these three requirements:

1. cheap (wood or plastic)
2. comfortable (the gap between the beads doesn't give you carpal tunnel or something)
3. sturdy (can handle a ride in your purse)


Again, I am not an expert but this is what has worked for me the past five years. I keep the nice pairs for a night when I am going to stay up as part of my pampered girls night routine or lailat al qadri or something. Also, I cannot stress enough that if you find a pair of beads with the right gap, keep them, because comfortable beads are hard to find.

Loser

Someone actually opened our locked laundry room to steal 2F40. Oh yes, we have to PAY for the chance to do laundry every two weeks on dilapidated machines. I know it was locked because the lock is wonky and I always have to spend like five minutes locking it back. What a loser. Now I have to waste about 45 minutes to go somewhere to make change. I hope I can catch Nice Husband before he gets back from jummah. Thanks a lot.

Friday's Thanks God

After descending into a multi-week pity party not related in any way to PMS, it's time for a little Happy News.

1. We are doing laundry today. For those of you acquainted with Swiss Laundry Drama, this is indeed a great day.

2. Sometimes a little medication from time to time does not hurt.

3. You know those Bucky neck pillows? I got one for the plane when I came back from the States. This was after years of mocking them mercilessly. I have to say that I am sold, and I even use it at night. I also like the handy dandy travel bag. Forgive me Bucky, I was wrong.

4. I have quite possibly found the best sunscreen ever. Just when I thought LaRoche Posay couldn't get any better (they make my winter moisturizer, hand cream and eye cream), they came out with this shaky-shaky SPF 50 (I bypassed the 60 for some reason) fluid for faces. Plus, it was cheap (I think the 50 was less than the 60 by like two Euros). I used to use their classic SPF 50 sunscreen, but it was kinda thick, thus causing sweaty face, and had so much zinc that my face was white. I heart you, LaRoche Posay Sunscreen. If you live in Switzerland and want to get soem, go to France. It's twenty percent cheaper. EVERYONE should wear at least SPF 15 or 20 in the summer. Even Nice Husband needs some for his shoulders from time to time, and he is way brown. Wear Sunscreen, remember that spoken word thingie? Forget about the rest, but Sunscreen is my credo (thanks Miss Jean).

5. My mommy, on my last trip to New Orleans, got me the hookup as far as makeup is concerned (makeup being my mother's one true love in life, therefore she is always game for giving makeup as gifts). I have the most lovely powder and blusher, and I have one powder compact and one mascara (I only wear mascara for girls' parties and special occasions) waiting in the wings as backup. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a zen makeup routine, it involves a bucket of sunscreen, a beige-y powder blush (courtesy of Nars) and powder (courtesy of T Leclerc) and my favorite non-lipstick (courtesy of Shu Uemura)ever. The end.

6. Nice Husband had the foresight to buy dryer sheets in the US. Yummy smelly clothes.

7. I had one of those perfect cups of tea this morning, you know where the sugar and the milk and the steeping of the tea are in sync? Yeah one of those days.

8. We have a new shelf in our kitchen, courtesy of Mr Bricolage, Nice Husband, on which we have put the salt, pepper, sugar, coffee, etc, thus freeing valuable table space.

9. I think the eye doctor is in my future.

10. Speaking of doctors, I heart my doctor. Alhamdoulillah for someone normal who takes time for people.

This Week off of Work= Bilan

"Mes Constats", French for "Pity Party"

1. Taking a week off of work because you are sick is not like being on vacation, because you still feel like crap. My summer vacation is Mexico, not my living room.
2. Being off sick does not mean that I have "more time to clean".
3. I am still tired. Really, really tired.
4. I have only seen Mr Olivier Galzi once on television. Once is not enough, and I need to set the alarm to get a good look at him tomorrow morning.
5. It would really be a lot easier for me right now to justify myself if I had something "tangible" wrong with me, say a broken limb or repeated vomiting. No. Just something that could be my thyroid, could be just stress, could be anemia, who knows. I would really like to be able to say "I have X wrong with me and boo-ya." Seriously, a friend of mine from high school had this little brother who was always thought of as lazy and somewhat of a hypochondriac. Turns out he had bone cancer. His first reaction to his family? "See, I told y'all I was sick, y'all kept telling me to take a Tylenol, a whole lotta good Tylenol is gonna do for my CANCER bla bla" (NB, he lived. I wouldn't have mentioned the story had he not).
6. The weather is lovely. Too bad I am exhausted.
7. Tomorrow is laundry day. Since I am "at home", I get to "help". Woo hoo. Oh well, at least there is clean laundry involved.
8. I said in a post a few weeks ago something I wish to repeat. I am tired of having bad days. I am tired of stupid little details being the only things that make me say alhamdoulillah. I want to say I had a good day, period. Without having to qualify it with platitudes like, "I had a good day because I am still alive" or something. I want to have a day where nobody and nothing decides to get in the way. I want no drama nowhere for at least 24 hours. I don't care if there was some typo in a report or if there is a dustbunny under the bed. Seems to me that right now, 24 hours of no drama is my impossible dream. Once one dragon is slayed, there are two or three others crouching in a corner just waiting for their turn.
9. For example, yesterday sucked and today sucked. I don't feel good and I had to deal with other people's drama when all I wanted was to be left alone. Alhamdoulillah I am alive, and that is all I can say about that.
10. I have reached critical mass. There is only so much "you didn't do this" or "you don't do that" that I can take. My brain is fried by reproaches and insults and criticisms. I feel like this blog is suffering, because my brain can barely form a sentence these days. Ergo the cathartic nature of blogging is cancelled out by the fact that I am, in fact, writing depressing crap.

From S.'s blog

Still haven't had my tea yet, but here's to starting off your morning with a leetle list about Redneck Muslims from S.'s blog.

I am so guilty (Guirty for those of you know know what I am referring to) of the first one and the last one.
salam

Home Sick

Y'all make dua for me, I am ill. Don't want to talk about it, but yeah. I am hoping it is temporary and not an indication of something long term. Good thing I stayed home today because it looks like monsoon season out there. The rest of the day was beautiful, and then about twenty minutes ago the clouds unleashed their nascent torrential rainstorms. Meanwhile, Nice Husband is somewhere in Geneva getting rained on.

Hmmm. Home Alone without Nice Husband. Let's have a little poll (give me some comment love, people), what do you think I will be doing for the next few hours?
Your choices are (and you can have more than one):

-Singing Leonard Cohen songs even more off key than he does a cappella to no one in particular

-Drinking a cup of tea

-Watching...ohh nooo my new favorite tv channel even though i don't understand a darn thing. Nice Husband often is perplexed by my desire to watch television in languages I don't understand. I used to watch TV5 back in the day before I spoke French, and guess what...I speak French now.

-making a series of long-distance phone calls and generally running up the phone bill

-giving myself a pedicure

-German verb drills, because I am a nerd like that


The possibilities are endless. I love Girls Night. Answers as to what I really did later.

Welcome to Switzerland

Switzerland is a weird place, y'all. It isn't just all about cows, watches, chocolate and banks hiding Nazi money. This place is strange.

I read a story about, get this: a drunk dude either decided to "take a nap" or passed out...on some railroad tracks somewhere in the German part of Switzerland late Friday night. The conductor of Saturday morning's first train sees him but couldn't stop in time. However, believe it or not, the man comes out of the incident pretty much unhurt despite getting run over by a train. He gets sent to the hospital for a check up, and is (here's the "Welcome to Switzerland" part)...given a fine for interrupting rail traffic.

Mr. Switzerland (not a bad morsel, I say) is part of some new ads meant to entice women to visit Switzerland while their menz are participating in World Cup festivities. I love the stereotypes- the lumberjack, the mountain climber, and the "sexy train conductor."

Speaking of "sexy train conductors", I wonder how much the fact that German makes me laugh is going to hinder my ability to speak said language. Last year in Zurich they had an ad campaign for public transport, and even my limited German was enough to make me crack up. One of the ads involved an old man in a convertible with way too much jewelry on, and said something like, "Don't you want to take the tram instead?" The second had a series of tram drivers of varying levels of hotness with a couple buttons open on their UNIFORMS holding flowers and chocolate and stuff, and said something crazy in German like, "Our tram drivers are gentlemen, they pick you up, they take you home"...and this is where my German started failing me, but I am pretty sure the punch line was something like, "but they don't go upstairs." Also, it was pretty interesting to see what the Swiss considered "hot" enough to be in an ad about "hot" tram drivers.

Two words that send me into hysterical giggling fits are Grütli and Böögg. I can't remember, do they really say "Rütli" instead of "Grütli" in Swiss German? It doesn't matter, I laugh either way. And their little friend, the Böögg, an integral part of any Sechseläuten festivities...I mean, how can you take a country seriously with these types of names floating around?

Nice Husband, quote du jour

Nice Husband ran the 20km of Lausanne yesterday and came out with a perfectly respectable time- under 1:45. Everybody say Macha Allah and move on. I got, as The Big Finn would say, some "Photographic Gold" and a "Salam alaikoum" around the 18.5km point. He was even smiling.

Watching tv a few minutes ago, he suddenly came out with one of his weird social commentaries, "I don't like May in Europe." When he says something like that, you have to take it as fact and it has been forever deemed some sort of universal truth. Ok, let's ask Nice Husband why.

DP: So what is wrong with May? In France you're always off work. Switzerland is just like the US.
NH: blah blah météo blah blah long weekends in France blah blah gout des vacances blah blah but you still have to wait until June.

Ok I get it now. Even though we're in Switzerland:
- the weather is still "traitre", even more so than April, because in May you kinda expect it to be hot. So some days are really good but sometimes you get days are frozen tundra. I remember once in Paris (it might have even been last May, I was there a lot) one day it was in the low 80s, and so the next day I forgot about the ambient temp in my mil's place and walked out straight to the car in the sunshine. Nice Husband had an errand to run so he dropped me off at the metro in Creteil, I hop out and it was easily 50F outside.
- even if there are no long weekends, all the French people are on vacation, and the weather is so nice you feel like you should be on vacation
-if you can't have vacation until the end of June, it is really aggravating to have to go to work if the weather is nice.

Thanks for that clarification, Nice Husband.

Underage German Teacher Hits a Nerve

I was talking to Underage German Teacher this morning about a couple I know whose "working language" in their relationship is German, which happens to be the second language for both of them. I thought it was kinda cool that two people were married and were both communicating in their second, non-native language (I know a couple at work in the same situation). He saw it another way. His response: "Gee, finally two foreigners in Germany speak German!"

Discuss amongst yourselves. He has just enough of a German accent in English to be funny without being a cartoon. The only thing that really gives him away are his a's, like when he says "fat". I do think speaking with an accent can work in certain situations, my French boss sounds like Pepe le Pew in French and people eat it up.


In other news:
Mark my words, y'all, it is time to count down, incha Allah, my three dreams I have given myself a deadline of age thirty (If I am still alive and the world is still here)for are:
- I want to pass whatever the German version of the DALF is. The ZOF or the ZD or whatever it is called. I will find out whatever it is called and learn serious German. I am for real. Don't laugh. Y'all laugh now because my German sucks, but they laughed at me ten years ago when I said I was going to be Super French Expert, and look at me now, boo-ya. I do the Bernard Pivot dictee and all that foolishness. I correct the spelling of native speakers.
- I want to go on hajj. I know me. I know I hate hot weather. I know I hate crowds. It's a test like everything else,it needs to be done, and I do not want to go when I am old and have less patience than I do now. No I am not going to give you the mystical spiritual transformation of hajj stuff. All I know is that it is required, I have to do it, and I don't want to wait until I am 80 and can't handle the foolishness. I don't care if people take care of old people on hajj. I want to be young enough to take care of the old people, not be one.
- I want Nice Husband to get to work on producing a male heir. Or a female heir, or something. But he needs to sort that out. I can't make that happen alone. Also if he could arrange for the offspring to have his skin color and eyes I would really appreciate it.

I have 896 days, y'all. Again assuming I am still alive and the world is still here, incha Allah. Make dua for me.

Brain Fog

Hello, my name is the DP, and I need 8 hours of sleep every night.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step, I know. I am going on four months where I average between four and six hours a night, and it is catching up with me. I actually slept ten hours a night the past three nights, and I feel like I human being--imagine that! I technically should be in bed right now (I have to wake up in seven hours and forty five minutes) but no. I am tired of planning my life around sleeping, even though my rebelliousness is what got me in this sleep deficit trouble in the first place ("Oh, I'm sorry, yes I want to do more than work all day and come home and sleep and get ready for tomorrow's grind", I mean hi.)

Anyway, as I mentioned about ten days ago and promptly forgot to update on because I am Sleepless in Lausanne, we were *supposed* to have six people come last week. Plans got changed, and Thursday two different people decided to come spend the weekend. In their honor, I went to Migros on Saturday and stocked up on everything they could possibly want to bring back to Paris: cheese and chocolate. Then they were able to head to Coop while we were exploring Lausanne, and got some cheese and chocolate. When checking the fridge for stuff earlier, I gave them the cheese I bought but not the cheese they bought. Doh!

And we don't eat cheese up in here. Nice Husband and I rarely eat cheese or meat.

What am I going to do with all this Gruyere???!!!

And in other idiot news, I forgot to buy deodorant in the States because I thought I had a stash here. I only got two and just had to open one. Summer is coming and I refuse to stink up buses and trains like some European people. Yeah I said it.

In Travelling While Muslim news, I took the boat to Evian today. American passport holders do not need a visa for France or Switzerland. Somehow, the ID dude on the boat..going to the FRENCH SIDE... decided that he absolutely HAD TO SEE my B permit...from Switzerland!!! Part of me wanted to be a witch and be all, "I am American, I don't need a visa for either country and if you look really hard you can even see my expired carte de sejour" but I just whipped out my B permit and let it go, because I am a wuss like that. Geez, I wonder what they're going to ask me for when I have my French passport, my birth certificate or what?

At least I still have Carmex.

Weather= no fun

Last night I tried some Shan's. It was some sort of barbeque sauce-type marinade. I give it 5 out of 10. It tasted like it was pre-prepared, but it wasn't bad per se. And I haven't written off trying their other products.
The chorba was edible, but not my best effort.

In today's news, I was hoping that the weather would cooperate for our houseguests, but no. I think I am going to walk down to the lake anyway.

Oh, and I am not one to be snarky, but does Katie Holmes' baby bump look fake or what? Something just isn't right with all that.

Long weekend

Well at least I have Monday off from Thankless Job. I try not to blog about my job, but as an update, it is truly, absolutely thankless in every sense of the world. People work for a series of reasons- money, camaraderie, professional development, interesting work content, or whatever. Suffice it to say I only get money from this job, and the money I get isn't worth the stress and the drama etc. etc. So that's my mini-rant, over.

Well one aside. I know someone who has a job she loves, and not because of the money or the actual job itself. She could very likely go get a more interesting job with twice the pay and more responsabilities, but she stays where she is. Every time somebody asks why, she says that she trusts everyone she works with, and never has any drama or politics at work. She says she knows that if she went somewhere else, she would have to deal with drama, backstabbing, politics and the Peter Principle, so she would rather drive a beater car and have no stress than be rich and put up with morons. I think that is pretty wise.

We have guests from Paris for the weekend and in their honor I have made chorba and some meat marinated with Shan's. Evidently Shan's is the shortcut recipe maker par excellence, we inheirited it from a friend of Nice Husband's who was moving. Will let you know how that turns out.

Plan to respond to emails this evening, I got a lovely email from someone very special, so with that and the guests I am feeling a small bit better. I don't know if I feel good because there are 2.5 days between me and Thankless Job and I am repressing, or what.

Looking on the bright side

I have always been an optimistic person, and I have always had a survivor type of mentality. My motto has always been that everything must pass, and I made it a policy to look on the bright side, be happy for the small victories and so on.

Right now I am tired. Physically and emotionally. I don't want the small victories any more. I don't want to just be happy because a day "wasn't as bad as yesterday". I want to be happy about something big. I want something so big to happen that I don't have to look for something little to cheer me up. But mainly I don't want to be tired any more.

More Snow

Today's weather was no fun. Then about three it started sleeting. At six the sleet turned to snow.

I am so over snow, y'all. Subhan Allah. My Yankee stepfather was right, it only took one real winter. He is from Vermont, and when it was time to "leave home" so to speak, his main criterion was, and I quote, "below the Mason-Dixon line." Not out of any Confederate sympathies but because he was evidently tired of, well, snow. He lived DC (well DC is barely north of the M-D line), then in Florida for a few years then moved to New Orleans.

A little-known fact: At age 24, I got my first heavy coat that wasn't from a rummage sale, a marché, or otherwise second hand. There was no point in dropping upwards of 100 dollars for something I could have worn at Ole Miss or in New Orleans a few weeks a year. This year, I got my first parka. Yes, a parka. From my one true love, Mountain Equipment Co-Op, makers of my lovely man-purse.

I have no maternal instinct

It's not that I am averse to having kids. I just never really, really wanted to. When I was still in college, I chalked up my lack of mommy feelings to the fact that my life wasn't in order yet and I wasn't married and I was still young and all that stuff. I figured some part of my brain chemistry would change once my biological clock (har har) started ticking and I would suddenly find the undeniable urge to have offspring, or something. I even gave myself an artificial deadline- my mom was 30 when she had me, and I always said I wanted "at least one" child before thirty, and that I would worry about it then.
I'm married and everyone is gainfully employed and 30 is close enough to where I need to start thinking about kids, and no. Not there yet. How many of you mom's out there were anti-kids and are now happy and fulfilled mothers? I once told my mother-in-law that it might bother Nice Husband, but it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I never had children. She could not believe me. She told me that's why Dalida killed herself. She said every woman, no matter how good her life or career is, will regret not having kids when she is older. I'm not so sure.

My feelings towards having children involve: 1/3 "I don't care", 1/3 "other people's kids seem really bad" and 1/3 "I am afraid of eventually being a bad parent."

1. Children between the ages of 3 and 6 drive me crazy. I think every single one of them are manipulative twits. I will literally run away from them. I am scared of having kids that age and not liking them either.
2. I think all newborns look like aliens. People expect me to ooh and ahh over their babies, and I am sitting here thinking Gremlins. Nothing stirs the feelings of cute in me until a baby is at least six or seven months old. I have seen two babies that looked good on day one (to me) and will provide photographic proof if necessary. Plus, it isn't like I don't know what I am talking about...I was the ugliest baby ever. I am for real, y'all. Subhan Allah. My ears weren't parallel, my hair had this weird bald spot, and my eyes were beady little stones in my potato head.
3. I am surrounded by horror stories. Babies who won't nurse, babies who are eighteen months old and have never slept through the night in their entire lives and their moms still hold down full time jobs, toddlers and small children who have been on a destructive spree since they learned to walk...I often ask myself is it the child, or is it the parenting? What if I have a kid who is "born bad"? What if I get slowly driven crazy for the rest of my life by my offspring?
4. No offense to my lovely readers, but I HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT when people say "we're pregnant." I would like to see Nice Husband gain some weight for a change, believe me, I wish it could be "we're" pregnant.
5. Speaking of "we're pregnant", I am absolutely terrified of the actual process of giving birth. Part of me is anti drugs and epidural and c section because I see no reason for surgery and anesthesia for what should be a natural process, but part of me wants to avoid the pain of childbirth completely.
6. I am intellectually "for" breastfeeding, but psychologically it bugs me out. I do not think of my breasts as food and do not particularly relish the idea of them being chomped on, or having a baby who finds them appetizing. I know it is all natural and normal and motherly and stuff, but no.
7. I am one of those people that seem to collect insults and "well-meaning" snarky comments. Especially at work and in school. I am the kicking dog wherever I go. I know that despite the lack of my maternal instinct, if someone tried to do a Mommy Drive By on me, I would be in jail for assault. Especially if they had an older kid who was absolutely terrible and spoiled as a toddler and then have the nerve to "give me advice."
8. I am worried about super mom syndrome. I do not want to work out of the house, but the idea of staying home also scares me. I went crazy when I was unemployed (and now being employed is driving me crazy).
9. I often wonder how much our parents and grandparents prepare us as models for parenting. My mother has worked my whole life (she had to, but that is another story), so I only have a very limited idea of what I stay at home mom does even though that is what I want to do.

When I said, "Come Visit", I meant it, but...

... I am afraid my Swiss neighbors are going to think we are human traffickers or something.

In Zurich, we lived in a glorified shoebox that called itself an apartment. I have seen bigger dorm rooms. But it was geographically darn near perfect, which is why we had it. We never had to take trams, especially if the weather was nice. The few friends that dared make the mistake of using our place to crash rarely made that mistake twice.

My mother's place in New Orleans is known to all as a place where people crash, and so is my mother-in-law's place in Paris. My mom got seveteen people in her place during Mardi Gras once. I shudder to think how many they have squeezed into my mother-in-law's flat. It's one of those don't ask don't tell things. This is the type of background Nice Husband and I come from--despite "cultural differences", we both come from homes where people were welcome to come visit, spend long periods of time at the house, and so on.

Moving to Lausanne, we sacrificed geography for size, and we now live in a two bedroom with...get this...a real kitchen. We can even squeeze a breakfast table in there.

So the second half to my "but..." in my title is: I have six people coming to visit next week. Which means total inhabitants of our apartment for a week is eight. I am sure that must break some obscure yet highly-enforced Swiss law. However, we "technically" have the space. Why, you ask?
-our couch turns into a bed for two
-our guest bedroom has a double bed, a loft bed, and an extra mattress
-one of the guests is a child
=sleeping space for eight.

I was speaking with an American friend of mine married to an Egyptian about the whole "just drop by and stay for a month" culture. All six people coming next week decided to come together. Like a group decision. I personally wouldn't have come up with the idea that six people could fit into my bigger-than-Zurich-but-not-that-big apartment, if I was planning a trip to visit me. She reminded me that one of the cool side-effects of having people drop in and dropping in at other people's houses is that she and her kids have learned just to roll with it. No change of clothes? No problem. Sleeping on the floor? At least it's inside. And so on.

I am a weird houseguest. In some ways I am extremely low-maintenance, but in some ways I am totally high-maintenance. For example, I can dig any situation involving:
-sleeping on the floor
-lack of heating or air conditioning. I have worked in the air conditioning bit and am proud of not needing it now.
-Turkish toilets
-sharing a room with several adults
-taking uncomfortable means of transport and walking

At the same time, my high-maintenance requests involve:
-I have to have tea and milk in the morning, and no, I will not cook breakfast. I will buy croissants or whatever, but do not ask me to do anything before tea is ingested.
-I can only go three days without a shower before I refuse to go anywhere or do anything. If it is the summer, two days. This has taken a lot of work on my part, I used to take one or two a day and expect to do the same in other people's houses. After said shower, I need fifteen minutes of prep time uninterrputed.
-I can sleep through hurricanes, loud televisions, lights on and active conversations around me. I cannot sleep in a room with awake children running around. I just don't do kids. I cannot go to bed until they are asleep. Furthermore, if I know that a kid is a "morning person", I will do whatever I can not to sleep in that room, because when Morning Kid wakes up at 4:30, so do I. For the day. Meanwhile Morning Kid usually gets a siesta. Then whatever room I sleep in, I have to lock the door if there is a wandering kid in the house. Of course, most Wandering Kids then just proceed to bang on the door, but still.
-toilet paper, which I will supply if necessary.
-I refuse, for health and family history reasons, to spend inordinate amounts of time in the sun without the appropriate sunscreen, sunglasses, and clothing. I burn without sunscreen in twenty minutes in spring sunshine. Which means I frequently opt out of beach runs and picnics. I'm not antisocial, it's called skin cancer, y'all. Making me sit in the sun is the quickest way to get me in a bad mood.

What really makes me mad is that I know that I am way more low-maintenance than a lot of people I know and yet some people still persist in insisting that I am a spoiled American better off at the Inter Continental or something. Not because of any proof, but because I am American. Yes, I have an elaborate morning routine in my own house; but travelling, I have been known to pack for a weekend in a glorified purse. All you really need is a toothbrush and underwear, let's be real. And most of the times I have flipped out travelling involved lack of underwear, toothbrush, tea or toilet paper.

As a hostess, I am also a bizarre combination of low- and high- maintenance.
Low Maintenance: I don't care if you use my shampoo or my soap or whatever. You can even use my towel if you don't leave hair on it.
High Maintenance: do NOT, under any circumstances, use my face washcloth. I HATE IT when people use my washcloth for my face on other body parts. I have forty washcloths, get one out of the dresser five feet away in the the guest room to wash your feet for crying out loud. I can smell it. Blech.

Low Maintenance: you can do whatever you want at my house.
High Maintenance: that means I won't babysit you. You know I work forty hours a week, that means come on a weekend or cook ME dinner on weeknights. This is where I LOVE my mother-in-law, she saved me during Ramadan by cooking. There is no way I could have fasted and worked all day and came home and cooked for three hungry Muslims. I think she knew she had to come to take care of me during Ramadan. When I wasn't married and working during Ramadan, I prepped my dinner on weekends and froze it. In the mornings I took it out of the freezer and into the fridge for when I got home. You can barely get me to cook on a weeknight outside of Ramadan, so if you expect Emeril after I have been out of the house for twelve hours, no. It always surprises me how many people expect women to cook just by virtue of gender, without taking into account other factors.

Low Maintenance: You can stay up till three am, watch my tv, use my phone, surf the web. You can even make noise and leave lights on.
High Maintenance: I go to bed by eleven. Don't complain when I ditch you and when I wake up at five-thirty and make noise in my own house. It's called give and take. You watch tv until three, I bang pots and pans at five making tea. I refuse to alter my morning routine any further than it already is by tiptoeing around. If you want to complain, then I will start enforcing a house bedtime.

I don't think I am that unreasonable at all.

Snow, y'all!

It is SNOWING. Subhan Allah. I know every other blog I read within a 400 mile radius is saying the same thing, but still. I can confirm snow where I am. Right now. On the way home from Thankless Job, it was sleeting at Place of Thankless Employment. I hop off the train and on the bus. As the bus goes up, and we're talking a difference of maybe twenty meters of altitude, the sleet turned to big, fluffy snow.

I cannot do snow. I. Can. Not. I stopped snow when I left Exotic Swiss Ski Resort a month ago with a big Alhamdoulillah. I had a snow moratorium and the crappy weather today had to go mess that all up.

Mark my words, because watch there be some sort of heat wave this summer and my hypocrite self will long for the freezing days of April.

I also think I have a tendency towards Seasonal Affective Disorder. I have never been diagnosed, which is why I said "tendency." I felt really good yesterday because it was bright and sunny. This winter I was all tired and stressed out and cranky and spacey. I could be just Thankless Job, but it could be something else. Then today my sad face came back. Nothing else changed.

Oh well, I am at home now, so alhamdoulillah for that. I have to keep positive and stay grateful and strong.

It is an Emergency Tea Day, y'all

It is raining, I have a sinus headache, and I am at work. Only 8:26 and all signs point to Emergency Tea. The tea from Canada that only has about three servings left, otherwise known as The Hoarded Tea, My Favorite Tea and so on.
I am technically on the clock at 8:30 so ciao...

I am too nice

You know what they call "Matrix Management"? My current place of employment has taken this concept to a stratospheric level. I technically have six "bosses". The problem? One of my bosses is totally in charge and nobody dares go against his word. I am telling you, if you mess with this dude...well I don't know, nobody has lived to tell about it. I work with him in the afternoons in his office and--here is the important part for later--THIS IS ON MY TIMETABLE. Everyone knows I am "booked" in the afternoons and that if they want something that isn't what Scary Bossman wants me to do, it better be before one pm or it doesn't happen. This also means that the flipside is that work for the other five bosses has to get done between 8 and noon. But I digress. I try not to stray too far from his office because people are so scared of him that they won't even try to ask me to do something around him, which means I can actually get work done if I stay in there. Which makes everyone happy.

Today I had to venture out of his office to go to the bathroom and I saw this one colleague who always throws work on me. It's not technically her fault, and it is sort of my job what she is asking me to do, but hey. I scurried and practically ran to the bathroom, but she caught me too soon. She knew she could get me to say yes to something precisely because Scary Bossman wasn't around. She begged. She pleaded. Said all she needed was fifteen minutes. So I run to Scary Bossman, who was on the phone, and left a note with a big sad face on it saying she had to see me and I would be back in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes later I run downstairs...he had left for the day.

What makes me mad is that nobody has the nerve to ask me out of his office in front of him, and she wouldn't have done it, because he would have said no. By catching me out of the office, now I am the one who has to hear about it. Nobody will mess with this dude, but everybody will mess with me. I must have some sort of infrared kick me sign going on.

Here's a sad face for everyone. :(

the requiste French labor law post

So one of my colleagues (one of about five I like) yesterday starts talking about how French people need to stop rioting and that the CPE is simply within the norms of the rest of the world's labor practices and such. He thought the French were just on strike again or something. I don't necessarily agree with him.

1. Just because the rest of the world does it, doesn't mean it's right.
2. Here in Switzerland you have almost two months notice by law after the first three months. The CPE, in its current form, would mean that those under 26 in France could technically be fired whenever...and that for a year (down from two years, the last I heard). Guess what? With that, it is harder for you to: rent an apartment, buy a car, open a bank account....
3. Some stupid chick on tv was like, "You don't want internships, you don't want limited contracts, you don't want school...what do you want? I think it is pretty self-explanatory what the French want. They want job security. They want to move out of their parents' homes. They want to buy a car. I don't have job security right now, and let me tell you, it sucks.
4. Why is it the universities that are striking? This is the part that my American colleagues don't get. You go to University of Whatever in the US, and you can still have access to top jobs. In France, if you don't go to a Grande Ecole or the *best* universities, forget it. You'll never be The Big Boss. You'll never be The Man. This means two things:
5. The people who made this law aren't FROM universities. They went to ENA, and Sciences Po and probably did Louis le Grand or something. They and their children won't be forced to accept (yeah, I said it) a job with a CPE.
6. Who is going to have a CPE? Poor people. Arabs. People who went to universities instead of Sciences Po. Foreigners like me (well I won't because I am 27 but still).

So typically French...instead of fixing a problem, the deeper problem being an ever increasing social divide in France, they just make a new law and add a new section to an existing body of laws rather than like, doing something. Speaking of doing something, Chirac and his glasses on tv are starting to make me laugh. Just like with the riots in the suburbs, Chirac goes on tv and we're expecting him to say something, and instead, as Nice Husband says, he's completely off-topic. (Exact quote: "H.S"--hors sujet).

Nice Husband thinks this all has a link with 2002, and he asked me to be his spokesperson. However, I think he should say it himself. What do you think?