Certain blog posts are composed entirely of angst. This will be one of them.
And now, in alphabetical order, I present to you the causes of my angst.
Arthritis: My everything hurts. But it stopped hurting when I started meds for the arthritis. But then I was having nightmares every night, and going to sleep at night became a source of angst. So then my Dr. changed my meds, and the nightmares stopped but all the pain came back. I followed up with doc, and she said that if my pain isn’t responding to this medicine then it might not even be from arthritis, so now I’m confused (and also, in pain) because if it’s not arthritis then why did everything stop hurting with the last medicine?
Autism: Khalid’s doing amazingly on an academic level, but his social skills are stuck in KG mode. I take him to play and he ends up being by himself regardless of the number of children there, because other nine year olds don’t speak his play language. He gets along best with five year olds. They still play trains and dinosaurs and simple cause & effect games.
Blogging: I feel guilty about neglecting my blog, like properly remorseful. And yet, between the pain involved with writing and the pain of my subject matter, I’m really having a hard time. I’m stressed, so I’m going to end up writing about stress. I don’t want to though, I’m not here to bring myself or other people down. I know that people will find whatever they’re looking for, and I refuse to look for pain. Pain seems to be looking for me though.
EDS: My neck got stuck again a few days ago, and I couldn’t find my phone, husband was out of the country, and the kids needed a blue million things but all they got was peanut butter & jelly. Eventually I found my phone and ordered in fried chicken, Alhamdulillah. Took some painkillers and slathered myself in voltaren gel. Am still stiff but at least I can move my neck. This whole EDS thing is getting more irritating as time passes, even my wrists creak & grind now.
Fever: I had one of those for the last two days. I went to bed at 7:30 pm yesterday, and was up and down all night with bad dreams, drenched in sweat, and disoriented. I’m hoping tonight will be better. HF got home today after being away for a week, and managing the kids and work without him is never a walk in the park.
Finances: So we’re thinking of moving to the US so we can find better help for Khalid, but money makes the world go round. Admittedly, we don’t have all that much. Alhamdulillah, Allah has blessed us with more than most people- that we have a room over our heads and food every day is more than even half the world’s population can claim, but relocating the whole family, setting up a new home, and me being unable to work a full-time job due to health is worrying me.
Hamster: Marty died last week or so. She passed away peacefully in her sleep. The girls buried her in a flower pot in the backyard and put a little marker on her grave and while they seem to be over it, every time I look out the kitchen window and see her resting place it makes me sad again. I don’t actually know if Hamsters go to Jannah, heh.
Husband: Oops! I’ve been caught out of bed. Time to be a grownup and stop blogging in the dark.
It’s raining, it’s pouring- the engines are roaring!
On the roads of Dubai, the cars try to fly
Then they slip and they slide into crawling.
So I’m getting ready to leave for my morning meetings, but I’m doing so by staring at Google Maps and trying to figure out whether traffic is getting better or worse. It’s 8:30 am right now and morning commute traffic should be starting to dissipate, but it looks like it’s coagulating instead. Because rain.
Yes, rain.
Not a storm, not a flood, just… rain. And not because the roads are flooding (come on, that’s Sharjah) but because people haven’t got the mental spare change to slow down and drive sensibly when the roads are slippery.
Expats of Dubai: We got more dollars than sense.
Some people like to blame the A-rabs of A-rabia and say that the miskeen desert dwellers do better on dunes than raindrops, but the population of the UAE is only 18% local Emirati. Everyone else comes from places where not only does it rain- it also rains a lot.
Hydroplaning, shmydroplaning beta.
The US, UK, Bangladesh, India, Philippines- none of the drivers from any of these countries have an excuse for the traffic chaos that a light sprinkle causes all the way across town. Come on- even Pakistan has a monsoon season and not only are Desi drivers accustomed to driving in torrential rains, we know how to float our tiny Altos and Mehrans through flooded gallis like tin gondolas through a knock-off of Venice.
Even as a child I remember my father floating a Bolan through two feet of water in Azizabad, Karachi and having a great time. We do rain.
But for some reason, Dubai doesn’t. I don’t have an explanation for it, but I do have fifteen more minutes to watch the road, and if it’s not clearing up, I’m leaving for my nearby meeting sixty minutes early rather than fifteen.
So MashaAllah, Musfira is getting taller, cheekier, and slightly wiser every day. She has taken to gently correcting me and educating me throughout my day, sharing the wisdom of her many years – all three and a half of them – and the result is so adorably awesome that I almost hate disagreeing with her.
We prefer our gween the-matoes fried, actually.
We went grocery shopping the other day, Musfira shared this timeless gardening tip:
Musfira: Momma, did you know, when the matoes are gween that means they not wipe.
Momma: That’s right, very good!
Musfira: And whena cucumbuzz ah owange, that means they cawwots.
If we’re worshipping furniture then this must be the world’s holiest ottoman.
And while standing for prayer, Musfira turned my prayer rug to a different qibla.
Musfira: Here Momma, this izza wight way.
Me: Sweetheart, qibla is this way.
Musfira: You need to pway to the sofa, Momma.
Me: We actually pray toward the Ka’ba dear, in Makkah?
Musfira: Do we? Hmm!
She’s shared lots of wisdom, but half I’ve forgotten and the half has been unprintable as it is usually shared on the toilet, and is usually shared in relation to her bottom. (Apparently your bottom is a pretty funny place when you’re three and a half.)
That’s it for now, I’ve been taking anti-inflammatory meds for my arthritis for three months now, and have been feeling much better overall. I’ll try to update more often, InshaAllah. 🙂
There’s this thing in writing where you just make yourself write non-stop for a certain amount of time without the pressure of a desired outcome of the expectation of making any sense. I call it blogging. 😉
So I’m going to be on the radio tomorrow. You can listen here at 10am GMT + 4. It’s not my first radio interview, but it is my first time being in a recording studio with fancy button and knobs and levers. There’s a lot of exciting stuff happening at work – in parallel to the not so exciting stuff – and some of it involves paperwork and stamping stuff but other bits are exciting and may involve golf and me being at a charity tournament.
Hmm.
I don’t know if I’d call this writing. It’s more like failing to write. But I’m going to make myself do it because the only way to strengthen a weak, underused muscle is to gentle torture it back into use again.
(You see? This is why I’m not a physiotherapist)
#Selfie
I got a retainer because my teeth were migrating south for the winter. Well, east actually. To the left. That could be east or west depending on which way I’m facing. I wear it at night and HF calls me Darla. I call him a slurpy, wet word that is produced as a combination of wires, plastic, and sloppy sibilant consonants. I have yet to translate it. Neither has he.
I have arthritis, so my everything hurts. My feet, my knees, my fingers – and Oh Em Gee bang bang my fingers hurt. Typing is a huge challenge and I have started using a dictation software for work emails more often than not. I thought that was going reasonably well until I composed and emailed a proposal for therapy that involved a four letter word that sounded like fork but wasn’t fork. I would have died from embarrassment except the parents have yet to follow through on meeting up. I wonder why.
So this is my free-blogging update. I want to do more of this writing thing and less of this guilting thing, because my blog has been alive for over ten years now and this is the longest any of my pets have ever lived so I’ll try not to let it die of neglect, InshaAllah.
Some people say writing is an art. That’s because they’re silly. Writing is a sport actually- it’s like exercise for parts of your brain that otherwise go soft and floppy without creative stimulation.
The less you write, the weaker your writing muscles become. Eventually they atrophy, and you forget how to put two words together to form half of an incoherent thought. That is why, dear blogistan, lately when I’ve sat down to write the only thing my flabby, out of shape brain can come up with is meh.
So this is where I answer all of the shorter questions that were left last time. Some of you had longer and significantly more important questions, and InshaAllah those will be answered separately. But here we go:
Boss… How do you make applesauce?
*Sounds easy*
Ok, how do you make Dabb sauce?
Dare looking it up!!! *mwahahaha*
Take a bunch of apples that your children wouldn’t eat, peel them, and then boil them with just enough water to cover with apples. You can add a little sugar and cinnamon, and keep cooking them until they look translucent. When they’re done, blend them and then guilt your children into consuming them. Or if this doesn’t not sound appetising, turn them into pie instead. Cinnamon apple sauce also makes a lovely topping for grilled desert lizard. Bon Appetit!
Walaikum Assalam! I’m a big fan of the four quadrant system. I can’t remember where I first read about it, but basically you sort your life into four categories.
Q1 is Urgent AND Important: This is like your house burning down.
Q2 is Important but not Urgent: This is like your house needing a paint job.
Q3 is Urgent but not Important: This is when pink flamingo lawn ornaments are on sale for only one more day, so if you don’t get them now the sale will be over, but is buying pink flamingo lawn ornaments important to begin with?
Q4 is neither Urgent, nor Important: This is buying hats for the pink flamingos. They’re not on sale, the flamingos aren’t complaining, and there’s not real justification to spend your precious time dressing tacky lawn ornaments in the first place.
This seems relatively straightforward as long as it relates to pink flamingos, but what about real life? I need to do my work email- that’s Q1, urgent and important, and yet here I am answering questions on my blog instead. Are these questions urgent? Are they important? Some of the questions I consider important, but none of them are urgent. Before this I even snuck in half an hour of Minecraft, which is a big, fat Q4- neither urgent nor important.
In order to manage your time smarter, you need to clean up all the emergencies in Q1, and then work on living in the Q2 zone as much as possible. Q2 is where things are important but not urgent. That’s where you can schedule them at your convenience because none of them are on fire yet. Q1 is rushing through your homework the night before it’s due, Q2 is scheduling your homework four days before it’s due and being able to do an A+ job of it because you weren’t panicking.
If you’re really honest about deciding whether things are Q1,2,3, or 4, you should be spending your time and energy only where it’s important and not wasting it anywhere it’s not, regardless of whether it’s urgent. When you realize- and accept- that doing so will cut out most of your childish, pre-adulthood pursuits, you will not only be a more mature, productive person, you will also have a leg up on me, who still plays video games when no one’s looking. 😀
1) I wasn’t there and I don’t know!
2) Done. 🙂
1. Do you read books? What kinds of books? I recently read Destiny Disrupted which is a history of Islam told in a very, very beautiful, fluid, story-like way. It was so fascinating that I re-read it straight through a second time.
I used to read fiction- lots and lots of fiction. Then, at some point in my 20’s, I learned the concept of knowledge without benefit, and I started cutting back. Yes, I still read Harry Potter and enjoyed the Hunger Games (though book 3 was disappointing, frankly), but those are actually the last pieces of fiction I’ve read for a very long time.
I recently read The Illustrated Book of Arguments, which I loved, as well as some sciency book that my sister loaned me- I can’t remember the title. I’m currently attempting to read a book about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and other heritable connective tissue disorders, but again, I really try to read books that will count for me in my own book- my hisaab- versus against me.
No, there’s nothing haram with reading books that don’t have haram in them, but if time is the most precious resource in the world, how can we justify killing hours and hours of it in the imaginary troubles of made-up people? There are real people with real problems, and the more time we kill, the less time we have to help them- as well as ourselves- live.
2. What helps you most to stay away from the time-suck of the Internet?
Honestly, I really, really struggle with the internet. It’s possibly the biggest fitna is my life, and I’m not joking. I use a few different tools.
StayFocusd: This is a chrome plugin that you install and then acts as a guard dog on your internet use. I program it to give me 15 minutes a day of FB and Twitter time cumulatively, after which it automatically shuts down all the sites on my blocked list for 24 hours. It has other options as well, which close out your blocked site list (which is customized) for a set number of hours, or for certain times of the day. I close down my blocked list completely and only allow it to be opened if I access the settings at a certain time… like 5am. 😉 I do this when I have a busy work week, and it’s really the best productivity tool ever, MashaAllah.
TinyUrl: This is another tool that blocks sites completely. It doesn’t have a timer, and it’s extremely useful for the kids too. Youtube is simply blocked for them unless I come and enter the password. For myself, I block certain sites entirely. If I needed to, I could have HF lock it for me and unless he gave me the password, I would have no way of unlocking them.
I disable Safari on my phone. The restrictions settings can be passcode locked and the passcode given to another person.
I delete the Twitter and FB apps from my phone and HF has the Appstore password.
If my measures seem extreme, it’s because I use the internet to escape from the real world when the amount of work on my plate stresses me out. This is obviously problematic, given the more I procrastinate/escape, the higher the work piles and the greater its associated anxiety becomes. I’m an addict. I don’t mean that in a joking way, I really, seriously mean it. I’m addicted to the internet, and it sucks away my time, my creativity, and my productivity in the worst possible method of self-inflicted intellectual harm.
3. I doubt we will ever meet in this life, but I just want you to know that I love you for the sake of Allah. Keep me in your prayers.
Jazakillah. 🙂
Are three kids easier or harder than two kids to take care of?
And lots of love and duas InshaAllah.
You know, when I had one kid, I was always busy. When I had two kids, I was always busy. When I had three kids, I was always busy, but now I look back on when I only had one or two kids and wonder what the heck I was so busy with.
I don’t know, honestly. I do know that I can’t imagine not having three children, and if two of them are out and only one is home, I’m still busy with that one. As a mom you give 100% of your attention to your children regardless of how many are there, so whether it’s 1,2, or 3, you’re still giving the same- 100%. And Allah knows best.
Asalaamualaikum sister hope u r fine its a long time u see. I wanted to ask that about floods here in kashmir . i can tell u there are lot of wrong practices happening here nd some people say that this was punishment from Allah can we say it ?? or was it a test plzzzzzz note there is lot of shirk here nd also some areas where badly affected while some where not !!so is it that Allah was happy with some nd angry with some ??? it may be stupid question but its bothering me .May ALLAH give u happiness in this life nd hereafter Aameen!!!!
Walaikum Assalam- in a nutshell, no. Allah sends people difficulties to test their faith, and disasters as a sign or reminder, but the punishment of Allah is hell, not rain. For more details, see the following: http://www.islamicity.com/dialogue/Q405.HTM
Now, there are still three or four important questions pending, but I have some really Q1 things to handle and each of those answers need the time and attention of Q2 scheduling.
AssalamuAlaikum from Chicago! Did I mention I’m in Chicago? Right, sorry.
So, as part of the unexpected life changes in our lives we’re in Chicago at the moment. Don’t worry, I still live in Dubai, but we’re here to see an Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome specialist, and by we I mean me, myself, and all three of my kids. ALL of them. On an airplane (are we there yet?) in those tiny seats (can we go home now?) with those tiny TV’s (issa iPad inna seat?) and those messy easily-spillable servings of kid-unfriendly food that were actually very tasty, thank you Turkish Airlines!
It was like the fight that wouldn’t end. We got onto a plane. We slept, we woke up, we were still on a plane. The kids cried to get off the plane, but we were still on the plane. Khalid asked where the bedrooms in the plane were. I hadn’t the heart to tell him they were less than a hundred feet away physically but a million miles away financially, so I told him there weren’t any and everyone slept in their seats.
Iman had a proper sobbing meltdown and needed to be cradled to sleep like a 30 pound infant, so she and I napped together in my seat in one big heap on exhaustion and flannel blankets.
HF won the pillow of the flight award, for sleeping bolt upright with not one, but two people sleeping with heads in his lap. One of those heads was mine. The other was usually Musfira’s.
Khalid’s only rest came during the three hours Iman spent sleeping on top of me, when he was able to turn sideways across her chair and simply shut down from exhaustion. He woke up with a bruised shoulder.
So how was the flight? Alhamdulillah, very well considering how many things could have gone wrong but didn’t. No one got hurt, sick, or lost. Everyone made it to the bathroom on time. Yes, there were LOTS of tears and sighing and yawning and requests to go home already, but it was a learning experience: we learned that we don’t like flying.
But we do like cousins. My kids have five cousins here in the US that they met for the first time yesterday, and they spent the day in gleeful somersaults, toy exploration, cereal-eating and exploring things like “grass” and “clouds” in the great suburban outdoors. My poor little desert-dwellers, they kicked their shoes off in glee expecting to be running on the soft, yellow sand that cushions the ground beneath play equipment in Dubai. Instead, they found piles of pokey, scratchy wood and ran gingerly back for their shoes.
“Momma, iss rocks?” Musfira asked, holding out piece of a wood-chip.
“No dear, it’s wood-chip.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s softer than the ground. It’s like what Marty has in the bottom of his cage.”
Musfira looked unconvinced. I pressed on.
“Hey, it’s like we’re giant hamsters and the park is a hamster cage… yay?”
Musfira blinks and the gears start turning. “HAMSTOS??” she squeals, and runs off to collect piles of woodchamp. “YAY!”
Khalid is slightly less impressed with America so far. I took him to use the bathroom in my elder brother’s house for the first time, and gave him an orientation on how to use the lota.
“See Khalid, this is called a lota. You need to fill it up before you use the bathroom, otherwise if you sit down to go pee first then you might find the lota empty and how will you wash yourself then?”
“Why is this here?” Khalid asks, with genuine concern, “Have water pipes not yet been invented in North America?”
“I was wondering the same thing dear, but most people don’t use water here, so they’re not usually installed in bathrooms.”
“Why?”
“That’s a discussion for another time dear.”
Speaking of bathroom culture shock, Iman had to use a porta-potty at the park yesterday, and it was a new and amazing and awful experience for her. “MOMMA!” She called out from across the park, “That tiny room has a little toilet in it! But it has no water, no sink, and nothing but hand sanitizer. So I cleaned myself with sanitizer, is that ok?”
“It’s good enough for now dear, let’s wash you when you get home.”
Oops, it’s almost six am now. Time to pray Fajr and start rousing my tired lil world travellers.
So, until I can get my head around the new and exciting challenges in my life and blog about it, let’s think of something to do while we’re waiting!
I’m not very good at writing sometimes, but I can answer questions like a boss. Seeing as how I’m the director, technically even the most poorly worded question will be answered like a boss. Cuz I am a boss, albeit a poorly-worded one, hehe.
So, who’s got a question? And would you like to address it to me, or my acute asthmatic bronchitis?
So I haven’t updated in a while. I understand that, for people who don’t follow me on twitter, that could mean that I’ve gone and died. Fair enough. My twitter handle is @zebasez. In case you want to see if I haven’t died yet.
I’ve been meaning to write but the problem with writing is that you have to take big, abstract, lumpy concepts like uncertainty, fear, fatigue, pain, and try to fit them neatly into paragraph-sized boxes. Writing is a hands-on thing, but my hands hurt. My back hurts. My legs hurt. My head hurts. And now that I’ve been told that all three of my children are likely to have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome too, my heart hurts.
Ouch, right in the feels!
Once upon a time I begged Allah for Khalid to not have autism, but he did, and that’s been a blessing for us all. Now, I pray for my children’s health, but if they have Ehlers-Danlos, let it be the focal point around their remembrance of Allah and a daily reminder of their own mortality whether they wanted one or not. Cuz they’re certainly going to need one. We all do.
Allah loves my children more than I do, so if He should decide that Khalid will have low muscle tone and Iman will have elbows that can be wrung like a wet towel and Musfira- my tiniest cupcake- should have a heart murmur, then He has decided that for them out of love, not in spite of it.
I don’t want to give too much away but there are some major life changes coming up for us that I’m not done grieving yet. So until then, silence is golden.
And maybe I’ll post some memes so no one thinks I’ve died. hehe.
As part of our homeschooling exercises, I give Khalid written questions to answer about stories we’ve read. This was his terse, and entirely pragmatic response to the epic tale of Peter Rabbit. 🙂
Who is Peter Rabbit?
He was the rabbit who robbed Mr.McGregor’s garden.
What did his mother tell Peter Rabbit and his sisters to go do?
So if there were ever any doubts that Owl is a dramatic, attention-seeking medical diva- allow me to lay them to rest.
On July 1 she went in for her CT Angio. This is where they injected a radioactive dye into her brains to see how the aneurysm was doing. Turns out the aneurysm was doing great, had settled down and decided to start a family. Specifically, a daughter. Yes, her aneurysm had a baby aneurysm.
Hooray?
Following the CT Angio, Owlie sprung a leak from the femoral artery that the surgeons had opened to access her brainy bits, and when the nurse couldn’t close it off, she had to call for backup. So a giant man named Danny mashed Owlie’s leg closed apologetically for a while until the spurting stopped.
So I made her a meme. Like any concerned elder sister would.
On July 2, the surgeons went back in through the same artery to repair the two aneurysms, and found that a third daughter had appeared within the 24 hours since the CT Angio, popping in for a lovely mother-daughter tea perhaps. The doctors brought a balloon, and you know when someone brings a balloon it’s going to be a party.
They used the balloon to block off the exit to the rest of Owlie’s brain and then filled the aneurysms with a fancy brain glue called Onyx.
Science says that Onyx is an ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymer dissolved in the organic solvent dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) opacified with tantalum powder, but google says that onyx is a type of stone. And that is why Owlie’s husband is now snickering that she literally has rocks for brains.
Later, Owlie awoke from anaesthesia and starting bleeding all over the place again. First into her stomach and then back out again, projectile vomiting blood all over everything. Then from her leg again, because all that vomiting caused her to spring open the same leak. And then a vein collapsed in her arm. So she bled into her arm too. I wasn’t there. But I’m pretty sure she looked like a purple lawn sprinkler spraying tomato juice. Just saying.
Alhamdulillah, Owlie has since been upgraded from lawn sprinkler to walking dead, and her pasty, zombie-white self was allowed to shuffle (gently) out of the hospital and back to our brother’s house. You can read her account here.
To make a long story short, she’s alive. She’s recovering. Her head is full of rocks. And the moment her husband messaged to say that the surgery was a success I broke down completely- in the darkness of my living room, 2:30 am Dubai time- into the longest Sajda of gratitude and happy tears that I have ever done, for anything. Ever.
Seven months ago my lil sister of DeGrouchyOwl fame was diagnosed with a time bomb in her head, AKA an inter cranial aneurysm. In her brain. Yeah. Really. I know right. How rude. Here I am being all dramatic and in mortal medical danger and she comes along with her upstart aneurysm to steal my medical thunder. Cheeky McSqueaky.
So she has finally found a doctor that can remember whether it’s the red wire or the blue wire, and on July 2nd, her head will be the scene of an exciting medical action adventure where he holds a pair of wirecutters and waits for an oversized LED countdown to reach 1 before snipping the right one. InshaAllah, once the procedure is successful, Owlie-bird can ride off into the sunset, hand in hand with her on-screen love interest (AKA husband) so that the credits can roll and we can all live happily ever after. InshaAllah.
In other family news, Musfira has now turned free. Khalid said he felt like a velociraptor, and Iman hosted a ladies only dance party with daff-only nasheed today. By ladies only, I mean I was the only lady. Iman and Musfira were there too. We beat on an upside-down pencil box and Iman twirled in the ambient glow of the night-light. It was fun.
HF’s busy winning medals to hang around his Husband of The Year trophy. I sprained my left wrist doing pretty much nothing, and since my hand is in a brace, he’s taken over nearly all the housework and even most of the cooking, MashaAllah. He makes awesome nihari. ***heart***
I dedicate this post to a friend, whose current state of perpetual war against invisible blood-sucking enemies not only qualifies her as a vampire-huntress, but also takes me back to the good ole days when I too had… bedbugs.
It was the year 2009, and we had bedbugs. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t relax, couldn’t stop itching- and most frustrating of all- I couldn’t see them. I was being held psychological hostage by a legion of invisibugs, and the only proof I had of their existence was a chronic itch and spotty bedsheets.
I say I had bed bugs. What I really mean is that bed bugs had me. In the beginning, they were definitely winning.
We called a pest control service. Pest control promised they could get rid of the bugs- money back guaranteed- and came to hose down our home with oily, smelly, probably mutagenic toxins that killed everything in our house except for us. Oh, and the bedbugs. It did nothing to the bedbugs.
We called the pest control guy back, and he demanded to see evidence of our bugs. Because ghosts are hard to catch, we had nothing to show him, but the man grudgingly sprayed again.
The bugs survived. We called pest control again, this time with a tiny jar of living bedbugs. Yes, we actually found some. It turns out they weren’t ghosts, they were ninjas. We found where they were hiding- in the walls.
How did we know to look in the walls? Through simple process of elimination, of course! Because after we had thrown away every piece of furniture in the house except for the sofas and the dining table, there was nowhere for them to hide except the walls.
Realizing that pest control wasn’t helping and didn’t like us anymore, we decided to pull out all the stops and unleash the greatest weapon in our our anti-bedbug arsenal: the internet.
Not all of what the internet had to say about fighting bedbugs was relevant to the UAE though- many of the products effective against bugs simply aren’t sold here. So information about the diatomaceous earth, thermal heating bags, and even full-room heating equipment that people have access to in other parts of the internet wasn’t as useful as it was frustrating. We were, however, able to figure out the general method behind the madness, and it goes like this:
When it comes to the bugs themselves, you only have two options- they are contain or kill. Whatever can’t be killed, contain it. Whatever can’t be contained, kill it. And now, some Do’s and Don’ts.
Do: Contain the Bugs
No bug is unkillable, but some bugs can be inaccessible, and despite the nightly urge to personally murder all the bugs keeping you up, you may find you’re not able to because they’re ninjas. And while it would be far more emotionally satisfying to somehow kill all the bugs in your mattress rather than contain them, there’s no way you can do so short of setting your mattress on fire. Nine out of ten experts agree, a flaming mattress can be less than conducive to a restful sleep.
Yes, you could freak out and throw all of your worldly possessions away, but unless you replaced them with plastic lawn chairs and a tarp on the floor, you’d probably just have to throw those away too. An unprotected mattress is essentially a padded fortress with free food, because the bugs can actually be living inside of the mattress- crawling out to bite you by night and then hiding inside to perplex you by day.
You need to encase your mattresses and pillows with something made specifically for containing bedbugs. I’m sure there’s more than one company, but the only one I’ve found in the UAE so far is Protect-A-Bed. They make more than one kind of cover, be sure to buy the one that specifically has Bug Lock. Homes R Us carries them. So does Homestead in Karama, but Homes R Us frequently has sales and you can find the covers discounted sometimes.
The covers can be expensive- a king size cover is around AED 400ish and pillow covers nearly sixty each. Think of this though- it’s still cheaper than replacing your mattress and pillows multiple times.
A covered mattress means none of the “in” bugs can get out, and none of the “out” bugs can get in. However, don’t be lulled by the false sense of security that the bugs want you to have. It takes 18 months for bedbugs to starve to death, and until then, they will continue to fall in love, get married, have kids, and poop inside of the mattress cover. None of this will reach you as long as the cover is closed, but you may start to see faint black or brown stains showing from within. Ignore them.
Oh, and while you’re out shopping in Homes R Us, pick up white bedsheets and pillow cases, as well as a lightweight cotton duvet that can be washed and dried with high heat often. Forget the fancy satin set with tassels and sixteen decorative pillows you got from Dragon Mart. Right now, you just want to be able to wash your bedding often as well as easily spot any new bugs or bug poop.
Other ways to contain the bugs include:
Taping over places where bugs could be hiding. Think about the corners on the back of nightstands, the place where the wall meets the floor- around light switches, AC controls, electric sockets- bugs are looking for dark cracks and corners to hide in. Your goal is to trap the bugs and make them rue the day they moved in. Use duct tape for long term, or painting/paper tape for short term taping. Use colored electrical tape for color-coordinated giggles.
Painting over the bugs- if you have a room partition made from plywood or an old villa where the tiles on the floor don’t line up with the wall, paint it over. Use a thick, light-colored paint that will essentially glue the bug and their eggs in place. They won’t be dead. But they certainly won’t be going anywhere.
Painting over wooden furniture- If you have furniture that you either can’t or don’t want to replace immediately, paint that too. You can turn your infestation into that Pinterest project you’ve always wanted, and give your bed, dressers & shelves a bright, cheerful coat of paint that the bugs can’t escape through. You can also- less conspicuously- paint the backs and bottoms of some furniture items (dining & coffee tables) white to seal in old bugs and make living there harder for new bugs. Also, they’re easier to see on a white background. Please Note: if you’ve painted things together properly you will not be able to take them apart again. Doing so may unleash bugs or drop eggs.
Put the legs of your bed into little bowls of vaseline or oil. No, it’s not good for your furniture. But it’s not good for the bugs either. While this method doesn’t guarantee that bugs can’t fall off your bed or hitch a ride into bed with you, it does make life a little harder for any bug with ambitions of world travel.
Don’t: Spread the bugs around
Don’t call pest control: Chemicals don’t work. If standard pest control chemicals worked on bedbugs, we wouldn’t be having a standard worldwide bedbug epidemic.
Don’t use bug spray. You won’t kill the bugs, you’ll only irritate them and like all fickle UAE expats, they’ll simply break their lease and take out a new one- moving from your bed to your bedside table, or your dresser, or the electrical socket closest to you. They’re not interested in going new places or seeing new things, they just want a safe, dark place to hide where they are as close to their source of food as possible.
Don’t move: Don’t go and sleep in another room. While this may be the first thing that comes to mind when you discover you have bugs, don’t do it. If the bugs wake up and discover there’s no food at home, they go out to eat and the infestation will move and grow throughout your house. So unless you want bedbugs in every room of your house, stay put.
If you do have to throw something away, smash it to bits or set it on fire first. Please.
Don’t give bugs a lift: Bedbugs are spread from room to room by their own legs, but from house to house and office to office by your legs. And even wheels. People have been known to have bedbug infestations in their cars. These people probably don’t live in the UAE where the heat in a parked car could kill bedbugs and bake cookies too, but it’s not always summer here and wherever you picked up a bedbug from, someone else gave it a lift halfway there.
Isolate dirty clothing, protect clean clothing. You will need some light colored plastic buckets/storage boxes with airtight lids. Use them for storing clothes (or whatever) with the desired outcome of not letting bugs leave dirty clothes or infest clean clothes.
When you wake up in the morning, take off your pajamas and put them into the airtight bin. Walk your nekkid self to the bathroom and take a shower to make sure there aren’t any bugs there either. Then, when you get dressed, walk out the room and don’t come back unless you must. If you must, don’t sit on the bed or any piece of furniture that may have bugs on it.
How can I find them?
Bedbugs hide in the tiniest, darkest, closest places possible to your warm, tasty body. Telltale signs include brown or blackish spots on furniture. This is bedbug debris from their wild partying habits. You may not always see this unless you have a decent number of bugs.
Other signs are eggs- bedbug eggs are about the size of regular- not kosher- salt grains. Their six-legged mommas glue them to the back of your furniture for safe keeping.
Check for bugs and their eggs around the places where people sleep, and don’t limit yourself to only the bed. Make sure to check:
Where the floor meets the wall, or along baseboards or wainscotting
Inside (yes, inside) or electrical outlets, light switches, AC control boxes mounted inside of the wall
Beneath the edges of carpets or rugs
Along any crack of your bed or bedside tables. Remember, you bed has a bottom as well as a top, and bedbugs have as much respect for gravity as they do personal space. Turn things upside down and inside out.
Within the holes where your furniture is screwed together.
Around light fixtures
Behind picture frames, posters, mirrors, etc
Can I kill them already?
Yes, but you have to know how. Bedbugs can be killed by:
Dry heat in excess of 120 degrees
Water heated to boiling
Rubbing alcohol
Steam
Good news, the UAE is full of dry heat, so if you get infested during the summer, you can put furniture outside for a few days to properly roast it. Yes, that may ruin your furniture. Or it may not. After having thrown away enough wooden furniture, I now only buy beds with metal frames which can be easily dismantled and set outside to bake.
I’m not going to go into the details on rubbing alcohol, because I’m not sure if the proof of pharmacy grade isopropyl in the UAE is high enough to kill bugs. If you have info about this, please feel free to share.
Arm Yourself
Your two best weapons against the bedbugs are a steam machine and a hot air dryer.
I bought my steam machine from Ace Hardware, and it’s a Karcher. When I bought it, Ace only carried two models. I bought the cheaper one, and I wish I had spent a bit more to get one specific feature- the continuous refill. With the machine I have, you have to wait until the machine cools before being able to open the tank and refill it, and you only have 20 mins of steam time between refills with 20 mins of cooling. With the other model, you can add more water and keep on steaming.
Don’t be tempted to buy a clothes steamer or a tiny kettle steamer. You need steam plus pressure to force the steam into cracks and hard to reach places. The max steam pressure a machine can generate is measured in bar. If the machine doesn’t have a bar rating, then it doesn’t shoot, and your precious steam will just waft away into the air instead of forming a lethal, bug-killing blast.
Dryers in the UAE come in two kinds- useless and not. The standard dryer is useless- it works with condensation. Assume most dryers are condensation dryers, and ignore them. They don’t get hot enough to kill the bugs. If you wash and dry your bugs without enough heat you will only get cleaner bugs. You need very hot, very dry heat. You need a convection dryer.
You don’t see these in the UAE very often because they work by creating lots of hot, dry air- something we’ve already got enough of. If you’re not sure whether the dryer you’re looking at is a convection dryer or not, check the back. If it has a big hole that blasts hot air and need a long bendy pipe to be poked out of a window so your house doesn’t turn into an oven, then you’ve got the right one. I bought mine used off of Dubizzle.
You can also boil bugs to death if you have a fancy enough washing machine. They water temperature needs to be higher than 120F or 48.8C.
There are lots of other little tips and tricks, but for the most part this is what you need to know. Contain and kill. Use dry heat, alcohol, boiling water or steam. Do not panic. Do not spray, and DO NOT GO OVER TO OTHER PEOPLES’ HOUSES IF YOU KNOW YOU HAVE BUGS.
Just don’t. It’s mean. That’s how they get around.
Lots of people won’t admit to having bedbugs because hey- who wants to admit to having bedbugs? but bedbugs don’t live in your house because you’re dirty and inferior. They live in your house because the world is a global community, Dubai a revolving door of expats, and bedbugs love to travel. Enough said.
From whom, you may ask. From myself. Because one part of me took my blog and claimed it in the name of Writing, while another part of me was like Hey, I was using that for catharsis! What gives!
So I’m taking my blog back and claiming it in the name of catharsis. Because I enjoy writing, but I also need catharsis.
Incidentally, there is a difference between complaining TO Allah and complaining ABOUT Him. I have no complaints about Allah or what He has willed for me. I am pleased with Allah as my Lord and Islam as my religion. I am NOT pleased, however- with my own ability to manage my workload.
The kids have been homeschooling since… April? Or was it May? Has it really only been two months since we pulled them out of school? Because it feels like forever. I pushed for their removal, and I don’t regret pulling them out. I recognize though, that it’s going to take more than just good intentions to get the homeschool ball rolling. And let’s just say it’s a work in progress.
Work is complicated, irritating, and further exacerbated by my pain levels. My good knee is quickly becoming my less bad knee. My wrists have started to click and recently- pop. My left hand chronically hurts. We may, InshaAllah- finally be getting a housekeeper. We’ve been six months without one.
Can I just admit that I’m lonely? Is that allowed? Can I raise my hand- amidst the motion-blurred swirl of life, home, work, and three children- and say that I feel lonely even though I am never, ever left alone? Can I say that even an entire hour of my husband’s undivided attention is not enough to fill the void where meaningful adult interaction is supposed to be? That socialising on a quarterly basis is watering a dying plant but doing nothing to tend the garden?
The more socially withdrawn I become, the less I feel like socialising. Finding the time to call people, line up schedules, get dressed, and of all things- clean the house- means having fun is too much work. And I don’t need any more work. If I try to meet people outside the house, then packing up my crew of beautiful savages, their backpacks, their water, their snacks, their books, and their whining- into the easy-bake oven known as The Car and travel through the life-leeching Dubai heat to… wander around yet another mall- well, that’s just too much work too. So it’s easier to stay home, stay cool, and stay sane. Even if that means staying lonely.
Please to refrain from posting supportive comments in the box. If you know me, just show up. If you don’t, make dua. But not here. In private, to Allah.
“This made me weep today. I’ve already read this post 4-5 months ago and yesterday while thinking about what I’m going through.. I got Exactly these feelings .. the forming of outer cover .. the smashing .. the shattering .. And I thought of You. This article. And then as I checked your site today I picked up some random article displayed and started reading.. And it turned out to be the Same One I was thinking of yesterday! It brought me back to Realisation. BUT, Zeba, Do you still have that ‘fear/depression’ after the shattering? I do.. still. The shattering did make me gain more trust .. But .. the fear of those trials or the depression still remains in a corner. I am still dangling between Hope and Fear (from the trials, Astaghfirullah).” -Tired of Trying
Dear Tired of Trying,
Do I ever still have fear or depression after having the hardened out covering on my heart smashed? Are tears wet? Does loneliness hurt? Does the pope wear a funny hat?
There, I made you smile. A little bit. I hope. And now, a side-story!
I had a muscle biopsy once- I can’t remember if I blogged about it- but it was done with only local anaesthetic on my skin because the muscle they removed needed to be chemical-free for a correct lab analysis. This was not a needle biopsy- this was a crouton biopsy- where they cut out a 1 cm by 1 cm cube of my right arm and then cauterised the two-inch hole shut. I still have a dent in my right arm from where the muscle was taken.
That is not my arm. But that is what they did to my arm.
I don’t know if I should even try to describe what it felt like. In theory, I know that scalpels are sharp and surgeons are precise. In reality, it felt like having my arm sawed open with a dull, rusty hacksaw and then carved into with a melon baller. Have you ever thrown up from pain? Me neither, but I wanted to. My brain was screaming in complete panic- every muscle in my body tensed to flee- and nothing I have ever done- no surgery, no accident, no mortal wound and no child birthed- was ever as painful as having that muscle biopsy. But I did it. And I did it willingly. And I was grateful my surgeon did it to me. If doing it again meant getting healthier, I would do it again. Would I be looking forward to it? Hell no. But I would do it again. That is pain with purpose.
Pain is coming. Are you afraid?
If you are, then remember this: The hammer of Qadr is going to beat you against the anvil of the Master Smith. If you’ve been burned, it’s because He’s scorching the impurities out of you. If you’ve been cooled off only to be thrust into fire again, it’s because you needed that second heating.
If you feel like your life is nothing but an incessant pounding- where you get smashed in the face by Qadr of Allah over, and over, and over again, remember- that is how steel is crafted. Your heart was cold, hard, sin-encrusted rock. Allah burns the rock away, heats it until it is soft, and then pounds it into what He wills. Some of us are swords. Others of us are armor. What better honor than letting your pain turn you into a shield for others? AllahuAkbar.
(If you thought you were done- that everything had been burned out of you and you weren’t in any danger of being mistaken for coal, remember, hearts rust. Blades dull. And that’s why life’s a grindstone, and that’s why Allah is pressing your face against it.)
Fear of Allah is part of faith, but fear of Allah’s will is opposite to Trust in Allah. Fear is a button that Shaitaan pushes so that when Allah turns the heat up, you turn away. Or when He lays your heart upon the anvil, you don’t yield- you break. Without trusting Allah and trusting in the purpose of that pain, you flee in terror and go back to being a rock with a heart inside.
Except, now it’s broken.
The pain Allah intends for you has a purpose, and when you understand what the purpose is, not only do you not fear it, you would also volunteer again to have the purpose accomplished. That is why- despite the indescribable pain of childbirth, women still have- and love- their children. This is also why I’d offer up my other arm for a muscle biopsy if there was a chance it would make me better. That is why, when the blows start raining down on your head- you can place it gently down in submission and soften your heart, making it malleable in Allah’s hands. Or you can turn to face Allah, rather than flee Him, and find yourself beautifully refashioned by the work He’s done. If you knew what beauty He was crafting you towards, you would miss being on the anvil when you’d been given a break And if you hadn’t been on the anvil for a while, you’d get worried that you weren’t worthy of anymore detailing from Him, and then- then you would really be afraid.
Trust in Allah. If you find yourself being fearful, remember that He promised no burden greater than you could bear, and fear is a weapon Shaitan uses to prevent you from being turned into one against him.
Our lil family has a favorite game, and the way it’s won is by preserving momma’s sanity with three children and no volume control. We stick to animals to keep it simple, and a turn always starts with the phrase “I’m thinking of an animal,” followed by three clues.
We play the guessing game during long drives and boring waits, and I am working to slowly introduce concepts like animal families (Is it a primate? A reptile?) and habitats- does it live on land? Underwater? Underground?
Khalid, almost inevitably- is thinking of a dinosaur of some sort. This is useful- because that’s how we introduced the concept of extinction. Now, some kids know five or six dinosaurs. Khalid, on the other hand, knows almost all of them. Really. MashaAllah- all of them. He has memorized almost three encyclopaedias of dinosaurs, so when he’s thinking of an animal with four legs, a tail, and a long neck- he’s not thinking of a giraffe. He’s thinking of a dipolodocus. Or a mamenchisaurus. Or an argentinosaurus. Or a camarosaurus, which is also known as a morosaurus. I believe there are HUNDREDS of -sauruses that serve no current purpose other than to confuse and bewilder anyone trying to guess Khalid’s animal. Such is the universe.
He takes pity on us, and tells us the first letter of the dinosaur’s name when we’ve gotten stumped. Then, he tells us the second. Then the third. Sometimes he will spell out the whole name and I will be no more clued in to what dinosaur he’s talking about- just because he can spell it doesn’t mean I can say it, or know what the heck it looks like. Case in point: Do you know what this dinosaur is called?
It’s a parasaurolophus. I spent almost twenty minutes once, wracking my brain and trying to figure this dinosaur out before asking Khalid to finally spell it for me, and even then- I still didn’t know what he was talking about.
Iman’s MO for the guessing game is adorable. She doesn’t pick animals that are difficult, or get upset when her animal is discovered. For the most part she isn’t even picking animals, she’s actually picking people.
Iman is acutely aware of who hasn’t had a turn in a while, and when she successfully guesses an animal and gets her turn, she will tailor her choice of animal to the person that she feels needs one. She will direct her clues right to the person she has in mind. For HF, she will usually be thinking of a shark. For Khalid, she will be thinking of a dinosaur. For me, she will be thinking of a lion or giraffe, and for Musfira- she is always, ALWAYS thinking of a cat. Why? Because Musfira is always thinking of a cat too.
Musfira’s ability to participate in the guessing game has been increasing step by adorable step. In the beginning, she was struggling with the concept, and would just repeat the last clue that she heard. If Iman said, “I’m thinking of an animal with two legs,” then Musfira would ask, “Is it two legs?”
When she realized that we were looking for answers instead of echoes, she started guessing as well.
Iman: “Musfira, I’m thinking of an animal with four legs, with brown spots, that says moo.”
Moo?
Musfira: “Izzit the sun?”
Momma: “No dear, the sun is not an animal. We’re only thinking about animals.”
Musfira: “Oh, ok! Izzit Lighting McKeen!”
Musfira had an epiphany one day, and she correctly guessed the lion that Iman was directing towards me. That was her first chance for a real turn, and she started out pretty good:
“I’m thinking of a animo-”
(“Okay.”)
“It has four legs…”
(“Very good.”)
“Anna tail…”
(“Alright.”)
“And, it’s a cat!”
Musfira grins expectantly, anticipating all the exciting questions we should now be asking her. Iman raises an eyebrow and says, “Musfira, are you thinking of a cat?”
“Guj-job Iman!” Musfira cheers, “Your turn!”
We’ve played this game hundreds of times since, and Musfira’s ability to sort and label is getting better, and so her turns are getting more interesting. However, they have yet to move beyond cat.
Once Musfira said to me, “Momma, I’m thinking of a animo. It has four legs, two ears, and iss bigger than a cat.”
“How interesting!” I said, excited that Musfira could finally be breaking free from her cat-only streak. “Is it a dog?”
“Nope!”
“Is it a cow?”
“Nope!”
“Does it eat grass?”
“Nope.”
I tried a few angles and eventually I gave up.
“Alright Musfira, you were thinking of an animal with four legs and two ears that was bigger than a cat. What was it?”
Musfira beamed. “A bigger cat.”
We have since thought of smaller cats, as well as a pink cat, specifically Musfira’s long-time crib companion, Meow-Meow.The only time we’ve ever thought of anything other than cat was on the way home from the Dubai Mall after we had surprised the children with a trip to see the dinosaur fossil being exhibited there. It was a diplodocus. Khalid knew this within seconds of seeing it, even before he was within range of the exhibit information. He looked at the fossil- suspended from the ceiling in all its fossilized awesomeness- and he smiled and said, “It’s a North-American dipolodocus.”
We oohed and aahed, marvelled at the hugeness of its legs and the tinyness of it’s really tiny head. Later, there was ice-cream, and on the way home Musfira suddenly announced, “I’m thinking of an animo!”
Iman interrupted, “It’s a cat.”
Musfira snarked back. “I didn’t finish my clues.” She has learned this phrase verbatim from Khalid and Iman and their tendency to start guessing before the clues are even given.
“I’m thinking of an animo, ” Musfira continued, “It has four legs, a long… long… long…. neck. And, a tiny, small head.”
“Is it a diplodocus?” Khalid piped up excitedly from the back of the van.
“Nope!”
I felt I should translate. “Musfira, Khalid is asking if it’s a dinosaur.”
“Nope!”
Iman tried again, “Musfira are you sure it’s not Meow-Meow?”
“Nope!”
“Is your animal pink?” Iman pushed.
“Yes!” Musfira said.
A few seconds of silence passed. “Musfira,” I said slowly, “Are you thinking of… a pink dinosaur?”
“Hooray Momma! You did it!”
Four legs, lives in desert. Gives milk. Rraawr.
The game has only gotten better and more interesting since Musfira has started participating actively. HF was playing with her at bath-time the other day, and as he pulled her pajamas off he said, “Musfira, I’m thinking of an animal with four legs, a long neck, and it lives in the desert.”
“Oh! Izzit a chicken?”
“Musfira,” HF said, “This animal gives milk!”
(Musfira- who has a bovine milk allergy- has been raised on camel milk.)
I think I may not have updated for over a month. High score! So here’s the world’s shortest summary of last month:
I’m not sure how this is supposed to help her hearing, but there you go.
Iman: Grommets in, tonsils & adenoids out. Two weeks off school, ice-cream and lollipops FTW! We spent a day and a half in the hospital. The first day was fun, because morphine. She actually said- and I quote- THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER! Once the morphine wore off, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and she very sadly and heart-breaking sobbed, “Momma, I wish I never had a peration.” Not an operation, a peration. Say it out loud.
Khalid: Finally, finally getting his front teeth, Alhamdulillah! Khalid’s front teeth had to be removed almost four years ago, and his gummy grin has been a source of embarrassment and self consciousness for him since. Now, there are four white bumps slowly growing on the front of his gums, and we excitedly check on them every evening after brushing. Khalid’s been making dua his teeth. Alhamdulillah, it’s been answered. 🙂 Also, MashaAllah, my little man is now eight. And taller. And handsomer than ever. MashaAllah.
Alhamdulillah, our office has finally been moved into the premises of the larger organisation that we are joining. It’s a real office. With real people. And when you’re me, every day is Take Your Toddler to Work Day!
I think Musfira likes it so far. We get up, have breakfast, get out of our pj’s, and pack our respective bags. Mine has a laptop, a company stamp, a check book, and various reports. Musfira’s has three diapers, powder, a box of cereal, and small LED flashlight from Daiso. It is pink.
We wake up in the morning and leave the untidy house- the cereal bowls crusting over in the sink, the pile of folded laundry that’s been on the coffee table for three days, and we drive. We listen to Qur’an or Nasheeds. We point out birds. Sometimes, Musfira likes to point out trees.
We get to the new office and Musfira is immediately welcomed by any number of bouncy, energetic, ABA therapists with exactly the right sort of personality to be a toddler’s best friend. She sees who’ll be working with her today while I’m working with admin. She gets happy.
SHELL! (Hanshell)
EYES! (Aiza)
JOY! (Joy)
She plays with puzzles, and climbs up and down the stairs, and when no one’s looking, she hides in a corner and poops in her diaper because she’s too afraid to use the toilet at the office. So then I close my reports and wash her little bottom in the bathroom without a changing table, and she runs back outside to climb the stairs again and all is right with her little world. Sometimes, we have impromptu teleconferences. I’ll be talking to one person on the phone. And Musfira will either talk to me, or start talking to them too. She comes with me on lunch meetings, and the day before yesterday, she demanded- and got- the Clinical Supervisor’s apple juice.
Today we’re going to be taking our lunch from home, because I cannot and will not eat out every day- it’s too expensive, too unhealthy, and too hectic trying to pack a two a half year old out to lunch and back again within any given timeframe. She likes to chase birds, linger over her chicken strips, and ask loud questions about other lunch-hour patrons.
Musfira: “momma, wha happinid to a lady’s nose?”
“It’s pierced dear. Some cultures wear earrings in their noses. Isn’t it lovely?”
Musfira is unconvinced. She continues to stare fixedly at the nice Indian lady in the power suit.
It’s 8:30 right now, and my company toddler has overslept, which is why I’m blogging instead of driving to work. But it’s time to wake her up now, change her into her best corporate diaper, and hand her to her adoring fans while I attempt to get some work done. Alhamdulillah. Off to work we go.
These days, there are four magic words from Musfira’s mouth that cause me to go into instant state of anxiousness.
“Mama, I hep yoo!”
Musfira had a dirty diaper. We went into the bathroom to change her. As I turned to move the garbage can closer to the toilet, I heard those magic words- mama, I hep yoo! followed by the crinkly zip of a diaper being unfastened.
Her diaper had been full of poop. Had. Now her pants were instead.
We were making eggs for breakfast, and a bowl of lemon-yellow omlette sat waiting to be poured into the pan.
mama, I hep yoo!
And that’s how Musfira had her first egg-wash for smooth and shiny hair.
Musfira wanted a cup of milk, and I asked her to bring me the bottle from the fridge. Instead, she got both the milk and the cup as far as the hallway, where she – impressively- filled the cup, as well as emptied the bottle on the floor.
mama, I hep yoo!
She says it with such enthusiasm, such genuine love and a desire to please and help me that I feel guilty for dreading those words. There are many times where she follows my instructions perfectly, but those other times- where she doesn’t listen for instructions, or makes up her own instructions- those are the times that set my teeth on edge, and that’s when I end up dramatically sighing and cleaning raw eggs or poop off of things. And people.
But she’s tiny. Really. She has these teeny-tiny feet, and these skinny little legs, and when she comes pattering up the hallway at full-speed, both arms in the air and a face full of gleeful enthusiasm, then I HEP YOOOO! is perhaps, the cutest, sweetest, most earnest little expression of love that this momma has ever seen.
InshaAllah, we’ll both get better at this. 🙂 And we’ll hep each other.
I invited myself over to a friend’s house yesterday. Normally I invite people over to my house instead, but since we’ve been without a housekeeper for the past three weeks, I don’t think any of my friends would appreciate an afternoon in the sty with tea and- well, that’s it. Tea. Because I don’t have cookies and there’s nothing made for lunch.
So MayG let me invite myself over. And she very patiently waited for me to arrive two hours late after I was delayed by urgent work. She sent me very detailed directions to her house.
(I buckled Musfira into her seat and started driving towards her part of town. Five minutes into the drive, I noticed some alerts on my phone.)
I needed to go north on this road, take this exit, and then look for that building with the thing on it. I had a google map point as well, which is fantastically useful.
(I’m in a Whatsapp group called- of course- Brain Surgery News. It’s a small family group where my sister- who is in Singapore for neurosurgery right now- shares updates about what’s going on. There were 29 notifications.)
So I started driving and skimmed through the messages when I stopped at a traffic light.
(My sister is allergic to the materials they could have used to fix the aneurysm in her brain.)
And then I realized I had starting driving towards the wrong city.
(The aneurysm is too wide for the second option, coiling)
So I turned around and headed the other way, but I got stuck in Deira traffic because I hadn’t accounted for the time of day. But when does Deira NOT have traffic, really.
(The third option is to open up her brain and manually put a titanium clip on the swollen vessel. Which is behind her left eye. Which she may lose sight in.)
I worked my way through Deira and got myself going in the right direction. When I was finally five minutes away from her house, I drove right past the exit.
(But losing sight in one eye is a small price to pay to keep your brain from exploding. So Alhamdulillah.)
I made a U-turn using the next exit, except it wasn’t a U-turn. It pointed me back in the direction of home again.
(The surgery has been delayed until the doctors are sure they’ve picked the right course of action. Owl is being tested to see whether her form of EDS- a connective tissue disorder that we both have- is the kind that makes your veins fragile. That’ll take another week to come in.)
I made another U-turn, and got myself pointed in the right direction to make a second pass at the correct exit.
(They also need to see if she’s allergic to titanium, because again- you can’t install things in someone’s brain that their body is going to have a problem with.)
I nearly missed it again. I swung my car into the exit ramp at the last possible moment, grateful that traffic was light and there were very little cars on the road.
(They would have to break her skull.)
I finally found the building. Musfira and I located the entrance, pushed the button for the ‘alligator,’ went upstairs and then rang the bell for MayG’s flat.
Breakfast was lovely. It was served the moment I arrived- at nearly noon- as all breakfasts should be. We had eggs and toast and chicken and nutella and juice and tea and cake. Musfira and her four year old played beautifully together, we chatted about random interesting things, and just as I finished my last piece of toast (this was the one propping all that nutella up) MayG suddenly said, “Hey, you want to paint with me?
(…)
Yeah!
MayG printed out some Arabic calligraphy using a machine that cut the art into adhesive vinyl. Then she painstakingly removed the excess vinyl around all… err.. most of the little fathas, dammas, kasras, and other little wiggly bits that go around Arabic script. Then she transferred them to watercolor paper and handed me a brush.
(She had asked me if there was anything I wanted to paint in particular.)
To say that I enjoyed the painting wouldn’t even begin to do justice to how I felt. I felt renewed by the painting. I felt freed by the painting- even if it was for a little while- from the non-stop worry, fear, pain, and anxiety that had pounding on my brain the entire drive down. I dipped the brush in water, I touched it gently to a deep, uncomplicated blue. I dabbed the thick, textured paper and watched the paper soak up varying shades depending on wet the brush was, how long the brush had already been on the paper, and how quickly I moved the brush from one place to another.
It was soothing- not only in the action of painting itself- but in reading and re-reading the words I was painting around.
(On no soul does Allah place a burden greater than it can bear. Stroke, stroke, dip. On no soul. Stroke, stroke. No burden greater. Dip, dip- stroke. On no soul does Allah place a burden greater than it can bear.)
I painted for Owlie-bird, who is floating in fluorescent white medical limbo somewhere in Singapore. The course of treatment is unclear, the risks are scary, and the waiting is hard and scary, but InshaAllah, she’ll be fine. Allah said so.
(If she dies as a Muslim, Alhamdulillah.)
I wish I could get it to her now because I want to frame it and prop it up next to her hospital bed, not because my untrained, unstructured, and uncomplicated blue watercolor is beautiful, but because Allah’s promise is beautiful.
(If she survives and lives as a Muslim, Alhamdulillah.)
I’m pretty sure I thanked MayG three or four times before leaving. I was hoping to convey just the right sort of thanks- one where you’re insanely grateful but not hoping to show your insanity. I don’t know if I succeeded. But I thanked her.
And now, I’m going to thank her again.
MayG, thank you. Really, very very much. For tea and cookies and company and calligraphy and paint and green masala chicken and qeema and gajar halwa and poking out all those little sticky vinyl bits with a pin. And for listening and hearing and giving me emotional sanctuary in your beautiful home for the better part of the afternoon.
Thank you for making me a larger, prettier version of the same calligraphy that I painted for my sister.
Your decorations are awesome, and you are one of the most creative people that I know, MashaAllah. I left your house feeling calmer, clearer, and less likely to miss my exits because I was crying- which is what I had been doing on the way to your house. I was also crying while you were printing things out with your magical cutting machine, and I would also like to thank you for either not noticing or not letting on that you had noticed.
“Whosoever relieves from a believer some grief pertaining to this world, Allah will relieve from him some grief pertaining to the Hereafter.” Hadith Source Here
May Allah bless you and forgive your sins, and return the kindness you showed me thousands of times over with His mercy towards you and your family.
May Allah relieve the distress of Muslims all over the world, wherever they are, whatever their source of distress.
The mechanism of autism is unknown, and that’s ok. Research takes time, especially when you’re talking about complex neurological disorders. We- the people who have to manage autism behaviorally before it can either be prevented or effectively treated- find meaning in our role in making the lives of children better before we can make their brains better, and that’s ok.
But there is something that is not ok, and I am angry. This morning I did yet another intake meeting for an autistic child whose parents had been put through the wringer. They went to an established clinic in a fancy building for a better understanding of why their child wasn’t speaking, and they left with a big, steaming heap of BS, including but not limited to:
• Heavy metal testing
• A full food-allergy screening
• Recommendations for genetic testing
• Recommendations for CT scans & MRIs
• A shopping list of supplements, including FRIGGIN LITHIUM
• A prescription anti-fungal
• A prescription anti-psychotic
• A recommendation for Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
• Stool and urine testing
• Recommendations for a Gluten Free, Casein Free diet
The psychiatrist’s recommendations for therapy were pretty much anything that she could get away with legally and possible charge for. Oh, and somewhere on the side- they should check a website for an ABA program.
And now- some information about the child whose parents were just wrung dry- He’s 3.5 now. He’s been on anti-psychotic drugs for the past six months. He’s verbal, social, can sequence numbers from one to one hundred, can read, write, and spell words from memory. You know, simple words like e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t and p-o-m-e-g-r-a-n-a-t-e?
He has no behaviors of self injury, does not tantrum, no obsessions, and very little stimming- which is easily redirected. If this child were to be assessed by someone who knew what they were talking about and didn’t pass out antipsychotics like candy- he would probably be diagnosed with PDD-NOS, maybe mild autism. But this nice lady- she diagnosed him with moderate autism, ADHD, food allergies, heavy metal toxicity, a fungal infection, and vitamin deficiencies. Wow.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of shoddy autism services in the three years I’ve been working and the five years since my son was diagnosed with autism. I’ve seen centers that copy-pasted names onto other children’s assessments and charged parents thousands of dirhams for 16 pages of ctrl-v.
(Child has severe speech deficit, as he cannot/does not use his, her, and other gender-appropriate language. Yusuf- age 10 months.)
Because I work for a center, I see more than just my own son’s assessment- unlike other parents, who will probably only ever see their own child’s. I have seen assessments from many, many centers- and I know which ones actually provide accurate information about a child’s development and which ones are giving you a binder of fluff. But junk assessments are practically nothing compared to what the lady above has done. Because she has done it over, and over, and over again.
She’s been doing it for at least as long as Khalid has had autism- because we visited her clinic when we were first searching for answers, and HF and I smelled a rat then and never came back. But then, HF and I are both educated, highly-literate people who can- and do- unleash the full power of Google on our important decisions. Many parents don’t know that they’re allowed an opinion, multiple treatments, and the tools to research the hell out of a something before touching it with a ten foot pole.
Every child she sees gets practically the same report. They certainly all get the same recommendations. I’ve never seen her administer a CARS, GARS, ABLLS, VB MAPP, or the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Index. She assigns children an average score without showing their scores for the subdomains- which is like writing the answer to an algebra question without showing your work. No matter how old you are, how many words you know, or how mild your autism is- you’re all hyperactive, moderately autistic, and possibly bipolar little snots, so have some happy pills. Ok, bye!
I met a child who had been under her “treatment” for four years before his parents finally figured it out- that she had wasted four years of his life- drugging a six year old until he was a ten year old- and “treating” him with an unstructured, undocumented “program” of flashcards, scribbling in a binder, and sending him home to come back next week, thanks.
That’s nine hundred fifty six thousand, one hundred and fourteen dollars.
A day.
Not a year, not a month- a day.
So $956,114 –a day- is going back into one company. I have to ask- why can’t they make Candy Crush for Syria? Or Candy Crush for Autism? Or Candy Crush for Cancer Research?
I know that Syria, autism, and cancer aren’t Candy Crush’s fault, but can you imagine if the people who made shiny, interesting, and successful things actually did so to the benefit of humanity? And considering the state of humanity at the present- autism services included- can you imagine how much it hurts the world when people act for their own financial gain? I mean really- if your company made $956,114-a day- would you not feel even just a teeny bit morally obliged to do something other than make yourself richer- like I dunno… cure cancer? End world hunger maybe?
My least favorite psychiatrist and Candy Crush have something in common- and I don’t know what to call it yet, but it’s a combination of profiteering and gross negligence. It’s what happens when people think about themselves first. It’s what happens when you’re living for this world alone- and your perspective on “success” doesn’t look past your own mortal lifespan.
Allah loves my children more than I do, so if He should decide that Khalid will have low muscle tone and Iman will have elbows that can be wrung like a wet towel and Musfira- my tiniest cupcake- should have a heart murmur, then He has decided that for them out of love, not in spite of it.
Boss… How do you make applesauce?
*Sounds easy*
Ok, how do you make Dabb sauce?
Dare looking it up!!! *mwahahaha*