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Dear Mom & AssalamuAlaikum Dad& Z1 & Fuzzy & Zaymun & Oleo Corpoleo & Blogistan

I’ve only got half an hour to type (those are the rules down here at the Barret Memorial Library, Petersburg, IN) so I hope you guys forgive me for combining  four separate letters with this one blog entry. 

We’ve been in Indiana since Sunday.  Z1 (the big bro) drove us down as far as Uncle Rusty’s house, where we sat on the sofas and hung out with cousins we hadn’t seen for about four years.  A note about my Uncle Rusty, he loves Pakistani food.  Sometimes I wonder whether he’s related to us from my mother’s side at all, or whether he’s actually a displaced Chacha (brother of my father) who somehow ended up in Indiana.  We brought him a tub of Nihari and a tub of Biryani. (Note to Fuzzy: That biryani was Delicious with a capital D.) 

We also met two Mormon missionaries who were at Uncle Rusty’s house for lunch.  My Momma used to feed the missionaries every Sunday, so it was a very nostalgic experience for us to see the fresh-faced, well-intentioned, but too-young-to-be-too-brilliant missionaries with the black name-tags and back-packs.  

After good-bye hugs and one good-bye squeeze from my Uncle that fractured at least three of my ribs, we jumped in G-ma’s little red car and finished the rest of the eight-hour drive catching up.  We’ve been here for the last five days, baking cookies, eating G-ma’s famous tuna casserole and zipping about southern Indiana.  We’ve also been mildly productive, we broke G-ma’s bathtub spigot.  Then we replaced it.  That was exciting.  It involved a few trips up to the hardware store in town where a nice man humored our questions and guided us through the painfully silly process of installing a new spigot.

1. Buy new spigot.  (the hardware store is only twenty minutes away)

2. Remove old spigot.  (bang bang bang. ok, now what?)

3. Place threads of spigot onto pipe. (it isn’t fitting!  Back to the hardware store, STAT!) 

4. Place threads of adjusted spigot (the hardware man took an extra rubber bushing off) onto pipe.

5. Turn spigot clockwise.  (which way is clockwise?)

6. Oh, that way, he he.

7. Enjoy.  (whee! Showers for everyone!)

Other adventures here at G-ma’s house have included a trip up to Hornady Park, the beautiful green pond & park where we spent the halcyon days of or youth torturing each other on the teeter-totter (mooOOOooom, she won’t let me dooOOOoown!) and feeding the ducks.  Well, more than ducks actually.  First there were the red-faced thingies that looked like ducks but hissed like snakes when you didn’t crank those crackers our fast enough.  Then there were these white things that looked like ducks but honked like geese and ate like pigs.  There were one or two proper ducks, cute little things trailing cute little ducklings, but they were muscled out of the way by the several proper geese, three-feet tall and mean-tempered.  When they opened their beaks you had a choice, you could fill the beak with crackers of you could suffer The Wrath.  We tossed the crackers and ran.

We plan on having an adventure later today, but right now we’re doing laundry.  Rather, G-ma and Owlie are doing laundry at the Laundromat while Abez, Minister of Miscommunications, is here at Barret Memorial Library, where incidentally, her time is up.

Well Blogistanis, we hope to post some pictures after we get back to Chicagoistan and develop the film.  More coming later, but how much later is unsure.  G-ma doesn’t have internet access.

Love, Peace and Salan Grease,

   Abez

Computer C2

Barret Memorial Library

Petersburg, IN

Leaving tomorrow for G-ma’s house. All aboard for hugs, chocolate cookies and swinging on the front porch. toot toot!

Conversation of the day:

Me: Hi Hamza!  It’s been a long time, how old are you now, five?

Hamza: No, five and a half!

Me: Oh?

Hamza: Yes.  And still a ninja.



Hamza.  The Ninja.

Just when you think that everyone has grown up, your elder brother hits you in the face with a pair of socks.  Ah, memories. 

How we’ve spent much of our vacation so far: Driving between Suburbs!! Aaak!  

Nephew number one. Just got back from a night at Chuckee Cheese’s, and he’s full of pop, pizza, sugar and madness. This picture was taken one second before he zoomed off and started pressing plastic spiders on various party guests. 

Nephew number two. So cute he can get away with anything. This kind of thing should really be illegal… 

Walking past an abortion clinic on the way to buy milk this morning, we were stopped by a wide-eyed lady with an armful of literature who looked us and gasped, “You girls aren’t going in there, are you?!”

 

We told her obviously not. 

 

“Good,” she said, placing her hand on her heart and sighing in relief, “I don’t know if I could take that this morning…”

 

We laughed nervously and walked away through the rows on nuns on both sides of the side walk (praying) and onwards to the gas station.  On the way an  interesting discussion ensued, about what difference, if any, these people in front of the abortion clinics are making, whether their 11th hour appeals to the women who enter these clinics do, in fact, save any lives.  The problem is complicated, and the nuns outside the clinic seem to be a little late in their attempt to prevent abortions from happening, especially when you consider that the best way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy.  I’m sure the Catholic group that those nuns are part of have some sort of abstinence  program for their youth, and they might be trying to advocate chastity, but I don’t know how far they’ll get when their teenagers are dressing like prostitutes. 

 

I’m not saying that to be mean, and I know it sounds pretty shocking, but a perusal of the mall (and of the mall-goers as well) revealed that tiny combinations of black and pink with stiletto heels are all the rage.  I’ve never seen shorter shorts or so many fleshy half-moons hanging out of said shorts.  I could be accused of over simplifying the problem here, and of saying that dressing like a prostitute makes you act like a prostitute, but that’s not what I’m trying to say.  I’m not saying that at all, actually.  What I’m getting at is that if these nuns, these well-meaning and God-fearing people want to prevent abortions, then they need to prevent the pregnancies, and if they want to prevent the pregnancies, then they need to prevent the sex, and if they want to prevent that, then they need to take it off the teenagers’ minds, and if they want to do that, they better put some clothes on these little girls because apparently a pair of shorts with ‘Hot Stuff’ written on the seat are not conducive to modesty and chastity and all that nice stuff.

 

The woman in front of the abortion clinic with the flyers was shocked that three young women dressed as we were, in modest clothing and head scarves, would be headed for abortions.  Apparently she knows what I’m getting at.  Someone else understands the link between modest dress and modest behavior (though it isn’t always 100%).  So why are they so reluctant to acknowledge the darker side of that link, that IMmodest dress leads to IMmodest behavior?

 

Some truths are less obvious than others.   

 

AssalamuAlaikum Blogistan and Momma-Abbustan.

 

I’m sitting in the UIC computer lab right now with Owlie, Sabah & Shamaila, finishing up the camp book enjoying this really comfy swivel chair.  Wheee!  We’re about to break for lunch- kabobs in pita bread we brought from home, yummy, and after that we’ll get back to work.  Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve been up to so far:

 

Last night we went bowling at Lincoln Square Lanes, naturally I lost, but I maintain that I had the most fun.  I had a strawberry milkshake from McDonalds, which cost me two dollars and took over half an hour’s worth of laborious sucking to consume.  Man, I think there was a vein standing out on my forehead by the time I finished.  I should’ve just gotten a spoon.  I repent.  I do taubah.  No more milkshakes for me. 

 

After bowling we went back to the park near our old highschool where we played on the swings and swung across the monkey bars, just like in the good old days… just like senior year.  he he.  Yes, Abez & co played in the park all the way till college, pushing the tire swings and falling into the wood-chip until the principal gave us diplomas and kicked us out. 

 

Time to go for lunch, I’ll blog later InshaAllah.  Still haven’t figured out how to use my brother’s digicam, the first step of which being to OBTAIN the digicam, which I have yet to do.  Ah well.

 

Peace & Handi Grease!

-Abez

Very busy finalizing camp book, I’ll type a real post later. In the mean time, I need help finding a small ‘SalAllahu Alaihi’ graphic to follow the name of the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings of Allah be upon him(this is where the graphic would be useful). I left my clipart collection at home. 🙁 HELP!

Dear Mom & Abbu & Blogistan

Yesterday Owlie, Sabah and I went out and replaced the beat-up sandals that I used to wear around the house- the ones the housekeeper was always making fun of and mom always trying to throw away. I’d give you permission to throw them away mom, but I actually brought them with me for safekeeping. :p I guess I’ll throw them away myself. They were good shoes too, maybe we should have a memorial service…

We also went to Jewel, where we wandered around aisles wider than most stores in a building larger than our local plaza, gawking at more food than anyone could eat in their entire lives, and eventually buying nothing. I don’t want to be so terribly fob-bish, maybe I’m just being 3rd-worldish, but that store was overwhelming, just in the sense of what was available, and wondering how much would be thrown away when it expired. There certainly are alot of food options for a people enamored with fast food. Maybe they go shopping and get overwhelmed too, so then they end up going out for falafel instead. That’s what we did anyway.

Yesterday we went to Evanston for lunch, after which we wandered around and then gravitated towards the beach. We clambered over the rocks and stood with our feet in the lake. We were enjoying the beach in the subdued, non-nekkid way that hijabis do when a woman in the distance began jogging towards us. When I turned and saw her, my first impression was that she had left the pants that went with the jacket she was wearing at the other end of the beach. Turns out it wasn’t a mistake. She was a life guard with a red jacket over her bikini, and she was here to tell us that this was not the proper beach entrance and that if we wanted to use the beach then we would have to buy a token.

Alright, we said. How much is a token.

Seven dollars, she said. And you have to buy them from over there.

We politely nodded and then made our way back over the rocks. After walking out of earshot, a motiont to boycott Evanston was proposed. All in favor say aye.

Aye!

The council unanimously agreed. Dunno where we’re going today, but I bet it’s not Evanston.

Peace & Handi Grease

-Abez

A family tradition for international arrivals: Giordano’s stuffed spinach pizza eaten on the very box in which it came. Notice our stylish cardboard plates. 

I feel FOB-ulous.

(That’s FOB as in: Fresh Off the Boat)

FOBular observations by Abez

– Costco is bigger than Islamabad airport.

– Judging by a fried breast-piece I met at yesterday’s picnic, I think your chickens could beat up our goats.

– The fruit is unnaturally large. RUN, it’s FRANKENFRUIT!!!!

– I could ride in an SUV with a whole bunch of other stuff in the back seat, like a bag, some golf clubs, a bedroom suite, my car…

Next time: Pics and more FOBulous thoughts coming your way. 🙂

Dear Mommma, Dad and Bloggers

Well, something about this computer’s cookie settings won’t allow me to log in to my email box to sent my parents a letter, so I’m writing my parents a blog instead.

The plane trip was pretty good, for the first time in my life I can say that I enjoyed flying PIA. The plane was new, a Boeing 777, which means nothing to me technically but in laymen’s terms it meant bigger seats with foot rests and personal computer screen thingies, even in economy with multiplayer gaming and your choice of movies & stuff. I ended up watching a fifty year-old adaptation of a Russian version of Beauty and the Beast, where Beauty’s name is Anastasia and her headdress and frock are distinctly Ukrainian. (the Beast, after he transformed, looked something like a hunky Estonian.)

I also watched the relatively new Dreamworks cartoon, Sinbad. I give it as many thumbs down as I possibly can, which is two, and as I type this I’m trying to curl my toes to see if I can add two more. Three of the four thumbs are for historical inaccuracy. Having read the original 1001 Arabian Nights as a child, I can tell you that Sinbad is-

a- not Greek

b- not a pirate

c- not a polytheist

Where in the movie he’s all of the above, a thief from Syracuse whose run-in with the goddess Aris (sp?) sets him on a whirlwind adventure with a sassy chick with which he obviously and eventually falls in love. The last downward thumb is for the cute animal that cartoon-makers feel the need to include in every movie. My theory is that this is the plush, adorable character that the children will nag their parents to buy, like Flounder from the Little Mermaid, Pegasus from Hercules and the raccoon from Pocahontas. This time it was a slobbery but sagacious dog who leaps in and licks people at all the warm and fuzzy moments, and can launch harpoons at the really dramatic ones.

Dreamworks did do an interesting and imaginative job with the animation though, so technically it gets four thumbs down but one pinky up. But I should stop reviewing two-year old cartoons now. You should have seen it for yourself by now, lol.

Right, well there’s an MSA reunion picnic that Owlie and I are off to right now. I have a whole bunch of other exciting and Fob-flavored observations that I could include in this blog (your Costco is bigger than our airport) but I’ll have to hold them till next time.

Love to Momma & Abbu, take care of yourselves and each other, don’t do anything crazy now. 🙂

Love, Peace & Handi Grease

-Abez

#101 Chicagoistan, USA

• I found a bag that I thought was empty. Actually, it was our winter storage for crickets. That was exciting.
• Fatigue makes you do funny things. Stabbing yourself in the lip with a sewing needle is not one of them.
• We’re flying back on the same plane with Chai & Ismo. I thought that was pretty cool. 🙂

T minus eight hours and counting till take-off. Daylight and shopping time fading fast. Next time I blog it’ll be from Chicagoville. 🙂 Everybody pray we have a safe journey InshaAllah.

Love, Peace & Salan Grease!

-Abez

A week or two ago, I made the pukka intention of losing five pounds before I got to the US. You would assume that following that sort of intention I’d do stuff like work out more often, eat less, and sleep less. Well you assume wrong my friend, I have been working out more, but the eating has been augmented with Salt & Vinegar Chips (Pakistan Zindabad! they finally got around to making them!) and my sleep has been increased with a daily nap. There are three days before Owlie and I zoom off to the US, and how does my weight-loss stand? At two pounds.

Yay!

Am I disappointed? Not in the least. I was actually expecting to have gained weight, because although I started my weight-loss regimen off with gusto, it kinda petered out after the third or fourth day due to the stress, the heat, and the Salt and Vinegar Chips, whose glorious name shall be capitalized henceforth.

Aside from losing those last three pounds, sometime before now and Sunday I also have to:

-drop clothes off at the tailor

-pick up other clothes from other tailor

-buy remaining gifts (this should be capitalized too, it’s a big project)

-find a non-broken suitcase (we’re Desi, we have no less than 12 suitcases with no less than twelve holes, tears, or missing wheels)

-pack

Right. I have to go eat…err… run errands.

yum… 

Hello! Yay! Wheeeeeee!!!

The computer is finally healthy again, Alhamdulillah, real post coming soon 😀

Message in a bottle:

Computer crashed. AAAAAAAK!

Be back soon.

My mother told us she wanted she wanted a parrot for her birthday. She didn’t specify what color it should be, or whether or not it should be edible…The devilish looking horns were added on after the party btw, just for effect. 🙂 

Sensei Presents: An exciting day and a boring blog

Everyone has a limit. Mine is 3 am. Precisely. The laws of Abezistan clearly state that I only have to lay in bed in the dark pretending to be asleep until 3 am. After 3 am night is over and any extra-bed excursion count as ‘waking up really early’ instead of ‘staying up really late.’

So today I’m up really early (it’s 3 am), typing in the dark and enjoying the basement ambience. Today was my momma’s birthday and we had an adventure. The basement flooded and then a pipe busted and there was boiling hot water squirting up to the ceiling and soaking into the electrical converters, which then started smoking. A very bad habit it is too, causes cancer & stuff. So then we had to tie the pipe up with a nylon. Then we had to turn the water off to the basement. Then we had no water in the basement. Then all the leaking water flooded the septic system and my bathroom flooded. Then there was panic and much gnashing of teeth as smelly water backed onto my bedroom floor and prevented access to basically everything in the bedroom. Boy was that exciting…

After the plumber came over and contained the emergency (I say contained, not fixed) we jazzed up the upstairs part of the house, wrapped my momma’s gifts and had us a party-sharty. There was drinks (milk), hot chicks (I was sweating), dancing (my mom did a one-man congo line around the table) and groovy tunes.

We also went out to KFC for dinner, not because we’ve bought in to the absurd trend that KFC in Pakistan counts as fine dining, but because we said, “Hey mom, what do you want for dinner on your birthday?” and she answered, “Fried Chicken!”

Certain local bloggers are invited over for leftover birthday cake. You know who you are. I’ll just go slice you guys some pieces. Not that I’m eating leftover birthday cake late at night. Oh no, I’m eating it early in the morning.

I’m sorry folks, I found this bumper sticker in a book store the other day and I couldn’t resist. I had to have it for my very own. 😀 Seen anything weird lately?

Today is a hamster day, a day for me to brood malevolently in my cedar chip and wonder who keeps moving it around and why people keep reaching into the cage to poke me. Ok, so maybe ‘malevolently brooding’ means watching the Discovery Channel and eating gingerbread cookies, but I’m not leaving this cedar chip, gosh darnit!

Well, ok maybe I’ll leave the cedar chip later, but right now I feel hot and disinclined towards activity- a bad combination for someone who’s supposed to be both busy and productive. I think it’s my clothes actually. They’re making me feel sleepy. That might be my fault, since I haven’t changed out of my pajamas and it’s now 5:30. Speaking of clothes, my tailor (the competent one) is out of town for a week and Aniraz & I have already booked our tickets so there isn’t much time to spare. I don’t have any problems with my current clothes (I especially like these pajamas) but since they’re mostly wrinkly lawn shalwar-qameez in varying shades of pink (they were gifts) I think I should find some alternatives. Other than neon yellow. :p

Help me out here you guys, what’s in fashion for the scarf wearing fundus? (say that five times fast!)

Have a Hamster-Flavored Day

A mangy looking guy goes into a restaurant and orders a hamburger. The waiter shakes his head and says, “No way. I don’t think you can pay for it.”

“Nah,” says the guy. “The hamster is also a ventriloquist.”

*****

A carpet-layer finishes installing a wall-to-wall carpet at a woman’s house and reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. They’re not there. He looks around the room and sees a small bump in the middle of the newly-installed carpet.

‘Damn,’ he thinks, ‘I don’t want to have to tear the whole carpet out just to get the cigarettes.’

He looks at his hammer and gets an idea. He pounds the bump until it is flat and the carpet is smooth once again. Just then the lady of the house walks in holding a pack of cigarettes.

‘I found these on the dining table,’ she says handing them to him. ‘By the way, have you seen my pet hamster?’

It’s 10 pm, and having alternately eaten, lounged, chilled and then eaten again (lather, rinse, repeat) since 5, I am so stuffed/lethargic/tired that this is all I can manage for a blog right now. But I wanna say a big huge JazakAllahuKheiran for the dua’s and to ask to keep ’em coming. In the mean time, I have got to lie down… arrgg…

Short of sounding really dramatic, could you guys dua for me? There are times when a brotha (or sista) could really, really use a dua. This is one of those times.

Introducing self to someone at party- “Excuse me, but I think I’m your mother.”

making pleasant conversation– “Your grandson just bit me in the head.”

How work was today?- “There were mangos and burgers flying all over the place!”

How did it go?- “He shot me with a grenade launcher several times.”

sold on an as-is, where-is basis.  

Damaged goods for sale.

It’s 4:45 am and I’ve run out of rocks. I started out with exactly 28 of them, my first batch being 13 decently-sized chunks and the second being 15 lesser rocks and greater dirt crumbs that weren’t so ideal for throwing but they would have to do anyway. The distance was (and still is) 110 feet, a frustrating and infuriating 110 feet when there are 11 dogs communally howling behind your house at 4:45 am and you have no way of making them be quiet.

I did hit one. One. One dog got a glorified pebble in the flank and slunk away from the pack as my victory cry rose to the dawn sky. Two dogs learned from their comrade’s mistake (don’t stand within 90 feet of that crazy lady’s house, she has rocks…) and left along with him.

A few more dogs took offense at the bad vibes I directed towards them and trotted away towards the soccer field. Three other dogs got wet when I slung a water-bag (like a water balloon, but much more serious) at them and scored a hit at their feet. They backed away and disappeared into the creek behind our house. That’s when I ran out of ammunition. Two dogs remained- the Statue Dog, which sat unmoving in our back yard even under the occasional barrage of my badly-aimed projectiles, and the Mother of all Evils, a small white dog with three loud puppies who prides herself on being the metronome of the wild dog world. When she barks, it’s to a steady 3-3 time.

Bark two three

Bark two three

Bark two three

Bark two three

Though the dogs are over 100 feet away, their shrill cacophony carries far in the clear morning and reverberates in the cement basement where my bedroom is. By the time the sounds get to my sleeping ear they are a series of metallic scratching noises, or bursts of dog-themed noise often in a chorus of five or more. I would like to go back to bed, but the Mother of All Evils and the Statue Dog are still there, sitting and howling on the unfinished boundary wall that marks the end of our backyard. I’m out of rocks and they’re just out of my range for flying bags of water.

I figured something out this morning as I stood outside the backdoor in my pajamas throwing rocks in all the wrong directions, and it has nothing to do with patience. It has to do with aim. And choosing the right rocks. And finding Aniraz’s slingshot.

Aniraz & I are planning a trip back to the US for the first time in four years. We also have to get the camp book together. We also have to buy gifts & clothes. We also have to figure out who we’re staying with and for how long. I’m sure I’m forgetting something…. Ah yes, my pile of unanswered email is getting deeper and staler. I received an offer for a job that I’m not sure I want to take, and it’s been a week since that email arrived. I have started and not finished four different blog layouts for four different people, all of whom have been waiting entirely too long. And plus, the dishes are dirty.

Did you ever notice that the more you have to do, the less likely you are to do something? It’s the same way that too many people trying to fit through one doorway become stuck and then no one can get through. That’s how I feel right now. There were too many things trying to get through the door at once, so I closed it. Not that closing the door will make them go away, it will just make them grumble as they stand in line, occasionally looking at their watches and wondering if it looks like rain and whether they’ll get in before it starts.

If only I could get them to stand in line, and then let them in one at a time and deal with them in the order that they came, but no. They all came at the same time and they all demand attention now, they all share the same deadline and they must all be finished before the second week of July.

I’d like to believe that I handle stress well. I still think I do, because I have never lost control of myself or my life, even in stressful situations, but man…I just cannot deal with long to-do lists. I never learned how to juggle, and now I’ve gone and dropped everything on the floor.

*sigh*

bloggerbot test pic. Testing, testing, check Hammie, one two three.. 

Well, I’m being bad today. And there’s watermelon in my lap. It leapt off my fork. *geronimo!* After a long and boring wait for my mother at the dentist’s office this morning, I sped off to Chai’s house to chill with literaunty and ismo. (oh, and you too Chai). I came home at a reasonable time but I brought Ismo with me, and we played about two solid hours of video games while eating shameful amounts of gingersnaps. After dropping Ismo off, Aniraz and I went to the tailor and then went shopping, where we bought:

cloth

thread

a pair of shoes

No french fries (boy was I disappointed)

After coming home at 9:30 we had dinner and I have been lounging about the house ever since. Lounging isn’t a morally reprehensible act in and of itself, but when you consider how steeped I am in old emails, pressing housework and dirty laundry, such laziness could be counted as major domestic sin.

So I’ve done absolutely nothing productive today. Maybe I should take the watermelon out of my lap. Or maybe not.

Real-time in Abezistan

Me: answers doorbell

Man: Is your upper portion for rent?

Me: No, not at the moment, but it may be within two-three months.

Man: Oh, I heard it was going to be empty soon.

Me: It isn’t yet. (turning away from gate)

Man: Hey!

Me: Wha?

Man: (having a Eureka kinda moment) You’re not Pakistani, are you?

Scrabble-Babble

(the following are actual quotes from our nightly Scrabble Games. I’ve been collecting them on the score-sheets)

Mom, you know you’re just a trophy wife. –Aniraz

Arf arf arf, go eat dog barf. –Mom

The sanity train has left the station. –Aniraz

Dad, you are *such* a cheat. – Abez

Look, I made a seven-letter word, GGROCER. That’s a grocer with a stuttering problem, ha ha! -Dad

I almost made the mistake of putting the bag of chips next to mom, ha ha. -Abez

And I know, I know, this isn’t the bestest blog in the world, but man, first I ran out of DSL and now I’m out of brain power, and I have a list of emails a mile-high to reply to and this was the best I could come up with. Maybe tomorrow folks. Right now I’m gonna go crash.

My mommy’s home. Everybody dance. 🙂

It’s T-minus 11 hours till Momma arrives, and I’ve got a rather daunting to-do list to complete before she arrives.

-Make Haleem

-Buy Rasmalai

-Buy Flowers (necklaces as well as bouqet)

-Wash Dog (she jumped into the creek yesterday and came out a shade darker and twice as smelly)

-Clean Upstairs

-Clean Downstairs

-Clean all bathrooms

-Wash Car & Clean Inside

-Buy Bottled Water

-Write Blog (check!)

Well, at least one of these things is done. *sigh*

Men’s kurtas are among the most comfortable articles of clothing in the entire world. Chai knows this, she has a kurta that belonged to her grandfather. Kurtas are soft and baggy, and when they get old they only get softer and baggier. Kurtas are the ideal hot-weather clothes for me. My father agrees, but he doesn’t seem to appreciate it, especially since the kurtas I’m wearing are his.

You all know the shirts I’m talking about, sometime in the sixties (or maybe the 1860’s) the uniform of the Pakistani male was the white kurta-pajama, the kurta being the loose, white cotton tunic and the pajama being the bunchy, soft pants that fit your legs like corrugated stove pipes.

It’s been a long time since kurta-pajama was really in, and at some point between the sixties and this century all of my father’s pajamas were lost and only three or four of the kurtas remain. They’ve been living in my wardrobe for years, but it’s still a shock to my father every time.

“Beta, you’re wearing my shirt!” my father exclaims, looking confused. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

“Because it’s comfortable abbu,” I plead, holding the shirt out for him to feel the fine white cotton, washed hundreds of times into softness.

“I know it’s comfortable, it’s my shirt.”

“Abbu please?”

Here my father shakes his head and wanders off, muttering about my strange fashion sense. I steal his regular qameezes too, and that irritates him sometimes. But I only borrow the qameezes, not the pants, and so that means he’ll sometimes have three or four shalwars hanging in the closet without their matching shirts. This evening my father came home to see me wearing one of his old white kurtas and arched an eyebrow.

“You’re wearing my shirt again Beta.”

“Yes daddy, I know.”

A few seconds of silence pass. He gives an exasperated sigh. I wait for him to tell me that he can never find matching clothes any more. I wait for him to remind me that when you wash the shirt more often than the pants, they end up being two different colors after a while. I wait for him to tell me to hang the shirt back up.

“Beta?”

“Yes abbu?”

“Could you at least wear the matching pants?”

10 pm: It wasn’t enough today that I should clean out the refrigerator, do laundry, fit a mirror into an antique frame, make pizza dough, drive the dog to the vet, eat half of a samosa and give our neighbours a tour of the (quickly cleaned) house. I had to make a new layout too. And now that I’ve done that I’ve got to go make a cake. Oh my aching back.

There are certain time-honored traditions in every family. In ours, there’s the insult game. The rules are simple. The person who out-insults the other wins the respect and admiration of his peers as well as the right to dance around the room and yell “I win! You lose! I rule! You drool!” and such like.

It’s not as easy as it sounds though, there are certain rules. The most important of which being that all insults must rhyme. Take, for example, this specific insult duel between Aniraz and myself.

Me: You look like a bat.

Aniraz: You’re terribly fat.

Me: Does your mother know you’re such a brat?

Aniraz: You look like something that’s gone splat.

Me: Oh yeah? Well I’ve seen better faces in place I’ve spat!

The crowning insult of the duel had to be this one:

Your head fills nine gallons of a ten gallon hat.

I thought I had won the match after that gut-buster (it’s hard to duel when you’re laughing so hard you can’t even sit up straight) but as Aniraz retreated up the stairs giggling she yelled out, “You smell like a dead muskrat!”

Drat. I have to think up an insult that rhymes with ‘bat,’ otherwise I won’t be able to show my face in this one horse town again. Any suggestions, amigos?

JazakAllahuKheiran & Thanks to Ahmed who made me this layout. 🙂 Not only is it easy on the eyes, but it gives me more time to come up with the ultra-Spartan and yet ultra-cool layout that I’m hoping to build sometime in the near future. I’d build it in the immediate future except that I’ve got work to do, cuz my momma’s coming home!

So far we’ve washed:

-the table linens

-the porch

–the dog

And rearranged the kitchen shelves and starting unpacking her stuff. There’s a lot more left though, the least of which is the cleaning of my own room which happens to look rather slovenly at the moment. I thought about taking a picture of it and then realized we were in enough trouble already, what with momma noticing the beans in the computer desk and the bed-sheet that’s been doubling as a table cloth. Mommas notice these things. They have Mom-o-vision.

So now it’s time to go clean something. Oh, and by the way, I’ve decided that as the only teacher in this here Blog-o-sphere I get to assign everyone homework. Here it is folks: Your home work for this blog is to go and hug a parent. Then write about it. 🙂

You’re an Etch-a-Sketch!! You’re the creative,
artsy type who doesn’t need to actually utilize
a single muscle group in order to have fun.
Doesn’t matter though, you’re still cool.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Every now and then I feel the need to get back to basics. Sometimes I’ll get tired of the extras in life and stop wearing my watch or any jewelry. Or I’ll get tired of cooking and eat veggies and yogurt for a few days in a row. When I get fed up with my high-heeled work shoes I’ll go teach in sandals. When I get really tired of things, I’ll go back to wearing the wrinkle-free, too-dark-to-stain ‘black default’ jilbab for a few days instead of ironing and maintaining any of the other ones.

I think it’s time to go Spartan again (ulta-simple, not battle-ready and buff). Bear that in mind when I finally post my new layout with links only for my daily/favorite blogs and my people. I couldn’t stand the visual clutter anymore.

Peace & Chikken Grease,

-Abez

Blog under construction. In the mean time, enjoy some Engrish. It’s on the house.

I’ve been home all day today with a miserable head-cold. No, the irony of having a cold when the weather is so very hot has not escaped me, but irony alone cannot save me from the sneezing, the runny nose, the blocked sinuses and the feelings of general malaise. I don’t need irony. I need a another box of tissues.

I also need some chicken soup. That thought occurred to me this morning as I wandered aimlessly about the empty house, wondering where everybody was even though I knew they had all gone to work. I meandered into the kitchen and tried to think through what it would take to make chicken soup. Chicken stock? None in the house. Chicken cubes would have to do. Noodles? No, only macaroni. I dumped that in too. Parsely? None available. I crushed a handful of dill into the pot instead and threw some garlic in for good measure. Garlic is supposed to be good for you when you’re sick. Or is that ginger? I wasn’t sure.

I let the pot boil for a while. Then I got bored and put my head down on the dining table. When I woke up a bit later my soup had turned into a pile of slimy, yellowish macaroni that smelled faintly of garlic but mostly of chicken cubes. It was also spicy. Apparently I had thrown in some paprika while I wasn’t looking.

I took my yellow slime down to the basement and brought along half a liter of Amrat Cola as an incentive to eat it. As irony would have it (“less irony, more tissues” –The Nose) I finished half a liter of pop before making myself finish my slimy macaroni. It’s not that I was eating slowly, it’s just that I was trying to rearrange my noodles into a tastier position since their current one was sort of bland. I piled them one on top of another and decorated them with salt. I knocked the pile down and stirred it around some more. I invented mashed macaroni. I drank more cola.

The rest of my day has passed somewhat similarly to my morning. I’ve sat around, I’ve napped, I’ve used up all the tissues in the house and I’ve moved on to the toilet paper. I’ve also created a new layout for my blog, but all the germs in my head have addled my brains and I can’t figure out how to make my columns line up without any seams. Helpful and benevolent people with helpful and benevolent suggestions may leave them here. Help!

I haven’t been wholly useless today though. I did manage to pulverize my father and sister in a game of Scrabble. I decided beforehand that if they beat me it would be because I was sick. Since I won, it’s because I can beat them even when I’m sick. Booya. I could beat them with both of my sinuses tied behind my back, which they might as well be for all the good they’re doing me. Whatever it is that sinuses are supposed to be doing, I’m pretty sure they’re not doing it.

And I wrote a blog. So there it is folks. I’m going back to bed and if this blog stinks it’s because I’m sick and if it’s great then that means I can blog even if I’m sick. Booya.