Tag Archives: Facebook

Man flu

My husband has just diagnosed me as having man flu. Having greeted me this morning by way of ‘you look like sh*t’, accusing me of over-dramatising a mild sense of unwellness seems like a compliment in comparison. But he’s right on both counts: I’m just ill enough to not function in any real capacity, but, with no fever in sight, not actually feeling bad enough to be officially sick; and I do look like sh*t. And actually, he’s been very kind and told me to rest up and get better, while he runs about with the boy all day. This is a luxury I am not about to say no to; I have taken him at his word and vanished as fast as my shakey legs will carry me. However, it being the weekend, I am stuck in our bedroom and can’t sit downstairs watching TV and drinking hot Ribena, which is how I would like to be spending my confinement. I’m tired, but awake. I’m bored but don’t want to do anything. I’m hungry but I don’t want anything to eat. Except maybe a chocolate digestive would be nice, if only we had any. Also, no one likes me very much. On my occasional forays downstairs even my little boy has been full of helpful comments like ‘go away mummy, I don’t want your germs on me’. So instead I’ve laid up here for hours wishing my headache would go away and making a list of things I need to do when it does, that finally got so long I started to go crazy. In a last ditch attempt to rescue myself from utter boredom I’ve grabbed my laptop and decided to write a long overdue post until my head gives in and falls off.

So, happy new year and all that. 2014 was a terrible year, all things considered, and I’m rather glad to see the back of it. When your 40th birthday is the highlight of the year, you know it’s not been a good one. Turning middle aged should definitely not be as awesome as I think it is. But there’s been so much loss and sadness in our family this year that I just can’t say I’ve enjoyed it, despite it being peppered with personal highs like finishing my MA and rocking the improv world (okay, maybe that’s a gross exaggeration, but I’m sick, remember, and taking that cold and flu stuff that makes your head go la la so cut me some slack). Looking back, I’m really just relieved to have got through it with my sanity intact.

Onwards and upwards. I’m totally excited for 2015. It’s a blank canvas for me, in many ways. No more assignments to finish, no feedback that has to be given by Monday night every week. No more milestone birthdays for at least 10 15 years. No more musing that I don’t know what to with my life. I know exactly what I’m doing with it and I love it. I have – gasp – spare time. The boy is settled into school and I have successfully avoided all kinds of PTA nonsense this academic year that I so foolishly volunteered for the year before. I am working a few days a week doing something I love that earns me some money, and hit the theatre once a week to be applauded by strangers who think I’m funny. The rest of the time I get to write, and in theory, go to the gym and have a nice long swim in the pool. Mostly I just write. Apart from the possible collapsed lung I am suffering from, life is GOOD.

But it would appear that 2015 is not charming the pants off of everyone. Me, who is renowned for her generally glass half-empty state – or more accurately ‘what f-ing glass?’ – logged off Facebook on Thursday because it was full of grumpy people arguing, posting depressing news and statistics and generally being miserable. Where’s the happy, people? I know it’s January, and January is always a bit rubbish, and maybe it’s the weather, or the dark, or whatever…and I know there are things going on in the world that suck, but there are always things going on in the world that suck. We need happy in our lives to balance all that. Especially when you might have japanese encephalitis.

And that’s what I like about social media, or, at least, what I used to like about it. For every person bemoaning the evil in the world, there was another one in the wings waiting to fill your heart with joy. I know it’s not for everyone but I genuinely enjoy logging on in the morning and seeing what’s been going on around the world while I’ve slept – and I don’t mean ‘the world’; I mean the worlds of the people I’m friends with, who give me a window onto their lives. But those windows are open less and less, holiday snaps and snippets of personal news replaced by quizzes and newspaper articles and marketing. And yes, before you say it, this is a middle aged person speaking. No doubt something waaaaaaay cooler has already been invented that’s taken its place, like, three years ago, and I just don’t know about it. But I’d like to know about it, because I’m fast falling out of love with what I’ve got. Facebook seems to be more of a place to air your political views or promote your business or watch videos of cats than check out what your friends are doing these days. Linked in is just a convenient way to stalk people. Twitter – ugh – is there anything more exhausting than Twitter? – seems to be much the same as Facebook, but just 170,000 times more prolific and annoying. Instagram? Is this my only choice? Do I have to??

Where do you go these days to just hang out and be happy, make sure your friends are happy, and then log off? It may be the rabies talking, but come to think of it, I vaguely remember that it used to be called ‘the pub’.

Happy new year everyone. Now log off, and may your year be filled with happy people and pubs.

Mushrooms and Moles

Gosh, well how do you follow up the blog post that went viral? Carefully, I assume*. I’d like to start by saying thank you to everyone that shared ‘Welcome, newbies‘ on Facebook last week, and a big hello to the new readers out there. I hope I do you proud. Or at the very least entertain you. It’s lovely to have so many people enjoying what I’m writing, it means a lot to an attention seeking ego maniac like myself.

So, while we’re having this virtual group hug, I’d like to indulge in a small moment of over-sharing:

I have fungus growing on my cleavage.

Apparently, according to the dermatologist (who has now been added to my general entourage of hairdresser, colourist, manicurist, pedicurist, doctor, OBGYN, dentist, personal trainer and anyone else that keeps me looking good, feeling good, or generally alive), it’s pretty common out here in desertville. She had one case in fourteen years working in Wales and sees about four a week in Dubai. The good news is the fungus lives on all of us, on our skin (so I’m not alone, or utterly gross), but when you get a little sweaty, it grows and forms pretty little rings which, if you’re paranoid about the time you got so sunburnt you couldn’t dress for three days and then your skin blistered and peeled away in a whole sheet (okay that’s a little gross), you might think were something more serious. They aren’t. They’re fungus, and with a little cream twice a day it will be gone within a couple of weeks. Crisis over. I just have to learn to stop sweating in forty degree heat.

While I was at the dermatologist parting with DHS 1000 of BUPAs money just to be told I was growing mushrooms on my torso, she asked if there was anything else I wanted to know. Well talk about kid in a candy store.  I’d turned 39 three days previous and the only reason I don’t look wrinkly is because of all the fat I gained stuffing my face over the summer.

I thought of the youthful looking woman I’d seen in reception. I noted the doctor’s plumped cheeks and smoothed brow. I looked around the room at all the photos of perfect dewy-faced women, with no bags under their eyes, no blemishes on their skin, and not a wrinkle to be seen. It all looked so tempting. I may have dribbled a bit.

‘Can you get rid of the mole on my nose?’ I asked. It’s not a moley mole, it’s skin coloured and sits in the dimple above my nostril. You can barely see it and it doesn’t particularly bother me, but I thought I’d start with something small and see what she said.

‘Not without a scar’, she replied. Hmmph. That wasn’t the answer I’d hoped for. But then something amazing happened.

‘You have such lovely skin for your age,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t do anything at the moment.’

The Dermatologist instantly became my new best friend.

‘But we can whip off that mole on your back when you come back for your check up. It should only take about 15 minutes.’

I ummed and ahhed while she explained that they would send it to a lab to be checked and although she was sure it was fine it might become bothersome in the future. And so, like the thousands of women before me who are approaching forty and feel in need of a little ‘help’, I have agreed to my first cosmetic procedure.

On my back.

I don’t think I’ve quite got the hang of this yet.

.

*To hell with that, let’s start with fungus.

Making the heart grow fonder

So, we are on the eve of the eve of my husband’s 40th birthday. He’s not here, obviously; life in the fast lane dictates that he will rock up tomorrow morning on the red eye from London and spend half his celebrations tomorrow night wishing he could go to bed and get some sleep. No doubt when the boy jumps on him on Saturday morning demanding he open his cards and presents instead of having a lay in and sleeping off his hangover, he will probably feel all four decades of life land on top of him much like the dead weight of a four year old.

My husband has travelled his entire career, since before we met, and so I am used to him disappearing for a few days each week. In fact, a little secret: I look forward to him travelling for a few days a week. It may mean I have to do the school run in jogging pants and less than perfect hair and make up (in truth I usually just throw on my gym kit and pretend to be smug work-out mom then go directly from school to the supermarket, buy a Toblerone, and go home), but it has upsides too. Chiefly that I can indulge in ‘orange tea’ with my son – fish fingers, jacket potato and baked beans – and then spend the evening doing an indecent amount of Facebooking, tweeting, drinking and watching girlie TV. I can stay up late, really late, like – ooo – TEN THIRTY –  and then just before going to bed decide to undertake projects such as ‘does my evening dress from before I was pregnant still fit’ or ‘it’s time to tidy out the medicine cabinet’  (only one of these is true, obviously, who the hell ever tidies out their medicine cabinet?) – projects that somehow drag on into the night, and leave me shattered but somehow complete in my splendid isolation.

One thing I have long since learned not to expect when DH is travelling is a coherent phone call. It has long been so, that every second of every day is taken up being important and indispensable to the bigger issue of making sure the world is still turning. So once the big boy has said hello to the little boy, there is usually no time left for me, because I am eating into valuable time required for meetings/lunch/train journeys with tunnels/toilet breaks/sleeping. The only exception to this rule is if I’m sat down with a glass of wine and in the middle of watching Greys Anatomy, in which case there is always time for chat. Except there isn’t, because then it’s my turn to get him off the phone as fast as I can manage.

It is a rare day indeed that we actually speak for longer than five minutes. So over the years, we have learned that when it comes to communication and the fine art of marital bliss, email is the perfect vehicle. For much of our time, our lives are run through the internet, and it works like a charm. Arguments Discussions that began at the front door as he is heading to the airport are finished and apologised over before the boarding announcements are made. Photo updates of me and the boy enjoying ourselves on the beach are exchanged with photos of him in a suit pulling pouty faces in some miserable conference room somewhere. Holidays are planned, hotels booked, birthday gifts purchased and social lives organised, all without the need for any conversation whatsoever. I have even been known to send calendar invites for date night on his return.

We can’t be the only ones to run our lives online. But without meaning to boast, we are very, very good at it. And thanks to my Facebook addiction, my husband misses nothing of family life while he is away. Photos, status updates and the odd location tag are all he needs to feel like he’s right there with us.

And although he’s not, we are just fine with it. The boy looks forward to his return almost as much as I do, and the pair of them skip off into the sunset together for half the weekend, which leaves me with a rather convenient amount of down time away from parenting I didn’t get during the week. When we do see each other, it’s not just a series of catch up conversations and logistics planning. We can actually talk about the real stuff. And the night owl in me is sated enough that when he wants to go to bed early to catch up on some much needed sleep I can (usually) do the right thing and turn the lights off before midnight.

I’m not sure we miss him when he’s gone, so much as feel happy when he’s home. And this weekend we will hopefully make some memories to treasure as a family, despite being separated from our nearest and dearest by a few thousand miles. Happy birthday my wonderful man. Hurry home. x

You know you’ve lived in Dubai too long when…

Several people ‘shared’ this link on Facebook this week, about the fifteen signs you’ve lived in Qatar too long. Several of them could easily apply to Dubai and a few of them could probably apply to many expat experiences, but just for the sheer hell of it, and to celebrate the seven year mark, which we reached sometime last week, I thought I would do my own list, most of which I can honestly say has happened since then.

You know you’ve lived in Dubai too long when:

1. You are intimate with the footprint of Mall of the Emirates to the point where, if a shop closes for renovation, you will trawl backwards and forwards for twenty minutes thinking you must have lost your mind completely to be making such a rookie error in not locating it instantaneously.

2. You completely miss your turning off the motorway because you are still navigating your way to Dubai Media city by sighting of the now-demolished Hard Rock Cafe.

3. Your three year old insists on using an umbrella to shield him from the six drops of rainfall at school drop off, and you are inclined to agree with him.

4. It’s 40 degrees outside and you haven’t put the air con on in the house yet

5. You can’t remember what a Marks and Spencer ready meal looks like, but you do know you miss them

6. You’ve stopped tracking the exchange rate, and converting dirhams to pounds/dollars is only used in case of emergency when the dirham figure sounds too scary, e.g. hotel reservations, school fees, shoes.

7. It’s been two weeks since your last mani/pedi and you are actually, truly distressed by the state of your feet and hands.

8.  Your three year old asks you what you are doing with the maid’s things when you get the ironing board out. Then asks what the iron is.

9. You are not surprised when the first item on the news is not the Boston marathon bombers, or an earthquake in China, but a sales report on the latest high rise development in Old Town.

10. You are not surprised by anything very much.

11. Moaning about the quality of driving is what other people do while you sip a latte and thinking about trading in the car for a faster one.

12. When the following things are exciting:  Fresh vegetables like kale, which you haven’t seen in nearly a decade; the opening of interchanges that have taken four years to complete; summer clothes arriving in the shops before Easter.

13. When the following things are not exciting: Fountains, Afternoon tea, Barasti, fast cars, Dhow cruises, suntanning, gold anything.

14. You don’t think it’s weird you haven’t been to a liquor store to buy a bottle of wine since 2006. You don’t think it’s weird that you can’t without your passport, a license and a letter from your husband saying it’s okay.

15. ‘Fresh air’ is described as anything below 30 degrees that doesn’t smell sulphurous or contain 95% sand.

Former Hard Rock Cafe Dubai - demolition

What did you do with my signpost? (Photo credit: Danny McL)

Lucky indeed…

Seven

(Photo credit: morberg)

Seven years ago this weekend, we landed in Dubai for the first time, for my husband’s interview with the company that would move us here and change our lives forever.

SEVEN YEARS AGO. I apologise for sounding incredibly middle-aged, but where the hell did that go?

I was barely in my 30s, not even married, and now I’m staring at 40 and have a three year old son.

Despite this only being a ‘temporary’ move, it is the longest we have ever lived in the same house.

I have friends I made here who I have known for longer than a lot of people’s marriages last.

Our marriage has lasted.

I have missed seven years of reality TV, politics and celebrity gossip. I have no hope of ever catching up with it all and feel rather fortunate about it.

I have not been inside an office for seven years.

I panic at the thought of having to walk about in cold weather.

Actually, I panic at the thought of having to walk anywhere.

There are people I have not seen in seven years and yet I’m still surprised when I see them on Facebook and they look older than they did when I last saw them.

I am seven years older than I was before and yet I’m still surprised when I see myself on Facebook and I look older than I did when I left the UK.

Seven years is a long time, and this year has certainly been the best of them by a country mile, although I optimistically predict that next year will be just as much fun – if not more. But for now I can only conclude that seven is indeed a lucky number, because when I think of all we have enjoyed, experienced and achieved since we first arrived, there is little that I would change. Maybe if you’d have asked me before now, I would have wished we had gone home after three, four, five years. But it took me so long to adjust to being here and to embrace and understand expat life – and motherhood on top of that – that had we moved back while I still wanted to go so desperately, I’m not sure I would have accepted that my life has changed, and that I have changed for the better as a result of all of it.

On this basis, should we return to the UK within the next few years, I can optimistically expect to start enjoying myself again somewhere just shy of 2025.