Dinosaurs & Cheese

When I was a kid, my dad would take me fishing occasionally.  We were members of a Rod & Gun Club (just the type of membership every 8 year old girl dreams of) and they stocked their lake with fish.  So we would go down to the lake every now and again to try our hand at catching those fish.

My dad was a big man.  Let’s face it, let’s call him what he called himself. Fatman.  Like Batman, but with less calisthenics.   So there we would sit on the bank of the lake, a rotund man and his scrawny kid.  I doubt he remember to put sunscreen on his blonde haired, freckled, paled eyed kid.  And we probably didn’t bring water to drink or healthy snacks.  Articles were not written in Parenting magazines, calling parents to follow my dad’s lead.  I look back and am surprised that I’m still alive.

Somewhere around hour three or four, after not a fish was found, Dad would start to get frustrated and probably curse a bit.  We would dig a hole in the bank, so the worms in the container would stay cool and living. And when Dad wasn’t looking, I would take out a lucky worm, dig a little hole with my pinky and send the worm on his way to freedom.  Since nothing was biting the lines, we certainly weren’t going to need all the worms anyway.

On this particular trip, Dad brought his camera with him.  More often than not, he wanted to bring a camera, but generally forget. This time, the camera made the trip with us. Bound and determined to get a picture of me fishing, so he could send it to Grammy, he had me pose with my line cast.  A real angler, this girl was.  Camera ready… and nothing happened. So he would fiddle with the camera, and try it again.  Again nothing.

Dad sat back down (not any easy task for a man of his great stature) and started to move dials and buttons and whatnots on the camera.  He set it up, snapped a photo, and decided to try it again.  With great effort, he once again stood up, got me posed and…. nothing.  Not a click, flash, or film advancement to be had.

It’s not often in life that one is privy to an obese man doing a tribal dance/ tantrum, but that’s what ensued.  Hot, inevitably dehydrated, and frustrated by the inconsistency of his camera, Dad issued a few curses, did a foot-stamping, arm pumping primal yelp and threw the camera into the lake.

Plop.

Then very calmly, he said, “It didn’t work very well.”  I released the rest of the worms into the wild and we went home.

Never was a fish safer than when my dad was on the hunt.

And the fish laughed as we drove away…
(Pic from Dailymail UK)

Today is 8 years without him. He has missed a lot over the years, and I know that there will come a point where I will have more years without him than with him. And my words can never fully illustrate how big his personality was, but when I’m writing a real whopper of a fish tale- that’s when I feel him most.

“And I’m going to go back up there and and I’m going to show him these sweet potatoes and I’m going to tell him that :incoherent due to tears:…. Mean.”

Everyone enjoys a good pregnancy-meltdown story well. In fact, I enjoy stories about people having meltdowns over rather mundane issues, so I figured it was only fair to share with you my complete and utter collapse this evening.

As you guessed- it was the sweet potatoes. It was the sweet potatoes that I bought this afternoon from the local produce guy, henceforth known as Produce Guy (Not good with naming. You can see why the kid is still without a handle).  On Sundays, I spend hours trying to find uber healthy recipes, using locally grown produce and products that I know I can find here.  It’s time consuming and frustrating. {See yesterday’s post for specifics}. Not to mention that while I haven’t really had many cravings (more on that in a moment), I’m weak-willed when it comes to food suggestions. So, if I see a recipe for lasagna, that’s exactly what I want, even though the cost of ricotta cheese would set us back about a semester’s worth of tuition for The Kid.  You say Fruit Loops, I say yum.  The cravings don’t last, so I don’t really need to act on them, but meal planning is downright painful.

Tuesday’s meal consists of Sloppy Joes (The Hubs- poor man. He wants Sloppy Joes. What he doesn’t know is that it’s made with 1/3 lb of ground turkey and supplemented with zucchini, eggplant, quinoa, and carrots.), oven baked sweet potato fries, and a veggie tian that I’m testing for a dinner party later in the week.  Do I need sweet potato fries? No, definitely not. That’s more than enough food for the two of us. Do I freaking want them? YES.  This is a true-blue craving. I need these fries. I need their crispness, I need their Vitamin A, I need them tonight.

But when I start to cut up the sweet potatoes, they are rotten completely through.  Only one part of one potato is healthy, and by that point I would be insulted to go through all that work for three dinky fries.

I’m rational. I’m an adult.

I sit on the floor of the kitchen and cry.  A lot.  Much like an emotionally disturbed child, I bawled over my ruined sweet potatoes.

I’m rational. I’m an adult.

I texted The Hubs and told him that I need the driver to bring me back to the produce stand because I’m going to bring those sweet potatoes with me and show them that I’m tired of them giving me rotten goods just because I’m an oyibo (foreigner/white person). And I know he’s doing it on purpose and I’m not going to stand for it anymore.

The Hubs is really rational. The Hubs is a true adult.

He tells me that I can’t do that.  He had the audacity to not even be outraged when he saw the picture of the uck that was supposed to be our sweet potato fries! He didn’t even champion for me.  Where’s that white horse, huh? Nothing.

I’m rational. I’m an adult.

I sink back to the floor and cry more. Then I start having one of those imaginary conversations where you tell the person what’s up. Those are always the best. I am one powerful broad when I’m having my imaginary conversation screaming session at Produce Guy who has ruined my dinner life.  And I demand replacement sweet potatoes or else I’m taking my business elsewhere.  Produce People fall all over themselves getting me the perfect examples of starchy-goodness.  I tell them that from now on, I will choose my produce- they will no longer choose it for me. When Produce Guy dares to rebut, I cast him a withering stare and shut him down. I walk away smartly and thus end my imaginary conversation…while I lay in the fetal position (on my left side, of course) on the kitchen floor.

Then I cried some more.

Sidenote:

The Hubs- kind, sensible, loving, sometimes stupid man that he is, commented on dinner.  “Hm, I’ve never had Sloppy Joes like this before.”

Remember…rational…adult.

I cried on the couch for an hour and ate mini-marshmallows for dinner.

If you haven’t heard the news, and I’m sure you have because my fan base is pretty much limited to my Facebook friends and I’ve become rather obnoxious on there about this whole thing: I’m pregnant. Yay!

I have vowed that this will not become a Mommy Blog. Well, not a Mommy Blog in the sense that I shared the best homemade Play-Doh recipe (Just reuse it. Junior doesn’t care if the colors melded together. And if he does, then use it as a teachable moment about respecting one’s belongings or something. Chill, Mama, chill.).  It will become a Mommy Blog in the sense that The Child will probably play a fairly prominent part of the blogspace, as I’m really only creative enough to write about things that are happening directly around me.

One perk of this whole thing is that I walk a lot now, so that’s good.

I walk to the kitchen to get grub 6 times a day.

Walk back to the kitchen to put the fork I dropped on the floor in the sink.

Walk back to the table.

Walk back to the kitchen to get another fork.

Walk back to the table.

Walk back to the kitchen because I forgot the fork that I was going to get the first time around.

Walk back to the table.

Walk to the loo.

Walk to the table.

Walk back to the kitchen to reheat my food.

You get the idea.

I used to think this concept of “baby brain” (essentially when a knocked-up gal resides into early-onset Alzheimers, often times complete with a mild loss of ones faculties… apparently sneezing is dangerous business when there’s some major extra poundage sitting on your bladder) with utter and total bullshit.  It’s not.

I often forget those things that you use to describe things so people know what you’re talking about instead of staring at you as you snap your fingers and say “it’s um, you know, that thing, um. Damn. Um” until you give up and you’re left staring at each other, unsure of where to go from there.  You know, those things: words.

I can’t write anymore. Steel Magnolias is on and my tears are blocking my view of the screen and I’m starting to do that hysterical sobbing thing where you start to choke on multiple viscous fluids and can’t breathe. Why does she have to die? Why? And why does she have to look better in a coma than I do on my glitziest day? Why?

If you are my Facebook friend, then you may have read that I had a full- on meltdown a few days  back. It was pretty epic. There was even silent sobbing in an empty bedroom. I could have been a PSA for something really tragic. I was huddled on the floor in a completely empty room, in full meltdown mode. Generally, if I am going to be involved in a PSA, it’s something much happier…like reminding people to wear sunscreen or to love puppies.  This, on the other hand, was something closer to “Please remember to take your mood stabilizers or you could end up in a barren room bawling like a small child” type reminder for the public.

Curtains.

It all stems from curtains.  Our curtain man, known as Curtain Man, spent a number of days putting the curtains up in our flat.  That wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem, because I had spent 5 weeks waiting for the curtains to be made. At this point, I was fine with the curtains taking a few days to be put up. I figured that since I had to wait for the cotton to grow in order for the curtains to be made, I could wait a bit longer.

The problem was this: Three out of four of the curtains that I chose were wrong, so Curtain Man and I needed to have a chat.  But after waiting for 6 hours for him to show up, I was pretty much done.

Add to that this was the first time I had my stewardess and driver in the flat, just sort of waiting around, it added to the awkwardness.  I am way over my head when it comes to house-help.

Between frustration from the “he’s on his way here now” for 6 hours, strangers in the house (who I’m sure where laughing at me), and  no food (save some Altoids), it all lead to the aforementioned meltdown.

And on a whole, I tend to be fairly emotionally stable. I mean, sure, I cry at commercials and books and whatever else, but it’s not tied to any true sadness or frustration. However, Nigeria and I may be breaking up now.  With 6 months in the hotel, which is 5 1/2 months longer than we were told we would be in the hotel, I think Nigeria and I are breaking up. Too many tears. I’ve lost perspective.

Furniture Guy promised furniture today. He looked us in the eye and said that it would be ready in 2 weeks. Well, that was 2 weeks ago.  The news this morning? No furniture is going to be delivered today.

I don’t know what the flight schedules are today. I need a flight out of here.

“Oh, it’s simple! When you boil the rice, all the bugs just simply  float to the top of the water. I skim them off and keep cooking. My kids never know!”

With a group of ladies, a comment like would usually leave the speaker surrounded by an appauled audience and a guarenteed topic of gossip in the future. There may have even been a furitive glance or two from the guilty chef.

But we all know that being an ex-pat certainly changes things.  In fact, the truth behind the bugs is that all of the women agreed that little buggy friends are in everything and you either deal … or you don’t.  The bugs don’t much care.

Yesterday, I tried to explain to the staff at a store called Goodie’s what salsa is. Have you ever tried to explain salsa? Throw into the mix that, generally, no one can truly understand what I’m saying. Must. Develop. Nigerian. Accent.

“It is tomatoes (say Toe MAH toes- that helps them understand) and onions and a sauce. And they’re diced. (Karate chopping action). Chopped. Small pieces? And you dip chips into it. (Chip dipping motion) And it’s hot. Well spicy because it’s usually cold. Um..”

And then we each spend a few moments blinking at each other.

Life at the hotel makes it a different ex-patriate experience completely. First off, we have no bugs in any of the food we eat. Try reading that with a straight face. I could barely type it without chuckling.

On Sunday, I went to the buffet. I ordered pasta (By the way, I walked up and Pasta Guy winked at me and started making my order. He forgot to add sauce, but you know, it was ncie that he remembered me…sorta).  So I cut myself some bread, brought it to the table and sat down. A few minutes later, I went to retrieve my pasta. I brought the pasta back, and my bread was gone.  I went to cut myself some bread again and brought it back. My pasta was gone.

I believe in the power of comedy. With that being said, I decided to carry my bread with me while I ordered my pasta again. Wouldn’t want to give the other guests too much to chuckle about.