Hello Again with 52 Questions - Heather

It's been so long since I've written on the blog, you'd probably never guess I think about it weekly(ish).  It's been a really quiet and leisurely couple years, since moving back to Abu Dhabi in the middle of 2018.  I mistakenly thought the more leisurely lifestyle would translate to more time to be fabulous and write.  But no. Apparently, I only want to write when 'free' time is scarce AND I'm feeling extra emotional/tired/over-worked/stressed/whatever.  Which makes sense from a cathartic perspective, but certainly not from a 'make my life easier' one.

And now here we are 75% through 2020 - both the best (Dylan!) and worst (Covid-19) year ever - when it's hard to find more than an hour for myself each day.  I'm tired, I'm frazzled (sometimes), I'm full of love for our newborn baby (the best best best), and I'm hustling around doing chores and daily necessities during her 35min naps (still the best best best). And here I am spending 2 of those precious naps writing this post. 

But it's been ages and I'm lazy so we'll start with something light and easy for re-entry.  I read this article on Air Mail the other day, and it reminded me how much fun I had with the 20 Questions post a while back.  So I'm taking some of their questions and answering below.  I love that it's a snapshot of who I am today - my day, my likes, my mantras, my meals. Maybe it's the 15 year old girl in me (who loved quizzes in YM and Marie Claire), or maybe everyone just loves this easy and short interview format - who knows?

Airline: British Airways
Airport: Heathrow T5
Bedtime: I resist!
Birthday: a quiet affair
Breakfast, Weekday: muesli and tea
Breakfast, Weekend: a pastry from the bakery downstairs
Car: vintage Land Rover Defender
Child: so grateful we have one now
Cocktail: sidecar
Couple: peanut butter & jelly
Date: a leisurely swim in a piscina naturais, the best burgers in Furnas (with extra onion topping), and a crisp, cold beer
Diet: only for Phoebe, who has been deemed too heavy for the past year
Dinner, Weekday: gimme all the tigela
Dinner, Weekend: someone else cooks
Enemy: FOMO
Escape: not currently wished for
Excuse: I don't want to
First Lady: Michelle Obama
Fitness Regime: sorely missed
Hotel: Hotel Ai Reali in Venice
Insult: chingatumaga
Last Meal: wine and cheese with Sven 
Lunch, Weekday: a little this, a little that
Lunch, Weekend: a big ol' salad, made by someone else
Movie: You've Got Mail
Neighbor: Vicky and Lloyd, who deeply enriched my teenage life and have been role models ever since
NonFiction Book: Let Nobody Turn Us Around, Manning Marable
Novel: A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler
Shoes: Tournament Sneakers
Pet: is almost at her goal weight (!)
Piece of Advice: "You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."  -Mary Oliver
Restaurant: Le Pichet in Seattle
Saying: Let that shit go
Singer: Erykah Badu
Spouse: Sven of my heart, my life, my one and only for all times
TV Series: Modern Family
Theme Song of your Life: lately it's I'll Call U Back, Erykah Badu
Time of Day: always 2-3 hours later than I want it to be
Toast: any type of sourdough with butter, a pinch of sea salt, and a thin slice of good cheese
Vacation: currently, anything that isn't a desert will do
View: mornings overlooking the water Norway, in winter 
Wake Up Time: 10-11am with Dylan
Work of Art: Cathedral, Normal Lewis
Writing Implement: Pentel Energel 0.5

That's the tiniest little snippet of who I am today.  Maybe later this week if I'm super ambitious (and the naps are cooperative and the house hasn't plunged too far into disarray), we'll post Steven's answers too.

Accurate representation of my current aesthetic

WE HAVE FIRE

Last week, Steven called our maintenance company for probably the 6th or 7th time, but time he used his "Dad voice" and asked how many times we had to call about the same thing before getting it fixed. 

And voila! The very next day our gas detector got replaced.

Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that the simplest (or seemingly so) things can make such a big difference. And while I'm grateful for so many things lately, this is definitely somewhere near the top.

Exactly how I feel every time it works without having to stand on a chair every 2-3 mins

Oven Escapades

Sometimes I think about my time in the UAE and wonder how much these experiences will shape my perspective in the long run. So many little things require 'more' here and while it causes a lot of frustration and requires (seemingly) unending patience to get through in the moment, it also deepens my appreciation for 1) Steven and my ability to figure things out (no matter how irritating), and 2) the comforts of home.

For example, I love to cook and probably make ~80% of what we eat from scratch. I don't do it out of financial necessity, or lack of options (amazing delivery all the time), or gender roles (screw those), etc. I do it because I enjoy the process of creating something new from start to finish.

No matter what kind of housing I was in at home (from dorms to wayy to many 20-something's sharing a house, to apartments, owning our own house), there was always a stove/oven that just turned on. Maybe I made a phone call to put the utility in my name, but it was always a simple process. I turned the knob, heat came out, and I cooked my food for as long as I liked. Done.

But after living in the UAE even my appreciation for this lifelong hobby has changed. First, when we moved to Dubai a few years ago, I realized how much I truly enjoy cooking. And second, now I understand that I've always taken for granted how the heat required for cooking just magically appears when you need it, how you need it, when you need it.

Will I always? Who knows, but get comfy because a way too long story is coming...

Around June-ish I bought a mid-range, Western-style gas oven from a merchant on a buy and sell group on Facebook. After a little barter and some pictures, it was delivered to our apartment (a few days late and at 11pm).

It took us a month to get the gas company out to hook it up (wrong numbers on gas boxes, and vacations, and night hours, and such), only to find out that while the gas line now worked, the oven had the wrong type of gas injection parts. I didn't really retain the details here, other than I couldn't use it until we swapped parts.

Luckily, the merchant that I bought the oven from knew exactly what I meant and came fairly quickly to swap out parts (but after the weeklong holiday, plus a few extra days, of course).

So we had the gas line, gas meter, and gas oven (with correct parts!) all hooked up and ready to go, but the gas detector is/was broken. It's a nifty little device that sounds like an extremely annoying alarm and shuts off your gas when too-high levels are measured in the kitchen. Ours is broken in such a way that the oven only works if we continuously hold down a safety button just under the ceiling.

And no matter how many times we called to get this fixed, no one ever fixed it.  A couple times someone came and just stared at it (seriously).

At one point in early September, Steven asked me to consider just using a hot plate.  But I love me some oven and I loathed having to cook everything using only 1 hot plate burner.  It's super dissatisfying and I gotta get my small joys where I can (out here).

So eventually, I made a duct tape contraption that kinda/sorta holds the button down for short intervals.  It means we have to reach up (Steven) or climb up on a chair (me) to touch the button every 10-ish minutes to keep it held down, but it works.  Sometimes we forget and the alarm goes off, and all the gas needs to be relit, but still...it works.

And even better, within the last week the alarm has graciously run out of whatever power made it scream so loudly, so it doesn't even make horrible sounds anymore. Which means that after 4 months of haggling, and arranging, and appointments that no one shows up for, our stovetop and oven work more or less as expected.  I may get some extra exercise climbing up and down every 10 minutes, but the food tastes the same, the cooking is still satisfying, and I don't have to use the dreaded hotplate.

As a side note, after I started using it more I realized that all the knob symbols (broiler, burner locations, oven temperature setting, timer, etc) looked a little odd. I looked more closely and realized they were all hand drawn with a Sharpie.

And that, my dear friends, sums up my oven escapades pretty nicely.

PSA: 2019 is the year of Outlander

In happy news, I'm reading voraciously again and quite pleased about it.

However, I feel like I should disclose that 90% of my reading this year has been devoted to polishing off the Outlander series.  There are 8 enormous books, and I've just cracked open number 7.

I've thrown in a handful of other reads to try and balance myself out (i.e. when I start having too many Outlander-ish dreams or can't get through the day without equating everything to Outlander in my head).  But they're mostly just short and simple stories that serve as palate cleansers so I can keep gorging on my Outlander marathon without sounding like too much of a lunatic when I talk to people.

And I feel like this is important to note on the blog because unlike sitting face-to-face with someone, I am not even a little embarrassed about spamming the crap out of you with Outlander gifs (in case you couldn't already tell).

Hello, Old Friend

It's been so long I hardly know what to say.  

Even though I'm just writing into the ether, it still feels like when I'm being an anti-social homebody and neglect my friends for weeks (occasionally even months) on end, and then suddenly pop back on the scene.  I mean...everyone does that right?

But I'm here and I don't have anything particularly interesting to say. I just felt like coming back to this space again. 

Late to 2019

First: Happy 2019!

Second: I've been here EIGHT MONTHS!??? 

Steve and I used to play a game where I could accurately guess the time (within a few minutes) at pretty much any moment of the day. From the moment I woke up to the moment I slept, I always knew the time. It was a fun trick I learned in childhood, but perhaps also an indication of how measured and meticulous my days have always been. 

Upon arriving in the UAE eight months ago, I simply turned off my internal stopwatch. Convenience aside, I wanted to know what it feels like to not to track every waking moment in the back of my brain. I assume it's a pretty normal (and only a tiny bit crazy) habit but I've been really trying to pare down on all the unnecessary brain buzzing in order to 1) focus on what's important, and 2) calm the F down. But that's the funny thing about ingrained habits - even when you want to it's hard to stop. I had to constantly remind myself to just enjoy the moments as they came without trying to count them, at whatever the hell time they occurred. And the result?

In short, it's different kind of life. One where I feel less controlled (in a good way), my brain is a little more free, my sleep is much more sound (sometimes I counted in my sleep), I never had any idea what time it is, and I'm late for way more things...like brunches, birthdays, and this post. 

But enough about my super weird habits that sound a hundred times worse when I put them in a blog post, it's time for New Years-ish things!

Let's take stock of the proclamations I made when I wrote this post at the beginning of 2018: 

1. Steven and I start living under the same roof again,    DONE!
2. I embrace all the things that scare me about starting something new,    I wouldn't say I've fully embraced all of it yet, but I'm pushing forward and starting something new in 2019. 
3. I read all the books I'm longing for,    I think my appetite for books will always exceed my ability to consume them, but I love that about reading. Last fall, I finally pushed through a mental roadblock and can finally read 'fun stuff' for hours at a time again. 
4. I balance all my cooking inspirations with not having 10,000 random ingredients on hand all the time, and    Ehhhh...I'd say 1/2 DONE (I have like 2 dozen items in my pantry right now where I'm like whyyyy?)
5. Phoebe makes peace with the all the squirrels (highly unlikely)    THIS IS THE SURPRISE WIN. Squirrels are not native to the UAE so we don't have any in our neighborhood. It's amaaaaaazing.

Dang, now I feel so accomplished, even if a tiny bit trivial.

Today, standing on the other side of 2018, the year feels bigger than I could have known going in.  Mostly, it was grounded in love - for better and for worse - in all it's humbling and terrible beauty. It's the year I put our marriage before my career and moved back to the UAE to mend our weary, long distance hearts. The year I finally practiced some long overdue self care, and in doing so realized I trusted Sven more than I ever thought possible. In many ways, it's another year where I learn how much lighter and brighter the road can be when it's shared. Yet also, forever the year our hearts broke in different, individual ways with Shawn's passing and then expanded and fractured in everything that came afterwards with and for Katie. 

In looking at the year ahead, I'm filled with so much excitement, and hope, and joy for things to still to come. For the first time since graduating college 10+ years ago, my year isn't scripted and I don't have an office with my name burned into it. It's thrilling and and a wee bit scary, but I'm so very full of optimism knowing that 2019 will be whatever Sven and I choose to make of it. 

Happy 2019 my loves.

*H

6 months: New Eyes

YOU GUYS - IT FINALLY HAPPENED. It took an entire 6 months (almost to the day), but the dark circles under my eyes have disappeared!

I know this is completely trivial, but I'm still so darn pleased. I think it means this break is as good for me as it feels (or at least that's how I choose to interpret it).

From now on, I will not participate in anything that jeopardizes my new under eye bliss.