Who can turn the world on with her smile?

The dry heat has dried up my wit, apparently. Every day I sit down at the computer, check my mail, hop on blogger.com, and try to think of something to write. Nothing interesting usually comes to mind, so I think it is better if I just post when I have something to say that might interest you. And me. Perhaps this is something, perhaps not.

Last night I dreamt of Mary Tyler Moore, who appeared as herself, circa her 1972 look. She had a secret cabin in Wadi Rum, which, strangely enough, was surrounded by evergreen trees. I met her in the wadi and she lead me up to her house, which boasted beautiful ceramic tiles, a bathroom filled with purple--a purple tiled shower, purple sink, and lavender flowers. She also had an indoor pool, which was a relieving sight, since we'd been sweating together in the wadi.

Mary was the most gracious hostess. I felt as if I'd known her many years. When the MTM show aired in 1970, I still had two years to go before I became flesh and blood. I grew up watching MTM in syndication. But I tell you, in my dream, she was like an old friend.

Then today I was reading some news online, discussing how McCain will most likely choose Romney as his running mate. A shudder ran through my bones as I tried to picture those two on stage together. I have (and this may be mean, so be prepared) been referring to John McCain in my home as Fire Marshall Bill for quite some time; I cannot help it, he reminds me of him--his voice, his gestures--minus the crazy physical antics of Jim Carrey, since we know that Senator McCain cannot raise his arms to a level above his hip bones (Vietnam injuries). And then there's Romney, a.k.a. Ken Doll Plastic Hair Dude, whose waxy looks just make me want to hurl.

In thinking about Fire Marshall Bill and how he used to make me laugh--how my cronies and I used to do impressions of him in the hallways--I thought about how much TV shaped my sense of humor. I used to laugh out loud at Mary Tyler Moore, whose show was not part of my generation, but also at In Living Color, which is completely from my generation. Then I started thinking about all of the generations of Saturday Night Live viewers. You have the ones who watched John Belushi and Chevy Chase, who would be the same folks laughing at comedians like Richard Pryor and George Carlin. (Knock Knock. Who is it? Land shark!) Again, I watched those shows as re-runs, and would laugh till I cried. Then you have your Eddie Murphy generation, (also mine) which included some of the funniest skits ever shown on television. (Hot tub! Heeeeeyy! Burn my feet! Too hot, in da hot tub! Owwwww!) I personally loved Phil Hartman, especially in his political sketches. And then there was Dana Carvey, with the Church Lady, Ross Perot (Can I finish?!) and my personal favorite, the Chopping Broccoli song, which I used to sing all the time, and had buried in the deep in the annals of my memory bank, until tonight. Now my son knows it. Should I be proud?

I sat outside tonight in the summer breezes with the laptop, and watched YouTube clips till my cheeks were soaked from laughter. I do wonder if this type of humor is a dying breed--everything today seems so vulgar, so over-the-top.

How has humor shaped your lives?

Seca

Hi-ate-us.

I have joined the ranks of the semi-gainfully employed. I like working.

I have tried to put some structure into my summer, so far, quite unsuccessfully. Today I slept until 9:17. That just will not do. One must grab the weather bull by the horns and embrace the morning time in Amman; after 11 a.m. it is too hot to venture outdoors. My son had company yesterday and wanted to play soccer outside in the heat of the day. He lasted about four minutes. Then he had baseball camp for four hours in the afternoon; he came home looking almost purple.

They say this heat wave is going to pass and summer breezes will return after Saturday. I'm holding "them" to their word. At least we are not living in al Ghor, a.k.a. the fly-ridden badlands.

Summer breeze
makes me feel fine
blowin' through the jasmine in my mind...

Bullet the Blue Sky

I did not mean for this number of days to pass without having a chance to post. We welcomed summer with a bang of busy-ness. And thirst. And sweat.

• The hunt for affordable roller blades was the first priority of this, the first week of our summer. Oldest daughter has been asking for in line skates since she was 10. She is about to turn 13. I figured she has been patient enough; of all of my children she makes the least amount of noise, rarely complains, does not give me trouble of any sort. Although on the brink of teenagerdom, she is such a kid at heart, and if getting her roller blades helps her to stay that way, I'm all for it. A friend recommended we try a sporting goods store in Sweifieh. I never knew the store existed, but I now know where to shop for baseball supplies for future Little Leaguers, as well as flippers, if we ever get the chance to snorkel in Aqaba. They also had magnificent looking ping-pong tables. The skates were not expensive.
• I visited a friend whose home should be featured in Architectural Digest. It was simple elegance at its best, with a breathtaking view of unadulterated rolling hills and valleys. For a moment I felt I had been transplanted to a Spanish isle, minus the ocean. Our sons, who met at Little League (yet more kudos being thrown to L.L.!) played football in her lawn. She has a hammock. Ah, yes, a hammock.
• I attended an engagement extravaganza for yet another former student of mine from Alabama. The bride-to-be was lovely. All I could do was hug her and congratulate her, finally shedding my former roll as her teacher. ("Where's your pencil? Where is your homework? Why are you late?) The groom's family walked from table to table, introducing themselves and possibly scoping out potential brides for their apparently large family. I've come to accept that by having three daughters in this country I must learn how to handle blunt questions like, "How old is your daughter and does she want to be married?" "Not yet, by God! I just bought her roller blades!" will be my answer for the next seven years, at least.
• I am drinking around three gallons of water each day, if not more. I cannot remember June ever being this hot. Right as I began typing this paragraph, however, my daughter informed me that after Saturday, normal June weather will return.
• Thrilling news: my sister and her son will visit me in August. Whooo hooooo! She and my nephew will most likely arrive in Amman knowing more about both Amman and Jordan than I do, and I live here. Seeing that ancient Nabataean city and rolling sushi are just a few of the activities we have planned.

The Java and the Omega

I love salmon.
I love it grilled, love it in sushi, and even love it out of a can. (salmon croquettes, anyone?)

I love coffee.
I love it brewed, percolated, boiled, topped with froth or frothless, hot and smooth and bold and rich.

Perhaps my love for both salmon and coffee are proofs as to why I am such a clear-headed deep thinker.

Ha!

Prayer of a Feminist at Koonj.

We Talk, We Walk, We Write, We Live

Check out the Muslimahs Speak Up! blog Carnival, courtesy of The Muslimah.

Food! Tagged

I've been tagged by this witty blogger who makes her home in Oman. Oman is the Middle Eastern country I want to see most, after Morocco. One day I'll make it to that Muscat Festival inshaAllah and eat fish freshly caught and prepared before my eyes. And I'll buy my husband one of those pretty hats.

This one is about what's in the fridge. Here are the specifics:

• Go to your refrigerator, and describe the contents in the style of a movie tag line.


• Locate the least popular condiment in and tell us what it is.


• Name the most embarrassing thing in your fridge/freezer and justify its presence there.


• Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

My fridge:

This Gibson masterpiece provides you with everything you need to keep you satisfied: bold flavor, sweetness with merit, and homemade comfort with an Eastern flair. There is homemade macaroni and cheese, a pot of freshly rolled grape leaves (thanks, sis-in-law!), some yogurt from Germany, cherry tomatoes, and an open bottle of Marca PIÑA soy sauce that dumped over and coated my cellophane-wrapped half of a cantaloupe with brown saltiness which has now dried to a sludge-like consistency. Cleaning out the fridge is like #5 on my list of things to do today.

The most embarrassing thing in my freezer is a bunch of bananas that were going bad, so I chunked them in the freezer, hoping to preserve the banana goodness they still possessed. Then my blender broke, thus postponing any smoothie-making, indefinitely. I think the rock-hard bananas have fallen out of the freezer and landed on my feet several times this week, because they are in the way of the ice trays. I justify their presence because I just hate to throw away fruit.

The least popular condiment would have to be the 1/3-used Parade brand barbecue sauce. It has no taste. I think it might be time to just throw it out.

Umm Zaid, Dixie, either of you want this one? You could include pictures. Maybe you have some Mobile Phone juice in your fridge? Habichuelas? Bienenstich?

NY Times: Egyptians on Obama

In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.”

Read more, here

Hat Tip to John Deere

Please read my friend's (I'll meet her one day, God willing) post about the tractor driving, baseball playing, Palestinian wannabes, and all the insanity sparked by Rachael's scarf.

Dixie

lolcats first attempt

Hear This

My voice
for a time, lived
among mutes who signaled to it,
pantomimed,
"You are beautiful"
because it made no audible sound.

My voice
longed to speak about
wretchedness and injustice,
fear and strength,
poverty and wealth,
souls and survival,
distance and closeness,
the reachable and unattainable
dreams
and intimacy.

My voice, doubt-ridden,
instead spoke of the mundane
the unimportant
the systematic
the programed
the expected
the hierarchy
and where it fit in, at the bottom, deservedly so.

My voice
had a silent scream only heard
by it alone,
triggered by the boxing in,
the labeling of
the unimportant
the systematic
the programed
the expected
and the hierarchy, where it did not want to
fit in.

My voice
choked by the words,
choked on the words,
choked by the images
of the Alabama summers,
the police dogs
water hoses
16th St. church girls,
braided hair,
jump ropes.

My voice
was born long before I was,
determined to make sound
in places--
far places where
cries from three generations
could still be heard--
this time without dogs
or churches
or Negroes.

My voice
now resides in a place
where muting it
will only make it louder
triggered by the boxing in,
the labeling of
the unimportant
the undesired
the ugly
the marginalized
the banished
the hierarchy, where it no
longer fits in,
since everyone knows
the hierarchy is deaf.

Silver Bullets

They are black, really, the bullets. This is the quickest way for me to organize my thoughts in this span of time that allows me no time for myself. It will be over soon, inshaAllah; summer lies just 'round the bend.

• I am excited for the first time in my adult life, save the two-month period in 1992 when I voted in my first Presidential election, about politics. I do not write about politics because so many others do so better than I can. Anything I might want to say has already been said. I know the first thing Obama did this week in his Dem Candidate role was go and speak to AIPAC. I have definite feelings about this. I also know, however, that he'll never make it to the White House without AIPAC. Still, though, I want to think differently about him. I want, as someone said in that video I posted, to feel proud of my homeland on some level. Currently, I do not. Patriotism skipped over my generation and left me in a cycle of cynicism.


• We took my husband's sister to Bennigan's last night. That is perhaps the nicest family restaurant in Amman. The menu is varied enough so that everyone can be happy; the prices are decent, the service is good (the manager always visits our table to check on us), and children eat free on Wednesday nights. Our bill did not make us seek smelling salts. There is no thumpity-thump blaring music drowning out my attempt to make friendly mealtime conversation.


• It must have been nearly 100 degrees by 8:30 this morning. From whence cometh heat waveth? We have been sleeping with the winter blankets until now. Perhaps it is really time to break out the fans.


• Running on treadmill is wreaking havoc on my feet. Oh, wait, that'd be living in Jordan is wreaking havoc on my feet. They look like I use them to pick cotton and/or scrub bathtubs. The thing about getting a pedicure (very affordable here) is that my feet have to reach a certain degree of "it doesn't make me want to crawl under my chair when you look at my feet" status. They are not yet there. I need no dissing from the pedicurist.

Mobilization

A bulleted "whass up wichyoo" list

• The cockatiel upstairs is performing his usual morning car alarm serenade. He has managed to capture the essence of three or four typical Jordanian car alarms. When Willie our cat was still alive, the cockatiel did a mean meow, but since Willie's demise, he sticks to the tantalizing sounds of burglared autos. His owners are two older, unmarried ladies, and their elderly mother, who is a stroke victim. She used to need live-in help but managed to pull an astounding recovery and takes care of herself during the day. Bless her heart, she tries to talk to me from the balcony but I cannot understand her (damage to her mouth from the stroke), and I'm sure the parrot cannot either. I just wish they could teach that bird something else to say, like the Nakamura family did with their amazing grey parrot. At least the parrot does not smoke cigarettes.

• I am absolutely ready for summer to begin. I do not want to make any more 7 a.m. sandwiches for at least two months or purchase juice boxes, the biggest money suckers ever invented. My two older ones need to rest and have fun. How many days left until the 15th?

• I have adjusted my taste for coffee. I can now tolerate it with only half of a spoonful of sugar. So THIS is how coffee really tastes!

• I had friends over from Alabama last night. We laughed and laughed and high-fived and laughed some more. I did an impression of a rock-cutting machine, which was a big hit. (flashing back to the home repair of last summer) My friend who gave me my shahadah and who was the first American Muslim I knew was among the visitors. I looked at pictures of those little girls I mentioned before, who are now beautiful women. I fought back tears. I went to sleep happy.

• I made a 9-inch, two-layer, Hershey's chocolate cake with Hershey's icing and did not even taste it. Better yet, I really did not want to. That was yesterday, though, so we'll see how today fairs.