Category Archives for Family

Election Day

In case you’re sick of watching news coverage of the election results, you can take a break and hear what the kids have to say about the presidential race.  They all have interesting ideas about who to nominate for president.  They’ve come a long way – just yesterday Adlani told me he was voting for Moroccobama.  And for the record, they get all the bad words and radical political views from their father.  Sorry it’s a little choppy…I had to cut out some of the bickering.

Happy Friggin Halloween.

Last week I was talking to someone who said she was really sad that I hadn’t posted anything on the blog since July. There’s nothing like knowing I’m contributing to someone’s sadness to get me moving, so here are some photos from Halloween.  I could just post a few cute photos and let you imagine our picture-perfect Halloween, but that’s not how I roll.  For some reason I feel compelled to tell the truth – the good, the bad, and the ugly, even though not everyone approves.  It is what it is.

I thought I had done everything right. The costumes were procured well in advance. Well, except for mine, which I threw together at the last minute with the help of my Italian neighbor lady’s apron, a curly brown wig, a bloody cleaver, and a squawking rubber chicken, which was the hardest thing to find. The theme for the Halloween party was “famous people who have died within the last 10 years.” I found it a tough theme to comply with, because I have no idea who has died. I would be terrible at that game – Dead or Alive. I know Michael Jackson died, but pretty much anyone else I have to Google.  So I spent an hour and a half in the costume store with everyone else in the Metrowest region, getting costume ideas and then Googling to see if the person was dead or alive.  Luckily my pal Elizabeth, who was helping me via text, thought of Julia Child.  There were 2 other Julia Childs at the party but I think I was the only one with a bloody cleaver and squawking chicken. 

So, back to Halloween.  The kids had their costumes – Adlani was a white ninja, Norah was a drama queen, and Aliya, Hannah, and Chloe were a “disturbed 80’s family” (it kind of freaked me out that they were wearing stuff I actually wore in the 80’s, but time marches on).  I had procured 3 pumpkins from the church pumpkin patch, for a whopping $42 – yes, $42 worth of pumpkins.  We had carved them, with the exception of Aliya’s which turned out to be a gourd and wasn’t carveable.  I spent hours separating the goo from the pumpkin seeds and roasting them.  I bought the candy the morning of Halloween so I wouldn’t eat it all before the trick-or-treaters came (I made sure to buy a kind I didn’t like).  After a lovely dinner at the Pearces’ I roamed the neighborhood for 3 hours, including a visit to the scary house – where a guy in a horrible mask would jump up and chase trick-or-treaters with a chainsaw (no chain).

When we got home around 9:30 I was feeling pretty accomplished, and like maybe I had earned some Mommy-points for my efforts.  Then the inevitable happened.  They started fighting about who had collected the most candy – they all dumped it on the floor to count it, and THEN, Aliya and Norah started screaming and KICKING each other’s candy across the floor.  AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!  There’s nothing that makes me crazier than the fighting.  That’s when I lost it and gathered up all the candy and put it in ONE BOWL, and yes, I yelled, “HAPPY FRIGGIN’ HALLOWEEN!  NOW GO TO BED!” 

I’m pretty sure my point total is back in the negative.  Oh well.

Doors of Morocco

I found out today that Doors & Hardware magazine is going to print some of my photos of Moroccan doors in their November issue.  Isn’t that crazy??  I posted on my work blog during my vacation, the editor of the magazine saw them and loved them, so today I chose 14 of my favorites, wrote the captions, and sent them off.

Here are my work-blog posts in case you’re not a follower of iDigHardware.com:

http://idighardware.com/2012/07/glaoui-kasbah-telouet-morocco/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/hassan-ii-mosque-casablanca-morocco/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/bahia-palace-marrakech/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/king-mohammed-v-mausoleum-rabat-morocc/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/medersa-abu-al-hassan-sale-morocco/

Here’s another door photo I thought was really cool:

There are men who actually make the trim that goes on caftans, and they usually tie it to something, like these door pulls, stand half-way down the block, and work their magic to create the trim.  I think it’s really neat to see so many years worth of work tied to this door. 

Here’s what the trim on one of my shirts looks like:

And here’s Norah getting cozy with the tailors, all crammed into this little room.  The threads going across her knee led to a guy who was standing outside twisting the two sets of threads, while the guy to Norah’s left sewed them onto the seam of whatever garment he was working on.  Talk about labor-intensive!

Re-Entry

We’re always really sad to leave Morocco.  For several days before we go I tear up occasionally when I see the kids having a cuddle with an auntie or uncle, and there’s always a lot of crying when we leave for the airport.  I dread that moment.

Sunday night I got everything packed up and got to bed pretty late – around 1 a.m., planning to get up at 8 to head out for the airport at 10.  Seven hours of sleep is pretty good compared to my normal sleep habits.  At about 4 a.m. I heard the dreaded words, “Mom, I puked.”  I opened my eyes just in time to see Aliya throw up again on the comforter she was sleeping on.  I got her cleaned up and put back to bed, and then spent (what felt like) the rest of the night obsessing about how I was going to get a puking kid through the journey home.  Adlani had been poked in the eye the day before and had not opened his eyes since (this is the 4th or 5th time he has spent several days with his eyes closed after a minor eye injury), so I already had a blind kid.  Now I had a vomiting kid, along with Norah who is enough of a handful under normal circumstances but was now pretending to also have a stomach bug because of the sympathy and positive attention.

I finally fell back to sleep and woke up at 7 to obsess some more.  I started to feel like maybe I was sick too, and wondering what would happen if I puked or fainted at the airport, whether we’d have a problem getting through immigration with Blind Boy, and where Aliya would put the zip-lock bag I was going to make her carry in case she needed to puke (the only outfit she had left didn’t have pockets).  I decided that if there was ever a time to take one of my public-speaking pills, this was it, and I felt much better.  I got everyone ready to go, the 9 big bags and 6 carry-ons were loaded into the car, the crying commenced, and we were on our way.

To enter the airport in Casablanca, you have to go through a metal detector, and each bag is scanned.  I’ll give them credit…they picked out one particular bag and asked me to take it to a security guy.  I didn’t realize when I purchased the key to the castle in Marrakech (I’ve just got to find the right castle), that it looks very much like a gun on an x-ray, especially when jumbled up with a bunch of locks.  I pulled it out to show him…I think he must have thought it was some sort of a test because I would be the last person he’d expect to have a gun in their luggage.  He seemed relieved, and then sent me to another group of security guys to show them.  They told us that we’d have to check it and couldn’t take it in a carry-on, which was my plan anyway.

At the next security station I tried to ply them with my best Arabic so they wouldn’t dig around too much in our bags.  I didn’t have any contraband but it had taken me days to get it all situated and I didn’t want to have to unwrap anything.  We had a ton of food that the aunties were sending home to my nieces and sister-in-law here, which is really heavy.  The security guy pulled out one package and I told him it was “shebekkia,” which is like a type of cookie.  With a totally straight face he said that I couldn’t take shebekkia out of Morocco.  I wasn’t buying it, because we had done it before.  Then he asked if I liked shebekkia, I lied and said yes, and he said, that it was ok for me to take it.  I have not met many Moroccan security guys with a sense of humor.

We didn’t have a scale at home to weigh the bags, but only one turned out to be more than a kilogram overweight, so I pulled out a bucket of shebekkia and turned it into a 7th carry-on.  I got the boarding passes and was shocked to see that the boarding time was 12:10, for a 2 p.m. flight.  As it turns out, there was a time change in Morocco at the start of Ramadan, which for some reason also changed the departure time to one hour earlier (I think this is related to the fact that the date of Ramadan isn’t known ahead of time so the time on our ticket was the pre-change time).  Luckily we had left a cushion, because by the time I filled out the immigration forms, got Blind Boy, Vomit Girl, and the Faker through another security check and to the gate, the plane was boarding.  Our carry-ons were examined at the gate again, but luckily the agents were my shebekkia friends from downstairs.  Then I had to go behind a curtain and be frisked (Norah: “OK Mom, they’re gonna pull your pants down now.”) by a female agent.  Every adult who got on the plane was given a thorough pat-down.  Very thorough.

On the flight home I chatted with my neighbors across the aisle which really helped pass the time.  The flight was pretty uneventful and took about 7 1/2 hours.  We had lunch and then a Ramadan “breakfast,” although most people on the flight weren’t fasting.  You’re not required to fast if you’re traveling.  Immigration and customs went smoothly, we found a porter to help with our 9 bags, got on the parking shuttle, fought for my 20% corporate discount on parking ($280 for 3 weeks), and two of the parking guys loaded all of the bags into the car including the two strapped onto the roof.  That was unexpected and awesome.

The traffic wasn’t bad and we got out of NYC with no problem.  We decided to stop for dinner because it had been such a long day and we needed a break, and we ended up in Westport, Connecticut.  Dinner was great, and we were back on the road by 9.  It was at that point that I realized that by the time we got home at 11:30 p.m., it would be 3:30 a.m. Morocco-time.  Driving the last couple of hours was h*ll.  I drove while Ben napped, and then Ben drove the last hour or so.  We hauled bags and kids into the house and passed out.

This morning I woke up and realized that the cat was missing.  We looked everywhere for her and she definitely wasn’t in the house.  I couldn’t handle another unexplained cat death and I was just praying I wasn’t going to find her remains locked in somewhere.  I finally found her tonight outside.  I don’t know how long she had been out there but she was not happy. 

Ben did a lot of the unpacking while I worked today, and we’re getting back into the groove.  We’re very happy that yesterday’s long journey is over but we miss our peeps and the pace of Morocco.  Maybe we won’t be able to wait until 2014 to go back. 

My key to the castle:

Some (not all) of the stuff we brought back:

Here are a few pics of our accommodations in Ben’s brother and sister’s house:

The roof, where it all happens:

Looking up at our sad peeps:

Ben and Adlani wishing they could stay another day: