Parents are JUST like rock stars

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I saw this on Facebook today and thought I’d share it here as suddenly assuming rock-star status has done wonders for my evening. Enjoy!

How being a parent is like being a rock star:

The eye bags add to the up-all-night rock-star look

The eye bags add to the up-all-night rock-star look

– Endless hours on the road with too many people in the vehicle

– Your job is to entertain a room full of loud, writhing maniacs

– If you do your job well, people ask you when you’ll produce more

– You ask yourself daily: “Am I tripping? Or did I really just see that?”

– Your name is always shouted, never spoken

– Someone is always pulling at your clothes

– Groupies follow you to the bathroom

– There’s a different person in your bed every night. Sometimes even two

– At the end of your work day, you’re sweaty and your hair is a mess

– Screaming is just part of the job

Thank you to Kim at letmestartbysayingblog.com, who wrote this and whose blog I’ve just discovered.

Apples and peers

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My DH finally bought an iPhone the other day. I say “finally” because he’s held out for a very.long.time.

His five-year-old Nokia was, in his mind, perfectly adequate, but it started to show signs of ageing – and I (gently) suggested it was time it was euthanised.

“It’s got to go! It barely works!” I urged [okay, maybe I wasn’t very gentle]. “You need a smartphone. How about an iPhone for Christmas? I’ll buy you one.”

Which really means he’d buy it, because he pays the credit card bill, but he reluctantly agreed this was a good idea. He wasn’t sure what to opt for, though. An iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy?

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While mine is practically attached to me, DH isn’t so sure

He went back and forth. Christmas passed. Every day, I’d ask: “Well, shall we buy your present today?” But he was still deciding, still weighing up the pros and cons of the iPhone versus its peer.

I’d raise my eyebrows, absolutely astonished that anyone could take so long to buy one of the most artfully polished gadgets anyone has ever designed (I’m an Apple kind-of gal).

The new year arrived and DH still didn’t have his Christmas present. Our shopping styles couldn’t be more different, like apples and pears, I realised (his, measured, restrained and thoughtful; mine impulsive, more like a hungry hyena – though, to be honest, I’ve known this for a decade).

At last, as the Dubai Shopping Festival started, I felt we were getting close. DH had read loads of reviews online, talked to a tech-savvy friend, visited several stores selling both rival phones, tried them out, and, finally, the stars had aligned.

He bought a gleaming black iPhone 4S, despite not being a convert to Apple at all. “You’ll love it,” I promised. “It’s worth the money.” [more than 2,000dhs, even though it’s not the latest model].

“I hope so,” he replied, yet to be won over. “The Samsung looked great.” [and must have looked even greater when DH discovered half his contacts had vanished].

Then, the very next day, the email arrived, on a community Yahoo group I belong to: “Brand-new Samsung Galaxy for sale. Won in a raffle and still in its box. 800dhs.”

I can’t tell him, can I? That if he’d waited just one more day…

Silent Sunday: Winter in the UAE

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Inviting, no? But this is what our pool looks like on a winter morning – deserted! It was a chilly 10 degrees centigrade at 7am today. Brrr! I took this photo at about 10.30am, as the temperature was rising (it’ll hit 24 degrees or so) – and noticed that the lifeguard was wearing a wooly hat!

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The hot weather we’re used to thins your blood, you know…

Good (enough) housekeeping

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It’s not all that long ago that I worked on women’s magazines in London. Okay, it was a decade ago – and two countries ago – but sometimes it feels like yesterday.

As well as writing for several health and beauty titles, I was a magazine junkie. I literally gobbled them up. My London flat was crammed to the rafters with glossy magazines (Marie Claire, Red, Vogue), which I’d leaf through for ideas, their beautiful pages becoming progressively more dog-eared and tattered as the years went by.

Any space remaining in my single-girl flat was taken up with the freebies I received from PR companies. Eye creams, moisturisers, vitamins, hair products, makeup, body-firming lotions – you name it, you could probably find it in my bathroom.

Oh yes, there were benefits to working on magazines (dah-lings!), especially the pharmaceutical title I edited for a few years. I was plied with ‘gifts’ from big-budget drug companies, and swanned off on press trips abroad at the drop of a hat.

Smart cheats, easy fixes - what's not to love?

Smart cheats, easy fixes – what’s not to love?

But, today, things are different, aren’t they? I realised this while standing in line at the supermarket this morning.

The new issue of Good Housekeeping Middle East was out and I actually felt a ripple of anticipation. I picked it up. I put it back on the shelf. I picked it up again. The feeling of excitement was undeniable. So I tossed it in the trolley, on top of the broccoli.

Fifteen bags of groceries later, I was able to snatch 20 illicit minutes on the sofa with the January issue, while sipping tea and being used as a climbing frame by LB (there may have been some Maltesers in there too).

I pored over the page with the headline ‘Declutter Your Fridge’; read all the quick tips on freeing up shelf space (square, stackable containers are better than round ones – who knew!); I learnt that eggs stay fresher if you keep them in their carton, not the fridge’s built-in egg holder (a revelation!); I even drooled over some rather nice bathroom sets.

I sped-read an article on having too little time, and found myself engrossed in an interview with New York City lawyer-turned-writer Gretchen Rubin on getting into the right mindset for decluttering (bring it on!). Can you guess what exciting things I’ve been doing this week? Yes, clearing out our accumulated junk.

LB might have started gnawing on my leg by now he was so peckish, but I was inspired – 2013 will be the year I become a better housewife, I vowed. I will never be THAT person who moves unopened mail half-way across the world again.

Boy, how times (and taste in magazines) change!

Kidnapping Helicopter Mum’s DD

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A while ago, we met Organised Mum, whose fait accompli in getting her children ready for the new school year left us all vowing to iron the name-tags on earlier next time.

As a new term gets underway, there’s another mum I’d like to introduce you to. You all know her. She’s the mum who follows her young up slides, down plastic tubes and into the toilet. We all share her protective tendencies to varying degrees, and hover over our offspring at times, but let’s just say Helicopter Mum is hyper-present in her children’s lives.

You’ve just dropped your kids at school for the first day back and you’re skipping returning to the car – with four child-free hours ahead of you – when you bump into her.

She’s sobbing into her hankie. Big fat tears and Bobbi Brown mascara streaming down her crumpled face.

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Helicopter Mum does their schoolwork in her spare time

Your bolt for freedom screeches to a grinding halt and you stop to chat, aware that those four precious hours (in which you planned to knock out several chores in double-quick time, buy a week’s worth of groceries and get a blow-dry) are already slipping away.

“We had such a wonderful holiday,” she blubs, dabbing at her puffy eyes. “I just wasn’t ready for term to start again.”

She regales you with sniffly tales about the cookies they baked, the trip to see Santa (in Lapland) and the Christmas stories her children wrote, while you almost start twitching with the urge to get going.

Helicopter Mum brightens noticeably when you – to get her off the school grounds – suggest a (quick) coffee. It’s the death knell for that morning’s to-do list, but at least it stops her calling her oldest on his mobile – the world’s longest umbilical cord – at break time.

As you part ways, she’s distracted from missing her children – until disaster strikes. It’s pick-up time for the little ones and her car won’t start. She calls you, so breathy with distress you think at first it’s a prankster.

“Don’t worry,” you say. “I’ll bring your DD home, no problem at all.”

But it is a problem, because her DD has never been in anyone else’s car before. It’s never been necessary, because Helicopter Mum is always there. She comes in a taxi, but by the time they reach the school (the driver not needing much encouragement to step on the gas), you’ve already grabbed her child.

You’re heading towards Emirates Road, with her DD doing hightails with her legs in her carseat she’s so excited, when you look in the mirror and realise Helicopter Mum is right behind you. She’s caught up in the taxi and is peering out the front window with an anxious, frightened look on her face.

You’re on her radar, and you realise you haven’t been terribly helpful at all. You’ve kidnapped her darling, bubble-wrapped DD. You wonder if you should stop to hand her child over, but, no, this little bit of separation will do them both good, you decide.

Her DD – singing along to the radio at the top of her voice and fluttering her eyelids at your son – certainly thinks so, even if Helicopter Mum sprouts a smattering of grey hairs on the way home.

Our turn for a break!

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School started again today – and I wouldn’t be being entirely honest if I didn’t admit to feeling more than a little pleased.

Okay, after whooping with relief, I’m now grinning from ear-to-ear and lying poleaxed on the sofa, feet up, magazine in one hand, TV remote in the other and the iPad back in my possession (I’m sure I’m not the only mum who multi-tasks while relaxing).

Don’t get me wrong – I (mostly) loved our countless outings to the beach, the park and the mall over the Christmas holidays; we had several successful playdates where the children didn’t injure or maim each other; and as well as spending time with my beloved cheeky cherubs, I finally caught up with mum friends I hadn’t seen in ages.

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I’m not moving, I’m really not!

I feel a lot more relaxed than I did before the holidays – and not particularly thrilled about getting back to crack-of-dawn starts (why do schools in Dubai have to begin at 7.45am?), packed lunches, homework and the cat-walk that is the Dubai school drop-off.

But, what I won’t miss is the need to keep your little ones entertained every day, for fourteen hours a day – with new ideas and venues required each day and no afternoon at Grannies to break up the holiday.

If you’re not a parent, I may need to explain:

It starts early, shortly after sunrise and while your tightly shut eyes are still flitting from side-to-side in dreamy REM sleep.

They come bounding in, full of the joys of the morning, and in unison chorus, “Mumm-eeee, what are we doing today?”

If you ignore them (say, you bury your head in your pillow), they simply try again… on a loop:

“Mumm-eeee, WHERE are we going today?”

They know you’ll have to think of somewhere to take them out to, because if you don’t, you’ll be the first to throw crockery at the wall.

There may then be a period of play (or perhaps TV) punctuated by sibling spats, but by 11am, the antsiness has started to build.

“Mumm-eee, I’m bored,” you’ll hear, followed by: “I SAID, I’m bored!”

“I’m SUPER bored!” the other one chips in, not to be outdone.

And, believe me, this isn’t music to your ears. So you trigger ‘the plan for the day’. You run round the house, packing beach bags, filling water bottles, wrapping snacks, looking for lost items. You give them a quick lunch so you don’t arrive somewhere with whiny, hungry children. You even get them to go to the toilet, find the swimming goggles and run a brush over your own hair.

“Right, let’s go,” you pant. “Shoes on.”

Only to be met with cries of:

“Awwww, muuum! It’s my favourite programme… why can’t we just stay home today?”

Cue: a further 10 minutes spent cajoling them out of the house.

As I said, it’s been lovely, but I’m revelling in the mummy break today!

Silent Saturday: Wise Men

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I’m doing Silent Sunday a day early because I’m never quite sure when Twelfth Night is (is it the 5th or the 6th?). Just in case it’s the 5th, and the bad luck associated with keeping your decorations up after Twelfth Night also applies to blogs, I’m posting this Gulf sunset photo now. It’s from a day out at Jumeirah Beach Residence and is a lovely reminder of the fun times we’ve had on the beach this Christmas school holiday.

So what do you think happened to the third wise man?

So what do you think happened to the third wise man?

A male-dominated society?

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“Now would be a great time to turn your phone OFF,” I tapped out in a text to DH while on a spending spree at Marks&Spencer the other day.

Being on a digital rein is a royal pain, I tell you. And the text – from the bank telling him the exact amount I’ve splashed out and where – always seems to reach him, even if he’s travelled to the most far-flung corner of the world and I can’t get through myself.

It means he comes back from trips and can joke around with comments like: “Right, let’s see where you’ve been over the past few days. Ah, breakfast at Shakespeare’s. Lunch from Costa, again.

“And what’s this?” he’ll enquire, as he scrolls through the HSBC texts giving away my movements around the city’s malls and supermarkets.

Despite what this sign might suggest, we don't have to walk behind our husbands!

Despite what this sign might suggest, we don’t have to walk behind our husbands!

In all honesty though – and contrary to what people across the globe might think – women in the UAE enjoy a great deal of freedom. The bank texts are for fraud purposes; it just so happens that as the primary card holder, our husbands tend to get the messages.

And, compared to an initiative in neighbouring Saudi Arabia – worryingly called Relax! We’ll track your wife down! – the UAE’s electronic trails are nothing. A text is sent to the male guardian of any female national who leaves Saudi to alert him of her departure (though maybe it is the woman who gets the last laugh, as the text doesn’t say where she’s gone).

But that said, even in the UAE, the most liberal of the Gulf states, there are times when a Western woman will find it a little peculiar (you could switch that word for ‘frustrating’, if you’d like to read between the lines) that she can’t do something she’s always done, like drive, without a ‘letter of no objection’ from her husband.

I’m used to it now – and, in fact, I love the way women are treated here, with female-only queues that really speed up boring, bureaucratic chores – but DH and I still joke about it.

The other night, I was mad about something. I can’t even remember what. And, occasionally, when I’m angry, I’m guilty of pulling the trailing spouse card.

“Well, just book me a flight back to England then,” I frothed at the mouth [horrible wife, I know, but it was late, the kids had been playing up, etc, etc].

For us, it’s not as simple as going to the airline’s website and pressing ‘book’. We use a staff system that I’m pretty clueless about.

And that’s when I realised. The corners of my mouth started twitching upwards. I suppressed a laugh.

Then I caught DH’s eye and he was trying to keep a straight face too. Suddenly the argument seemed silly.

“I can’t even leave the country, can I, without asking you?” I laughed, shaking my head with mock resignation.

[Rolls eyes – and vows to make this the year I get a bank card in my name only.]

It’s a small world

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It’s a bit of a running joke among pilot’s wives that our husbands are never around when you need them to be – like on Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (you could add birthdays to this list too, if you like).

But this isn’t a grumble. It honestly isn’t. It’s the lifestyle I signed up for and I don’t know any other way [slips crew scheduling our last mince pie in the hope DH will be home for Easter].

The upside of being a waif and stray (and unable to get home to family) on such occasions is the lovely friends – two of whom are dear blogging friends (SandboxMoxie and ExPIAtriatewife) – who take you in, offering not only great company but also wonderful food and even childcare.

Stop going away on special occasions DH! Look what happens (last festive pic, I promise!)

Stop going away on special occasions DH! Look what happens (last festive photo, I promise!)

Last night, DH was in London, and the children and I were in Dubai. We celebrated at ExPIAtriatewife’s villa with a fabulous BBQ and, just before midnight, took our traditional walk to the desert right outside our security gate.

Standing in the sand, with a glass of bubbly, we could see in the distance the spectacular fireworks cascading up and down the Burj Khalifa, as well as the bursts of colour exploding into the starry, night sky over the Burj Al Arab and Global Village (AND we were home by 12.30am!).

My husband, 5,000km away, was in a hotel, surrounded by cabin crew. And I really mean surrounded. Five A380 crews stay at this hotel every night. I’ve mentioned before that each crew is made up of some 27 flight attendants, mostly females in their 20s, with bright-red lipstick, fashionable boots and slender silhouettes unblemished by childbirth.

I don’t even want to do the maths to figure out how many there were.

A single friend was coming to meet him – who must surely have thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

Shortly after midnight, DH and I were texting. “Just back from the fireworks,” I wrote, picturing him in his hotel at Heathrow, practically tripping over giggly air hostesses.

“You’ll never guess who’s here,” he texted back.

“LB’s teacher.”

Strict, fair, no-nonsense and by far the best teacher I’ve ever met in Dubai (of whom DH is a little nervous), what are the chances of that?

It’s such a small world, it really is. I trust DH implicitly, but let’s just say, I went to sleep chortling my ears off.

Love this photo, taken by my gorgeous cousin Angela - I miss London!

Love this photo, taken by my gorgeous cousin Angela – how I miss London!

On finding out you think I’m Shouty Mummy

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This post was meant to be about new year’s resolutions, which, briefly, for me are to:

– Get back to the gym, lose a stone, grow taller

– Feel less stressed by the noise/mess/chaos that emanates from the boys

– Blog less under the influence

– Make more – not fewer – honest Facebook updates such as, “My kids are bored. We’re climbing the walls here!” (why not tell everyone how it really is?)

– Eat more dark chocolate to give me the endorphin-high needed to keep up with my children

But then I got a rather spiffy email from WordPress.com this morning, with roaming spotlights, fireworks, a map and more.

My ‘2012 in Blogging’ annual report – I started scrolling, intrigued.

I have to admit I laughed out loud (while secretly being quite pleased) at the comparison to Jay-Z. Some 19,000 people packed out the new Barclays Center in New York to see the rapper perform recently. Circles in the Sand was viewed about 120,000 times in 2012. If the blog were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take six sold-out performances for that many people to see it [laughs in disbelief again].

I’m under no illusions – a large proportion of those hits were people running an image search on the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, which I wrote about in September 2011. For some reason, the search engines love this post, causing more than 68,000 people to crash-land, accidentally, on my ramblings.

But there are other posts, too, that have proven popular and are more relevant to the tired, expat mummies who relate to my life:

In order of the most-viewed posts in 2012:

Expat brats: The signs to look out for – (clearly a pressing concern in Dubai)

A sticky story about having a housemaid – (no prizes for linking this to the above)

On yelling at your kids – (oh Gawd, please don’t let this be what I’m remembered for)

I was also interested to learn what search words, other than the Burj Khalifa and yelling, had sent internet users my way: not sure what this says about my life, but the most-frequent search terms that led to my blog were hair salon, Kidzania and Duran Duran.

So there it was in black and white: readers of Circles in the Sand are under the impression I’m an all-singing, Shouty Mummy, cavorting round the house to the sound of Wild Boys and The Reflex – with nice hair.

Could be worse.