You can take a horse to water…

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The temperature was perfect. Just a hint of summer heat hanging in the air. Turquoise highlights glistened on the surface of the Arabian Gulf and sail boats dotted the horizon.

A kite danced in the sea breeze. There were sculpted bodies in beautiful bikinis. Children playing happily. Mums reading – the sand cushioning their toes with marshmallow softness.

Waves rolled towards the shore, lapping the white sand. Kids squealed as the watery haven moved perpetually closer. The smell of sea salt and sunscreen filled the air.

Expat life at its finest.

Except this Easter weekend, BB wasn’t in the mood for the beach. All he wanted to do was play with his new Lego helicopter, a present from my parents, who’ve just arrived (and are providing the most wonderful distraction at silly o clock, when the kids – on school holidays – leap out of bed).

A bigger hit than the Easter eggs


You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, I’ve realised – especially when the ‘horse’, ie, my oldest son, has suddenly and inexplicably developed a fear of crabs.

And scorpions.

As the rest of us enjoyed some sun, sea and sand and LB busied himself jumping waves – dissolving into laughter every time there was an incoming rush of water – his brother looked on forlornly.

“Mumm-EEE! Can we go home?” he pleaded. “I really W.A.N.T to go home.”

For a few moments at this point, I’m sure I saw a knowing smile flicker across my mum’s face – a kind of ‘been there, experienced that many years ago’ expression that was quickly hidden.

And then, “Mumm-eeee, I don’t like the beach. I just want to go home and sit on the sofa.”

Oh my goodness. I’m raising a couch potato. And there are 15 more days of Easter holidays to go!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

My painting parties

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With visitors on the way (at a slow pace, by boat via Singapore, Mumbai and pirate waters), I’ve been doing a few last-minute things, including painting the spare room.

I love decorating. Not the doing it part, but the concepts, the colours, the shopping and the putting-it-all-together parts.

I can spend hours watching programmes like Changing Rooms and secretly wish I could be an interior designer and get paid to shop in home decor stores and play around with fabrics, cushions, lighting and layouts, before blindfolding my clients for the big reveal.

I long ago had to give up on hiring painters to do the work for me as my schemes started getting too complicated to explain to non-English speaking decorators.

Like these clouds on the playroom ceiling:

I took over and did the blobby clouds. The airplanes are stickers

I bought special sponges and asked the painters to do ‘fluffy white clouds’. They looked at me like I was unhinged so I pointed out the window, gesturing at the heavens – to no avail because the bright-blue desert sky was, of course, devoid of clouds.

So now I do the painting myself – with help from Catherine the Great, who’s much more nimble up a ladder than I am. We’re a great team and tackle the 10ft-high walls with gusto (and a little knee-creaking on my part). But the trouble is I never quite know when to stop. As I finish a wall, other walls start to look anaemic and so I carry on, mixing and matching colours, quite possibly on a paint-fume-induced high.

It all gets a bit experimentalist too. The boys’ room features a beach at the bottom, blue waves in the middle and desert at the top. Our home also has a marble-effect wall, a multi-coloured chessboard wall and an aquarium wall to rival The Lost Chambers at the Atlantis hotel – all done as tastefully as possible.

I don’t stop when I run out of walls inside the house, either. Here’s the fairy-tale castle Catherine and I painted to liven up the boys’ sandpit outside. They were enchanted by it for all of five minutes.

I simply copied the castle from a design online and used exterior paints

DH (who won’t let me touch his study) occasionally rolls his eyes, but is mostly pleased with the results. If he starts to look nervous, I quote my mother-in-law, who once told us: “If you have a creative wife, you just have to say ‘Thank God!’ and let her get on with it.”

(My amazingly artistic m-i-l is actually my inspiration when it comes to interior design and – being such a petite lady – never ceases to amaze me with the way she lugs huge pieces of furniture around like an ant carrying 10 times its body weight).

As for my latest project, the spare room, allow me to do a big reveal right here. It’s more fig-grove than jungle (my original plan), but more grown-up than the Winnie-the-Pooh theme I replaced. So, blindfolds off……. Ta-daaaah:

The vertigo-inducing walls are so high, I couldn't resist a two-tone look. If you visit us in Dubai, this is where you'll sleep

Dear Google, Thanks for the hits!

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Bloggers reading this will know that it can be fun to keep an eye on your ‘blog stats’ – not in an obsessive-compulsive fashion, but to see where traffic is coming from.

Special thanks to readers in North America, the UK and the UAE!

I love the new feature that WordPress.com recently installed – a world map on the stats page that means I can see where you live! Not your house or anything, but the country in which you reside. It’s fascinating to see which corners of the world are actually visiting little old me via the blogosphere!

I also love seeing how visitors stumble across my blog. The stats page lists the search terms that Internet users around the globe have typed into search engines such as Google – leading people, usually by accident, to Circles in the Sand.

Some of the terms searched for are hilarious – here are a few recent examples:

‘Mum screaming’ Can’t think how this led to my blog!

‘Expats gone bad’ Ditto

‘Dubai women seeking house-cleaning naked male for job’ Sorry, next time search for Chippendales in Dubai – or try an agency

‘Toilet sign styles in Dubai’ Do I look like a lavatory? (BB’s toilet talk the culprit, me thinks)

‘Exotic hair shears’ Mmm, don’t own any of those

‘Sugar mommies in Dubai’ You’ve come to the wrong place, hon!

‘My housemaid in tape’ Eeee-uw!

Postscript: Dear Australia, I’m terribly sorry, but you disappeared when I downloaded the map. I don’t know why! It has just been pointed out to me that I have a reader in Sydney (yay!) so thanks to Aus too…

Trucks that go bump in the night

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Before telling this story, I probably should confess that I have a habit of imagining the worst. I think therapists call it ‘catastrophic thinking’. I prefer to call it an ‘overactive imagination’ (hence the blog – it’s a great valve!).

Last night, I caught myself at it again – in the dead of night, when it’s all too easy to let thoughts of bad things, gremlins, or ‘could something happen to get us kicked out of here?’ ruminate through one’s mind.

I was lying awake at 3 in the morning. My head full of cold – my second cold since we turned the air-conditioning on just over a week ago (it’s that time of year when the AC feels a bit chilly, but if you don’t switch it on, you feel menopausal).

Everyone else was sound asleep – all was quiet, apart from the gentle snores drifting out of the boys’ bedroom and the cat scratching her ear.

Suddenly, the peace was shattered. There was an almighty noise, coming from outside. The sound of something very big screeching to a halt – skidding along, careering out of control. An engine droning. Tyres bursting.

And then an eerie silence.

Due to the fact we hadn’t been obliterated, I ruled out an airplane landing on our heads (you might laugh, but we get some deafeningly loud Russian cargo planes with dubious air-worthiness flying pretty low over us).

I guessed instead there had been an accident on the highway and leapt out of bed, shaking DH until he woke up, frightening the life out of him.

“Quick! Go up onto the roof,” I whispered in the darkness. “Something’s happened on the road.”

While I peered out the window at the traffic grinding to a halt, DH climbed the stairs to the roof – reappearing a minute later to tell me he couldn’t open the door.

“Oh yes, that’s right. I hid the key,” I replied. BB had gone up there a couple of times by himself, to holler at our neighbours – a habit I nipped in the bud by taking the key away and putting it somewhere.

And that’s when my overactive, over-tired imagination sprang into action. Knowing it had to be a truck or tanker that had just crashed but not being able to see it, my brain lit up with, “But what’s inside? It could be anything!)” Petrol, flammable chemicals, poo …. a nuclear reactor!!! (see, I told you I’m good!) “Is a gas tanker about to explode, igniting our compound and torching our homes too?”

It didn’t, of course. After hurrying into another room, where I got a clear view of the accident, I saw that, yes, it was a crashed truck. It had careered into the central reservation and spilled its load – timber, not toxins. The driver was fine, and there were no other vehicles involved (he’d fallen asleep perhaps).

Within minutes, there were police cars on the scene and men scurrying around trying to clear the highway of debris so traffic could get by.

I stayed to watch for a few more minutes. “Can I go back to bed now?” DH said, not in the least bit phased, whereas I just about got to sleep before the dawn chorus! Yawn.

Middle East meets Miami

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It’s warming up in the desert (highs of 39°c / 102°F on Thursday and it’s only March!).

While this was (hopefully) just a blip, a reality of living in the United Arab Emirates is while other parts of the world are celebrating the arrival of spring daffodils (like these) and life bursting forth, in a few short months we’ll witness life being scorched.

But the good news is the rising temps mean it’s beach season – and I’ve been here long enough now to know we need to make the most of Dubai’s beautiful seaside in Spring, before it gets too hot to go to the beach in July and August (lobster is not a good look, but is what you get if you brave the burning-hot sand and soup-like ocean during the hottest part of the year).

This weekend, I discovered a beach we’d never been to before – and decided I loved it so much, I’d like to move there.

Lapped by the aquamarine waters of the Arabian Gulf, Sunset Mall beach is flanked by gorgeous Miami-style condos, with views of Dubai Offshore Sailing Club boats as well as ducking-and-diving kite surfers.

If you tire of this driveable and surprisingly shrubby beach, you can walk to the adjacent glass-walled Sunset Mall to browse the newly opened high-end fashion boutiques inside.

Beach and shopping: now there’s something for everyone!

With fish, kite surfers and sail boats, there's lots of entertainment on Sunset Mall beach

What I ‘should’ eat Wednesday

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“We’ve got work to do,” said the doctor, peering at me from behind her spectacles.

I’d only gone to the clinic to renew a prescription. But having been ‘invited’ back for a double-appointment visit, the doctor – who previously seemed quite chummy, especially when we discovered we’d frequented the same sweaty, student-filled nightclubs at Southampton Uni – suddenly turned all serious.

“Your risk of having a heart attack in the next decade is three times that of the average person,” she told me, after tapping my blood test results into the morbidity analysis app on her computer. “Three times!” I replied. ‘Wow, that’s S.O.O.N,” I thought to myself – images of the boys making their own packed lunches and reading their own bedtime stories flashing through my mind.

I was quite distressed to find out how much 40-60g of carbs really is! I've had to rethink every single meal.

Needless to say, her words scared me enough to seek help with my blood-sugar levels from a Scottish dietitian, whose boyish charm and looks were a motivating enough reason to follow his where-the-hell-are-the-carbs diet plan.

All this transpired because I had diabetes in pregnancy twice, bad enough to warrant spending months injecting insulin into my pregnant tummy. They tell you afterwards you’re at risk of developing diabetes in later life and should have a blood test every year, which I hadn’t done since LB was born.

It was on my mind, however, as my sugar levels have always behaved strangely – leading to a habit I can only describe as ‘prophylactic eating’, in an attempt to stop them crashing. Weight-wise, I’ve put on the ‘Dubai stone’ (expat weight gain is so common in Dubai it’s even got a name) and would, of course, love to shed the extra pounds – which can stop ‘pre-diabetes’, the label I now possess, from turning into full-blown diabetes.

The dietitian looked at my diet. ‘Carb-icide’ he pronounced. Then recommended I eat like a cavewoman. Berries, nuts, seeds, avocados, salmon, green veg and salad are in. Processed foods, bread, pasta, rice, even bananas are out. For added motivation, he showed me a photo of a bikini model and then emailed me a meal plan, practically devoid of carbs.

Pasta, I miss you!

Aside from spending every waking moment either shopping for food, preparing food or thinking about it, the diet is actually great – and working well (having someone tell me what to eat and when is quite handy really – plus I’m less hungry!).

But, oh, how I miss carbs. The limit at the moment is 40-60g a day – practically nothing, as I discovered when eating a supermarket wrap. I looked at the ingredients and was dismayed to see it contained 68g of carbs. A WRAP! It rapidly became an ‘unwrap’ as I ate just the filling.

So, here it is – the meal plan for Wednesday – what I ‘should’ be eating today, in all its cavewoman glory:

Breakfast, 7am
25g oats made with water, add 100ml semi-skimmed milk and 50g strawberries

Lunch, 1pm
Turkey breasts with green salad (50g cucumber, 100g lettuce, 50g green peppers, two celery sticks, 100g radishes, 2-3 whole spring onions and a half avocado)

Dinner, 7pm
A very small lean steak (optional- substitute with white fish or white meat), and 100g green beans

Snacks (Thank goodness, but don’t get too excited)
100g strawberries (10am)
50g walnuts (4pm)

Drinks, 9pm
Wine (subsitute with gin). Ok, I added this myself. It should say 6-8 glasses of water a day (boo!)

Dancing in the rain. Hooray!

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For months now, we’ve been teased.

Women have threatened to dance at wine o clock – wearing fascinators and feathers, their shoulders squared and a far-into-the-distance stare fixed on their botoxed faces.

Scientific puppetmasters have talked about (and possibly carried out) cloud seeding, in which steel lampshade-like ionisers create artificial clouds in the desert sky.

Then, last night, it finally happened: it rained.

And I slept through the whole thing, even the thunder and lightening that I’m told occurred.

It was nothing like a few years ago, when Dubai had hail stones so bad that all the cars were left with an ‘eggshell’ finish and we thought it was the end of the world.

But when we got up this morning, there was a strange darkness creeping round the curtains – Twitter was buzzing with rain tweets from Dubai-ians and the ground was actually wet.

The kids pressed their noses against the window and I joined them, peering out at the marvellous colours: the rain washes all the sand away and so instead of the tans and beiges we’ve been seeing recently, the trees and plants looked green. It’s like seeing your garden in technicolour and appreciating that it’s a lush oasis in the desert, not just a dusty yard.

Even the birds looked like they were dancing!

The world may watch us, rather bemused by our excitement, but when you live in a region where there’s only on average 13cm of rain a year, it’s the equivalent of a white Christmas every time it rains.

Ironically, DH was just off to Toronto and talking about sunscreen. They put it on in the cockpit as they fly over the North Pole apparently. I offered him one of my five or six bottles of sun tan lotion, before waving him off to the airport – and seeing the boys off to school.

Then I sat down with a cup of tea, my eyes glancing skywards at the grey clouds gathered above, and enjoyed an atmospheric, almost romantic (!) couple of hours on the laptop – the ground, by now, completely dry again and not a spot of rain in sight.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

Mother’s Day week

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I’ve realised that being a binational family, living in a country in which none of us was born, means Mother’s Day can go three ways.

Our surname is Lebanese, because that’s where DH’s family is originally from. DH is an American citizen and I’m from the UK. This all melts down into two kids who hold both US and British passports.

DH is really keen that the kids know they’re American and learn about American traditions, while I teach them all the British bits – Bonfire night, royal weddings, CBeebies, etc (in case you’re wondering, they have British accents and call ‘erasers’ ‘rubbers’!)

Since leaving the States, I've become mummy rather than mommy. They call pants 'trousers' now, but still say 'awesome' all the time!

When it comes to Mother’s Day, we’re a bit confused because DH has, for his whole life, observed American Mother’s Day, held each year on the second Sunday of May. I lean towards the British one (Sunday just gone) and then yesterday (Wednesday 21st) it was the UAE’s turn to celebrate mothers.

The result is it either all gets a bit diluted – or you can spin it out and spend a whole week doing Mother’s Day activities. At LB’s nursery, they made cards and roses out of tissue paper on Sunday, while BB’s school held a special picnic and sing-song for the mums yesterday.

Although the boys probably have no clue which day is actually ‘our’ Mother’s Day, they are being particularly affectionate at the moment, and as I’ve been feeling guilty that I’ve given them a bit of a bad press lately, I thought I’d elaborate.

“I lub you,” says LB, every 20 minutes or so – his deep brown eyes scanning my face and his little mouth breaking out into a grin the moment I return the sentiment.

His older brother, not to be outdone, notices every time my hair looks different or I’m wearing something new and always says something nice. They might be wrestling on the floor two minutes later or getting into some kind of mischief, but their loving ways bowl me over.

I know one day they’ll have wives who are the centre of their world (and you might remember that I already share BB’s affections with Girl Next Door), but for now I’m basking in their attention.

“I love you to the moon and back, round the sun a thousand times and all the way round the universe,” BB told me the other day.

“And all the way to Girl Next Door’s house and back,” he finished.

The student-led conference

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Back in my day, parent-teacher conferences involved mums and dads trooping into the classroom at allotted times to talk to the teacher, with the student otherwise occupied elsewhere.

Knowing full well you were being discussed, you had little choice but to wait nervously – your ears ablaze – until your parents returned and you could gauge the expression on their faces as they walked through the door.

How times change.

Today we went to my six-year-old’s school for his student-led conference – which I presume are becoming popular the world over.

The information reminded forgetful parents to express pride in their children's progress and provided sample questions!

We’d been prepped by the school beforehand with a letter telling us what to do. It would be a ‘non-teaching day’ (which, and I did have to think about this, was a fancy way of saying ‘a day off for the kids’) with 30-minute slots for each child/parent combo.

The idea was for your child to take you through his or her work in the classroom. In case this whole concept was beyond us, we were advised to be supportive, be positive, be curious and to listen to our children.

A slight, okay glaring, error on my part meant our son was the only child not in school uniform when we rolled up for our turn (DH and I both looked at each other as if to say, “do you not read the emails?”), but I think I made up for it by asking BB lots of questions. Whilst lavishing praise, my journalism training meant I practically quizzed him and what I’d heard about these conferences was right: the kids jump at the chance to show off their work.

One of the books was a diary and, on further inspection, I realised his teacher must know everything about what we do as a family. Our trip to an airport museum in Sharjah, outings on the monorail, parties and visitors – it was all there, coloured in and with scrawly handwriting in places. Thank goodness there weren’t any pictures of mummy sitting on the sofa, glued to the iPad (phew).

As we went through his ‘portfolio’, the teacher was obviously listening from behind her desk, but wasn’t participating – BB did most of the talking and thoroughly enjoyed it.

At the end, as we were leaving, I nudged DH to remind him he’d wanted to ask the teacher about something on BB’s report card. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’ll wait till next time.”

Kids – when it comes to student-led conferences, you’re onto a winner!

On yelling at your kids

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I know you’re probably getting bored of this theme, but just bear with me.

A friend of mine, also a pilot’s wife – whose DH is regularly away for much longer than mine – mentioned this week that she had, yet again, come to the conclusion that 5-7 days with just her and their young boys was her limit.

“I’m at the end of day 5 today and I’m suddenly the ‘yelling mom’,” she said. “It came out of nowhere and I’m just spent!”

Can't think why I was drawn to this scene, can you?

The conversation, taking place across the globe on Facebook, was joined by several mums, who all said the same thing, along the lines of, “Good grief, love…that’s longer than I can do.”

I honestly think my friend’s a trouper. Don’t you? To save the yelling until day 5 deserves a round of applause and a row of G&Ts, I reckon. I’d buckle far sooner – as I [confession] proved yet again this weekend.

The rising temperature here in Dubai might have had something to do with it (you forget that running around with kids in the heat leaves your nerves not just frayed, but shredded as everyone gets hot and bothered). Plus the fact it was another unstructured weekend alone. Or I might just be low on patience and energy and making excuses.

But, whatever the reason, as the weekend draws to a close in the UAE, I can still hear myself firing off, ‘NOOO!’ ‘STOP!’, ‘W.A.T.C.H. T.H.E. R.O.A.D.’, ‘WAIT’, ‘JUST LISTEN’, ‘I said NO’, ‘GET OUT OF THE DRIVER’s SEAT’. I could go on (and will for the purpose of this blog post).

Love my children so much it hurts, but when DH is away, they love to test their boundaries. I’m hoping mums of small children reading this will identify with the following exchanges – not all yelled, but certainly not whispered – and I won’t get bombarded with comments recommending I attend Effective Parenting classes (or counselling!):

“It’s 6 am in the morning! GO BACK TO BED!” Delivered sternly, not long after the birds started squawking the dawn chorus.

“I SAID open the door carefully!” After squeezing the SUV into a space not much wider, between a new-looking convertible BMW and a Ford Mustang, at the jam-packed supermarket car park.

“But two minutes ago, you DIDN’T WANT a sandwich.” In response to BB’s sudden un-ignorable hunger pangs, developed shortly after leaving Subway, where he’d flatly refused to eat.

Sometimes it feels like they just don't hear me

“Just let mummy talk for two minutes – perleeeez!” On meeting a friend at the JESS school Spring Fair and wanting to chat rather than be dragged off to the bouncy castle (my friend and I had imagined ourselves sitting in the Tea Garden, then browsing the craft stalls together – Ha! What were we thinking?)

“GO AND PLAY – I just paid 100 dirhams to get you in!” Directed at both boys who were still hanging off my t-shirt at the indoor play area I’d brought them to for a break (okay, the break was more for me than them).

“If you didn’t want the yogurt, WHY DID YOU OPEN IT!” After LB helped himself and smeared half of it over the table – squelching dollops onto the floor too.

“DON’T KILL EACH OTHER! JUST DON’T!” On trying to break up a fight, in which LB bit his brother in frustration (and I started tearing my hair out).

“WHAT HAPPENED??” After asking the boys to sit and wait quietly outside while I nipped into a store, then came out to find LB horizontal, red faced and screaming his head off (he’d fallen off the chair).

“NO you can’t have that *insert* doughnut / KitKat / over-priced toy / flashing gadget.” Repeat 20 times.

“Turn the volume DOWN!” After the noise coming from Tom and Jerry on the TV threatened to reach the level at which ear drums implode.

“RIGHT, bed…NOW!” At the end of a long day, after cajoling and jostling them through the bath/book/bed routine. Then quietly, “Oh no, really? You feel sick?”

Is it any wonder I’ve finished the weekend with all this echoing round my head?

Feel free to add your own.