Heissatopia

Late this night when we should have been getting to bed...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 20:03:45 +0000

So, uh, the building across the street from us is on fire...which is (one of) my (many) worst nightmare(s).

I think about it every time I get in the elevator and see the sign that says, "In case of fire use stairs. Do not use elevator" because we...live on the 40th floor.

And I just can't help but think of what a nightmare it would be to navigating all those stairs in order to evacuate. I mean, we'd do it...but it would be with screaming, howling children...so not very fun.

I assume the screaming and howling because, well, today when we arrived at the metro station a train was already at our stop and getting ready to head off. We kind of hesitated about whether or not we could make it on, but ultimately decided we couldn't—not with our party of seven!—so we collectively decided to wait for the next trains (they literally come every six minutes so it's typically not a big deal to wait).

Oh, except that Benjamin missed the memo about waiting for the next train and hopped on board!

The doors closed, and off he went.

Phoebe immediately started wailing.

"We will never see Benny again!" she cried. "He's gone forever!"

"He's not gone forever," I assured her.

"Oh, look—he just texted," Andrew said and then read: "Sorry! What should I do? Get off at the next station or keep riding to Legtafiya?"

"Just stay on until Legtafiya. We'll meet you there," Andrew told him.

So that's what Benjamin did and we found him waiting for us when we arrived and all was well. But we told the little kids that if they ever got separated from us like that to just get off at the very next station (no matter where we were headed) and we would come find them there. Do not try to catch the train back to us. Do not try to get to the final destination. Just get off at the very next stop and wait.

We really need to teach them our phone numbers here...perhaps that'll be a fun activity for tomorrow!

Anyway, that's how I know that Phoebe would immediately lose her cool if we had to evacuate the building...and carrying a frantic Phoebe down forty flights of stairs really just doesn't sound awesome.

Anyway...

From our limited research, the building on fire seems to be an office building, not a residential building, so that's good because it means there won't have been as many people inside.

But there are dozens of emergency vehicles outside.

We really weren't entirely sure what was going on—there have been firetrucks and ambulances and police cars and everything all whirring about the block...we're hearing more sirens all the time—until I spotted embers spitting out the side of the building.

I took Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander downstairs to gawk at it from the sidewalk (along with many other hotel guests). Miriam graciously stayed upstairs to be with Phoebe. Andrew is at the gym.

It's possible the children will never fall asleep.

(News source; and the Ministry of the Interior has announced that it is contained as of 11:30 PM—they're still obviously working over there, but we can't see embers from our window anymore so I'm sure it has calmed down some)

Edited to add:

Blogger wouldn't let me put pictures up earlier (it simply wouldn't upload anything), so here is the view out our window:

Here is the view from the street:

Here is the announcement that the fire had been contained:

And here are some pictures we took the morning of September 10:

Katara International Hunting & Falcons Exhibition

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:40:49 +0000

It was Alexander who saw the advertisement for the Katara Falcon Exhibition on the metro. He tried to tell me about it on the train but sometimes the train is just too loud to hear him speak (not because others are talking but simply because the metro is moving fast and that creates a lot of noise). So when we got out of the metro he gushed out all the information with syncopated, breathless excitement: "Falcon festival! September 8 through 12! At Katara! Free admission! Can we go?"

As it turned out, we needed to be out at Gewan to sign one more document for our apartment (and we got to take the kids through the apartment and measure for curtains and things as well). The falcon festival was right on the way home, so we stopped by to see what it was all about.

It took us a while to find the registration booth—we had to do a combination of online and in-person registration to get tickets for everyone. They're free, but anyone over the age of 12 has to be registered. And then we went into the exhibition center.

We were in a sea of white dishdashas and ghutras and felt rather underdressed and out of place, but that feeling soon wore off and we began to enjoy ourselves.

There seemed to be an auction—of some very expensive falcons—going on in the first room:

The next room had many gun and knife displays, as well as various off-road vehicles and tents and things. And then we saw the booth Alexander had his heart set on...

...the "hold a falcon" booth!

We each got to take a turn holding the falcon, which was much lighter than any of us expected.

Phoebe thought it was great:

And everyone else got to take a turn as well. Here's Zoë:

Benjamin:

Miriam:

And me:

Andrew took a turn while also holding Phoebe for the family picture the guys at the booth insisted on taking of us:

Nearby was this beautiful falcon, who is 28 years old, according to her sign:

Here are some other falcons that were on display:

Phoebe was particularly happy to stumble upon this hunting dog with her litter of seven puppies—only a week old, still wandering blindly around:

She was even happier when we found this other hunting dog that she was allowed to pet for a few minutes:

Dogs aren't very a very common pet around here, so Phoebe is always thrilled when she gets to see one!

There was all kinds of art on display (and for purchase)—sculptures and paintings and taxidermy. Oh, and this life-size komodo dragon made of crystals:

There were several cages of Asian houbaras, a type of bustard that can sometimes be spotted in Qatar in the winter. It's a favourite bird to hunt using falcons, which is unfortunate given its status as a vulnerable species.

Andrew had a meeting this evening, so we soon had to head home. Finding the exit was quite the trick—we were directed in so many circles and followed so many signs!—but we eventually found it and headed toward the metro. The Katara station spits metro riders out into a rather fancy mall. There is a security guard at the top of the escalators directing all the metro-riding rabble (including us) right out of the building (and he's probably right to do so because from the look of the displays we weren't likely to buy anything at that mall).

But I really liked the façade of this building. I used the cedilla so that Alexander could see what that looks like because we came across the word facade without the cedilla and since it breaks the rules of English pronunciation, Alexander pronounced it with a hard c, which is correct according to the rules of English, but incorrect according to the word, which is borrowed from French.

Quel dommage!

The cedilla tells us that the c will be soft, regardless of what vowel comes after.

Anyway, I really liked this façade on a building by the mall:

It was a fun evening!

And the excitement was just beginning...

A better day (in which no one gets impaled)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 11:58:40 +0000

This morning was much smoother (thanks in no small part to the slight temper tantrum I had at dinner after Andrew came home, in which I ranted about everything that had happened during the day).

The little kids got up and worked together to put away the clean dishes, practiced the piano, played a dominoes counting/adding game with Phoebe that I made yesterday but she refused to play, and started on their math work. Phoebe played nicely while I got a good bit of writing (for my coursework) accomplished with minimal interruption.

It was (compared to yesterday) so marvelous.

Here's a list that Phoebe made for a hypothetical sleepover that she'd like to go to some day:

It says:

swimsuit

goggles

pajamas (triggered autocorrect)

toothbrush

toothpaste

pillow

stuffies

blanket

clothes

GO!

She carefully sounded everything out and then double checked her work.

"Let's see P-L-O. Pillow. Yup! I definitely got all the right letters in!"

For our English and social studies, we read a number of poems and talked about where the authors were from (or writing about), looking some places up on the map, and talking about the beautiful language of the poems.

Lines and Squares by A.A. Milne

Enter Shadows by by Dalia Taha

Cities by Rick Barot (a little more risqué than my first glance realized)

Rain at Night by Andrew Frisardi

While Everything Else was Falling Apart by Ada Limón

Ìbàdàn by Damilola Omotoyinbo

The kids wrote their own poems about cities...I wish I could have joined in on the poetry but I do have an essay due, so I worked some more on that while they wrote and Phoebe played.

Empty by Zoë

Mom snaps photos of us in the empty rooms in our empty house. I don't want to say goodbye.

I want to stay.

I wait for Evelyn to come home from school so I can say goodbye. When she pulls up we walk to the green electrical box, our favourite sitting spot.

When she starts crying, the torrent of tears I was holding back bursts from my eyes.

We hug each other for the last time.

It's time to leave.

She runs after our car, but it's too fast.

I sob all the way to the airport.

Doha by Alex
At 3 am we’re driving to the Marriott, a three-day plane trip tires us out. All ready for some sleep we still have to drive. Look—the Museum of Islamic Art with spirally pillars going up. Look—the corniche lights with the Quran written on them, but wait there’s more. Palm leaf lights let out a steady glow—look! The Marriott is where we park. We go in and see torsoless statues in the lobby while signing in. We pop our ears as we go up the elevator. In the room we look out at the dark sky with the little tan and white houses with flat roofs. As we sleep it turns from night to day.

Those are some wonderful drafts, I think.

And here are some pictures of the kids doing some drawing and painting together:

They did a "yeti" drawing tutorial and then painted them to colourize. This was a compromise of activities since Alexander and Zoë wanted to draw (with a drawing tutorial up on a laptop) and Phoebe wanted to paint (but I don't allow water and laptops on the table at the same time). So instead of fighting about it they worked out this compromise.

Not a single child was impaled by anything today, no one yelled or cried...all in all it was a pretty good day!

Not every day can be great, but isn't it nice to know that not every day can be terrible, either?

The parable of dumping all the silverware into the bottom drawer

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 22:06:52 +0000

This morning was rough.

It didn't really stop at the morning because the whole day was a little bit rough, if we're being honest.

But the morning? It was rough.

I won't tell on everybody, but I will tell on the four year old.

I interrupted Phoebe's play to ask her to help me unload the dishwasher, which—granted—was rude of me. Like, why should she have to do chores? Pretty rude.

But she eventually decided that the dishwasher could be on the plane, so unloading it could be part of her game. But, like, if any turbulence happened she'd have to go back to her seat...which sounded fair enough.

Though...also...things did get turbulent.

First, though, here's a picture of her earlier in the morning setting the stage for today's pretend play:

She couldn't locate her boarding pass for a minute, which made her feel "frantic" (her words), but eventually found it and handed it to me along with her passport (which—breathe easy!—is actually a sticker booklet, not her actual passport).

I had unwittingly been enlisted as the ticket taker and passport checker. But her documents were in order so I let her board her plane.

She sets up a row of chairs by the window (because we're about as high as planes fly! We have to pop our ears in the elevator!) and then she makes people do things for her like bring her snacks and toiletry kits and what not. And she just does stuff that she can entertain herself with at her chair. She colours. She plays with her dolls. She puts the iPad over the back of a chair and plays games or watches a little show.

Today she listened to the Star Dew Valley soundtrack and started sobbing when she got to "Alex's Keepsake" because it's "just such a sad song!"

Raise your hand if you're raising a Highly Emotional Child...

"Phoebe, what's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing!" she wailed. "I'm just listening to my airplane music! It's soooo sad!"

She was just...listening to the music and looking out the window...and allowing her little heart to be broken into pieces by the melody.

There aren't even any lyrics, folks.

Anywho...I interrupted her airplane ride to ask her to put away some dishes and she wasn't very happy about it, but she did most of it just fine, even though she wanted me to put the silverware away after she put away "the plastics."

I told her that she was going to put the silverware away because I had asked her to do that and it wouldn't be very helpful to me if I did her assigned job for her.

"But it would be helpful for me!" she pointed out.

And, sure. But...she was going to put that silverware away, by golly!

After we got passed our negotiations, I worked alongside her and the dishwasher was emptying rapidly. She just had the silverware left to put away. I grabbed a ladle to put away because I didn't think she knew where that went...so I put it in the drawer...and then Alexander asked me to come help him with a math problem that he kept getting wrong.

So I went to help him with that and she...finished up putting away that silverware lickety-split.

Suspiciously lickety-split.

I walked over there and saw that she had simply dumped the entire basket of silverware into the bottom drawer. And I had the audacity to accuse her of such a thing.

"Well, you left the drawer open!" she accused.

"Well...I didn't mean to?" I said. "I got distracted because Alexander wanted help. You could have closed it?"

"I just thought you left it open because you wanted me to put the silverware in it."

"Why...would I want the silverware all dumped into the bottom drawer when there is a designated drawer for silverware with a sorting tray inside of it with a little spot for everything?"

"I don't know! But you shouldn't have left the drawer open!"

"I'm sorry I left the drawer open but...you're going to have to fix this."

"What?! I am trying to play airplane ride!"

"I know, but you did the job poorly so now it needs to be redone and you are going to be the one to do that."

"All by myself?!" she moaned. "But that will take so long!"

"You should have thought about that before you dumped all the silverware into the drawer."

"You should have thought of that before you left the drawer open."

"Yeah, we're not going to do this," I said. "You need to take the silverware out of the bottom drawer and sort it neatly into the silverware tray in the silverware drawer. You can put the silverware back into the basket from the dishwasher if you need a place to hold it."

"I don't need a place to hold it! I can do it just fine!"

"Great. I'm sure you'll do a fine job this time around. I'm going to go...[I can't even remember what–I think just to the bathroom]...and I'll check on you in a minute."

"Fine!"

"Great."

"FINE!"

So I left and she started angrily gathering up silverware, dropping pieces left and right, slamming doors, and drawers, and just...I dunno...things were clattering and banging and...then she started screaming.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah...I'm coming..." I called from the bathroom.

Because what else is new?

Like I said, it was a rough ~~morning~~ day.

I made all the kids cry with my unhinged cruelty and unreasonable expectations and general diabolicalness.

And they made each other cry multiple times as well.

One child (not Phoebe, but not telling who) cried because they were lying on the floor and another sibling stepped over them. OVER THEM. Like, they didn't get stepped on or tripped on or kicked or anything. They got stepped over while they were lying on the floor taking up the whole walkway. OVER.

No physical contact whatsoever.

And there were tears over this.

Tears and tears and tears...

Like I said, it was a day (that felt like a day and a half...or more).

So I moseyed back out to the kitchen thinking nothing in particular would be the matter and instead saw that the screams were (for once, today) somewhat justified, for Phoebe had dropped a fork on her foot and aforementioned fork had pierced her soundly through her second toe:

Cool. *Sigh.*

So I washed up her toe (it wasn't so bad once we'd washed it off and stopped the bleeding—and her tetanus shot is current so we should be good) and put a bandaid on it.

We don't have any "picture" bandaids, just plain ones. And those ones were so big I actually had to cut one in half to fit it on her little toe...but we got her all patched up.

And the she was like, "Now will you just put away the silverware like I wanted you to do in the first place?"

"Absolutely not," I told her. "You're going to finish that job. You wouldn't have dropped a fork on your foot if you had been calmly putting silverware away..."

"I would have never dropped a fork on my foot if you had just put the silverware away yourself!"

"No. You dropped the fork because you were mad and were slamming things all around. And that was silly. In this house we help. And you are going to finish that job."

(SO HELP ME)

She finished the job.

It's possible there's a fork in the drawer with a bloody tine *deep breaths* but all the silverware was put away (somewhat) properly and Phoebe returned to her game.

AND THE DAY JUST KEPT GOING

*****

Dumping all the silverware into the bottom drawer and hoping Mom just doesn't check...and then raging about how unfair aforementioned mother is when she does check and finds a job poorly done and asks you to redo it was certainly a theme of the day.

Perhaps this mystery mom is just hard to please.

Or perhaps this mystery mom deserves to have children who just sort the silverware into the tray the first time around (or write appropriate answers or actually do their assigned math work or whatever).

We may never know, but the least we can learn from this story is to not rage about and slam drawers and things while holding a handful of forks or your bare feet will reap the spiky consequences...

Tour de famille (and a stop in Banff and BC)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:34:39 +0000

Rachel will be set apart as a missionary in about a week. She and Auntie Josie took a road trip up to Canada to see some family and some places before Rachel settles down to business.

Here they are at Elizabeth's house on the first night of their journey. She lives in Rexburg, so they didn't get too far their first day, but there's just something about driving 10 hours versus driving 13 hours that feels so much more doable, so I'm glad they stopped. Plus they got to visit with Elizabeth and her family!

Here they are with my cousin Eric and his family up in Grassy Lake:

They loved spending time on the farm!

Here they are with my cousin Heather's daughters Miley and Sadie:

They stayed with my mom's cousin Lavon in Okotoks (and Heather, Lavon's daughter, lives close by with her five daughters, so I was glad they got to pop by for a visit).

And here are some pictures of Rachel meeting her little cousins for the first time (I have some pretty big feelings about this):

M will be 5 next week and Rachel has never met her...so it almost goes without saying that Rachel hasn't met E or C, either. How wonderful that she was able to meet them before leaving on her mission! Good for these girls (Josie and Rachel) for making such an effort to do so!

I was surprised by how little C looks! When I've seen pictures of her she's usually been in a stroller or swing or something. She looks so tiny when she's being held by a grown up!

I think Auntie Josie is so cute peeking out behind baby C here:

They went out for lunch at McDonald's (so the kids could play and visiting could continue). Here they are before saying goodbye:

And here are Rachel and Josie with David in the middle:

The day before visiting with David, Josie and Rachel drove from Grassy Lake to Banff (I am told that Josie drove that entire stretch!) and stopped at Lake Louise.

Which is stunning!

And then because the Alberta-British Columbia border is so close, they drove over into BC to say hello. They were a little annoyed by the state of the sign, which was covered in stickers and graffiti, but nonetheless happy to have made it to three separate provinces in a single weekend!

They had a bit of a scare when their check engine light came on. Andrew told them to go to Canadian Tire just to see what was wrong (my mom, surprisingly, was on team persevere) and it was an issue with the air conditioner pulling too much coolant (which could wait to repair). But they also found out their brake lights were out, so they got those fixed (which is probably a good thing).

They spent the night somewhere in Montana and should finish their trip today.

Hard to believe Rachel's mission is just right around the corner!! Thanks to Auntie Josie and my mom for helping make this trip happen, and to all the family along the way that hosted these girls to make their trip affordable!

Ingrown hairs

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 22:53:58 +0000

The first thing you need to know is that I pulled out an epic ingrown hair the other day.

It wasn't the kind of ingrown hair that knows its confused and grows into a tight little spiral, having obviously been doing its best to find its way out—the kind that sort of sproings out of your skin triumphantly, being just as pleased as you are to have finally corrected its course.

No, it wasn't that kind of ingrown hair. It wasn't sensible.

This particular ingrown hair was an ingrown hair that was suffering severely from the Dunning-Kruger effect, a "cognitive bias that describes the systematic tendency of people [or hairs] with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of their ability."

Yes, this ingrown hair put undue confidence in its non-existent navigational skills. It was forging its own path, certain it was doing A+ work when really it was failing abysmally at the one job it has.

This hair had grown about an inch long in a relatively straight line just under my skin...which rather explained the constant itching of my ankle that I hadn't been able to satisfy in recent history.

So I took a pin and punctured my skin, looped the hair up, and tugged it out with tweezers.

As one does.

It was very satisfying.

So I had to tell Andrew all about it when he came home and naturally had a rather nosy audience of bystanders (read: children) listen in as I related this tale.

This raised some questions about what, precisely, an ingrown hair is. Before we could even explain it, though, Alexander said as if he had solved a great mystery, "Ah-ha! So that explains why I sometimes get hairs in my mouth."

We quickly disavowed him of that notion (that any hairs he found in his mouth were simply ingrown hairs from the top of his head that decided to sprout in his mouth instead of into the sunshine) and explained what ingrown hairs actually are. But...that's a pretty funny thought!

Daily studies and other stories...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 18:56:58 +0000

Alexander picked this position to do his writing work this morning:

*****

We got up some watercolour paints and paper at the store the other day. I hesitate to get too much craft stuff while we're at the hotel (three more weeks!) but today made me remember how well paint keeps Phoebe occupied so I'm glad we got some:

*****

I have never been to Saskatchewan before, but my family recently started a little tradition of darting across the border when they're in southern Alberta just to say they've been there. My family didn't do a lot of unnecessary traveling when I was younger. We went from point A to necessary point B with as few stops as possible along the way. While I have crossed the border between Canada and the US about a billion times, I've never yet made the frivolous stopover in Saskatchewan.

It adds several hours onto the trip (from Taber to Calgary, or thereabouts), so I understand why we never did it. We were always traveling with young children, it seems...first me, then my younger siblings...then my own children. It makes sense not to drag a roadtrip out superfluously.

However, somehow or the other my own children are starting to be grown ups?

So when Rachel takes a roadtrip as a grown up with her super cool aunt...they take the hours-long detour just to say they've been to Saskatchewan. And I'll bet no one in the car complained about it.

*****

Alexander was in charge of our FHE lesson this evening.

Having worked long and hard to prepare this lesson, Alexander was ready to address some Big Questions with the family:

We settled on religion being a system of beliefs that (groups of) people can use to help make sense of life.

Earlier that evening, Benjamin had been talking about septs (which are clan divisions), but I didn't hear him right and asked him if he had meant sect. So we had talked about sects (and septs) while we were getting dinner on the table. So during family night while we were discussing what religions are and how they differ (or are similar), I tried to prompt Benjamin to use the word sect.

"There's a word for this! Come on, Benjamin!" I said. "We were talking about it earlier in the day!"

"Uhhhh...." Benjamin said, racking his brains.

Finally he landed on it, threw both arms up in the air triumphantly, and called out, "Placebo!"

We laughed for a long time (the word I wanted him to come up with was sect).

*****

The other night we were reading Proverbs 2. It was Benjamin's turn to read aloud; he began in verse 10:

"When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee: To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things; Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked; Whose ways are cooked..."

"Whose ways are cooked?!" everyone just about shouted, all at once.

"They're totally cooked, man," I said in a gravely voice.

"Oh," Benjamin said, rescanning what he'd just read. "Whose ways are crooked..."

The Villaggio Mall

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 06:55:22 +0000

Phoebe spent the day as an only child, a position she took to quite well.

She is rather emotional and tends to be rather strongly affected by nostalgia—which is odd because she's only four. How nostalgic can she really be, right?

Remember how just hearing the song 'There's Always Tomorrow' from Rudolph would set her off crying all the time? Like, we could just start singing it and she would start crying?

It was hilarious, but very indicative of her personality.

The song just made her so sad that she couldn't even handle it.

Similarly, she had to laugh boisterously through the entire (loud) call to prayer because it was so loud that once she was startled she was going to either laugh or cry and she settled on laughing and...that was that. Like, those giggle weren't going anywhere until the emotions had fully run their course.

Well, last night we were getting ready to play Nerts together, which Phoebe had uninvited herself from because it's too fast-paced for her. Instead she sat down with a phone and asked it to play some memories for her. She loves the little video montages Apple puts together. So she was just sitting down and watching one of those movies when she started sobbing.

"Oh, Phoebe! What's wrong?" we asked.

"Do you...do you miss me?" she blubbered. "Being this little?"

"Oh, of course I miss that sweet little Phoebe! She was so cute and cuddly and funny! But we also love this Phoebe," I said, giving her a hug.

"But I was sooooo cuuuuuuute!" she wailed. "And I was so little! Just look at me!"

"You were so cute and little! You were my favourite little Phoebe in the whole entire world! And it is so hard to watch you grow up because I always miss little Phoebe. But it is so fun to watch you grow up because you become more incredible every single day!"

We watched a few movies of her being little and cute and fun and we laughed and hugged and blew our noses (or at least her nose)...and...she's not quite over wishing she could reclaim her babyhood, so today (Saturday) was a good day for her to be an "only child" for the day.

Benjamin slept over at G's house last night.

Miriam left for the library to hang out with her knitting group friends early this morning.

And then Andrew took Zoë and Alexander over to G's house to hang out with G's younger siblings.

So it was just Phoebe and me and Daddy for most of the day, which was perfect for Phoebe.

We did some window shopping at the mall at some home goods stores, just to see what's available furniture-wise (since we have none), and she quite enjoyed walking around, trying out furniture, and imagining putting a room together.

Oh, and convincing Andrew and me to carry her.

I don't know what sweet nothings she was whispering in his ear when it was his turn to carry her, but I had an ongoing rendition of "Oh, how I love my beautiful mommy! She is so nice and sweet! And her cheek is soft and she's wearing black pants! Oh, how I love my beautiful mommy!" going the whole time I was carrying her. It involved lots of nuzzling into my neck and hair. She was very clingy.

But here she is down for a moment in the rug section (she claimed this area as her fort):

After getting home we piddled around the house (working and boring stuff like that) until it was time to take the metro to meet the kids at the Villaggio Mall for dinner. Miriam went there straight from the library, and G's dad drove all the kids in together (they had dinner with us).

Here's Phoebe, who sat at the very front of the train the whole way from Msheireb to Al Aziziyah:

The Villaggio was pretty impressive! It's a Venice-inspired mall, so there's a canal inside with gondolas you can ride in (we didn't—though I just learned it's only 10 QAR per person, which isn't terrible) and a lovely Venetian walkway (very much like the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas).

Here's Miriam, Andrew, and Phoebe on bridge with a gondola passing underneath (we found Miriam at the entrance to the mall—she was waiting for us):

The architecture does have a bit of an Arabian flair to it (which...is fair):

Me and Phoebe on a bridge)

The canal ends at the food court/ice rink:

Miriam actually spent last Saturday here with her knitting/library friends (so I suppose now they are her knitting/library/skating friends). They skated for three hours (they could have done four but got too tired to continue) and had an absolute blast!

It was fun to take in the environment while visiting with our friends and having some dinner. With the vents in the sky/ceiling, we joked that it felt a bit like The Truman Show (which a few of our children need to watch).

On our way out of the mall we ran into the Hala Summer mascots—in the flesh! They were out greeting children and Phoebe was...thrilled beyond pieces. She immediately ran over to the blue one and gave it a big hug:

Then she turned her attention to the pink one:

She and these two adorable little girls had such a good time...mobbing...this poor creature, who took it all in stride (their smile never faded):

We had a hard time calling her away...

Mostly because every time we got her to come back to us she'd soon break away and run back to the mascot:

It was the time of her life...until Benjamin told her that they weren't real and there was actually a person inside. That really shattered the illusion for her; she was actually quite disturbed by the idea. I gave Benjamin a look that I thought said, "Why'd you go an ruin the moment for her? Let her have her fantasies for a moment! She's only a baby!" and then explained to her that rather than a human inhabiting the body of her beloved 'hala bialsayf' guys (which is, indeed, disturbing), she should think of it like a costume that someone was wearing. That's all.

Even then, it made her feel wary. When we passed by this little inflatable (truly, it's not large compared to some—there's the huge blue guy by our hotel and Benjamin informed me that on their drive to the mall they saw an even bigger one that was somewhere else in the city) Phoebe had to take a minute to decide whether or not she thought there was a person inside of this one, too, that was suddenly going to reach out and grab her (and then whether or not she believed us that there wasn't a person inside the inflatable):

So the magic was dulled and/or tarnished for her a bit, but I suppose that is just one of the hard truths about growing up. Benjamin is in a skeptical phase of life, himself, a place many teenagers find themselves, but eventually he'll learn the joy and importance of creating and maintaining "magic" for others.

We will have these Hala Summer characters out through September, I believe. And then hopefully the weather will be lovely and we won't need extra summer cheer to get us through the days.

Here's everyone on a bridge of the walkway just before we left the mall:

And here's a view of the Torch Tower behind the mall:

It was a lovely metro ride home! We got on the train with a big group of friends, who quickly claimed the window seat we were aiming for. But after about a stop and a half, one of the girls came up to me and Phoebe (who was on my lap) and said, "Were you hoping for the window seat? We will move. You can have it."

"Oh, no! That's okay," I said. "We're okay here."

"No, no! I insist! We live here so we ride the metro a lot and we would rather have her look out the window than us."

This group of older teenagers (young adults? Guys—it's getting difficult for me to "age" youths these days. They looked like teenagers, they were talking about medical school...so I dunno) moved to let me, Phoebe, Zoë, and Alex take the window seat on the way home.

And I think that's such a beautiful example of the ways older members of society can help create an illusion of magic for younger members of society. Those youths (?) still found plenty of enjoyment on their train ride—they were talking and laughing—but they increased the joy for my little kids and that was such a kindness.

Should my little kids expect this treatment all the time? No–and there have been many metro rides where they haven't been "given" the window seat, and we learn and grow from that, too. But I hope that they will remember these kindnesses and recreate them for others down the road (or train tracks or whatever).

Lotion!

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 21:32:49 +0000

It has been one month since we left the United States, so today I'll confess that I didn't pack lotion. I packed a lot of things, but I didn't pack any lotion. In fact, I gave away a few perfectly good brand new bottles of lotion that had been sitting in our storage room because I didn't want to pack them all the way here.

Why?

Because they have lotion here.

Obviously.

I packed an extra bottle of hair detangling spray because I wasn't sure that they would have that here (I don't know why), but we found some right there beside the children's shampoo (which is in the baby aisle), and it was a good thing, too, because that extra bottle of detangling spray I packed broke on the way over here.

Which is precisely what I envisioned a bottle of lotion doing.

So I didn't pack any because for sure, for sure they have lotion here, right?

Apparently wrong.

I have been looking for lotion the whole time we've been here. I have been up and down every aisle at Carrefour (almost). I have popped into pharmacies...

All I could find was ridiculously expensive lotions.

In the states we would get Aveeno from Costco—that stuff is $18.99 for 709 mL (two 24 oz bottles), so about $10 per bottle. It's on the shelves here...at 114 QAR for 300 mL, so about $30 per bottle (and it's a smaller bottle).

I wanted lotion, but I didn't want lotion that badly!

So we just kept looking around because I continued to believe that ordinary people use lotion here (and by "ordinary people" I mean "people unwilling to spend $30 on a bottle of lotion") and...they do!

I finally decided to check on Talabat to see if they had decently priced lotion and I found that they did—they have Nivea brand lotion and it's absolutely affordable (they also have Vaseline brand, which my mom used the whole time I was growing up). I decided that I would order some on Saturday since I looked late on Friday and...didn't want to order right then...anyway...

Andrew ran the kids to their friends' house this morning and stopped by Carrefour on his way home to pick up some fabric softener—since we have lived here long enough to have run out of fabric softener!—and he thought he'd check the body care section one more time to see if he could find lotion on his own (before we just gave up and ordered it through Talabat). And lo...he finally found it!

Could we have asked someone where the cheap lotion was? Probably. But let me ask you this: Why wasn't this lotion simply beside the more expensive lotions? Why was it in a completely different area?!

So, anyway, we have lotion now...and it was only 24 QAR ($6.59 USD).

Rachel's Alberta roadtrip

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:01:39 +0000

Rachel and Auntie Josie decided to take advantage of the Labour Day weekend and drove up to Alberta to do some visiting before Rachel leaves on her mission. They drove up to Rexburg on Wednesday after work and spent the night at my cousin Elizabeth's house, and then made it all the way to Grassy Lake to my cousin Eric's house on Thursday.

I'm so proud of them for taking this road trip! What cool people!

Earlier in the summer Rachel took a solo roadtrip from Atlanta to Tallahassee, which she was terribly afraid to do, but which she said kind of changed her brain. She managed that drive all on her own, and she managed the drive up to Alberta with Auntie Josie just fine (she said it was even better than all the city traffic in Atlanta/Tallahassee areas....and I believe that...I quite like driving in the middle of nowhere compared to city driving).

Here's Rachel, having just made it to Alberta:

And here's Rachel and Josie together:

They're going to spend some time on "The Farm" (though they won't see Auntie Colleen or Uncle LeRon because they're on a mission in the Philippines right now, recently having gotten the chance to flit over to Japan (where my uncle served his youth mission) for a visit—but, no matter! Lots of cousins to visit!) and then head up to Okotoks where they will stay with my mom's cousin Lavon, head up to Calgary to visit my brother David and his family, and also plan to spend a day in Banff before heading back to Utah.

It'll be a fun time, for sure!

Crystal Walkway and Hala Summer Contests

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 22:04:40 +0000

Andrew got his residency card and that mean's we're apartment shopping.

Today we looked at some apartments at The Pearl.

Really I wanted to look at this great apartment right off the Msheireb metro station...but alas it was snapped up before we even got to look at it. But our real estate agent suggested some other apartments at The Pearl.

We looked at one and were not very impressed. I just don't see how it could possibly be as big as they were telling me it was (or perhaps it was simply that a lot of the square metreage was a terrible use of space) and it was rather...run down...though we were still considering it.

And then he took us to another place that was incredible. It was a little over our housing allowance (meaning we'll have to pay some of our rent out-of-pocket), but for its size and location it feels worth it. Plus, most utilities are included (whereas at the other place no utilities were included). Plus, we get a percentage off because of our corporate connections...so...it all...seemed to even out in the end.

Eventually we won't need a place quite this big, but with five kids (all homeschooling), it feels necessary.

We wish the pool were bigger, but it also comes with access to the beach and a long, air-conditioned pedestrian promenade called The Crystal Walkway, which looks beautiful enough in the daytime...but our real estate agent said we had to return in the evening to see it all lit up:

Oh, and we also spotted this big pink Hala Summer guy, which Phoebe has been wanting to find:

So of course we had to return to take a look around at the night life.

And it was pretty incredible. There are dozens of crystal dioramas set into the sidewalk (180 apparently—in five different themes including desert, snow, forest, sea, and machinery) and the hexagons in the sky are lit up as well. The air conditioning keeps it comfortable, day and night, so it's always a good time for a stroll!

I am always mildly concerned about energy consumption, so if you are as well, this cooling system is apparently a cutting-edge system that uses far less energy than traditional air conditioning, and the hexagon-crystal canopy of the "trees" are actually—and somewhat incredibly—solar panels that power the system.

It's really quite dazzling.

Alexander said it made him feel like medieval times...but the rest of us are pretty sure it feels futuristic.

Still, I'm sure there is room for improvement regarding energy consumption (and it seems to be a concern on many minds), but I'm glad to see some experimental technologies helping people stay cool (and look forward to the day when we can do that without causing more emissions).

These crystal displays are pretty amazing though!

And Phoebe was happy to find the pink Hala Summer character (even though it's not as big as the blue one near our hotel):

We also asked the front desk at our hopefully-future apartment building if we could take the kids up to the roof to see the pool and the view...and they said yes!

It's not a terrible view.

Here's Phoebe with another Hala Summer character:

After we'd finished with our adventure on that side of town, we returned to our hotel...stopping by Carrefour to do a little grocery shopping for the weekend. Part of the Hala Summer fun is that there are all these...stations...set up around the city where you can do...stuff...and win...other stuff.

In order to participate in this bar hang thing in City Center, you have to show proof that you spent at least 100 QAR in the mall. Our shopping trips to Carrefour tend to run well over

100 QAR, and Zoë had a hunch she'd do great at the bar hang.

She had done a bar hang thing at the Spy Museum when she went to DC with Grandpa and Darla back in March, and she had done very well, beating out an entire group of teenagers who had gone before her. They were very impressed.

Well, a while ago (August 19) we had a big ol' receipt from Carrefour in our hand so we suggested we try the bar hang contest. Zoë was confident she could make it the 45 seconds needed to earn a prize.

She lasted all of seven seconds before putting her feet down.

She didn't realize that the bar would (1) be a little greasy and (2) rotate.

She felt defeated and embarrassed.

But today when we had another big ol' receipt from Carrefour we managed—after some convincing—to make her swallow her pride and try again. We talked about techniques like regripping her hands as the bar moves, but she settled on a mixed grip (with one hand facing forwards and one hand facing backwards to keep the bar from moving). The person running the station the first time we visited had tried to communicate this to her, but Zoë didn't understand what she meant.

No matter! She tried it again today (which may...be...against...the...rules?? It says one try per person...but surely that's one try per person per receipt...I don't know) and she totally succeeded!

Her grand prize? A 15% off coupon to spend yet more money at the mall!

It's for Claire's, which is fun because Claire's has been struggling in the US (with many, many stores having been closed down), but it's got such cute stuff—and it's alive and well here (apparently...we haven't yet seen it but it is listed as one of the stores in the mall). I'm sure Zoë will enjoy poking around there!

Church City, license plates, and little things

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:16:33 +0000

Church City is a designated quarter of the city where churches with official status can rent out buildings for their congregants to worship in. Our friends attend the Anglican church, which shares its facilities with the Seventh Day Adventists. There's a Catholic church as well as a Coptic church, Greek Orthodox...and a handful of other officially recognized religions. And they all meet in that quarter.

We've haven't actually been there yet, so I don't know if their names are allowed on the outside of the building or anything, but I do know that no outside symbols are allowed (no crosses, etc).

Our congregation is too small to be recognized, so we meet in a rented-out villa elsewhere. It's unmarked so can be tricky to find (we wandered around in the heat for a good twenty minutes before texting a friend for help finding the place—she sent her 6'7" son outside to find us and shared her location so I could lead us there with GPS) but we're happy to be able to meet together.

*****

Today we saw a 3-digit license plate.

We've seen two 4-digit license plates.

Most of the license plates we see are at least 6-digits though.

License plate numbers inversely correspond with social class: the smaller the license plate number, the higher the class of the vehicle owner. Only the wealthiest can afford to procure a low-digit license plate. A 3-digit license plate can go for as high as $400,000 (which, for the record, is about the price of our house in Georgia).

So it feels pretty cool to spot a 3-digit plate out in the wild!

*****

We took a couple of Ubers today and rode around with our real estate agent for a bit. I feel like we could create a bingo car for conversation topics. So far on our list is:

The importance of education

One driver said, "You can be born poor and you can't help that. But if you are poor, don't be ignorant. You can do one small thing every day to teach yourself..."
Another driver said, "No education, no life, no good!" He himself admitted to having only a little education, but his children have all done very well. His son is in his last year of medical school in London, he's becoming a cardiologist, and he earned good marks and did it for free

Colonization

"When the British came, they wanted to control everything. Have you heard of this? They call it colonization!"
(A lot of our taxi drivers hail from post-Colonial nations)

Donald Trump

"I think he is jealous of third-world dictators. He called el-Sisi his favourite dictator—you know this? I think he is jealous. I think he wants unchecked power. He wants to be a dictator."

The weather

"How do you find the heat?"
This inevitably turns into a conversation about where we're from and where they're from and how the climate compares.

Children

"Mashallah!" "So many!"
Most taxi drivers seem rather excited to load "All the small ones in the back! All the small ones in the back!" (as our driver enthusiastically called out tonight as he helped Phoebe, Alex, and Zoë into the back row of jump seats—when we order an extra-large taxi it's usually a five seater vehicle with an extra row of seats in the trunk that can be popped up and truly little people fit back there best)

And...I think that's all that we have on our bingo card so far. We've used the metro more than taxis, honestly, though we just put in a bid for an apartment building (fingers crossed) that will require a bit of a taxi ride to get to the metro so we'll likely be using more in the future.

Privilege

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:56:42 +0000

We went to IHOP the other day, which was a bit of an extravagance...but was also really good...so I suppose it was somewhat worth it. Phoebe got a funfetti pancake and was thrilled to pieces.

She got ridiculously sticky eating it, so Andrew grabbed one of the "moist towelette" packs the waiter had left on the table and offered to clean her up a bit.

"What is this?" she asked.

"It's a moist towelette," Andrew told her.

"Huh," she observed. "It's not even hot! The ones on the airplane are hot!"

We were given hot towels to freshen up with at meals and at waking time on the plane. Miss Fancy Pants thinks that should be normal, apparently.

*****

The other day our housekeeper came by to make up our rooms (we live in a hotel so...) and Phoebe said, "Are you going to vacuum today?"

"Uhh...vacuum?" the housekeeper said. "Yes, yes. Yes, I can! I will vacuum today!! No problem, no problem!"

"I will hide!" Phoebe said.

"You want me to vacuum?" the housekeeper clarified (a little confused by Phoebe's sudden departure).

"Oh, no, no, no!" I said (they don't usually vacuum—there's a vacuum for our use in the hall closet). "She is asking because she's afraid of the vacuum. She doesn't really want you to vacuum. You don't need to vacuum. It's fine."

"So...no vacuum?"

"Yes, no vacuuming today."

*****

Phoebe has had some serious issues about how the housekeepers make up her bed. Everyone seems to do it differently (and all of them seem to do it wrong). If we leave pyjamas out, they will fold them and place them on the bed. They fluff the pillows, they remake everything neatly. They arrange the children's stuffed animals...

And they consistently take Phoebe's blanket off her cot and put it on the big bed that Alex and Zoë are sharing.

This makes Phoebe so mad.

And I'm always just like, "lt's okay. We can just move it back to your bed. Not a big deal."

Today while the housekeeper was here, Phoebe and I were playing a bit in the living room when she suddenly jumped up and ran down the hall.

"Be right back!" she said. "Just gotta check something!"

The housekeeper was, by this time, in the hallway bathroom, having finished making up the children's rooms (we have three bedrooms here). When he came out of the bathroom to tell me he had finished his work for the day, Phoebe gushed, "You made my bed correctly! You're learning!"

And I just about died of embarrassment on the spot.

"Thank you, thank you!" he said, as he closed the front door.

Apparently he had left Phoebe's blanket on her cot instead of moving it to the big bed, which is great. But also...not high on my list of things to tell a housekeeper.

*****

While I was telling Andrew about Phoebe's interactions with the housekeeping staff (as we were getting her ready for bed), he said (both annoyed and entertained), "Aaaargh! And because of social hierarchy mess, they probably internalize all her chatter!"

"I know!" I said. "It's like..."

"You don't have to listen to her!!" we said together.

"She's four!" I said.

"She's just a dumb kid!" Andrew said.

"Yeah!" Phoebe said, completely ignoring what Andrew said. "But he did put my blanket on my bed very nicely!"

*****

After dinner the kids were hankering for dessert so I told Zoë that she could open a little package of cookies to share with everyone.

"Strawberry or coconut?" she asked.

The kids settled on strawberry so Zoë opened the package and Phoebe called out, "Me first! Gimme! Gimme!"

Rather than telling her something like, "Gimme, gimme never gets! Don't you know your manners yet!" (which would have been more than appropriate), I decided to tell Phoebe a fun fact: "You know—there's a band called Me First and the Gimme Gimmes."

"Ooooh!" she exclaimed. "I could be in that band! Put me in!"

Truly, she would thrive in any group with gimme gimme in the name.

Ella's chair and cutting with scissors

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:46:13 +0000

As promised, here are some pictures of the adaptive chair Phoebe made to help Ella be able to join her friends at the table.

You can also see that the bat has a bag of peanuts, the blonde baby has a pot of honey, and Ella has a cup with a straw. Phoebe likes to think through all the ways she can help Ella enjoy everything her friends without limb differences can do.

And, as a bonus, here are some pictures of Phoebe (a left-handed child) trying to use right-handed scissors to cut some yarn into itty-bitty pieces that she left on the carpet. She said she needed them for a "project."

I told Uncle Patrick that I had a hunch that the project was cutting the yarn. He just finished submitting all his work for his PhD so is still thinking very scientifically. He wrote back saying:

Question: Can you cut yarn into small pieces with right handed scissors as a left handed person?
Answer: yes
Proof: see carpet

Whether her project was to leave small bits of yarn all over the carpet or simply to exercise her fine motor skills...she certainly achieved her objectives (even if it left her a little cross-eyed).

Phoebe-isms

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 22:33:20 +0000

Today Phoebe was running into our bedroom at top speed—which requires multiple turns down a hallway and a brave dash past the scary full-sized portrait of a falconer—when she "stabbed" her toe.

"I stabbed my toe!" she shrilly announced.

"You did what?" I asked.

"Stabbed my toe!" she repeated. "I stabbed it right into the wall!"

She meant "stubbed."

*****

Every time we get on an escalator—which is a lot these days—Phoebe makes some remark about getting to ride the "excavator."

She also saw a sign at the airport in Turkey that used the word "travelator" for "moving sidewalks" and since that was her first exposure to them, that is 100% what they are to her. She will not be convinced otherwise.

*****

Tonight we had two different kinds of soup for dinner—tomato and, as far as I understood the French, "Green Vegetable."

Phoebe wanted both soups "convided."

I'm...not entirely sure what she was going for here. If you divide things, and di- means to, like, take something apart, then surely con- (which means together or with) will be the opposite of divide...right?

Divide. Convide. Makes sense.

Or perhaps she was trying for "combined"?

*****

We were playing a game with her Littlest Pet Shops the other morning and...I was really bad at it.

I wanted my character to take a turn in this spinny chair thing, but was informed that I could not because that chair belonged to The Dog of All Knowledge.

"No!" she said urgently. "You can't! That's The Dog of All Knowledge's! It's his throne! So you can't use it. But—you can have a turn on the slide."

Behold The Dog of All Knowledge

"Your feet aren't kinetic, though," she went on. "So you can only go down the slide, not up."

The slide, for the record, has a magnetic lever that will cling to any Littlest Pet Shop (LPS) critter that has a magnetic foot. So then the critter can be pulled up and down the slide using this lever, seeming to use the slide all by themselves!

But other LPS critters have, like, a little hole...in their feet...that lets them perch on things (like a peg hole) and they can't use the magnetic attractions in the LPS world. Or at least they can't use them to their full extent.

Phoebe is all about adaptation, however, at least when it comes to her characters. In the picture above you can see Ella, the beloved armless, legless doll that has been following our family around the world for several years now (shedding limbs all along the way, apparently).

Anyway, Phoebe built Ella a special chair to sit in at the breakfast table so she could join the other babies for a meal, since she can't sit up in a regular chair. She also set out a cup with a straw for Ella to use...since she doesn't have arms.

I will have to take a picture of that set up if she still has it in the doll house.

*****

Tonight Phoebe was getting herself her nightly vitamin when she decided to take some time to read the bottle...and realized what a charade we've been putting on.

She stormed into our bedroom, shaking the vitamin bottle furiously (and stabbing her toe—if only she'd made her way through the hallway with a little less...oomph).

Luckily the toe-stabbing wasn't terrible and she soon recovered because...she had a bone to pick with us.

"Two gummies for children ages four and up!" she read off the bottle with complete consternation.

She lowered the bottle and stared daggers at Andrew for several seconds before repeating herself, in case we didn't hear the first time, or perhaps misunderstood. This time she decided to cite her sources—the instructions on the bottle: "The destructions say two gummies for children ages four and up! Why have you only been giving me one?! I need another one! Because I can have two! I am supposed to have two! The destructions say I can have two!"

Oh, the injustice!

We...have had this moment with each of the children.

Our reasoning is thus:

1) Vitamins are expensive.

2) We have a lot of kids.
3) Half a dose makes a bottle last twice as long.

4) We eat a lot of fruits and veggies at our house so get vitamins that way, too.

I mean, it's not like Phoebe is a child who says no to vegetables. She's a vegetable vacuum.

She loves carrots. Baby bell peppers are her favourite treat.

And remember when Alexander was Phoebe's age and his favourite food was mixed vegetables?

I rest my case (and only give my children half a dose of vitamins).

As I was saying...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:20:30 +0000

"I won't say that the call to prayer is ever disappointing to hear, but we've mostly heard it played quietly over the speakers in the mall or the library, almost like soft background music. We had high hopes that the muezzin at the suq would really belt it out...the way they did in Cairo when we lived there...but it ended up being much quieter than we expected (which was a little disappointing)..."

—me, like two days ago

This evening was a bit of a circus with Andrew staying late on campus, me having meetings at 4:00 and 7:30, Miriam having a YW activity in one location (7:00), and Benjamin having a YM activity in another location (also at 7:00).

After my meeting, Miriam and I heated up some boxed soup from France (so fancy) and we quickly ate dinner. And then I took all the kids on the metro down to the Corniche station and then walked Benjamin down to the soccer pitch while Miriam took an Uber to her activity (which isn't precisely on the metro line).

There was some confusion about which pitch was which (the security guard was certain we* hadn't reserved the pitch we had so wouldn't open the gate), but since Benjamin was with his leaders and peers, we left him to walk across the street to the playground on the other side. It was quite the hike to get to the pedestrian bridge! It looked so close, but the access point was so far.

* We is doing a lot of work in this sentence because here "we" means...the church? The YM leaders? I think actually the bishop reserved the pitch. We (as in me and the children) merely showed up. We contributed nothing to the logistics of the evening.

I was in a hurry to get to the park and send the kids off to play so I could hop onto my meeting. A lot of video call features on social media apps are blocked in Qatar (like FB is...even WhatsApp), but thankfully Zoom is not, so I was able to connect and have my meeting from the park, which was very convenient. But I wanted to make it to the park before my meeting, so was rushing the children along.

And then I heard, off in the distance, the call to prayer.

"Hush, hush," I said to the children. "Be still and listen and you'll hear the call to prayer."

"Oh, yeah! I hear it!" Zoë said. "Where...does it come from?"

"Well, you know the tall towers at the mosques? Those are called minarets and they have a special kind of balcony where a muezzin stands and sings the call to prayer, which is then usually broadcast over a loudspeaker..."

"Too bad," Zoë said looking around. "I don't see any minarets nearby."

"Me neither. Shhh...we'll just listen quietly for a minute."

Just then a loudspeaker directly over our heads burst out wailing the call to prayer. It was so loud! We all jumped, the children screamed, Phoebe clamped her hands over her ears. It was quite surprising.

I missed the initial "jump scare" (as Zoë called it), but filmed a little bit of it. It was very windy, so you can hear the wind whipping around as well, and Phoebe's nervous giggle continued through the entire call to prayer (she doesn't do well with loud noises...and has to let out her emotions and laughing is better than crying, which is what she used to do to cope with loud noises).

Now that's the call to prayer volume I'm talking about! You can really set the rhythm of your day to that—there's no missing it! And I love the reminder to take those moments throughout the day to commune with God, though I did have the children keep walking...because we had to find our way into the playground area and somewhere for me to take my meeting...and we only just made it before I was supposed to log on, so it was perfect timing!

The kids had a fun time playing at the park (al-Bidaa playground), especially on this little...sledding...installation. Phoebe was thrilled: "We can go sledding in the land where it never snows!" she sang with glee.

My phone/camera was too hot to use the flash or anything, so all the pictures are blurry. It's really been much cooler lately. At 7:30 it was only 38 °C (100°F), with only 40% humidity. That's...hot...but totally handleable. My phone was still grumpy about it (I think it was just extra warm from having to Zoom for so long in the heat before I even started taking pictures).

Soon I had to convince the children that we had to make the trek back across the street to find the soccer pitch (Benjamin sent a text message saying he was at a different one because they were able to change their reservation to another pitch, even if they couldn't use the one they thought they had reserved...so he actually ended up being at the soccer pitch right by the pedestrian bridge and we saw them right away).

The boys weren't quite finished playing soccer since they started late, on account of the pitch switch. The little kids and I found the toilets (public restrooms are one of the most amazing things about Qatar—they are beautiful! Okay, perhaps not "the most amazing things," but certainly pretty awesome—this one was air conditioned and clean and had toilet paper and soap and, like, every bathroom here just gets two thumbs up).

And then we sat and waited on a nearby bench. I pulled out a book to read. The kids tried to coax the many, many, many kittens out and about to come in for some friendly petting.

This little pair of cuddly kittens reminded me of the set of kittens I had when I was a little girl: Tango and Midnight.

Tango was a tabby, and was so named because he loved to stand on his hind legs and bat at things (a paper fan on a string, moths, whatever). Midnight was a little less rambunctious and more prone to hiding, but was secretly my favourite. I also liked to sit quietly and she would come and sit quietly with me.

But she got hit by a car. And then soon after Tango disappeared (we are fairly certain he got snatched by a cougar—these things happen). And neither of them really made it to adulthood.

Anyway, it was a successful evening! Miriam had a good time at her activity and made it home shortly before us. We opened the door to our apartment and her beautiful piano music wafted into the hallway.

She's into Debussy right now, reveling in his children's corner, giggling over titles such as 'Jimbo's Lullaby' and 'Golliwogg's Cakewalk.'

I told her she needs to learn and record Jimbo's Lullaby for my cousin Mindy's husband...who goes by Jimbo. But apparently it's really meant to be about Jumbo, an elephant who came to live at the zoo in Paris, but...Debussy got his vowels mixed up.

And, oh dear...I just looked up what a golliwog is and...Claude, no!

The music is delightful, but the history's not great.

Arabic Story Time II

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:16:37 +0000

We made it to the library for Arabic story time again and it went a lot smoother than last week. It was a different storyteller/librarian, who was much more...excited...about story time than last week's librarian (who, granted, was filling in for someone else).

Here's Zoë in a little reading nook while waiting for story time to start:

Although the librarian did stop me at the door of the room to tell me that it would be in Arabic, she didn't dwell on the fact that I was clearly an out-of-place English-speaker. She just dove right in in Arabic. And none of the parents were concerned when they saw me either (even the mother who kept asking everyone if this was really Arabic story time) because this librarian rang a bell and announced that Arabic story time was commencing and whoever wanted to participate should come to the multipurpose room. So there was no confusion.

And when she noticed that I was following along with what she was saying, she simply asked whether I spoke Arabic.

I told her I spoke a little. She smiled and said she would use simple words.

And it was great!

She was enthusiastic, she acted out words very dramatically so we could understand more, she had games for the kids to play. It was quite a lot of fun!

Our story was about a girl who was short and needed to jump to reach a lot of things (and was bullied at school for being short) so she had various kids come up to jump to see if they could reach her hand. Even Zoë took a turn (none of my other kids wanted a turn). She played another game where kids had 15 seconds to name as many prophets as they could (that was a surprise for me). She read the story very enthusiastically, with lots of excellent body language, which helped the kids—from the smallest to the biggest, from the most fluent to the least—stay engaged.

Phoebe was fidgety on my lap, so I told her a little translation of what was happening—a child was too short to reach the sink when she brushed her teeth, too short to get a cup of milk from the counter, too short to see out the window in the car. And she was teased at school for being short. Something about jumping rope. And then a footrace where she proved she was faster than the big ol' meanie who teased her so much. She learned to hold her head up high and be proud of who she was.

Something like that.

The other kids didn't have the benefit of my translation, inadequate as it was, but they listened for words they knew. And Zoë made this lovely sketch of our librarian telling the story (the book is open to the page about the footrace) while she listened:

I love that Zoë put scribbles in for the words...and that the scribbles are read from right to left (as indicated by the punctuation).

At the end of story time another staff member brought in a whole stack of books (about a rocket ship) and gave one to each child in attendance. The librarian was concerned because the books were in Arabic, so she went away and found a selection of books in English for each of the kids to have, which was really a considerable kindness since we haven't been able to check any library books out for weeks now (still waiting on residency status)!

Here are the kids with their books in front of the library (Benjamin was a little embarrassed by his book—Dig, Dig, Digging!—which he didn't feel was quite on par with his reading level as a 14-year-old, but he just offered it to Phoebe, who was more than happy to have a book about trucks).

And here are the girls playing story time this morning (with Zoë being the librarian and Phoebe being the mom; dolls and stuffies playing the role of children):

That's evidence of a successful outing, I think!

Suq Waqif

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:41:14 +0000

Having been here for three weeks and not yet having visited the suq, I suggested we head out for the evening on Thursday and see what the suq had to offer for dinner (Andrew was also in the middle of having an argument with Phoebe about whether or not dinner at McDonald's was a good idea—I'll let you guess whose argument was which).

Our hotel apartment has a kitchen, but the stove is highly inefficient and the oven is (as a friend put it) EasyBake oven-sized. Our washing machine (which we are very grateful to have, but which is running nearly constantly) also seems to have been made for elves.

Hotel life is great but...perhaps not suited for a family of seven.

It's hard to make a full meal with the limited space and dishes that we have and we have laundry hanging to dry everywhere all the time.

It's fairly glamorous.

I mean, we love the view. We love that we have beds for everyone. We even enjoy having housekeeping come by three times a week (though I also like they days they don't come by). But we still feel a little bit like we're just camping out...still.

It's been a long time of feeling displaced, first living in our own house for six weeks with little to no furniture, and then living here in our temporary—wonderful but less-than-ideal—apartment.

Anyway, all that is to say that we've gone to McDonald's three times since moving here and Phoebe thinks it's the absolute best (we used to only get McDonald's on our way home from the beach and whenever the power went out and we couldn't cook any food). She's always trying to convince Daddy it's a good day for a trip to McDonald's.

But I was like, "Why don't we go to the suq, see what kind of places they have down there..."

Andrew thought that was a great idea, so that's what we did. Even though it was hot.

The architecture of the suq is traditional, though most of it is rebuilt (having burned down in a fire in the early 2000s). And, of course, there are some...art installations to be found...like this golden thumb:

That's a little less traditional, probably, but still fun to encounter.

It's title "Pouce," which is French for thumb.

We wandered around for a bit, stumbling (with elated relief) into the air conditioned section of the market:

Each of the vents in the walkway are spouting out air conditioned...air. Apparently it's only turned on for a few hours in the evening (and apparently is quite new—apparently they were just installed last year). It's only on one stretch of the suq, but it certainly is a good way to take a little break from the heat.

Here are the kids giving a kitty some attention:

And here's a view of the Sheikh Abdulla Bin Zaid Al Mahmoud Islamic Cultural Center (and mosque). The children had wondered whether we might be able to visit and we certainly can (since it is a cultural center aimed at helping foreigners, such as ourselves, learn more about the culture here). So that was nice to learn!

I feel like we've been doing so much other research about life in Qatar (and figuring out things like how, precisely, one goes about selling a house) that we haven't done much research about what touristy things we might want to do (nor have we had time for much tourism with the semester starting and trying to get all our residency stuff done). But...I'm hopeful things will feel more stable soon...

Andrew wanted to hear the call to prayer in the suq, so we waited until 7:30 to find a restaurant so we could be nearby the mosques during the adhan. I won't say that the call to prayer is ever disappointing to hear, but we've mostly heard it played quietly over the speakers in the mall or the library, almost like soft background music. We had high hopes that the muezzin at the suq would really belt it out...the way they did in Cairo when we lived there...but it ended up being much quieter than we expected (which was a little disappointing).

It's rather a long and heated debate in Cairo, with attempts to standardize an adhan broadcast rather than allow individual muezzins to make the all to prayer by their own clock (and speed and volume). As of yet, it seems they haven't quite managed to roll out a complete system, so Cairo is still loud (and lovely, I imagine) at call to prayer times.

While it's nice to not have the call to prayer be so...interruptive...to my day, I was rather hoping to hear it more than I have here so far. Perhaps if we live near a neighbourhood mosque we'll hear the call to prayer throughout the day...perhaps...

Oh! We ended up eating at Zaatar w Zeit, which was great!

There was a large cockroach staring at us from the wall the whole time we ate and while there was a time that might have grossed me out...it honestly didn't. After living in Georgia for seven years, having a large cockroach or two (depending on the season) scamper across the dining room falls under perfectly acceptable parameters for health and safety as far as I'm concerned.

We always had palmetto bugs sneaking into the house.

We call them palmetto bugs in the south so they don't sound like cockroaches...but they're definitely roaches.

You just trap 'em and toss 'em back outside—no big deal.

So the cockroach didn't bother us a bit (though I know that it would have bothered me-from-twenty-years-ago), the food was delicious, and we had fun exploring a bit of the city (and, of course, getting the window seats on the metro).

Gold club lite

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:13:53 +0000

Every metro train here has a "gold club" car, followed by a "family" car, followed by however many "standard" cars. We have mostly travelled in the family car, although I don't know why because this isn't Moscow or London or DC or Cairo or Rome—Doha has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. The likelihood of getting harassed or assaulted or pickpocketed on the train in Doha is virtually nil.

But the first time we rode the metro here everyone directed us down to the family car, so...that's where we sat and then, as creatures of habit, that's where we continued to sit.

The children—particularly Phoebe—have been staring at the "gold club" car with quite a lot of longing (perhaps even with a tinge of coveting). You see, there are two chairs at the front of the "gold club" car, through which you can see out the window and down the metro tunnel and that is very exciting.

Sure, there are windows on the side of the train, but it's really so dark that you can't see much of anything through them (so they're a little disappointing—our friends went to a Harry Potter themed restaurant and were telling us that the windows of the train cars were screens that showed scenery passing by...perhaps the metro also needs these windows).

Here are the kids staring into the gold car, wishing they could use those seats. But a ride in the gold club car costs a whopping 10 QAR (while standard fare is 2 QAR...which is only like $2.75 compared to 55 cents...which is still honestly a good price for a metro ride...but you also have to buy a gold club membership and...anyway...we just keep telling Phoebe no):

I was talking to Andrew about Phoebe's wish to ride in those seats at the window while we were coming home on the metro from the library together last week and he said, "Oh, those seats? The last standard car has those seats as well."

They do? Well!

On Thursday night we went to Suq Waqif using the metro (it was our first time getting on the gold line!) and as a special treat, we purposely headed to the very last "standard" car and boarded there. There was a man sitting in one of those seats, but when he saw the children all bouncing up and down and squealing, he offered to move so they could use both seats (which was so kind).

They loved getting to watch the tunnel unfold before them (or collapse behind them...technically we were moving "backwards" from this point):

We only went two stops, I think, on this train, and then had to get up and switch for another line and when we did another family with several young kids piled into the seats after us. "Thank you! Thank you!" the children all cried. So apparently we're not the only ones excited about this.

Our desired seats were already occupied on the next train, so we just stood in the aisle until those riders got off and then sat down to enjoy another short ride with the window view before making it to our final destination.

What lucky kids!

(I have a feeling this is going to be a "thing" while riding the metro for the next little while...but at least I might not have to listen to Phoebe whine about not getting to ride in the gold car. See, Phoebe—I do want you to sit in the very front/back seat and look out the window!)

Look! A diversion!

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 18:46:44 +0000

Last week we were on our way to church, all piled into one large Uber, when we saw a big sign with flashing lights proclaiming: DIVERSION!! →

"Look!" I whispered to Miriam. "A diversion!"

"Where?!" she gasped, playing along.

One of the oldest tropes in the book. Unfortunately, I was too slow to take a picture.

What it really was doing, of course, was pointing out a detour route.

*****

Miriam was called as the ward pianist on Friday morning. She's the first one in the family with a calling!

And it's pretty good timing, too, because we just got Miriam's organ manuals set up! Her pedalboard will soon be on its way from Germany. We shipped them to our friend's house because...we don't have a permanent address yet...and they brought them along with them when they dropped Zoë and Alexander off after their sleepover (Wednesday to Thursday). They arrived a lot sooner than I thought they would, all things considered.

Here's Phoebe helping to open the box:

And here's Miriam playing a song after she and Andrew got the computer system all set up:

Our church building only has an electric piano, but we're hoping we can get her some practice time on a real pipe organ. Some other friends of ours attend a church in church city that has an organ, so it's possible she'd be allowed to practice there on occasion.

We're working on getting a (used) piano but it's...proving trickier than I'd hoped.

Update: We got a piano! The first piano I was hoping for was sold before we committed a pick up time, but immediately after that another piano person I'd messaged (like a week ago) finally messaged me back. It was actually the very same piano for the very same price, but in much better condition. This second family had moved here just before the, uh, conflict...and decided not to return after evacuating. So they had only used the piano a few times before they left (the pedals were still in bubblewrap and everything). As it happened, the father of the family was arriving in Qatar on Saturday afternoon to work on emptying out the apartment a bit so if I could arrange for pick up Saturday evening the piano would be ours.

Luckily, a friend in the ward had offered us the use of their vehicle. They actually just went and picked up the piano for us and dropped it off at the hotel, which was very kind.

The kids have been loving (and fighting over) practicing the piano again!

*****

Our numbers at church continue to swell. When we arrived at the beginning of August, attendance was still paltry. Many families were still away for the summer (or even longer, having been evacuated), but they're slowly trickling back in.

Benjamin and Miriam are amazed at how many youth there are.

The primary still feels somewhat small. Zoë and Alexander are both currently the only children their age.

Phoebe was alone the first week as well—in fact, there were so few kids that all the primary children met together in the same class! But they're splitting into classes now. And today a family with three little girls sat behind us and they were all very interested in Phoebe. They started passing her stickers to put on her drawings, which was quite cute, and then right after the closing prayer one of the little girls said to me, "Can Phoebe come inside my house?"

"She is very interested having Phoebe come over to play," her mother explained (this family is from Finland).

"Are you the same age as me?" the girl asked Phoebe. "I'm four!"

"Then...yes!" Phoebe said, delighted. "I am also four!"

She just invited Phoebe to her birthday party next month (like, in September).

It sounds like we might still have a few kids yet to arrive, so things are looking up in that department!

*****

The youth went bowling for their first youth activity, which Miriam and Benjamin reported was fun. They're excited for their activity this coming week as well!

Mango Pickle

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 07:39:46 +0000

In 2020, we finally got around to watching the eleventh season of Doctor Who, the sixth episode of which, "Demons of the Punjab," centers around the Partition of India in 1947.

Sometimes people ask me about our homeschool curriculum, and I tell them that we use such and such for math (Singapore Math, Beast Academy, Art of Problem Solving, Khan Academy, CTC Math...) and such and such for science (Mr. Q, Science Mom...) and then I about fall apart at social and language studies because the answer of, "Well, we kind of just do whatever suits our fancy..." doesn't entirely sit well with everyone.

That is to say, in 2020 we watched "Demons of the Punjab" and then fell into a unit on the history of India...as best we could. We watched things like Lagaan and Bride and Prejudice. We read The Night Diary. We read The History of India for Children. We read Mangoes, Mischief, and Tales of Friendship: Stories from India—this particular collection of stories was very impactful for the children.

The main character frequently discussed his love for mango pickle and the kids were anxious to try it.

But...I dunno...it was the middle of COVID...so we weren't spending time looking for mango pickle, I guess. We were more concerned with acquiring, like, toilet paper and hand sanitizer and things like that.

I don't remember what research we did on mango pickle, all I know is that it was described in such a tantalizing way that the kids have been thinking about it for the past six years. They've brought it up regularly. We have never been able to satisfy their curiosity...until now.

We were at Carrefour, wandering down one aisle or another, when I spotted a jar of mango pickle.

Of course we had to get a jar!

The kids were so excited to try it...before being supremely disappointed.

Mango pickle is an acquired taste, it seems. It was strong and mouth-puckery and...no one had very much.

We were gasping for air after our sampling. I don't exactly know why—it's not particularly spicy or sour...but it is pungent.

We put it back in the fridge and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Perhaps, I thought, we could offer it to some friends...

Lucky for us, we ended up having dinner with friends last night! We had aloo gobi, rice, and dal...with a jar of mango pickle.

"Is that mango pickle?!" I asked. "We read about it in a book years ago and the kids have wanted to try it ever since! We found some in the store here and tried it, but it was kind of like meeting your hero—we found that we didn't like it all! It was so strong! I think...we must be eating it wrong..."

Turns out we were!

(Probably should have done some more research before diving into the jar).

It's a condiment, not a staple—just a small portion mixed into a serving of rice will spice things up nicely. You don't typically just...eat it.

I think we were imagining something more like burong mangga, Filipino pickled mango, which can be eaten like a traditional Western-style pickle.

Well, good

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:33:41 +0000

This morning I was doing Phoebe's hair while she was playing Minecraft and she was prattling on and on about everything:

"Mom! Do you want to look at my house? I decorated it so goodly! I mean well. I decorated it well. Did you know that well and good are the same word, but you can only use them sometimes. You can't say that you do anything goodly. You do things well. Not well-ly, either. Just well. Like, I decorated my house well, you do my hair well. But things can be good, I think. Like this is a good house or this is a good hairstyle. You can't say well hairstyle. It's always good."

*****

Miriam and I are watching The Other Bennet Sister, certainly a pleasant watch (which diverts from Austen quite markedly, is drowning in anachronisms, and seems to be at least a little cloying (according to the linked-to review)—not only because our television seems stuck on "soap opera effect"). I'm reading The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion and this series seems like a lovely companion to that. I'm pretty unconcerned with doing Jane Austen justice or perfectly replicating society as it was during the Regency or Victorian eras. I'm simply happy to enjoy a rather wholesome retreat from the world and both serve that purpose.

Light, fluffy, uplifting, occasionally quite humorous.

When Mary is talking with Mr. Sparrow at a ball, he mentions something about "less oysters" and Mary quickly says, "Fewer. It's fewer oysters; not less." Miriam and I just about died laughing. I don't know that this was a joke in the series, per se, but it certainly is an ongoing joke at our house.

We have discussed the distinction between countable and non-countable nouns.

Less salt. Less water. Less time.

Fewer boxes. Fewer cats. Fewer days.

But it is still something that trips up the children...and everybody, really.

Like, you can't have a sign at the grocery store checkout that says, "10 items or less" because...you can't have less items.

Items are countable, so you would have fewer items.

And yet we have signs that say "10 items or less."

It doesn't really matter because it's understandable either way (and isn't that the purpose of language—to communicate an idea, whether the grammar is correct or not). And yet, somehow it's still important to learn and understand these rules (that are constantly shifting anyway).

So at our house the children correct each other anytime anyone says less or fewer. It doesn't even matter if the original statement was correct or not.

If one of the children says, for example, "There were less people there than I expected," someone will shout out "FEWER!" (which is true).

But if one of the children says, for example, "I wish there was less broth in my bowl," someone will also shout out, "FEWER!" (even though that would be an overcorrection because "less broth" is correct). Or if they say, "I wish I had fewer problems to deal with," someone will shout out "LESS!" (also an incorrect correction).

The result is that we are more confused than ever about this little grammatical rule at our house. On the plus side, we do often take time to consider whether the original or corrected statement is correct so analyze this rule a lot more often than is perhaps normal, so when it comes down to it the children know how to test whether a statement is correct or not.

*****

I do have to say that I have a soft place in my heart for Mary Bennet.

When I lived in High River, my Young Women's president (and/or seminary teacher—I can't remember what her calling was at the time of the play, but she was both YW president and seminary teacher for me and thus really had quite an impact in my life) wrote a musical called Skunks and Roses, which was a countrified retelling of Pride and Prejudice.

I thought it was delightful. And it was so much work on her part—she wrote the entire script, she wrote the songs, she choreographed the dances, she found costumes, built sets, made casting decisions, directed, advertised... She had plenty of helpers, I'm sure, but she did a lot of the work on her own.

I didn't think much of things at the time, because I was just pleased involved at all. I had recently begun homeschooling because I was having such a terrible time with bullying in middle school and didn't really feel like I fit in anywhere. Though I felt close to the youth at church, but have since learned that—although I remain friends with a few of the youth to this day—I was actually rather unliked by many.

Or at any rate, I was considered awkward, uncool, untrendy, undesirable. A gangly, bespectacled nerd.

I was cast as Mary Bennet and was directed to do all sorts of embarrassing things on stage (while the daughter of the YW leader was cast as our charming and beautiful protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet).

Largely I was fine with it because I quite enjoy musicals and acting and understand the importance of the comic relief.

But you should also know that my brother was cast as Mr. Collins.

He didn't really mind that either, being perfectly willing to get up on stage to portray a rather insufferable character. But I just think, in retrospect, that it was altogether uncool to have written such obnoxious characters and then cast my brother and I in them (when we both sang and danced on the regular...yet were not cast in singing and dancing roles, which were given to the "cool" kids, who didn't regularly sing and dance...though fun to give them the experience, it also served to inflate their heads regarding their opinions of their looks and personalities; we heard many "type-casting" jokes, which I laughed about along with everybody else, but now that I'm reflecting on these memories I'm thinking, "Hey, wait a minute..." And perhaps this was more innocent on the part of my YW leader, but I think it was perhaps a little less innocent when it came to our peers).

Anyway, while Mary's portrayal as a quirky, self-righteous, untalented, socially awkward nobody is tangentially interesting to the plot of Pride and Prejudice (I suppose), I do appreciate a good redemptive retelling of her character.

My own good friend Kathy wrote a charming (and redemptive) series about The Secret Life of Mary Bennet and I care about her opinion immensely. She highly recommended The Other Bennet Sister, calling it an absolute must—charming, funny, delightful.

We could do with less (fewer!) Jane Austen purists in the world, I think.

What's in a name?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:29:46 +0000

In 2013, Qtel (Qatar's leading telecommunications company) decided to rebrand themselves as Ooredo. Ooredo has a very visible presence in Qatar today, being one of their leading telecommunications companies, but there is still evidence of Qtel's existence in utility infrastructure throughout Doha.

I'm a little obsessed with these covers because in Arabic it phonetically spells out Qtel...like kyoo-tell:

And it just makes me laugh a little every time I see one of these because the Q in Qtel is obviously for Qatar...and in Arabic Qatar starts with a ق (q), not a ك (k). Perhaps I'm just easily amused.

Anyway, Ooredo essentially means "I want" in Arabic and was "chosen...to reflect the aspirations of our customers and our core belief that we can enrich people’s lives and stimulate human growth in the communities where we operate.” And those communities are rather widespread! They also have telecommunications holdings in Indonesia, Kuwait, Oman, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Maldives, and Palestine.

The Ooredo branding allowed the company to get all their acquired companies under one parent-company umbrella.

*****

The Persian Gulf is frequently referred to as the Arabian Gulf (or simply as "The Gulf") on this particular side of The Gulf, though the name hasn't achieved global traction. Thinking about renaming things made me laugh about the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America (which a little less than 1/3 of Americans actually want) and, just today, about a certain president declaring that Lake Ontario shall henceforth be known as Lake America.

It's very Endora-coded behaviour, I think.

There's a line Endora (Samantha's mother) says that runs through my mind every now and then (season 2, episode 18). When Darrin and Samantha first have their baby and Endora appears and says she's fine with whatever name the couple picks because, "Whatever you call her, I shall call her Tabatha."

It always just felt so ridiculously entitled to me—but that's Endora for you.

And perhaps it's a bad example because in the end Darrin agrees to name the baby Tabitha (of course that's only after Endora engages in all kinds of shenanigans to gaslight Darrin into agreeing, of course). But the ridiculousness of the entire situation feels remarkably similar to all these executive orders (*cough*vanity projects*cough*) renaming various entities.

At the end of the day, everyone will just call it whatever they'd like, anyway.

So Ontario it remains (for most of the world).

As Prime Minister Carney so level-headedly wrote:

"The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.

Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.

Whatever you call it, Mr. President, we shall call it Lake Ontario.

Ophthalmology, gastroenterology—what's the difference?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:19:54 +0000

Let me begin by stating that I'm feeling much better. So much better that I almost feel silly for having gone to the doctor at all. But, honestly, there were some concerning symptoms so...anyway...

The clinic was on the third floor of the mall across the street. Rather, it was the third floor of the mall. It was a clinic with everything: pediatrics, OB/GYN, dental, vision, surgery, x-ray, lab, pharmacy, family practice, and just about every speciality one could think of. Quite convenient to having everything together, I think.

Andrew asked if I wanted him to come home to go to the clinic with me, or watch the kids, or something...but I told him it was fine. The waiting rooms are gender-segregated anyway. And the big kids could watch the little kids while I was gone.

I had to head over to make an appointment. And then I had to head back over for my appointment.

But it was all fairly straightforward, except for my own confusion when the front desk handed me my paperwork and told me to proceed to clinic 3 and take a seat.

Actually, that part wasn't terribly confusing. I understood that perfectly well.

My confusion set in when I got to clinic 3 was it labeled quite clearly—in large capital letters—OPHTHALMOLOGY.

Huh.

I walked into the office and looked around. There were pamphlets about eye health on the counter. There were posters about eye health on the walls. There was a sign on the desk that said "Office of Ophthalmology."

Now, I love a good ophthalmologist as much as the next person, but I began to feel that perhaps I wasn't in the right place. Call it a gut instinct (no pun intended).

So I went up to the desk and said to the receptionist, "The front desk told me to come to clinic 3, but...I'm not sure I'm in the right place."

The receptionist looked at me, looked at her screen, looked back at me.

"Nancy?" she asked.

"Yes."

"For gastroenterology?"

"Yes."

"You're in the right place. Have a seat."

I did end up meeting with the gastroenterologist, who was very kind and reassuring. In fact, everyone is. Practically every person from the person whose job it was to stand by the automated self-serve ticket kiosk to help people know which buttons they should press...to the pharmacist who handed me my medication...to the person I spoke to on the phone regarding insurance...they all mentioned how sorry they were that I needed to be there and wished that I would feel better soon.

Anyway...that was the only strange thing about the appointment. I'm not sure why ophthalmology needed to have a huge capital letters proclaiming its location when gastroenterology got...nothing. Perhaps to reassure patients who can't see well that they're in the right place.

I told Rachel that this is where the saying "your eyes are bigger than your stomach" comes from—mixing up ophthalmology and gastroenterology.

"It's always a good day for lemonade in the desert!"

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:03:42 +0000

This morning Phoebe didn't wake up until 9:00 (which is incredible, considering Alexander and Zoë, who were away at a sleepover, have been claiming it's been she waking them up early in the morning) and Miriam left for the library around 9:15, so it was just Phoebe and me at home for about an hour before the bigger kids came home.

She stared out of the window for a long time (we are all still charmed by the view) before sighing and saying, "It's always a good day for lemonade in the desert!"

So those are her window-staring thoughts, apparently.

*****

Last night at 10 PM it was 34°C (93°F), with a dew point of 31°C (88°F), and a humidity level of 84%. This meant that at the 40th floor we saw a lot of dew forming—so much that we could almost imagine it was raining!

Our windows are often much clearer at night, as you can see below: