AbezAbez Is... 50% White, 50 % Pakistani, Muslim Hijab-wearing type female, Daughter of Momma, Sister of Owlie Wife of HF, Momma of Khalid, a special little boy with Autism, and Iman, a special little girl with especially big hair, Writer, Graphic Designer, Editor, Freelancer, Blogger, Inhaler of Chocolate
Right Brain Left Brain Islam poetry
Mortal Wounds BebeFiles Husbandfiles

 
My sister, De Owl

My Husband, who never updates!

Mona, who I don't visit enough

Hemlock, who I don't hug enough

Baji, the orginal robot monkey pirate

Prometheus, who buts brains to blog about Autism

Socrates, a blogger with Asperger's

Jo, a funnier Autism mom with a great blog

Autism Watch-  for logic-based information

ASAT- Assosciation for Science in Autism Treatments

Quack Watch- for current news and info on all sort of medical treatments

Expat Women Blog Directory

My Cousin- really, he's my cousin.  Wish he would update more.

 
 
 
 

Monday, December 25, 2006

Werkin it



Or at the very least, werkin.

There are four more days until HF returns, and I've found that the best way to make time go faster is to attach it to a deadline. See, if I focus on HF's return alone for the 29th, then time drags its feet and twiddles it thumbs and dawdles all over the dang place. However, if I, say... take a copywriting job on ridiculously short notice that must be completed the 28th, then suddenly time picks its feet up and starts hurdle-jumping over the little lines that divide days in my monthly planner. Because time is annoying like that.


So I've picked up the job for the >>Large Hoity-Toity Food Conference Name Here<< that right now involves rewriting their brochures, then their posters, and then their banners, etc. Alhamdulillah for the work. Now if only I could get Bebeface to agree with the schedule. See, if I could get him to change his own diaper, then I could finish this paragraph and be done with the page. However, according to the Babycenter.com calendar of developmental milestones, Khalid is a long way off from that, so far off, in fact, that it's not even mentioned on the Year One page. Maybe it's on Year Two? Developmental milestones are annoying like that.

Off we go, Bebeface Beckons.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

You'll understand when you get married and have kids

HF has been internationally away for the last 11 days, and top of that, Khalid choked on a carrot today. Yes, these two are related.

Today Bebeface swallowed a huge piece of carrot at dinner and started gasping for breath. I picked him up, turned him over and slapped him on the back repeatedly before he finally coughed the piece up, vomited, and started crying. The whole episode took twenty seconds at the most, and we had guests over for dinner who, I am sure, probably did not notice anything beyond a baby coughing up a carrot bit and then being carried out of the room. Truth is that I took him out of the room so that I wouldn't be seen holding him tightly and trying not to cry.

There was a friend of mine, a woman my mother's age, who I always knew as being very flamboyant, very loud, very sparkly in the way she spoke and the way she acted and the way she dressed. She was the 50-year old with the perfectly blonde hair and the short skirt. I remember once commenting to a mutual friend about how cheerful she always was, and the mutual friend said, "Yes, it's nice to see her like this now. After her son and husband died she went into depression for a few years."

I'd had no idea. Her husband and only son had died only a few years ago in a car accident, and not only had she never brought it up, she seemed alright. She was colorful. She was alive.

(I later learned, she was lonely)

When I knew her, I was single and her story seemed like a tragedy. Now that I am a wife and a momma, her story seems like an apocalypse, an ending of life as we know it, a implosion of the universe itself. How does one recover from that? HF has been gone only 11 days, and I think about him constantly. Khalid gave me a momentary scare, and the tiny glimpse of worry, of fear for my child's life that it caused has had me rattled this entire evening. What if I couldn't get the carrot out? What if he stopped breathing. God, I don't want to think of the what-if's.

(I've been staying at the Chateau these past 11 days and last night I shared a room with Hemmie. "It was an interesting night," she said to me this morning. "You woke up and asked me where Khalid was." Actually, I'd had a bad dream, and when I woke up, I couldn't find Khalid and started to panic. He was in bed next to me, right where I left him, but my sleep-heavy eyes missed his warm little bump under the blanket. )

As I read this over I realize it seems strange, maybe even pathetic to be so attached, or so afraid. The truth is that no one but a mother will know how this feels. Erma Bombeck once said that to have a children was "...to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

She was right, and when you factor in the husband you adore, then your heart is neatly halved before it is removed from your chest and sent on its merry way. There's no way of ever getting it back. You will never stop checking on your child when you know he is asleep. You will pull the covers over your husband if you think he's cold. You will fret when your husband is late, you will lose sleep when your child is sick. You will dance continually between worry and relief, but being worn at by concern for the ones you love is more sweet than bitter. It is part of life, and it is proof that you love them deeply, and thank God, you have someone to love. SubhanAllah for the pain, because it means you have someone to give your heart away to.

Better the ache of love fulfilled than the emptiness of lonely regret.

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Thursday, December 14, 2006

Mortal Wounds: Conflict and Resolution

Abez Presents: How to Mortally Wound Yourself with Lunch

Step1: Make Tuna Corn Chowder yesterday(recipe will follow at bottom of post)
Step2: Reheat bowl of Tuna Corn Chowder in microwave, set on one minute.
Step3: After one minute, take the chowder out to stir it, so that it heats evenly.
Step4: Put spoon into chowder
Step5: Be attacked by superheated flying potato from chowder.
Step6: Catch superheated flying potato- in the eye.

Yes, I burned my eye with a potato. This may be a world's first, and remember, you read it here. Alhamdulillah, I managed to wince in time, and my eyelid caught most of the damage. It hurts though, subhanAllah, and the area around my right eye is quite red.

Facing the pain of betrayal from my own lunch, I decided to take solace in dessert, hence, the second recipe of this post- Conciliatory Icecream Cone.

Mix One scoop Vanilla Icecream with 1 tbs pancake syrup
Add 1 tsp peanutbutter (it rolled away!)
Plop onto an icecream cone.
Nurse your burned eye and enjoy.


Recipe2: Treacherous Tuna Corn Chowder

In roughly two cups water, add:
Can of Mushrooms
Frozen, mixed veggies (greenbeans, peas, carrots, corn)
1 diced potato

And boil until the potatoes are soft and seem broken of their will to retaliate with flying attacks.
Add 3 cups milk, 2 cans of tuna, black pepper, salt, and 4 cloves of garlic that have been finely minced. Or grated. Or mashed into paste. Just destroy them, ok?

Mix 1/3 cup white flour into abt 1/2 cup cold water on the side, add to soup BEFORE it boils. (if you boil milk that has no thickening agent in it, it will split) Allow soup to thicken, add salt and more pepper if you wish.

Allow soup to cool. Reheat a single bowl. Microwave on medium heat. Beware of flying potatoes.

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