the times they are a-changing

i am one of those people that are disgustingly close to their families. i willingly see my family multiple times a week and would cancel with friends to hang out with my siblings. i think they are some of the coolest people on earth (and the most annoying, but i love them anyway), and yesterday they deserted me for the desert. this makes me sad, but i will not dwell on that. instead, i will tell you all about my apartment.

my husband and i (and darcy) live in a one bedroom apartment. i've never thought of it as an itty bitty apartment, because it is not really itty bitty. i mean, yes it's small, but i've seen smaller. aside from the kitchen and bathroom, three are three main rooms in our apartment. over the past couple of days, they have gone through some major transformations.

my favorite room in the apartment is probably the tower. the first time my grandma visited us, she mentioned that the shape of room reminded her of a tower, and well... it stuck. the tower houses most of my books (except for the three piles that live on my nightstand) and has like a million windows so it's always filled with natural light - my favorite thing. in pre-darcy days i did yoga every morning in my tower, but then darcy moved in and his playpen has taken over my yoga space. (if the apartment people let us, i would take down the playpen, let him run around free, and resume my daily yoga. but they won't.) the tower has now been transformed into my menagerie. aside from darcy with his cage and playpen, it is now the temporary home of tedward berger and louis vuitton (my sister's guinea pigs), with their two cages and playpen. feeding and petting time is now filled with frustrated back leg thumps and desperate squeaks as they all try to be the first fed and the only one being petted. it's fun.

what used to be my living room is now the land of misfit furniture. there was a little red breakfast table with two chairs in the tower that were relocated to the living room to make room for our house guests. the living room - which was never huge - now has two furniture sets crammed into it, looking nicely mismatched and very unbalanced. it is also the summer home of peter, my sister's plant.

my bedroom has become ground zero of the eruption of the volcano of crap. not only is half of my closet laying around the floor and a mountain of laundry by the door, but there are boxes of textbooks between my side of the bed and window that were moved from the tower, boxes of art supplies littered here and there, tissue paper and gift bags, and just random crap that has been thrown into the room to make the rest of the apartment look neat. it's kind of like one giant closet or junk drawer.

i also offered our bedroom to my grandmother in august, so i may have to clean it just in case she takes me up on the offer. (she didn't seem too taken by the idea at the time but you never know). i'm not sure where i'll move anything which probably means that it'll go from an eruption of crap to semi-organized crap, but i don't think she'll mind.

oh, and during all of this moving around of stuff i discovered that i'm a bit of a packrat and i should maybe try and stop doing that.

*Times They Are A-Changing - Bob Dylan

but I don't wanna go home where they all stare at me

i wrote a few posts ago about how i feel completely at home both in america and saudi arabia. well, i think it's important to point out that, while that's true, i also don't really belong in either place, both see me as 'other.' and while i am comfortable with both people, with both cultures, i'm not really a part of either. in america, i'm seen as a saudi. in saudi arabia, i'm seen as the american. so while being half saudi-half american may get me back stage passes to both cultures, i'm definitely not considered part of either band.

i'm scrutinized in both places - everything i say, everything i do. the nuances of the rules of arab society sometimes fly straight over my head, but that's okay because "i'm the american." i'm expected to not know how to do anything, to make a complete idiot of myself. people wait for it to happen. and though the people in america may not be as watchful for every sign that i dont belong as some of the people over here, they are still watchful, or some of them are at least. i'm muslim, i'm saudi... which, to some, means i'm trouble. even those that don't think that, still see a difference between me and themselves, despite the fact that we are both americans.

i'm a person that likes to blend into the background. i prefer not to be the center of attention. but no matter which place i go, though they are both home, people stare. it's not alllll the time, and you get used to it and barely notice it after a while, but it's still there. the two cultures are polar opposites, so it's natural that they won't overlap smoothly, but sometimes i kinda wish they would.

it might seem impossible that i can feel completely at home and completely alienated in both places at the exact same time, but therin lies the paradox.

*War Sweater - Wakey!Wakey!

vacation all i ever wanted

since, as anisah very thoughfully points out to me repeatedly, i have no life, i guess i'll be blogging here more than i expected to. anyways, my first full day here has come to an end, and once again, i'm hit by that realization that "it feels like we never left." like really. we fall into the same routine as we've had for practically our entire life.we catch up with the stories we've missed out on and notice how big the kids are, but it doesnt feel like we've been gone an entire year. saudi arabia for me is just as much home as america is. i have my room filled with useless crap (though a loooot less than my american room). i have a closet full of clothes i ignore to wear my favorite stuff. we have our car and our restaurants and our daily schedule. the day i get to either place i'm at home. there's no adjustment period. no jet lag. no nothing.

which, in a sense, is really great. and i love the fact that i'm completely comfortable in both places (though i have to admit i'm socially awkward and that's a bigger problem here than in america). but at the same time, i wanna have a summer vacation for once. you know, actually go somewhere new... somewhere i don't know everyone, somewhere i live out of a suitcase, somewhere i dont have to clean the house or do the laundry or stock up a fridge. a vacation.

today, i watched my first ever episode of star academy. i can finally consider myself arab lol. i have to admit, i see the addictiveness factor. we sat staring at them walk around in complete boredom and play on paint for hours. nothing exciting, yet we couldnt seem to change the channel. it's the same appeal teletubbies has for little kids.

on a completely unrelated note, i just saw the new moon trailer on a blog i follow. it reminded me of something i realized on the airplane. i was watching this movie with robert deniro and it had kristen stewart in it. at one point of the movie, she's supposed to be confused or hiding something or whatever... i kinda forgot. but she does this spastic facial features thing. and that was what i hated most about her acting in twilight. that face - or series of faces - that just annoyed me beyond belief. i generally like her and used to think that she only did that in twilight (like in the bio class scene) because it was a movie that should've just stayed a book. but apparently not. i'm not sure how i feel about this. how did i not notice it before??

*Vacation - The Go-Go's