Apparently, it has become a special treat to drive over to FOB Diamondback for a meal every now and then. Because I needed to go to the APO to mail Gabe’s birthday present, I went with the gang for lunch at Diamondback yesterday. I would say that the grass is always greener, but we don’t have any grass here like they do in Tikrit! Anyway, the food was fine, nothing really to write home about. That still doesn’t keep me from blogging about it though. After lunch, Glenn and I went to the barber, Robert ran an errand, Jeremy wandered around the PX, and Sarah went to the beauty shop. After I got my $3 haircut, we went to the APO. They still haven’t fully recovered from the old APO burning down. The forms counter is a folding table on the sidewalk.
You stop at this table first and fill out your customs form. Then you proceed inside the warehouse to have your package inspected. After inspecting the contents, the clerk seals the package and affixes the customs form and any other required labels. Finally, you go to the counter, have your package weighed, and pay the post.
Gabe’s birthday package is on the way. For Josiah’s birthday back in November 2007, I bought him a wooden puzzle box. You have to figure out the secret to get it open. Inside the box, Josiah found a 10,000 Iraqi Dinar note. For Christmas, I bought Gabe his own puzzle box, because he liked Josiah’s so much. The trick to opening Gabe’s box is different than the trick for Josiah’s box. When Gabe finally got his box open, he discovered that it was empty. I guess that’s been on his mind since Christmas because in his email this week he wrote “was there meant to be anything in my box?”.
We were blessed with a couple inches of snow today. Zeke and I went out to have a snowball fight and build a snowman. The snowman has broccoli eyes, a carrot nose, and a celery mouth. He’s wearing Dale’s hat and Gabe’s scarf. Zeke named him Goomba. The kids were released early from school, because the snow turned into freezing rain. When they got home, we all had a snowball fight. I was enjoying myself out in the snow, but I kept hearing my Dad’s voice in my head. “If you don’t shovel the driveway, the slush will freeze and you’ll have ice all winter.” My Dad’s far away in warm and sunny Arizona bothering my Aunt Cita, but I can still hear his voice in my head. Even though I know the temperature will go up tomorrow and melt all the snow, I can’t break with fundamental Meloch beliefs about furnace filters and shoveling. So, I grabbed the snow shovel and got to work. The kids then had plenty of practice trying to hit a moving target.
Yesterday, Josiah participated in the school wide spelling bee for seventh grade. Gabe is participating in the second grade bee on Friday. I was testing Josiah on his word list over the weekend in between football downs. He would periodically ask me, “Can you use the word in a sentence?” To which I’d reply either, “No. I can not,” or “I have no idea what verdure means.” I thought I had a fairly large vocabulary until I realized I didn’t know a quarter of the seventh grade spelling bee list. I was also no help when it came time to pronounce the words. The words are followed by phonetic symbols which would be helpful if I knew how an upside down e or an a with an umlout (Karl will have to give the proper German spelling of that word) sounds. So far, Josiah has been reading Gabe his words. I feel the boy has a better chance that way. At the Bee yesterday, Josiah came in 4th place and advanced to the next round. If he hopes to win, I think he would be wise to hire a new coach.
As part of the preparations for an upcoming construction project, we conducted a partnering meeting. In addition to USACE personnel, the participants included representatives from the Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), the construction company, the governor’s office, and the appropriate directorate from the provincial council. I can’t go into any specifics about the project due to security concerns. The meeting was held in the Provincial Hall in downtown Mosul.
The highlight of the meeting actually happened before the meeting began. While we were standing around engaged in small talk, one of the Iraqi aides came into the meeting room and handed me a small porcelain coffee cup. He then proceeded to pour about 1 finger of the thickest coffee I had ever seen into the cup. I’ve had Turkish coffee before, and this coffee makes Turkish coffee seem like a nice cup of tea. Anyway, after he poured my shot of coffee, the aide just stood there looking at me. So I drank the coffee in 1 gulp and handed the cup back to him. He then took the same cup, handed it to the next person, poured the coffee, and stood there. The aide repeated this process with the same cup for each person in the meeting.
The following day, we had a meeting with the Governor of Ninewa, Mr Duraid Kashmoula. He had been unable to attend the partnering meeting, so we shared with him the outcomes of the meeting. Once again, we got treated to the same coffee ceremony from the previous day. However, this aide was not as patient as the earlier one. He used 2 cups to get done twice as quickly. The strangest thing was that throughout our meeting, the Governor never turned off the TV. At one point, he did turn the sound down a little, but that’s it. It felt very familiar to me!
This week was Spirit Week at the kids school. Zeke has been a little disgruntled by the unacceptable clothing worn throughout the week by his siblings. On Monday, when we went to pick them up from school, he looked at all the kids and declared, “It’s not pajama time!” Zeke doesn’t quite understand why you have a pajama day, crazy hat day, and favorite team day. Yesterday for chapel, the high school cheerleaders came to fire up the Stafford campus. They did some stunts and a dance routine and led the classes in the cheer “Hey Eagles are you there?” Abby asked me what I thought about the cheerleaders. Abby’s teacher told her class that she would do away with the sport of cheerleading if she could. I reluctantly had to admit that I had been a cheerleader. I was terrible at basketball, volleyball, and track. I did play softball in the summer, but softball didn’t count as a school varsity sport. I desperately wanted to earn a letter, so I could wear a letterman’s jacket. Cheerleading was the means to the end. Abby asked if I wanted the letterman’s jacket to be cool. I had to admit that was one of my attempts to be cool. I never did quite succeed in being cool, but I did wear a letterman’s jacket. Gabe could not fathom that his mother had been a cheerleader, so I pulled out my old yearbook to show him the pictures. Josiah looked at the pictures and said we all looked like the people in the movie Back to the Future. Zeke looked at my pictures and said, “Mommy, what happened to your hair?” He did not care for the clothes I was wearing either. “What happened to your pants? What happened to your shirt?” Apparently the styles of the 80s don’t appeal to him.
