The big 4-0

I celebrated my 40th birthday last week. I used to think 40 seemed so old. We had to celebrate it on a different day than my actual b-day because there was a lot going on. Just as well because that day didn't go so great.

After the kids got home from school I dropped Petey and Critter off at the Ambassador's residence at the embassy for a mutual activity of an etiquette dinner. The ambassador and family are LDS. The ambassador didn't attend the dinner but it was his wife who taught the kids what fork to use, etc.

Then I took Red to a friend's b-day party. This party was at a place called "Playtime." We walked in and it was a kids' paradise (well, for the Middle East it was pretty good). There were different areas like an art center where the kids could paint a mural on some paper mounted to a wall, a chill area with soft couches and such, a place to buy food, a place to buy junk toys, a place for coin rides, a bouncy play area, etc. There were also two clowns performing when we arrived. Red was scared stiff. He huddled into me and didn't want me to leave. I gave him a little "tough love" and told him if he went over and participated with the other kids I would stay a while and watch. If he didn't participate then I would leave him right now sitting there on the bench all by himself. He chose to go sit with the other kids and I kept my promise to stay and watch a while. However, I only had to stay a few more minutes because once he got involved he started having fun and he didn't mind me leaving. In fact, when I came back to pick him up, he didn't want to leave. I only got him out the door when I pointed out that the other kids were also leaving and getting a party favor gift as they walked out the door. In order to get the gift, he was going to have to leave.

After leaving Red at the party, I raced home to get a map of where the next stop would be (a b-day party for Petey's friend), then went back to the embassy to pick up Petey and Critter. Fortunately, and quite by accident, we found where Petey needed to be. Then it was back to pick up Red. I took Critter and Red home where I stayed for about an hour before heading back out to pick up Batman from a friend's house where he'd gone after school. (Todd was flying in from Egypt that night so he arrived early evening but fortunately took a taxi home.)

It was dark when I picked up Batman and I was in an area that was unfamiliar to me. I knew what road I needed to get to so I started heading toward it and I realized too late that I was headed the wrong way down a one-way road. It didn't help me that there were cars parked the wrong way down the one-way road because I really thought I was going the right way. I've commented on ME driving before and it isn't pleasant. Lots of people go the wrong way down a one way street--they just don't do it 9:00 on a Thursday night (one of the heaviest traffic times in Jordan.) I arrived at the street I was trying to get to but I was having to squeeze between cars parked along side the road on my right, the cars double parked on my left (there's a very popular coffee shop at the intersection) and the traffic coming at me trying trying to squeeze by the parked cars and me. I tried to turn right onto the correct road but I took the turn too sharp and I scraped the bumper of a parked car on my right. I pulled off his bumper and there was a little scrape on our van. The damage was fairly minimal considering the sound it made as I was peeling off that guy's bumper. Oooops.

Everyone was very nice--the other driver, a man who saw the whole thing, etc. I called Todd who called Firas to get Abu Wassam's number. (Abu W is the man we rent the van from--Firas is our landlord's nephew whose fulltime job has become taking care of us since we moved to Jordan.) When Firas heard I was in an accident he called me to find out where I was and he came and talked Arabic to the man I hit since that man spoke little English. Firas arranged with him to meet at the car garage on Saturday to get his car fixed and said there was no need to involve the police. Evidently here if you get the police involved you have to go to the police station to fill out reports, it takes hours, and there is a huge fee that has to be paid by the person who is at fault (that would be me :) We love Firas who takes care of everything for us. And that Saturday Firas spent practically the whole day at the garage with this man that I hit helping get his car fixed. I spent Saturday in my pajamas. More on that in a minute.

After all the information had been exchanged for the accident, Firas was worried about my phychological state and since he lives by us, he offered to follow me home. I still needed to go pick up Petey from her party. I only knew one way to get there (remember I found it quite by accident) so again Firas helped out by letting me follow him and showing me a shorter way to get there from where the accident happened. I made it right on time picking up Petey thanks to Firas.

I finally made it home about 10:30 pm and was trying to relax when I saw the biggest spider I've ever seen crawl across my kitchen wall. Actually, I have seen bigger spiders but they were in magazine pictures or in cages. This was an "in-real-life-wild-spider." Those of you who know me know spiders cause me quite a bit of angst. If Todd isn't home, Batman is usually the creepy-crawly thing killer. But even he wouldn't go near this spider. It was that big and ugly. Fortunately Todd was home and he agreed to take care of it. His usual method of getting the spiders for me is wadding up a piece of tissue and smashing it. This spider was even too big for that. He had to roll up some newspaper for this one. After he hit it, it fell down to a desk underneath. Then he got out the tissue to pick it up. Just before he threw it away he was examining it in the tissue and I heard Todd yell out like a little girl and drop the tissue in the garbage. Evidently the spiders' leg moved and it even creeped out Todd. If I had been in a better mental state I might have taken a picture but I didn't.

So the actual birthday day didn't end so well. Thankfully we'd planned on celebrating my birthday on Saturday. The kids brought me breakfast in bed. I stayed in my pajamas all day while Todd took the kids on errands and to the Children's Museum. I had the house to myself. My dream vacation. That night we took the family and Firas out to eat at Applebees. I did change out of my pajamas for that. Todd bought a delicious chocolate cake from a bakery and we came home and had cake and icecream. A great day.