The Post-Dubai Chronicles

One November birthday down, we headed into this latest period with two more to go. Thankfully, only one of the birthdays was for an immature child; Christian's birthday, on the other hand, was easy to arrange. For Rich's birthday, we visited the Dubai Museum in the afternoon and then had a fabulous authentic Emirati meal in the only really authentic part of Dubai: Bastakiya. After dinner, we took a taxi-boat across the Dubai Creek and visited the famous gold souk where we met an Iranian who is a Baptist and who eventually offered to size down Amy's wedding band at no charge. When I say "eventually," I mean eventually. The guy peered over at Amy's ring--nearly falling off her ring finger--and asked me if I'd been feeding her. I replied that a saucer of gruel is hard to fit between the iron bars once a day. So, he offered us tea, talked to us about life in his home country, showed us around his shop and at the very end announced, he'd give us a "great price" on a channel band that had caught our (read Amy's) eye. "How much," Amy asked, cutting straight to the chase. "A very good price." "How great?" Amy repeated. "So good that I will not charge you to size down your wedding band." "Well, thank you very much, we'll take the free resizing. But you have still not answered my question." Finally he said he would order the ring in her size and we could look at it before deciding.

So, to celebrate to my birthday we went gold shopping for Amy. Oh, and on the way to the gold souk, by the way, Amy stopped at a few toy shops to see what shopping she could knock out before Christian's birthday. So I offered to buy Amy the channel band we saw if she would buy me a new Macintosh computer for her birthday. She glowered and I helped myself to another piece of chocolate banana cake. Anyway, it wasn't until my third helping of cake that it hit me: this is the big three-zero for me. gasp I know, I know--all you old fogies are out there, congratulating yourselves on creative jokes about how 30 is nothing and how I should try fending off the grim reaper at age 40 with a bad heart or a bum knee because I didn't start eating Wheaties every day for breakfast when I was a young buck at 30. Well, no disrespect to you my elders, but I don't like Wheaties and furthermore I really do sense my mortality more than ever before in life whether I have a right to or not. I've spent the past few days looking back and figuring out what I've accomplished, what I regret, where I'm headed . . . . No great conclusions as of yet, but I'll keep you posted.

A week later it was time to celebrate Christian's big three-nothing, and Amy had put together quite a fish theme party bash (in honor of Finding Nemo, Christian's favorite movie as judged by the number of repeat requests to watch it per week). She had a jello dessert formed like an aquarium, a birthday cake with "sea foam" frosting, little tuna fish sandwich sailboats, and reservations at the local outdoor park for the gathering. Now, that last one is no small feat, more complicated than carefully placing gummie-sharks in just the right spaces of blue jello. Amy made more than one phone call to the park director, not to make the reservation but to request special permission that Christian's male father (yes, I know it's redundant) attend the party. "That's absurd!" you might say. Well, the thing is, outdoor parks have family days where persons of any gender may enter the park. Every other day is ladies' day--no men allowed. Well, after extorting his highness's royal (but ambiguous) permission, we made plans for me to take off work early. We informed the park security guard that we had special permission. But our attempts were essentially to no avail since no less than half a dozen Muslim women confronted the security guard and demanded I be expelled. I don't know how he did it, but the guard fended them off and we can only imagine they left, indignant and shocked at a fully clothed man that would deign to attend his son's birthday party one afternoon in a public park.

Well, it was all worth it in the end as Christian had a great time and I forgot about the cold stares by the time we got to eating the cake. We should have given Christian a grammar book for a gift--he uses the preposition 'of' incessantly with interesting results: "read stories of me," for example; instead he got a toy motorcycle that is his current bed-partner, replacing the over-sized, stuffed Nemo. (For the record, though, nothing will replace his "Charlie Brown," a blanket with prints of the Peanuts comic strip characters made by his Aunt Nissy which he will not sleep without.) On the way home from the party he started whining because his motorcycle fell out of reach.

Dad: Christian, whining is not okay. That's not how we get what we want. Be a big boy, Christian.
Christian: I are, daddy.
Dad: Good. Okay, now would you like me to find your motorcycle?
Christian: Yes. . . . Mommy?
Mom: Yes, Christian.
Christian: You say 'What's that noise?' and I'll say 'Motorcycle.'
Mom: What's that noise?
Christian: Motorcycle.
Dad: We're almost home.
Christian: I want to do the garage door openenener.

It rained two days ago for a total of twelve and a half minutes. This is big news since the first time we even saw clouds in the sky was a few weeks back. I think that was the only day of autumn we've had and since then it's gone back to 84º and sunny every day. Should make for an interesting Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow, not least of which for the fact that it is the unofficial kick-off of the Christmas season. I guess we'll put up the Christmas tree after brunch on the patio.

Rich & Amy