I've had a wibbly wobbly timey wimey couple of days that absolutely need to be blogged about! Let's start at the beginning.
Do you know that nightmare we all have about being naked in a public place? Well, I spent the whole day shopping for a nice dress to attend a good friend's katb kitab, and I had tactically chosen a light blue shirt to make the fitting room battle slightly easier. I successfully managed to finish the girl errands in record time, and then set off to get my friend her weight in chocolate because she broke her leg on a freak bus accident. I didn't want to get her sick people chocolate, so I figured out with etiquette and in with the yummies! The Metro Market aisle it was, since it's Egypt's neighborhood equivalent of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Up I reached and down I bent, sideways I chatted with a dozen staff personnel to find the missing bars then to the cashier I bolted to charge and bag. The personnel were unusually giggly for Metro Market, known for their rather hostile staff, I figured they're having a good day and was all smiles. That was until I glanced down my own shirt, perchance on my way to unpocket the money, to find that two out of the four buttons were unbuttoned and I had flashed the entire Metro Market staff Daisy Duke style. Apparently, two hours of buttoning and unbuttoning the shirt had loosened the cuffs, and my messenger bag had the sleight of hand of Charlie Sheen in his naughty days. Let me rewind a little bit. Do you know that nightmare we all have about being naked in a public place? Well, it's not half as bad as the real thing.
How does one react to that? Mortified doesn't quite cover it, my body's heat was abandoning ship through my face now that I knew that it was in fact my boobs that made the staff's day, and not kismet. I kept my cool and buttoned my shirt, then maintained eye contact with a dozen menial workers who were openly giggling and suggestively glancing, took my time at the cash register with middle-eastern fucks who undoubtedly shamed me as a slut for the fashion slip and walked out of there in a normal gait when every instinct told me to bolt. It took me 10 minutes and about 160 muffled 'FUCK!'s to finish my errands and head home.
The day was not nearly done. In fact, it hadn't even started yet. I changed my shirt and took a quick shower, adding about 45 more not-so-muffled fucks to my verbal quota of the day, then headed off to see my friend. I got lost for about an hour trying to get there, spent another hour telling her about it (and every other piece of gossip she could have possibly missed) after throwing etiquette out of the window and raining her with candy in bed.
Dad picked me up at 10 and we headed off to a family reunion. An estranged relative came for a visit, and true to my expectations the two hour visit was testing to dolphins everywhere. A squeal over me being as tall as her, a scream at the haircut, a squeal at the lost weight. Hysterical chuckles over jokes that aren't nearly as funny as she made them sound, and audible awws up to live studio par at the news of my getting sick. The room was refrigerated to sub-zero levels in an attempt to appease her now cold-blooded physique, and the main dessert was a bear-sized bowl of ice cream to my red-riding-hood-fitted tummy. Around 12 we had to drive grandma home, who in turn insisted we come up for a nibble. Little did I know that she had an agenda, for she took it upon herself to make me regain the pounds that were squealed at. Half a watermelons and two main courses later, we headed home at 2. We came home to find that all the cars in our square were wrecked, their windshield smashed and their doors bent at unseemly angles. Turned out there was a fight and had we come home so much as 30 minutes earlier, the biggest part of our car would have been the sideview mirror, and the largest patch of skin left unmangled of my body would have been squeal-inducing boy scalp. Good things happen when you spend quality time with Teita. Let me digress for a second, but grandma is the kind of person who, when bored, gets creative with her pearl earrings:
By the time we found a safe parking spot and walked about a mile back, I had a baby belly and wasn't feeling so good, only to come home and find that my mother decided to get me fast food in a medical experiment to 'see if I can handle it yet.' I wasn't supposed to eat take out, drink juice or anything remotely related to the outside world until my liver stopped pursuing Broadway, but I didn't want another yelling match and frankly couldn't be more excited at the sight of pizza and lasagna after so many boiled vegetable servings.
You probably see where this is going, and you're right. I went to bed, woke up a short while later and threw up for an hour and a half, taking naps when my tummy elves had to reload food into what I imagined to be a catapult only to run off to the bathroom for another medieval attack at the sink. I seem to be innocent in the arts of war for I woke up to a full-fledged fight between our family's noble houses, grandma blaming my aunt for the AC, my uncle blaming grandma for not noticing, my grandma yelling at mom for not being there and mom yelling at aunt for not foreseeing it. I was fine, but it took about 6 phone calls to re-instate a truce. I had run out of arguments by the 5th and apparently 'hey at least now I don't have to worry about a kersh for the dress today!' was not good enough.
The katb kitab was nice, I got to see my friend's panicky face as he realized he's getting irrevocably wedlocked. I only got lost for about an hour, almost crashed a stranger's wedding, had a stranger give me chocolate, hid a juice box for allergy-related feeling-saving purposes, and got caught by a hot neighbour carrying my shoes Fouad-El-Mohandess style to use the stairs. Just your average Rory day. Amidst the chaos of day 2, there was one heartwarming tidbit (other than getting to see my friend's face going on an emotional rollercoaster), I saw this:
Now let me tell you what's special about this. For one, this mail box has been broken down, dusty and abandoned for as long as I remember living there. What's more, a little detail that I failed to see when I was shorter, is the Borio pack. This version has been out of production for ages; they no longer make single cookie packs and only produce the 6 pack, which means that this cookie has been there for ages, which also means that nobody took it. And I don't think it's because stealing mail is a federal crime. That won the race and made my day. With all the ugliness in the world, some people still have integrity, even if it's as little as not stealing a derelict Borio cookie.
Do you know that nightmare we all have about being naked in a public place? Well, I spent the whole day shopping for a nice dress to attend a good friend's katb kitab, and I had tactically chosen a light blue shirt to make the fitting room battle slightly easier. I successfully managed to finish the girl errands in record time, and then set off to get my friend her weight in chocolate because she broke her leg on a freak bus accident. I didn't want to get her sick people chocolate, so I figured out with etiquette and in with the yummies! The Metro Market aisle it was, since it's Egypt's neighborhood equivalent of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Up I reached and down I bent, sideways I chatted with a dozen staff personnel to find the missing bars then to the cashier I bolted to charge and bag. The personnel were unusually giggly for Metro Market, known for their rather hostile staff, I figured they're having a good day and was all smiles. That was until I glanced down my own shirt, perchance on my way to unpocket the money, to find that two out of the four buttons were unbuttoned and I had flashed the entire Metro Market staff Daisy Duke style. Apparently, two hours of buttoning and unbuttoning the shirt had loosened the cuffs, and my messenger bag had the sleight of hand of Charlie Sheen in his naughty days. Let me rewind a little bit. Do you know that nightmare we all have about being naked in a public place? Well, it's not half as bad as the real thing.
How does one react to that? Mortified doesn't quite cover it, my body's heat was abandoning ship through my face now that I knew that it was in fact my boobs that made the staff's day, and not kismet. I kept my cool and buttoned my shirt, then maintained eye contact with a dozen menial workers who were openly giggling and suggestively glancing, took my time at the cash register with middle-eastern fucks who undoubtedly shamed me as a slut for the fashion slip and walked out of there in a normal gait when every instinct told me to bolt. It took me 10 minutes and about 160 muffled 'FUCK!'s to finish my errands and head home.
The day was not nearly done. In fact, it hadn't even started yet. I changed my shirt and took a quick shower, adding about 45 more not-so-muffled fucks to my verbal quota of the day, then headed off to see my friend. I got lost for about an hour trying to get there, spent another hour telling her about it (and every other piece of gossip she could have possibly missed) after throwing etiquette out of the window and raining her with candy in bed.
Dad picked me up at 10 and we headed off to a family reunion. An estranged relative came for a visit, and true to my expectations the two hour visit was testing to dolphins everywhere. A squeal over me being as tall as her, a scream at the haircut, a squeal at the lost weight. Hysterical chuckles over jokes that aren't nearly as funny as she made them sound, and audible awws up to live studio par at the news of my getting sick. The room was refrigerated to sub-zero levels in an attempt to appease her now cold-blooded physique, and the main dessert was a bear-sized bowl of ice cream to my red-riding-hood-fitted tummy. Around 12 we had to drive grandma home, who in turn insisted we come up for a nibble. Little did I know that she had an agenda, for she took it upon herself to make me regain the pounds that were squealed at. Half a watermelons and two main courses later, we headed home at 2. We came home to find that all the cars in our square were wrecked, their windshield smashed and their doors bent at unseemly angles. Turned out there was a fight and had we come home so much as 30 minutes earlier, the biggest part of our car would have been the sideview mirror, and the largest patch of skin left unmangled of my body would have been squeal-inducing boy scalp. Good things happen when you spend quality time with Teita. Let me digress for a second, but grandma is the kind of person who, when bored, gets creative with her pearl earrings:
By the time we found a safe parking spot and walked about a mile back, I had a baby belly and wasn't feeling so good, only to come home and find that my mother decided to get me fast food in a medical experiment to 'see if I can handle it yet.' I wasn't supposed to eat take out, drink juice or anything remotely related to the outside world until my liver stopped pursuing Broadway, but I didn't want another yelling match and frankly couldn't be more excited at the sight of pizza and lasagna after so many boiled vegetable servings.
You probably see where this is going, and you're right. I went to bed, woke up a short while later and threw up for an hour and a half, taking naps when my tummy elves had to reload food into what I imagined to be a catapult only to run off to the bathroom for another medieval attack at the sink. I seem to be innocent in the arts of war for I woke up to a full-fledged fight between our family's noble houses, grandma blaming my aunt for the AC, my uncle blaming grandma for not noticing, my grandma yelling at mom for not being there and mom yelling at aunt for not foreseeing it. I was fine, but it took about 6 phone calls to re-instate a truce. I had run out of arguments by the 5th and apparently 'hey at least now I don't have to worry about a kersh for the dress today!' was not good enough.
The katb kitab was nice, I got to see my friend's panicky face as he realized he's getting irrevocably wedlocked. I only got lost for about an hour, almost crashed a stranger's wedding, had a stranger give me chocolate, hid a juice box for allergy-related feeling-saving purposes, and got caught by a hot neighbour carrying my shoes Fouad-El-Mohandess style to use the stairs. Just your average Rory day. Amidst the chaos of day 2, there was one heartwarming tidbit (other than getting to see my friend's face going on an emotional rollercoaster), I saw this:
Now let me tell you what's special about this. For one, this mail box has been broken down, dusty and abandoned for as long as I remember living there. What's more, a little detail that I failed to see when I was shorter, is the Borio pack. This version has been out of production for ages; they no longer make single cookie packs and only produce the 6 pack, which means that this cookie has been there for ages, which also means that nobody took it. And I don't think it's because stealing mail is a federal crime. That won the race and made my day. With all the ugliness in the world, some people still have integrity, even if it's as little as not stealing a derelict Borio cookie.
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