Very miscellaneous thoughts and random posts from my Facebook page

• When I watch a group of non-Arabs dance to Western music, I usually tsk tsk them under my breath and fantasize that, after disapproving of their dance abilities for awhile, I slowly walk into the center of the dance floor, wave my hand to shoo everybody away, and say, “Move over, everyone. Let me show you how this should be done.” I then break into an elaborate Egyptian belly dance. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), I did not inherit a single Western or Egyptian dancing gene from my American mother and Egyptian father.
• I’d like to work as a foot model. I really like the idea of making money by showing people my feet.
• I had one of my very strange dreams last night. We were living on a border between Egypt and Libya. On the border was a wall, very similar to the one the Israelis have built in the West Bank. The wall was weak in parts and easy to slip through; again very similar to the wall in the West Bank. A group of Egyptians spontaneously decided to spend a weekend outing in the neighboring city in Libya. Someone had said there was a very good restaurant on the other side. So lots of people got all dressed up, slipped through the wall, and walked towards the restaurant as if it were the most normal thing in the world to do. I wasn’t planning on joining them but did for some reason at the very last moment. I walked through the very crowded streets of this Libyan city, just looking around, and sometimes seeing some Egyptians walking back after having finished their outing. They were families. People with children, a girl and her fiancé both all dressed up, just normal people. Suddenly, there were explosions and people were running. The Egyptians who were nearest the wall were lazily fleeing back into Egypt, a silly smile on their faces. It was the kind of smile my kids give me when I yell at them for doing something bad and they roll their eyes at my completely ineffective disciplining. As I continued to walk further into the city, I realized that the Libyan government forces were shooting at all the Egyptians who had entered the city. The shootings were quite indiscriminate. The streets, after all, were more full of Libyans than Egyptians. I began to run to try to find a place to hide. I ran through a side street and a young man standing in the entrance of his apartment building beckoned for me to run in. It was one of those dream moments when your body doesn’t do what you need it to do. So I reached out with my hand, he grabbed it, and pulled me in. We began to hide in the building entrance but then we heard the Libyan forces running through our street so we quickly started running up the building stairs. Apparently the young man was going to hide me in his family’s apartment. We kept running and running up the stairs and were soon joined by another Egyptian woman holding a small child. I saw the child and was thankful it had made it into our relative safety. This man’s apartment was at the very last floor of the building. We reached the last floor and I woke up. I think Egypt has traumatized me.
• I know it’s not good to question God….but I do have to ask this one: Why oh why did I get the Arab gene rather than the Norwegian gene (one of my grandmothers was Norwegian) for body hair, God? Why when there was that choice?
• Just so you all know, if it were up to me I would be a speed skater.
• I discovered I am horrible at making small talk. Example: I was sitting next to a man at a wedding this past weekend. When he asked me, “How did you and your husband meet?” I shrugged and said, “Climbing Mont Blanc.” He waited for more. I waited for another question. He didn’t ask one. So I asked, “How did you and your wife meet?” And he proceeded for the next 15 minutes to tell me how one night he went to a nightclub. He was recently divorced and drowning his sorrows away. His wife was taken to the drink and it seems to have been the reason why their marriage fell apart. A friend of theirs, the mother of the groom of the wedding we were at, happened to be at the same nightclub with a friend of hers, also divorced and also because her ex-husband had taken to the drink. They had something in common! And the story went on and on and on. He had three grown children. She had two very young children. He said he had just divorced and wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. That was fine with her. He lost everything he owned to his ex-wife. The new woman lifted him up. He doesn’t know what he would have done without her. They married and had their honeymoon in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Her two sons were with them on the honeymoon. While going down the water slide, the older child slashed his chin on the edge of the slide and needed stitches. It was all right though because his mother is a nurse. The hotel doctor was going to immediately start stitching and the mother had to stop him, “Hold on, now! Let me explain it to him first!” And the stepfather had to hold his head still. You can hardly see the scar now, though. See even? And the mother proceeds to tell her son to raise his chin so i can see that the scar is hardly even there anymore. So how did I meet my husband, you may ask? I’ll shrug and tell you it was while climbing a mountain and I’ll assume you aren’t interested in the details.
• How does one go about deciding, “You know what? I’m going to be one of those sweepers in curling competitions.”
• Nadia’s children are her greatest weapon against obesity. No matter how much food she cooks, no matter how many desserts she bakes, no matter how many goodies she buys, by the time she decides to eat some of them they are gone.
• Love is baking a pecan pie.
• I want to be a Hollywood action film star. I will maintain until the day that I die that I could have been the best of them all. I want to star in Kung Fu movies, movies where I need to wear tight leather suits and swing from ropes, movies where I must drive fast Ferraris, and movies where I ride fast jet skis. Fast is the key word here. In these movies, I am always the hero. I save peoples’ lives and kick bad ass. I don’t smile much in these movies. I’m the serious kind of hero. I do things and refuse to be thanked for my good deeds but people grovel all over me anyways.