Hoping this one shows up in Heidi’s old feed. Test, test!

Mobile wp killed my dashboard

• Rejoined Postcrossing
• Let the salon ladies talk me into manicures… And like them (in pale colors only)
• Got a cat
• Haven’t gotten over my obsession with vermilion red
• Have been knitting more
• Have pretty much chronic pain in my left hip
• Discovered Poppets (best are the toffee ones)
• Finally allowed myself to get on the sudoku wagon
• Completed my work wardrobe of things that feel like jeans or pajamas but really aren’t (chambray trousers, jean skirts, elastic waist pants that actually fit nicely)
• Am turning 40!

I’m doing it. I might even come back to this post and make a list of who I have written to and when I sent it. Do I have your address? If not you can send it to me through my contact form.

I realize I actually have a blog category called Services already.

Now that I am 12 days shy of living in the UAE for two whole years, I thought it would be a good time to remind myself of some of the things we have here that make life more comfortable. Most of them are not without their hints of exploitation or legal violations, but such is the nature of life in these parts… I try my best to be good to these people, if I avail of the services (which in most cases I don’t, hello KFC home delivery).

• Housecleaner – we have had an Ethiopian woman clean our place every Friday morning for almost as long as we’ve been here. She is great.
• Gardener – since we moved to the villa we have a guy who comes to trim things, spread fertilizer, adjust sprinklers, etc.
• Drinking water delivery
• Delivery of whatever at work – anything too “heavy,” I can get a guy to bring it to my office on a cart. Like, if I bring a cake to work I can make someone get it out of my car and deliver it to my office.
• Full service at gas stations, usually including cleaning the windows
• Grocery packing and putting of any shopping parcels in your car for you–not always possible when the shops are super busy
• Booze delivery – we have not used this one yet, but if you buy over a certain amount from the grey market shop they will bring it to your house
• In-home pedicure, haircuts, massage, etc.
• Pharmacy delivery – just call. Many things that would require a prescription in the states don’t here, so you can make them bring you antibiotics at 10pm if you want
• Fast food delivery – get your Burger King fries delivered!

There are more, most of which are probably not on my radar because they are too ridiculous. And a lot of these require waiting forever or 10,000 phone calls to give them directions.

This year I was remarkably faithful in my use of Daytum to track a few routine things. At my current job, having a coffee break is a standard daily occurrence, and I watched myself shift a bit from tea to coffee over the year, though that’s not obvious from the main graph. You can see consumption drop way off in the summer, when I went back to the US for a vacation and fell out of the routine for a while. The category “Random Black Tea” (which I usually only drink when it’s all there is because Lipton Yellow Label = scourge) took a huge jump at the end of the year too, thanks to a trip to Turkey where I drank about five cups a day.

More statistics & interpretation beyond…
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[This is a draft I wrote a long time ago and forgot to publish. I am medicated now and a million times happier.]

As I come out from the fog of yet another transnational jet lag, I find myself being steamrollered by the evil triumvirate of anxiety, depression, and insomnia.

The week before I left the US after a really nice six weeks’ vacation, I was already not sleeping and stressing out about the life waiting for me in Dubai. The biggest problem with it is the lack of long-established social relationships, something I need more time than the average person to develop anyway, and problem no. 2 is the ongoing instability of my work situation. I think I’m over the jet lag now, and back to that crappy insomnia.

I am aware of all the many tricks for dealing with insomnia without drugs, but they aren’t working for me and never really have. It’s the annoying voice I can’t stop as I’m about to fall asleep, if I even get that far after counting down from 100 or reading (and usually failing to concentrate).

And all this is pretty typical among the expat community.

I am planning to see a doctor soon for some help. This doesn’t work like it does in the states though, from what I have heard. Often doctors can only prescribe medication for a month at a time, and after a short period like three months, you either have to hope for a referral for psychiatry or stop treatment. As far as I know you need more time than that just to get the balance sorted out. I’ve also heard that employers and insurance companies are not supportive of people with mental health issues here. For example, there is no medical privacy law, so as soon as you submit reimbursement paperwork, anyone around the office could potentially know your situation.

I am still going to give it a try. Getting fired would solve some of my problems!

For most of my adult life I have dealt with some combination of these things, but rarely none of them. Thanks to my midwest, highly Germanic upbringing, I am pretty good at hiding it, and with all the years of experience, I am also good at coping, with things like healthy eating, exercise, and other daily routines. Is it ridiculous of me to think that if I wasn’t living here I might not be in this situation though? That’s one thought that crosses the mind in the wee dark hours…

At the risk of starting a trend among my American crafting friends (ahahaha nobody reads this anymore especially now that Google Reader sucked the life out of RSS feeds)…

Here is a picture of some Three Cats original Shwe Shwe cotton my mom brought me from Pretoria this week. It’s somewhere around a light canvas weight, 36″ wide, and will be great for making bags.

I quickly became uncomfortable writing openly about my job in Dubai after moving here in January 2010. There is still a lot I would rather keep private, but I think a large part of it is “typical” to the expatriate work/life experience. In short:

• Frustration with communication problems
• Different expectations for leadership and organization
• Different cultural values
• Volatility and constant restructuring*

All of these things plus personal stuff have made me spend a lot of time reflecting on what I want to do next. I am signed on through July 31, 2013, and if things continue to remain so unpredictable with management and expectations, I could resign at some point before that time. Right now I want to stick it out until the end of the contract at least, because we still have a lot of work to do getting ourselves buffered for potentially living with no jobs for a while whenever we do leave. I am generally a hopeful and trusting kind of person and I haven’t given up despite just wrapping up pretty much the most awful year of my professional life so far. Rodney likes his job and still has a lot to learn there, Maeve is getting a great experience going to school with kids from everywhere, and there are some other really good personal advantages I’ve mentioned here before like travel.

Sometimes I think going back to school for further archives/local history education would be a good thing, but one reason we are here in the first place is my student loans that just won’t die. To get that paid off and then start all over again would just be sad.

At this moment, if I had my way, I believe I’d like to take my career away from being a Lone Arranger once and for all. While I have always valued the autonomy and range of daily roles to choose from, I think going forward I would really like to work directly with a group of peers, and to have a more specialized role within a larger archival operation. I am not sure academia is the place for me; in fact going in the historical society/state archives/big public library direction is and has always been really appealing. I would like to split my time between processing and reference somehow. I really like being buried in collections and establishing order, but I also like being asked to help find things. There is something really rewarding about providing answers – an immediate feedback that you don’t get elsewhere in the field.

What I definitely don’t want to do is electronic records management.

And ideally Rodney will get the next big family-supporting job so I can have at least a few months’ break wherever we go next.

Will the world please open up the right opportunity for us when we need it?

*This could be due to the fact that I’m in a very young organization, in a very young country, and how things “should” be done hasn’t been tested over decades or centuries of experience.