And suddenly after working only a week, we got a week's vacation

Uh, Eid Mubarak folks!

It's a holiday in Islam where you eat a lot of stuff.  I think there's some religious reason behind it and I would TOTALLY wiki the crap out of it for you and maybe even give you a link, but the Archaeospawn is stretching in a weird way and at any moment I may leap from my bed into the bathroom to either pee, pass gas, or possibly have a nice sit on the toilet for no good reason whatsoever.  Or I may get half way there and decide I need juice.  Since I'm an adult, I can drink juice when I want juice.

It's nice being a grown up sometimes.

I mean, the upside to being an adult is that you get to do what you want most of the time, the downside is that sometimes you can actually do all the things that might possibly jump into your head to do and the only drawback is that you don't have enough hours in the day and some of the things you want to do are stupid, like peeing, and no one is proud of you any more for peeing in the toilet and not all over yourself, but then at the end of the day when people are like "what did you do today" and I say "I watched a couple of episodes of Supernatural, I made French Toast for something like 8 people (maybe more, they just kept coming and I was enjoying myself), I tried to catch up on the internets, but then I got bored, I peed a lot, I had some awesome gas, I poked the baby because THE BABY STARTED IT Y'ALL, and generally lolled about the house" and then people are all "dude that sounds so dull" and I'm all "It rocked!  I did what I wanted to do!" and people are like "you wanted the awesome gas?" and I'm all "fo' shizzle" because it takes about 5 years for Denmark to get American pop culture references and I was never quick on the uptake.

But like I was saying, we only just started working and then Eid happened.  And while last year we got treated to three days of gluttony and sloth, this year we got jack because we live in run-down cinder block houses that are apparently a step up from living in tents and so we don't deserve three days in a 5 star resort spa.  I'd love to be back in a tent.  I mean, I like only having to walk 10 steps to go to the toilet and I don't have any tourists oggling me or wandering into my tent, but it is really hot inside a cinder block house that absorbs the sun like a brick oven and what with the walls around the house we don't exactly get a cross breeze.  I was originally supposed to be sharing a flat with a couple and their small daughter (age 3 or maybe 5 - who can tell, really, she's small and doesn't ever stop talking, not that I can understand her accent - where have her consonants gone to? she asked me "ca' oi 'ach a dee-eee-dee on 'or co'u'er?" and I was all "whut?" but at least I get her when she says "oor iz moi mum'ee?"- but no one gets my joke when I say "are you my mummy?" because we don't have serious Dr. Who fans this year - and I've suddenly had to child-proof my office which I wasn't planning on doing for a few years yet, but I may end up duct-taping her to the wall if she tries to help me work on my Mac again).  The flat had high-speed internet and air conditioning and a separate bathroom all for me.  So of course I begged to be moved to the cinder block palaces, with no AC, volunteered my computer to be the internet router, and said I would totally share space with anyone and everyone but please let me be in the house with my office space and near to all the folks from last year who are the main reason I wanted to come back here again and please don't make me commute, even a little bit.  I got my way.  Eight people and one toilet is not that bad, really.  And I still got my own room, strangely enough.

Anyway, so suddenly I have this week of vacation because Eid falls in the middle of the week and it's a three day holiday and the workmen realized that if they took Thursday off they'd have a whole week to go home and visit their families (and by "home" I do mean Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, etc.) and had we all known this in advance, it's possible we could have gone home ourselves, or more likely, organized a mass trip to Oman or Dubai or Bahrain, since we don't get paid until the end of the month and can't really afford to fly all the way home.  I could have gone to Cairo or Damascus!  But instead I'm going to lounge around in my own sweat here.  I am not exposing the unsuspecting expat community to my huge belly at the swimming pool (I don't care what anyone says, I'm totally grossed out by pregnant bellies and so I'm not going to show off to my veiny, hairy belly) and I can't really enjoy the expat bars, so there's not much point in me paying money to go stay in a hotel in Doha.

But honestly, lying here in my sweat?  AWESOME!  I love it.  Baby loves it.  We are enjoying not having numb bits or getting teary at the prospect of getting naked (I don't know if the spawn cries, but I'm sure spawn prefers Mommy *not* to be miserable).  And if I'm awake in the middle of the night because Someone thinks midnight somersaults are The Win, I'm not trying to stuff my sausage legs into sweats and wool socks and piling on extra wool sweaters so I can huddle downstairs in a blanket, I'm turning on the lights and sprawling half nude on the bed and reading random books.  And poking baby.  Fair's fair.  If it's exceptionally hot, I take myself out to the porch and lounge out there.  So far being hot and pregnant is winning hands down over being cold and pregnant.

So you've all gathered then that the baby is moving?  I mean, it MOVES.  I went from going "is that it?" to "sweet Jesus, I'm trying to sleep here" in less than a week.  And I can see baby moving under my skin.  In a word: creepy.  I swear to god on a stack of latinate bibles that I'm not having twins.  But I may be having a gymnast or a marathon runner (Daddy is SO proud of his little powerhouse).  It's not really interfering with work, although sometimes mid-sentence I make a random weird face because THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY BELLY (read that as Shatner's infamous line "there's something on the wing" and you'll enjoy the moment that much more).

Now I've got to toddle off and find me some more food.  We've run out of gas (damn it, why do we have the funky contraption that means we need a special gas canister instead of what everyone else is using?) and so I've been taking ingredients 'round to the other houses looking for a place to cook.  It's a good way for others to get fed, too, if I make more than I can eat, which is not really all that often, because sometimes I can really put the food away.