The amazing lizard lady

Me at my mirror in the morning.

I have long thought that I have a little reptile in me. Not that I lay eggs or eat insects, but there are other, more subtle, signs. Such as the need to go and sun myself after sitting in the frigid conditions of air-conditioned offices (yes, that’s you, South Coast Register). And a preference for hibernation during cold weather.

But the lizard-like characteristic that has come most to the fore in these days of ‘late youth’ (ahem) is that I now have scales rather than skin.

I can no longer apply foundation or powder to my face without moisturising like a bandit for half an hour beforehand. Otherwise the scales show. And I’m not talking a little light Oil of Olay daily moisturising fluid. I’m talking night repair cream. In the morning.

I now not only constantly rub paw-paw ointment into my lips. I have to run it across my hairline because it’s always peeling. (Yes, Mum, I know, I should wear a hat. But I can’t wear a hat, because it scrapes against my poor hairline. And so it goes.)

The backs of my hands are so dry I actually shed skin there like a snake, and my feet – well, it would be in poor taste to describe them. Let’s just say that hot footpaths don’t bother me overmuch.

I also have this rash that comes and goes (can you tell me what it means?) on my décolletage (love that word), and when it comes it makes me look like a freshly plucked pterodactyl*.

And I know reptiles don’t have hair, but if they did it would be like mine. You could scrub pots with it.

I can’t blame the fact that I live in a desert for all of this either. The scales were growing before I left my bit of Australia, which was so wet you could get foot rot from going without gumboots.

Instead, I blame the fact that I had oily skin in my youth and so developed an aversion to icky moisturiser that I didn’t overcome until my late thirties. Too late!

But I’m trying to see the bright side. Snakeskin clothing is in fashion, so I’d better get me some of that. And I guess I can claim to be wearing very expensive gloves made from the tender bellies of baby crocodiles, which would be a very ridiculous and Dubai-ish thing to do. Ditto shoes.

Finally, I am prepared to offer my skin (post-mortem, preferably) to makers of handbags. I think I would look quite stylish.

Is there something you are starting to resemble as you reach ‘late youth’?

* Yes, I know pterodactyls didn’t have feathers. Just messing with ya.

The good, the bad and the ugly

I’m feeling a bit stuck. I thought I would get a few more blog posts out this summer (since my kids are now so big and self-sufficient – ha! – leaving me with time to write – ha!). But aside from the lack of time, mental space and working brain cells, I have also been paralysed by a growing sense of unease about how we (meaning, really, ‘I’) present our lives online.

Looking back over my Instagram pics or my Facebook posts, there are lots of smiling faces and cute poses. 

There are, naturally, no pictures of my children trying to drown each other in the pool, or of the scratches (from a sibling’s nails) that drew blood on their backs. 

There are tales of fun family activities but none of the hours of time in-between that are filled with the repeated cry of the vacationing child. It goes a little something like this: ‘I’m hungry, what can I eat, I’m starving, Mum! MUM! What can I eat?’ Repeat, dawn til dusk, then throw in one or two at 10pm for good measure.

The pictures don’t show the moment, a second after I press the button (or, rather, tap the camera icon), when that arm around a sibling’s shoulder becomes a hand around their neck.

If I try and balance out the coverage by actually telling the truth about the tedium and terror of ten weeks of holidays, I’ll embarrass my kids (I mean, embarrass them more than I already do by, say, dancing in the car), and you, dear reader, will think I hate them and am an unfit mother.

If I focus unrelentingly on the positive, I’ll be living an online lie. And – judging by how inadequate I often feel when I look at everyone else’s Facebook – that’s no good for anyone.

So which would you prefer? Tell me!!

Five reasons to spend summer in Dubai

Yes, it’s hot. Like, really, really hot. Even I think so. And, yes, the children are on school holidays. Every day. Yes, most of our friends have left town. Yes, this year summer has happened to coincide with Ramadan, so even if there was something to do, it couldn’t involve the public imbibing of fluids or eating of food (although bending over and pretending to tie your shoelace while surreptitiously swigging from a water bottle is working out quite well for us so far).

But there are a few wins to spending the summer holidays in Dubai. Here are five of them…

1. There are no queues

Now is your chance to visit every Dubai attraction that is normally too crowded to enjoy. Put off taking the kids to the ice rink because of the crazy teenager speed skaters playing tip between the toddlers with over-sized penguins? Worry no more. They have all gone home to Europe or Africa or wherever, leaving the ice free for your precious offspring. Don’t want to spend half an hour in the line for every ride at Wild Wadi? Visit over summer and the whole water park is yours. Etcetera. WIN!

2. There are no cars

Honestly, the roads are like Nowra on a Sunday afternoon. Vacant. Empty. Deserted. Over summer, you only feel like you are about to die once a day. It’s a big improvement. WIN!

3. Your family will bond

In Australia, summer holidays mostly consisted of driving the kids to their friends houses, or else picking the kids’ friends up to bring them to our house. In between, there were trips to Sydney, people to stay, work and all sorts of other reasons to spread the five personalities in our family around more thinly. But at the moment, we really only have each other. Okay, Graham actually has a life, but the rest of us don’t so much right now. No one can say I am not spending enough time with my children. And actually, we quite like each other. WIN! (Now, if I could just convince them that lying on a bed reading a book all day was a good use of holiday time, we’d all be happy.)

4. Lunch is the new breakfast…

We’re encouraging serious sleep-ins, seeing as the hot, empty days are harder to fill in than the relatively pleasant evenings (only 39 degrees. That’s under 40!). Turns out cricket after dinner is quite possible in the park by that time of day, finished off by an evening swim in the pool (which currently is for our exclusive use). This means that the first meal of the day, for those of us without livelihoods, is more like a (very slightly) early lunch. The kids eat afternoon tea, and then a good dinner, but so far no one has noticed the fact that we’re eating one less meal a day. This saves both time and money. WIN!

5. …And you can eat it in your jimmy-jams

If it has to be done in the morning, then it has to be done in pyjamas. That’s the new rule at our house. Whether we’re playing cards, playing Wii, playing Trivial Pursuit, cooking, cleaning (oh wait, that’s just me) or building houses both real (Lego) and imaginary (Minecraft), our pjs are de rigueur. And, because there’s no one in town, there’s no chance of the front doorbell ringing. WIN!

And finally, if I ever start counting down the days to the new school year, I just have to look at our friendly Springs 14 lifeguard (what? You’re pool doesn’t come with one?). He spends the whole day outside in temperatures around the mid-40s, and not only is he fasting for 16 hours a day (that’s no water, folks. NO WATER) he does it all in long pants.

What are your surprising holiday upsides?

Zombie apocalypse in Dubai - true fact

Yes, yes, it's been a while since my last post. Blame the end of the northern school year. Blame summer vacation. Blame Cyprus. Here's something to read....

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Wes on the Sky Trail at Playnation. No queues!

Almost every time I go to the mall (Aussies, that’s what I now call shopping centres – I’m sorry, peer pressure) I don’t buy anything to eat or drink. I happily do the groceries, run errands or window shop without feeling either thirsty or hungry.

But today, my throat is parched. My stomach is rumbling. And why is that?

It’s Ramadan.

Meaning, I can’t eat or drink (or smoke, but that's somewhat less relevant) in public for another three weeks. And it’s precisely because I’m not allowed to, according to the law of the land, that I really, really want to.

Some cafes are open with screened off areas to purchase food or drink, but I can’t figure out where I’m actually supposed to do the imbibing/ingesting part, in private. I bought a drink for my son at my small local shopping centre the other day and got told off for letting him stand where people could see him. I suppose I could just brazen it out, but I’ve heard of people actually calling security or police in these instances, so it doesn’t really seem worth it. And I really do want to be respectful of the people around me, who are mostly fasting. But I don’t want to stay at home all day, every day, in the middle of the school holidays. And there’s only so long I can go without a coffee. I’ll be sneaking into the bathroom cubicles any minute now. It’s high school all over again, but (thankfully) without the need for breath mints afterwards (which are not allowed during Ramadan, anyway).

We returned home from a trip to Cyprus the other day and it was an eerie feeling to enter a city you have lived in for months, but is now missing a key component – human beings. The combination of Ramadan and summer holidays (during which all ex-pats hop a plane for home) means the streets are deserted. It’s like the zombie apocalypse has been and gone. We are Legend. As Graham said when he went back to work on Sunday, he almost expected to see a tumbleweed roll down the highway.

Woooo-ooooo. That’s the sound of the wind through the ghost town.

Okay, not totally true. It comes back to life a bit after sundown, when all the restaurants and cafés open up again and do a roaring trade with starving, dehydrated locals. But by that time, we’re tucked up at home, in our neighbourhood of absent ex-pats. At least we have the pool to ourselves.

I’m attempting to shift the kids’ sleep patterns so that they fit in better with the current situation, but – while the older two have 10.30am sleep-ins down pat – Archie still wakes at 6.30am. And a family is only as happy as it’s youngest member, which in his case – on a night out – is not very.

I was curious to experience both Ramadan and a Dubai summer. It’s only been three days since we returned from Cyprus (where, by the way, Ramadan is also observed in the Turkish North, but with absolutely no impact on the non-Muslims. Even The Pork Shop (that’s what it’s called - true fact) stayed open, and all the supermarkets sell grog) and I think I’ve satisfied my curiosity. Bring on August 9 (which is not just a reference to mother’s birthday, but also my mother-in-law’s birthday – amazing coincidence – and, of course, to Eid, the end of Ramadan 2013).

Mum or maid?

There’s an exercise I sometimes undertake when I am sitting around at my children’s school. The kids finish at staggered times, and often have after-school activities, so this amounts to several hours of sitting around each week. As we wait, my younger kids do their homework and eat afternoon tea in the cafeteria along with a teeming rabble of other students and their mothers. Or maids. And that’s where the exercise comes in.

It’s called ‘Mum or Maid?’. The question mark is important because the aim is to decide whether the woman accompanying the child is a mother or an employee of the nanny/maid variety. If there are some blokes about, I often get in a quick round of ‘Dad or Driver?’ which is always a bonus round. Double points.

Now, most of the time it’s a problem that is easy to solve, because this is a society built on castes ruthlessly dictated by race. If you have before you a European, Arabic or Indian child and a Filipino woman (extra clue – she’s the one carrying the school bag) odds are she’s the maid. The mothers, on the other hand, are the impeccably dressed and made up ones (well, okay, not all the mothers. Me, for instance), and generally of a matching racial persuasion to their children.

Almost no one in an abaya or burqa is a maid, though sometimes the Muslim maids do wear a headscarf.

The interest comes, though, when the child is Filipino (or from one of the less prolific maid-supplying nations, such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka or parts of Northern Africa) and so is the accompanying woman. Mum or maid?

Here are some tips. The maids are – to a woman – almost always physically smaller than their employers. This seems to hold sway even when they hail from the same place, as sometimes happens (or close enough so that I, in my ignorance, can’t separate them). This helps solve the puzzle when both the mum and the maid are in attendance. Also, the maids are always very plainly dressed – three-quarter pants and an old t-shirt seems to be the unofficial uniform of those who don’t actually wear an official uniform. (Many do. Yes, this is a strange, strange place). They don’t wear any make up. Their hair has not been blow-dried, their nails are un-pedicured/manicured and they don’t wear high heels.

In my opinion, this is more a comment on the mothers than the maids. Since the above (maid) description could pretty much belong to me (and to most of my Australian friends on a school run), there is obviously something else going on here. It could be that women (and men) from non-European backgrounds make a huge effort to not be mistaken for the help. Europeans get a free ride, as usual – there are no white maids in Dubai. Which leaves the high standard of European mum-dressing an inexplicable mystery to me. (It may be as simple as – me Aussie, them French.)

All this is fascinating when you are sitting around, bored, in the school cafeteria, but it is deeply disturbing too.

I have been to restaurants and parties where the maids (who are along to wrangle the kids) eat at separate tables, and there would not be one person there who would find that uncomfortable. 

In the malls they trail along behind their 'families', holding the bags.

I totally understand the dependence on help in the ex-pat community, especially if both parents work. Here I sit with my three school-aged children and my loving church community, and a husband who is in the same city as me more often than not. It is not my aim to suggest that women with babies and toddlers, whose husbands are away almost every single night and have no family or community back-up, should not hire help.

I imagine I would do the same.

But I am uncomfortable with the way we often slip into a given culture instead of challenging it.

I know some people who have developed some very sensible rules regarding their home help: their children are not allowed to ask their maid to do anything for them (she is Mummy’s helper, not your slave), meaning their kids aren’t going to grow up (like many here) strewing the house with their belongings only to find them neatly put away five minutes later. And someone else who limits her maid’s services to the children (no spoon-feeding the lazy three-year-old at dinner, for instance) to force the kids to look after themselves.

There are families with very happy, healthy, positive, even loving relationships with their live-in domestic employees. But they are not the majority.

And - as if the whole subject wasn't complicated enough - there's the kids to consider.

My eldest son’s friends were incredulous when he said we didn’t have a live-in maid. They think Australia, where most people don’t have help, must be a very poor country.

“So what do you do when you want some food? Do you just… go into the kitchen and get it yourself?” they asked.

I am proud of my kids’ independence, and I am sad that some of their friends aren’t getting to stretch their own wings.

And that’s just with regard to the kids. There’s probably a whole other blog post in treating that other woman in your home like a human being, but I shouldn’t be the one to write it, seeing as I don’t actually have one.

But you can be sure of one thing – the kids are watching. If someone asks their maid to do trivial, unnecessary or demeaning tasks, so will their children. I have observed (okay, spied) as some people down my street leave in the morning. First the maid comes out and gives the car a quick once over with the hose (the waste of water is a topic for another day), then she turns on the engine to get the air-conditioning going, and heads back inside. Then she emerges with the children’s school bags and puts them in the boot. Then she comes back with the kids and helps them into their seats. Then mum or dad appears and off they go.

Is it really too hard for those kids to carry their own schoolbags to the car? Or for the parents to start their own vehicle?

I’ve been hesitant to post a blog on this topic. To non-Dubaians, this must all seem like life on Mars. And to Dubaians, I have probably said all the wrong things. Tell me, what do you think about it all?