I sweat.

An 80s girl, I was an avid Rick Springfield fan. (Holy crap! He’ll turn 7-0 in August.) As an avid fan, I saw “Hard to Hold.” The movie was pretty terrible, a fact Springfield himself acknowledged in his autobiography, which Laurie gave me for Christmas a couple years ago. Good read. Hard to believe some diehards really liked the movie, but, and I should probably be ashamed of this, I eventually bought the DVD. Blame the $4 bins at Target.

Anyway, the soundtrack isn’t bad. Springfield’s songs highlight it, of course, but there are other artists. Nona Hendrix, for example. Now, I don’t know Nona Hendrix from Adam’s housecat, but she has a song on there (“Heart of a Woman,”) and somehow – since this was pre-Google – I tried to figure out who she was and discovered she had a song called, “I Sweat,” which was featured in the John Travolta movie “Perfect,” which I never saw. As far as I know, I’ve never actually heard the song before; I just saw the title somewhere.

This weekend, boy howdy, have I thought about that song title this weekend, because I feel like “sweat” is all I’ve done.

Yep. It’s a dry heat, but holy hell, it’s hot. I really feel like sweating has been the highlight of my weekend. It’s all I’ve done. I mean, yeah, I’ve watched a couple of movies and read a couple of books (Recommended: “One Good Dog.” Not recommended: “The President is Missing.) but the underlying activity has been sweating.

We have an event going on next week and I had to go into the office to do some prep work, and even after turning on the AC and the ceiling fan, I broke out in sweats from the half-block walk from my TDY quarters to the office.

I suppose the upside is that it’s slightly cooler here than Baghdad, but when you’re discussing temperatures of over 100, can you really tell a difference between 119 and 109? I don’t set foot outside without sunglasses, my ridiculous-looking floppy hat (designed in Korea, made in China, purchased in Kazakhstan) and sunscreen, but I try not to set foot outside between 1 -5 p.m. or so anyway. Let it get down to 105 or so, you know?

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had it worse, I know, but it’s like living in an oven. Sometimes the wind blows, though. Want to know what it’s like then? Turn a hair dryer on your face.

This is not meant to be a complaint. I totally love this gig. It just amazes me that so many people live and adjust to extreme weather like this. Three of my closest colleagues work in the office downstairs from me, and my guess is I amuse them when I sit down under their AC unit and announce it’s hot. It is hot, but they’re used to it.

The whole no-humidity thing is wonderful; the shade is cooler, but it’s not a matter of it being tolerable. It’s not that you don’t broil; it’s just that it’s the Crock-pot version.

Baghdad is hotter, but because we built the compound there, we built a water treatment plant and you can drink water out of the faucets. Seriously, except for in the showers, there’s a little red sign over every faucet that says, “Tap water is safe to drink.” There have to be hundreds. No such luck here. Instead, we pound little half-liters to stay hydrated. Even with also drinking tea (I use tap for that since I boil it) and juice, I think I’ve had 4-5 today, and it’s only 6 p.m. (and 105).

One day, I’m going to finally get to Minsk and I’m going to be bitterly cold for months and it will stun me that people can adjust to that extreme as well, but right now I’m just going to sit back, sweat, and be amazed that people can deal with this on a regular basis.

Rubbing salt in the wounds

Erbil’s still fantastic. It’s pretty much a ghost town, but it’s my little ghost town, at least for now. And it’s as boring as ever, at least on weekends.

During the week, I usually work until 6 p.m., then head to the gym, which takes until 7:30 or 8 p.m., so, after a shower and dinner, that’s pretty much all she wrote. But weekends are far more boring. Even sleeping late – 7 a.m. for me – puts me done in the gym, showered and fed, and even post-nap, by 10 a.m., and after that, there’s just not much else to do. I work for a couple of hours so I don’t get behind (everyone here works 7 days, but me far less than most) but that’s about it.

The do seem to subscribe to a better AFN; there seem to be more movie channels. One of them consistently plays Star Wars. I’ve seen the tail end of “Han Solo” once and “The Last Jedi” three times since I’ve arrived. And I’ve snagged DVDs from the library, catching the whole first series of “Big Little Lies” and some of “Breaking Bad,” which isn’t near as good the second or third time around.

I haven’t made it off campus; since there aren’t as many people here, they don’t offer the grocery store runs as often. Since I’m due to leave at the start of July, it doesn’t make sense to sign up to go anyway; I’m about halfway done. This late in the game, I figure I should just make do with what I have.

It might be a Peace Corps trait: seeing what you have and then figuring out what you can do with it. We had a little party last night and I remembered I’d looted a brownie mix from the other house, and threw it together. I’d bought eggs, so I used three of them. The “sauce” package called for milk, and what do you know, I’d brought the rest of the powdered milk, so I used that, too. As far as what I brought, I’m down to a little powered milk, rice and lentils from the grocery store and tea bags, Stevia, two root beets and six individual cereal bowls. The store-bought stuff is at one serving of alfredo sauce, a stick of butter (not really sure why I bought this) and eggs that won’t quite carry me through. When they run out I’ll double up on the cereal, or something. No plans on taking anything back. I’ve lugged the 50-pound bag enough recently.

In the little break office here, there’s a nice massage chair, which I love. My calves are always tight and when you sit in the chair barefoot it gives you nice little foot massage. Since my current tennis shoes don’t fit quite right and have rubbed massive blisters on my heels, I appreciate this. And in inspecting the Kennedy half dollar-sized blood blister on my right foot, I realized I have some pretty darn ugly heels.

And in the cupboard here, I have a ton of salt. It’s once of those spices that everyone buys and of course they only sell in giant bags. I’ve no idea how much normal people use salt, but one of those Morton’s things lasts me for years. And in each TDY house I’ve been, there might not be much, but there’s a ton of salt. I guess everyone buys a bag without checking first to see if there’s any they could use. Why would you, I suppose, except in the 6-bedroom TDY house there were probably four canisters of it, and in the house I’m in now there were two.

That’s past tense. There’s only one now. As I was looking at my horridly ugly feet, two words popped into my head: “salt scrub.” Without bothering to research what exactly a salt scrub might entail outside of, you know, salt, I went to the cabinet to see what I had. Olive oil! Perfect! I decided to jimmy up a salt scrub and pamper my feet. Seriously, there is nothing to do in Erbil!

I dumped out half a salt container and some oil. Proportions schaportions. I just winged it. I realized in almost every foot massage I’ve ever had (you can count on one hand), I’ve had my feet soaked before, I looked around for something to use and came up with a huge broiler pan. I suppose this might gross the next TDYer out, but I’ll never tell. After looking at what spices I had, I went with rosemary, and dumped a bunch in. Then I remembered I found some tea tree oil soap and threw that in, which scattered the rosemary but whatever.

Here, you don’t have to worry about getting the water warm enough. It is so hot outside and we don’t have nice things like good plumbing, so the water is hot in the summer. After my morning run, I can’t get the water cold enough for a shower – and I don’t like cold showers. It’s hot. Always hot, so I figured that’s perfect for a DIY foot soak.

Gotta say, it was pretty blissful. It would have been more blissful delivered  by some strong-muscled guy, but it was pretty nice. I just curled up with a book – Up In the Air, which was wildly different than the movie – and then scrubbed my feet raw. Not bad.  They’re still cracked, callous-y and ugly, but they feel a lot better.

From One 100 Acres to Another

I’m back and almost recovered from jet lag. Had a long journey back to my 100-Acre Sandbox, which took – somehow – four days, including two overnight flights and two long layovers. Go figure.

One of those layers was Rome, a place I’ve visited twice before, once also on a long layover. That day, I ran into some Darija-speaking hawkers outside the Colosseum, who, after learning I lived in Morocco (this was during Peace Corps, obviously), came really close to inviting me over to couscous. They were thrilled some random white chick who spoke their language (albeit very badly) stopped by.

That visit, as well as my previous one, happened to be on whatever day of the week it is the Vatican is closed, probably Monday. When I learned I’d have a 12-hour or more layover in Rome, I figured I needed to head over to the Holy See. Had a blast, although I think I sleepwalked through some of it.

Following Internet directives, I booked my ticket and a bus from the airport in advance, and made sure there was a “store your bag” place at the airport for my backpack. (Best 6E I spent, for sure.) My goal was to hit the Vatican by 1 p.m., but I missed because I missed my stop. I was conscious we stopped, but I listened to the driver and I swear he did not say “Vatican.” I stayed on until the next stop, the main train station, and took the metro back to the Vatican, which sits on a walled 100 acres.

All this came after my first overnight flight, which had been jam-packed. For reasons that I will remain bitter for a long, long time, I had a middle seat for the 9.5-hour flight and didn’t get a wink of sleep. I can’t even remember which movies I watched, but point being, I was pretty tired as I fumbled my way to the Vatican. 

I finally figured out which metro stop I needed, successfully bought one ticket but in the process accidentally bought two, then made my way down to the metro. I was so tired that, watching my feet as I went down the stairs, I saw myself going to miss one. I remember thinking, “You are going to miss that stair and fall,” but I was just beyond being able to do anything about it but hang on to the handrail and hope for the best. I collapsed and I’m just so glad that A. I was on the next-to-last step so I didn’t fall far and B. didn’t break my ankle. No one so much as glanced at me.

After only asking one person, I figured out where the Vatican was and made my way through a maze of tourists as I went to three successive stops to get my voucher exchanged for a ticket, then to get the audio guide and then to get headphones for the audio guide. No idea why those weren’t at the same place but whatever.

Oh, the tourists. It was a Saturday, I think, or maybe a Friday, and the place was jammed. That was probably normal, but I was dodging little tour signs, which varied between flags and flowers or stuffed animals on sticks, all day long.  Huge tour groups. Gosh, on the flight from Atlanta, there was a group that had to have been 40 people.  I snapped lots of pictures (none in the Sistine Chapel – not allowed) but nothing was particularly good because I have the heads of a bunch of people I don’t know in most of them.

But the Sistine Chapel is pretty amazing. I plunked myself down and tried to absorb all the audio from it, but there’s just no way to take it all in at once if you’ve never really studied it. Humanities was a long time ago, and all I remember is Michelangelo, also come to find out, Raphael did quite a bit, too, as did others. (I’m not ready for the test.)

The museum was stunning, though. The ceilings were so high, and all decorated. There was so much incredible artwork, with pretty much each pope having his own collection. My favorite was the hall of maps, which was this long, long hallway with, you guessed it, maps painted in murals down both sides. They were all maps of regions in Italy, and were each huge.

One courtyard had a lot of fun sculptures and, for a reason I didn’t quite figure out, these amazing bathtubs. I really enjoyed poking around but was so tired that I know I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have liked. I’d gotten there around 2:30 or so and by 4 p.m. was physically done, even though I didn’t even make it over to St. Peter’s Basilica.

I called it a day and found a pizza place that had WIFI so I could figure out where my bus picked up. I’d bought a round-trip ticket so even though I missed the drop off I had to find the spot, which was really wasn’t so hard. When I got there, the bus, which came every half hour, happened to be going by so even though it was still only 5:30 or so and my flight didn’t leave until around 11 p.m., I went ahead and got on. I had a great layover, but I was done.

The next flight landed at 3:30, putting me in a hotel at 4:30 a.m. For whatever stupid reason – still bitter – I had to leave the hotel at 7 a.m. the following morning, giving me a night and a half in Amman. I’ve no idea why I couldn’t have just left Florida a day later. (Still REALLY bitter.) In Amman, I crawled into bed around 5 a.m., set my alarm for 10 a.m. so I could hit the breakfast buffet, then went back to sleep until 2 p.m. I didn’t even leave the hotel and only wandered to the first floor for a leg massage, which was wonderful.

Too early the next morning, I headed back to the airport and back to the Sandbox, where I learned I’d head again to Erbil. That’s where I am now and will be for a couple of weeks, which is fine with me. It’s super hot, but it’s a little less super hot than it is in Baghdad. However, since we built the buildings in Baghdad, there’s central AC. There is none of that in Erbil. There are wall units in rooms; that’s the best we can do.

The other two times I’ve been here, I stayed in a TDY house with 5-6 bedrooms. Each room had an AC/heating unit, as did the kitchen and the room with a TV. As soon as you exit the bedroom, a wave of whatever air you were trying to avoid would hit you. This new TDY house is much smaller – 2 bedrooms, and I’m the only person – and it’s the same. I have an AC in the kitchen, which isn’t worth using because it’s a wide open space and I don’t spend a lot of time in there, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. The dining table is in the living room, and the AC blows straight on it, giving me the choice of sweating to death of having cold scrambled eggs. But worse than that is in the morning, when I get up and walk out of the cool room into 95-degree heat, even if it’s 7 a.m. Joy.

Food has been a scavenger hunt. I had a few leftovers from before, so I brought those and will get rid of them, but what I brought wouldn’t last as long as I’ll be up here. I’d counted on the “free food” shelves from the other TDY house.

When I left a month ago, there was plenty of food in there, and there were other TDY people who had planned on staying much longer, so they had tons of it. When we were evacuated suddenly, I knew they wouldn’t have had time or opportunity to take them, so I figured the food had to still be in there still.

So, basically, I looted the place. I went in with my backpack and took unopened packs of macaroni, rice, popcorn, quinoa, olive oil, Oreos, some spices and other random stuff. I left the ramen noodles. After that, I went to the little store and bought eggs, alfredo sauce and juice. I’m still determined to use up existing food as much as I can, so for breakfast I’ve had scrambled eggs and popcorn. It’s really not too bad, but I learned rosemary doesn’t work on popcorn. Definitely go with the chili powder.

Time to trade in my crystal ball

Reporting in from R&R. Been busy, but not with jury duty. I didn’t get selected and, oddly, was a little upset. The defendant, who was charged with robbing someone of a carton of cigarettes and somehow also battery got worked in there, was going to represent himself. I think that would have been fascinating, and, since they said it would only have taken a day, would have been really convenient. But alas, I didn’t make the cut. I’ll never know why, but I wonder if it had to do with me hacking up a lung as we were questioned.

They only needed a jury of six and an alternate, but they must have called 60-80 people. We filled out little forms that included our employer, and then, after a lunch break, they took 30 of us upstairs for questioning. I was No. 5 or so called. Twenty-one of us sat in the little jury box, and on each of our chairs was a laminated thing with questions we had to ask. Just the general: name, where you work, spouse/kids’ names, where they work, if you’ve ever been arrested or know anyone who has, if you think they’ve were treated fairly, etc. 

Initially, they asked people if anyone being there would create an undue hardship. One lady said she was the primary caregiver for her husband, which led to a “who’s with him now?” question, to which she said no one. She eventually got dismissed, but I found that interesting. No one “got off” immediately. Another guy claimed it he was observing Ramadan and therefore could not judge anyone, which was a new Ramadan theory for me, but what do I know? I’ve only lived in four Muslim countries. He was eventually dismissed, too, along with the person sitting next to me, who said she had PTSD from witnessing a shooting and it might be triggered by listening to testimony of a violent incident.

Tallahassee’s a small town. There were three connections between the 21 people seated. Two women's husbands worked at DHMSV, and one realized the other’s husband was her husband’s boss. Another was a therapy dog trainer at TMH and a man’s wife volunteered with that program. That same man had been a middle-school substitute teacher for the 26-year-old who was called. And the next day, I discovered that one of the women I’d talked to at lunch knew Zippy. And Leanne knew both the DHMSV people.

After we did our little introductions, the prosecutor came up and voir dire-d us. He came off as really arrogant, but he was very fair. Since the defendant was incarcerated, he was wearing his little jumpsuit and the prosecutor made a point to ask if anyone would be pre-dispositioned by that. No one said they would. More people than I thought, though, had been arrested. One guy in the back said he’d been arrested three times. Another woman’s son had some kind of drug charge, but he had died awhile back. People know a lot of law enforcement, too. The woman on the other side of me, who was eventually selected, was dating a Gadsden County officer. Someone’s child went to school with Someone Else’s child, where Someone Else must have been some high-up law enforcement person, but I don’t remember the name.

I got asked one question right off, but I forget what it was. He added an “—er” to me name, which made my teeth stand on edge since I found him arrogant. Later, he asked if I knew any military-type people and if that would affect my judgment. I know a lot of military-type people, but I don’t think of them as military-type. I think of them as Mike, Eugene, Reuben, Jed, etc. He also asked someone what kinds of evidence there were and whatever they said, he asked me after that what I would expect to be presented. I said I’d rather not expect anything and look at it as it was presented.

That took forever, and we took a break before the defendant had his turn, but once we came back from the 15-minute break, all he did was say that the prosecutor has said it all (which was true) and all he asked was whether anyone wouldn’t treat him fairly and that all he wanted was a fair trial. After that, we got another break while the judge and the two representatives selected the jury. Not me. I had no idea that was the process. Clearly, I don’t watch enough television. The whole “afternoon jury selection” was weird enough. They do this twice a day, I guess. It sure was a lot for one six-person-plus-an-alternate jury. I was probably out of there around 4 p.m. or so.

After that, my R&R got started, which meant a lot of yard work. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I basically finished the yard work today. Probably 20 bags of leaves, since nothing’s been raked since I left in August or whenever it was. Today was mowing the lawn, raking the side yard and bagging those leaves. It’s a small side yard, and that was seven bags just there. The lot is about .25 acres, I guess and I’m amazed at how much it can gather.

The departure plans changed, thus demonstrating that I really don’t understand my employer whatsoever. I am not, as DC told me, reporting to DC. I got a note from my boss – first communication in a couple of months – asking that I return to Baghdad. Although welcome news, this meant I had to re-jigger all my flights, leading to another $580 in charges for me. Because my R&R wasn’t from Point A to only Point B, I did what we call a “cost-construct,” meaning I remained on the hook for any changes. And swapping the return from Baghdad to DC back to Baghdad (via Amman this time, since Baghdad was too expensive). Joy. That, combined with the $400 charge on the way in made this visit home way more expensive than I thought it would be. Oh well.

Just no idea this would have happened. Normally, we opt for “position” over “person,” meaning however good or bad a particular employee happens to be, it’s the position that the person is in that everything depends on. But this time around, it appears that the factors are different. Since my position is being eliminated, there’s just no way I’d be able to argue it’s “essential,” but someone much higher on the food chain determined that I am clear to return. At the same time, a person with the same job title and whose position would normally be considered essential was evacuated and does not yet have clearance to return. I’m not going to pretend to understand it. I am just glad I will be returning. Now I can drink all that root beer, which I assume is still in my fridge.

Peace Out

I really don’t remember what I was doing five years ago at this time, but in retrospect I should have gone to my five-year Peace Corps staj’s reunion. This past weekend was the 10-year and oh, man, it was so much fun.

“Staj” is the Peace Corps Morocco term for your cohort, all the people who land in Rabat with you. In our case, we landed on Sept. 11, 2007, so the 10-year reunion is more of a reunion of the end than the beginning.

We have an amazing group of Type A planners, and a handful of them sent out a survey of what people might like in a place, where they could get to, etc., and came up with Seven Springs, which is some kind of ski resort about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. Because this was Memorial Day weekend, we had hiking and not skiing but that might have been better. I certainly would have not been inclined to ski.

As it was, I was sick as a dog. The event started on Friday, and on Thursday night I came down with a brutal cold. My Friday was the worst day I’ve had in several years, so it was nice to finally find the place around 11:30 p.m. that evening and start the actual “rest” part of the R&R.

Really, when you stay in a place like this: https://www.vrbo.com/4754456ha, you cannot go wrong just hanging out at the house. It was fabulous. I could have camped out in the kitchen forever, but then I would have missed the gas-powered firepit, which was pretty phenomenal.

My room was the worst part of it; I somehow got the short end of the stick. On paper, it sounded fabulous: the office to myself. I thought there’d be a recliner, but the chair was really a futon-like thing that, for some reason, had each of the three pillow sections set in some sort of frame, so there were pieces of wood stabbing me the whole time. However, I was pretty dead to the world and didn’t move, so on one of those three nights I totally slept. The other room downsides were, although it had doors (the loft did not), they were clear glass so there was no privacy. This being Peace Corps, no one cared about that. It was more annoying that the bathroom off the office also led to the hall, meaning it was kind of the default one if you were on the first floor. No issue there, except people kept forgetting to unlock the door leading to my room when they were done, so I got locked out a lot. And, being that the room was off the kitchen and front door, it was kind of loud. However, I was so sick it really didn’t matter.

Overall, though, the place was just fabulous and it was great to touch base with people I hadn’t seen in 10 years. When I wandered in, everyone still awake was around the fire pit and people just screamed when I wandered in. It was so nice to see folks!

And, 10 years on, I swear we all look exactly the same. It was kind of scary, like a time freeze except some people brought kids. They’d had a five-year reunion and one person had brought a guy she’d just started seeing. On the 10-year, she brought him and the three kids they’d had. She still looked like the exact same Anna who’d sat next to me on the flight from Philly to Rabat, but everything else changed. So incredible!

The first day, I really was too down for the count to do anything; I took a nap in the movie room while the others went hiking and played around. I finally pulled myself off the comfy recliner and went into town to have some awesome potato leek soup and salmon from a restaurant in a neighboring city, then wound back to hang out and reminisce. Our Type A group then cooked up an amazing Moroccan feast, a truly legit Moroccan feast.

Most Americans haven’t experienced a legit Moroccan feast and have to settle for what they find in Moroccan restaurants and hope for the best. Since they’ve never had the real thing, they don’t know that in many cases, those are imitations. They’re good, but still short of the bar. Our meal in Saturday was not. We had it real. Some of it even came from Morocco directly, as one of our volunteers still works there. Oh, the joy of mint tea made with sugar as it should be – chipped off a cone with a hammer. I hadn’t seen schpekia in forever; we had real, hand-rubbed couscous and just all kinds of fixins.  With real Moroccan tea.

On Sunday, I was somewhat functional and enjoyed a hike (walk in the woods) through Laurel State Park and then several rounds of Bananagrams, followed by even more food. Oh, my there was so much food.

Heads. We also had a lot of heads. Apparently last reunion, they went to people’s Facebook pages (or something) and used profile photos to make giant heads on popsicle sticks, using them for photo ops. That was so cute, they did it again. We sort of forgot to take them on most of the day events, but we did hang them by the mantle. Kind of freaky, actually.

On Monday, we all went our separate ways again. A small group of people who had evening flights from Pittsburgh went into town there and did the incline, then we had yet more food before splitting at the airport.

The fifth reunion, I suppose, took place in 2013, when I was in Minot. That would explain why I couldn’t go – no money. However, now that I have a real job that’s reasonably secure, I really hope that I’m able to attend the 15^th.