I'll have a blue (bloooOOOOooowooh) Christmas...

Well, I managed to make it through Christmas without having a major breakdown. (Sorry about the teary phone message, Shan!) It was rough being away from family and friends, but okay. Lahcen and Hassan took me out to dinner and I had chicken cous cous for my Christmas dinner. That and watching the pope give the Christmas mass on TV was the sum total of my celebrations. Santy didn't come to visit me this year; I guess I forgot to send him my forwarding address!

Anyway, am now bracing myself for Aïd Al Adha. Don't have a clue what it's all about, but I know it involves sacrificing a sheep. I think I'll stay in bed that day.

Happy gets happy

My cat has recently hit puberty, and I don't like it one bit. You know, the usual -- mood swings, tantrums, hair growth, masturbation. Yep, you read me right. It came as a huge shock to me, given that when I was growing up, any animal that dared come within a two-mile radius of my mother's house was immediately shipped off to be de-clawed, de-flea-ed, de-wormed and de-genitalized, as appropriate. It's debatable as to whether they were demoralized, but perhaps this helps explain my ignorance of the male cat's reproductive growth.

I was traumatized the first time I realised what was going on. Poops has started doing unmentionable things to my bedspread. He does it whenever he's happy -- he'll be purring away, like a good little kitty, and then I guess he just gets "excited". I thought only yippy dogs did that?!

La Cucaracha - No tengo dinero para gustar

Okay, so putting up my old journal posts has gone out the window. I'll never get caught up to the present at the rate I've been going. Tragic. Perhaps I'll post some of the old ones occasionally, when I can be arsed to do it.

Last Sunday we got moved into the new house, the one given to me by the school as compensation for the fact my salary is lower than low, pitiable, scandalous, and downright laughable. I won't say how little. Just know it's little. Anyway, them's the perks of living/working in Morocco!! At least it's cheap here.

So, the new house. Yeah. Well, it's definitely NOT like the old house. I came in a few days before we were due to move, and bombed for cockroaches, of which there were MANY. Next day, carcasses everywhere. Not sure why they crawled out into the open to die, but they did. Thankfully they were all small. Oh, that is, except for the 4 MONSTERS that were near the drain in the front entryway. I lost it. A lot. Like Sally Field in that movie where she's skitzo. Is that Sally Field? Maybe I'm thinking of Sissy Spacek.

Anyway, after several hours sitting on the couch in a paranoid ball, whimpering and jumping at the sight of shadows, holes in my sweatshirt, and my own hair, I finally managed to compose myself enough to completely cover the house in that powder poison stuff that they're supposed to carry back to the "nest" ("lair" is a more appropriate word, I think). I mean, the house looked like a winter wonderland. Seriously. You could build snowmen in the kitchen. But I think I've managed to get rid of the damn things. And what comes in from outside is cat fodder. Ha HA!!

Don't tell me that this is winter and just wait for summer. I WILL NOT HAVE ROACHES IN MY HOUSE, DAMMIT!!

Okay, gotta jet. You can now rest easy knowing I'm not being eaten alive or carried off to an evil lair by those hairy, beady-eyed little monsters. I'm safe, in my little winter wonderland.

Melodrama 101

29/10/05

I didn't think it was possible, but there exists TV that is cheesier than Irish/British serial drama. I'm talkin' Roquefort, Baby. Arabic and Berber soap operas and movies are in a league of their own. I won't even talk about the quality of the acting. It's just not even worth the words.

Today I watched a beautiful woman drown herself because her lazy-ass, drugged-out boyfriend broke up with her. She walked into a calm ocean, and as she got about chest deep, she began flailing her arms in "Help me! I'm drowning!" fashion. Her head wasn't anywhere near being under water. The bum boyfriend watched from afar, as some suitably tragic music droned in the background. Too much of a bum to go in and rescue her, he went home and OD-ed on cocaine. The horror!

But nothing could top the Berber movie we watched several nights ago, about a family that is struck with several calamities on one day (father wrongly sent to prison for murder, mother dies of broken heart, daughter struck by a car, son left orphaned and alone). Fast forward 15 years and the same family that had been tragically wrenched apart is now VERY coincidentally reunited for a tidy happy ending set over mom's gravesite.

That ain't just Roquefort, Baby! That's a large roomful of cheese, unrefrigerated and improperly ventilated, somewhere in the Tropic of Cancer. The thing that kills me, though, is that people here eat that shit up. Lahcen and his friends were going, "Oh, my. That is so sad. I'm going to cry."

No, seriously.

Annoyance

29/10/05 -- 4:41 a.m.

What is it about men that causes complete hearing loss -- 100% deafness -- when there's a woman around to wake them? Why can't they hear the alarm?

Forty-one minutes ago, when Lahcen's phone started beep-beeping its alarm, he sat bolt upright, wrenched the covers off me and put them around himself before rolling over and facing the alarm, which was violently shrieking approximately 9-12 inches from his head. And get this: he didn't turn it off. What the hell?!

How can a person wake up enough to steal the covers but not wake up enough to hear an alarm with a decibel level akin to an air raid siren?

He has slightly made amends for this heinous misdeed by extricating a very large buzzing fly from my room just now. I say "slightly" because, after not hearing the alarm clock, Lahcen then had the nerve to tell me he doesn't have any appetite to eat the breakfast I had cooked him BECAUSE HE DIDN'T SLEEP LAST NIGHT.

Prince of Thieves

28/10/05

Right now Ali Baba is perched on my thumb, taking a nap. He is the tiniest, cutest chameleon ever. He just had a long drink and bath and his belly is full of yummy water. This afternoon I took him to the pool and he ate four (!) flies. I nearly got the fright of my life the first time I saw that tongue shoot out of his mouth. Guess he's a carnivore.

He does a funny dance when he's hunting, something akin to a stilted Running Man mixed with the Hammer mixed with the Robot. I think Ali Baba believes he resembles a windblown leaf when he does this dance, but I don't have the heart to tell him any different.

On another note, mosquito carcasses are beginning to pile up around the house. It's hot, so of course it makes sense they can smell my sweet, juicy blood better. Have so far managed to avoid being eaten alive. But I reckon it's only a matter of time before they get me.

Muezzin Jive

28/10/05

One of the five pillars of Islam is prayer. Five times each day, you can hear the call of the muezzin throughout every Muslim city and village. I don't know exactly what he says, but I do know it translates, roughly, as "God is big, yo. God is big, and Mohammed is His homey. All y'all git y'all asses out the bed and go pray, yo."

I'm not sure whether Mohammed held loyalties with East Side or West Siiiiiiiiiiiide, but it doesn't seem to matter here. Pretty much everybody stops what they're doin' and heads for the nearest prayer mat --- a little bit of peace in the 'hood, if only for a few minutes. Cool.

Hell Freezes Over

25/10/05

I've never really considered myself to have been spoiled, but after only a few days in Morocco I am beginning to understand that being American, in and of itself, means I have been spoiled. A few things I never expected to do, prior to moving here:

1. Wash clothes by hand. I mean, other than delicates. I mean, like socks and shirts and normal clothes that are meant to be thrown into the washing machine! Who washes clothes by hand?! Apparently, I do, now that I live in Morocco.

2. Piss over a hole in the ground. Really, how do people do that without splashing at least a little bit on their feet? I'm figuring out it's all about the aim. If you can get it directly in the hole, you minimise splashing. (More detail on said holes in the ground later)

3. Calmly standing next to a half-a-cow which is hanging in front of the counter at my local butcher shop. Can't these things fit in the back with you, Mister? It's worse when at the souk, though. There are cow and sheep heads, still intact, on display near the butchers' stalls. Sensitive vegetarians "steer" clear. Seriously.

4. Buying (and eating) bread and produce I KNOW has had at least 15 or 20 people handle and squeeze it to check for freshness. Vegetables I can wash. Bread -- well, you get the picture. So far I'm still alive.

So next time you think you're having a hard time without that dishwasher or the satellite TV, remember there are those of us on the other side of the globe who are cozying up to carcasses and injesting the dead skin cells of a couple dozen different people with our breakfast.

The Magic Numbers

25/10/05

In this day and age, what better way is there for me to announce to the world that I'm moving on, starting a new life in a new place, than by the procurement of the magic numbers --- the mobile numbers! These are the numbers that say "I'm here! I've done it! And I intend to stay put for a while, so there!

Three years ago, almost to the day, I purchased my first mobile phone in Dublin, gave the number to friends and family, and I was off on my adventure! Ha HA!

Funny how adventures can flip-flop into mundaneness without you even realizing it. Pay attention, Denise! Okay, so now I'm beginning another adventure --- one which promises to provide a lot of excitement and lessons learned. I am ten days into my new life in Morocco, and just to prove I'm serious about it, I'll present the magic numbers: (deleted for anonymity!).

Wheeeeeeeeee!

Prologue

There is something I find incrediby intimidating about starting a journal (blog). Pages and pages of empty space, with no instructions on what to write or how many words??! No thank you! I realise that is supposed to be liberating, but I only find it quite terrifying. Would someone please notify me immediately upon the release of "The Journaler's Guide to the Galaxy"?

Too many thoughts and ideas and no clue how to go about organizing them. However, I will try to emulate my current hero, Dooce (www.dooce.com), and hopefully I'll improve as time goes on.

So here goes...

Getting started

Hey Everybody! Here it is, finally. I am gonna spend a few days posting some old journal entries, so those of you I haven't been in close contact with can get the whole story about the move to Morocco. Hope y'all enjoy readin' my antics!