Ok.. I haven’t really said anything lately cuz honestly, I haven’t been feeling so good. The migraines have been on the attack like anything… I’m popping Advil like candy.. hell even candy shouldn’t be popped the way I’m popping Advil. Anyway.. I think I need to go and see that neurologist again. Lately I seem to be going to the doctor’s a lot.. rather to the hospital. At first it was for the volunteer stuff (which is still keeping me in limbo) and then on the advice of my good friend Fatima, I went to see a Ob/Gyn specialist and she took some tests and will let me know the results later… what she says could explain the miscarriage and inshaAllah prevent future ones. Please pray for me… let’s hope it’s nothing but the thyroid.. I’ve heard that if you take medicine to fix that, it also helps you lose weight and conversely thyroid problems make you put on weight that you shouldn’t.

Anyway, to completely tangent, has anyone seen the Indian movie Monsoon Wedding? It’s one of the nicest Indian movie I have ever seen.. with more meaning packed into it’s 2 hours than most 4-hour Indian movies combined together! Well anyway, I watching it again today and I remembered the first time I saw it with my brother (the one who just got married) and it was funny how every scene reminded me of what we’d he’d said during it. I have a remarkable memory, alhamduLilah and sometimes I almost wish I didn’t cuz when I become nostalgic like this, it… isn’t… good… for those.. migraines. Tears give me headaches.

It’s funny how me and Sunny (that’s my bro.’s nickname) used to fight like cats and dogs when we were small and then not so small. At first when it was just the two of us, we were the best little kids in the entire family. My mom says we never touched a thing we weren’t supposed to and never moved from a spot she stationed us on. We were also great conspirators in everything; unfortunately Sunny’s favorite snack happened to be the same one as the flowers in our garden… yep, you guessed it, the delightful mixture of manure with mud. So he used to plop down there in the flower beds, all comfy and stuff and I used to watch him snack on… gross, huh? How was a 2-year-old supposed to know there was anything wrong with eating that stuff?? The flowers grew out of there all nice and pretty!! Anyway, I used to watch out for Mom or Dad or our uncles (who lived with us)… while he gobbled the stuff.. haha..

I miss them all so much… damn!!! (tears hurt) !!!

Watch this song… and the video carefully.. if you have a family who you love, this will make you well up.. I love it.. I played it at my brother’s reception with a slideshow of our pictures and there wasn’t a dry eye in the hall from our entire family…

We went to my cousin’s (the one with the cute son) place in NJ and her area is actually at the edge of Manhattan so you can see the actual Manhattan skyline from her window. On one side is the ocean with the skyline and the other side is a baseball field.. it was really beautiful.

..I so totally don’t get it!! I mean what’re you supposed to do on there?? ‘Poke’ people? Why would I wanna do that? I’d ignored a few ‘add on’ requests but I eventually caved in and decided to figure out what the hype was about… well it’s been a month since I signed on and I’m still trying to find an answer to that question!

Here’s the deal… if I know you and like you, you’re already on my msn or better yet, we talk on the phone often enough … I do NOT wanna find long lost ‘friends’ from wayyy back when I was two – if you’re ‘long lost’ then there’s a reason why and I have not changed my mind about you! Please do not write dumb notes on ‘my wall’ and certainly don’t ‘poke’ me! And if we crossed paths once on a mutual friend’s party, it does NOT mean you’ve now ‘found’ me on facebook and we’re gonna be best buddies… jeeeez…..!!

I hope nobody takes this personally… and this doesn’t mean that if you love facebook, I don’t love you… by all means love facebook with all your heart – just forgive me for not liking it! I guess this replusion for sites like Orkut, Hi-5 and Facebook stems from the fact that a long long time ago I was the kind of person who used to make random friends – the whole world was my friend and then all my energy and time would be spent fulfilling the obligations of these friendships which would have been all nice and noble except that most of these so-called friends turned out to be two-faced, self-centered, self-absorbed, backstabbing whatevers (insert your favorite expletive here)!!!! Time and again I’d end up being brutally hurt cuz I’d be taken for a ride, used and cast aside… my father would warn me about these ‘friends’ – at that time I used to marvel at Papa’s perceptive skills – how could he predict that this ‘friend’ was a foe? Well now I know that most scumbags have ’scumbag’ written all over their every gesture and word…

Anyway, with age comes wisdom and I learnt the skill of filtering gems from the stones… I promised myself I wouldn’t waste time on people who weren’t worth my left shoe (which incidentally is worth a lot more than most scumbags) so I began breaking off ties with the so-called friends which had exploited my innocent trust and in the end I was left with a handful of REAL gems… alhamduLilah… and I still have them and I know I always will inshaAllah and other than that… I don’t really need to find the old scumbags. I have a few really really good friends and my life wouldn’t be enough if I laid it down for them and I know they don’t need any ‘pokes’ or ‘wall writings’ for me to tell them how often I think of them and how much I love them…

At another time I might tell you a story about this ‘friend’ I used to have who shone and dazzled just like the real thing but all her glittter turned to dust when I needed her the most… does it really surprise me that she was on Orkut with a million ‘friends’ but I know for a fact that in real life, she doesn’t have a single friend?

Disclaimer: If you know me then you know what I’m gonna say here so if you’re on facebook and I love you..don’t sweat it…ok? If I don’t know you then who cares?

I’m not sure if I said this earlier but I had applied for a volunteer position at this one hospital and today was the orientation. It was interesting and I’m intrigued but again they have to hit me in the face with ‘you’re a foreigner’… I mean of course no one says exactly that but they make all these dumb rules which ensure that unless the Homeland Security says so, a poor useless foreigner like me can’t even volunteer!! They said they need a social secuirty number to ‘run a background check’.. even though a background check can just as easily be run by someone’s name/address/DOB whatever… I know that for a fact but they also know that only American citizens and people authorized to work in the US have SSNs.. so of course I don’t have one.. which means they can’t do a secuirty check on me, which of course means I can’t even volunteer. As usual.. I hit another dead end….

Anything I try to do… I’m just snubbed in the face with one law or another which ensures my failure to progress in any way at all. Am I supposed to accept this stagnant life and accept it as fate? Well too bad I don’t believe in that kind of fate… I can not convince myself that this is what Allah wants from me… to sit around and do nothing! I want to get out there and do something with my life… something fulfilling and rewarding… something that helps me build on my strengths and talents… I know I’m not cut out to be just a housewife.. I know it in my heart… that’s why these setbacks hit me so hard and frustrate me so much! And before anyone begins to lecture me on the futility of complaining and instead getting my ass up and actually doing something… I can assure you that I have explored every single option available to someone with that lovely, glowing stamp of non-immigrant status that I so relish!

*Sigh* Do I sound bitter and angry? You bet I do….. there is this girl I know who when got married and moved here from Pakistan didn’t know a word of English… she was as FOB as they come… and now… 4 years later, she’s is in the last year of her residency.. on her way to becoming a freakin’ DOCTOR!!! Why????? Cuz she was lucky enough to marry an American citizen!! How come no one told me to check the color of my husband’s passport before I married him? How come no one warned me about all these dead-end alleys I’d be running into?? Oh no wait.. I know why… cuz everyone thought I’d be spitting out babies one per year.. too busy to really do anything else… who needs a career? Who needs education? Why did I sweat in that engineering school for four years if this was all I was ever gonna do? Why don’t I just flush down my engineering degree for all it’s good? What good is that specialized education when I haven’t a day’s work experience to my name?? And thanks to wonderful immigration laws in this country.. I never will…

No I don’t hate America. I think it’s a wonderful country but I do think that for a country which takes so much from it’s ‘foreign’ citizens… including rediculous amounts of taxes… it should REALLY have some reasonable immigration laws… My husband has lived in this country LEGALLY for ten years and he has still NO hope of getting his citizenship! I hate this stinginess… I’m sick of these shackles.. I wanna be able to do whatever the hell I want instead of being made to feel inadequate because of the color of my passport…it’s just not fair!!!!!!! ITS.NOT.FAIR.

You know sometimes I forget that it’s been almost three years since I moved to America.. there are so many things that still make me so uncomfortable that I can’t get over living here.

There are times when I just wanna whip my scarf off just so I can have some semblance of comfort – just so I can feel like I fit in… I know deep down that in fact taking the scarf off will make me even more uncomfortable and unhappy but still.. I like to attribute my awkwardness to something…something physical.

I’m not sure what makes me feel so out of place in this country… why this feeling of not belonging forever haunts me. I know that my own thoughts, my own fears alienate me more than anything else from the place I wanna call home. It’s like I have some kind of phobia and I feel like everyone who looks at me is thinking, “What is she doing here?” I squirm inwardly every time I catch someone looking at me… I try to tell myself that there could be any number of reasons this person is giving me the once-over – perhaps they like my top, perhaps they think I should lose weight, perhaps they’re trying to figure out where I’m from – really it could be anything – BUT, I still feel very conscious and wish that the earth would split open and swallow me within… that I shouldn’t be here… I don’t belong… I have no right to be here… ouch!!

I love swimming… I love sports of all kind… I hate working out but I love sports… I was so looking forward to summer cuz I thought I’m gonna go swimming… so I bought my ‘Muslim’ swim-suit… it covers my entire body except face, hands and feet and so I decided to go to our apartment pool to try it out. Since I don’t work, I can go any time of the day so I chose a time early in the day when I know most people are at work and I won’t have to
1- Look like a scuba-diving loser in front of too many people.
2- Face too many men (hopefully they’re all at work)

Ok so I went down there with the swimming costume beneath my robe and *phew* there were only two women lying face down on the deck chairs, baking themselves in the sun and they didn’t turn to look at me… there was the lifeguard (a female..yaay!)… she looked at me closely but didn’t say anything. I gingerly took my robe off and quickly jumped into the pool, still feeling very self-conscious and awkward… I have this nose-clip that I love to wear when I swim cuz then I don’t have to worry about water going into my nose – I used to wear it all the time in Pakistan – everyone there did.. but here I didn’t know if it would make me look more freako or what so I didn’t wear it, I love my goggles too but again I didn’t wear them cuz I just didn’t wanna wear anything more that made me look ‘different’… so I swam for about half an hour but all that time I just kept wondering if the lifeguard thinks I’m crazy for wearing a swimming costume that doesn’t leave me almost naked… or if the lady who just walked in (in a ‘teeny weeny itsy bitsy‘ swimsuit) doesn’t think I’m deranged for wearing a head-cover… or if a guy might just walk in… jeeeeez… all that thinking just gave me a migraine when I came back home and I decided it’s just better not to swim… there’s always walking…

So go ahead… tell me I’m weird. But if someone can tell me what those women at the pool might really think of me, that would be helpful…

So it was my little nephew’s birthday yesterday and I have to say that he’s the best host I have ever seen and it was the most fun birthday party I have ever been to! Hahaha!! He’s such a darling little boy, full of vibrant energy and friendly as a dolphin! I mean I’ve known him since the day he was born – hell I was there when he was being born! I went to his mom in NYC and she went into labor!! Haha!! That was a fun night which put me off motherhood for at least a few years!! Haha.. just kidding! Seriously though – my cousin wasn’t supposed to have the baby until another week at least and she went into labor because she over-walked haha.. so I spent the whole nigt awake with her, counting the frequency of her labor pains (the doc. said she couldn’t go to the hospital until the pains were less than 5 min apart and lasted more than a few seconds)… and eventually at 7am, I woke her hubby who took her to the hospital and thus was born this fiesty little boy who turned two a few days ago (yeah they celerbated a little late).

At other times he invented some other games all made us all play with him – everybody had so much fun laughing at his antics – it was really the best birthday party ever!! Hahaha!! Oh and when his mom brought his gifts, he was beside himself with excitement and he’d cry out “SURPRISE!!” at every present- then he’d go running to the person it was from and give them a big hug and “thaant ew’.. awwww… oh and when we cut his cake and made him blow the candles – he was singing along with everyone ‘Happy Birthday to M…” hehe.. and once we got done, he’s like “AGAIN!!!” .. so he made us do it 3 times and I think he’d have gone on forever except his mom told him celebrating 3 times is enough!!! Hehe!!

Wow so that was a lot of fun – we got back home at 2am! I’m still pretty tired from all the activity yesterday – I helped my aunt clean up afterwards.. anyways guys, that’s it for now. Oh by the way, this little attention-addictive boy is about to have a sibling soon inshaAllah so it’ll be interesting to see how he reacts to shared attention – he doesn’t like it much right now – besides being adorable as hell, he’s also ultra smart and manipulative.. if any of ‘his’ people are seen playing with other kids, they get one hell of a scream session from him! Haha!

Check out the precarious roads.. you could hardly call them a ‘road’.. they were mostly just paths carved out of mountains.. it was a very bumpy ride and very scary too.. the open edge of the road is just a HUGE drop… there’s no way you can survive if you fall off of there. There were times when our hearts were caught in our throats.. we were like, surely we can’t survive this treacherous path??!! haha.. but alhamduLilah we did and though our car was just an average sedan, hubby is such an efficient driver mashaAllah that we never had any problems. It’s not unheard of in these areas for cars and buses to be falling over and people being killed or breaks failing and peopel being stranded in the middle of the night etc. So alhamduLilah we were fortuntate that our entire trip of a week, we didn’t have any incidents.

Remember I told you guys earlier that me and the hubby had gone to Swat while we wree in Pakistan? Well here some pics we took.. it’s a really beautiful city towards the north of Pakistan. It’s full of gorgeous pastures… huge mountains and crystal clear rivers… we had a wonderful time while we were there.. it was just breathtaking. The only fallback was the awful state of roads.. I’ll post pics from the broken roads too.

I went in for a volunteer interview today and it went pretty well. She asked me what I wanted to do exactly and I said I’d like working with kids so she showed me the summer schedule for Elementary level kids.. their program starts in July so let’s see what happens. I’m really hoping something will materialize out of this… I’m very eager to start doing something productive inshaAllah.

On another positive note I met this wonderful friend of mine for the first time… she’s the one who inspired me to start my own blog and to this day her blog is my favorite. I’ll ask her if it’s ok with her if I link her here but in any case, we had a lovely time and it was absolutely delightful to hang out with a real ‘poke-in-the-flesh’ (thanks pini for that phrase) friend! It’s amazing how the internet helps us find these wonderful people who we might otherwise have completely missed… mashaAllah she’s such a lovely person and we had so much stuff in common, it was just a deliciously comfortable meet!

On yet another note, my cousin is having a small birthday party for her two-year-old son this Saturday. I’ll be meeting them after 4 months and the little boy has really grown in that time, I hear, so I’m really excited about meeting him. I’ve heard he’s hilarious with his perfect little English phrases and so I can’t wait to meet him and tell you all about it. Speaking of which, does any one have any idea what I should buy him for his birthday? Sobia?

Oh and I also needed some advice about a good non-fiction book… does anyone have any ideas?

Just looking at the site stats and curious about a lurker from Virginia… care to tell me who that is? Just wondering cuz I live in the same area.. email me if you don’t want to post a comment. Thanks!