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Friday is the New Thursday and Learning Farsi
I seem to be very challenged on Thursdays and even though I promised myself (with my will of iron) that I would post every Tuesday and Thursday I am seeing that it is impossible. Thursdays are too full! I’m thinking that the only solution is to make Friday the new Thursday and I will post on Tuesdays and Fridays.
I’m not loving the symmetry of that so maybe I’ll switch to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but yikes that’s a lot of commitment. I miss the days when I posted everyday. Life was so simple then… sigh.
Hah! Life wasn’t simple at all then. I don’t know why I had so much more time in my twenties and thirties than I do now. Less kids? Maybe.
So anyway, speaking of challenges I have decided to pay for Farsi lessons this summer. It’s not that I’ve always wanted to learn Farsi or that I’ll find it useful in business or anything it’s just that I am surrounded by Farsi-speakers and Bug’s math tutor offers Farsi lessons.
When summer came and Bug desperately wanted a summer off from all things school-related I decided to keep her math tutor on (because I love her so much) and pay her to teach me Farsi instead. It has been fun. On weeks that I study I make massive progress and I am the best student ever. On weeks that I forget to study it is like being in kindergarten all over again and learning that these funny squiggles are actually letters.
I was really scared that I wouldn’t be able to learn, you know, being old and set in my ways and having a memory that is shit. It is definitely a lot easier for the kids to pick it up. And there are sounds and letters that I find impossible to say. They seriously sound like hacking up saliva to me but it’s actually a LETTER! These sounds roll off the kids’ tongues easily but when I try, it sounds like I have a hairball. Khagh! Ghagh! Cough! Kghlaagah!
But I am loving it. It is sort of like cracking a code. I have these sets of squiggles and lines that I can actually sound out and make words with. I can write from right to left! I’m still very slow and only six or seven letters into the alphabet but I am making sentences with words with those seven letters.
I’m really glad I decided to do this. We might not be traveling this summer (big bummer) but learning a new skill is the next best thing and having someone who is really patient and kinds teach it to you makes it a pleasure instead of a terrible learning curve that makes you want to cry and tear your hair out. (Wow that’s a really long sentence.)
I’m having so much fun with Farsi that I’m thinking of making Farsi-finglish flashcards. I’d love to make real Farsi flashcards with the words in Persian characters but I haven’t figured out how to do that on my computer yet (Do I load a special font? How do I know which letters to type on my keyboard? I know phones can do this but does it work the same way on my computer with my Adobe programs?) Maybe I’ll use google translate and trace the characters in Adobe Illustrator. That seems like a lot of work though and the fonts are hard to read… Maybe some Farsi speaker out there has an Arabic keyboard and would like to collaborate?
In the mean time: Baba ob dad. Dara nan dad. Man toot doost daram! Abr Bood. (Lol)
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46 and Beyond!
I turned forty-six last week. I thought I would write a really long post about all the things I’ve learned in my vast and extensive forty-six years but you know what? I don’t know squat. I have learned a lot of things, most of them private and embarrassing and I think anyone older than me would probably smile and roll their eyes over. I hate it when I read posts from thirty-year-olds thinking they are so smart so I’m going to be even smarter and stay mum. All of you youngsters can learn the hard way just like I did. Just kidding. Let’s take a walk sometime and I’ll share some wisdom privately. Or just laugh. That’s good too.
Anyway, this birthday was kind of a bust. First of all it was the HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR, clocking in at a sweaty 108 degrees. That meant we pretty much bunkered down the hatches (aka closed all the windows and drew all the shades), turned on the AC and didn’t leave the house all day.
I did, however, leave the house in the morning to have breakfast with my pack of girlfriends. Do you have a pack of girlfriends? They are the best thing ever. Everyone should have a pack. There are five of us and we go out to breakfast monthly. Sometimes we go on excursions. Sometimes we bring each other food when we are sick or having surgery.
This birthday my friend Ana gave me a gold friendship bracelet, the fancy kind from Nordstroms. I love being a grown up and getting grown-up friendship bracelets. I like regular friendship bracelets too but I love this one so much because I feel like I’m part of secret club and when you get into your forties you trade up from embroidery floss to GOLD. Age has perks!
So yeah, it was hot.
Payam promised to make me the chocolatiest of chocolate cake and EVEN THOUGH IT WAS 105 degrees in our kitchen he persevered and made it for me anyway!! I couldn’t even believe it. There he was wearing his batman apron and dripping in sweat while he mixed and measured and the OVEN PREHEATED. That is LOVE folks.
It was really really good too. Flourless so it pretty much tasted like dark-chocolate-flavored butter which is my favorite! That evil cake called to me all week long. “I’m in the fridge, Brendaaaaa…. You know you want me….” I’m telling myself that since it didn’t have flour in it it was Keto or Adkins or something. We’ll see what the scale says next week.
Isn’t it amazing how resilient our bodies are? If you eat a 2000-calorie piece of cake you can get on the scale the next day and it won’t budge. You’ll amazingly stay the same weight. BUT you can also work-out for two weeks straight and eat 1400 calories a day and it won’t budge either so there’s that. Resilience baby.
The other reason my birthday was a bust was that every single night of my birthday week, Joon had rehearsal for the play she was in this summer. We had planned to go to my favorite restaurant for my birthday dinner the night before my birthday but of course a last-minute dress rehearsal was called and that jacked that up and then opening night was my actual birthday so it just didn’t happen. We had McDonald’s instead.
Whine, whine, whine. Would you like a glass of wine?
I was a diva about it for about half a day and then I snapped to my senses and realized that this play Joon was in was REALLY COOL and I need to grow up and be the bigger person. She didn’t have a big part or anything but it was a fun summer camp that lasted a month and a half and she made a ton of friends and really enjoyed herself. I was the idiot fool that happened to have a birthday right when it ended. I should have been born in August instead. And really? Do I need more than breakfast with my girlfriends, a gold friendship bracelet, the chocolatiest-chocolate cake ever AND my kids singing me happy birthday at ten o’clock at night? No, I do not. It was NOT a bust it just was challenged. A very challenged 46th birthday.
I did however tell Joon that if she wants to be in a play on my 50th birthday, I’m not going. She can send me a birthday photo postcard of her and the cast to my hotel in Paris.
And that was that!
Here are some pictures from my morning walks with the dogs. We’ve moved our walks earlier and earlier to beat the heat which makes for prettier pictures with better light. I’ve finally cracked the dog-walking code. In order to really enjoy dog walks you have to find a podcast you really like. I don’t dread them anymore. I think of dog walks as my podcast hour instead and sometimes I even find myself taking the long way home because I’m so hooked.
In other summertime news we made the most awesome swimsuit cover-ups on Alphamom this week. They were so fun to make! I’m sure this craft has been around forever but when I searched it on pinterest very little came up.
Joon showed me how to make really cool starburst designs and Bug outdid herself in stencil work. We spent hours on them, which when combatting summertime boredom translates to major currency. They didn’t binge-watch Friends (what they’ve been doing all summer) for three hours straight which says a lot.
Then they we headed off to Payam’s mom’s pool for a photoshoot. They turned out great. Don’t you love how Joon’s personality is so different from Bug. They are both nutballs but Joon is definitely the more out-going of the two.
It was a really big deal that Bug finally got up enough courage to jump off the diving board. So much of a big deal that she asked me to document it on sport-mode. Gifs all around!
Happy Summer!
