May | 2015 | The View Through The Window

I am done

Posted on May 21, 2015 by sheemsters

Shit, it’s been a long week.

I recently completed a 48 hour school workathon, which is the only type of marathon you will ever find me participating in.

I can assure you, it was just as much of a bitch as the real thing.

Seriously, I think I’m applicable for the Guinness Book of World Records or something.

By the time I hit the last submit button, I was almost awash in tears of relief.

I am DONE DONE DONE with school for now. And I am ready for a vacation.

That’s why The View Through the Window is going to Florida!

Our vacations are usually on the shorter side. We take four day treks to a city within a few hours drive and get back home in just enough time to say mother eff, tomorrow’s Monday!

But this year we decided that a good vacation is a very important part of life. Everyone needs to exit the traffic circle of work, school, home, repeat once in a while.

And what can be a better destination than the happiest place on earth?

After that bitch school workathon, I needed to find a happy place.

I still have my concerns, though. The drive from Chicago to Florida is around 18 hours long. Add my kids to it and we might as well hire a donkey cart for our mode of transportation.

We’d probably get there just as fast.

Flying is completely out of the question. I swore I would never board an airplane with my boys again after my last plane ride, one of the many highlights of which was my very concerned son, a first time flier, asking things like why there were so many cops at the airport, was something wrong with the plane, would it crash and would we all die?

Loud and clear enough for everyone on board to hear. He apparently inherited my flying apprehensions.

This was me.

Everyone knows you don’t say crash when you’re on a plane, especially if you’re a Muslim. I couldn’t believe it, but most people just laughed when they heard him voice his concerns.

Me? I almost threw up all over my friendly fellow passenger from the stress, combined with plenty of air sickness.

I’d rather drive to and back from Florida ten times than go through that again. Any humiliation we experience will be confined to the privacy of our van.

I tried to persuade my husband to postpone the trip until our kids were older, but he was adamant that they were at just the right age to experience the magic that is Disney.

And because he’s paying for everything, I felt I should agree.

And when I did, he was all

So we are going. Suitcases have been packed, Florida relatives have been notified, and neighbors have been asked to keep an eye on our place for us until we return.

Wish us luck! I am sure one hour into the drive I will want to shoot myself, but I believe in living in the moment. And in miracles.

Last week was also my birthday. I am now 31 26 years old.

Here are some birthday dinner pictures.

Half the menu consisted of alcohol 😦

Came with the bread

Delicious

Smoked salmon appetizer

Vegetable tagine

Chocolate mousse

Creme Brulee

My mom refused to eat the restaurant’s prized steaks because “they bleed when you slice into them”, so she ordered that enormous vegetable tagine instead.

Here comes the best part about birthdays.

It pays to be old.

Hellos and goodbyes

Posted on May 14, 2015 by sheemsters

Happy Mother’s Day!

May has always been a very busy month in the View Through the Window household.

There is my mother in law’s birthday, my brother’s birthday, Mother’s Day, my birthday, and then Memorial Day, when we usually go somewhere for vacation.

The month has gotten even busier since I started school again. It means the end of the semester. In fact, all my work for my classes is due before midnight on May 15.

I wasn’t going to let schoolwork get in the way of my enjoying my weekend, though, especially since I had extra reason to celebrate.

Reason number one is that my brother and his wife had their first baby last week. I am an aunt now for the second time!

And if that wasn’t awesome enough, my sister and her son, my four year old nephew, paid us a surprise visit all the way from Dallas, Texas.

There he is hiding behind his cousin, Son 1.

Seeing my nephews was the best gift ever. It made me so happy to be able to celebrate Mother’s Day with them.

We all went out to Chicago’s Chinatown on Sunday.

Chinatown has a little courtyard type of area, where there are statues of the animals of the Chinese zodiac. They have a little description underneath for who falls under which year and what animal.

Mine would be the Rat.

Here are some of the other ones.

We had a late lunch…

Lunch.

We were hungry.

Strawberry tapioca drink. Delicious.

and then toured some more.

Above are pictures of Chinatown’s candy store, where they lay out samples of stuff like dried plums, sesame seed candy, and sweet ginger. They have the regular stuff like Airheads and Skittles as well. I even saw some small samples of dried squid and cuttlefish.

I spent half my time in that store hollering at my boys, who had never been through the sampling process before. They thought it meant they could take a bite of whatever it was they were sampling, spit it out if they didn’t like it, and put it right back in the little dish.

I spent the other half fishing out whatever they had put back and throwing it away. 🙄

It’s a miracle they didn’t kick us out.

The weekend went by too quickly and before we knew it, it was time to drive my sister to O’Hare airport and say goodbye.

Son 2 and sister 2 joined me in dropping them off.

It does the walking for you

Cousins and buddies

What’s this?!

Saying goodbye

Glass elevator

Going down

Heading home

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day!

I wouldn’t go there

Posted on May 7, 2015 by sheemsters

It takes me a long time to get ready and out of the house. I take long showers, do my hair three different ways before I’m finally happy with the way it looks, and try to put together an outfit that doesn’t hug back fat or show cleavage.

That last one can take an hour in itself.

So sometimes I’m just not up to the challenge. Sometimes I just want to put on a comfy pair of pajamas, sprawl out onto the sofa, and enter into a coma of laziness.

Most people think that as a stay at home mom, I get plenty of rest during the weekdays and weekends should be reserved for chores and activities.

Eff that shit.

This describes it for me.

Here’s a snippet of a conversation my husband and I had recently :

Hey, want to go out to Menard’s or Home Depot?

– No.

I noticed the boys’ room needs new blinds. We could take a look and see what they have.

– I don’t want to.

Apparently he thinks “no” means I’m playing hard to get.

But we could get new blinds for the whole house.

– I don’t care. I like our house ugly.

What if the neighbors happen to look in and see you naked?

– Send them your condolences.

That last question was just plain silly. We have nice neighbors who pay way too much attention to their lawn and don’t really seem interested in a game of peek a boob.

Anyway, this past weekend I had to be productive, whether I wanted to or not, because my in laws were visiting.

And we had a wedding to attend.

And it was my mother in law’s birthday.

And my brother’s birthday.

And I had homework.

So on Friday I slept for a grand total of four and a half hours and got my ass up at the crack of Sheema, get up, your alarm has been going off for an hour already!

I washed, scrubbed, mopped, cleaned, dusted, vacuumed, swept, and cooked. Every time I thought I could rest, I remembered something else that had to be done.

By the afternoon, I was all

Then it was time to take my tired ass to the wedding. By that point, I just didn’t care anymore. I could’ve been sporting facial hair the size of a cat’s whiskers and I still wouldn’t do anything about it.

I put on the same thing I wore to the last wedding I attended, stuck a bobby pin in my hair, popped in some earrings and off we went.

And because I am tired of typing, here are some pictures.