Missing: Sense of Humor

When you're an expat, a sense of humor is essential to making it through the day without losing your business.  In situations which are ridiculous, or infuriating, or baffling (or all three), you must always remind yourself that you're living a story that you can one day tell to others (much of this happens for me on this blog).

Friends, I have now had a few too many frustrating experiences in the span of too few days and my sense of humor is EXTINGUISHED and now, I just snap at people, including my own children (one of whom peed all over the floor this morning, mid-fit because her daddy wouldn't let her play on the iPad).

She peed all over an already filthy floor, because yesterday we had three guys come and paint over places in our house which had bubbled, or molded, or chipped off.  These guys that came - one of whom the landlord hires to maintain the property - had no tape, plastic, drop cloths or cleaning supplies.  They did a terrible job (see photos below) and left a huge mess.  I am furious, especially because we pay high rent for a nice house.  We have emailed our landlord and received a wholly unsatisfactory response as it's one month after we renewed our lease so why would he care?

They left my house trashed, and the ultimate insult is that I GAVE THEM THAT ICED TEA.

This is not the only door that was painted on. 

Yep, that'd be the stool my dad made for the kids which they used.  They also got paint on Lizzie's stroller while working in the garage.  (Yes, still need a stroller for Lizzie occasionally; I know she's too big.)

This morning, still smarting from yesterday's painting experience, I arrived at the Hyundai service center to have work done on my car - and despite the fact that I made an appointment when he told me I needed the work done two days ago, the guy trotted off to see if the part was in stock.  On Thursday he said he could finish the work in one to two hours, but today he evidently did not have the part, and did not want to tell me that, so left me languishing in the waiting area for more than three hours.  I had to cancel a haircut and have someone else pick up Lizzie.  I dealt with these things after screaming at the clueless Omani man helping me.  Don't worry, I apologized before I left because that's not how I want to behave, and I see this guy every 5,000 kilometres.  (Yes, I know you don't need an oil change that often, but I want to get as much money as I can for my car when I sell it.)

And last week, Lizzie was sick yet agin, and I went to the nearby hospital yet again, and was yet again given three prescriptions (one for antibiotics) and charged as much money as they could possibly charge.  Also, this hospital used to accept our insurance cards but now only does for a select list of companies.  After making them bring all the Aetna directives to me and confirming that they were indeed correct (miracle!), I had to go home and file all the paperwork for reimbursement for an appointment that was absolutely useless.  I was tempted to draft an email for Eli to send to his HR department, asking for Eli's company to be added to the list, but as I won't return there unless someone is in danger of death in the ten minutes it takes to get to the other private hospital, I've decided to skip it.

In better news, we had a party on Thursday night and it was fun.  Phew.