Did you want some petrol?

Recently Ahmed called me while he was out and asked if I wanted petrol for my car. He asked if I wanted to fill it up and I replied with 'Just put in about $30'.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah $30"
"Ok...be home soon"
He walks in later and I asked how much he put in the car. He told me he had put $40 in and so I asked him why he bothered to call if he didn't plan on listening.
"I wanted to fill up the car, you wanted to put in $30....You compromised" =)

My first post

I've been refusing to use this blog to bitch about my minor little problems with my lovely wife. However, she encouraged me to post this little problem on here.

My wife loves... chaos.

Not the good chaos where you have nothing to lose so you just kick back and enjoy people freaking out and things getting damaged.

She loves the chaos where you walk in the house and it looks like it just endured a mortar attack. Her theory is that it encourages creativity. I won't go into details about the countless arguments we've had regarding this topic, but I'll put it this way; everything I own can be packed in one large suitcase. Everything she owns can be packed in - give or take - a 5 ton truck.

Regardless of swimming against the current, I've managed to keep the house in a "relatively" neat order. Audrey compromised as well and helps out when possible.

Anyway, I woke up this morning and I found a trail of clothes leading from the bedroom to the bathroom. Typically, that sort of imagery sparks a bit of sexual excitement into the air, but there was no woman at the end of the trail.... just underwear.

And she wonders why I go a bit insane from time to time.

How We Met

I always get asked how Ahmed and I met. I guess it's because he wasn't born here and until 2008 had never been to Australia. They envisage this wild, passionate holiday romance and it really wasn't like that, or maybe in the couple of years of comfortableness I have forgotten.

Surprise, Surprise, it all started in an Internet chat room. He was actually being annoying and generally driving people crazy. Turns out this is his default setting. Something about him though, got my attention. We chatted that first night until 6am and then everyday for the next 3 months.

At the time I was living overseas and was a 'free spirit', or at least behaving like one. Everything I did was rather spontaneous and fun. It seemed perfectly sane travelling to another country to meet him, until I boarded the plane, when it set in that I was about to meet someone that I had only seen on web cam. Obviously, as it turns out, this was the best decision I could have made, insane or not.

Before leaving, I had been talking to Ahmed about how I was disappointed I was missing out on Christmas with my family. Where I was living at the time, Christmas was seen as a time to put up pretty lights, but life went on as normal and people went to work on Christmas Day. The same could be said about where Ahmed lived but this was so very different from my home. I come from a family, where Christmas had always been a huge part of our lives. Everyone eats until they can't fit anything more in and if you didn't believe in Santa or at least pretend to, you didn't get presents.

As it happened, the only flight available was on Christmas Eve, arriving early Christmas morning. I really didn't need to worry though. I had my Christmas Day. Ahmed met me wearing a Santa hat (he had stolen from a friend of his) and clutching a little Christmas tree. It was the sweetest (yet a little strange) thing anyone had ever done for me. Ahmed has since done many more of these weird, sweet things to cheer me up.

After that first meeting, our lives never really went back to normal. I moved back home after a year overseas and we continued chatting daily. We really had no idea how it was going to work out but we both wanted it to. I swear friends thought I was making him up and couldn't understand why I was turning down dates with others. My mum was worried about me sitting around waiting for someone that might never be able to come to Australia. It wasn't until we started the VISA process that they finally understood how serious we were.

2 years after we met, Ahmed arrived in Australia and everyone was there to see us get married. I wouldn't ever recommend this to anyone, the wait was full of ups and downs, but it worked for us...eventually.

Not the best student

Okay, so I am trying to learn Arabic and I am being a big baby about it. It's frustrating and just when you think it makes sense, they change what the letters look like. I have nothing against the language, but I don't think it's for me. I did tell Ahmed that I was giving up and unless he could give me a reason to learn Arabic *hint hint...Give me a baby*, then I was going to give it a miss. As it stands right now, I'll have to sign to my children instead. =)

The Lasagne

I took Ahmed to a small Italian cafe for dinner before we had an exciting night of ten pin bowling. We were looking at the menu and he decided he'd have the lasagne. We checked the ingredients just in case, and all was fine. I got the pizza myself and was pretty excited (I like pizza). The food finally arrived and Ahmed was about to take a bite of his lasagne when I spotted layers and layers of ham. *groan*

I decided that I would be the one to return the lasagne, because I'm generally nicer with these things. The man behind the bar gave me this look like I had no idea what a real lasagne is. "Lasgane is ALWAYS made with ham...there is no need to write it in the menu". Right....so..hmm.."Umm he can't eat ham...it's not that he is just picky or that he can pick it out". "Fine, I'll go get the owner" and he storms off while I mumble a thanks.

Well, the owner comes out and he is this gorgeous little old Italian man. You know the kind of old man who just looks happy all the time? I had an interesting conversation with him.
"Umm, I'm so sorry, but he can't eat this. It has ham and before we ordered it, we checked the menu but it didn't say ham".
"He doesn't like ham?"
"No, he can't eat ham, he is muslim. It is a religious thing"
"Muslims don't eat ham?"
"No.."
"Ohhhh....Do they know how good it is?" I just smiled. "Can he eat vegetarian lasagne?"
At this stage, I'm a little worried. Ahmed does not like vegetarian food, but the owner looked so sad about the rejected lasagne.
"I'm sure that would be okay"

I walk back to the table...and what do I hear "ahh...vegetarian?? yuck". I wanted to leap over the table and slap him. =)