I posted some new recipes. I need to post some new Pakistani ones...will do soon.

NJ - Email me - my addy is off to the right. I'll let you know when i'll be in Jersey. :-)

Hard drive going going ... almost gone

My computer won't stay on for longer than two minutes so i know the hard drive is crashing again. This is the third time since i've had it (2 1/2 years only!). At least this time i'll get a new computer according to the lemon law. Insh'Allah, they won't fight me over it like they have in the past. I've lost so much information, pictures, etc from the hard drive crashing. It won't let me back it up either. Everytime i start to do a backup, it crashes. I think i might play Dr. Kavorkian and assist it in it's slow and miserable death. It's suffered enough as it is. Poor thing.

Giraffe on my back.

My little guy is so big and heavy and there just aren't carriers for this size that i like so a friend (can i call internet friends friends?) told me about this website.

I didn't want to spend $130 dollars to buy one in case little dude (or me) didn't like it so i went and bought clearance fabric (plain ole black) and made one myself (all you have to do is slice it in thirds which gives you three of them so i got 3 wraps for $5.

I'm practicing putting him in, well actually his giraffe stuffed animal. I'll wait till DH can help me before i practice with little dude. Watching these videos make it look hard but i figure if i learned how to wear a sari, i could learn this.

I'm hoping it works out well. Okay, i think i'm all posted out. Three posts in one day. When does that happen? When little dude takes a good long morning nap. Wooo hooooooo.

Meme from Musical Chef's Blog...

I am? woman. Hear me roar.
I want? to taste a Pakistani mango
I wish? Little Dude would go to sleep
I hate? politics - it's such a big mess and when you really start looking at the little pictures that make up the big picture, your head hurts because it's all nonsense and so mangled that it seems it can't be fixed.
I miss? Sunday mornings with the newspaper, coffee and solitude.
I fear? Allah
I hear I am not? patient
I hear I am? generous
I dance? when there's a waterbug on the floor
I sing? Punjabi songs to Little Dude even though neither my husband or me know punjabi
I cry? too easily
I am not always? antisocial
I make with my hands? duas
I write? to be free
I confuse? perennial and annual plants
I need? Allah and a vacation
I should? fold the laundry
I start? too many projects without finishing them
I finish? everything on my plate

Wanna join my mom's group?

So i finally met my happy (gay) neighbors a couple doors down. The little girl they adopted is so cute and she was born in my hometown. He was saying how his partner is now staying at home and is looking for things to do and i was mentioning that i was thinking of starting one for just our little subdivision since there's lot of babies being born (like 6 in the last 10 months). He said, "X said that's the one thing he won't do - go to a mom's group." I felt like such a dunce and should have said so but i didn't feel like a dunce until i got home. There's a lot of gay couples in our neighborhood...i'd say 1/3. One is a doctor and his partner is a nurse - i don't know, but i think that's hilariou - it's just such a cliche. There's quite a few doctors in our neighborhood in general. Get this. The one guy - with the little girl - said he went to the pediatrician and guess who the receptionist there was? The runaway bride from GA. Too funny.

See, you guys touched on exactly why we are having a hard time deciding. We have a beautiful house here on a lake in (!) the city. There's no way we could get this in NJ. Also, the house alone couldn't be found there since most of the houses there are old and little and very expensive compared to here. On the other hand, way of life i think would be much better.

I have a lot of issues with Atlanta:

- too many bugs
- too hot in the summer so you can't do fun stuff in the summer
- no sidewalks so you can't walk your child easily
- no parks that are safe in the day except for 2 - bad for kids
- crime - i just don't feel safe here
- religion...it's soooooo evangelical here

To be fair- the good stuff:

- an awesome awesome international farmers market
- a choice of mosques (but would probably be more so in NJ AND they have the al-khoei mosque in NYC. That would rock!
- the weather. Winter is practically nonexistent...but for that you have the miserable summers....can't win or lose with weather here
- you can grow anything here - but they will be eaten by bugs

Now, i'm from Colorado and Oregon before that so two beautiful outdoorsy states and i miss that. I would rather live in a small house if i had fun outside my house. I feel so locked up here. I don't have any Muslimah momma friends here either and know i would in Jersey. I think NJ would be more to my liking outdoorsy wise too. Also, the area we would be moving to is very wealthy (bad for a house for us but good for crime, schools, parks, etc.)

I think i want to go to NJ for a week and sit in a Walmart for a couple hours and see what i see. I think Walmart gives you a good perspective on what people are like there - in all walks of life and you get to see the various social classes in action. Here, people are so rude and incompetent (scary to hear someone say that's how Jersey is...) dear God, can't we relocate to a good state? Maybe another opening will come up and we can go someplace cool.

NJ or GA

If you had to choose between living in Atlanta, GA or NJ, where would you choose to live and why?

Only in Hyderabad

I love Hyderabad and I've never even been there. My mother-in-law will be happy to hear i finally have an appreciation for her birthplace.

Watch this video. Too funny. And be sure to notice the various pedestrians crossing the street.

I love this feeling...

I just sent the book review that was due yesterday (as in last week) off to the paper, the Little Dude is taking a nap, and i have only one project due in the next few weeks and that one should be pretty easy. I am going to eat some lunch and spend some well deserved time reading and surfing the net and seeing what these so called terrorists are up to. There's something fishy about it to me, like they were set up or something - or maybe just whack jobs and in that case why did they have to get Islam involved. Don't they know we have have trouble on our plate? I'm not saying there's not crazy Muslims out there cause there are. Just look at me! lol. Ah, i must have got my sense of humor back too.

As Much As a Pen Knows

Originally uploaded by wayfarer.

Do you think that I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.

- Rumi

Did i tell you...

I also started writing my book again. If my hard drive crashes and eats it again, i'm gonna go crazy for sure. It's such hard work and losing hard earned writing is like losing a child - you learn to live with but you always wonder what could have been.

I went to church today...

and it was so weird! I went with my moms group to check out the daycare school that starts in the fall. Good rates and good play areas but I was very uncomfortable with it all. I don't know why it was so weird. I spent a good portion of my youth in churches but now it feels very odd to me. I don't think i can use them. I do need a day to run errands etc - it would be so much faster if i could leave him for a couple hours while he naps once a week - their rates are great. I think i'll look into finding a babysitter though.

What else on this front? I just read a great book and am reviewing it now. I really need to start selling my reviews in more than one place. I'm trying to catch up on some magazine reading and some books. I read an article about Zarkawi from April - boy were they wrong lol.

I also read that they are going to start teaching the Bible in schools here in GA. I think that sucks that supposedly state and church are separate yet my taxes go to funding bible studies and a crusade against muslims too. Now here's something funny on the religious front in GA - they want to put the ten commandments up in state and federal buildings and the congressman that wants to do it can't even name three of the commandments when asked.

Watch the video

Silly little people that run our states and countries. I seriously wonder how these people end up in power. How stupid are we?

I'm all stuck on religion these days. I'm reading the Bible right now which i haven't done since i converted to Islam and it's interesting how differently i read it. The bible is what made me convert to Islam. It's very interesting though to read the Bible, then read the Qur'an each day. I wish i had a copy of the Torah. I'd really like to read it but i've never even seen one...just portions of it. What's interesting is that while i read the Bible, i feel 100% positively sure that Islam is the right path. Not that i had any doubts, but if it did, it would reassure me. It's amazing how similar the religions and books are - how is it that the religions are practiced so differently when they are/should be so similar?

I promise to get off the religion thing soon. That's what fills my days though. And the LD.

Oh wait, there's one more thing - Fathers Day. I called my dad and all was good but i was curious about something. Bush's ratings are very low, the attitude on the war is changing so i thought i'd ask my dad if he was still a Bush supporter and pro war. Boy did i open a can of worms. We got into a huge fight. I can't believe what he believes about the Middle East. I swear my whole family watches FOX news like it's really news. How can two men arguing and screaming over each other or women, whatever, be considered news? That's what they watch though and that's what they quote. We were both so frustrated with each other we had to hang up. I've lost most my family for my religious beliefs. It's okay though. See, it's all religion with me these days. I promise to talk of something else soon.

Another video - Iraq: The Hidden Story

Click here for the movie

High speed (home) connections may need to "pause" the video and give it time to buffer/download.

Thanks for the link Eddie!

A tale of two neighbors

There once was two "neighbors," (within the same development) three including the narrator, and all had babies around the same age so of course became "friends."

One neighbor, a self proclaimed devout Christian, believed the one neighbor was going to hell because she didn't believe God was a man, and instead believed God was God. Imagine that! She actually thought God was God! When one day the Christian neighbor asked how Islam was different than Christianity, the Muslim explained that Muslims believed Jesus was a great prophet, not God. When the neighbor got upset, the Muslim neighbor asked her neighbor: "How can Jesus be God when Jesus prayed to God? Also, Jesus, himself, in the Bible, said he isn't God (John 7:16, Numbers 23:19) and that God doesn't want us to worship anyone but him because He's a jealous God" (Deut 6:15). At the end of the scary conversation the Christian neighbor says, "You are going to hell for your beliefs. Do you think the same about me?" The Muslim says, "I don't pretend to know what God will do."

The other neighbor, also a Christian, befriended the Muslim lady and when she found out that the Muslim lady was a real Muslim (not just married to one), she began to ask questions about the faith that confused her. She asked "why does Islam condone violence and why they say to root out Christians and Jews and kill them where you find them" so the neighbor gave her a printout of an article that provided answers to her questions. The neighbor did not get offended and asked more questions so the Muslim neighbor gave her a book about the basics of Islam saying "I'm not trying to make you a Muslim, it's just that you asked questions and it seems you would like to understand what we believe and i thought this would help." She was very thankful and said "No, i do want to learn. Some of my favorite students are Muslim and i don't want to believe that they think it's okay to kill Christians and Jews. I just can't imagine it to be true."

Guess who i spend more time with? Now I'm not trying to criticize or badmouth my one neighbor but i just wonder why some people are so intolerant about learning about other cultures and faiths. When i was younger i read all sorts of stuff - mostly Jewish books, some Buddhists, Hindu and other philosophical faiths. I stayed away from Islam because i never saw anything about it until one day someone gave me a book and a qur'an. I read this stuff to strengthen my faith too. I didn't get irate although i considered myself a good Catholic and thought Muhammad was a man tripping on some opium in the dessert. I just thought it wasn't for me. When coworkers explained they were fasting for God, i didn't go all crazy on them. Why do some go crazy on other people and some don't? This why i only like to surround myself with intelligent and progressive thinkers. I get scared of people that begin to foam at the mouth when talking about religion (and this goes for Muslims too!).

We fund all this with our tax dollars

This is disturbing. Our tax dollars are basically funding racism and hatred. The end is just awful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLu54KdzEnM

And notice the name - crusader - that pretty much sums up what this war is all about.

And this interview is also quite enlightening. It is an interview with Jessie Macbeth, a former Army Ranger and Iraq war veteran, that reveals the US military mission in Iraq. [20 mins]

"We were debriefed that our job over there was to strike fear in the hearts of the Iraqi people, you can do whatever it takes" (sounds like terrorism to me)

"I didn't know that so many people could die and be hidden from the world, we were the terrorists"

"She begged me to save her and the kids, but I didn't, you know... I killed her."

Macbeth speaks of heartbreaking specific accounts of raiding homes and murdering 30 to 40 families per night . "I personally took out around 200 people, the death toll is like hundreds of thousands of people"

Watch the Interview, and show it to others.

Milestones

Yep, I'm talking about my neighbor again. I tell you - she drives me crazy! Since Little Dude was born and her child was born (a month and a half before him) she has been trying to compete. Every phone call or visit consisted of questioning me about LD's milestones. Her daughter was hitting every milestone right on time or before while my LD was a late bloomer. Most geniuses are. :-) Anyhow, it's always been a competition and i don't get it. I always figured since he laughs a lot and is always happy and very affectionate everything is just fine. Her daughter doesn't quite seem happy and i rarely see her smile. Maybe it's all that pressure. My point is this though - no matter how great your kid is, I will always think mine is better. And no matter how great my kid is, you will always think yours is better. That's the way it works. That's why we take care of and love our own children. There's no point in competing. Besides, my kid really is the best one so you can't even come close. ;-)

It's driving her crazy that LD is now standing (if he is holding onto something) and that he says mommom. I didn't tell her that this weekend after seeing dogs close up for the first time that he loved them so much that he was calling them mommom. I thought he always meant milk, but now i see he means "i want". Mommom/Mamma and Baba are the only clear words he says where the meaning is clear - outstretched arms with the word. She also doesn't think it's fair that he kisses and hugs me. I never marked my guy by milestones. As long as he is happy and doing something different every so often, i figure he's developing. And given that people stop me all the time, even if i'm talking to someone, to tell me how cute he is and what a big personality he has, i figure we are doing just fine. Going out with him is like going out with a rock star. All the crowd wants is a little smile sent their way.

Pain

So the pain of reading a truly bad book is now behind me. Finally! I've been suffering for days trying to get through it. Every nap Little Dude took was spent reading this waste of a tree. My review has to be sent tomorrow so the new pain of writing the review is about to begin. I usually enjoy my little guys naps. This past week i dreaded them. "Come on Little Dude, you don't wanna sleep, you wanna play! Yay.." Ah, but the bribery didn't work, he slept and i read. Wah wah wah. I don't know how I'm going to write this thing. One good thing about a good procrastinator like me (i've had the book for two months and finished it the day i'm supposed to turn in the review) is that we get a lot done while procrastinating. For example, i disassembled and reassembled LD's stroller since he puked orange stuff all over it while out on a long three hour walk. That was no easy thing to put back together. I went to every baby event this week. I made an involved dinner which took a good three hours. I did every dish and washed every piece of clothing in this house. Hmmm, what else? So so much but i did finally reach the end. Alhamdulillah!

A convert

I was talking to one of my neighbors and explaining that in Islam, the woman's main role is to raise righteous children. I explained that women aren't required to cook and clean, they don't have to work either and that if a women wants to be paid for breastfeeding her child, her husband must pay her.

I think she just converted.

Thoughts

I have two Qur'ans with tafsir from the same person (Pooya). I like his commentary, although sometimes i think he's way over the top and sort of has an agenda of his own and I don't like agendas but for the most part I find him very eloquent and insightful. Both these Qur'ans have different commentaries though which is weird and there's an online version which is different too. He must have kept updating and i have Qur'ans from two different decades. One is very old and the other is pretty new. I also have a Yusuf Ali one and a King Faud one.

Anyhow, my point was, when i read the Qur'an and then the tafsir, i often end up reading three or four commentaries for the same chapter so i never get much Qur'an reading done. I guess that's okay since I'm at least fully understanding what i'm reading and I read tafsir from shia thought, then sunni thought, etc. so I get the whole spectrum of thought.

Anyways, i read this tafsir and thought it was very well written:

...He has made mercy incumbent on Himself - 6:12, 6:54. He Himself enjoins on the sinners to seek His pardon-4:106. He bestows His mercy upon whomsoever He pleases - 2:105. To whomsoever He pleases, He even wipes out the individual's sins and instead entitles him to reward - 29:7, 47:2, 64:9, 65:5, 66:8.

Now this next part is the part i really liked:

He is such a merciful judge that He does not wait to punish but to pardon. Hence before the matter comes to be tried, He invites repentance and even encourages the sinners to make haste in seeking His pardon - 57:21. He never wants any sinner to be dejected and go hopeless of His mercy. But the pardon is granted only when it is asked for in time.

It goes on further to say how it's not only asking for forgiveness that is required but also mending one's ways. This concept is nothing new - it's there in Christianity too but the way this was said really spoke to me. Sometimes, especially since becoming a mom, I feel I am letting down God so much by missing prayers, eating Kosher, etc. I have good intentions but sometimes the day just runs away and I can't get a prayer in and when my little guy finally goes down for a nap, I just want time to myself and just sit in silence. I should feel that prayer would rejuvenate me but sometimes I just can't muster the energy. Once I do get up and pray, I feel much better, more whole and rejuvenated and can't wait for the little guy to wake me up and tire me out again. But while reading the commentary I feel I do repent but it seems I still slip and don't mend my ways permantantly. But the line about Him never wanting any sinner to feel hopeless of His mercy. I do feel that sometimes. I often feel I'm not worthy of reward and I wonder if that's why I'm still having so much pain from my child's birth. I felt so good after reading this explanation because I realized I am only human, I will fall, I will get back up and do better, but most of all, I feel this tremendous weight being lifted off my shoulders. God IS merciful and I need to remember that. It doesn't mean do wrong and assume I'm forgiven but do right, and when i do fall, go back to doing right and all will be okay inshAllah.

Spelling Bee

Anyone who knows me knows i love anything spelling bees. I love books about spelling bees and movies about spelling bees and spelling bees themselves. I haven't seen the lastest two movies - "Akeelah and the Bee" and "Bee Season" but i did read "Bee Season" and fully intend to watch both movies as soon as LD decides i'm allowed to watch movies again. I watched Spellbound twice a couple years ago.

I think i like spelling bees because i was always a really good speller and think it would have been fun to go on the circuit but i didn't know that was possible back then. I think it would be really cool if Little Dude wanted to do it. I would have so much fun being a spelling bee mom.

I was hoping the homeschooled kid would win because i think it's cool he's homeschooled and something i've been considering doing for my kids. After that i was hoping for the last desi standing - he was such a little sweetie. There are always so many desis in spelling bees!

It's heartbreaking to watch the kids faces when the buzzer is heard and i get all emotional from it. They are all so talented. I was thinking last night that if Little Dude did compete he would be the champion of 2017. 2017!!!! How weird does that sound? It doesn't even sound possible to me. When i told my husband this he said that LD would graduate college in 2027. That's just crazy!

I then asked my husband if he thought it was possible that LD would be into spelling. He said "Of course, he's got nerds for parents." Well speak for yourself mister lol. But there i sat with this book in my lap. I got it a couple days ago and have already done half the puzzles. I so love cryptograms! I guess i have to admit that i am a dork.

Green things

How is it possible for a person who can keep any green plant alive kill every cactus they've ever owned?

The garden is suffering a bit right now too. It's just too hot and where the garden is (the only place it can go) gets the hot afternoon sun. The bugs are insane here also and it's hard to keep the plants free of them. Tomatos are on the vine already though. Looking yummy. It's just so hot and miserable. I don't think i can ever get used to it being hot in the morning and through the night. I miss cool nights and mornings. I really want to walk outside but it's just way too hot any time of the day.