Friday, March 5, 2010
Be Careful What You Wish For
My mother would tell you that I was something of an impatient child. If I didn't get my way, I might even be prone to going outside into the street and stomping my feet and screaming. Personally I don't remember that, but she claims it's true.
This propensity to lose my temper easily has always been a source of frustration for me. For as long as I can remember I've prayed that God would give me patience. Well, we all know that patience isn't just given, but that it's instead developed through situations which God allows into our lives to grow us.
And I just want to let you know that if you are praying for patience, I'll be happy to be your Doha tour guide when God sends you here, because this is the ultimate training ground for people with a shortage of patience.
It's not only that you will soon not even care about the people who are going the wrong way down the street to skip to the head of the long line of cars waiting at the stop sign. But you'll also find yourself barely batting an eye at the people in the grocery store who blithely stand in your way and don't even bother to move when they notice you are waiting to pass but continue to peruse the 50 different varieties of canned corn on the shelf.
But the ultimate game of patience for me seems to be what I've come to think of as The Ingredient Game. As I've mentioned before, keeping store shelves consistently stocked with a regular line up of products seems to be a problem here. For the life of me I can't understand why since this is the richest country in the world, but such is life.
This means that it's like a game to try and made something special. You have to carefully collect the different ingredients over time and wait for that magic moment when you find the last missing piece. For Valentine's Day the stars all aligned just in time to make one of Hubby's favorite desserts - Oreo Pudding Pie. Pudding mixes are extremely hard to come by here for whatever reason, particularly chocolate. For months I had been hoarding the chocolate Oreo Keebler pie crust and when I found the chocolate pudding in early February I knew it was a sign that I was meant to make this dessert as a sign of my love and effort for Hubby. He loved it.
And now I've moved on to my next challenge: collecting the ingredients for Hawaiian Wedding Cake. I've had the crushed pineapple for several months, the instant vanilla pudding mix I found at the same time I found the chocolate pudding and last week found yellow cake mix. Now all I'm lacking is Cool Whip. I've gone from one grocery store to another trying to find it, all with no luck. It's not normally so hard to find, but that's life in Doha. You might lose access to anything at any time. And so I wait (yes, patiently) for that little tub of creamy goodness to appear once more on the store shelves.
And then I'll start collecting all over again.
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Doha Life,
Rambling through life
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3 comments:
How about "Dream Whip?" You could get that and make your own whipped cream? Or even heavy cream and sugar? Just a thought...then you might not have to wait so long! :)
That really must be frustrating. I can't imagine, living here in the good ol' U.S. of A.
Hi Lori,
Are you SURE you're not really living in Mozambique?? Once again, you manage to capture the essence of life here. I so often want to tae your whole post and plop it on my blog to give my readers a taste of life here - but they'd be reading about Doha!
Hang in there! In fact, thrive!!!
Love it! I've been here almost 11 years and I'm sure the 'plan' was to teach me patience. I'm not sure I'm any more patient but I have learned to try, try again. Today was another day when I went to two different 'businesses' only to have them no longer there? Where DID they move to? Oh well, tomorrow is another day. I'll tackle the streets, to try and accomplish something on my list. :-) Keep smiling!