No I’m not dead…yet…

salams, hope everyone’s Ramadan is going well. Mine has been good Alhamdoulillah but busy.

Still I feel blessed and happy this Ramadan, and I have to say that spiritually this has been one of my better Ramadans, alhamdoulillah. The past three were kind of the suck, full of drama and junk and I never got to do my own DP style itikhaf. This year is a lot more busy than the previous three yet somehow I have managed to carve out twenty or thirty minutes for myself.

Thank you Southern Muslimah for your link which I got from my email alerts and realized it might be time to post.

This Ramadan I took a tip from my Uncle Paul and decided to have a “theme.”  He is a photographer and a writer, and when he travels, he picks a theme to tie in with the places he is visiting. For example, hen he came to Switzerland, he decided he wanted to write and think about Switzerland and its relation to wealth. This Ramadan’s theme is humbleness. I have been meditating on humbleness lately and realized that a lot of humbleness is gratitude or rather satisfaction with what one has. This of course leads me to the classic Mr. Hart (only the “initiés” know about Mr. Hart) line of “Remember, you can and have done worse.”

So yeah I am tired. Yeah I am writing this at 4:20 in the morning. No I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a long time. No, living in Switzerland isn’t always fun; in fact, more often than not over the past five years, it has sucked. But I am grateful. And I “can and have done worse.”

I am grateful that one of my best Muslim girlfriends from Paris has moved to Lausanne. We are both goofballs- Friday night she came over for dinner with her husband, and they were having the celebrations for the new metro in Lausanne. For that, they did spotlights into the sky at all the metro stops. When we walked outside we were both convinced for like thirty seconds that is was laylat al qadri, and then had a good laugh over it.

I am grateful for my job. I lead a blessed life and I just have to open my eyes to see past the negative. I have to forget about the buttheads I used to work for and realize that the people I work for now are NOT them.

I am grateful for my husband and his random stories. Once, he was driving near his hometown and there is a big forest with lots of wild bunnies. No, I am not joking. Lapins de brie, look it up. He was rollin in his hooptie, bka his first car- a Super 5 (hooptie ride par excellence, it looked like a before car on Pimp My Ride), and suddenly a herd of wild bunnies ran across the road. He ran over one of them, a baby, but not with the wheels. So he pulls over and the baby bunny is in the middle of the road completely unhurt but scared out of its wits. Dude picks him up by the ears and puts him on the shoulder, and stands there for five minutes until the bunny chills and hops off, and he drives away.

When Algerian Bleach Machine Obama Dude isn’t entertaining me, his weirdo friends are. We drove with two of his friends to Paris last weekend and I literally laughed all the way from Auxerre (when I woke up) to Fontainebleau. I was laughing so hard I started hyperventilating at one point. For example, the two guys were childhood friends, and when one of them got married, the other one was the witness. In France, when someone is your witness, the mayor announces the person’s name and profession. Of course, not even the wedding could be serious, and the groom filled in his friend’s profession as “football player” without telling the friend. So at the mayor’s office in front of like two hundred people, when it was time for the witness to sign, the mayor yells out, “John Doe, Football Player” and the entire room cracked up.

Then commenced the I Said I Would Never Work Like This Again When I Quit Working For Lawyers But I was Obviously Lying to Myself Week at work. Between Sunday night and Friday night I slept a grand total of eleven hours with waking up for suhoor and working and all that.

One thing that does not make me laugh is Sarah Palin. The way she said “You know, Charlie” in that nasal hokey voice during her ABC interview haunts my nightmares. She is like a sign of the apocalypse or something. She scares the heck out of me. I haven’t lived in the US in seven years, and as a general rule I know more about French politics, even Swiss politics, than US politics right now, but this election has me in Red Alert mode. Obama ain’t all cupcakes and rainbows (thanks for selling us out on FISA, dude), but have you seen the alternatives? Bueller? Anyone? Sarah Palin does not speak for me and I cannot find one piece of common ground I share with her as a voter. I’m not a “Washington Insider” but I can still tell you what the Bush Doctrine is, so her hokey, “I’m just a widdle hockey mom like the average American” line doesn’t work on me. I don’t elect people to be “average,” which seems to be a code word for “ignorant on the issues” these days. I challenge Sarah Palin to a map quiz whereby we are given a blank map and have to fill in the names of the countries. I would win. The average 8 year old would beat her too.

And while I am on the topic, you know what I want? I want the Democrats to give Cindy McCain the same hell they gave Teresa Kerry. I want to see Cindy McCain’s tax returns. I want the Democrats to say, “Remember how nasty y’all were to Teresa Kerry? Put up and show us Granny’s money.Love the Chanel watch, too.” The shameful way the Republicans Swift Boat-ed John Kerry? I don’t want people to swift boat John McCain per se, but I want someone to stand up and say, “Hey, what if we treated McCain like we treated Kerry?”

About time to stop eating so I will end here. Don’t know how much more posting I will do before Eid. If not I hope everyone has a blessed and happy Ramadan full of learning and compassion.

Lausanne now has its own Bondy Blog and I am digging the article on the new Islamic Center.

Mots-clefs : Ramadan