It's the end of Ramadan and I've got some Holy Month fatigue.

It happens when I'm getting ready for bed and notice that we're out of coffee. I just went to the store that morning but the stores don't stock much variety in ground coffee - instant is a more common drink here. You can find green beans and beans ground with cardamom, but I've given up on finding any even vaguely-dark roast. Which means I have to go to an actual coffee house. And those, along with any other restaurant, are closed every day during Ramadan until after sunset. Which means I can't run out to Starbuck's in the morning when the demons arrive in my head. I have to either go now - change out of my PJs and face the 11 o'clock crowds in the mall - or endure the withdrawal symptoms in the morning.

The fatigue also happens when I'm picking the kids up from school on Tuesdays. For some strange reason, their school has a half-day every Tuesday (I guess it helps the teachers get over the mid-week hump). I'd love to take the kids out to lunch and maybe even do something fun like go to a park or the ice skating rink in the mall but all the restaurants are closed and we can't eat in public until sunset. I'm hot and hungry and grumpy as hell and it's always a long and imagination-challenged afternoon. You'd think I could find something fun to do with my afternoon with the kids but during Ramadan it just doesn't happen.

I'm not Muslim, I don't fast. I have a huge amount of respect for my friends who do fast throughout this month, and do it with a strength, humility, patience, and devotion that I just can not comprehend. They surrender themselves to their faith, and I'm both awed by their efforts and frivolous enough to complain about how it inconveniences me. Maybe this is how husbands feel when watching their wives go through pregnancy: outside looking in at something inexplicable. How did my husband tolerate me though that process for all those months?

With one week left in the Holy Month, I was looking forward to the week-long Eid break, when we'll have a whole week off work and school with the whole family together. All of us. Here in this house (it's too damn hot and humid to spend much time outside). For nine. Whole. Days.

Weekends are nice for us, but by the third or fourth day at home we get a bad case of cabin fever and can't stand the look of each other by day 5.

I thought about Bob and me driving over to Abu Dhabi for a quick overnight trip - hire a babysitter we know and trust, and take off for a belated anniversary getaway (our 15th was back in July and in the hustle and bustle we never even made it out for an anniversary dinner). But the land route is through Saudi Arabia, and they require you to apply in advance for a transit visa. Between Ramadan and the coming Eid holiday we couldn't get a visa in time. So we thought about taking the family for a short beach vacation in Sri Lanka - it's close and easy and green and you can read in this blog archive how much we loved our trip there two years ago. I got so far as asking the kids whether they wanted to take a day trip to the elephant orphanage, or whether they wanted to spend all three days just lounging at the pool and body surfing in the Indian Ocean. Awesome options, right? Turns out they'd prefer to sit around in Barzan compound doing nothing at all for nine days, thank you very little.

So I'll go back to my original idea: Bob and I will go off on a couple's getaway. We'll go to Oman because although it's not green, it's at least somewhat mountainous, and it's giving me something to look forward to. And sometimes you just really need that.

Arab Qatari Agricultural Co: my personal crack house

I'm an enthusiastic amateur gardener, and one of the hardest parts of living in Qatar is the near-absence of the color green. The landscape is sandy, dusty beige; the sky is always a dusty blue; the buildings in our compound are a dusty peach color. My eyes ache for green, my lungs ache for oxygen. So my husband had a hard time breaking the news to me when he returned early to Doha after our summer break and found that nearly every plant in our garden had died. I suspect that the maintenance men in the compound let themselves into our (locked, walled-in) back yard to apply insecticide spray and as a favor while they were there turned off the slow drip irrigation pipes I had set up before we left. I have problems with this on many levels. But that's not the point of this post.

I took a trip to the nursery today to re-stock my garden with green. Wow. I haven't come down from the high yet. It's an amazing place: a lush oasis in the midst of the desert made possible by a truly impressive climate control system. They have over a dozen greenhouses in one compound, each about half the size of a football field, filled with wonderful exotic plants. I wat there for over two hours, and didn't see the whole place. Can you imagine? The oxygen content inside those greenhouses must be huge because just walking around gives me a euphoric energy rush.

Coming from Pittsburgh and Michigan, I am so amazed at the plants they grow: I'm reasonably well informed on the plants you typically find in Zone 5 and 6. But if you take a walk through the tropical houseplants department in Lowe's or Home Depot, those are the plants you find here growing in irrigated beds. I like to go with my friend who is a master gardener from Texas: she is much more familiar with the Zone 9 plants we have here. I don't know the names of half the things I buy - I have to rely on the list they write up and then try to research them online - but they are gorgeous and I want to rush out and put them in the ground right now. But it's 108 degrees, so I think maybe I'll wait till tomorrow morning.

The icing on the cake for this day is: not only do they let me wander around in the botanical garden as long as I want for absolutely free, I can take home any plants I want for a nominal price. Here's my bill of sale for today:

3 x lantana (3 foot tall, yellow-orange flowers)
4 x hibiscus (3 foot tall, marvelous lantern-style orange flowers)
3 x jactorpha (can't remember which one this is, probably the 3 foot tall with brilliant red flowers)
3 x spadlima (maybe the 3 foot tall plants with purplish-green leaves?)
3 x jasmine (only 2.5 foot tall but fragrant as you imagine an arabian night)
1 x rubber plant, 6 foot tall!
2 x ficus panda
12 x vinca, pink flowers - hey, I know what this one is!
12 x freein (?) - purplish leaved spreading groundcover
5 x cassandra
3 x gardenia
3 x zamicallus (?) (yeah, no idea - it's downstairs somewhere)
1 x pepperomia (small green houseplant)
3 x bougainvillia - 5 foot tall, pink flowers
1 x acanthus (?) - fleshy green-leaved hanging plant
1 x (?) fuzzy purple leaved hanging plant

Total cost: 574 riyals = $157

I'll be back.