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.