Food Fail

Wednesday started out okay, Thomas stayed home with Ben so I could do another appointment first thing this morning.  I had hoped that Ben would wake up while I was gone so Thomas would have get to change his diaper and get his breakfast.  Sadly, he slept in and woke up about 10 minutes after I got in.  It was great to be able to take a nap while Ben slept this morning.  Even though this is the loaner mattress, I'm a huge fan of the bed.  And especially now I have my Snoozer again.  (I never stopped using my pregnancy pillow, and I never will.)

I took Benjamin with me to the embassy for lunch with Thomas, which was fun.  They have a fruit plate with nicely sliced up apples and peaches and plums, Benjamin just dove right in.  He hasn't figured out the whole taking bites phenomenon, he just shoves everything in.  I guess it'll come later.  After lunch we walked to a little grocery store that's close to the embassy.  I needed some stuff, but this place, though new and nice, was tiny and didn't have great-looking produce.  So, off to Taj Mall we went!  This was my first time going there on my own, winging it with figuring out how to get there.  But it went smoothly and I parked in the garage with no problems.

I put Ben in his stroller and we walked around the mall first, I found a Bath and Body Works, which was awesome.  I desperately needed some body spray, since they wouldn't pack up mine from back home and I didn't have the space in our crammed luggage.  They were mostly old though, so I'm excited for a new scent.  I got the White Citrus smell, which is light and nice.  And all of Amman is thankful that I won't stink any more.  Yay for extremely overpriced body spray.  (Seriously, it was 14JD which is like $20.  But I needed it so badly...)  After we explored the mall I got some produce and bread and juice and random stuff from Spinney's, which is in the mall, then we headed home.  A successful afternoon.

Ben was definitely not as fussy today, which is a blessing.  I was almost flying off the handle yesterday, so I'm glad for a little break.  He might be going through a growth spurt, I feel like he's much hungrier recently.  Although tonight Thomas and I were fussy, for valid reasons.  So we were planning to order delivery, and I picked an Indian place.  I love chicken korma, and it sounded good to me this evening.  We called about 6:15 and ordered, one dish for each of us and a side of naan bread.  We assumed (wrongly) that rice would be included, because duh, it's Indian food.  Cut to an hour and a half later, and the delivery guy is trying to find us.  His English is bad, Thomas doesn't speak Arabic (nor do I at this point) so they agree to meet at Jounia Pharmacy close by.  Thomas meets him and pays, more than he was expecting I think, about 20JD.  (There's a 16% tax, which we won't have to pay once our tax-free status cards arrive, but they are slooooow in handing them out.)  And after he carries the food home, we realize: no rice.  Tragedy.  So I make some plain rice, which takes 15 minutes.  I'm so hungry at this point that I just dip some naan into the korma and eat that alongside the (tough) chicken.  Not impressed, Taj Mahal Indian food, not impressed.  All that to say, we will not be ordering from them again.

Aside from the food being sub-par, it's just incredibly aggravating to live in a place where you can't give someone your address to find you.  You have to say, I live in this neighborhood and then they'll call when they get there.  Then you have to give directions, without knowing what direction they're coming from.  Ugh.  I'm sure part of it is homesickness, but honestly.  Can't they just make people learn how to do street names?  I mean, they weren't implemented yesterday, it was a decade ago.  Huge sigh.  I miss America, and our organized way of doing most things.

Oh well.  Tonight will be spent buying things on Amazon and Target.  I'm really liking the Target diapers, and at sixteen cents each, you can't beat it.  You just have to spend $50 to get free shipping, oh well.  Guess I'll have to find something fun to get, maybe a toy for Benjamin.  There's a cute truck that comes with Play Doh and you can make bricks, it's like a construction crane thing.  It says for 3 and up, but if I play with him, I think it's okay.  Moms, any thoughts?  I do want to start getting him some more mature toys, since we mostly have balls of varying sizes.  He likes them, but there's got to be more out there.  It pains me to pay full price for toys though.  Oh Craigslist, I miss you like crazy.  Sniff.  (If anyone has boy-friendly toddler toys they want to offload, I will pay you for them, and the postage!)

-Rachel