I’ve always had a problem with coffee. I truly consider myself addicted to coffee. A while ago I decided to get rid of this addiction, which I somehow managed to do, but huge amounts of tea had to replace the missing coffee doses… so if you think of it, caffeine always had a way to win!

The past couple of weeks were really rough. I had to do anything to keep myself awake and alert. Nothing could do the job better than a hot cup of coffee! so, yes, you guessed it, my coffee addiction’s back, but I welcomed it with open arms, and i believe, I might never be able to kiss it goodbye again!

The only problem is, when you have to stay awake, and when you consume a lot of coffee, you get bored quickly and you feel that you need a change. Since nothing really compares – to my taste buds that is- to the awakening smell of a hot cup of coffee, I wouldn’t change the taste to tea or any other drink, change has to be in the taste of coffee itself. So I’ve been experimenting with coffee, trying to create flavors I’ve never tasted before, or ones that I’ve once tasted but are no longer available for one reason or the other.

I’ve tried them all: vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon… you name it! but then I remembered that a few years ago I tasted one hell of a flavor in London, for which I went crazy: ginger-bread flavored coffee! hmmm, yummy, yummy! just mentioning its name makes my mouth water! I can still smell the ginger-kissed steam that came out of it! GOD IT WAS GOOD! anyway, long story short, since I have absolutely no idea on how to make such a thing, I just bought some ginger powder, mixed it with my coffee and sugar, poured on some hot milk, and voila! I had my own ginger-flavored coffee. Ok, I have to admit it’s not as good as the real thing but it was really good.

Actually I’m drinking a cup of my ginger flavored coffee as I speak, it’s too good that I can’t resist the smell of it … oops, here we go, spilled some coffee on my jeans while having a sniff, how nice, my own son is laughing at me!

Anyway, I know ginger is not favored by many, but when it comes to me, I believe ginger, combined with good coffee and hot milk creates the best flavor ever!

Remember that: “Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez –

There’s nothing in this world I hate more than hypocrisy. I just can’t stand it!
I have no idea how people manage to smile at you, look you in the eye, and even hug or kiss you while they can’t stand the sight of you!

I’ve been through many situations, where I found myself surrounded with at least one hypocrite, who, in no time, managed to convert the rest of the people surrounding me into similar lying copies.
So in my opinion, there are 2 basic kinds of hypocrites, those who are hypocrites by nature, and those who are made hypocrites by those natural hypocrites. Let me explain.
There are those who, regardless of your own nature, would welcome you and show their happiness for knowing you and then stab you in the back in the first chance they get, for nothing you did wrong, just for the heck of it. These are hypocrites by nature. The other kind is the kind of people who believe what the first kind tells them, and act accordingly without giving you the privilege of showing what you’re made of. So even if they’re the sweetest people you know, even if they don’t usually hurt anyone, and sometimes even if they know how good a person you are, for some reason they’re weak when they’re in the company of the hypocrite-by-nature people and believe them so easily, maybe because the hypocrite-by-nature people are close to them, and are ones they’ve trusted their all life. So when they see you, they’d smile at you and welcome you but implicitly they’re planning ways to piss you off and make you pay for the lies told to them by the hypocrite-by-nature people.

Who’s worse? i believe the worst ever is the kind of people who know you, and know how good your intentions and acts are, but still insist on treating you as an evil person, even if you did nothing wrong to them or anyone they know, whether they belong to the first or second kind.

In the past, I dealt with hypocrisy in a self-destructive way. I used to get really sad, and mad, I had many sleepless nights trying to figure out why I’m being back-stabbed, or why do some people show me something then do something completely different, deliberately hurting me over and over again even though I never intended or did actually hurt them. On several occasions I’d turn to someone close and ask for support but I’d end up looking bad and many times I’d be considered the hypocrite, if not then I’d be at least called a whiny nagging silly person who feels all people are her enemy.
So there was a time when I’ve actually considered becoming a hypocrite myself, you know, “if you can’t beat them…”, but as the British novelist and playwright W. Somerset Maugham explains: “Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job”.
I can be extremely polite -which is often misunderstood as hypocrisy by the way- but I could not be two people at the same time. If I hate a person, I can tolerate them but I can’t act as if they’re so dear to me, and if there’s someone I love, I can never hurt them, at least not intentionally. So I pulled myself together and decided to deal with hypocrisy the best way I know, strength and ignorance. And now whenever someone hugs me tight when I know they’ve been talking negatively about me, or when someone gives me a big smile while giving me “hidden” and “indirect” comments to hurt my feelings or to point out something they know would annoy the hell out of me, I do get upset, but I take a deep breath, count to 10 and act as if I never really heard a thing… unless there was an insult of course that’s a different story

Hypocrisy to me is the synonym of cruelty, indecency, intolerance, and insecurity. It’s a lie, a lie perfected in a way that it’s being believed at a certain point. All I can say is that nobody’s perfect, but you should always give any person a chance of expressing themselves and never judge by what others tell you.
As for the hypocrites out there, I leave you with Benjamin Franklin’s simple yet extremely useful quote: “Clean your finger, before you point at my spots.”

Oh dear, where do I start? the thing is, I consider myself well-informed when it comes to food, drinks, nutritious facts and info regarding things I consume very often. So when I learn a fact that totally shatters one of the things I used to believe for over 25 years, I must say, I get in this weird state of shock and start doubting most of the info I know about the ingredients I use in my cooking, or when preparing my favorite drinks.

One of these “facts” that had a very strong impact on me was knowing that there are no trees that produce green olives and others that produce black ones, it’s the same tree and it’s just the stage in which you pick the olive and how ripe or not it is, that affects its color! I tell you, you should’ve seen my face when I first learned that, and how EMBARRASSED  I felt for not knowing this before!
But the shock of my life, is a recent one, and this took me a while to overcome the embarrassment it caused! See, I’m addicted to tea. Can’t help it, I just love it, and coming from the Middle East, the kind of tea we mostly use and prefer is the black tea (referred to as RED tea in our dialect). We drink it basically all the time; before meals, after meals, during meals, all the time, and I especially enjoy it during breakfast Being a tea-lover I used to also drink green tea, but the black one was my favorite. When I came to Tunisia, I still kept my black-tea-drinking-habits, but things got worse as I enjoyed the green tea prepared here as well, which is mostly drunk after meals and is full of yummy roasted pine nuts or almonds. So I ended up drinking same amounts of black tea plus green tea (and then a coffee addiction problem occurred afterward, but that’s a different story). Anyway, I remember that in one of the Bloggers Meetups, a few years back, and after we had some green tea, a fellow blogger, Karim, and I had a little chat about kinds of tea that are consumed more in the Middle East. And then Karim shocked me when he asked: the green and black tea come from the same plant don’t they? Not only was I shocked, but I proudly -and stubbornly- denied his argument, and started convincing our friend that there are 2 different plants… he was too polite to insist that he was right and I decided to double-check my info, but for some reason, I never got to do so. Until last week, and while watching a program about healthy foods and cooking, that the host of the program actually said that black and green tea come from the same plant! I still couldn’t believe it and did my own research, and now I have to be brave enough to admit I was wrong and that “all tea comes from the same basic plant, the Camellia Sinensis plant. The differences between teas arise from processing, growing conditions, and geography”… more info.

Ah, no matter how much we think we know, there are always more for us to learn… much more than what we already know!

Anyway, while we’re speaking of tea, here’s a nice quiz that will tell you What Kind Of Tea You Are!

This is the kind I am:

Wow, it’s 1 year already!! It feels like yesterday…
I remember every single detail of this extremely beautiful day. It was hot like hell, I was stuck in bed (for around 4 months really… damn bed-rest!). I had no idea Adam had decided to join us on that particular day.
I remember how we went to the clinic for a regular check on my and my baby’s health, when the nurse shocked me: get ready to say hi to your baby.
I had this stupid look on my face, trying to get the fact that I’m gonna have my baby delivered that day. And when it finally hit me, I was overwhelmed with many emotions: fear, happiness, stress, excitement, and fear again, love, joy, suspense, and fear, and fear and fear. For some reason, I felt so alone, especially when I was put in a room alone with needles, drips, monitors, and lights (before the doctors came and my beloved husband was allowed in that is).
And although I’ve always loved listening to my baby’s heartbeats, listening to them on that particular day felt different. They were so loud and fast, and so incredibly calming, reminding me that I’m not alone in this…
The process of giving birth to Adam is the loveliest and dearest to my heart. I know you don’t hear this so often, but I enjoyed every second of it .

Now a whole year has passed. I will be lying if I said it was an easy going and relaxing year, because it’s anything but that. But I must admit, it was one amazingly unique year that made us feel blessed.
As exhausting as it was, the smile of your baby, the touch of his tiny hand, or even the hair-pulling, and skin biting, all will wash away your exhaustion, kill your worries and brighten up your days, making you feel the joy of parenting.

Having a baby teaches you many things and makes you see life through a whole different perspective. The most important thing you learn is the value of time. I mean if we didn’t have Adam, a long year would’ve passed by without us even noticing it. It’ll be “just another year”, and we’ll be the same time-ignorant people. But having a baby is like having a human calendar.
You see days pass by with every new sound he learns to make, you notice weeks pass by every time you figure his clothes don’t fit any longer, you feel months pass by with every tooth cutting its way out, and you see years pass by with every new step he takes.
Raising a kid, is the best investment anyone can make. It’s the greatest achievement of all. Because you know, that even if your job sucks, or your life isn’t as great as you want it to be, you know that there’s one thing you’re doing that’s making you proud, and this thing will always inspire you to follow your dreams and encourage you to go on till you’re content and happy with your life on all levels.
I’m really shocked how many people believe that having kids makes them look or feel older?! I mean you’ll always be as old as you really are, kids will only mark your time, urging you therefore to make the best out of it.
That’s why, if I were to give a piece of advice to anyone it’ll be to raise a kid. If you can’t have your own, raise an orphan. Just don’t miss on this experience, it’s one of a kind, it will enrich your life and give your existence a purpose and a beautiful meaning. It’s really worth the fuss.
I thank God for sending my husband Marwen into my life, and for blessing us with Adam.
I believe words will fail to express how thankful I am.
Happy 1st Birthday my dear dear son. May God bless you, protect you and make your life full of happiness, success and love. – and God, I know I’m asking too much, but would you please make him sleep just a little bit more, please! –

What can I say! It runs in the family…

I didn’t get enough sleep last night… actually I didn’t get ANY sleep last night. No specific reason, just one of those nights you must have every once in a while I guess.
Anyway, last night, not being able to sleep, I tried to get myself busy. Wasn’t in the mood for TV, so I read my head off, yet nothing happened, my eyes were all wide open with this burning sensation you get when you’re so damn exhausted but you can’t sleep.
I walked around the apartment like a ghost, I ate all the unhealthy snacks available, I took yet another shower that only energized the hell out of me, I walked again -in circles this time, like a jerk- and just then I realized that things would be really different if I only had my phone line working and my internet connection all set up for me to surf until I fall asleep.
After managing to stop cursing all people responsible for the phone line misery we’re suffering from for a loooooong while, I finally crawled back into bed, read some more and finally fell asleep.
A couple of hours later (8 a.m.) Adam woke me up for my busy day to start.

8:30 We heard the most beautiful relaxing soothing sound of our dust-covered-phone ringing…
We couldn’t believe it at first, but once I picked up the speaker and got the maintenance on the other end, I must say my exhaustion and desire to sleep faded away. I felt so overwhelmed I could’ve cried… cried?! no, I could’ve weeped so easily.
The poor maintenance guy must have been terribly shocked, I mean the way I shouted: Are you sure it’s fixed once and for all? You mean it will work after we hang up? So you’re saying it’s simply working now? No more going dead? please call after a while to check if it’s still working! Now, not to sound pushy or something, but you are positive about that, no mistakes, no accidents, nothing right?!
After assuring me and reassuring me that things should be fine now, I started dancing and running all around the place like a crazy little girl, I stopped when I saw Adam staring at me with his mouth open holding his pacifier in shock!

I can’t really describe how happy I am! I’m so happy yet so worried that the line will go dead again! God forbid!
I’ll go catch up on my emails and check out what’s been cooking in the blogosphere!
AH! IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK!