How to recognize it's time for Repat

We haven’t put the “Count-down to Repat” calendar up on the fridge quite yet, but I am already looking for graphics and picking out fonts.

It’s been exactly 450 days since our last repat, that annual 4-week trip back to the Mother Land – well at least as far back as Texas and Minnesota. We usually try to schedule repats at about the same time each year, but this year – actually last year when we put in the request – we decided to spend the Christmas holidays back in the States.

At the time, it seemed like a good idea.

In hindsight, it wasn’t.

Not that singing carols and drinking eggnog with family won’t be fabulous – I know it will be – but staying in Kingdom for such a long time without a substantial break has been a killer.

My husband and I have been recognizing the signs of late – signs that scream out “It’s time for Repat!”

Like the day I called up my daughter in Minnesota to see if she wanted to go on-line shopping with me. I’d been thinking about the Target store back home – about how nice it was to just linger in the aisles, unconcerned about the store closing during prayer. We spent the better part of two hours messaging links to pajama sets and T-shirts back and forth while we chattered on like school girls over the phone. We didn’t buy anything, by the way. It wasn’t about the buying – it was about the shopping.

About this time food starts taking on more importance as well. Yesterday I spent three hours making bagels. The only bagels available in Saudi are frozen-thawed-and-refrozen, and there’s just something wrong about eating a bagel that could double as a hockey puck.

When my husband came home, we stood in the kitchen looking adoringly at my day’s work, then started reminiscing about a favorite bagel shop outside of Houston.

It was like an out-take from that scene in Forrest Gump when Bubba lists his favorite shrimp recipes: Sun dried tomato with scallion and bacon, garlic with Assiago cheese, Walnut with honey, strawberry orange with strawberry, plain with Greek olives.

I’ve noticed it in my tolerance levels too. Sitting in the taxi on the way to the eye doctor the other day, a local guy pulled out in front of us then slammed on his brakes. Any other time, that kind of driving would have gone unnoticed. It was, after all, pretty tame compared to the way most traffic scenarios go in the magic Kingdom. But I nearly blew a gasket, urging my driver to speed up so I could give the rude driver a piece of my hand – if not my mind.

And then there’s clothes. We have a certain dress code, if you will, here in Saudi Arabia. Going into town almost always requires an abaya, and even inside our camp, it’s a rare day when you see women wearing shorts above the knee or anything with a plunging neckline.

Dressing to please the local morality police has never really been an issue with me. Yet this morning when I reached into my closet, I pulled out a skimpy little spaghetti strapped thing that totally defied a bra. Worse yet, I didn’t even think twice about putting it on!

Coming out of the closet I ran smack-dab into my husband who looked at me for a moment then calmly remarked, “Maybe you should work on that count-down calendar today, Honey.”

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(I wrote this as part of Darren Rowse's Group Writing Proejct at ProBlogger.net.)