Holidays...I Mean Vacation

Time trickles by...like sands through an hour glass...so are the days of our lives...when there is a sandstorm...or we go outside...or we go camping...or we even look at our front door. Sands in an hour glass. And on the front stoop. And in the hallway. And even on the inside staircase. Sand and sand and sand. And it doesn't even have the decency to be proper desert sand. Instead it's dusty, gritty, fine stuff that you see best when the light shines just so...and it all seems to shine just so.

Ah, but back to where I started, which was in a pensive sort of place. Our second year is nearly up here and we will soon be returning to the States for our annual Sultan-sponsored respite in our legal place of residence. Thanks to continuing Omanization at the university's administrative level (and if you can see the relationship between Omanization and the following statement then you get a prize), our previously enjoyed Sultan-sponsored stopover in the European capital of our choice is no longer Sultan sponsored. Sigh.

The other expats we know here are a philosophical bunch who enjoy giving their two cents, as do we all, and have lately been warning of a coming shift in our thinking regarding the States. They pontificate upon the something-something that occurs during the third contract year. "You will go home and stay home for as long as you can in the first two summers and then, after that, you might go for a couple of weeks...three tops."

This is the crowd made up of individuals who, during their first two years here, purchased a little place in Cypress or an old farmhouse in southern France and, once they retire from life in Muscat, will move there. They have the sweet furniture collected over years of travel in Asia, and awe-inspiring wall hangings, instead of the press board furniture given by the university, and the blank walls we sport. They have stories of wild adventures gathered throughout their lives of expatness, and a laundry list of other countries in which they have lived. They are the crew who jumped on this teaching abroad boat back when no one did it. They are largely childless and terribly adult. In short, they are not us.

We look at our rotten snot-nosed kids and wonder how we could NOT return to the States every summer for as long as possible. Muscat is very kind to them in so many ways. This year they have developed new social connections, taken up music, studied art, been entrenched in a weekly drama class, and raised a cat and tadpoles to adulthood. They have decorated our press board home with dozens of canvases of all sorts of artistic interpretations. They have become adept climbers and hikers, swimmers, and explorers. While they have become all of these things within a very friendly and supportive foreign country, in just as many ways they need to maintain their connection with their home country and to do what is purely American, at least for a few months.

Curiously, this year has brought them into a study of the American Revolution and the events leading up to and immediately following it. Our tag-along students who are not of the American persuasion our fascinated by the story that unravels at the hands of our history book one battle and famous colonial at a time. However, my little Americans do not seem equally fascinated. Silas will jolt and squeal when he hears a place name he knows but that is the most they give.

As a matter of fact, while Hamid wants to examine the American climb to independence and world dominance with an eerily despotic inquisitiveness, and Alfie wants to role play George Washington's every move, the American crowd hangs back with, at best, an aloof detachment. What do they want to know? "So what was England doing at this time?"

Yes, they continue along that slippery slope of Britishness and I feel hopeless most days to stop them. Tian returns from weekend play dates with a marked change in her vocabulary and phraseology. She has ceased using the words "kind of" or "very" in general parlance and now opts for "a bit" or "quite" instead. Tehva describes things as "horrid" and pronounces the word "bottom" with a strong "t" instead of using the good American "d" as in, "My goodness your bott(strong T)om looks big in those trousers." They are small changes, and amusing ones. Changes are to be expected of course. But balance is important, and balancing out 9 months here with three months there is barely a balance at all.

In light of this, we will continue with the Sultan-sponsored extended holiday time. I mean vacation.

Footie With the Girlies

Evenings here as of late are cool, bordering on downright chilly when the breezes whip just right off the ocean. It is just the right sort of weather for a sweaty game of soccer. The problem up until a few weeks ago, though, was that I did not have anyone to play with. The only ones ever on the pitch have too much equipment (if you catch my drift) and women just do NOT play with men here. Even the thought of such a proposition would give men the willies to such an extent that they would trip over their soccer cleats and that would be the end of the game.

However, a few weeks ago one enterprising woman decided that she would try and see just how many women were interested in a girls-only round of soccer, and it turned out that a lot were. So, on Sunday and Friday evenings the soccer pitch is strictly NO BOYS ALLOWED, and thus has begun my education on Arabic women and "football".

Learning Point #1: Abaya-clad women make really good goalies. Most of Da Girls get to the pitch and throw off their head scarves, shed their abayas, and jump onto the pitch ready to roll. However, there is a tiny minority that insists on playing covered and NOTHING gets past them when they are in the goal. As an additional bonus, it is easy to discriminate between fielders and goalies when the goalie is wrapped in black.

Learning Point #2: Everything is negotiable in soccer, even the ref's calls. These women do not argue calls...they negotiate them, asking the ref for some give, then asking the other team for some give, and then, after everyone has had a chance to catch their breath, play resumes without a change in the original call.

Learning Point #3: "Hustle your butt" sounds the same in Arabic as it does in English. That's not to say it is a cognate, but when Soccer Momma is screaming, "Eem-shee! Eem-shee!" you know what she is saying.

Learning Point #4: When a player comes late to the field, all play must stop so that she can go around and kiss everyone hello, check in (Sa-va?), and adjust her headscarf. This routine must be immeasurably important because everyone comes late, everyone goes through it, and everyone is willing to wait through it for every single woman who enters the field.

Learning Point #5: Goals or exceptional plays call for field-wide celebrations. The opposing team gets just as goofy, giggly, and clappy over a goal as the team that scored it.

Learning Point #6: In spite of the way this sounds in the points above, these women play for blood. Thus far I have suffered violent bruises and scratched arms, Tian has been run over and tripped, and another woman recently broke her foot during a game. Funnily enough, fouls are rarely called as there seems to be a concensus that a little violence makes for an interesting game.

Footie with women--what better way to spend your evenings in Oman?

Hiking With the ROP

"Hello. Are you busy today?" At 8:40 a.m. the phone had rung, which is bizarre since nearly everyone I know texts instead of calls. Calls are pricey but texts are practically free. In the name of looking like I am not a lazy bum I was trying my best to make it sound like I had been wide awake when the call came through.

"A little." Not really but the lazy bum thing once again...I have an image to maintain.

"All right, well the police are here and they want to go out and find that grenade. I cannot remember the way exactly to find it. So you need to come. I will see you in 20 minutes." **click**

I have such nice friends here, and when we go out walking together we tend to find things like shell fragments and hand grenades. The finding is not such a problem, but when my friend reports those explosives to the police and the police want to go out and recover the explosives early on the days that I am on school holidays, well, that sucks.

Joy was still around when this all went down and she is organized enough to dump the pictures from her camera's disc every night. Her camera with plentiful memory instantly qualified her as the trip photographer. Srey met the two of us at the university's administrative building and guided us into the perfumed depths of the vice-something-or-other's wing where we were greeted by three very wise-looking, portly Omani administrators dressed in immaculate white dishdashas, and two policemen wearing tan jumpsuits, black woolen berets, and shoes with absolutely no tread on them.

Greetings were exchanged all around, hands were tentatively offered (Joy, Srey, and I ARE women after all--*danger*danger*) for limp-wristed shaking, and the police indicated that they were ready to go after that grenade. I couldn't help it...I had to do it...Honestly, how many times in your life can you look at a man and say, "Those are some beautiful shoes. But can you walk in them well enough?" The police were dismissive, as if they wandered into mountains everyday in suede camel boots with no tread.

We arrived at the trailhead, marked by a monolith, a washed-out dirt road, and a fossilized oyster bed. The police hopped from their tan Land Rover. "Okay, where is the grenade?" they asked, and looked a bit disappointed when we three women responded with, "That way. Up." Immediately one of the coppers volunteered to stay with the car lest a group of marauding camels come through and try to eat the mirrors, while the other cop started up the trail behind us.

He huffed and puffed, chugged and snorted up the first rise, smiled when we reached the top and asked, "Where is the grenade?" He asked twice more as we walked and then resigned himself to a long hike through the hills of greater Muscat. He chatted about his family, his bomb squad trainings abroad, his travels overseas, and the universality of the middle finger. He sweated through his tan jumper and declared that this was a very fast walk.

After 30 minutes we came to the valley of the grenade at which point he phoned his partner and explained that he was taking so long because this bomb was a LOOOOOONG way from the cars, like 5 or 6 kilometers! (As if) And then the moment we had been awaiting all morning--we spotted the grenade. It was lime green and laying on its side surrounded by dirt and stones; on its side "Grenade" and "CCC" had been clearly stenciled.

Being the local bomb expert he strode right over to the thing, nudged it with his toe, and picked it up. Then he started shaking it. Srey threw her arms up and we three women backed away (actually I think Joy snapped photos while Srey and I backed away). When a former Cambodian refugee throws her arms up and backs away from an explosive, one tends to follow suit.

Instead of exploding and throwing bits everywhere, the bottom of the canister dropped its plug of stone and dust poured out its bottom end. "Yes! It's dead this one! Yes. It is just an old grenade. See?" As Joy busily snapped photos, he explained the mechanism of the pin you pull and how you arch your arm to throw it. He showed where the smoke pours out and how the smoke's color is different according to the canister's color, and...

"Hold the phone. This is not an exploding grenade?"

Our expert laughed. "No, no, this is a signaling grenade, like for the army if they want their friends to come find them after an exercise and pick them up."

And with that our expert started out of the valley with the grenade in hand, tan jumpsuit sticking to his back, smooth suede shoes carrying him smoothly down the goat trails and up and over the rocky cliffs back to his car. So it wasn't an exploding grenade, but it was worth getting up for--how often do you get to hike with a bomb-laden Omani man in smooth-bottomed camel suede shoes?

Making Amends

The Kia Rio has now been retired as a faux wheel drive vehicle and has begun a life of luxury. On weekends it sits in the covered parking space instead of dune bashing in the Empty Quarter or chugging up and down wadis. It has become a true saloon car instead of an almost four wheel drive.

And in its place we have the Hyundai Santa Fe. Previously owned by a friend of ours who has moved onto greener pastures, it is tricked out with tinted windows, royal blue paint, and cruise control. We no longer even have to exert the effort to unlock the doors individually with a key--with

the push of a single button all doors unlock simultaneously. While all of this is nice, Silas most appreciates the individual air conditioning vents and reading lights, and the fact that the cargo area folds out into two extra seats, allowing Tehva to have her very own "cage".

Driving the Santa Fe allows me to feel less of a peasant here. It is big, which means that by default all of those itty-bitty saloon cars must respect me. It has four wheel drive which means I can take it into wadis without worrying about whether or not I will ever come out again.

And the windows are darkly tinted which means that Joy can change in the front seat without that Omani bus driver seeing her--until he got right in front of the car and looked through the windscreen--the tinting there is almost nonexistent per Omani law. Then he nearly wrapped that school bus around a cement wall. Best of all, the Santa Fe looks like we paid more than 10 riyals for it, unlike the Kia Rio which possesses an air of plasticity and appears to have come out of a vending machine. You know, the kind where you insert a quarter, turn a knob, and get a plastic ring. Or a gum ball. Or a Kia Rio.

So feeling less the peasant, I decided to pack up Joy, Rachel, Abigail, and my own brood, and head to Qurm where, you no doubt will remember, there is a skating rink and lots of other people who drive nice, big cars. We thundered down the highway, burning lots of fossil fuels all the way. As we drove along the engine purred instead of doing the Kia Rio Whine. We looked down upon other people on the road instead of hoping, as in the Rio, that they would notice us and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE not hit us. The children, content with their individual vents and bounty of space, never even noticed one another. It was pure bliss.

And there was the skating rink after a trip that felt all the faster for the comfort experienced during the ride! But just as quickly as I pulled into the skating rink's lot I also noticed that the parking spaces are itty bitty there, made for a Kia Rio, not a hulking Santa Fe. So I did what any SUV owner would do--I decided I would make the car fit, dammit. I pulled up and then reversed and then pulled forward and then reversed. And just as Joy offered to get out (not to worry, she was fully dressed at that point) and help me negotiate this anorexic parking spot, I hit a tree.

The tree wasn't big--as a matter of fact it was little more than a collection of three unassuming branches sticking up out of the ground. However, it was big enough, and I was going fast enough, to allow the tree to leave an impression on the back of the car.

Did I mention we had owned the car for three days at that point?

Needless to say, my argument that Tony had dented AND scratched the Rio within a month of its purchase, on a cement wall that was right in front of him, in broad day light, held absolutely no water. Apparently denting the Santa Fe is a sin much worse than scratching and denting the plastic car.

Although I am reassured by many that body work is cheapy-cheap in Muscat, and that dents are so commonplace here as to be almost not worth mentioning, I still am being made to rectify the situation. And so, if you find a few weeks go by without a blog post, well, you will know that I am busy making amends.

My knees are killing me.

Culture Crash

It seems as if the vibes in the universe that modulate weirdness have bent just enough that the bizarre is coming through loud and clear. Back in my politically correct grad school days, the bizarre and incomprehensible encountered in a foreign culture was labeled with the very benign term, "culture bump". Alrighty, then, we can go with that if it makes some of you more comfortable.

In just one week I have tripped across so many weird culture bumps that they are starting to more accurately resemble culture pot holes. Great big deep pot holes.

Be careful! Oh, no, wait...you're driving an automatic. Well done, ladies!

As I drive Tony to work in the morning in our manual Kia Rio I am supposedly breaking the law. Women here are not supposed to drive stick shifts because, errrr, they're suggestive? Tony speculates that someone in the Omani lawmaking body heard that urban legend about the girl who took Spanish fly and, well, you know. Not sure the whys really, but when the driving test is administered here, women are to take the test on the much less erotic automatic transmission, while men must fondle the stick of a manual in order to pass the same test.

Girlfriends are for wusses. Manly men ice skate with other manly men. Period.

Muscat has a new skating rink in the very swank section of town called Qurm (no need for a vowel between the r and m in case you were thinking, "TYPO!") Qurm is where we lowlings (mostly teachers) can go to stare greedily at the other half (mostly petroleum engineers) who have lots of money to spend on niceties such as furniture, Land Rovers, Hummers, and organic products imported from the more cultured parts of the world.

Needless to say, we don't spend much time in Qurm since it makes us feel like peasants.

Anyhow, today we did venture into Qurm for a birthday party at the new skating rink. Tehva wore her very ugliest fur-lined shirt and clashing paisley flowered pants for the occasion, while Silas wore his cleanest pair of floods, and Tian, in her carefully matched duds, rolled her eyes at both of them.

As we made our entrance there was nary a soul to be seen--just one abaya-clad woman sitting behind the cash desk looking thoroughly put out at having to be there at all, and a tiny collection of ten-year-old girls ready for a birthday party. The ice was empty with the exception of a clutch of boys scooting tentatively across the ice.

Fast forward two hours and the ice rink is awash in boys and men dressed in the most stylish fashions that Oman has to offer--Michael Jackson gloves; tight black jeans made all the more attractive by a white belt full of holes--think spiked belt with the spikes pulled out but the holes left behind; t-shirts printed with English phrases such as "I Hate Girls" and "No girlfriend! No problem!" (I am NOT making this up); and to top off the ensemble, a net baseball cap like was popular in the US in the 70s, with the plastic doohicky in the back that you can use to adjust the size of the cap. The cap is the most important part of the fashion statement as the plastic doohicky must be adjusted to the very smallest size and the cap must rest upon the head in such a manner that it makes the wearer look like he has an itty-bitty pinhead.

The horde of 20, who range in age from 9 to about 23, skate around and then perform a showy move for one another--some throw their bodies in the air and slam onto the ice, their momentum carrying their bodies through the trajectory of other skaters. Others do breakdance moves, digging the toes of their skates into the ice and then, for good measure, eating the flakes of ice that result. Then suddenly and without warning the boys begin whistling, making what sound like camel calls, and skating while holding hands, careening back and forth across the rink at top speed. And just as quickly they converge in the center, still holding hands, and spin one another around as fast as possible.

My first thought, being a red-blooded American, is that they are doing this to show off for the girls in the rink but silly me there are only about three girls in the rink and they are tending to a friend who has fallen and hit her head on the ice. The girls have no time for the boys, which isn't a concern anyhow as the boys are in fact NOT doing this for the girls. They are doing it for each other. And those t-shirts seem to be a statement of fact.

The new Muscat Opera House is haram so STAY AWAY!

Religiously speaking, Oman is still a bit of a head-scratcher. Yes, the predominance of the population is Muslim, but the sect of Islam that they follow, Ibadi, is one based on a more liberal interpretation of the Koran. The word haram, which means "forbidden" in Arabic has worked its way into our vocabularies, but we don't have to talk about haram very seriously very often because followers of Ibadi say it's all good. We don't worry too much about haram in Oman. Until now.

One of Oman's top emirs has announced that the new Opera House, which cost about a bazillion riyals to build and dominates swanky Qurm's skyline and its social scene, is haram. Strict Muslims regard music as haram and guess what they have been doing at the Opera House. Yes, making music. Naughty naughty.

He could have raised this issue a couple years ago when they started building this collosus.

Ladies! Get away from the pool! And stay off of that exercise bike! And no treadmill for you! Away! Away!

This week I overheard an interesting statistic--the average Omani woman's resting heart rate (while in her twenties) is 80-100 beats per minute.

And that, apparently, is okay, because maintaining a healthy heart rate would require some sort of exercise, which might involve displaying some flesh, and that would be unacceptable, even in facilities designed for exercise.

The Staff Club, to which we belong here, is a cross between social outlet and exercise center. Think YMCA crossed with Parks and Rec with a Shoney's stuck to it. If you are affiliated with Sultan Qaboos University, it is the place to be for dinner, swimming, jogging, soccer, basketball, tennis, playground, and hanging out around the pool. While the kids enjoy a dip, the adults can have a cup of tea, served at poolside by nice men wearing crisp uniforms carrying silver trays. The tennis court is the only place on the campus that women can comfortably wear shorts, and the club is the only place on campus that Muslim women can uncover their heads and go for a dip (but only on Sunday and Tuesday evenings).

This is a bit much, though. A gentleman stood up at the last Staff Club general meeting and suggested the Staff Club become a "Gents' Only" facility. The facilitator, whose name sounds an awful lot like Ghengis Khan, startled at the suggestion (much to his credit) and then asked the man to repeat it for good measure. "Yes, how about we make the staff club 'Gents Only'--I put it to the members." The members stared back. End of discussion.

Usury is bad, but I hadn't realized that until now. That's what the US banks must be doing for us! Saving us from eternal damnation!

The Staff Club, for a little bitty facility, has quite the budget and pulls in a tidy sum of money each year, which is placed into an account where it bears a bit of interest. It is not a lot of interest but it is enough to allow members to afford niceties like a crisply uniformed staff that will serve tea by the pool.

During the meeting, when the Mongol Conqueror announced the year's income and outflow, a hand shot into the air. "Can we place the money in a non-interest bearing account?" I dredged my ears clean. Huh? No one else reacted with the least bit of shock or surprise. As a matter of fact, many rolled their eyes. The woman next to me sunk in her chair--"Typical. Happens every time."

"What is going on? Why would she say no to free money?"

"An interest-bearing account is usury. Haram."

Oh. Just when you think the culture bumps are no more and that a place is so familiar it again becomes unfamiliar, confusing, and surprising.

How exciting!

Faux Wheel Drive

Theoretically blogging, Kia Rios are not made for off-roading. Apparently they simultaneously lack the clearance and the cubic litres to power them through such off-road hazards as sand dunes and mucky wadis. However, we find that our Rio, when fully loaded with a weekend worth of camping equipment, three car sick children, and two crabby adults positively hugs the rough, unpaved roads that scream "ADVENTURE".

Chanting the mantra "The Rio loves off-roading...The Rio is a four wheel drive...The Rio loves off-roading..." we set off in the middle of a group of rugged looking Land Rovers up a wadi into an area called the Gubra Bowl.

The Land Rover owners scoffed just a little when they saw our ride. After all, their vehicles were pimped--ladders, racks, four wheel drive, spare petrol in square metallic containers strapped like a badge to the rear spare tire...oh, did I mention our spare tire is in shreds in the trunk thanks to an unfortunate encounter with a curb a year ago? A view looking over the Gubra Bowl One of these days we'll have to get that repaired.

But no matter, with a flick of the eyes, the Land Roverers silently agreed amongst themselves to set us in the middle of the caravan, a bit like elephants set their sick and infantile in the middle of the herd for protection.

An hour into the Bowl over violently graded dirt roads, the Land Rovers shot up and over a rise to claim our camping spot, right in the middle of a group of three camels. To honor our arrival one spread its back legs and created a sizable pond of camel pee. Charming.

The camel handlers came and stood for a series of photos and a litany of questions regarding their camels' ages, diet, and well-being. One of the camel farmers came and threw his ten-year-old son up and behind the camel's hump. Another camel became very upset at its friend's plight and started doing a camel dance around our campsite. The questions and comments continued. Many "humdill-allah"s and "inshallah"s were exchanged before the word of the winter began to be bandied about--"muttera" and "shittah". Rain.

Earlier in the day another front had moved off of the Indian Ocean and was in the process of breaking up over northern Oman, dumping rain on select locations. Of course rain is good. However, as you may have gathered from earlier posts, rain, while appreciated, is not always desired due to the flooding that invariably ensues after even the smallest amount of precipitation hits the ground. And rain is especially unwelcome during a camping trip in a Kia Rio in the middle of a place with the word "bowl" in its name.

The afternoon melted into an evening that stewed in cold, black clouds. While the kids, all dressed in two and three layers, climbed and ran along rocky rises all around us, the winds grew stronger and chillier, finally blowing away the clouds. The astronomers among us brought out their telescopes and trained them on the moon, Jupiter, and Orion's Nebula. We added more layers and hunkered down in camp chairs between long spells staring through the lenses at the bright, crater-ridden moon, clusters of stars, and the bands of color on Jupiter.

And it never rained. And the Kia Rio made it out of the Bowl. And all was well with the world.

Another successful camping trip thanks to our faux wheel drive.

Whatever You Do, Don't Touch That Door.

The Butterball turkey had sat in our freezer, dare I say expectantly, for two weeks, solidly frozen in anticipation of the big day. Or so we thought. When we removed said turkey three days before Thanksgiving only to find it half-way frozen we were perplexed. "Turkeys in freezers do NOT spontaneously defrost," Tony and I insisted to one another. "I mean, it's a freezer, right? It's supposed to freeze the bird, right?"

And then the question we did not want to face arose. It is the question you do not want to consider when there is a massive, half frozen, imported, precious as gold, $60 bird sitting between you and your spouse mere days before the annual pig out. "How long do you think it has been like this? Do you think it's gone bad?"

We have been without turkey for foreign Thanksgivings in previous years. In China, although there is a word for turkey (literally, "fire chicken") there was no way to actually get one in the years I was there. The best we could do were freshly-slaughtered-before-your-eyes chickens.

In Korea one year, a friend's mother smuggled one into the country from the USA under her dress or something, and it miraculously ended up in our oven. In seven years, that was the only time we ate turkey for Thanksgiving. Of course, there were always rumors that one could acquire turkeys in various markets around the country, but in reality, we never managed to get anywhere fast enough to get one of those precious black market turkeys.

But here in Oman, turkeys can be had--rock solid frozen, factory grown, yellow-net-wrapped, Butterball turkeys. The things do everything besides wave an American flag and shoot off fireworks. The Al Fair chain, famous for its porn...I mean pork section, fresh baked bread, and packaged foods also carries turkeys through November and December especially for little flag wavers like us.

So back to the here and now, standing in the middle of the kitchen with a plastic wrapped turkey threateningly half-thawed on the tile floor between us, Tony and I must have looked like we were in the middle of a comedy sketch. We poked and prodded, and hemmed and hawed as to whether this turkey could have been the source of the odd smell in our freezer. "It reeks in there."

"Yeah, but it smells like rotten milk. Do you think it's the turkey?"

"Crap, if it's not the turkey then that means we will have to empty the freezer to find what else has gone bad."

We sniffed and pinched the plastic wrapping around the turkey. And in the end we decided to risk it, threw the sucker into the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator, crossed our fingers, and started to prepare for Thanksgiving Day.

Tony went out and got a new food processor for the event, and then set to work modifying the menu to maximize the use of his new toy.

We pickled beets, baked pies, and experimented with pumpkin cheesecake. We drew criticism from Tian for baking pan after pan of casseroles. "Mom," she insisted, eyes rolling tweenishly. "Nobody (nobody being Tian) eats casseroles. Why are you making so many. They're disgusting." We peeled potatoes, snapped beans, chopped an enormous bag of onions, sliced apples, and boiled things to make them mushy, which is what we do on Thanksgiving.

And on the day of Thanksgiving, we unwrapped the bird to find...it was perfectly defrosted with just a touch of ice left under the wings and in the cavity. Now all of you who were actually there can breathe a sigh of relief--the bird was untainted. Did you really think we would serve you a rotten turkey? Really?

Just be thankful we didn't open the freezer during dinner.