I'm having an Alice In Wonderland moment.

Remember the scene where Alice dejectedly cries and sings to herself, "I give myself very good advice, but I rarely ever follow it."

Two months ago, I got a perm. It was way too curly and made me look like a trained poodle walking upright. I said to myself, "Carol, don't follow a bad perm with bright color, you'll look like a clown." But did I listen to myself..... obviously not. Now here I sit with curly mother-of Ronald-McDonald hair!

Tomorrow Hubby and I jet off for the ME and I wanted to perk up my dull hair color. I thought I would have to drive into the Blue Area to get a blonde shade of hair dye, but to my surprise, my very own G-11 Merkaz had shops with full arrays of colors. I very unwisely bypassed the sedate ash blonde for a lively Blonde Blush. Well, it looked good on the box and I've had strawberry blond hair before, but with this perm, it's really just tooooo much. If this is a blush, if must be a hooker's blush! Fortunately, I have time to try to correct my mistake. Tomorrow morning, with duputa firmly on head to hide the garish results, I'll humbly buy the ash blonde and hope my over chemicalized hair can stand another chemical assault without turning to straw.

Blogistan invades real life: Late last night I got a call from a fellow blogger W---- in Lahore. It turns out my girls had met his blogger sister a couple months ago, and he had just met Hemlock, who passed on our contact number. We're meeting in his home city. Now let's all sing "It's a Small World" a-one and a-two, and a-three......

Hubby and I bought the August Spider magazine to see the blurb about our own deGrouchy Owl. What proud parents we were to see our Owly mentioned as sharp witted and hysterically funny.

Monsoon Madness!!!

The workers were finishing the back yard a few days ago. They flattened out all the dirt hills and repaired the breaks in the new retaining wall. I had plans to get the yard fenced in and kick out the hoard of wild dogs that have adopted my yard as their very own lair. I had dreams, big dreams of landscaping and lawn furnitre and flowers, lots and lots of flowers.

24 hours later, Monsoon Madness struck and my dreams have all washed away into the creek.

Two days ago, most of the family had gone to bed early, before midnight. I was awakened from my fresh sleep by heavy banging on the door at 1:15 m. I stumbled out of bed, noticing my hubby was gone, and across the wet floor towards the door. Pools of water were flowing across the floor and water was pouring as if from an open tap from the TV cable outlets in the walls. I quickly regained my senses and realized; 1. the banging was my husband trying to awaken the upstairs tennets so he could get to the roof to open the clogged drains, 2. I needed some help to fight the internal flooding.

I banged on the boy's bedroom door and Oleg answered the emergency call. Zaman had a cold and fever and had taken medicine and never woke through the entire event. We grabbed the livingroom rug, rolled it up and threw it on the sofa. Then we grabbed floor wipers and started squeeging the water to the nearest exits, doors and floor drains. You see, this is the third time we have experinced such a weird phenomium as water flowing from the wall outlets. It happened once in our previous rented house, and once here when our tennets threw empty boxes onto the flat roof, the roof floods in the heavy rain and the water comes down the holes made for cables.

We responded like seasoned pros. Within a few minutes the water stopped flowing and the all that was left was the clean-up. Nephew Azeem ran around in hyper mode squeeging like a madman. Two days later when we were recounting the adventure, Hubby said, "Azeem was like a genie, all he needed was a gold earring." "Oh my gosh," I cried, "That is exactly how I envisioned him!" Our two floors of the house were all squeegied in about an hour. [Girls, guess where the very lowest elevation in the house is? in you bedroom by the wingback chair.]

We went back to bed at 2:30 and were talking quietly. I was silently thanking God for the rain and that he gave me such a mild mannered and good natured husband when I hear him chuckle to himself, "Ha ha, 4 bags of cement ruined." The workers had left it uncovered on the back varanda and it had gotten soaked in the rain. He further surprised me by whispering, "I can't sleep, let's go bake something." I was quite shocked at his idea and suggested we eat mangos instead. Mangos and monsoon have a cultural romantic link here. We went to find the boys in the dinningroom and they joined us in mangos and various munchies.

We tried going to bed again at 3am. I dozed immediately, but hubby, who had taken a long and late nap that day, lay in bed listening to the rain and the rushing water in the creek. He said about 4:30 am a loud crashing noise confirned his fears that the retaining wall wouldn't withstand this deluge. When I awoke the next morning we toured the devistated backyard. The left cornor of the wall was gone, the right sidewall had a 5 ft breach and the upper left wall had an undermined spot that would break through on the next rain.

All my dreams of a landscaped back your were down the drain. It will take a least a month to rebuild the wall, and fill in the dirt that washed away. Till then, my "lawn" is a dingo den again.