This is what I look like after I help my son with his homework.

This is what I look like after spending five hours helping my son with his homework on Nefertiti. Incidentally, the two of us do not believe the mummy shown here, often touted as Nefertiti, is actually her. X-ray reports show that this is the body of a 16-year-old girl, not a woman who bore six children. Believe it or not, nerd that I am, already knew Dr. Zahi Hawass' name (isn't he handsome?) and kept shooting links in IMs to my son. I love Egyptology. Having said that, I am now moving onto Hittite stuff. It's groundwork for a book I'd like to write. It's in my mind, the characters are developing and it all started with the picture on the very first blog I put here. Why Hittite? Well, there's that darn Turkish connection rearing its head again...

I stomped through ruins of many castles in southeastern Turkey as a kid. My dad was transferred to Incirik AFB in 1980 with the intent of serving a year, leaving us here, and then coming home. The other option was to take us all and spend two years there. Mom tried it by herself for two months and told him we were on our way.

I am so glad Mom put her foot down. I was only 8 when we left. I was young enough to not hate going, and I was old enough to know what an awesome experience awaited us. Turkey may not be the cradle of the great civilizations, but it was certainly the crossroads, which makes it mystifying, intriguing and engaging, offering so many tidbits of so many different cultures. I often feel bad that my kids haven't had the same opportunities, but they have the same friends they've had since preschool, and there's advantages in that, too.

Okay. Enough on Turkey. Tiger's Eye is going to the dance with...drumroll please...Lady C. She broke the triangle possibility and I'm a little relieved. I need to meet her, of course, and we need to get Tiger's Eye some decent clothes. I mean, being new to this mom-of-girl-crazed teen things, how much time/effort/moulah do I put into homecoming?

I think I'm going to add some stuff to Twisted. I need to borrow some pics from Mom and get the Turkey blog all ready to lay out. There's some awesome castles and natural wonders I want to show and I might actually show an image of my true self, circa age 8, 9 or 10. She's still with me, and she is my inner child. I cater to her often. She scampers over crumbling bastion walls still, and calls me to go back and play there. I will, some day. I will take my kids and we will go deal with the little kids who make their money off tourists by fashioning coins out of rock, feeding them to their little black goats, waiting for the goats to, well, "process" the rock and then passing them off as old coinage from days gone by.


It's the weekend. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!