Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

After five months of humming and hawing, we've finally decided that in order to keep our collective sanity intact, we really do need to move out of our tiny treehouse. It has served it's purpose well; we have settled into our little community (by which I mean I know three people), the children are happy in their school, and the beautiful surroundings have provided a dramatic backdrop for our introduction to life in Australia. However, the truth is that pretty as it is, the house is really not much more than a glorified apartment, something which really doesn't work for a family of seven (albeit with the largest member absent two thirds of the time). It offers so little privacy that when I shower the children tend to gather in the bathroom to ask me questions through the misty glass (the bathroom door doesn't close) and our living room also serves as a kitchen/dining/dressing/occasional-conjugal-quickie-before-the-children-notice-room (there's no pri...

So we're heading back to Ireland, at least for a few months, leaving DH behind to sweat it out in the sandpit they call Abu Dhabi. Predictably, trying to leave the UAE invokes every conceivable complication and at times makes me want to throw my hands up and shriek 'OK, I'LL STAY! ' out of sheer defeat. Normal things like trying to move out of a house here, no matter at what point into your year's lease you are, requires that you forfeit the remainder of the year's rent (which has cleverly been demanded in advance). Imagine that! Being a landlord here guarantees unlimited, undeserved and unearned wealth -- I should have bought a property here the second I arrived; DH wouldn't have had to work a day after that (and don't get me started on the sub-species they call estate agents -- suffice to say I've yet to meet one that understood the concept of fairness or reason, and I've dealt with them as both a landlord and a tenant). Of course the ...