It's been one of those...

...days.

Khamaseen is roaring through. It's supposed to last 3 days. We're in Day 2. It's not the season for Khamaseen, which is more like springtime, but it's blowing up a storm nonetheless.

The weird thing is, it started raining some drops. In a dust storm? This could get ugly. Thankfully it only was enough to wet the sidewalk.

To make an ugly day uglier, I went to purchase this beautiful painting from Mansour to remind us of our Cairo days...



... and discovered I was 600LE short. Funny, I had it all in a wad this morning.

The only explanation is that my housekeeper or her daughter took it. So I had to confront them. I had suspected her daughter of stealing from us before, but could never prove it and didn't want the confrontation, but today I was positive.

So, I had to rifle through her bags and found she had taken my Palm Tungsten T3 (palm pilot), some scrapbook stickers, and some hair accessories. I found exactly 600LE in her wallet, but couldn't prove it was mine (I thought mine were crisper ;) All this after I had given them loads of Maya's clothing and a ton of my jewelry just a few hours earlier.

So, I told my housekeeper I didn't want to ruin her career, and that she could still work for me (for one more day) but that her daughter couldn't come back. I do feel bad for Nadia if she didn't know what her daughter was up to, but who knows? Did I do the right thing? Dave said that I should tell neither of them to come back, but I still owe Nadia for this month's work. I don't want to steal from her either, especially if she didn't know what was going on.

It just makes one sick to their stomach.

A fitting end to our time here, don't you think? My heart aches to leave my wedding ring here, never to be seen again, all I can hope for is that it made the life of someone here a little bit easier, because truly it is a rough life for most.