I woke up this morning in Abu Dhabi with a bad case of the blues. The see-for-miles view out our 37th floor windows didn’t help; the gulf gleaming in the distance didn’t help.  Then the Monday listmaker struck again: Stasha at The Good Life said the topic for today’s list is: 10 things I miss.

Well. That’s easy-peasy, folks.

Numbers 1-8:

Mother, sister, brother, brother-in-law, nephew, 2 nieces, stepfather, gathered in Provence for mom’s 70th birthday. Actually, I miss Provence, too (but that’s not an official entry on the list).

9. Not people at all but things:

I love magazines. I know, I know, hard copy is so 20th century that it’s positively quaint. My subscription to The New Yorker comes to my iPad but it’s just not the same. I can’t flip through the pages, dip in and out of articles, skim the cartoons, dart around to whatever strikes my fancy. Yes, yes, I could just hit a link on the table of contents but somehow a dedicated jump like that lacks…serendipity. (And yes, Richard, I fully appreciate the irony of a blog writer bemoaning the loss of print culture!)

10. Coming on the heels of #9, this “miss” will seem a little odd, but here goes. I miss my iPhone 4. I am unmoved by gadgets, mostly, but I loves me my iPhone4. Mostly, I love all the camera apps I’ve got–I think of it more as a camera than a phone. Because the iPhone 4 can’t be easily unlocked, it can’t use an international sim card, so I’m relegated to my (far inferior) iPhone 3.  Please note that “easily unlocked” and “international sim card” are phrases that I do not fully understand, so please don’t ask any questions. I parrot only what DTS (domestic tech support, aka Husband) tells me. The phones don’t look that different, but a day hasn’t gone by that I don’t itch for my 4.

11. Finally, as I suspected I would, I miss green. The dominant color here is…tan. Lots of different shades of tan, but mostly? Tan. In the white heat of day, even the gulf waters look bleached out, a silvery blue-ish beige. Nowhere yet have I found this: