A Special Purchase

There's a guy who sells large, colorful balls right outside of Yerushalayim. We pass him about half of the time we travel there, seeing him slung with about 20 balls, each nearly 2 feet in diameter. They look fun, but he's essentially standing at the exit of a highway. How can we stop?

Today, he was outside of Rami Levy. He had fewer than 10 balls, and I had to ask how much they were. He told me they were 25₪ apiece, and I thought about it. Where would we keep it? How much is 25₪? As I was thinking, he brought the price down to 20₪, at which point he had a sale. I'm still not sure where we'll keep it (the ball is covered with fuzzy cloth, so storing it outside may not be viable, though with the rainy season being over...), but for 20₪, I want to be able to say I bought something from the guy who stands at the entrance to Yerushalayim. And it really is a cool ball.

F l a g

You know one of the best things about Israeli Independence Day? Stores finally sell Israeli flags! This is important to me, personally, because it means that after months of growing embarrassment, we replaced our flag at last. Seriously, the wonderful rain-heralding wind shredded our poor flag down to two inches of stripes. No star left at all. Now we have a beautiful, non-mortifying, complete Israeli flag flying from our porch once more. Whew!

Post-Pesach

Remember the four loads of laundry that I managed to cram onto our laundry racks before Pesach? Well, someone on the yishuv was selling a used dryer. The problem is that we didn't really want to pay a guy with a truck 150₪ to schlep it for us. Well, Husbinator discovered that we can fold down the back seats of our Hyundai Accent (which, by the way, is called a Hyundai Esteem for some unknown reason), and thus schlep the dryer ourselves. Yay!

Pesach Season: Wrap-Up

I have some more notes from the Pesach Season that I'd like to share with you, but don't actually want to write about. Brace yourself for bullet points.

• We had American guests for Seder, so there was a second seder at our house, as well. Husbinator announced in shul that the Israelis were welcome to stop by and "see the chutznikim," perhaps even take a selfie at the second seder. Our across-the-street neighbor took him up on his offer, and made this shocked comment: "It's just like the first seder!" Yes. Yes it is.
• Good friends from the US who made aliyah to Northern Israel a few months before we made aliyah were in Jerusalem for the first day of Pesach. Since they were around, they came over and we had a BBQ and it was awesome. They also brought Charoset-flavored Ben and Jerry's ice cream that we really wanted to try but couldn't find anywhere. (It's really cinnamon-y.)
• Speaking of the first day of chol hamoed/the second day of yom tov, I only tried to get  Husbinator's brother to break yontiff once. He just looked at me until I realized that he couldn't write his name on his cup...
• We went to Neot Kedumim with Nefesh B'Nefesh. The first part of the tour was us wandering freely in the park; the second part was guided. I confirmed for myself that I vastly prefer guided tours. During the guided tour, I also confirmed that pressing olives is an absolute pain in the tush, and I need not try to make olive oil again this year. Also during the guided portion of the tour, the guide pointed out that "kedem" (yore, as in days of yore) and "kadima/l'hitkadem" (onward/to progress onward) are the same root word conjugated two different ways. She also pointed out that our forefathers were shepherds (duh), and when the Jews entered Israel, they formed an agricultural society (again, duh). What I somehow failed to see until she hit us over the head with it, is that means that the Jews went from being nomadic shepherds to settled farmers. Oh. That's a huge transition.
• Before we left for Aunty Em and Uncle En's for the last day/s of Pesach, I noticed the wind was much stronger than usual, and much stronger than I'd come to expect after a week of mild, sunny weather. It was slightly overcast, and a line from the silent Amida popped into my head: "משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם" "[G-d] winds* the wind and sends down the rain." We just stopped saying this line, in fact, since the rainy season just ended, but I suddenly realized how literal it is. Every single time it's rained over the winter, we had a few hours to a few days of strong wind, first. So I checked the weather, and sure enough, there was rain in the forecast. So I took in the four loads of laundry I had hung out before Pesach and hadn't gotten around to folding, yet. (And yes, it did end up raining while we were away. Ha! I'm telling you, there's a bunch of stuff in prayer/Torah that doesn't fully make sense out of the context of Israel.)
• Aunty Em and Uncle En completely renovated their apartment over the last few months, so they have brand-new doors to all of the rooms. These newly-balanced doors allowed BSM to learn what velociraptors learned in Jurassic Park: he can now open doors. Run!
• After Pesach, I annotated our Pesach shopping list with quantities. I must say, we overbought a little on matza and oil, and vastly underbought on eggs (we had to buy eggs twice more after I thought we were done), but all in all, we did a great job with our Pesach shopping. Round of applause!

--
Yes, "winds." "L'Hashiv" means to return, to double something back on itself, to wind. The fact that I just paired the verb "wind" with the object "wind" is a very happy coincidence. I like my poetically literal translation much better than Artscroll's clearer, "Who makes the wind blow and the rain descend."

An Important Lesson

...And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

This year, I learned to NEVER SHOP on erev-erev-erev Pesach. That's right, in preparation for Pesach, which started on Shabbat this year, I went to do my final grocery shop (or so I thought) on Wednesday. To get a quick feel for what this means, imagine grocery shopping in America on Erev Thankgiving. Multiply that by two. Squish up your face and bobble your head from side to side a few times, then judiciously add another 25% or so. There you have it: shopping in the Jerusalem area three days before Pesach. Need I say more?

Of course I do! That's why I have a blog!

I swung by my local Rami Levy first, but they were out of soft matza. (I had refused to buy it earlier, insisting that Husbinator talk to his rebbe before we buy this crazy flexible matza he wanted so badly.) Well, I wasn't completely shocked, though I was a little dazed by the crowds, so I headed out to the Rami Levy in Givat Shaul, Jerusalem (25 minutes without traffic). Waze predicted a 90-minute ride by my regular route, so I went the long way around, via Ma'aleh Efraim. That trip took a heart-stoppingly gorgeous hour. So pretty. The hills. The curves hiding panoramic views. The grass and flowers and stones and streams. The poor little BSM who vomited three times before he fell asleep :(

In the end, after multiple parking adventures, I found soft matza in the 3rd store I visited. Having parked about two blocks away, I couldn't buy their nearly-free seltzer or unbelievably cheap Kededm grape juice, but I did get the last of the meat and maror and karpas. I am so glad we finished the bulk of shopping last week. Checkout took forever, and I will not repeat this little adventure next year, but it was a nice break. And a stunning drive.

Another problem with mideast politics

As long as we're taking a break from Pesach...

I was reading this article in the Wall Street Journal the other day, and I found myself ticking off the groups as I went. I still confuse Sunni and Shiite, Druze make good neighbors and better citizens, I don't know much about Kurds, Alawites... Hmmm... Alawites? Wait, aren't they insane? Nope. It turns out I was mixing up Alawites with Almohads. Though I was perfectly aware at the time that the group I was thinking of did their piece of insanity in the twelfth century. Still, that qualifies for mistrusting them today, it seems.

-A Break in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming-

There's still more I want to say about the Pesach season, but I'm pretty excited about the interview I had today.

Yesterday, while hanging out at the mall with Shoshie and Nosie-Boy (he looks exactly the same! only totally different!), I got a call about a job I applied for. We talked for about five minutes, and set an interview for 9am today. Knowing that traffic around here is ridiculous, I gave myself an hour and a quarter for what is a twenty minute drive without traffic. This, it turns out, was an exceedingly good decision: I left Dikla's at 7:43 and had the security guard page my interviewer at 9:01. Sheesh. It's a good thing this job doesn't generally start at 9.

So, yeah, I think the interview went well. I now understand exactly what this job is, and they're right: I'm overqualified. But I really want to start working again. So we'll see.

After the interview, I went to Rami Levy to pick up supplies for this week's kugel. As I'm pulling into the lot at 10am, I realized that it's a very good thing we moved the interview from 10 to the traffic-heavier 9: today is Yom HaShoa VeHagvura, with a 10am siren.

BSM and the Car

While I put the carseat back in the car after Pesach cleaning, BSM took the opportunity to explore seats he doesn't usually sit in. He had a great time, and especially enjoyed sitting in the driver's seat. He turned the wheel back and forth, looked out the passenger window, and yelled, "Yishuv? Yishuv?" Good boy. He knows that this car offers hitchhikers rides to our Yishuv.

Cleaning Help

Well, Pesach is over, so I finally have some time to blog about Pesach cleaning (and Pesach itself). I'd like to start off by thanking the best 15₪ cleaning help I've ever had: my bucket of 400 wet wipes. Scratchy on one side, soft on the other, perfect moisture every time, don't take very long to clean up when BSM invariably gets them all over the floor. Did I feel like some fancy-pants spoiled lady? Yup, I did. "Oo, I'm too fancy to use rags and a bucket of water. How quaint! How difficult to use! How 'orrible!" But seriously, these wipes are a game-changer, and for 15₪, you can bet your sweet patootie that I'll be using them again next year. So. Much. Easier.

And I will take any help I can get, especially when my other help is my wonderful boychick sitting in my lap as I clean the fridge: keeping me company, wanting to help, eating a challah roll.