Torchlit Parade

Our Yishuv has quite a few Chanukah events. The only one I felt BSM would really enjoy, however, is the Torchlit Parade.  When I mentioned it to my manager (seriously, a torchlit parade: how cool!) she responded matter-of-factly that their neighborhood had their torchlit parade last week; I guess it's a normal Israeli thing.

Either way, I figured BSM likes Shabbos candles, so he'll probably get a kick out of walking around and seeing "torches", however those played out in real life. Husbinator agreed with me, so yesterday afternoon, the two of them headed out. When I got back from work and caught up with them at the tail-end of the parade, I immediately comprehended what had struck Husbinator as soon as the parade was being set up.

This was a torchlit parade. This wasn't an American torchlit parade, either, in which firefighters hold an Olympic torch or two and everyone watches. This is an Israeli torchlit parade, wherein people decide that it's a good ideas to give kiddies huge, wax-covered sparklers, and let them wander forth in the breeze as a close-packed group. Oh. My. Gosh.

Pro tip: if you offer a bunch of kiddies such devices, they will wave them around and point them in all sorts of directions and generally freak the patooties out of everyone. The kiddies will not decide that holding huge, wax-covered sparklers is above their pay grade, and opt for the glow sticks instead.

For the record, BSM loved his glow stick, no one got hurt, a few torches got confiscated by the security guard who also walked around in the parade, all torches were doused at the end, and everyone got a doughnut.

Oh my goodness. It was certainly an experience.

94

The English tells it wrong, but the Hebrew is perfect.
(Also, JPS translates עתק as "arrogancy" versus Artscroll's "lies.")

Psalms Chapter 94 תְּהִלִּים

א  אֵל-נְקָמוֹת יְהוָה;    אֵל נְקָמוֹת הוֹפִיעַ.	1 O LORD, Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth.
ב  הִנָּשֵׂא, שֹׁפֵט הָאָרֶץ;    הָשֵׁב גְּמוּל, עַל-גֵּאִים.	2 Lift up Thyself, Thou Judge of the earth; render to the proud their recompense.
ג  עַד-מָתַי רְשָׁעִים יְהוָה:    עַד-מָתַי, רְשָׁעִים יַעֲלֹזוּ.	3 LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?
ד  יַבִּיעוּ יְדַבְּרוּ עָתָק;    יִתְאַמְּרוּ, כָּל-פֹּעֲלֵי אָוֶן.	4 They gush out, they speak arrogancy; all the workers of iniquity bear themselves loftily.
ה  עַמְּךָ יְהוָה יְדַכְּאוּ;    וְנַחֲלָתְךָ יְעַנּוּ.	5 They crush Thy people, O LORD, and afflict Thy heritage.
ו  אַלְמָנָה וְגֵר יַהֲרֹגוּ;    וִיתוֹמִים יְרַצֵּחוּ.	6 They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.
ז  וַיֹּאמְרוּ, לֹא יִרְאֶה-יָּהּ;    וְלֹא-יָבִין, אֱלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב.	7 And they say: 'The LORD will not see, neither will the God of Jacob give heed.'
ח  בִּינוּ, בֹּעֲרִים בָּעָם;    וּכְסִילִים, מָתַי תַּשְׂכִּילוּ.	8 Consider, ye brutish among the people; and ye fools, when will ye understand?
ט  הֲנֹטַע אֹזֶן, הֲלֹא יִשְׁמָע;    אִם-יֹצֵר עַיִן, הֲלֹא יַבִּיט.	9 He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?
י  הֲיֹסֵר גּוֹיִם, הֲלֹא יוֹכִיחַ:    הַמְלַמֵּד אָדָם דָּעַת.	10 He that instructeth nations, shall not He correct? even He that teacheth man knowledge?
יא  יְהוָה--יֹדֵעַ, מַחְשְׁבוֹת אָדָם:    כִּי-הֵמָּה הָבֶל.	11 The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.
יב  אַשְׁרֵי, הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר-תְּיַסְּרֶנּוּ יָּהּ;    וּמִתּוֹרָתְךָ תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ.	12 Happy is the man whom Thou instructest, O LORD, and teachest out of Thy law;
יג  לְהַשְׁקִיט לוֹ, מִימֵי רָע--    עַד יִכָּרֶה לָרָשָׁע שָׁחַת.	13 That Thou mayest give him rest from the days of evil, until the pit be digged for the wicked.
יד  כִּי, לֹא-יִטֹּשׁ יְהוָה עַמּוֹ;    וְנַחֲלָתוֹ, לֹא יַעֲזֹב.	14 For the LORD will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance.
טו  כִּי-עַד-צֶדֶק, יָשׁוּב מִשְׁפָּט;    וְאַחֲרָיו, כָּל-יִשְׁרֵי-לֵב.	15 For right shall return unto justice, and all the upright in heart shall follow it.
טז  מִי-יָקוּם לִי, עִם-מְרֵעִים;    מִי-יִתְיַצֵּב לִי, עִם-פֹּעֲלֵי אָוֶן.	16 Who will rise up for me against the evil-doers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?
יז  לוּלֵי יְהוָה, עֶזְרָתָה לִּי--    כִּמְעַט, שָׁכְנָה דוּמָה נַפְשִׁי.	17 Unless the LORD had been my help, my soul had soon dwelt in silence.
יח  אִם-אָמַרְתִּי, מָטָה רַגְלִי;    חַסְדְּךָ יְהוָה, יִסְעָדֵנִי.	18 If I say: 'My foot slippeth', Thy mercy, O LORD, holdeth me up.
יט  בְּרֹב שַׂרְעַפַּי בְּקִרְבִּי--    תַּנְחוּמֶיךָ, יְשַׁעַשְׁעוּ נַפְשִׁי.	19 When my cares are many within me, Thy comforts delight my soul.
כ  הַיְחָבְרְךָ, כִּסֵּא הַוּוֹת;    יֹצֵר עָמָל עֲלֵי-חֹק.	20 Shall the seat of wickedness have fellowship with Thee, which frameth mischief by statute?
כא  יָגוֹדּוּ, עַל-נֶפֶשׁ צַדִּיק;    וְדָם נָקִי יַרְשִׁיעוּ.	21 They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood.
כב  וַיְהִי יְהוָה לִי לְמִשְׂגָּב;    וֵאלֹהַי, לְצוּר מַחְסִי.	22 But the LORD hath been my high tower, and my God the rock of my refuge.
כג  וַיָּשֶׁב עֲלֵיהֶם, אֶת אוֹנָם--    וּבְרָעָתָם יַצְמִיתֵם; יַצְמִיתֵם,    יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ.	23 And He hath brought upon them their own iniquity, and will cut them off in their own evil; {N} the LORD our God will cut them off. {P}

Success!

I did. I really, really did it. After weeks of trying (granted, most of that was waiting for a letter with a username and temporary password to show up in our mail), I finally created an online National Insurance account for Husbinator. ("National Insurance" is more commonly known as Bituach LeUmi, and it's Israel's hardcore real-socialist version of Social Security.)

Lo, within those same 30 minutes, I managed to transfer our automatic payments off of our Israeli bank account and onto our American credit card. (Because using our credit card is the best way we've found to transfer the American Dollars from Husbinator's salary into Israeli Shequels that we can use for useful stuff.)

I did it! Victory is mine! YEAH!!!!

(For the record, O mighty National Insurance Institute of Israel, I am in no way suggesting that I beat you. Or that you couldn't crush me slowly and tortuously as you have crushed countless others who dared wrestle with your mighty bureaucracy. I'm just implying that you have a great website, may it live and be well. Don't mind me.)

Woo-hoo!

Birkat Hatov V'hamaitiv

The fourth blessing of bentching (Grace After Meals) is "Hatov V'hamaitiv", ("The One Who is Good and Does Good").

The Rabbis added this blessing to bentching years after the failure of Bar Kochba's rebellion against the Romans, when the Jews were finally allowed to enter the city of Beitar and bury our dead. This was a moment of revisiting the bloody end of dreams of independence and safety. Instituting a blessing praising G-d for His goodness and care isn't necessarily the intuitive response.

It's hard, but it helps.

Also, it rained today. And that helps, too.

Tears

You know, I have so much awesome stuff to blog about that I haven't gotten around to yet. But when I heard the news today, I couldn't process it. For some reason, this picture finally let me cry:

October 1st is World Ballet Day. Go for it.

Cha-ching!

I got my first pay stub at work today. Very, very exciting stuff. I have little to no clue as to what the millions of words and numbers and columns and the occasional minus sign mean (the minus sign is attached to a number that thought was a reimbursement from the company to me), but I checked my bank account, and there's a bunch more money in there now: so that's pretty darned cool! I will have to figure out what it all means, though. Meanwhile, part-ay.

Dentist!

Welp, a year and  a half after moving to Israel, I finally made my way to the dentist. This is something I've been dreading, and it worked out Just Fine. Thank G-d.

I went to a private practice that comes very highly recommended, and the dentist was great. Not only did he speak English, which is nice since I don't know a whole lot of Hebrew dental words, he was also very patient and soothing and good at what he does.

Moreover, even though the waiting room only has a few magazines, it also has a nice big bookshelf of Chumashim, and Gemaras, and assorted other Jewish books. That made me really happy. The Escher room (with a nice number of impossible staircases) painted on the ceiling directly over the dentist's chair was also totally awesome.

Since it's a private practice, it means they don't take insurance, but my filling was still slightly cheaper than what I paid in America with dental insurance. Ha.

It's True

Less than a week after I started my job, a recruiter reached out to me about a potential employment opportunity, and since then, I've had a slow but steady trickle of recruiters wanting to connect on LinkedIn. It's nice to feel wanted, but it's frustrating to see how true it is that the most valuable asset in finding a job is already having one.

August

In Israel, August is a nebulous time. By unspoken national agreement, it is nearly impossible to find childcare in August. This is the month of family vacations, of "Camp Ema", of taking off a day here and a day there to patch unfillable holes in the kids' schedules, of spontaneous and unofficial Take Your Child to Work Day. Or, in some special cases, Days. I'm hoping that when September 1st rolls around in two days, our resident eight year old with the Nerf gun will finally leave my floor and go back to school.

How It Looks

So it turns out that the "ketchup" ruling has already gone into effect.

Thus, Osem proudly says "Ketchup" in Hebrew all across the front of their bottles of ketchup, as they have always done. Heinz now says "Ketchup" only in English, though they've added a really big "Since 1876" which didn't used to be there. On the back, in Hebrew, Heinz wrote "Tomato Seasoning" and on then their blurb about how they use delicious sun-ripened tomatoes together with their long-standing knowledge and desire to make their unique recipe: no other tomato seasoning tastes like this. 

This is completely ridiculous. The best part, though, is that Rami Levy still knows what's up. In their inimitable style, they write whatever they feel like on their SALE signs, customers and government be darned. This week, Rami Levy decided to go with their customers rather than the government, posting signs that will lead to minimal confusion. The top sign says, "Ketchup 750g - Osem" and the bottom sign says "Ketchup 700g Heinz." What's tomato seasoning? The employees need to know where to put the sign (kind of), and the customers need to know what the sale is for (again, kind of). Ketchup. They're both ketchup. And they're both on sale.

It's Happened

Due to the low percentage of tomato paste in their world-famous condiment (6%), Heinz will no longer be able to market their better-on-hot-dogs sauce as ketchup in Israel. Osem, however, with at least 10% tomato paste in their ketchup, is fine.

Real Work

Yesterday, I finally finished enough training to start actual work. My supervisor told me not to worry about how long it was going to take me to complete even very simple tasks. So no pressure, just lots of excitement at finally getting to work like the big kids, instead of being stuck in class like a little kid.

The Recruiter

I got a LinkedIn message from a recruiter the other day. She had a position to fill, and wanted to know if we could talk about it. Well, that was flattering and somewhat unexpected, if also irrelevant. Where was she for the last year and a half?

Something Different

I just realized something weird about my orientation. This is the first tine in years that I came into a new workspace and wasn't immediately given a tour of alarms, fire extinguishers, safety showers, and escape routes. It's so... so... banal. I'm sure my parents will be glad my new workplace is so dull.

Not a Drug Deal

Husbinator bought a lot of vanilla beans online recently, and Aunty Em split the order with us. When the vanilla beans finally came, I brought half of them to work. That day, Uncle En took a cab to my building and I met him downstairs. We exchanged a few pleasantries,  I gave him the goods, and he gave me an envelope of cash and left. Luckily, Aunty Em included a baggie of homemade cookies along with the cash, so it wasn't too much like a drug deal. Really.

Feedback

Here's how I know I've dressed up for work: I dropped my car at the mechanic a few mornings ago to get a new battery, and the mechanic warned me that if I touched anything  in the garage, it would make me dirty. No mechanic (including this one) has ever felt the need to give me that warning before.

TGI... T?

Overheard while getting a cup of coffee in the office this morning (translated from the original Hebrew):

"What a week!"
"I know, right? I'm so glad it's finally Thursday."

It took me a minute to process that: yeah, Thursday's good, it means you're nearly there, but why such an intense level of relief? Oh, right, there's no work tomorrow.

Because the Israeli workweek is Sunday-Thursday. Which I've known for a long time, now. But "Thank G-d It's Thursday" still isn't something that my brain expects to hear.

Artificial Traffic Jams

There was horrific traffic on my way to work this morning. Horrific. As I was getting off of the highway (at last!), I saw what had caused the backup: although the right lane was completely clear, it was occupied by a parked police vehicle, and the officer was standing on the road, partially blocking the next lane. Kind of annoying, but who knows.

As I drove on the next leg of my commute, which about of a 1/4 mile on another reasonably major road, I again used the brake pedal rather than the gas pedal to move forward, if you want to call it that. And again, I saw that the backup was due to a police car parked horizontally in the right lane, with a policeman standing between it and the next lane over... looking intently at every car that crawled past. Oh.

So that's how we cordon off areas for search in this country.

What Does Family-Friendly Mean?

I keep hearing that Israeli corporate culture is very family-friendly, which makes sense given how obsessed the country is with kids. Forget a village, it takes a country to raise a child. But still, where a 43 hour workweek is the norm and schools don't go that late, how family-friendly can it really be?

I shall tell you.

In one of today's training sessions, the guy giving the training got a phone call. Well, he got tons of phone calls throughout the meeting, but he answered one. First, he apologized to us like he really meant it, then he took the call. 

"Hi, Penina, what's going on?" 

Pause. 

"What? But I told him he couldn't!"

Pause.

"Let me talk to him."

Pause.

"No, but--"

Pause.

"I told him no, please let me talk to him."

Pause.

"Put him on the phone."

Pause.

"Hi, sweetie, what's going on?"

Pause.

"You have how many friends over?"

Pause.

"Right, but I said you couldn't."

Pause.

"The party's over; don't make Penina crazy; I'll see you when I get home; I love you; bye."

The development team leader gave us an embarrassed grin and shrugged.

I said, "August. What can you do?"

And the meeting moved right along.

The Job

I started my job on Monday. The first two weeks are training, which is mainly videos/web conferences explaining what broadcasters need to do behind-the-scenes before they air stuff, and how our software lets them manage that. I take notes and play with the software during the lectures, and type everything up afterwards. Oo, ah. But it is cool learning the industry-side of something as ubiquitous as television. It also has the added advantage of giving me complementary information to what Husbinator's learned since he became a recruiter for the internet-advertising world.

What else? Going from no schedule at all to working 9 hours a day with a 30-minute commute is kind of intense. Like, super draining. But I'll get used to it again.

Working in an office that keeps a well-stocked kitchen for their employees is fun, especially when well-stocked means fancy-pants American cereals (Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Raisin Bran) along with bread and all of the typical Israeli things to put thereon (chummus, gvina levana, cheese, matbucha, cole slaw, egg salad, cucumbers, tomatoes, and, shockingly, cold cuts). Free food is a significant perk, but honestly, not having to pack myself breakfast or lunch is an even better perk.

I've liked everyone I've interacted with so far (yay), and I really like my supervisor (double yay).

Also? The office has floor-to-ceiling windows all along one wall, giving a gorgeous view of the edge of Jerusalem and the surrounding hills.

The best perk though? Seriously? The office is air conditioned. It's been over 90° for two weeks already, which is not at all normal for this region, and on Sunday, the high/low was 106°/88°. Our house is not air conditioned, though it's something we began discussing very seriously about a week ago. (And before you all start wrangling me about our favorite person, he is attending an air-conditioned camp in a wonderful lady's house for the next week-and-a-half or so.)

Another Milestone

BSM woke up before I did this morning, and it took me a few minutes before I could go in and get him.

As I'm getting ready, I hear calling/crying (I'm coming, I'm coming!) which soon stops (good, he's entertaining himself), but is shortly punctuated by a thump and real crying (oh Gosh, he decided to jump up and down and now he's hit his head on the side of his crib: I'll be there in 20 seconds, just hang on!) which stops pretty quickly (hmmm?) and is followed by a small voice outside my door (ohhhhh, no, the day has come) telling me that a head has been bumped. On the floor.

I know I should take the side off of his crib, converting it to a toddler bed, but it's so convenient to be able to pen up the child when it's time for him to be sleeping! Maybe he'll forget he has this skill? At least for a few more days?

I Got a Job!

That about sums it up, no? But here's some backstory, anyway. Just a little backstory. The tiny bits of EVERYTHING I HAVEN'T BEEN WRITING ABOUT FOR THE PAST THREE MONTHS. (Well, not everything. The Saga of the Car also has yet to be penned.)

A year after making aliyah, having had a grand total of three (3) interviews for engineering jobs, I realized it was time to restart my job hunt, because this wasn't working. So I dug up the initial responses I got when I sent out my CV to everyone I knew, and started looking at leads that hadn't seemed relevant a year ago. One of those leads was from B2's rebbetzin (speaking of which, thank you Ema for passing my CV along to her), who suggested I look into "technical writing."

I contacted her friend the technical writer (whom I shall cleverly dub TW), and spoke with him for about 45 minutes. By the end, we were happily discussing minutiae such as when to use bullet points versus when to use numbers for lists. (For the curious, use numbers if the order matters, and use bullet points if the order of the steps is irrelevant.) Seeing that this was something right up my nerd alley, I got pretty excited. Then I realized that I have experience as a technical writer. Sure, I had just learned what "technical writing" means, but that can't negate the fact that as part of my previous job, I spent three years writing manuals for all of the lab tools and processes. Because it was necessary, and nobody else was doing it. And thus, I grabbed three years of experience in a job whose name I didn't learn until just now. Perfect.

On TW's recommendation, I joined a Yahoo group for technical writers in Israel, reading the chatter and keeping my eyes open for job postings. Shortly thereafter, I found myself living in a dream-like state: after essentially nothing for so long, I had five (5) interviews within two (2!) weeks.

Luckily, my favorite interview was for the job I actually got. Cleverly, the interview started with an hour-long exam, which essentially checked that I am actually capable of doing the job I came to interview for. Thankfully, if I've been gifted with one skill that's useful in school but not in real life, it's testing freakishly well. If you want me to learn a new skill really quickly, just give me a test. (Seriously, I had no idea  what was going on at all for my first month or so of Differential Equations, but I still scored 40%-60% on the daily quizzes by just making stuff up. Because not to brag or anything, but it seems that I can cobble together almost half of basic Diff EQ as long as you tell me that This is an Exam.)

The technical writing exam consisted of two parts: the first question asked me to "document the following screen" and the blessed second question asked me to "edit the following documentation." Well, once I edited the horrific mess presented in the second question, I had a template of how to document the screen in the first question. So I did. And since my interview immediately followed my exam, I went into it confident, focused, and relaxed, which is not how I usually feel going into interviews. Gosh, I miss taking tests. If anyone knows of an analogous real-world situation that comes up reasonably frequently, please let me know.

So yeah. I came back three more times (they apologized about that: stuff kept coming up forcing the process onto separate days) and on the third visit I signed a contract. I start on Monday. The job is in Jerusalem, which, without traffic, is 25 minutes from me by car. It's a large company, and the employees seem very friendly. The manuals I will be working on will be in British English, so keep your eyes peeled for a plethora of unexpected u's and s's cropping up in the near future.

Since signing the contract, I've unsubscribed from So Many employment emails. I'm hoping to track down the last of the email sources and banish them before I start. Yay!

Identifying the Need

As we are wont to do, BSM and I stopped to look at the construction site two doors from our house on our way home from daycare today. Thrillingly, the two guys who were working (one of whom was sitting in the backhoe-loader) noticed us and waved hello. We said hello back, one of the guys mentioned the heat, and I made the obvious reply asking if they had water. Turns out they've got the hose, but that's about it. So I invited one of them to come back to the house and gave him a bottle of water, some ice, and some cups.

It turns out the guy lives in the Bedouin village that abuts our Yishuv, and as soon as he walked into our house, he offered to find us a cleaning lady. When we acknowledged the mess but declined, he offered to find us a gardener. When we turned him down again, he gave us his phone number in case we change our minds. And that, my friends, is how business is done in this country.

Making the Bezeq Guy Crazy

We switched internet providers recently, and Bezeq called to get us back. I totally blew the guy's mind when I refused to switch. I'm sorry, but for 15₪/month, switching just isn't worth the hassle.
And yes, Bezeq Guy, it will be a hassle. And no, the fact that Bezeq is a bigger company than 012 doesn't really make a difference to me. Sorry for blowing your mind.

Of course, other than the fact that I hate dealing with companies over the phone, and doubly hate doing so in Hebrew, there's nothing stopping me from going to 012 and asking them to beat Bezeq's offer...

BSM Update

One of the drafts in my blog is devoted to BSM. Because I assume we're all obsessed. Over the course of the last month or so, BSM has:

• Told a joke
• I asked him, "What does the bird say?" BSM grinned, exclaiming, "Hee-haw!" and burst out laughing.
• Understood a joke
• As Husbinator was giving BSM avocado, he said "Avocado? Avocado?" as is our wont when teaching BSM new nouns. Eventually, Husbinator switched to, "Abbacado?" BSM totally got the joke.
• Read me a book
• Because sometimes I just can't read him a book, so having him tell me what's in the pictures can be very useful.
• Got better at counting
• For example, BSM asked for some chocolate-covered-orange peel from the box I was holding. "Okay," I agreed. "You want one?" BSM looked me in the eye and answered, "Two. Onetwo." So we counted out two for him, "Ooooone? Twooooo?" As I put the second piece of chocolate in BSM's little hand, he changes his story: "Threeeeeee? Onetwothree?" Nice try, kid.
• Got better at colors
• He is still far from perfect, but he names the correct color at a slightly better rate than he would by random guessing. However, when asked what color something is, he will always respond with the name of a color. So that's cool.
• Ridden more buses
• He has learned that on buses, people go "up steps." This fascinates BSM.
• He's seen the heart of the city, where four cars driving on one block does not constitute heavy traffic. Wide-eyed, he looks out the window. "Many buses. Many cars. Many people."
• He's learned that on certain stretches of road, he can say, "Ahhhhhhhhhhh," and have it sound like he's saying, "Ahahahahahah." When this happens, BSM looks at me proudly and explains, "Monkey!" Yes, that is what a monkey says.
• Turned two
• Hearing BSM say, "Happy birthday!" even if he has no idea what a birthday actually is, is adorable.
• Also, he blew out his candles in one blow!

Design Flaw

In Israel, light switches are generally placed outside of the bathrooms. This takes some getting used to, but I can see the pros of this design choice. Sometimes, though, if there are both a two-year-old and a chair in the vicinity, the placement of the bathroom light switches is just ridiculous. Unless you are the two-year-old in question.

Osem Cakes

You know those pre-packaged Osem cakes? The ones that are invariably stale and terrible? (See below.)

Well, in Israel, they're fresh and pleasant to eat. We've (knowingly) had them thrice now, twice by our own choice, and they've been tasty every time. I'm still slightly in shock.

The Bright Side

The advantage of not having blogged for a really long time is that now I have a huge number of stories to tell. So if I feel like writing, but nothing's happened that day, I can be all like, "Hey, this funny thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago..."

Today, though, was not boring. I went to the kotel, which was good, and I went shopping afterwards, which was also nice. The excitement was the lady who found an abandoned handbag when we got off the train. We jammed the train door open and kept asking who forgot a bag (my voice being louder than hers, I helped with the interrogation), and when no one 'fessed up, we called over the nearby security guards, who seemed Highly Irritated and all came over to investigate.

I didn't see any change in traffic flow during the rest of my time in the general area, and I've heard nothing on the news, so I assume the handbag was simply a forgotten handbag. It wasn't until hours after I got home that I realized that as long as I was helping ask who forgot a bag, I should have asked in English as well as in Hebrew. After all, in addition to knowing how to speak from my diaphragm, I also know how to speak in the language most likely spoken by someone who would forget their bag at an Israeli train station.

Produce

In the spirit of having read Parshas Shlach last week, I'm finally getting around to sharing my observation about cucumbers. I love the produce here: the fruits and vegetables actually taste like what they are. "Bursting with flavor," if you would. And they're so fresh! Do you know how to pick a fresh cucumber? Sure, sure, it should be firm and not look weird, but a really fresh cucumber is still covered in tiny little thorns. Mmmmm... I think I need to go eat a cucumber.

Money

There was a book fair this evening (which was rather disappointing, but that's irrelevant). At the fair's second-hand book swap, I acquired a (Hebrew) counting book. It's cute, with lots of photos of babies and fingers and rubber duckies and suchlike. I was amused to note that on the last page, the little Israeli children were asked to count American dimes. Hee hee, it's not worth it to photograph Israeli coins, they'll never know the difference, etc., etc. Husbinator was also slightly amused, but his amusement stemmed from the fact that I don't seem to be able to recognize dimes anymore.

"Ike Dollar." Worth more than 10 cents.

Siiiiiigh. Whoops. But seriously, why would you have kids count outdated silver dollars? Have them count coins that they'll actually use one day! ...And don't make their mothers feel too ignorant, please.

Informal Driving Lesson

As I got out of my car after a (masterful) parking job the other day, an incredulous pedestrian asked me, "Do you not see the traffic cop across the street?"
After figuring out what he was asking me, I replied, "Is there something wrong with where I parked?"
"Yeah, it's an illegal parking spot!"
I was inclined to believe him, but I wanted to learn his secrets. "How do you know?"
If he was incredulous before, that was nothing to where he was at now: "The curb is painted red and white!!"

Well, that's a traffic law I never would have intuited from the behavior of other drivers. Good to know.

(And yes, I moved the car. Failing to find another free spot anywhere in the vicinity... Well, failing to find a legal free spot nearby, I parked in the pay lot across the street. Darn.)

A Day on the Town

You know what was great? The day that I picked up BSM from daycare and we took a bus and a train to the shuk, wandered around, bought what we wanted (I bought what I wanted and BSM got in the game by grabbing an apple which I had to pry out of his hands to pay for), took another train ride and another bus ride, and went home. It was a really nice afternoon that we got to spend together: lots of fun, got something done, absolutely no pressure, good times. And BSM learned that "The people on the bus go up and down," clearly means that they go up the steps and down the steps as they get on and off the bus. Over a month later, and when he sees a bus he still mentions that people go up steps.

You Know It's a Good Crowd...

...When most conversations involve at least one trip to the dictionary.

We had four Michlalah girls over for Shabbos, and we had a great time. Not only did most conversations send us to the dictionary for one reason or another, but the girls made all four salads for me. I don't love making salad in general, and I didn't even know how to make two of the salads. (The two salads in question were a tomato-mushroom-dill salad that I've had at a few people's houses and "something with green beans." It turns out you can blanch string beans, then mix them up with halved cherry tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and garlic powder. It is simple and yummy.)

Drill

Yesterday was national Air Raid Drill day. I often forget to warn BSM about stuff (other than bedtime: I am very good at warning him that he needs to go to bed soon), but Husbinator cleverly started a conversation with him a few minutes before the evening siren went off. We were sitting outside, and BSM didn't want to come in (possibly because I had warned him about his impending trip to his crib), but in the three minutes before the siren went off, BSM learned that the siren says, "Wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo, go inside, go to the mamad (safe room)."

So when the siren actually went off, he got really excited that it was saying exactly what we just said the siren would say, and went inside without a fuss. Just for kicks, I asked him this morning what the siren says, and he smiled, "Wee-oo wee-oo mamad. Inside." It's really cute. It's really weird that we had to teach him that.

The Definition of Interest

Mrs. Barzilai came with me to Rami Levy last week, since I have a car and she doesn't. Being talented, I lost my wallet between getting gas and arriving at the grocery store (though Husbinator masterfully located my wallet under the passenger seat later that day). Being nice, Mrs. Barzilai paid for my 153.20₪ worth of groceries with her card, and I paid her back in cash later that day.

Honestly, counting out 153.20₪ is a little silly. It would have been easier to just give her 155₪ and be done with it, and I certainly wouldn't mind losing the extra 1.80₪. It's the least I can do for her to pay her back for lending me money when I had none and needed some. And that, my friends, is the exact definition of ribbis (Biblical prohibition against charging interest). It was interesting (ha ha ha) learning about that experientially.

Oh, and it's a good thing I realized what was happening before I tried to give the Barzilais 155₪ even. Sure enough, when I handed Rabbi Barzilai the plastic baggie with cash, he checked with me that I was giving him exactly what they lent me. Oddly enough, he also didn't want to get involved with ribbis.

Mini-Pool, Watering Hole

The day after BSM had fun with the Barzilai's in the kiddy pool, he asked for a pool of water again. It was cooler that day, though, so sitting in a pool didn't make a whole lot of sense. So I filled up our large roasting pan with water and let him play with that. BSM enjoyed himself, it wasted much less water, and he didn't get cold. All good things. And, when he left the pan of water to come inside and help me bake a cake, his "swimming pool" turned into a "watering hole".

Something I Do Not Like

I actually enjoy standing in the sun hanging laundry out to dry. And I enjoy how much lower our electricity bill is when I line-dry our laundry. I don't really mind the extra step of a short dryer cycle before line-drying to ensure that our dry laundry doesn't have better posture than we do. However, I do not like it when birds poop on my clean laundry.

Passports

I was thinking of this and that last night, and my mind wandered over to the subject of passports, and getting them, and what they looked like, and... hey... where are our passports? I figured it out within a minute or so (and double-checked just now: they are where I thought they were), but it was an odd feeling.

In America, I always knew exactly where our passports were. What if we suddenly needed to go to Israel on a moment's notice? I couldn't afford to start looking for passports: I needed them in-hand! Now, our passports are just another set of important documents that I really, really need to not lose. Really. But there's no urgency about them anymore.

It's a good feeling.

I'm home.

Speaking of Which...

I've been hearing a bunch of things over the past few months. More terror tunnels have been discovered leading from Gaza to Israel. Reports of unrest. "Code Red" drills. Just vague feelings that last summer's "Operation Protective Edge" has in no way ended a story. Then, last night, rockets were fired at Southern Israel. Not good. Not good.

What's really bad, though? I was talking with Mrs. Barzilai today as our kids played in the pool (speaking of which, the three of them had So Much Fun, and I'm really glad I popped over to Yerushalayim this morning and bought said pool in preparation for today's 98°-high). She mentioned that they plan to visit her in-laws in Be'er Sheva this summer, "Assuming, please G-d, that there's not a war." She hadn't even heard about the rockets yesterday. It's just a pervasive feeling that things are very much Not Over.

Shavuos and Such

I had lots of spare time on Erev Shabbos/Erev-Erev Shavuos, so I cut a bunch of hadassim from my front yard and a bunch of rosemary from behind my house, and managed to actually decorate the house with lots of greenery in honor of Shavuos. It was fun.

I'm still a little confused about how little I had to cook. Granted, we only had Shabbos+One Day here, and we ate Shabbos lunch at the Ornas, but still. I'm cooled out that my food preparation was: baking one (1) cake, spicing one (1) salmon fillet, steaming one (1!) bag of broccoli, and making two (2) salads. That's it. Granted Husbinator made meatballs for Friday night and two types of sauce for Shavuos night, my freezer contributed challahs and cookies, and each of our guests brought a side dish, but still. I had to do very little, and that's what counts.

I was going to bake a cheese cake, but we found a 20₪ cheesecake in the store, and that's cheaper in both time and money than making one myself. Unfortunately, when we cut into it on yontiff, we discovered that said cheese cake was absolutely tasteless, so it's a good thing that Dikla sent BSM home with a cheese cake that actually tasted delicious.

The other disappointment involved the "bagels" I was so excited about a few days ago. Sure enough, they're just round bread with a hole in the middle. Blerg. Luckily, I had a hunch that would be the case, so I went back to the bakery before chag and bought myself a nice artisan baguette which was very nice with cream cheese and lox. And since Husbinator's ideal bagel is Thomas' Everything Bagels, he wasn't too disappointed. And poor Israeli BSM was just thrilled with the new type of bread. I shall have to teach him the proper Way of the Bagel before it's too late.

Surprise Goal Reached

Growing up, we had a yearly goal of putting away the Pesach stuff by Lag B'Omer. If that due date were somehow missed, Shavuos became the new "No, really, we need to switch everything back NOW," date. I didn't expect this household to make the Shavuos last-ditch deadline this year. But we did. On the 47th day of the Omer, our friend/neighbor Yonah came over and helped Husbinator shove all sorts of odds and ends up our new stairs and into the attic. Including our Pesach stuff. We have so much space now.

Bagels

We generally go for a very simple meal for Shavuot lunch: Husbinator stays up all night learning, so we never know when we'll want to eat. This year, we decided on bagels, lox, and cream cheese: it's a real treat and takes about 5 minutes to prepare the meal. But this is Israel. The Jewish Homeland. The country that is chock-full of Jews and mysteriously devoid of bagels. So after giving it a good bit of thought, I decided I'd buy some artisan rolls, since they have a good crust. Not a bagel, but it should be good with lox and cream cheese. However, while wandering around the bakery today, shamelessly poking their bread and rolls, I found an entire shelving unit full of bagels. They look like real bagels. They feel like real bagels. I am all nerves waiting for Shavuot to see if they taste like real bagels.

The Saga of the Car

I just wanted to say that we pretty much wrapped things up with the car today, but that requires some back-story. So here's the saga.


Last week, the hood of our car broke the windshield of our car. UN peace negotiators were called in, making the situation much worse. Sorry, I'll try to keep that in check. Right, so one of the ladies in the car with me very kindly called my insurance company and all of the phone numbers they gave her, a guy passing by stopped and tied down the hood for me (and told me to drive to the checkpoint and wait there, as opposed to staying on the side of the road), and Shimon of A.A. Glass (real name and company) was the nicest person ever: he acted just like Abba would in that situation, keeping everyone calmed, informed, and hydrated.

The net results of my conversation with Shimon were (a) I became completely calm and (b) we decided not to fix the car windshield, since doing so was predicated on fixing the car hood, and that would cost around 2000₪. (Have I blogged about our car? I think so. I love it. But even before the whole Hood versus Windshield conflict, we had decided not to invest the 1500₪ in yearly registration fees that will come due in August, so pouring thousands of shekel into the car now is just plain silly.) It works out well that we have a good reason not to fix the windshield, because between my talking things over with Shimon, the lady at the office (also really nice) tells me that the car registration we have is in Husbinator's cousin's name, and she's tried, but there is no way she can get money from the insurance company unless we can produce something called the "transfer of registration," proving that this is, in fact, our car. And that is a tiny slip of paper we know full well we are never going to find.

Enter a guy who lives on our street. Call him Oved. He's a wheeler-and-dealer type, and he's been offering to fix stuff about our car for a while, now. Naturally, when he sees the smashed windshield, we talk. The net result of talking to Oved is... we decide to fix the windshield, after all. After all, Oved points out, insurance covers the windshield, and if we get that fixed, we can sell the car as a car as opposed to selling it for parts. It's an investment. Also, he wants to buy the car from us if we fix the windshield. Also also, he has a friend who can replace the hood for about 150₪. Also also also, it's really easy to get the missing paperwork: just go to the DMV in Talpiyot (the same neighborhood that the glass shop is in), ask for a "duplicate registration," fork over about 30₪, and be done with it. Okay, fine then.

We planned to go Sunday, but that was Yom Yerushalyaim, so Husbinator and I went back to Talpiyot today. I dropped Husbinator off at the DMV, figuring that I'd put cash on the table at A.A. Glass, and when Husbinator got the registration in a few hours, A.A. Glass would get authorization from our insurance company, and we'd get our money back. We switch places, I get directions to the glass shop, I make a U-turn and pass the DMV again. Just then, Husbinator calls. He's done, registration in hand, let's go together. Wow. I'll say it again, louder this time: WOW.
Good, so we drop off the car, wander around Talpiyot, and drive back to the Yishuv a few hours later. Finished. Oh, and Husbinator got them to Close the Jammed Driver's Side Window as long as they were at it. (No extra charge.) Doneskies! (Dikla let me leave BSM at her house until 4 today, so we could get all of this done. BSM was not at all phased that I didn't show up at 1:30, and did not miss us at all. This is good, I guess, but also kind of sad. I missed him!)

***

Addendum: 15 minutes after we got home, the guy from the attic store called me to say he could come by in half an hour and install folding steps to our attic. This has been another saga, but I'm drained by all this epic storytelling. Suffice it to say that not only do we once again have a reasonably working car, we also have a viable way to get to our attic, at last. Coolness.

Challah!

BSM has been helping me more and more in the kitchen, lately. (By which I mean that I discovered BSM will let me cook/wash dishes if he's standing on a chair next to me doing something similar.) He helped me make apple pie, he helps me chop garlic in the food processor, and today, BSM helped me shape challah.

He rolled the dough, and patted the dough, and smushed in chocolate chips or shook on spices, and put his challot in the pans, and painted them with egg. Oy, he is my big boy. And by the time he was shaping roll #4, my big boy had an epiphany. "Eat?" he piped. "Eat? Eat? Eat? Eat. Eat. Eat!" Sure enough, he put his Eureka moment into immediate experimental phase, and was quite pleased with the results. I don't think we'll have such an effective ratio of dough given to dough baked for years to come.

It Takes a Village

A little while ago there was quite the bru-ha-ha on social medea over so-called "free-range parenting." Being too clever to actually read the articles and rants, I don't know much about the details, but I did see someone's brief rant about neighborhoods and all adults taking responsibility for all children, or something like that. I agree with the bit of that philosophy that I remember.

For example, I passed three children standing outside of the nursery school this morning. A boy who looked to be about nine and a girl who looked to be about seven were trying to drop off their three-year-old sister, but the gate was locked. I was late dropping off BSM, myself, but I couldn't just walk on! So I tried calling the number over the gate, but there was no answer. I tried pushing the button on the call box, but that wasn't working. So I did the only responsible thing I could: following the seven-year-old's instructions, I helped the kids break into the nursery school. Just doing my civic duty.

Cabbage and Meatballs

Sometimes, one finds oneself on a diet. In that situation, one is often avoiding things like spaghetti. In such a case, The Internet will suggest substitutions such as spaghetti squash or tiny strips of zucchini. I am here to say that such substitutions are worse than useless: they are just a sad reminder that one wants spaghetti but can't have any.

You know what's a good base for meatballs? Slawed cabbage stewed (briefly!) in tomato sauce. You don't wipe away tears of longing with every bite; you just wonder who was too lazy to stuff the prakas, and salute them for a perfectly reasonable time-saving alternative.

Darkaynu

We hosted a group of Darkaynu guys for Shabbat lunch. (Darkaynu is a post-high school yeshiva program for people with special needs.) It sounds horribly trite, but it really is a beautiful program. After having lunch with them, it's obvious to me that these boys need a post-high school yeshiva experience just as much as the next guy, so Darkaynu made them a program. It's very nice.

My other trite observation is that Shabbos prep is approximately a zillion times easier when I keep the house reasonably clean and dishes reasonably washed throughout the week. Okay, folks, take your heads out of your hands. I know it's obvious, and had you asked me, I could have guessed that, but some things really have to be learned experientially.

Lag B'Omer

On the advice of Mrs. Gold, I brought in everything we had outside. Husbinator saw me and asked if it was supposed to rain. I told him no, smoke. You see, the custom in Israel is to light bonfires on Lag B'Omer, and "bonfires" is probably too mild a word. Here's a picture of the bonfire that our shul made:

Most bonfires are constructed entirely by little boys, and are at least that large. I counted four bonfires in the empty lot behind the shul, and there were plenty more in other empty lots throughout the yishuv. Yes, firetrucks are on patrol.

As I've mentioned before, Israelis need to wordplay more. I wished someone a tentative Chag Sameach at the bonfire. Lag B'Omer isn't exactly a holiday, but it is a day of religious significance that marks the end of a mourning period, so I figured I'd give it a shot. No dice. So what's the obvious greeting? It's not "Chag Sameach" and the day is "Lag B'Omer..." Say it with me, folks. I greeted the next lady, "Lag Sameach," as any self-respecting punster would, and she was completely taken aback and impressed. Puns shouldn't be impressive...

So It Begins

BSM has been requesting specific articles of clothing for the last few days, and so far, it worked out. Last night, he asked for his monkey pajamas. His one pair of monkey PJ's wasn't in his room, so I sold him on sports-themed pajamas, instead.

When I went to him this morning, he was standing in his crib with his balled-up sports pajamas in his hands, crying, "Monkey! Monkey!" Oh, boy. And no, we don't have any daytime clothing with monkeys on them. Again, I sold him on something else (airplanes), but we'll see what comes of this.

Shopping

I didn't go to Restaurant Depot often when we were in the US, but I liked knowing it was there. Today, I went to a store I heard about on Facebook (at HaTaasiya 12, for those who care), and was pleasantly surprised to see that is actually more like a Restaurant Depot than a Costco. Granted, the place is tiny, and they're missing the entire "restaurant-grade kitchenware" section, etc etc, but they do have soy sauce by the gallon and 18-kg buckets of techina paste. Not that I bought either of those items, but it really is nice to know that it's there.

While I was out, I successfully deposited a check in Israel for the first time. I asked for advice from both the security guard and another customer in line at the ATM, and I learned that, oddly enough, depositing a check here works just like it does in the USofA. But the rush of successfully gleaning another life skill is much bigger.

Fixed!

Well, I almost resolved (part of) my phone issue this morning, but it didn't end up working out. Luckily, Husbinator completely resolved my phone issue this afternoon, so that worked out nicely.

I spontaneously explored the tire store near Rami Levy, though, discovered that they are also mechanics, and got the brakes on our car fixed! So full credit all around, I say.

And while I was waiting for the car, I bought the complete works of Uri Aurbach: I was with neither phone (it was broken) nor book (I hadn't expected to go to the mechanic) so I wandered around the bookstore and figured I'd pick something up. I found Maybe They'll Throw Candy This Shabbat, which I recognized thanks to the Kornbluths tying that poem to baggies of candy and giving them out in shul on Aurbach's shloshim (or yahartzeit, or something). The clerk suggested I buy the whole set, and after skimming a few more poems, I did.

I smiled, I laughed, I groaned, and I've even cried once. So all in all, a productive sort of a day.

PSA

I seem to have run through another phone. Glory be. I hope to remedy the situation soon, but in the  meantime, please contact me through the internet or through Husbinator's phone.

Food

Below please find diverse brief anecdotes on the theme of "food."

Very soon after Pesach, I bought more finely ground black pepper. With it, I made Yerushalmi kugel, and thereafter I was informed in no uncertain terms by no fewer than three people, that the rumors I heard 10 years ago are true. Israeli black pepper is generally cut with flour. But not on Pesach.

Also soon after Pesach, I bought sunflower seeds. Being a savvy consumer, I looked at the expiration date before putting the bags in my cart, and I was suitably unhappy to see that the darned things expired two days ago. Then I looked again: they expire in almost a year from now. They were packaged two days ago. My friends, freshly roasted sunflower seeds do indeed taste freshly roasted. Yum.

Other indignities include buying "עלי סלק" and upon Googling "beet leaves," discovering that although סלק is certainly beet, "עלי סלק" is actually Swiss chard. Luckily, I forgot to buy spinach, and cooked Swiss chard is pretty indistinguishable from cooked spinach.

Possibly the most exciting food-related adventure is that I finally caved and spent over 100 on a percolator. Let me just say, "Cofffffeeeeee." There is nothing like actual brewed coffee. I resent instant coffee so much that I've been drinking the powdered Elite stuff that has a smell somewhat resembling that of coffee, but is so far removed from the actual product that the fact that it isn't the real thing doesn't really bother me. But coffee. Real, brewed, coffee. Oh my Gosh. It's almost as good as Aunt Chef's Pesachdik Jelly Cookies made with flour. (And those are marvelously delicious.) Because I finished my matza meal, and if it isn't Pesach, why shouldn't I substitute flour for matza meal?

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.

Winter is Over

I don't know that winter is over because the weather has warmed up, nor do I know that winter is over because we've passed the vernal equinox. I don't even know that winter is over because tonight, Israel starts Daylight Savings Time tonight (which is called the "summer clock" in this neck of the woods).

I know that winter is over because when I looked down at my arms and hands, I see that they have started to tan.

Israeli Humor

Conversation upon seeing two boys clearly interested in a hoodie dangling from a branch:

אני: של מי זה?ש 

אחד מהבנים: לא יודע. (הפסק) אולי זה הסוודר של המן.ש 

Me: Whose is that?
One of the Boys: I don't know. (pause) Maybe it's Haman's sweatshirt.

Get it? Because it's hanging on a tree! Har, har, har.

Weight Gain!

Since his last visit to the nurse, I've been very good about making sure BSM sits down in his chair or at the table for his dinner. I've also started offering more deli and/or challah and/or givna levana or chummus sandwiches instead of pretzels/Bamba.

Thank G-d, we went back to check on his growth this week, and this new data point is sharply above his previous gentle slope. Baruch Hashem.

Reassurance

FYI, when I picked up BSM today, we discussed putting on his shoes. "Youse!" he proclaimed as he sat down to be shod. I confirmed that we were indeed putting on his shoes, and Dikla said with a bit of a sigh, "All day, he's always talking in English." Which is funny, because I feel the same way, only with "Hebrew" in place of "English."

Voting

A week before elections, I finally figured out who to vote for. Thank you, israel.electioncompass.org. I thought I should vote for that party, but being able to compare parties' stances on the issues I care about (with sources given!) is very important to me.

Voting itself was a lot of fun. Election day is a national holiday, and there really is a tangible happy excitement in the air. This bubbliness is only helped along by the fact that the voting booths/ballot boxes themselves look like science fair projects that didn't get too much parental help.

Here's the voting booth, as photographed by friends of ours in Northern Israel.

And here's the selection of ballots, printed on normal paper, each about the size of a playing card. Notice that in this voting booth, the chart reminding you of which abbreviation is for which party has fallen down.

After standing in the privacy of the voting booth and carefully placing one and only one ballot in the very official envelope given to you by the voting attendents (the envelope actually is nice: dark blue, lined with black, with two actual signatures on the front to show it's 100% official), you seal your envelope and enjoy the immemsely emotionally satisfying experience of placing your envelope into the Government Suggestion Box. (I'm totally not being sarcastic, by the way. This simple form of physical voting is very emotionally satisfying, even though it totally feels like suggesting the local library get a few more copies of your favorite book. Still, I am left wondering why on earth this process is not electronic.)

Photo Credit: ynet's Herzel Yosef

And since today is a national holiday, we took the opportunity to go see Elmo at the Bloomfield Science Museum. The museum itself is a lot like The Franklin Institue, but forgive me for saying so, is even nicer. Not only are there more exhibits (and cheaper admission prices), there are step-stools everywhere. Naturally, this was all way above BSM's level, though he did enjoy grabbing a plastic ball from one of the exhibits and playing fetch with it.

However, we brought him to see the giant Elmo puppet, who only shows up on rare occasions. The giant Elmo turned out to be a person in a mascot costume (naturally), and BSM reacted as could have been expected: he didn't freak out, and he did seem to think it was cool, but rather intimidating. He loved the promotional sticker he got, though. He could hold it in his hand, and it had a tiny little pixely picture of Elmo hidden on it.

Really, taking him was a bit of a waste, but I would have felt bad if I knew Elmo was half an hour away from us, and we didn't take BSM to go see him. On a side note, the photo-op was in a little corner dressed up to look like Rechov Sumsum. It is soooo much prettier than Sesame Street. Just saying.

Wedding!

Well, approximately two years after buying it, I finally sewed a kickpleat into my pastel pink suit. (Because if I am going to buy a suit for an unspecified occasion, you can bet your sweet patooties it's going to be a fun color.) I was going to go all-out and match my suit with my wig, but I just don't have the confidence to pull it off. I can fake a suit, or I can fake a wig, but it turns out I can't fake a suit and a wig. But a small bedazzled satin scarf still paired well, I think (and a nice lady at the wedding showed me where to gather the material to avoid little "horns" which are always awkard).

But oh! The music! The dancing! The seeing of friends! (The now having a babysitter on tap!) Mazel tov to all :)

Post Office Woes

The post office on our Yishuv (where everyone must go to collect their packages/registered mail, since mail is delivered to PO boxes rather than individual houses) is changing their hours from three evenings a week to an hour every morning. Naturally, residents are up in arms, because this means missing half a day of work to get a piece of mail. Facebook comments ranged from shock to indignation, outrage, and despair. My favorite comment, however, was "! ! ! ה פ ק ר ו ת" ["UTTER CHAOS!!!"].

Support Network

Landman was in town to pick up his mail (from our shared PO box up the street), and he stopped by to ask how our electricity was working out. I told him everything was fine since we unplugged our dryer, and he suggested we call the company to have them fix it. When I told him it was at least second hand, Landman looked at it himself and suggested we swap out the plug (as a previous owner has already done, he explained). Sometimes I get the impression that the Landpeople think we are sweet but helpless young things. We're not really that helpless, but they do generally have good advice that we haven't thought of. Also, I like that our Landpeople have made themselves part of our support network.

On Coffee Liqueur and Israelis

As we do every year, we put a small bottle of homemade coffee liqueur in our mishloach manot (recipe courtesy of EmaII). And as we've come to expect, people really enjoyed it, and told us so. The new spin on things was this reaction: "Your liqueur was delicious! It really made our kids' Purim." Said children are two and four-and-a-half years old.

Mishloach Manot (a photo essay)

Our Mishloach Manot got fancied-up this year. Lacking non-brown paper bags, I bought some cellophane bags for our shalach manos. Not having bought enough cellophane bags from Jerusalem, I caved two days before Purim and bought cellophane. My friends, using cellophane is a bit more work than using bags, but the result is considerably fancier than the old "white paper bag" standby.

I assume you noticed the (censored) label taped onto this little package. Husbinator prevailed upon me to print labels in English, even though the majority of our mishloach manot recipients are Hebrew-speakers. "How else will they know it's from us?" he asked. In the end, I agreed, but only on the condition that (a) we use pictograms to help out the non-English-literate and (b) kashrut information be listed in Hebrew. Picking symbols for "Happy" and "Purim" was fairly easy, and picking a symbol for our family name wasn't too hard, either. This, you see, is the sign we have on our front gate:

We own this sign due to the combined whimsy of myself and Husbinator, and we hung it on our gate for giggles and kicks. We did not expect the outpouring of confusion from the Israelis around us. The slowing down with rotating head. The full stop. The moving of lips. The discussions. The seeing us around and asking what on earth our sign meant. The endless parade of 7-10 year old girls asking us over and over again to translate, if they could see our walrus, why we hung up the sign if we don't actually own a walrus, to explain again what the sign meant. Basically, we had a solid three or four months of walrus-themed conversation, so the pictograph for our family name was fairly obvious. I am thrilled with how this turned out.

Speaking of how things turned out, I remembered after my Absolutely Last Grocery Run Before Purim that in Israel, one is expected to give nice gifts to daycare/preschool teachers at Purim and at the end of the year. Non-disposable plate sort of nice. I am very, very impressed with what I managed to scrape up for Dikla, using things I already had in the house:

Truman Capote

A while ago, I went to a used booksale in Ma'ale Adumim and bought a whole pile of books for 1₪
each. In that pile was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which I bought because it's very famous for being very good. It's taken me this long to start reading it, because it's famous enough that I know In Cold Blood is a true-crime account of a disturbing multiple murder. Have to be in the right mood to read that one.

Well, I finally found a mood where I wanted to read In Cold Blood and wouldn't be overwhelmed by it, and I see why it's so famous for being so good. Because it is. So good.

After having finally opened the book, I also now know why it was donated to a used-book sale: this particular copy of In Cold Blood was withdrawn from the Beit Shemesh Children's Library. I should think so! I only hope that the story of its withdrawal is amusing rather than horrifying.