I'm grateful for: being finished with the dentist; a lovely day up north; keeping some food down.

It's awfully early for me to be in bed for recent times. I am sick. Very, very sick. Ugh.

And don't I start so many entries that way? What a life. I'm ready to stop be disabled, put the kids in school and get a job ... no, really. ;-)

Today went really well, better than could have been expected. I managed to get up at what for me is the crack of dawn, okay, around 7:30. Ate breakfast, managed a quick shower, dressed, and made it out the door in reasonable time. Despite John only leaving me an hour to do all that, instead of the hour and a half I usually need. Fortunately I had planned ahead and set our departure time back so that we would make it out the door when I really wanted to leave - 9:00am. We made it.

Zechy, Simcha and Eliyahu came along on the trip. We visited Rehan (the way it is transliterated on the sign, good to know), Shaked and Tal Menashe. Rehan is very small, forty families. There is no shul, but a few other dati (religiously observant) families live there. It has a huge appeal because of being small, and having a national forest next to it. But, there is no house available there that is large enough for us, and no room for animals. And there are rules against climbing on trees.

Shaked is a larger and better built community. We were told there are 145 families there. There are two shuls - not because there are that many dati, but because the Moroccan sephardi Jews couldn't get along with the Yemeni sephardi Jews. So they built two shuls to keep 'shalom bayit' - peace in the house. There is a mikveh there as well. It's got rather more people than I really like, and is a well established community which puts us trying to fit in like we tried to do here. Doesn't really appeal to me. On the other hand, there is a house which looks wonderful for us available to rent, and possibly to buy, now or later. It is very green, they went in for planting in a big way, and it looks lovely. There is no problem with climbing trees (Simcha's question) or pretty much anything you want to do, as long as it doesn't impact the other residents. Makes the thought of roosters rather more difficult. And goats. But the kids really liked it. Shaked has a very nice makolet, and a swimming pool as well. The children all voted that they liked Shaked best.

Tal Menashe is a dati community. It is a very young yeshuv, which means not a lot of people, not a lot of housing, not a lot of anything. Except, this being Israel, desert. :-) Still, they are slowly planting trees and building a community. There are a couple of caravans (trailer-homes for Americans) which we could rent, and live in while building a house we could all fit in. The rent on the caravans should be low enough to allow us to come up with some money for a mortgage and all that. The caravans are not surrounded by houses, but by the ganim - preschools. Which means very loud neighbours during the day, and very quiet neighbours, actually no neighbours, after hours and on weekends. We would have to rent two caravans because there is no way to fit the whole family into one, not even close, and we would probably have to rent three because all of our stuff will never fit. We would have to rent something for storage, and as long as there is this empty caravan just sitting there...

Dividing the family doesn't thrill any of us, but we could do it for a while. If Hans actually succeeds in returning to the states, it all becomes that much less difficult. Not that I want Hans to go, but he still really wants to go, and all we are waiting for is his official release from the army. ... more on that later, I think.

I'm not thrilled entirely about living in a dati community. All the issues I have here with dressing and 'worrying about what the neighbours think,' will exist. And we would be in a very small yeshuv with no amenities. Residents of Tal Menashe have an agreement that they can use the Shaked swimming pool (which is only open when the schools are closed), and have to go to Shaked to shop at the makolet. Don't run out of milk in Tal Menashe without a car. Although I suppose it is probably the kind of community you can easily borrow from neighbours.

All three of the communities have a majority of Hebrew speakers, and plenty of people who speak English, ranging from Israelis who can just about make themselves understood to native English speakers. In Tal Menashe a boy, about twelve years old, called out "They are Americans!" with great enthusiasm. He has just moved here with his mother who married a man from Tal Menashe. Cool.

So, basically, while none of them is perfect, all of them could work out, one way or another. I don't know what, if anything, Hashem wants for us here. I figure we pursue all of them to some degree. Make arrangements to meet with the klitah (absorption) committee in Shaked, get invited up to visit with Tal Menashe families, and keep our options open. I'm still hoping Hashem will come up with the perfect place, or at least that He will make His will more clear to us. Like the way we got shoved into this house one and a half years ago. There was no question, we were quite neatly herded in here, and here we still are. *Sigh*

All of that took several hours. We stopped at the Shaked makolet and picked up some salami and humous for a quick lunch, and drove the kids home. Simcha was complaining about pain in her teeth, so we dropped off Eliyahu and Zechy, and drove Simcha to the dentist with us.

John was in and out of the dentist's office, no problem. I went in, and he was to fix a tooth which had lost a cavity. I was sitting in the chair, well, lying, actually, when I was hit with a wave of dizziness so violent that I ended up in a cold sweat and shaking. Vertigo, actually. According to proper medical definitions. Like we care. It was awful. But I kept praying about it and it seemed like the right thing to do was to carry on with the tooth-filling, so we did. Having to stop periodically for me to recover. Everytime I had to sit up to rinse, I had to hang on to the framework and pray. I managed not to throw up in the dentist's chair. A good thing.

He did manage to finish filling the tooth properly, which relieves me immensely. It wasn't too bad, the worst part was the needle stick when he was putting the lydocaine in. Better than novocaine for me, I have had allergic reactions in the past.

Anyway, after that, I sat in the bathroom for a while, but likewise didn't throw up. Simcha went in, and he says her gums are inflamed and infected. Yuck. She has a goop to put on her gums this week, and an appointment for a cleaning next week, after which we will really have to keep after her regarding tooth brushing and flossing. I expect that she's been a little lax, and of course we are eating SO much more junk food here, and stuff with heaps of sugar and white flour. Why do we have to learn/figure out these things the hard way? I have no clue.

Then came the fun part. I managed to get down the stairs without falling, and sat in the back seat of the car for the ride home. At first it was very, very slow. Lots of traffic and stop and go, something we don't often encounter here. When we finally reached the end of Kfar Saba, there was practically a parking lot in front of us. There was an accident, which we found out when we finally managed to inch past. I didn't see it, can't tell how bad it was or if the cars were blocking the street. I had my head down and my eyes closed. It didn't help.

As soon as the car started moving I lost it. I feel really sorry for John and Simcha, I think it is much worse to listen to someone throwing up than to be the one throwing up. The car kept moving, the roads are neither straight nor level, as they wind up some hills and curve 'round others. It was pretty awful. The only thing was that all I wanted, all I had wanted since the dizziness hit, was to be home. So I kept my mouth shut (as far as talking, telling him to slow down or wait), and hung on. Fortunately the plastic trash bag I was using had no holes and held it all. Yuck!

Once home I went straight up to bed, no, with a detour to the bathroom. Probably tmi, but nothing happened in the bathroom, unfortunately. Except that I did manage about half of a shower. I came to bed, lay down, and crashed almost immediately. I kept waking up freezing and with the shakes, so I am now under two blankets (it's still summer here). Still with the nausea and now it's light-headedness, not vertigo, which helps. I managed to eat an apple, and so I tried some falafel, and that went down. So I'm not starving. And drank water so I'm not dehydrating. Too much.

I did get up briefly, I needed to make a shopping list for John for tomorrow. I am hoping I will wake up well enough to go along, even though I don't have to. I would like it. I have decided to make soups, and of course couldn't settle on just two recipes. So I have planned a gazpacho, a basic mixed vegetable soup (that is two), a cold potato soup (three), and if John and I are up to it French Onion soup. It's not overkill, none of the recipes make enough to feed the whole family, and the first time in years I am making soups again is not the time to tamper with the recipes. Next time. :-)

Simcha has planned a honey cake for the holiday as well. And put together a bag of treats for the soldiers at the machsom. There was a whole bunch of new, sour-faced soldiers there today, I hope we are back to the usual ones tomorrow, but if not, even the sour-faced soldiers deserve treats for standing there on guard for us.

And I have to go back to sleep, or at least lie down. Oy, this is not fun. Story of my life, what? I did a bit of research, checked out symptoms and what I've eaten and all of that, and it seems as if the only likely cause I can find for this is the M.S. I'd have to talk to a dr. to find out what he/they think/s. Not likely, especially going into the holiday. If I am still like this next week, I will see a dr. Or two. Until then, I'm going to take it easy, watch what I eat, and try to figure out what Hashem has against me. That was a joke. Sort of.

I'm listening to Hans giving commands to the dog (training her? I can't tell from here)

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06