I'm grateful for: Yummy soups; a quiet day here; letting go of (a little bit of) fear.

Good morning. It is almost 2am, so 'morning' applies. At least if you aren't Israeli. In Israel there is no such thing as two o'clock in the morning. It is 2 o'clock at night (shteim b'lyla). Silly people. :-)

I don't know exactly when I wrote my last entry, so I'm going to go back to Friday, just because. We slept late, all of us, but not too late. John made it out to do the shopping well before noon so there was no stress about that, and he reported that there were no lines at the supermarket. How every odd. I suppose everyone who worried about getting things done for the chag (holiday) were already home and cooking. Except us.

Simcha went shopping with John so when she came home we launched into our soup-making. I can't chop vegetables (can't trust my hands with a knife) so I gave Simcha instructions and she chopped and diced and sliced with enthusiasm. She said it was fun. We ended up making a basic mixed vegetable soup, and gazpacho, and potato soup. The French onion soup didn't happen but John made a megaloaf (a kind of vegetarian loaf that can look and taste a bit like a meatloaf). I felt great.

I mean, I didn't actually do ANY of the cooking. But they were my recipes (that's I had used decades ago), and I directed Simcha and John (when necessary) through the various steps, and other than John scorching the butter (sautee-ing the onions for the vegetable soup) it all went without a hitch.

John did all the steps that I worried about Simcha doing - parboiling and peeling the tomatoes (for the gazpacho), and sauteeing the onions basically. Simcha watched the clock, timing the cooking of everything which took a lot of the excitement out of cooking with John. He tends to throw something in a pot and wander off, believing that he'll be back in the two or five minutes or whatever it is. Sometimes he even is. Very exciting.

The vegetable soup we put in the crock pot and had hot today. Yum! It really was good. The gazpacho I haven't tasted yet although some others did, and the potato soup is for tomorrow. Oh, and the megaloaf came out good, too. It was made with weird Israeli 'cheddar' which isn't like any cheddar you've ever had if you haven't had it here. It isn't like *anything* you've ever had if you haven't had it. Still, it tasted good and the texture was good as well. John makes the megaloaf, and as you might guess from earlier comments, how each turns out is very inconsistent. This one is good, especially with ketchup. :-)

I really enjoyed doing all that cooking, even if I wasn't doing it. It felt good, and I feel like I actually contributed something - a rare feeling for me lately. Once everything was cooked we went upstairs for our usual Friday night - holiday or no holiday. We watched Bandwagon with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charise (no claims to the spelling, I'm too tired to do it right). And ate popcorn and pizza (pita-pizza and pizza puffs), and had a box of fancy chocolates we had picked up as a treat for the holiday. Oy! But they were strange. The ones that said caramel weren't like any caramel I had ever had. The ones that were raspberry filled were quite odd. Good, but quite odd. Most of them were indescribable. Some of them had names of fillings we had never heard of. I should go look at the box to share some of them with you, but the box is downstairs and, well, it will either happen tomorrow or it won't happen.

In any event, it was fun, the food was fun, the movie was good, and the day ended quite well. John read some more Animorphs aloud to Simcha and Eliyahu and I (sometimes now Neil and/or Zechy hang around to listen as well). And everyone got to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. Not necessarily to sleep, but to bed. I couldn't sleep and ended up at around this time last night trying to take a bath. No luck, there was absolutely no hot water. But I soaked a bit in the cold water anyway, and felt better for it.

This morning John and Zechy and Hans went off to daven with the Chabadniks at the kenyone. Chabad is a type of chasidik stream of Judaism. More is not important. Except to mention that absolutely without fail everything Chabad does - Everything - starts late, runs long and is rather chaotic. Long story short, five hours after they left we were running out of steam (Havva and Simcha and I) trying to entertain Eliyahu and quite tired and ready for kiddush. With no sign of John or Hans. Zechy came back early, not feeling well.

So I asked Havva to make up the kiddush for us and we did it without them. It was actually really good. Along with the vegetable soup and megaloaf, Havva (and/or Simcha) made a tossed salad, and chopped up apples to dip in honey, and generally set a lovely table. I am undoubtedly forgetting some other food that was out, but so be it. It was kind of exciting. Havva knocked over the grape juice for a big spill, and then somehow Simcha ended up spilling a huge bit of the soup. None of it was a crisis, but more excitement than you really want at a meal.

John and Hans came back in the middle of the meal. Neil had vanished, we knew not where, and we had a very nice meal, after which I came upstairs and utterly collapsed for a while. It had been a long day.

Not the end of it, though. Simcha and I started a new jigsaw puzzle, which Zechy and Havva each did a little bit of work on, but so far it was mostly Simcha. John read a whole lot more Animorphs, and from a wonderful book (I've probably mentioned it before) by a British navy guy who didn't land on d-day in WWII.

I got to write some things I'd been wanting to get done, Neil and I and Diana and Lyla had a telephone meeting, and that's pretty much it. So far it's been fun.

We did get a telephone message from a lawyer, right before the holiday and shabbos started, saying we needed to call back as soon as possible. John and I agreed not to do it before the holiday - soon enough to ruin our day afterward. I hope it's not something bad, but I have a bad feeling about it. So, okay, American Express is going to sue us or something. Fine. What can they take? I have about $300 in a bank account in Massachusetts. They can take it if they want. Whoopie! We never would have ended up in this situation if they had been willing to work with us when things went south here. But they don't care about that, either. I hope this harrassing us is costing them a lot of money at least.

But there I go, borrowing trouble again. I don't know that that's what it is. And even if it is, soon enough to worry about it when we hear what the lawyer has to say.

John has pretty much obligated me to go to shul tomorrow to hear the shofar. Not that I don't want to go, but I'd prefer if it wasn't an obligation. I haven't got a decent thing to wear for a chag, and I haven't had my hair washed (John can't be brought to see that as a priority, ever). So it's a little bit fraught. I'm sure it will be okay, and if it's not, I can always just come home. I hope.

I'm still sick, with the dizziness and I have increased peripheral neuropathy which seems to support the idea that whatever it is is related to the M.S. No walking for me. Fortunately the shul is just right across the street. I guess it's fortunate. :-/

I'm going to try and get some sleep, or at least some rest now. All caught up. Or not, but enough for now.

I'm listening to Eliyahu's breathing

:: 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