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Honey is Sweet

Bad connection, no doughnut - 2007-03-20

I'm grateful for: lovely weather; getting out for a walk; being okay with doing less.

I keep losing the internet connection. Something wrong with the ISP, or the physical wires. Or both. It's not uncommon in Israel for these things to happen, but it's been a couple of days and it's not apparently getting better. So if this doesn't get posted, you'll know why. *grin*

I woke up too early, meaning after less than eight hours sleep. No surprize, but frustrating all the same. Got some laundry done. Rested. Got some more laundry done. Rested some more. Arounc 1:30pm I managed to get out the door with all the kids coming along. It made quite the parade, I guess. We left the dogs at home, so it was much less of a parade than it might have been.

So, I walked. Walked to giveret (like 'Mrs.' or 'Miss' or 'Ms') Simcha's house. We call her giveret Simcha to distinguish her from our Simcha. She's the only other female Simcha I've met. She's a grandmother, possibly a great-grandmother. I've lost track. I'd thought we could say 'hi,' maybe drink a glass of soda, and move on. Silly me. ;-) She insisted I go down to a sofa she keeps in the yard, and offered for me to sit (I sat in my wheelchair, which I was using as a walker. Far more practical and easy to get up from).

Then she went back and forth to the house several times bringing out fruit and cookies and soda and glasses (which took three trips all by themselves). When I figured out how big it was, I asked one of the older kids to offer to help her bring things out, which Zechy did. Then we chatted a bit, Havva trying to translate for us, and I using what little Hebrew I have. It is harder because giveret Simcha's Hebrew isn't quite Hebrew. It's Hebrew mixed with a bit of Arabic, possibly some French, and apparently she can't do glottal stops. Which Hebrew is full of. (a hard 'G' and 'K' are glottal stops, for instance). Still we managed okay.

She went inside after a few minutes and brought out her photo albums. So it was rather a longer visit than I had ever dreamed... It was wonderful, though. She has photos of a group of them when the first made aliyah, so young fifty years ago. Photos of every one of the twenty grandchildren (I assume, I couldn't tell all the babies apart), and of her various children, son- and daughter-in-law's, siblings and their spouses of the son- and daughter-in-law's, and so forth and so on. She had a picture of her when she would have been in her late thirties/early forties. She was a really good looking woman.

I told her she is beautiful now (which she is), and she thanked me looking a bit - not embarrassed, I guess one would say - conscious. I wish I had a prayer of looking as good at her age as she does. But she's had a very healthy life, despite some tragedies. And, yes, I heard about her son who died (a table fell on him, weird), and a baby girl. And her husband, who must have died quite a while ago. And her son-in-law's friendship with the former chief rabbi, and so on and so on. It was a delightful visit, but way more than I had bargained for.

Still, I continued on my walk finally. I had told Simcha I would meet her at the sewing club. I managed to walk there, it really wasn't too hard, and then came in and made small talk with the horrible woman there and Leora. I don't now if I've written more about the horrible woman, if I haven't I won't now. She's ... prickly. And I probably wouldn't describe her as 'horrible' except that poor Simcha has listened to her say some pretty horrible things about me while working on her sewing projects. Simcha said she would have liked to walk out, but she wanted to finish her projects, which makes perfect sense to me. Her plan was to bring a walkman with her in order to be able to sew and not have to listen to the horrible woman talking to Leora. Leora is the wife of David, someone John became very friendly with for a while. I don't know her well enough to know if she is horrible, and am keeping an open mind. Because she listens to someone saying insulting things about me is no reason to assume she agrees with them or participating. She may just want to use the machines, too, for all I know.

Anyway, I chatted, small talk with the horrible woman, and told Leora that I had planned to come visit her, invited myself over to her house (which I intend to allow her to back out of before I get there), invited the horrible woman to visit me (which I doubt she will), and got out of there. Ugh!

The horrible woman is leaving here sometime in the next six weeks. Oh, joy.

I went from there to BatZion's, where Eliyahu was playing with her boys Avi and Moshe. I had forgotten how hard it is to just talk to her, she is deaf, or partially deaf, or something. I try to speak up, but I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. She wears a hearing aid but perhaps it wasn't turned on? Or the battery was low? I don't want to be shouting at her if she hears perfectly well with the hearing aid. It was obvious at several points the she either didn't hear or didn't understand what I was saying. I'm pretty sure she was lip-reading, also. So I made an effort to be facing her when talking - not always easy while keeping an eye on three small boys in the yard.

For me it was an awkward and uncomfortable conversation. I think she was genuinely happy that I came by, even if she doesn't care for me much. She is very insecure - and prickly. I guess most insecure people are prickly. It does get tiresome sometimes.

Back home - Havva pushed me home in the wheelchair - I fell asleep. I was so tired from the walk, and being out in the fresh air for so long. I think I was sleepwalking when I came into the house. After I woke up a bit, John made me supper, and we played a railgame, Eurorails. And watched a couple of Dr. Who episodes. And stayed up *way* too late. It's 1:38am now, and I really *should* have been in bed by midnight at the latest. I am going to try and get to sleep earlier, even if it means getting less done.

Actually I imagine that if I can do it, by getting enough sleep I should be able to do as much as I am doing now, hopefully better and more efficiently. Maybe I can even do more?

I just lost the internet connection again. I'll try to load this once, then go to bed. Sleep, wonderful sleep.

I'm listening to some buzzing noise, I hope it's not just in my ears.

0 bleats so far

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
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