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Honey is Sweet

A wild ride - 2008-02-13

I'm grateful for: my new cell phone, silly; saying things that I need to hear; everything being different, really.

The last few days ... I can't do justice to them. I really can't. I wish I had the gift, to take this and write it out in anything close to the experience. It's just been, wow.

Good, bad, hard, sweet. The roller-coaster of life sent me through a couple of really steep loop-di-loops, and it hasn't leveled out yet. Better than Sunday - it couldn't help but be better than Sunday. Monday was pretty darn rough, too. But I think Sunday just hit some kind of all-time record. The metapelet didn't show up. Didn't phone, didn't show. TH had gone to work, S3 was (and is) still sick. We were all just starting to realize how much having company had taken out of us. We didn't get our weekend, if you know what I mean.

The TH phoned from Petakh Tikvah. The (evil) kabas, the truant officer, phoned him at work and demanded to come to our house and meet. He wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, and pressed TH hard - Why? couldn't he come out to the house while TH was at work?

When TH phoned to tell me this, I just about split something. I don't know what. Something between my ears maybe? I didn't quite have hysterics. Yet.

I gave TH words to use to make the kabas go away for a while - to tell him that I was uncomfortable with a man coming to my house while my husband wasn't home. And I told TH to tell him that we would set up a time to go see him at the moetzah (gub'ment buildings) on Monday.

Several frantic telephone calls later I'd ranted at my friend MS for a little while, gotten the phone number of a lawyer, phoned the lawyer, explained as best I could to the lawyer, lawyer told me what was best for us to do at this point (this was when I had hysterics), phoned TH back with all of this information...

I did get a bit of a good laugh out of it all. While I was ranting at my friend MS, I still at that point didn't know for sure that this (evil) kabas wasn't going to just show up at my house and I told MS if he did I would set the dogs on him. So later, while I was on the phone with the lawyer, I told her I'd said this and she laughed and said I could do that. :-) What a hoot! No worries, though, he never came.

So that was pretty much the tone, and the low (and maybe the high) point. TH and I had a minor set-to Sunday night. Later Sunday night I got him out of bed to try and talk, and ended up just sobbing for some time. I couldn't put into words then, or now, exactly what I was feeling/thinking, but it went something along the lines of after all this time, here I am again with the world ganging up on me, everything and everyone I depended on or tried to depend on just went south (the metapelet not showing up, TH and I having that fight, the lawyers suggestions, which were very hard for me), and it's me alone against the world and I can't do it all alone and there's no one to get my back and, well, like that there.

I just sobbed for what seemed a timeless time. Then TH and I talked a little bit. It was very different from any previous situation. He said he wished he could be relied upon, but knew that he has a tendency to crumble. And we talked just a little bit about how things really are different, even if just at the moment it seems like all the same shit I've been dealing with my whole life. And I think we may have made some choice comments along the way but I can't for the life of me remember any of it besides TH trying to describe life as a spiral - you know, where you seem to be exactly the same place when you circle round again on the next bit of the slinky. He is not very articulate. I was too much of a mess to pay a lot of attention, but I did hear the words.

We actually managed something in the vague ballpark of enough sleep Sunday night, with all of that. Monday S2 had a driving lesson, and we dropped him off, then went off to meet the (evil) kabas. My friend MS says he is not really evil, and more to be pitied than hated. Fine, he's not threatening her, she can pity him.

The meeting went reasonably well. We repeated the magic words "my lawyer" at least half-a-dozen times. "I'll have to ask my lawyer," "my lawyer says," and "that's not what my lawyer said," constituted a significant part of my conversation. The beauty of those magic words! He backed off of insisting that my kids get tested (not necessary, and he doesn't have the (legal) right to ask for it), and while he was adamant that my kids have to be in school until we get an issur (permission to homeschool issued by Misrad haChinuch, the ministry of education, a permission which isn't even truly legal), he really tried (squirming like a worm on a hook) to try and find some way to let us (and himself) off the hook.

See, he doesn't want to mess with us. The worst thing that they can do is take me to court - and if they do, they will lose (huge body of precedent behind us). So they hassle and harrass people who don't know the law, or who aren't well connected (my friend MS is on a panel of people who are working with misrad hachinuch to change, or rather create, the laws pertaining to homeschooling in Israel), or who can be bullied. Once it became clear that we know what he actually can and cannot do, that we won't give ground, and that we have the big guns (lawyer) to back us up, there was really nothing he could do. Unfortunately, he is answerable to people who may well never even know our names, but will give him hell for not pursuing us dangerous types.

So the meeting went as well as could be expected/hoped. He gave us some paperwork to fill out that he said was necessary to apply for an issur (which, if the changes in law actually do come into effect will be a worthless piece of paper), and asked us to give the lawyer his phone number.

Then we headed to b'tuach leumi (national insurance) to get it noted that S1 is back in the country, and to get him on the health plan, and, can I remember? Not sure I can. Too many things. B'tuach leumi was closed, we took some money out of the bank, and bought me two hats and both of us lunch.

We had to be back home so TH could drive S3 to her riding lesson, and I crawled into bed, my body broken and aching.

I don't remember much more of the day besides that I *did* get out to feed the birds and goats, and that I have managed to get on my exercycle and work with weights every night. I've given up on any kind of target - pulse rate or calories burned or anything like that. I just get on and push the pedals, and I don't get off before twenty minutes if I can help it. The weights are going much better. I think my arms were in better shape to start with, and it's a different sort of exercise. I think if I had something like weights or some kind of resistance machine I could use for my legs I'd do better at that. But the exercycle it is, and at least it works.

TH and I played a rail game that night, and watched Knocked Up, and that was Monday I think.

Today was more and more and more. The shuk, and back to b'tuach leumi and getting my grandfather's watch properly repaired and D3's watch band fixed, and making copies and trying to finally end our phone service with Bezeq. Physically, I am toast, and a bit mentally as well.

TH and I struggled to fill in the paperwork. The (evil) kabas phoned TH at some point, do I remember when? I do not, and said that if we get the paperwork in by Thursday then we WILL get an issur. The lawyer says it sounds like a good deal, and so there we were trying to fill out three forms in Hebrew and also in that foreign language educationese. I have some experience with both of those languages, actually TH is better in Hebrew, and I know more educationese. The combination is just about killer.

We phoned several people including friend MS, another friend SB, and D2 who's Hebrew is quite good, and no one could figure out what one word was. It wasn't part of a sentence, it was a single word followed by a blank line. What to put on the line? We have no clue.

I think we actually did pretty well. We filled in the whole thing, except for that one line, and did it all in Hebrew except for the part where we explain our philosophy of homeschooling/child-rearing/education, which we couldn't have put into Hebrew, even had there been room on the page.

Tomorrow morning early TH is going to fax the completed forms to the lawyer, hoping she will have time to look them over and tell us if they are okay, or if not, what to change about them. That gives her the whole working day (hopefully) before we have to turn them in to the (evil) kabas.

The metapelet is supposed to come tomorrow. We found out Monday that the reason no one had phoned is that they lost our number, and the reason she didn't show up is she got very sick. Oy! So, I hope she is well enough to come tomorrow, but at least they do have the phone number now.

I have a dr.s appointment in the evening as well. My body is just about completely crashed. It's the nutritionist, so I don't even know if going to see him will do anything good for me, probably not immediately. But if I don't go, I may have to wait another month to see him again. *sigh*

And Thursday is supposed to be quite another full day.

When I got home from the shuk and all the errands this afternoon (I got a new cell phone also), I could feel my body just sort of hanging on me, dead weight. It's not a good feeling. But, as I said to S2, at least I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I saw the crash coming, I've been riding the roller-coaster hard, and this is what it comes to is all. It's something of a change for me to crash physically, and not get all sobby and sorry for myself. It feels good honestly. Different.

I also got a phone call from someone I work with, trying to help her to get a handle on actually changing things in her life, one tiny piece at a time. It was a good conversation - for me at least. I got to say things that I need to hear, and also to feel for a moment or maybe longer how absolutely wonderful my life really is. Wow.

It's all pretty amazing.

And it's almost 1:30am, so I am going to try and get to sleep.

I"m listening to The Kinks: Misfits

0 bleats so far

:: 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