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Honey is Sweet Rambling stuff and a meme - 2009-01-08 I'm grateful for: seeing progress in my Hebrew; a bit of help with the fencing; feeling better than yesterday, despite pain. So my sister, visiting our mother, get caught in a conversation with mother's 'wife.' Don't ask. His name is Jimmy, and he sees her reading the news and is instantly on the attack. "You just read the ones you agree with!" - superior, provocative. RS, not as quick on the uptake as she is with 20/20 hindsight, argued with him, by listing the various newspapers and media organizations she reads online. She did NOT ask 'so, what's wrong with reading news from people whose viewpoints coincide with mine?' I mean, this was a casual afternoon, she wasn't doing research to preserve the fate of the free world. Jimmy immediately shoots back that he reads the J-Post (Jerusalem Post) and Al-Jazeera, as if that were the clincher of some argument they'd been having. What RS did NOT say is, 'oh, so you also read the ones you agree with.' I don't get how a person, theoretically educated and open minded, can read any publication as gruesomely and unquestionably biased as Al-Jazeera and see that as proof of being fair and open minded. There exist plenty of arab press outlets that are more -- Drat! What is the word I want? It's not believable, reliable, respectable, balanced, but, well, it means something like that -- Well, anyway, that was one of several delightful episodes RS had to relate to me on returning from her latest visit to mother. It may actually have been a worthwhile trip in that it is just possible that she has finally gotten it that she does NOT want to visit mother, and in fact needs to stay as far the hell away from her as possible. My personal favourite is the exchange in which mother blamed RS repeatedly for her (mother) having to wait in the car for about an hour at the airport when she went to pick her (RS) up. When RS repeated, for the umpteenth time, it wasn't her fault that the airport lost her luggage, mother yelled at her, "I don't care, it's got to be your fault, it's always your fault!" Lovely. Thanks mom. I woke late again today. I am back in pain, *that* pain, for the first time in so long I can't remember how long ago it was. Which was wonderful, I must say. I was sitting here trying to figure out why I felt so horrible, which is something I have to do. Not only do I have lots of good possible reasons for feeling that bad, I am so good at 'not' feeling it when I am in pain. So, I almost immediately noticed how I was sitting hunched, and, oh! I'm hurting. Look at that. So now I know. It's not too bad at the moment. I just have to trust now that Hashem is not going to give us a rocket alert while I am hurting so bad. I am not sure I could move if I had to. The booms are loud, louder, and consistent. Which probably means the IDF. There have been several rockets today. TH had to take D3 to the orthodontist for another emergency semi-repair of those blasted braces. And while in the process of turning left out of the city, the siren went. In Netivot they have an air-raid siren rather than the tzeva adom beepers (or maybe in addition?). TH and D3 ran to the nearby bus stop and took shelter by standing on the far side of the concrete - I don't know what the word is? They place them at bus stops with benches and a roof and three sides so people waiting for busses can sit down and get out of the sun/rain - well in Israel they are all built of concrete, so TH and D3 just went to the side furthest from Gaza and prayed. Fortunately they were lucky. The heard and saw the blast, but it didn't come down near them. I think it was yesterday evening, a taxi driver saved his passengers when the rocket alert went in a city, and he quickly drove up to one of those portable bomb shelters they put up by bus stops and ordered everyone off the sherut. A sherut is a multi-passenger taxi, usually they follow regular routes, this one went from whatever city it was to Tel Aviv, and had a full load of passengers. Just as the last one entered the bomb shelter, the rocket hit and shrapnel exploded all over, damaging the taxi. I had thought the thought that perhaps if the taxi had stayed where it was rather than driving to the bomb shelter, it would have been far enough from the bomb blast, so it might not have been as heroic as it sounds, but no. Apparently they were quite close, and the rocket might well have hit the taxi directly. Whee, fun. So anyway, TH and D3 had bus stop bomb shelters in mind, which was a good thing. Besides that, the volunteers who have been working by BZ came over to give us a little help, and ended up putting in two fence posts to try and secure the fence against goat break-outs. They also got to help put the goats in the shed and put the chickens away, since they said they wanted to be with the animals. While the volunteers were here, a neighbour called 'hello' from the road. She lives at the corner where you just enter the moshav and is the post office for the moshav. She came right up when I waved back and we chatted. She commented that S3 has my face, and I told her he had my grandfather's face, and went and got a photo of my mother's parents from about 1930. That was the second actual chat I've managed, and so it feels as if things are looking up, language-wise. Of course I make LOTS of mistakes, and can't remember (or don't know) too many words, but I am actually managing to chat. This is important - more important than being able to give your vital information to a traffic cop. I mean, I can alway show the cop my license, but asking how a sick neighbour is doing is absolutely vital for good relations in the community. I never had a community to strive for good relations with before. It's pretty darn cool. TH was commenting how strange it was for him to have friends. Real friends. He never did friends before really - our friends were largely my friends and he was automatically included. Now he has friends he plays soccer with (when we are allowed) and a friend who always wants to do stuff with him, whether it's repairing the tubing for a gaz balloon or making homemade pita. Clearly we didn't fit where we were before, and we do here. The neighbour I chatted with last (not today) asked if we find our moshav good. I told her it was the best! I said we love it here. For us, it really is the best possible place. If anyone has asked me if I thought it was possible to end up like this, leave alone if I wanted to, it would have been an unequivocal no. This is how I know I'm better off having Hashem run my life. My five year plan wouldn't have included ending up in the best of all possible places for me, us. I didn't have much supper, and really ate no lunch. And I have been walking around, even if not 'exercising' exactly. So, will I see any weight loss, or firming up? Probably not. That's been the way of things, and if the pain really is back then I'm not going to be moving about so much. Oh, well. I know I'm considered 'morbidly obese,' but the only real complaint i have about my weight is how incredibly difficult it is to buy clothing of any sort. Ah, well. That was a problem for me before I got overweight, because my arms and legs are out-of-proportion long for my body, and my feet are too long and narrow with too high an arch and that sort of thing. So, it's late and I'm tired and in pain and I should stop typing. Oh, wait, but there's more. TH and I filled out our 2008 tax forms tonight. Yeaaa!! I love having that done. I would have done it this early even if we didn't have money coming, but we do. All that money does is pay our property taxes, so it's not like we benefit a huge amount, but it sure makes paying the property taxes a whole lot less painful. This is the last year we can expect to get any money back. After this I'm going to have to squeeze another $1000/year out of the budget or else figure out what to do about our home in Vermont. Yes, I know the taxes are ridiculously low, and I am NOT complaining, but we are on a completely different pay scale here. That is quite a significant chunk of change, not even accounting for the headaches of having to convert money we've got here to USD. So anyway, tax forms are done. And in an addressed envelope and literally ready to go. Pretty cool, really. I missed talking to D1 a couple of times today, and I talked with D2 who is still pretty sick (I feel so bad), but I wasn't really in any shape for it and she wasn't either. I did talk on the phone with our American friends on the other side of the moshav, which is funny considering how I'd told them yesterday I never talk to people on the phone. Which, generally is true. Well, most people. I had loads of other thoughts that've fled my brain. So, instead let me follow the fair a bit. I stole this from a couple of people. Take your iPod or music program or whatever. Do a random shuffle. Pick the first twenty songs, excluding instrumentals, and write down their first lines. Post them, and let people guess the songs in the comments section. I've been listening to my music on shuffle, as I usually do, but taking the time to note the songs with lyrics and their first lines up to twenty. This is a fairly typical mix of mine, barring that I usually end up listening to 1/3 to 1/2 with no lyrics - classical, jazz, trance, that sort of thing. And not all types of music are represented, but an awful lot of different ones are. Some of these will be very hard, more than one the first line is also the name of the song. So, here are the first lines, I hope you enjoy the game. Song titles and artists will be posted either tomorrow or the next time I write here. 1. You know I had a job on the levee And since I don't have comments I guess you can use my notes, or email, or don't bother. It's not that important. I'm listening to (still on shuffle) Bound Stems: Excellent News, Colonel 0 bleats so far:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::
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