I'm grateful for: Kitten, sleeping on me for a chunk of the night and sharing her purr; hope for a new stove, maybe, this time?; a good movie for Friday night. I'm looking forward to it.

I have one really big complaint about my trip to the U.S., and I want to say that I am VERY disappointed. Before I left Israel all I heard about was the super-cool summer everyone was having, and all the rain, and how un-summer-like it was.

So what happened? I got off the plane. It was sunny, clear and hot. I drove to Boston - sunny, clear and hot. Flew to Newark and then Las Vegas -- okay, I can't complain about it being sunny, clear and hot in Vegas, but I did ask people who said that it rains in the summer there. It didn't.

From Vegas to Berkeley where it was, you guessed it, sunny, clear and hot. There was just a bit of the famous fog that I got to see while crossing a bridge, and it didn't do anything to block the sun.

Flew back to Boston for some more sunny, clear and hot weather. Drove to Bethlehem, PA, where it was uniformly sunny, clear and hot. The day I left the ground was a bit damp and I was informed that that meant it had rained. Rained? I didn't hear a sound, and if you think I wouldn't wake to the sound of rain in the middle of summer? And, trust me, the ground wasn't that damp. Heavy dew more likely.

I MEAN! What was the point? I could've stayed in Israel for that, I mean really!

It doesn't rain here - not from May until October - if we're lucky. Last year it was nearly December before it really rained. I've acclimated reasonably well, but it doesn't take long - say 'til about mid-June - that I'm dying for a breath of rain. I thought for SURE I'd get rained on in this cold, rainy summer. Yeah, right. I want my rain back! :-(

Well, I am back here now, and it is hot (duh) and sunny (duh) and clear. At least in Israel I don't get sunburned, as I am always covered up when I go out. The burn I got in Berkeley isn't healed yet. My left arm has started peeling vigourously, but my chest is still red, itchy, painful and miserable. Should I go see the dr.? I can't until Sunday at the earliest, so there's no rush to decide, maybe by then it will show signs of getting better? I can but hope.

Today was just dreadful, due in part to not falling asleep until way too late last night, in part due to still being completely out-of-sorts from the trip, but largely due to it being a 25 hour fast day at the end of July in Israel. It was Tisha b'Av, and I'm sorry but I'm not up to telling about it. It just is.

Our new stove, which we bought and paid for weeks before I left for the U.S., still hasn't arrived, so we (TH, D3 and I) decided to leave early for my acupuncture appointment to see if we could shop some other appliance stores and maybe find a different but equally suitable stove. Unfortunately all the appliance stores were closed, not expecting any customers on Tisha b'Av I expect. Little did they know...

While in Netivot, though, D3 started to feel really sick, so instead of just heading north from there, we went home, swapped D3 for S2 (who really wanted to come, but there is only so much room in the car), and then went to Ashkelon.

Before we'd even left the moshav, though, the appliance store called to say our stove. Was. Finally. There! At the store. TH asked to have that confirmed before we even left the moshav. Happy days and joyous joy - they weren't able to deliver it before Monday, who cares, we'll pick it up ourselves. A stove! It's been far too long. Thank goodness it's summer, and no one really wants to cook, anyway.

We still went to Ashkelon, where I was able to shop at a store I don't usually go to (because it is too bloody expensive) and that was fun. I was able to get some large glass steins which is something I love to have and haven't been able to get for a couple of years. And we bought lots of meat and some cheese and some hard-to-find things like Bran flakes. No kidding, they are hard to find here. And frozen fish fingers. A household fave, and the only frozen food type thing I will buy without grumbling. It even wasn't too terribly expensive because we only bought things there that were on sale or that we can't get anywhere else. That was good.

Then we headed north to Tel Aviv, but hit almost completely stopped traffic just before we got to the city. We didn't know it for a while, but there was an accident about three or four kilometres ahead of us on the highway. Needless to say we were WAY late for my appointment, and then I had to wait for over forty minutes to see my guy because he'd stepped out of a meeting to treat me, but I wasn't there yet, and then he was stuck in the meeting again.

The treatment went well I think. I felt weird afterward and couldn't say whether it was due to the treatment or the fasting, but I do feel much more like myself now since eating. D2 met us there, and TH ran some errands while I was in the treatment room so we had supplies for falafel for when we got home and the fast was over.

Drove home, which wasn't terribly exciting (thank goodness!) and everyone sort of leapt out of the car (I was helped) so TH could really quick go to Be'er Sheva to get our new stove. He borrowed a neighbour's car which is more of a truck-like thing than our little compact and took off leaving us to cope with hungry children (the youngest didn't fast of course) and our own hunger, and fraying tempers and the heat and all.

Good news came in the from of a phone call from RS, who was calling to tell me that she had secured a loan of several thousand dollars - and she was going to give me enough to cover my needs after spending everything we have on the funeral trip. Bless her! Much of the rest of it is for D1, who needs it for lawyer's fees and preparations for what we hope will be the last ever suit from her mom&dad. They got thrown out of court when they tried to get emergency custody (of the grandkids), and were thrown out of court again when they tried to get the grandkids on the basis that D1 and F and NW aren't fit or are incapable of taking care of them.

So now, having been advised that they haven't really got a case, and risk losing any grand-parents' rights that they have, they are pursuing a civil suit, again trying to get the grandkids away from D1 and their father.

It doesn't seem as if they have a leg to stand on, or a chance in heck of winning, but if D1 and F can't afford a lawyer or to put up a defense, then where are they? Mom&dad could win by default. So RS has offered D1 several thousands of dollars (bless her!) in the not forlorn hope that this will put paid to mom&dad once and for all.

The saddest thing is that I gave D1 to those people thinking they could/would do a better job of rearing her and taking care of her than I could. For the first few years of her life that was probably true. D1 says that mom went off the deep end when she was nine, and I wasn't there to say, but why should I doubt her? So for the last eighteen years mom&dad have been, to a greater or lesser degree, causing D1 all the suffering I could have/would have without even the excuse that they couldn't help themselves due to not learning how to be parents. I express myself poorly, but there is no good way to say it I think.

I would have been an abusive mother, there is no doubt. However, I hope I would have worked on getting better (as I did with the rest of the kids) and shown her that I love her and shown her by my working on and getting better that any abuse wasn't because I didn't love her or she didn't deserve better. At least that's the way it looks now that I've been there and done that with five more children. Anything I would have done to her wouldn't have been done out of *malice* at least.

Mom&dad have admitted outright that they are pursuing custody of the kids and attacking D1 and F and NW (and the husband back when he was still in the picture) simply to 'get back at them.' And what they are supposed to be getting back at them for? They moved into a house that mom&dad bought for them to rent, lived there according to mom&dad's rules to the best of their ability and then what? They fell behind on the rent. They didn't live up to mom&dad's ideas of good housekeeping.

As a side note, D1 is NOT a housekeeper, but her house isn't unhealthy, just not neat, I can vouch for that having just been there.

The biggest crime that D1 and her new little family have committed? D1 spoke out honestly about having been molested by an uncle, dad's brother. Dad said to the now absent husband that their abuse accusations were strictly tit-for-tat, to see how *they* liked it. I MEAN!

Yah, so anyway, I am terribly sad about everything that D1 and my lovely grandchildren have had to go through as a result of my choosing the wrong parents and there is nothing I can do about it. Besides be there for them and help out as much as I can. So, anyway, RS has really made it possible, we hope, to see an end to this miserable persecution.

Okay, so back to my miserable day - off the phone with RS, to find out that no, the stove was NOT at the store, and TH was coming home empty-handed (not even bagels...*pout*). Sundown finally arrived and I had a cookie and some fudge, then some falafel when TH got it made, then crashed, hard, while TH and D3 did as much of the grocery shopping as they could in the middle of the night in Netivot.

TH is off this morning to again try to pick up our stove, and to drive S2 to the train station so he can go to a gathering of his pluga (company?) in Tel Aviv, as a last chance to get phone numbers and make an effort to keep in touch as they are all being scattered to the winds.

And - good news - S2 got what he wants, he is going into the combat engineering corps! Better news - their training base is about 20 minutes from where we live (if reports are true)!!! After this nightmare of having him on the other side of the country, this is just wonderful. He won't go straight to the combat engineering course, though, he's spending four months doing advanced infantry training first. That is also in the south, but not so close to home. Whatever, it's still better than where he was (for us).

And that's about it. I feel crappy, I haven't slept enough (I woke up between 2 and 3am, and haven't managed to fall back asleep), I'm hungry, there is more grocery shopping to do...

Hopefully next time I write I'll be in a better skin. For now, be well, all, and Gd bless

I'm listening to the fan, and to someone knocking about the house. I wonder who?

:: 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