Monday, October 12, 2009

Swirling Thoughts #56 – a beach trip postponed but new trips have already begun
















Jennifer, our baby elephant
I had almost forgotten about her. We used to joke with our shipping company rep that we would need a lift big enough for all our stuff including our elephant. When Jennifer Convertibles kept calling and inquiring about their paperwork somehow the elephant came to be known as Jennifer. In retrospect we would have had room for Jennifer and as many peanuts as she would have required for a six week transatlantic boat ride. If only I would have used that space to bring a trash can. Or a car.

Saturday Night Fever – the illness of my Grandis?
Not more than one minute after I posted my last blog, the phone rang. Again, Bob was returning a guest to his yeshivah motzei Shabbat, this time in Jerusalem, when the car simply died. Four hours later the car was towed and he returned home, thanks to a ride from our Car Guy. Did I mention you need to have a sense of humor to survive here?

There’s always the Isru Chag after Pesah
It took me a while to comprehend what Bob meant when he said we won’t be able to go to the beach Sunday (What does one have to do with the other? Oh, yes, now I see). It’s funny, when we left his Aunt in Tel Aviv the other day I was overwhelmed by the strong aroma of her lemon tree. I mentioned to Bob I wanted to plant a lemon tree. I wanted lemons. Oy.

School’s back. And that’s not the only thing.
For the most part, the kids were excited to return to school. Asher to his ulpan bus, Becky and Barbara up the hill. Rosie was less excited. Bob peeled her off me and the morahs ended up peeling her off Bob. I don’t see or hear her crying from my spy window upstairs so I will assume she has made the transition by now.

Part of the tranquility of this holiday was the complete work stoppage on the construction site next door. No drilling cement, no hammering stones, no cutting wood, no arguing in Arabic, not even an afternoon prayer. As I started my pre-dawn lunch preparation this morning, all the familiar construction sounds were back. And then some. There is a truck parked in front of my house with an arm the size of a crane. This arm will extend high up over my roof and my neighbor’s roof and deliver wet cement to the construction site between and behind our houses. Very carefully but very noisily.

Brain exercise
My gas balloon is coming Yom Reviyee. Echad, Shtayim, Shalosh, Arba. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Got it.

Cool is cool. This was way cool.
Half the gan kids were plastered to the fence across the street watching the cement machine. So I went outside to check on the cement delivery. There were two trucks, backsides facing each other. The first, a cement mixer, was pouring cement into the other (the cement crane arm machine). The cement was somehow pumping up the crane arm (way way over my house) and then coming down out of a tube that seemed like an unwieldy elephant trunk. There were two workers trying to wrestle the elephant trunk into position with the help of a third worker manning a hand-held remote control box that had the power to move the crane arm. I’ve never seen anything like it. Check out the pics.

Planes, trains and automobiles? Something like that.
More specifically, a ride with a friend, 1 bus, 2 taxis and 2 tremps. By sampling many different modes of transportation I made it both to and from my doctor’s appointment in Jerusalem. Unscathed and on time. Really it was a breeze. My doctor, giddy as ever at the sight of my baby on high resolution sonogram, informed me the baby is big – quite big – and we have some time to go yet. Some quick calculations by Bob put the birth weight in the baby elephant range.

Bob’s taking care of business – I’ve got fruit on the brain
Bob’s been following the progress of the car – it sounds like the car is in advanced stages of rehabilitation – I’m hoping we’ll have it back in its restored health tonight, Be'H. Tomorrow we plan to go to Mahane Yehuda together. We haven’t been there as a team since our honeymoon when we staged a hilarious negotiating fight between him and a fruit vendor for the sake of a photograph. It’s a classic. We have big plans to save big on fruit. And ka’ak. And halva. Must to feed Jennifer.

1 comment:

  1. for someone who basically avoided the NY subway system you're doing okay with the various modes of transportation, Hopefully you won't have to resort to that when the big momment arrives!!!!!!

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