Sunday, October 12, 2008

Nearly vaccinated, among other news


First, a shout-out to some people: Sharon, for emailing me frequently and keeping me in the loop, especially about SAR gossip, Rachel for her weekly phone calls, and Laurie for calling me today. People - I am lonely! Email, call, keep me updated on what's happening, since my life now involves a single loop going from Dimri - Gan - Ulpan - food shopping - Gan - Dimri. I need news and especially gossip! Please call or email!

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled blog.

This morning, the kids had gan, no one was sick, and I did not have ulpan. Let's say it together...ahhhhh. Deep cleansing breath. Of course, what I did with my free morning was get a shot, go food shopping, and chop up chickens. Not so much the relaxing, hang around with a cup of coffee kind of day. But it was nice to go shopping by myself, and anyway, my coffee partner has ditched me for America. (You know who you are.) This morning, I got my festive vial of Hep A vaccine from the fridge. You know, the fridge that is not at the optimal temperature and may be turning my vaccine moldy and green. Well, it seemed fine, so I packed it up with the ice and took it with me to Maccabi. I did not have an appointment, but I got there a little before 8:00. At exactly 8:00, the secretary showed up and I asked for an appointment to inject myself with this questionable vial of medicine. She gave me an appointment for 8:10. I figured it was worth waiting for. At precisely 8:10, I was called in to the nurse's station. She shot me up and then told me....I need to come back in 6 months to get the second dose! AHHHHH!!!! I thought I was done. Oh well. In the meantime, there is only a little soreness in my arm, and I haven't grown a second head or anything, so I guess the vaccine is ok. Although, if the second head spoke fluent Hebrew, I might opt to keep it.

After my excitement at Maccabi, I came back home to do some laundry, then headed out to Supersol, my home away from home. Apparently, lots of other people had the same idea, and the store was pretty crowded considering it had just opened. There was great sadness awaiting me, however, in the dairy section. ("Sadness in the Dairy Section" is the title of my new Israeli/Country single.) Here it is folks: They did not have the 1% milk in bags. This was gravely disappointing. We love our milk in bags! I was forced to buy...don't say it...car - cart - cartons! Oh no! Oh yes indeed! I also went into panic mode because the kids are home all week and we have to do "fun stuff" with them. So to combat the inevitable whining and hunger which always tags along with "fun stuff" I bought every snack, cracker, cookie, and wafer imaginable. This is my answer when the kids are bored, hungry, kvetchy, tired, thirsty, perplexed, or in any condition that is less than ideal: Feed them! Have a cookie! A cracker! A rice cake! Have five! So I bought lots of treats to take with us this week when we do "fun stuff." I also bought more bottled water because we go through that stuff like it's...well, you know. Then I came home and began to deal with my chickens. No, that is not a euphamism. We have discussed that the chickens are greatly cheap, but only if you buy them whole. So I've been busy cutting up and separating chicken pieces. Not only that, now I separate the white meat from the bone so we can have shnitzel. This takes me the better (or worse) part of an hour. I had just enough time to do more laundry, collapse on the couch for a few minutes, and then pick up Ariella and Aiden (her buddy) from school. Aiden and Ariella came over and played all afternoon. Basically, the way it works is, Ariella bosses Aiden around and then talks him into a stupor. But he seems to enjoy it and they have a great time together. We even had to extend the playdate because when it was time to pick up Yaakov, Ariella did not want to stop playing, so she went to Aiden's house for a while. Eventually, we had to break up the dynamic duo. (On Shabbos, when they came over for dinner Friday night, Ariella wanted Aiden to sleep in her bed. Don't worry - we told her, "As long as you're living in our house...")

In other news:

Kids: The kids made sukkah decorations that we're hanging on our Not Quite Ready for A Sukkah mirpeset. I figured we should hang them somewhere, so they are decorating the mirpeset quite nicely.

Elevator: The Shabbat elevator is working!! Whoo-hoo! Except that since it stops on every floor both on the way up and the way down, it takes approximately 20 hijillion years to get anywhere. However, on Shabbos, the kids insisted on taking it. What fun! While the Shabbos part of the elevator is less than exciting, it is nice to have 2 working elevators during the week. I was starting to lose years of my life waiting on meenoos shalosh for the elevator to mosey on down.

Car: We are now part of the Microsoft car leasing program, in which you give Microsoft money and they give you a car, complete with insurance, gas, maintenance, and two car washes a month. Not a bad deal. We are now the proud leasers of a Ford Focus, one of the finest vehicles ever...well, it drives. That is the important thing.

Unpacking: We made serious effort to clean up the remaining rooms. Donny's mother is coming on Wednesday to see our new digs, and is coming for Shabbat Breishit with the elusive Jonathan. So we had serious motivation to actually clean up. Although Jonathan probably would be ok sleeping on boxes and a printer, we figured it was a good excuse to get everything in order. Donny just came back from yet another machsan run. I believe we now have more items in the machsan than in our apartment. We are proud of that. I'm not sure why.

3 comments:

MOMZWIFEOFDADZ said...

See how helpful I am - here are instructions on how to cut up a chicken - http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cutupchicken.htm

Also, I think you should reconsider the title of the blog - if it was indeed by accident, then someone would have said, "hey donny, we have this neat job for you but it is in Israel!" then that is "by accident" But indeed you did make a decision that if you had to move anyway, it might as well be to israel, even though you hadn't thought of it seriously beforehand, so in a sense, it should be called "Aliyah When You Least Expect It"

love, me

Gila Rose said...

not as snappy

Donny said...

Another possible title that we considered was, "Aliyah - Why not? You may as well. What else are you going to do?" But that took up way too much of the space in the address bar.

Also: my favorite part of the cut-up chicken directions is... Step #4 Cut Carcass in Half.