Catching Up

I know I've been a little neglectful of this blog lately. I didn't even tell y'all about my successful shopping trip last week. I picked up two nice shirts for Yaakov, a cute fleece jacket for me, and ten hangers... all at a great price!

My sister is teaching me to be a better shopper. More importantly, I got to spend the day with Nome Nome Mickey Mouse. (also known as Naomi Hallel Inbar)

She's a real delight these days. She's just started saying her first few words: Mom, hi, bye, and cat.
Strangely "cat" was also one of her sister's first words. I guess it has to do with having a cat in the house. It was amusing when she said "cat" in a shop, and we looked around and found a picture of Tigger on the wall. I guess she recognizes the felines as members of the same family!

The other news from around here is that we went to Ikea and we got lovely Ikea couches. Unfortunately, they didn't have the covers we wanted, so we are currently leaving the couches wrapped in plastic and cardboard in our living room, and waiting for the covers to come in. Our living room is, as a result, sort of a huge mess.

Anyway, today I have another exciting ultrasound. Hopefully tomorrow, I'll be up to blogging about it.

All the best,
t.c. Goodman!

Tourist Trap

Yesterday, my parents, as professional tour operators for Shai Bar Ilan Tours, went to IMTM, "International Mediterranean Tourism Market" the Israeli conference for tourism professionals. Being good parents, they asked if I wanted to attend, and I attended the conference in the capacity of their assistant.

My parents decided to avoid some traffic and complications, so they drove to the airport and took the train to the fairgrounds. It was a nice train ride, and the train goes directly to the fairgrounds.

The conference was very cool, although a lot of the "freebies" were either wine or beer, which was somewhat limiting, since I'm pretty good about abstaining from alcohol when pregnant. In addition, one very cool exhibit was a miniature version of the Jerusalem Time Elevator. I couldn't go in it (there was a whole ride) b/c it's not recommended for pregnant women...

Still, I got some neat keychains, a few pens, and a cup of hot cider with cinnamon. The highlight of the day for me was that one of the Israeli exhibitors was advertising a nature experience, and had brought a basket of ducklings. One of the ducklings and I bonded. It's not as soft as a hamster, but since Mishmish (our hamster) finds humans completely terrifying, I haven't picked her up in many many months - She escaped from her cage and I had to pick her up to get her back in. She bit me pretty hard, and I kinda lost my interest in her... Anyway, back to the duckling... it was very sweet, and had this cute little miniature bill (which was how I knew it was a duckling and not a chick). My mom took a picture...


So anyway, after the duck and the cider and stuff, I sat down for a while and then we got back on the train, went back to the airport, got back in the car...

And my fingers had a fight with the car door. To be fair, my fingers were out of place. On the other hand, the car door really didn't have to fight so dirty! After a blood-curdling shriek, my parents took me to Terem, the local emergency clinic. Two of my fingernails are broken, which means I'll have to have the acrylic removed, let the nail heal, and have the acrylic replaced. The removal part is loads of fun. It involves soaking the fingers in nail polish remover for many minutes. That would be ok, but... there's a small cut that runs all the way through, and acetone on broken skin is a lovely idea... for torturing terrorists.

On the bright side, the bones aren't broken. The fingers aren't swollen. The typing is darned slow, because I can't use two of the fingers on my right hand. But this too shall pass.

t.c.

At Work... Well...

So this whole week Yaakov's been working with a group of people from around the world, and things have been seriously hectic. He's been getting home at about 10:30 and collapsing...

So today I came to his work and had dinner with him. I also ran a whole series of errands in Jerusalem, which was good, because some of them have been on hold for a while.

So now I'm at his office, waiting for him to finish up so we can head home...

There's a little bit of news. The yaakov-and-leah site is gone... I wasn't editing it and doing stuff with it, so I decided to let it go rather than pay to keep it alive when it isn't really accomplishing anything.

My parents are now tour operators for an all-kosher/shomer Shabbat trip to China. For more information, you can write to DrSavta at Gmail dot com. The tours are available in Hebrew and English, and include 3 kosher meals a day. The tours leave from Israel, but if you're not in Israel, you can make arrangements to meet the group in China. My parents have taken the tour once, and co-guided once, and they've really enjoyed it immensely.

I'm in need of work. I write content for websites, translate from Hebrew to English (but not the other way), and edit English text.

If you have work for me, leave me your email in a comment, and I'll write you back. Since I moderate my comments, you don't need to worry about your address being posted for spammers. If you need receipts, let me know. I haven't gotten receipts yet, b/c I'm not getting enough work to justify it, but I could probably arrange it within a few days if necessary.

so that's the news...
t.c.

Feeling Groovy

Well, maybe not groovy, but we're feeling better.

Both Yaakov and I are still a little wiped out from our battles with various virii, but we seem to be doing better. Half of Yaakov's company is down with similar issues, so no one was particularly upset by his missing a week and a half...The particular bug that got him seems to be very strong. Thank G-d, I didn't get the fevers he got.

Thank you so much to those of you who offered help and support while we were sick. A special thanks to both the Epsteins and the Hess family for offering grocery help. We really appreciated the offer.

I'll write more at some later point. Just didn't want to leave our audience in suspense.
t.c.

In Sickness and in Health...

I'm making chicken soup for Shabbat, because Yaakov and I have been pretty sick this week. My sinuses have been congested and he's been coughing, sneezing, and running a fever.

I'm feeling a bit better, but not enough to feel like a human being. It's been a rough week. On Sunday, Yaakov came back from France. He arrived in Israel around 8pm, and went straight to work. When he finally came home, I was mostly unconscious and quite annoyed that he didn't just get into bed and leave me alone until morning...

He woke up with a fever Monday morning, and I made us some tea. All day long, people from his work kept calling and asking for help, and Yaakov tried to help between cups of tea. Tuesday, I dragged us both to the doctor, and the doctor said he had an ear infection and gave him all sorts of nifty medicine. As a pregnant lady, all I could have were nose drops - the kind that sting when they go up your nose.

Tuesday evening was my nephew Tzvi's Bar Mitzva party. We went, and between the two of us, had enough onion soup to feed the population of a small African country. Then we moved in on the tea. I think there were some other people there, and I remember some stuff with harmonicas and a recorder. There was also some kind of skit which I hope was well videotaped, because everyone was laughing and I was groping around for another tissue. I think Tzvi was practicing his sedra (Torah reading) and his siblings were trying to make it difficult for him.

I think I'll try to digitize it and put in on YouTube.

Anyway, it was a lovely Bar Mitzva! We only wish we'd been fully conscious for it.

Wednesday and Thursday, we spent mainly sleeping, and this morning, I finally forced myself to go grocery shopping. Chicken soup is a-boiling. It's filled with all kinds of good stuff like rutabaga and Jerusalem artichoke and carrots and celery and onion (and some chicken).

I hope that tomorrow, I'll be well enough to go to the party in honor of my neighbor's new baby daughter. Today, I saw the baby (from a good distance away - I tried to avoid breathing on/near her) and she's very very sweet and cute, which isn't surprising because both parents are fairly attractive and her big sister (2.5) could be a model.

In the meantime, I have to go finish cooking for Shabbat and check on Yaakov.

Shabbat Shalom
t.c. Goodman

Teddy Kollek 1911-2007

I am aware that I need to write more about my trip to North America, but right now, there's other stuff on my mind.

For example, Teddy Kollek passed away this week. I gotta say, I'm not an overly political person most of the time, and prior to 1995, when I made aliya, I had little idea of what was flying here in Israel except that it's a piece of land the size of New Jersey, surrounded by multiple Arab countries, and yet somehow, the Arabs expect us to divide it and give parts to Arab entities.

What I remember about Teddy Kollek was a movie called "Goodbye, New York." It was a pretty hokey movie about a New York woman who goes to Paris to escape her humdrum life, and ends up accidentally landing in Israel. The movie was made by Teddy Kollek's son, Amos Kollek, and I remember my parents all but screaming when they saw Teddy on-screen. The woman, played by Julie Hagerty, had just had all her clothes stolen. She tells her whole sob story to a man on the street (Teddy Kollek) who responds by saying "So tell it to the mayor." Since the movie was released in 1985, (when I was 7) the significance had to be explained to me carefully. Since then, every time I've seen the movie (which is on tv surprisingly often), I've loved that scene more than all others - even the banana eating contest.

Anyway, so that was Teddy Kollek for me. In 1993, Ehud Olmert won the election, and when I made aliya, there were still bumper stickers around that said "Ohavim Otcha Teddy" - we love you Teddy.

A little more recently, I learned more about Teddy Kollek. He was an incredible man, and he did so much for Jerusalem. He built Jerusalem up in the years after the reunification (1967) and helped Jerusalem become a modern city.

Ehud Olmert said:

"David Ben Gurion declared Jerusalem the capital of the State of Israel in 1949. Teddy Kollek turned it into the capital, not by virtue of memories and prayers and longing, but by virtue of creation, construction, diligence, tolerance and the intolerance which lived in his body together.

"Teddy turned Jerusalem into the center of his existence. Yehuda Amichai wrote that it is sad to be the mayor of Jerusalem. He didn’t write it about Teddy, but about his predecessor. Teddy wasn't sad, he was glad to be the mayor."

This would be more significant to me if Olmert actually listened to himself once in a while. However, I doubt that statements like these will keep Olmert from re-dividing the city and moving Jews out of their homes even in Israel's capital.

So today, after Teddy Kollek has been laid to rest, I want to say thank you to him. Thank you for building a city we can be proud of. Thank you for your love and devotion to the holiest city on Earth. Thank you, and "Ohavim Otcha Teddy."

What's 3 Inches Long and has the Hiccups?

If you're expecting me to say "I don't know either, but it's crawling up your leg," then you're out of luck.

Actually, it's a baby. Well, okay, I think the technical term is fetus, but seriously, it has a head and a body and s/he's so cute!

I had a test today called a neuchal translucency. The test isn't very thrilling. They measure the fluid at the base of the spine, and if it's a lot, then there's a higher risk of serious birth defects. My risk of having a baby with Down's Syndrome (G-d forbid) has been assessed to be about 1 in 2000, which sounds pretty good.

The exciting part of the test is that to measure this fluid, they do an ultrasound. So here's what happens. I go into the office, and the doctor puts the probey thing on my abdomen. At this point, I mention that I have a tilted uterus, so he's probably going to have to do an internal thing. He kinda shrugs, and starts moving the probe thing around, and all the sudden, I can see a head, and a body and all kinds of moving parts.

So I go, "Oh my gosh! It's a person! Holy cow, it's moving. Oh my G-d! Oh my!" and the doctor is laughing. My mom and sister (Yaakov couldn't make it) are standing there in awe. It was incredible. The baby was moving around a lot. He (this reflects the fact that there are currently more girls than boys in my family, so the [faulty] statistics indicate that I should be having a boy, not any actual knowledge) seemed to have the hiccups, and he was moving his arms and legs a lot. I could see such cute eyes and a nose and mouth. I'm in shock. It took more than a little convincing to believe that the images I was seeing weren't a video put there to make me happy, but now, I really believe there's a baby in there. He's only three inches long, but he's really there! And he's beautiful.
Sadly, this is the best picture the doctor was able to capture, because the baby kept moving!

The Philadelphia Story

In addition to being lazy, there's another reason I haven't blogged lately. I took a trip to the old country. That's right, I spent some time in the good old US of A. (and Canada, but you get the point.)

There were a lot of weird things about the trip - some good, some less so. First, this was the first time I ever arrived in the United States that no one picked me up at the airport. This is partly because we arrived at 6am on a Sunday morning, but more because I just don't have family in the New York metropolitan area anymore. The only person who could have picked us up was my Aunt Vicki's friend Phil (Vicki decided to give up her car several years ago.), and he would have had to leave home around 4:30am, which seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for your friend's niece.

Next thing, I've never arrived at JFK and not gone to visit my Saba (grandfather) in Queens. On the bus from the airport into Manhattan, we went fairly close to my Saba's old neighborhood. My whole mind started fighting and screaming about this. I know that my Saba passed away over 5 years ago, and more than that, I was there the day we took him from his house the last time, to help him make Aliya. He lived with my parents in our house for over a year after that, and I visited him in his nursing home when that became necessary, and I was there when he was buried. Still, it felt so wrong to land and not visit him.

We got to Grand Central Station, then switched shuttles to Penn Station ("and lead us not into Penn Station...") There we got on the train to Trenton, from which we got on the Septic (errr Septa - South Eastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority) system, and met my Aunt Vicki in Philadelphia.

We took a taxi to her place, dumped our baggage, showered, and then.... I got to meet Shlomo. Shlomo is Yaakov's son. He is a beautiful child.

We took him out to dinner that night, at a restaurant that serves a little bit of everything (really, everything.) I mean, they had Chinese and shawarma and fried chicken and Philly (cheeseless) steak. It's kinda bizarre. So we went in and got some food, and I started to get to know my stepson. He's a very attractive child, and he's bright. It did drive me a bit crazy that he continually talked about football, even when other subjects were brought up, but that's ten-year-olds for you. Anyway, we had dinner and then we took him for a walk. We went to Toys R' Us, which my mother's family claims was named after my maternal grandmother's family, the Toizers (although in my grandmother's case, the name was changed to Tizer, but still, coincidence? I think not!)

All the toys there were pretty scary. They all move around and yell and do all kinds of things that toys aren't meant to do, plus there are these nasty Bratz dolls everywhere who teach children how to dress like prostitutes. My friend AbbaGav has a better concept than Bratz. Anyway, Shlomo decided that what he really wanted for his birthday was a digital camera. I personally thought it wasn't a great idea, since 1. he's 10, 2. A camera isn't a toy 3. He doesn't have a computer to hook it up to. However, I let Yaakov make the decision. We decided that Toizer Us isn't the place to get a camera anyway, so we left the shopping until the next day and took Shlomo home.

To the left, you can see Shlomo making a political & health statement... Actually, you can see that I just don't pay enough attention to the background...

Anyway, there's much more to tell, but I thought this would be a good start for now.

t.c. Back from America!

Violins on Television...

Steven Spielberg called for a stop to violence on television. You can read about it here.

One interesting thing is that Spielberg squarely places the blame on the producers who make these shows. In the forums responding to his statements, you'll see the same point made over and over. Parents need to be responsible for what their children watch. So who's right?

Can I get away with saying everybody's right? Here's the thing. Today's audiences aren't satisfied watching "I love Lucy" and "The Brady Bunch." The wild success of crime shows like "CSI," "NCIS," "Bones," "Law and Order" (in all its various versions), is telling us something. People like watching twisted criminals. People enjoy watching the obscene. Ever wondered why Ricki Lake and the like are so popular? Heck, tune in any soap opera, and you'll see that within the "acceptable" boundaries, the sexual limits are being pushed, and you certainly wouldn't want your children to learn their morals from soap operas either.

In fact, for every talk show about best friends stealing each other's spouses, it probably happens twice on a soap opera. Sure, they're not showing nipples, but you don't have to be a genius to figure out what's going on under the covers either.

So - audiences want sex and violence, and audiences don't want their children to see sex and violence. Guess what? You really can't have it both ways - not all the way at least. Sure, you can make sure your kids aren't watching tv late at night (when the violence gets nastier) but you can't keep them from seeing every horrible thing that's on television without throwing the boob tube out of your house (and they'll still see some of that garbage at friends' houses).

So what do we do as a society? First, those of us who watch violent television shows need to think about what it's doing to us as people. Are we becoming less and less sensitive to violence? Does it take more and more to disgust us?

Next, we need to think about what we're teaching our children. Do our children sit watching television for hours a day without anyone checking what they're watching? Has the television joined our family with full status as a member, or do we remember where the off-switch is? Does it join us at the dinner table? If we don't live without television, our children won't either.

It's so easy to tune out to a television show - it's fun, undemanding, available. But the television is a piece of equipment. Just like you don't let the dishwasher decide what your family does, you shouldn't let the television. I wonder if it wasn't better in the days before the popularity of television. People went to a movie theater, sat down, settled in, and prepared for the onslaught of images and ideas. Nowadays, we just let it into our house without ever looking at what we get. We decide nothing - just let the network execs choose for us...

So Spielberg's half-right. The level of violence is disconcerting. But the producers are only giving us what we ask for. What does that say about us as a society?

The Oxford Comma

I love the Oxford comma. It disambiguates, conforms to speech patterns, and just makes me feel good.

I'm sure some of you are wondering what the #$@# an Oxford comma is. Well, I could leave you to click the link, or I could explain it to you:

Suppose you were going on a picnic with your brothers and sister and their twenty-two children. Suppose you were making the sandwiches, and you wanted your myriad nieces and nephews to choose their sandwiches from a list. Your list might look like this:
Tuna Salad
Cheese
Hummus
Lettuce and Tomato
Lox and Cream Cheese
Peanut Butter and Jelly
Cream Cheese

Now if you wrote it into a list without using the Oxford comma, you end up with this:
The sandwiches available for today's picnic are tuna salad, cheese, hummus, lettuce and tomato, lox and cream cheese, peanut butter and jelly and cream cheese.

So is that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a jelly and cream cheese sandwich? (Trust me, my mom is fully capable of making either option, and many of my siblings will eat them both.)

Now if you use the Oxford comma, here's your sentence:
The sandwiches available for today's picnic are tuna salad, cheese, hummus, lettuce and tomato, lox and cream cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and cream cheese.

See? Now we're perfectly clear as to what's available for those last two sandwich types.

This is why I love the Oxford Comma.

Now I'm off to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

t.c.

Remembering...

You know how sometimes, absolutely everything gets on your nerves?

So Friday, I was going to bake challah (it's that braided Jew-bread).
So I went into the kitchen, and everything was a mess (partly my fault), and I was stressed, and I just got all angry and upset at everything and started yelling and being just obnoxious.
Yaakov eventually took the dog and went for a walk just to get away from me.

Tonight, I decided I needed to sit down and watch our wedding video again. It's important to remember how much in love we really are.

P.S. The challah was AMAZING!

Surprisingly Unbroken

Some people claim to be klutzy and aren't really. Some people really are.

For example, a college professor of mine broke her finger pulling on a sock. I mean, that's really talented. Funnier, she broke her middle finger, and it had to be immobilized, meaning that she walked around for a month flipping the bird to everyone she saw. Fortunately, when you're a college professor, the whole "absent-minded professor" is somewhat more good-natured than the "spazz" title that the rest of us get.

Anyway, I'm a real bonafide klutz. Using "Juggling for the Complete Klutz," it still took me three months of practicing daily to learn how to juggle. It took until I was 9 before I learned how to ride a bicycle, and I was never all that good at it. I've tripped over my own feet, and during my "sheva brachot," I managed to hurtle myself down three stairs and create a bruisey icky thing that took months to heal.

So what possessed me to try rollerblading? It's all Scott's fault. See. For his daughters' birthdays, he (or maybe his parents) got his girls rollerblades (well, something between skates and blades for the 4-year-old, and real blades for the 7-year-old).

Then he decided that if he was going to take the girls blading, he needed his own, as did N., who he spends a lot of time with lately. So they each bought blades, and then took the girls blading, and then they went blading sans girls later on.

Of course, Yaakov got rollerblading into his head, so he decided he had to go. No problem, we have a skating rink in the local park, and my nieces and nephew, who live between here and the park, all love to rollerblade.

So... we called, and they were on their way out to a birthday party. So I decided to do the next best thing. I borrowed my niece's rollerblades. They fit. I walked around the rink in them twice, holding on to the rail. Then Yaakov decided to take me out into the center of the rink. Using a hockey stick, he pulled me out. It was fun, really. Until I started to panic and broke into a sweat and almost started crying.

Later, I decided I was in a trying things mood, so I tried walking on stilts again. On the second try, I was able to walk about 5 meters, leaning on Yaakov, before my legs went weak and I had to stop.

The good news, though, is that there were no major falls, and despite my klutziness, I am surprisingly unbroken.

Better Days

Scott, you're right - it's about time I post something new!

So... last night, I had a birthday party for my mother at my house. After monumental efforts, I was able to get most of my siblings (one couldn't get a babysitter) and a few of my mom's friends to come to my house. I then fed them all kinds of unhealthy and delicious food (lasagne, fresh bread with cream cheese and lox, borekas) and healthy food (cut vegetables). My sister baked a yummy cake. She claims that it was nothing, because pillsbury always comes out good, but she made the frosting herself and it was great, and she decorated the cake and it was SOOOO pretty. Besides, I know plenty of people who can mess up cake from a mix too. (hey, I burned frozen borekas)

The cool thing is that it's the first time since she got married that my mother has had a surprise party. It's also nice, because I had the pleasure(?) of hosting. It is nice to be an adult who can host parties. I did have to work very hard to clean up the house, but in the end, it was really clean, and it was nice, and everyone thought I did a good job.

The other cool thing is that now, for the first time, my house is clean. I mean, not perfect, but clean enough that I could have a tupperware party or a chug or any of the other dozens of things that I'd like to do here.

Now we just have to KEEP it nice.

I bought a little unit with drawers for my desk - since my desk is really a dining table, I couldn't get a regular drawer unit, but I have a small set of drawers on my desk now, so I can hide all my papers out of site. I only have one piece of paper with important information and phone numbers out. My pens and stuff are all out of site, and there's really space for everything. I even put the webcam in a better place so that I can use it more easily.

I should take pictures, but I'm really tuckered out. I'm just exhausted - I worked soooo hard since Monday getting ready for this party, and I'm not finished with the cleanup, even though we used very few dishes (and they are dairy so they can go into the dishwasher) and mainly used disposables.

I seem to use up so much energy doing even the smallest things. I went to an endocrinologist about that and some other stuff, so I'm going to have a whole bunch of tests on Monday, and who knows, maybe there will be progress. I've been reading up on something called "insulin tolerance" and if I have that, it would account for several different problems I've been having, and maybe help me lose weight too, which would be nice.

My weight is such a struggle. I mean, most people say that, and I believe them, but really - on herbalife, you're supposed to lose a kilogram a week, and me? In three months, I've lost 4, of which I gained 1.5 back. It's not like I'm not serious about it either. I am. I might not be perfect on the plan, but back when I was in high school, I did a similar diet, with an equal degree of resolve, and lost about 12 kilograms in 4 months (not a very fast pace either, but much better than what I've been doing lately) I was doing less exercise then than I do now, too, so it's not that either. It's just that something's wrong with my metabolism.

Anyway, my weight is a boring subject... so I'll move on. Rosh Hashana is coming, and hopefully we'll get the first rain soon. Every year, when the first raid starts, I go outside and dance in it. It's silly, but I just love the rain. I love it when the air is clean, and the heat stops being so oppressive. I love rain and cold. I miss my sweaters and velvet skirts. I miss my jeans more, but that's another story...

My parents brought me pomegranites from their tree yesterday for the holiday! Today, Yaakov sent me information about buying a Sukkah. We need to measure our outdoor space and check what size will be good for us, and then we'll have a Sukkah. Pretty exciting - this will be my very first - I mean, one that's mine and not just my parents'.

I think that's just about all the news from here, except that I sort of have a job, working from home. It's an editing job, but it's my excuse for not writing as much here... :)

Anyway, wishing you and yours a Shana Tova Umetuka - A good and sweet New Year.

t.c. Goodman