Wedding Eve

It's 11:30 p.m. on my wedding eve and somehow, and lord knows I have NO idea how this happened, but I'm the only one awake in the house and it's because I have to wait for the dryer to finish. I wish I could make this stuff up people, especially since I maybe have 2 items in the entire load, but I'm dead serious. One minute, we were "preparing the staging area" which means that we brought all necessary items for tomorrow into the living room and labeled them appropriately. There will be "two waves" going to the hall tomorrow. My Mom and I will be in the "first wave" which means we'll be driving to the hall with the two gowns (my gown is packed with a person's worth of tissue paper) and my brother will follow behind in his car with the boxes of benchers, kiddie bags and our mini suitcases.

My house is running on army time right now, and Dad HolyLandHipster is Major while Mom HolyLandHipster is the General. Me, I'm just going along for the ride. So, here I am, just chilling out and waiting for the kids laundry to be done. And, my sister is anal about shrinkage (that's what she has to deal with since my nephew is 6 months and 21 pounds!) so the dryer is on the LOWEST SETTING POSSIBLE and my Mom threw in some bath towels too. So basically, the reason I won't be sleeping this evening is because the dryer is NEVER GOING TO FINISH!

If only the pair of socks I need for the wedding tomorrow wasn't in the dryer, I would just say screw it and head off to bed. No matter what, I want to be in bed and asleep by 1:00, cause the kids have been waking up at like 6:00 and crying for hours! I can't wait for the wedding to be over so I can get to the hotel and get some sleep!! Its been a long week with a 2 and 6 month old in the house; we're all reall wiped.

So, Friday was actually a lot of fun, I only cried once when my Dad started yelling about the weather. My brother-in-law didn't make it to New York for Shabbos, the tornado watch closed down the airport so he was stuck in Cleveland. That was upsetting, we all could have used an extra set of hands on Friday.

Mom and I spent the morning pampering with manicure/pedicures and then blow outs. Afterwards, we ran some food errands at SuperSol and then came back and tried to tackle the downstairs and clean up. The house was a wreck and Shabbos was coming! We cleaned up and I managed to steal a few minutes upstairs to just deal with what I needed to deal with. Buggy sent me 2 dozen long-stemmed red roses for Shabbos and my friends Debra, Shulamit and Marnina sent a gorgeous little bouquet of flowers. It was really nice going into Shabbos surrounded by flowers.

My nephew's cries woke me this morning about an hour before I wanted to be up, and so I decided to help my Mom take care of the kids. We got my niece dressed and made it in time for the end of the Haskamah minyan where my Dad was making a Kiddush in honor of the wedding. We told my niece it was her birthday and she was really happy to see the "birthday" cake. She didn't want any, so my Mom, Grandmother and I all took her upstairs to daven with the main minyan. She was happy when we managed to get her a lollipop from the Shul candyman. The Rabbi said some nice words about me and my family during his speech, a lot of people said Mazal Tov, and then we went home for lunch. I managed to catch about 3 hours sleep this afternoon and then got up to prepare for the Shabbos Kallah.

It was a bit hectic getting ready and I only cried for a bit when I couldn't find the serving spoon for the fruit. I was still really tired and needed help just getting everything ready. Also, my stomach is one big knot at this point and the nerves were really getting to me. Fortunately, Shulamit, Marnina and Debra really helped calm me down. I was so happy they came by and we had a really nice Shalosh Seudot.

And then, before I knew it, Shabbos was over and we were full on getting ready mode. Mom and I sat down and put the table numbers in all the place cards and then I packed up for the wedding and for Israel too! It's insane that I'm leaving so quickly, I could really use a few more days here in New York to tie up some loose ends, but that's just not going to happen.

I've been listening to this mix that I made and I'm so happy I made it, the music is really perfect and relaxing. I keep saying that I'll be relaxed as soon as I know that Buggy is at the hall tomorrow, and I really hope I'm not just fooling myself. Meanwhile, as I scramble here with tons of wedding stuff to do, guess what Buggy is doing?

He's at the freaking movies!!!!

Can you believe it? I don't whether or not to be happy that he's entertained or upset because I have all this work to do and he's off enjoying himself at the movies. I would love to be at the movies right now, too! Hmmm, in retrospect, I think talking should have been added to the things not to do before the wedding. It's one thing to not see him, but maybe I shouldn't have been speaking to him either. That way, I would be sitting here right now annoyed that he's at the movies because I just wouldn't have known. I would have been blissfully ignorant and just assumed that he was relaxing back at the hotel and getting ready for tomorrow.

Anyway - I hope all these nerves will let me sleep! OK, I'm off to check on the dryer!

The British Invasion

Well, no, the Beatles aren't coming to Israel but more than 5,000 UK citizens are coming! In fact, some of the newspapers in this country are estimating that thousands of soccer fans will be flying into the country today and tomorrow morning to watch the Israel vs. England match tomorrow night. And, of course, they will ALL be here in Tel Aviv! I wish Jules were here, she would have a field day with all the Brits. Good thing I'm getting outta town for Shabbos. Jerusalem, here I come!

I had such a productive day yesterday. First, I had a call with an absorportion person at Nefesh B'Nefesh who told me that, surprise, but when I went to get that Teudat Zehut the banks all forced me to get, I offiicially made Aliyah! OK, so how come I've been spending 450 shekel a month on health insurance? I have to make an appointment now with the Misrad HaKlitah to make everything official and then I should start getting rights as an Olah. It's a pretty big mess and once I get back to the States in a few days, I'm going to have to cobble together proof that I spent the past 10 years living in the States. I got in touch with my former employers from 1997-2000 and asked them to write me a letter. They told me to just e-mail me the letter and they will put it on official letterhead and send it to me. So, at least I have 4 out of the 10 years accounted for. Now I have to get in touch with ANOTHER employer and then I should be able to supplement the rest with my back tax returns.

It's such a pain to do all of this! But, oh well, it has to be done and if I want to be able to buy a new car without paying taxes on it, this is the way it has to go.

So, this conversation got me a bit hyped up, especially since I want to make aliyah officially with Nefesh B'Nefesh because I was hoping for the financial assistance next year. Now they tell me that, since I accidentally made Aliyah in August, I'm probably not eligible for financial assistance (they don't do retroactive assistance). I'm not pleased about this, not pleased about this at all.

Which lead me to the gym at 2:00 p.m. yesterday. I stayed there for an hour and a half, doing 30 minutes on the treadmill, hitting the weight area, and then finishing off with 15 minutes on the bike. I walked home and went to visit Boris and Miriam to buy some fruit and vegetables for dinner.

Check out what they sell in this country! I've never seen these before in my entire life:



These are squat little zucchini's! Since I'm in full-on Pesach mode, I've been trying to use up what I already have in my house. I had some left over vegetables from Shabbos, so I made a red onion, portobello mushroom, yellow pepper, garlic and zucchini stir fry as a side dish for dinner last night. Sprinkled with some kosher salt and a bit of pepper, it was really, really yummy!

But, that left about 8 hours before I went to sleep and I had no idea what to do with myself! I'm pretty ahead of the game in terms of wedding plans and, quite frankly, I really needed a night off from wedding planning. I had already caught up on all of my TV shows for the week and began another short story for my thesis collection. People, I was really, really good and bored. Buggy was back in Jerusalem studying and doing some more homework. I haven't seen him since I left Jerusalem on Sunday night, and this weekends visit is going to be super short (tonight until tomorrow night, I return to Tel Aviv right after Shabbat so he can study for his big exam on Sunday morning).

And then, Jeff called and asked if I wanted to meet for coffee. Now, I was still in my stinking gym gear and I don't drink coffee, so I said no. Since he's giving me a ride into Jerusalem though, he somehow managed to twist my arm to go to the movies with him. Now, I'm not going to reveal the name of the movie that Jeff is dying to see, but I was super bored and really needed to get out of the house, so I agreed to see it. Since I was at home and he was walking back from the gym, I went to the Seret website to check out where and when the movie was playing. We managed to find a showtime at the end of Dizingoff street (near the Namal) playing at 10:00. We met on the corner of Arlozorof and Ben Yehuda and got onto the #4 bus, which left us a few blocks from the theatre. And, when we got to the theatre, we discovered that the movie wasn't playing at all that night!

Now, I know that I can sometimes be off when reading Hebrew, but I'm telling you that it said Alef-Heh and no Alef-Daled on the website! Once we got to the theatre though, we saw the sign that said Alef-Daled. I think Jeff was a bit annoyed with me, especially since he showered and got dressed and was excited about the movie, only to be disappointed. Well, since we were both out at that point, we just decided to walk back together and that was nice. We walked straight down Dizengof street, past the famous Chumus restaurant and the Kosher Blintzies place, until I got back to my apartment.

At which point, I realized how absolutely exhausted I was. I called my sister and then somehow fell asleep within the 15 minutes it took her to get back to me. Sorry!

I woke up this morning to gray skies and a wonderful message from my friend Shulamit and her husband Paul. They welcomed a baby girl late last night, and she weighed in at a whopping 9 pounds! WOW!

MAZAL TOV! I can't wait to find out her name :)

Since I'm on wedding lent, and have given up quick a few foods such as french fries (haven't had one french fry since I left New York in February!) and popcorn (recent addition to my wedding lent), I need to hit the supermarket and pick up some breakfast for myself.

Song of the day is Baby Fratelli by The Fratellis. Hey, maybe they're in town for the game too!

Shabbat Shalom!