Israeli Plumbers Crack & The Bat of Tel Aviv

The saga of the apartment that's falling apart (or was never built correctly, whatever you want to call it) continues. It's getting to the point where I feel like I'm cracking up (just kidding, was trying to use the pun...). And this morning, I woke up at 7:45 a.m. to let in the plumber so that I can look at his crack for an hour as he fixed yet one more problem in the apartment.

A fitting end to the past 62 hours.

It all started as soon as I lit Shabbos candles on Friday night. Buggy and I had a really, really nice afternoon together on Friday. As soon as he got here, we called his Aunt Nomi who lives in Tel Aviv, and we took a cab over to her side of the neighborhood to meet for coffee. It was nice getting to know his Aunt, who I've only met once at the family Chanukah party back in December. She is really a nice woman, and extremely interesting to talk to, and we both really enjoyed ourselves. As the rain started to fall, we hopped into a cab and got back to the apartment so Buggy could make his famous onion soup. I helped of course! I prepared all of the ingredients in an assembly line next to the pot so that we could put them in when it was time.



This is what the soup looks like this morning straight from the freezer. A little fatty on top from the oil but once you heat it up it's really, really yummy! I told Buggy that since soup ain't my forte, it will B"H be his responsibility once we're married. He was so proud that the soup tasted so good that I think he's going to rise to the occasion in the future.

So, after the soup was up, we had literally 30 minutes to both get ready for Shabbos. I lit Shabbos candles with one minute to spare and then, as Buggy was getting ready to go to shul for Mincha/Maariv, I went into the bathroom to pull out the box of tissues I bought for Shabbos. I opened the cabinet under the sink and picked up the box, and felt something wet. I crouched down and saw this absolute pool of water all over the cabint. I think I muttered something that I can't repeat here (actually, I'm lying, I know that I screamed an obscenity because Buggy came running to the bathroom to see what happened) and then I had a little fit as I pulled out the entire contents of the cabinet.

So, here's the long and short of it: there was a leak in the pipe so that clean water was dripping underneath the sink. I have no idea how long this leak has been here because of the following photo:



This folks is a bag that contains 8 boxes of cardboard applicator tampons and sanitary napkins.

They are ALL fully absorbed at this point.

Obviously, I will not be able to use them in the future. But, had they not been there, I probably would have discovered the leak a few days ago instead of RIGHT AFTER SHABBOS STARTED.

Buggy brought me some bags and I loaded the contents of my bathroom into them. I then tucked these bags into the corner of my living room and hoped that my Shabbos company wouldn't notice that they were there.



The big concern for me is that my blow dryer and hot iron were resting on top of the soaked boxes of tampons and I have no idea if they were really wet. I'm letting them dry out in the meantime before I attempt to plug them in and test them out. Which means that yes, I'm going curly for the next few days.

Anyway, I'm a bit passive aggressive and I decided to leave the soaking wet tampon/pad bag in the hall between mine and Itai's apartment. It didn't do anything but at least it made me feel a bit better that it was stinking up the hall. In fact, when Shabbos ended and I called the landlord to let her know of yet ANOTHER snafu, he came in to check it out and told me that something I cooked had a rank smell.

Buggy had to excuse himself and went into the bedroom to laugh. He told me that my cooking smells amazing and the stanky scent were the wet tampons in the hallway.

Maybe my passive aggressiveness worked!

Anyway, I did not have a pleasant conversation with my landlord. I told her I wanted to be reimbursed for the damages that were caused in this latest "flood" and that includes a $150 hot iron that I brought from the States. She got all pissy with me and said we first needed to coordinate on the plumber and then we could discuss damages.

Fine. That's defnitely the right way to placate me.

Unfortunately, I couldn't spend my Sunday sitting in the apartment waiting for the plumber. I had an eye Dr.'s appointment in Modiin in the morning and then Buggy and I had to go to Jerusalem to do some more wedding errands like picking out our wedding bands (rings, not orchestra), picking up benchers, getting Buggy a birthday present (April 11th!!) and meeting with parents to review the content of the invitation. So, my landlord said that I would have to call the plumber directly and work out my schedule with him. I asked her, since this was yet ANOTHER apartment inconvenience, if she could come to the apartment and stay with the plumber.

She said: What, me sit all day in your flat and wait for the plumber? No, never.

OK, fine. I had nothing else in the bathroom that could be ruined and I couldn't rearrange my schedule for Sunday so I took the phone number and made the call on Sunday afternoon to coordinate with the plumber.

Meanwhile, Itai came into the apartment to check out the leak and told his Aunt (my landlord in case you haven't been following) that it wasn't such a big deal. That the rhythm wasn't that intense and it could wait a few days. This is what my landlord claimed he told her. I was not there when he said this to her because he took my phone into the bathroom to have a chat.

So, yesterday, when I went to call the plumber to have him come to the apartment he told me that he was told it wasn't an emergency and he would try to work something out with me. I asked if he could come on Sunday night and he told me that he was unavailable. I asked him if he could come then on Monday morning and he said he was busy all day Monday. So I asked him if he could come on Monday night and he said we'll see and that he'll call me.

Now, I have experience with the workers who call you. They call you when they're 5 minutes away from your place and ask if they can come over. Now, I didn't want to be held hostage in my apartment all day long so I asked him to give me a 3 hour window so I could make myself available. He didn't want to do that. So, we hung up without setting a time and I called Lea back.

She said to me that she told him it wasn't a big deal or anything because Itai told her that it wasn't so much water.

Really? Hmm, okay. That's news to me. I've been waking up every 4 hours in the middle of the night to empty a full pan of water into my shower so that I won't have a huge flood! The water dripped with or without the tap being on too so not using the sink doesn't help matters at all.

But fine, if that's how my landlord wants to play it, what can I do? Right? I'm at her mercy and she knows it.

But she said she would call the plumber and try to set a time and would get back to me.

At which point, I called Itai and asked him why he told her that it wasn't such a big deal. Did he not see the damage in the hall? Would he like that to happen in his apartment? So, he started in on this long, drawn out lecture about how they are working really hard to accommodate me but things happen in a new apartment. He talked on, and on, and on and now I know why he's a lawyer. He can just talk the other side to freaking death! I stopped talking and just let him drone on and on because I know that it doesn't pay to talk, he won't listen, and it's just a waste of my time.

But this was the real clincher here, the reason why I've never been so pissed in my entire life. He told me that he overheard me telling Buggy that I want Lea to be responsible for the damages. He told me, that if I read my contract carefully, his Aunt is NOT responsible for any of the damages. He gave me some ridiculous example of if I left my diamond ring in the bathroom and there was a flood and the ring was damaged, his Aunt wouldn't be responsible. And, the only reason why he offered to reimburse me for the shit storm from two weeks ago is because it's out of the goodness of his heart and he felt bad about that. He also didn't even take the 91 shekel from his Aunt for the cost of cleaning up my apartment by the cleaning lady because he knows just how hard she is trying to work with me to make this apartment better.

What a guy huh?

He cited an example of his own living situation a few months ago where, if something was broken, his landlord took his sweet time getting around to fixing it. So let me get this straight. If it was someone else's apartment, I would still have a river of waste flowing through my place AND my sink would be leaking? Is this really how it works in this country? Cause, if that's really true, that's a tremendous crime.

When he made yet another comment about how, aside from the incident a few weeks ago, this apartment has been wonderful I ended the conversation. Let him be a revisionist if he wants to, I've been blogging every single incident and have a written account of all of the problems in this place. I hope to just move out and be done with them but I'm armed with plenty of ammunition if they want things to get ugly.

I was on such an anti-Israel low yesterday it was really depressing. Buggy worked very hard to make me feel better as he, a Sabra, feels responsible for how shabbily his people are treating me. I told him that he can't feel that way because I don't make comparisons or generalities. Its just been very hard since I moved here and it's really depressing to hate Israeli people. I would have prefered to be that naive woman living in the States who dreamt of moving to a wonderful Israel where the people are amazing and the land feels like my true home.

Never in a million years did I think I would be wishing for my old landlords, a sweet non-Jewish Polish man and his son, who were menches the entire four and a half years of my previous rental experience.

I think, at the end of my year here, I'm going to blog about how I really feel told Israel and her people. I don't want to start it up because today is a new day, and I'd prefer having a fresh start in the morning.

I took the 8:30 p.m. bus back to Tel Aviv last night and, as I waited for the 61 to bring me closer to the apartment, I saw the bat of Tel Aviv. He flies around the Arlozorov bus station and, if you don't look closely, you'd think it was just a bird. But, in the light from the streetlamp, I was able to make out his wings.

It was scary and exhilirating at the same time. I haven't seen a bat in years, not since my days at sleep away camp. It was kinda cool.

Since I'm awake, I've decided to spend my morning working on the draft of my thesis proposal and catching up on the reading for class tomorrow. I have to re-read a few stories in James Joyce's Dubliners and apparently there is a 32 page short story waiting in my inbox from one of my colleagues.

I hope it's a quick years cause otherwise, it's going to be a long afternoon.

PS. George and Izzie on Grey's Anatomy? Seriously? Seriously!