Home Bound

I'm stuck in the house today, and tomorrow, and so I'm trying to keep myself busy. I have plenty to do, a long list actually, but absolutely no desire to do any of it. I think I would rather spend my time curled up on the couch watching the Food Network and the CNN coverage of the California wildfires. B"H tonight is yoga, at least I'll get some air and exercise before the day is done. It's terrible about the California wildfires too. I was just telling Buggy how I wanted to to San Diego because I'd heard it was just so beautiful. I just hope the fires stop soon, before more homes are demolished.

So, yesterday was quite a morning for me at Bank Hapoalim. I spent an hour and a half doing 3 little things. First of all, the guard told me to take a number when I walked in, and when I went to the machine I specified all three things I needed to do. And, sure enough, I got three different numbers. I waited on the A line first, cause that one was moving really quickly. When it was my turn, the woman looked at my stack of checks and yelled at me for being in the wrong line. I had dollar checks from the States and only 1 woman in the ENTIRE branch deals with that.

Well, guess what, that woman (Aviva was her name) was in the middle of opened up a new account for someone and I needed to wait until she was done. Did I mention that it was almost lunch time? After cooling my heels for 30 minutes, she was finally ready for me and started freaking out when she saw my checks. Apparently, you can't just deposit American checks at any branch of your bank in this country. No, you need to do it at YOUR branch. Well, she had to call over to the other branch to get permission and was she pissed. The woman could not and would not sit in her chair, she was stamping stuff and throwing papers around and at one point I thought she was going to toss the stapler at me too! Well, I just took the mute tactic and sat and stared at her. The problem was that the other branch wasn't answering the phone, so she couldn't do my transaction without them. She kept telling me they weren't answering and I just stared at her. She actually got through once but then got disgusted when they put her on hold so she threw the phone down and started again. Finally, she had enough, and since I wasn't budging she actually dialed the number and then handed me the phone and told me to wait until someone picked up. She left her desk and went about her business. I have to tell you, but if I was a bank manager, I would have fired her ass for that. I could have easily played around with the computer when she walked away, and her keys were right there in plain sight too, I could have gotten into her locked box and no one would have been the wiser.

Finally, somneone on the other line picked up and Aviva ripped them a new one for making her hold. She was also eating a puffed pastry of some sort while she was screaming, so I enjoyed a pleasant phyllo dough shower of spit laced crumbs. And still, I just stared at her while she did what she needed to do. Finally, she finished and was able to enter the checks into the system. I thanked her and then told her that I needed to change my address on my other bank account. Again, she got herself into a rage because apparently, you need to ask permission from the Tel Aviv branch before you decide to move out of the City and change your address. So, she handed me a pen, photocopyed my credit card and Teudat Zehut, and had me write a letter in Hebrew requesting an address change. I have no doubt that it will not work as my written Hebrew is pretty terrible and I'm pretty sure I forgot to include Jerusalem in the address.

Then, when I told Aviva I had to pick up our new credit cards, she looked like she wanted to strangle me. The branch at this point was closed for the day and she just wanted to finish her tea and get to her other work. She sent me to one woman, who spent 15 minutes looking through credit cards and yelling at other workers to leave her alone, before everyone realized that I had to go to a different department.

I walked over to the last woman I was to meet yesterday, and she yelled at me for not coming to her first as she could have taken care of ALL of my needs. Gotta love this Country. I left 2 hours after I had arrived and was pretty proud of my behavior, especially since I really was patient and calm while everyone else around me freaked out. I've discovered that if you're patient and calm, things go much smoother. No, if I was yelling at them nothing would have gone better and I would have just wasted my breath yelling.

I walked to the fruit and vegee place on Derech Beit Lechem and picked up some stuff for dinner and came home to start cooking. Buggy's old roommate was coming for dinner and staying for a bit to help Buggy with his homework assignment. I made them some fresh baked chicken cutlets, and a purple cabbage salad that was a little salty for my taste. We had some pineapple and passion fruit for dessert and, as we were digging into the slimy goo of the passion fruit, all hell broke out in the community center next door. They were holding some sort of meeting, not exactly sure what kind but we heard someone say "Ahavat Yisrael" so I'm guessing it was a political debate. I told Buggy all I wanted to do was pull up a chair on our balcony, pop some popcorn, and watch them go at it. I love a good boxing match! Too bad all the gloves were off..

After dinner, Buggy and his old roommate went to work and I started cleaning and washing dishes. It's amazing how much time I spend over the sink. My hands are starting to show signs of dishpan hands, so I think I'm going to invest in a pair of gloves. When the roommate left, Buggy and I watched a Law and Order he taped and then we fell into bed. With Tuesdays 6:45 a.m. wake up calls, I'm pretty wiped by the end of the day.

Today, we got to sleep in a little bit and then Buggy's Mom called to invite us to lunch on Shabbos. We said yes right away and then tried to get some more sleep before the alarm went off. Buggy had class this morning, so I quickly made him his brown bag breakfast and lunch, and then helped get him out the door before I went about my day. The locksmith was supposed to come at 10 but he never showed, and then the contractor came to fix the bathroom and I almost had a heart attack when I saw home much paint was littered on the floor. We threw all of the bathroom contents onto towels on our bed in the bedroom, and since this is a 2 day job, we'll have to move them someplace else tonight before we go to sleep.

Since I'm home, I'm going to spend the day organizing. I bought three pendaflex's and I'm going to start filing things away. One pendaflex will be Buggy's, one with be mine, and one will be ours. Those will include shared bills, wedding residuals, etc. Not too exciting, I know, but sometimes you have one of these days which turn out to be quick necessary.

Can't wait till yoga tonight! I wonder how much further I'll get on my headstand!

Till tomorrow

Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Me

Buggy and I almost did something really naughty at the bank today. No, we weren't thinking about becoming Bonnie and Clyde, although that could have been an interesting scenario. No, what we had in mind was far more mischevious then criminal. And, it involved peaches. But, before I tell the story of the Bank HaPolim Peaches Predicament, I have to give a quick synopsis of Tuesday/Wednesday.

Tuesday morning, woke up feeling nasty. Headache and some nausea so I stayed home from school which was good because I had to finish my story. So, I wrote for most of the day, caught up on some e-mail backlog and did some wedding stuff before hitting the hay. Wednesday it was bright and early wake up for me, in school by 8:30 a.m. Professor Kramer's class was great, as usual. We discussed Tillie Olson's short story Tell Me a Riddle which is one of the saddest pieces of literature that I've ever read. While Professor Kramer tends to cry every time he reads the piece, my tear ducts stayed dry. It was sad but not boo-hoo sad. After Professor Kramer's class, it was on to Professor Harvey's and now we're really at the meat of the course! We're finally discussing Free Will vs. Gods Knowledge of Paticulars and it's getting interesting. I think I'm going to opt to write the 3-4 page paper on this topic, which should be pretty easy for me. I've been grappling with the Free Will vs. Preodination concept since Junior High School and I will be absolutely thrilled if this course gets me to a satisfying answer.

After class, Tobye drove me to the bus stop and I walked home, stopping at the SuperSol to pick up some stuff for dinner. Buggy called to ask me out on a date (a first since engagement) and we were invited by his best friend's wife to come over to their house to celebrate Buggy's friend's birthday. I have to say, Buggy's BF and his wife are two of the nicest, most genuine people I've met since moving here. And, I'm absolutely thrilled that we all get along so well, especially since Buggy has been close with them since his Yeshiva days. Anyway, it's a good thing I never got around to cooking dinner cause it was a dinner party and we were starving by the time we got there! The food was excellent, onion soup, Egyptian meatballs, orzo and Israeli salad. The chocolate cake with a big #3 for his b-day looked amazing for dessert, but I held my resolve and didn't partake. I just sipped my cinnamon magic tea instead and enjoyed the conversation.

Now, I ended up sleeping in Jerusalem because Buggy's friends live in Givat Zeev. In fact, they have an absolutely beautiful apartment there and it has a gorgeous view and sports one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen. I guess that's what is to be expected from a gardener's home! I wish he could give me pointers, it's a miracle my cactus is still alive! Anyway, when Buggy got to Tel Aviv to pick me up for my date, I was really itchy. And, I noticed these red splotches on my arm and was getting a bit nervous. In fact, I've noticed them before but now I was concerned since they didn't appear to be going away. Buggy called the Medical Center in Wolfson and got me an appointment with a dermatologist for this morning, and so off we went to Jerusalem for the night.

The problem with sleeping by Buggy's parents is that the bed is so comfortable, and I'm not alone in the house so I feel a bit more "protected", that I overslept. Buggy overslept cause, well, we didn't go to bed until 2:00 a.m. and he didn't hear all three alarms! (Three alarms people, he even took my cell phone and set that alarm as a backup but it didn't help!). Anyway, at 9:45, he woke me up and we started rushing to make the 11:00 a.m. appointment. The Dr. at Wolfson was really nice, and she told me that it looks like I have bug bites but couldn't tell me from what kind of bug.

Yuck!

She gave me a steroid oitment that should bring the swelling down and told me to call her if it doesn't get better. I hope it does - with wedding 67 days away I really don't want to have bug bites! Anyway, it's now 11:30 and I'm pretty hungry. I need to eat and drink water in the mornings, especially drinking water with how easily I get dehyrated in Israel. Buggy, though, is like a Sabra camel and can go all morning without food or drink and be fine. So, instead of going to eat something, we decided to go to Bank Hapoalim to open a joint bank account. Now, normally I would have waited on that until after the wedding, especially since now I'm going to have to go back to the Bank and sign 33,000 forms again with my new signature (after the name change) but we got some engagement checks from the States and it's not nice to not deposit them. Anyway, so there we are at the Bank, and we're waiting to open the new account. Now, I also needed to go and take out the rent money for my Wicked Witch of Northern Tel Aviv landlord since she is coming at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow morning to collect. Nevertheless, I didn't anticipate how long of a process this was going to take.

First, we needed to set up the account. That took a while, since there were a million forms to sign and loads of questions to ask like when I want an SMS sent to my cell phone with my credit card statement or what address I want my statements to be mailed to. Then, Buggy and I both had to sign and finally, almost an hour later, the account was open.

However, the gentelman who opened our account couldn't put money into it - that's not his department. So, we had to wait for someone else. But, the person we wanted to go to was busy so he told us to wait for another woman. Now, this woman for whatever reason, got up and disappeared right when we sat down.

And that's when we saw her bag of fruit on her desk. It started to speak to us, the 2 peaches, 3 cherries and 4 apricots. They looks so good, Buggy and I both started salivating. We were starving - it was already 1:00 p.m.! I said to Buggy, "don't they give new bank customers fruit as a present?" Well, he agreed. And we tried to figure out what would happen if we just helped ourselves to the peaches.

We imagined scenarios:

1) The woman returns to see us in the midst of chowing down on her peaches. "Are those my peaches?" she would ask. "Peaches?" we would say "what peaches? We don't see any peached!" SLURP.

2)The woman returns to see us in the midst of chowing down on her peaches. "Are thos my peaches?" she would ask. "I'm sorry," we would answer "but these aren't for bank customers?" Awkward pause in mid bite. "Umm, would you like them back?"

3) The woman returns to see no peaches in the bag, and Buggy and I wiping peach juice off of our mouths. A trickle rolls down my arm but I rub it away in the arm of the chair. "What happened to my peaches?" she would ask. "Peaches? We didn't see any peaches. Just those three cherries and 4 apricots. Are you sure you had peaches?"

At this point, I am hysterical with laughter. My side is hurting because I can't breath and Buggy is laughing with me but getting a little nervous cause it appears that I'm cracking up. Oh, and did I mention that the bank closes at 1:00 so we were the only customers left in the now quiet building? I felt like I was making a big ruckas at the library but I couldn't control myself.

FINALLY, the woman returns only she wasn't interested in helping us. Now, I was past the funny-happy-hungry girl and told Buggy that he really didn't want to meet Hungry Holylandhipster. She's usually locked up inside cause she can be a real, well, bitch if let loose. I started snapping that people needed to help us so we could be on our way and, well, they finally did. We left the bank at 1:30 and made our way to Ben Yehudah.

Folks, I have no idea the name of the place where we ate nor do I care. However, the food was amazing. It's this shwarma restaurant place across the street from Cafe Rimon, where they give you about 10 salatim with 2 pitot as soon as you sit down. You choose from a pretty nice meat menu and then they just bring you either a pita or platter of what you selected. Buggy chose to get the Pargiot on skewers and I went with the shwarma with fried onions.

And then our waitress brought us a huge plate of french fries. I told her not to put french fries on my platter and just give me Israeli salad. She said she couldn't remove the french fries from the platter (does that make ANY sense?) and brought me my plate with shwarma, french fries and a side plate of Israeli salad. I removed the french fries to this other huge plate of fries she gave us and Buggy and I chowed down. At the end of the meal, Buggy reached over to eat one of the skewered vegetables that came with his pargit. He took the green pepper and bit down, not realize it was a Jalapeno green pepper. His eyes started watering, his mouth went numb, and he looked like he was going to faint. Unfortunately, he had finished his drink and so I gave him some of my soda while he waved his hand to the waitress. He told her to quickly bring him some water from the tap and she went to look in the cooler for mineral water. At this point, I thought Buggy was going to pass out and finally she ran and got him a glass of water.

He couldn't feel his tongue or mouth and was starting to look like he was going to be sick. So, I did what any other loving fiance would do. I leaned over and kissed him. Twice. My mouth and tongue became a bit numb, tingling a little, but Buggy starting feeling better.

I guess mouth to mouth works on hot peppers too.

Anyway, after a huge lunch, Buggy dropped me off at the bus stop and I was off to Tel Aviv. Somehow, I managed to get stuck with Mr. Drooling, Sleep-on-the-person-next-to-me's-shoulder. I felt like a fly on a windshield, that's how squished I was against the window. Finally, I just cleared my throat and pushing his leg a bit with my own. He got the hint but for a few seconds, and then he was snoring again against me.

Gross!

I was thrilled when we got to Tel Aviv and I ran like a bat outta hell off the bus. The wall home was good, although was sweaty, and I had to once again peel off my clothes when I got home. Now, I'm just relaxing before I have to go plan the menu for Shabbat. Buggy is coming and with my dietarian restrictions - and his - I'm going to have to be the creative culinary cook!

Crave of the Day should not come as a surprise. McDonald's French Fries! Not only was I taunted by the big plate of thick steak fries at lunch, but the girl sitting across from me on the bus to Tel Aviv was devouring a super sized MickeyD's French Fries and they just looked soo good! I think I'm gonna have a peach for a snack :)

PS. Katherine posted on my blog and, while I wish I was able to post back on hers (I don't know what your blog URL is so I hope you're still reading!) the requested information from your comment is as follows: Mei Eden can be reached either by *5335 on your cell phone or at 1-700-70-2002. I have a hot/cold water cooler and get 2 containers a month which is more than enough for one to two people for that time!