Shana Tova

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A happy, healthy, peaceful New Year to all.

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After a festive holiday meal tonight (Monday) surrounded by dear friends we consider our "Israel family" we're off in the morning to ring in the New Year with a Rosh Hashana camping trip. The weather's finally cooling off a bit and it's time to inaugurate the tent that (nearly) ate Tel Aviv. When we were in the States we finally got ourselves a tent big enough for all of us and all our gear. We put it up in the living just to see how it all worked and it literally filled the room. It's tall enough to stand up in (hurray, no more squatting down to change!).
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Don't believe me? See for yourselves.

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This monster even has a "pet hatch". Luckily, we've got a cute pet to stick in there. He does tend to drool a bit though with that tongue hanging out.

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Spokes

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Carmi's theme for this week's Thematic Photographic is "angles". I messed around with it a bit this morning but nothing really came together for me until I got this one. I like the way the lighting and the spokes combine to suggest a post-industrialist type sunset. (Does anyone else see that or am I venturing too far off into lala land?)
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TT - 13 Bizarre Bad Day Holidays

Where do they come up with this stuff*...

1. Have a Bad Day Day--November 19 (do they give out frown face buttons or something?)
2. Humiliation Day--January 4 (remind me to hide all pictures of me from the 70's!)
3. Peculiar People Day--January 10 (could work for most of us)
4. Be Late for Something Day--September 5 (heck, I do this every day)
5. Blame Someone Else Day--January 13 (fun!)
6. Blame Someone Else Day--August 13 (yes, again)
7. Blame Somebody Else Day--April 13 (they really liked this one, didn't they?)
8. International Twit Award Month--February 1-28 (I could get behind this one)
9. International Twit Award Month--April 1-30 (are twits so worthy that they need two whole months?)
10. National Procrastination Week--March 1-7 (now this one I like)
11. Be Nasty Day--March 8 (ooh, this could be fun)
12. Panic Day--March 9 (aaaaaaahhh!)

and finally

13. International Panic Day--June 18 (for those for whom ordinary local panic isn't widespread enough)

* The answer is right here.

WW - Neighborhood market, just before the Sabbath

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Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what other people aren't saying

Giant Ant

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A ruby red sculpture in Portsmouth, New Hampshire's Market Square. Mary had suggested that we go for just a little bit of red for this week's Ruby Tuesday. You decide, is this "a little bit" of red or a whole lot? Either way, I liked the sculpture. Sort of an odd choice for street art, but then again Portsmouth had a pretty great edginess and counterculture undertone to it, so it does actually fit in in its own way against the background of the historic square.

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Beauty among the wreckage

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Despite my small city's fairly urban character it still retains vestiges of its village roots. In the center of the city is a small commercial street, a remnant of days gone by. It looks a bit rundown, as many these days do. Too many stores lie empty, unable to compete with the big new mall just a mile away, but enough remain viable that it still retains its neighborhood feel. I can still buy groceries, or new sheets and towels, or art supplies, or fresh-baked pastries; I can fill prescriptions, or stock up on fresh-roasted cashews, or by clothes for my kids, or even buy a new friend for my fish without ever getting into my car.
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Between the small family-run businesses which continue on unchanged year after year are those buildings which time forgot. Old sheds which should have been condemned years ago. Nature has a way of reclaiming her own though, even in the middle of the city.

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Around one of these old structures wraps the most magnificent bougainvillea bush imaginable, it's fuschia flowers shining brighter than the sun against the fading white paint of the shed. Each year it bursts into bloom, begging me to come photograph its fleeting beauty. Each year I tell it that I will, and each year I do not.

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Until this year. Yesterday I finally made the time to answer the unspoken invitation, and another surprising spoken one.

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Nature has claimed a bigger stake with each passing year. First it was the shed

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And then the telephone pole

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And then the date palm nearby

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(Do you see the dates growing high above?)

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And all the while I was being watched. Mordechai lives across the street from the bougainvillea, in the modest old home best known for being the one that sets out a tray of wet bread scraps for the pigeons each day (I'd often wondered who did that). Each day he sits on an old plastic chair in the shade of the tree, watching the world go by. He watched silently as I took pictures. When he saw that I had finished he quietly asked what I'd been doing. When I explained, he asked to have his picture taken with the tree too.

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Here it is. Mordechai. And yes, I do believe that he was sitting outside in his boxer shorts, but we shall ignore that and leave him with his dignity intact.

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TT - 13 things I could have bought instead of a new washing machine

Ugh. There is some majorly bad appliance karma in this house right now. First the dishwasher, then the air conditioner, then the washing machine, and now the dryer is suddenly squeaking. I think I'm going to have to sacrifice a small toaster to the appliance gods or something to put a stop to this before I go completely broke.

Bearing in mind that appliances are quite a bit more expensive here in Israel than they are in the US (repairs too - to fix the thing would have been $300), here are 13 things I could have spent my money on instead of having to buy a new washing machine this week:

1. A flat screen tv

2. A week at a swanky B&B here in Israel

3. New furniture for Maya's room

4. Five months of weekly cleaning services

5. Two airline tickets to Europe (someplace closer)

6. 16 months worth of gym fees

7. Jewelry (a girl can dream)

8. 8-10 very nice dinners out (not including babysitting)

9. Two months of the kids' afternoon program

10. 10-12 pairs of shoes

11. A whole new wardrobe

12. The kids' after-school activities for the entire year, with change

13. A new desktop computer

Keep your fingers crossed that the dryer hangs on for a while, would ya?

Hope your week has been more successful than mine. Happy Thursday Thirteen.

Amarone

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Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what other people aren't saying.

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The Oracle Glass

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You never know quite how a favorite book is going to enter your life. Sometimes it's a friend's recommendation, or a book club selection, sometimes a fancy display in a bookstore or a slick promotion attracts your attention, or perhaps you were asked to participate in a blogger book tour. Sometimes it's as simple as grabbing an eye-catching cover out of the sale bin outside your local bookstore.
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I found Judith Merkle Riley's The Oracle Glass in a $2 bin outside the bookstore when I was looking to grab something to read on a plane. With it's gorgeous, and very red, cover it was bound to catch my eye ("bound" to catch my eye, get it?). When I flipped it over and saw that it was a story of witchcraft and decadence set in France during the reign of Louis XIV, with a feisty and independent young girl as the protagonist, and best of all based on a series of true scandals that had rocked 17th French society, I knew that this was the one that would be coming home with me. It didn't disappoint either. Riley is a gifted storyteller, creating such vivid portraits with her words that you can almost reach out and touch the sights and sounds of 17th century France. I've read this book over and over again, it's one of those comforting, familiar friends that I can just pick up whenever I crave some easy familiarity, sometimes starting from the beginning and proceeding through to the end, other times just jumping in mid-stream and letting the story carry me away.
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And of course with its ruby red cover it is also an obvious choice for a Ruby Tuesday post, don't you think?
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Guess who came to visit!

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Itai was excited to find a letter addressed to him in yesterday's mail, and was even more excited when he opened it to find that Flat Stanley had come to visit Israel - all the way from a second grade class in Georgia! The very lovely Megan, daughter of mom's friend in the computer Tinene, sent this terrific-looking Flat Stanley over to Itai's house so that he could learn first-hand what it's like to be a second-grader here in Israel and then report back to Megan's class on his adventures.

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Itai has read a bunch of the Flat Stanley books so having Flat Stanley himself come to visit is a real treat. Here's Stanley checking out his collection.
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Here he's checking out Itai's Hebrew dictionary - this one stays at our house for helping out mom, whose Hebrew spelling is atrocious helping with homework. Itai and his classmates each also have a pocket version that they keep at school.

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We'll have to check with Megan to see how long Stanley plans to visit with us. Hopefully he'll have time to visit Itai's school and a few other places too. (Sadly he came one day too late to visit the Old City of Jerusalem with Itai and Jay, but I'm sure we'll find lots of other cool places to take him while he's here.)

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Me, in parts

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The final theme for Project Show Me is "you".
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I would have loved to use this shot again (which first appeared here, and which I think Robert suspected when he said "a self portrait; your hands; your feet (I know some of you will be all over this one!); a shielded view of you; any way you want to portray yourself will work here." but I'm trying to be a good team player and take a new shot especially for the project as requested. (Who'd have suspected that I was a closet rule-follower? Certainly not me...) It's still a favorite of mine though. Quirky, a bit different, irreverent. A lot like the rest of me in fact. (See how I just snuck it in here anyway without overtly using it as my "Show Me" shot? I'm so sneaky...)
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Since I can't use the feet shot and I'm both horribly unphotogenic (yes really, even my own mother says I look awful in pictures) and am wearing an old ripped up t-shirt and shorts with my hair up in a sloppy bun there is no chance in hell that you will get a proper self-portrait. Instead, you'll have to settle for an artist's rendering.

I think it looks just like me, don't you?

Just think, it could have been worse. I could have subjected you to this instead:

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Fish Therapy

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What, you didn't know that fish can need therapy? You'd need therapy too if you were stuck swimming in circles around a tiny glass bowl all day...

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Seriously though, I find watching fish to be one of the most therapeutic and relaxing activities there is. There's just something about watching them silently glide and dart that I find utterly mesmerizing. My family knows that taking me to an aquarium is a risky prospect, that they are in danger of being trapped for hours as I gaze in wonder at the teeming life in the depths.

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Right now we've only got this poor little zebra fish in an old bowl. He's been with us for about two years now. (He used to have a few friends, but they've, uhh, gone to visit friends in other fishbowls far away. Yeah, that's what they've done. Hey, I may like to watch them but I never said I was great at taking care of them.) My kids are agitating for some friends for our lonely little guy though, so sometime soon we'll either buy a new bowl and a few more zebras, possible with a beta fish thrown in, or else take the plunge and decide that we're ready for the responsibility of an aquarium of our own. Maybe I'll price a few just to see...

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In the meantime, Mr. Fish and I will just continue to gaze lovingly into each other's eyes.

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I kid. He's certainly not looking at me. This fish is dumber than bread. Half the time he doesn't even notice when we feed him. Ah well, perhaps it's just his own coping mechanism - if I ignore the big scary monsters staring in at me maybe they'll just go away again and leave me to my silent prison. Alone. Afraid. The last survivor.

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See what I mean? Sometimes fish really could use some therapy.

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Or a friend.

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TT - 13 school supplies not on the original list that I had to buy this week

I have now been at the stationary store four (!) days in a row. Thankfully it's right down the block, but still, I really wish the teachers would get their act together and get everything onto the master list we're sent over the summer.

1. 3 more small Hebrew notebooks

2. 2 more math notebooks (graph paper)

3. a package of pastels

4. a "book stand" (for holding books upright while they read. Why exactly do they need this?)

5. A different kind of small pencil sharpener - this teacher doesn't like the one they had to use last year

6. an activity book for when the child finishes their assignments early (used a dot-to-dot book we already had for this one)

7. yet another notebook - this time a large spiral one

8. a special notebook for penmanship

9. a book to read at their desk (needed a new one he hadn't read already, and our stash of Hebrew books is woefully limited, I prefer to buy English books he won't get otherwise)

10. and still another notebook - this one for musical notation

11. clear plastic covers for workbooks - this one wasn't mentioned at first and I was hoping to get away without it this year. Drat.

12. some other notebook, I don't even remember which subject that one was for, but the cover had to be pink (I didn't find pink and used purple instead. Sue me.)

13. A pocket dictionary which required FOUR separate trips to the store just for that! They originally mistakenly asked for a full-size dictionary, which I bought. By the time the school realized its mistake (after school had already started!) I'd already written Itai's name in it and so couldn't return it. The store then didn't have the correct version because it hadn't been ordered in time, and so kept getting deliveries in drips and drabs. It took four tries before I managed to get one. That one will remain at school and the big one at home (and with my atrocious Hebrew spelling god knows I need it), so at least it's not a complete waste.




And while you're out doing the Thursday Thirteen rounds today, take a moment to remember all those who lost their lives on that terrible day seven years ago.

Remembering Grandma

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My father's mother, my Grandma (not to be confused with Nana, my maternal grandmother), was born in Hungary in 1907, living there until she emigrated to the US in the late 1920's. (There is a great deal more to that part of the story, but that is not a story for today. Today I prefer happier memories.)
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She worked most of her life as a seamstress, eventually even designing evening gowns for a famous pianist's partner to wear to his concerts. Grandma was very much a European - elegant and well-put together, with a clear sense of style (which sadly seems to have skipped my generation). Even when she lay sick in the hospital she made sure to have a nurse paint her nails in the bright red shade she favored.
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When I was growing up I always wanted to be taken to my grandparents' home when I was home sick from school because Grandma would make me grilled cheese sandwiches cut into triangles with the crusts removed, so much fancier than the simple rectangles I received at my own house. She had art books, and design magazines, and fancy needlepoints of sad-looking pierrots, and a button box for her grandchildren to play with that would be the envy of every child for miles around.
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She had a very formal living room which contained the world's most unbelievably over the top gilded coffee table - which she hated. She'd been talked into buying it by her wealthier and even more elegant sister-in-law and had hated it since the day it was brought home, but it would have offended her sister-in-law terribly to have gotten rid of it, so there it stayed. It was partially redeemed though by the four-compartment candy dish which she kept on the table - fully-stocked with everything from chocolates to peppermints.
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In my jewelry box, right next to a gold ring with her name on it which came with her from Hungary, is a small golden box which contains my most tactile memory of my grandmother. The box contains Fiamma, a solid perfume from Princess Marcella Borghese. When I open the box I inhale my grandmother's very essence, a scent that transports me back thirty years in time. This perfume hasn't been manufactured in decades, it can't even be found by google, but somehow this little tiny box has kept its scent strong all these years, giving me one last sensory link to a woman I loved dearly and lost much too early.
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My grandmother's perfume, what more perfect sentimental object could I have chosen to show you today...

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WW - Faded Blooms

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(Doing double-duty with Thematic Photographic today - this week's theme is "faded".)

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Ruby Large and Small

The color red appears in numerous places throughout my home, like in the full vibrant red of my dishes (or rather of 2/3 of my dishes. The other third are yellow.) I love this mix and match set. They replaced a set of simple Corel dishes we'd had since we got married over fifteen years earlier when we needed durable, space-saving dishes which could follow us around to a series of early homes with tiny kitchens and no storage space. We got these last year. They're big, they're heavy, and each bowl takes up half the dishwasher, but they make me smile every time I see them.
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At the other extreme there are the subtle red accents in this handpainted ceramic bowl my husband brought home from Morocco many years ago. Coincidentally, the bowl is hung just to the right of my front door, so it's doing double duty as my Project Show Me offering for today. I'm sneaky like that. (Oh, and the tan triangles are apparently made out of camel bone, but I try not to think about that too much.)
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Now speaking of dishes, I really need to head into the kitchen and do some cooking.

Around My Island

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It's kitchen time today at Project Show Me. You guys already see a picture of my kitchen each time you visit (in my header for those of you reading this on a reader - go ahead, click through, it's a nice picture) so I decided that for today's project shoot I'd zoom both in and out.

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First, the overview. This one is fairly similar to the header photo (which is quite fuzzy now that I look at it), but taken this morning on my DSLR (a Nikon D40 if you're curious) instead of last year on my old point and shoot.

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In it you see where this and this happen(ed), complete with living proof of the former, as well as a great closeup of this (I love this one).

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And from another angle

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Here's a closeup of the cruets, of spilled olive oil fame - I managed to replace the broken one and now we have a matched set again!

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And a peak at part of my cookbook collection (yes, this is only part of it. What can I say, I love cookbooks.)

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And just so I can remind myself how far I've come (both in terms of my kitchen and my photography), here are a couple of pictures of what it used to look like. It was even worse when we first bought the flat - there were two steering wheel shaped (I kid you not) fluorescent light fixtures on the ceiling which through off a huge amount of blindingly white light which reflected oh so beautifully off those pearly white cabinets (a huge honking wall of them) to make you feel like you were sitting inside a flashbulb! (You guys are old enough to remember flashbulbs, right?) Seriously, it was blinding, and the overall look was not helped at all by the horrible black plastic knobs that we lived with for years before a realtor friend walked in one day and said "you know, it wouldn't be quite as awful with chrome fixtures." She was right too, we were kicking ourselves for not doing it ten years earlier. Still, it was a very happy day the day the contractors took a sledgehammer to the thing and paved the way for what you saw above.
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Those black and white tiles even manage to make my red Kitchen Aid look ugly. Then there was the microwave cabinet that was too small for our own fairly small microwave, the stove that had to swim in the too-wide refrigerator spot because our fridge wouldn't fit in the stupidly small hole, leaving the fridge standing alone on the opposite side of the room, the missing bit of counter at the far end where the previous owner had installed her washing machine, which had to be filled in with something that didn't quite match... It was hideous. Big I'll grant you, but my god was it ugly. Here, see for yourselves:

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Now quick, go back up to the top of the page before your eyes start to bleed!

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My mailbox, sort of

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Robert over at Thoughts of a Father has just launched Project Show Me - a very cool new photo project (his very first one too, so come show him some love and play along).

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For day 1, we are to show you our mailboxes. This one was a bit of a challenge for me, since I live in an urban hi-rise with an incredibly ugly bank of mailboxes (why couldn't he have started with tomorrow's challenge - kitchens - I renovated two years ago and LOVE my kitchen). Not to mention, for some reason my city doesn't have mail delivery. All city residents are given, free of charge, a post office box. All "regular" mail, and a fair amount of junk mail, gets delivered to the PO Box. The only things that arrive in the mailbox in our building are municipal tax/water bills, gas bills (no idea why, they just do), free local newspapers (weeklies, chock full of ads and local political rhetoric), and flyers. That's about it.

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The only things the building mailbox has going for it photographically are a) the fact that it is right here and not several blocks away (a definite consideration on a day when my schedule is already jam-packed as it is) and b) it is slightly (very, very slightly) less hideously ugly than the post office boxes, which are just locked little doors.

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Never one to shirk at a challenge I took my trusty camera downstairs and hoped for the best. Somehow I had to find a way to make this wall of metal look photogenic, and to do so without revealing my or anyone else's personal information. Easier said than done.

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Luck was on my side though, and there was in fact a local paper sticking out of the box, which gave me something to shoot other than nameplates and locks. I went for the black and white conversion to hide the overwhelming ugliness because what could be more fitting for a shot of a newspaper than black and white. (Oh, and mine is the mailbox on the bottom with its nameplate carefully hidden from view, not the one showing the grayed out name of a long-since moved away neighbor.)

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And now, without more drivel further ado, I give you...

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drumroll please

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...my mailbox!

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Old and New

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Something about this knot with its new (formerly white) rope and rusty old spike really fascinated me. I shot it from a lot of different angles, including from the ground up. I think I took this one while lying flat out on the ground. Passersby probably thought I was insane...

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This week's Photo Hunt theme is string.

Faded Beauty and Knights in Shining Armor

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Today's offering for Carmi's Faded theme for this week's Thematic Photographic -

From this early in the season, to this:
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Faded Beauty

And since I don't have a good backstory for this one, other than to say that they grew in a pot on my rooftop patio, I thought I'd leave you with this instead:

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This morning Jay and I finally decided that the time had come to do something about the shoe colony that was multiplying beyond all control at the base of the stairs. There was no avoiding it, a trip to shopping hell Ikea was unavoidable. Let me say straight out that I don't enjoy shopping at Ikea. At all. I don't like the way they force you to wend through miles of galleries housing objects you don't want, I don't like the way you're expected to manhandle heavy boxes by yourself, none of it. But, they had just the piece we needed at a reasonable price so with some trepidation I agreed to do the unthinkable and go to Ikea on a Friday - a WEEKEND. (Yes, Fridays are the weekend here, we work from Sunday to Thursday.) To avoid the maze that is the main store I spent twenty minutes on hold so that a telephone operator could tell me the catalog number and exact location of the piece I needed, allowing me to go straight to the warehouse, and headed out.

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I knew as soon as I saw the parking lot that it was going to be ugly. I finally parked several countries away and my son and I headed into the store. I dropped him off in the movie theater to watch cartoons and went looking for the dresser. Half an hour later I'd finally found an employee to help me locate it (several shelves away from where they'd told me and not clearly marked) and heave it onto my cart. I then waited another fifteen minutes or so to pay.

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When I was finally ready to go my son was right in the middle of a show, so I agreed to leave him there while I loaded the car.

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Only catch, you can't take the flipping carts to your car and the official pickup area was completely full. I couldn't leave the cart unattended while I drove around looking for some way to get closer, nor would I leave my 7 year old alone, baking in the heat, while I did.

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I ended up standing there helplessly for a few minutes before deciding to try and carry the damn thing myself. After many attempts I finally had to concede defeat. I couldn't even stand the box upright, let alone pick it up.

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I was rapidly running out of both patience and options when a complete stranger walked up to me and asked if I wanted him to carry the (incredibly heavy) box to my car. I was SO grateful for the help, but I did warn him that I'd parked all the way in outer Slobovia somewhere. Nevermind he said, he was heading that way anyway. A few times I offered to let him set it down and I'd drive the car around, but he insisted on carrying it all the way, telling me that it was fine because his wife was waiting comfortably in the air conditioning. His help made the impossible manageable, gave me a great teachable moment when I went back in to get my son, and put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Just by taking five minutes out of his day to help someone who needed it. Israelis can often be downright horrible to each other, but this guy restored my faith in humanity.

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So whoever you are out there, thank you. I literally couldn't have done it without you.

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More than the sum of its parts

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Click to enlarge

This old, faded wooden crosspiece is what I see when I look across the wall that divides my home from my neighbors'. It's a bit rundown looking, someone less charitable might even call it an eyesore, but they would be looking no further than its surface.

This weatherbeaten piece of wood has been holding up my neighbors' sukkah each fall for all of the thirteen years I've lived here, and probably for several more before that. A few weeks from now, once Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, have passed, my neighbors will lay palm fronds across this frame, with lengths of sheeting stretched to form walls around the outside, creating the sukkah where they will gather their friends and relatives to celebrate the Sukkot holiday. They will decorate the palm frond ceiling and plain white walls with intricate homemade decorations - everything from Chinese lanterns to paper chains to my own children's childish drawings.
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The decorations and the holiday spirit they represent will more than overshadow the faded old wood which supports them, but they wouldn't be there to admire without its help. Faded yes, but not without beauty, and not without purpose.
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TT - My Life in 13 Parts

Since I haven't TT'd for the past few weeks I thought I'd use my Thirteen this week to catch you guys up a bit on the goings-on around the island lately:

1. For those of you who haven't been here since I was packing, I just spent the month of August in beautiful, albeit very rainy, New England.

(2. For those of you here via All Mediocre who have no idea why I'm writing in number form, this post is doing double duty as my Thursday Thirteen entry for this week. Come play along with us, it's great fun.)

3. The kids and I went to my visit my parents for the month. They had a ball at "Camp Grandma" while I alternated between being on vacation and squeezing in the (very part-time) work hours necessary to help finance our not so little jaunt across the ocean. My folks live in an area full of lakes and close to the mountains, so adventure was pretty much around every turn.

4. Instead of just taking two weeks off and heading to the States, I took four weeks at half-time. August in Tel Aviv is just hot, humid and generally miserable, and by then the day camp sessions are all over, so we decided the best possible option was to just get the heck outta Dodge. Jay couldn't take the whole month off, but he was able to join us halfway through.

(5. Why do the camps close when there is still nearly a month of summer vacation left, leaving parents scrambling for childcare each summer?)

6. Since I work from home, it was as simple as taking my laptop with me.

7. Don't worry, we also had plenty of time to play.

8. And take lots and lots and LOTS of photographs. New England is an awfully photogenic corner of the world. It would be paradise if they could just do something about those neverending winters. On the other hand, if they did we'd probably never want to leave all that green and all that water to come back home to Israel.

9. We swam, and boated, and tubed, and canoed, and hiked, and toured, and flew actual planes, and enjoyed spending time with our extended family.

10. There were even loons on the lake.

11. Then the kids got the shock of a lifetime when my mother announced that she and my dad were taken my two kids and my niece to Disney World for four days. We adults had been keeping that secret for nearly six months, and they never suspected a thing.

12. They had the time of their lives, despite Hurricane Fay's dumping massive quantities of water on their heads.

13. And Jay and I had a fabulous time NOT being taken to Disney.

What? 13 already? That was quick. I could have said a lot more. (Be grateful I didn't.) Thanks for bearing with me on the numbering thing, and on the endless vacation photos thing. Normal posting should resume tomorrow. Maybe. I think. I hope. I really do hope so, because I miss having the chance to actually sit down and write something more substantial than "this is what I did on my summer vacation". Vacation posts are fine, and photography posts are much more than fine (and having the vacations to write about and photograph in the first place is even better!), but my writing muse has been bottled up for too long and is starting to get snippy. It's way past time to let her out again. Not tonight though, I've got a long overdue and very much anticipated girls night out tonight!

Happy Thursday to all of you. I hope it's a great one.

Headstand - or perhaps not

Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what other people aren't saying this week.

WFMW Backwards Edition - Ammonia smell in shower?

Help! I've got a weird ammonia-type smell coming out of the drain in my shower. It seems to happen every few months and I'm able to get rid of it by pouring some drano in there, but using such toxic chemicals seems like overkill when the drain isn't clogged.

Anyone out there have any kinder, gentler solutions?

Check out this week's backwards edition of Works For Me Wednesday over at Rocks in my Dryer (which probably won't be up until several hours after this posts, so if you don't see it just try again later) to see what isn't working for everyone else. Who knows, you might just have the answer they're looking for.

Red with a message

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I snapped this photo of a t-shirt on display at a music festival I attended last month, figuring that the right moment to share it would come along - and so it has.
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Here is my contribution to this week's Ruby Tuesday. It's good to be back.
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In which she returns to her mommyblogger roots

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There are times when I wax philosophical, or fumble with the minutiae of Israeli culture, or push the boundaries of my writing, or spend hours looking for that perfect shot. And then of course there's stuff like this, or this. Or this. Or even this. That one still haunts my dreams.
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This isn't one of those times.

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Yes, this is the obligatory "back to school" post.

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It could have been a photography post, but not with these as the best of the first day of school lot -

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Yes, his eyes were closed or nearly close in every single picture.

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Or this one. At least she's happy, but she's much too busy to even look at me, let alone head for a less busy background. Oh, and the hair? A joint effort. My job is ponytails. Maya does the clips. So many clips. Oh so many clips. Dozens. All at once. Either her hair is down loose or else this. It's all about extremes. No middle ground with this kid.

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Or then there was this attempt to get the two of them together. Herding cats I tell you.

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As for the nitty gritty...

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Itai's day went well. The only surprise there, albeit a major one, was a last minute teacher switch from the same teacher he had last year (who we were THRILLED with) to a complete unknown, but I have heard good things about her and Itai came home happy. (Why wouldn't he, he'd been complaining for months that the previous teacher gave too much homework. He thinks he's on easy street now. I suspect he's in for a fairly rude awakening in a few short days.)

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Maya was our real star today. She started kindergarten (generally freestanding here in Israel, not part of the elementary school) in a small special education "language" kindergarten) as well as joined her brother in his afternoon program. Over the summer the kindergarten was moved from the brand new facility I'd originally blogged about in the link above to an older facility, but the building they're in is still more than enough for the eleven (11! Instead of 35!) children in the class and the teacher and the aide seem both nice and competent. Maya took a while to acclimate this morning, and was a bit unsettled when it was time for the children to eat breakfast (food can be a stressful issue for her) but she seemed to settle in well after that. They only went for two hours today and she was beaming by the time I picked her up, and is enthusiastic about returning tomorrow. As I've gotten to know the staff and the other children and families I've become more and more confident that we made the correct decision to place her in this program, that it is exactly what she needs to make a huge leap forward over the next 1-2 years. When the school day is finished at 1:30 she will be joining Itai at a private afternoon program. She knows several of his friends there as well, and has been happily playing in their playground and glomming treats off the staff for a year now, so that transition went a bit more quickly (though there too she didn't really eat, but hopefully that will settle itself soon). The staff there told me she was a bit reserved, but the fact that she was talking with the director right away when I brought her over (a first day treat, she'll normally take a van) showed me that she was feeling pretty comfortable. Maya herself told me that she had a "great" day and had "lots of fun" and can't wait to go back tomorrow. We're optimistic that this combination of specially-geared attention in the mornings and normal day to day kid stuff in the afternoons will be a good combination for her - giving her the extra boost that she needs without letting her fall further behind her same-age peers by becoming too insular in the special ed world. This is very important to us because the goal (of both us as her parents and of the professionals who understand such things) is to have her ready to enter a regular classroom by first-grade, two years from now. (Many children in Israel with fall birthdays are encouraged to stay in kindergarten for two years, with Maya's other issues it's practically a given.)

All in all we're off to a pretty good start. It was a long, stressful road to get here, but now that we're finally here the sun is out and things are looking good.