In the neighborhood

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The theme for Carmi's Thematic Photographic this week is rows. Living in an urban neighborhood I was really taken with this one. After all, the manmade environment is full of rows and angles. As I walked over to pick up my son from school today I saw rows everywhere - rows of steel rebar rising from a new apartment building, rows of shops, a long row of cars belonging to waiting parents, rows of trees evenly spaced in the median of a boulevard. All very urban looking. Edgy.

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An hour later I found myself looking around just a few blocks further away, less than half a mile from this urban grit, and the scene was almost pastoral.

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Maya has a weekly therapy appointment in this small house with its neat little red-tiled roof. It is a modest unassuming structure, left over from days gone by. It would be almost homely were it not for the love someone has obviously shown it.

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To enter, you open an old wooden gate, its rows of planks battered and faded with age.
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Running around the outer edge of the property is a fence, it's metal rows stretching out seemingly endlessly from the gate.

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Back outside again, a brick sidewalk leads off towards the neighbors...

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... who have their own row, this time of doors. Why so many? I have no idea. One is a driveway, one a main entrance, one is probably for the garbage cans, the fourth, who knows, perhaps a utility meter. After that is anyone's guess. Perhaps it is in fact the entrance to a cleverly designed two-family house masquerading as one but providing entrance for two.

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Rows. They're everywhere, if you look.

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Much more fun than working

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This morning I did what everyone should do every once in a while - I ditched work and household responsibilities for a few hours to go out for breakfast with a friend. In my blog fodder post Hannah from A Mother In Israel jokingly suggested that I should meet her for breakfast and then blog about it, so I did.
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In a somewhat unusual twist of fate Hannah is actual a real life friend turned blog friend - we knew each other for years before discovering that we each had a blog. These days though it seems like we talk more through our blogs and e-mails than face to face, which is a bit silly since we live just 20 minutes apart.
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It was high time to rectify that, and how better than over a yummy breakfast.
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Standing next to a display of amazing-looking cakes that we didn't actually eat. (And if you could see the butt that I oh so subtlely cropped out of this picture you would understand why, though I really hope I don't have that many chins in real life! Gak! I am SO getting serious about this whole diet thing.)
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Hannah with food that is in fact ours.
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This place bakes the most amazing rolls. Even my breadmaking husband can't get enough of them.

All in all, a delightful morning.

See, you never know what kind of good things could happen when you answer Robin's request for blog fodder ;-).
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Lamp outside Aladdin Restaurant, Jaffa

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

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Elections writ small

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Amidst all the hoopla of a major national election and all that entails, it is sometimes easy to forget that democracy is about a lot more than just electing a president. It is also about electing all those people who actually keep things functioning - the ones who make sure the schools run well, that the garbage gets picked up on time, that your streets are filled with endless construction "for the good of the town" for six months before any election...

Today municipal elections are being held all over Israel. Citizens throughout the country are choosing their mayor and town or city council members. It is a two-pronged system - the mayor is chosen individually and the council is chosen via list. You vote for a list of candidates (members of a particular national, or often strictly local, party). The number of candidates receiving seats is determined by their proportional share of the vote. Since it is almost unheard of for any one list to receive a clear majority, the actual government is made up of whatever coalition of various groups the new mayor (or prime minister, since our national government is a coalition one as well) can cobble together.

Elections in my small city are surprisingly acrimonious, with poisonous mud flung in all directions as everyone tries to grab that piece of the pie. It bothered me more until someone explained to me years ago that these same men (for yes, they're all men at the top of the list in this town) have been fighting and slinging that same mud at each other since they were schoolchildren. The accusations on all sides are serious, and I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between, but at least this year I felt my vote was clear. The incumbent may have a lot of enemies, and he may or may not have a penchant for strong-arm tactics, but so far it's all rumor and innuendo, and I haven't seen anyone else behaving much better. At least this guy is fixing the things that *I* believe were wrong with the city - the schools are vastly improved, particularly ours, the town's infrastructure has been upgraded, there are now flowers everywhere, a lot of dead weight was culled out of city hall (that one right there created half the enemy list), things here are BETTER than they were. The city LOOKS good now, inviting, like a place that you would want to live, and sure enough people are noticing, and coming. There are new restaurants, good ones, sprouting up like mushrooms. People are actually coming here from other towns to go out for Friday breakfast now. Imagine that. When I moved in about thirteen years ago there wasn't a cafe to be had, and now I have my choice of about 8 within a reasonable walking distance. The quality of the special education services too has surprised me for the better at every turn.

Whether I love him or hate him is irrelevant though. What is important is that I put my money where my mouth is and exercised my civic duty to vote. Not just for the big sexy national elections, but for the little ones that in their own way have just as much, or more, influence on my day to day life.

So I voted this morning. Or rather, my son did (yes, he of letter-writing fame). Which you would see here if he wasn't so impatient to vote that he stuffed the two envelopes into the ballot box and started to move away before I managed to snap the shot. (Yes, they let him go behind the curtain with me. He read the slips of paper, chose the correct ones, put them in the envelopes, sealed those envelopes, and then stuck them in the ballot box - by himself, as his proud mama looked on.)

You can't see him actually cast my his our vote, but at least you can see his bright red shirt.
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Any questions? Go ahead and ask 'em. I'm still welcoming blog fodder after all, despite my burying my request under new posts.

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A Giant Puddle of Mommy Mush

(We interrupt this call for blog fodder because this is simply too good not to share.)

I think someone had better get a mop, because I just melted all over the floor.

A few minutes ago Jay told Itai it was time to get ready for bed. He said he needed a few minutes, he had to write something first. We figured it was a stall technique but let him do it anyway. This is what he wrote:

(translated from Hebrew)

Dear Daddy and Mommy,

I love you very much, and I love to play with you very much, and I love to hug and kiss you very much, and I love to hold hands with you.

Love,
Itai

- decorated with a Cupid's heart, and then dated at my request, because you bet your booties this one is going into the "never ever ever throw this out" box

PS Keep the blog fodder requests coming now ;-).
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Blog fodder, or need thereof

Since I've committed to posting every day this month I figure it's in both of our interests for you, the readers, to chip in with suggestions for what you'd like to read. It's win-win - I get ideas, and you get the privilege of not being bored out of your skulls.

So dear readers, what would YOU like to see more of in this space over the next few weeks? What burning questions are YOU dying to see answered?

Okay then, since we're all in agreement (see how smoothly I assumed the sale there? Must be that marketing training in action.) - fire away.

You ask, I'll answer.