Adventures While Commuting, an Election, a Kitchen and Winter-Time – Finally.

Although our car's bovine interaction did dominate our week it was in no way the only event in our lives this week.

I am still trying to figure out the best way to get to work. If you remember my colleague from work had offered me a lift to the train on the mornings he has the car.
So we arranged to meet. I waited. In Israel being late isn't that unusual so I waited some more. Then my son turned up to wait for his lift to school. We waited together. My son's lift turned up and we said goodbye. I still waited. Then I began to worry that my colleague had forgotten me so I phoned. I got a response on the second try and became immediately aware that he was suffering from 'Screaming Child Syndrome'. He promised to get to me in a few minutes which he did accompanied by his small, tearful off-spring. Luckily my appearance didn't cause further upset and he managed to transfer her into the care of her kindergarten teacher pretty swiftly.

Even though the Naharia traffic wasn't too horrendous this delay meant we had to catch the later train. As we clickety-clacked towards Haifa my colleague said his morning prayers and then read the paper while I stuck my nose in a book. After awhile I looked up and realised we had reached our station. I alerted my colleague and we dashed for the exit but the doors locked as we reached them and the train started to roll forward to the next station.

This book was so engrossing I missed my train stop

By this time I was past caring and saw the humour of the situation but my poor companion nearly passed-out in consternation as he realized just how late he was going to be for work. We got off at the next station and crossed under the tracks to the north-bound platform. Fortunately my wry view of the situation rubbed off on my companion and he stopped hyperventilating and we managed to get to work without further delay.

This week we also had local elections. Luckily for me they were not on the same day as our public transportation adventure or I would not have made it home to vote. Not that I'm sure that would have been any great loss. Despite all our best efforts and democratic convictions the two idiots of the North were returned to power and will continue to 'enhance' our lives with colourful paving-stones and little much else.

Although we have now moved North to the Shlomit neighbourhood of Shlomi, a stone's throw from my parents' house, unlike my parents our polling station was located on the main road through Shlomi in the 'Dental Health Centre'. There was quite a melee round the door and as usual the queuing was Israeli-style ('I was in the line, I was just waiting over there')

white paper in the white envelope for your chosen party

yellow paper in the yellow envelope for your choice of council leader

photo: Sharon Gefen

Then they ran out of envelopes and closed the polling station. After 15 minutes of counting and signing and recounting and signing and more counting and more signing a few of the people waiting tried to push to the front, some using excuses other just using their elbows.

If it had been a queue for anything else I would have let rip as I was tired and fed up after a long day at work but I know the guards are in a sensitive position and are just guys from the neighbourhood not professional guards. As it was they threatened to close the polling station then let the most aggressive pushers in to get rid of them faster. Finally after about half an hour we were allowed to do our democratic duty.

Following our bovine escapade I would have preferred to rest all weekend but the carpenter had put the final touches to kitchen and now I just needed to buy a stove top.

Our New Kitchen

The Dresser

 I was debating between a regular one or induction. The problem was my pots. For an induction hob pans have to be ferromagnetic (ie if a fridge magnetic sticks to them they are OK).

So I spent Friday morning pressing a fridge magnetic to the bottom of all my pans.

I discovered that my two favourite pots passed the test while most that didn't were old pots I had wanted to replace anyway. The exception was my favourite large pot which is shallow enough for frying schnitzel but deep enough for stir fry. Not surprisingly my Mum eagerly offered to take it off my hands but as it is my most used pan it would have to be replaced straight-away.

My husband joked that if I had cleared all the kitchen stuff out of the sitting-room by the end of the day I was free to buy as many pots as I wanted. Challenge accepted!

And mission accomplished with some help from my mother. Almost. I didn't get all the tablecloths organised but then that box was in the hall not in the sitting-room!

After all that I was totally exhausted on Saturday but I had an extra hour to sleep as Israel switched to winter-time. This time clocks and cellphones agreed when morning came around, unlike three weeks ago when the cellphone companies failed tokeep up with the changes in Israeli law and caused half of Israel to be late for work.