Coffee pot and a little TMI

I am looking for a coffee pot. I want a small electric appliance that can take up space on my counter, and provide me nice, yummy coffee when I wake up in the morning. I want it to do this on its own - that is, after I program it the night before.

No coffee pot I've seen in this country is programmable. Unless its an espresso maker, or a cappachino maker, which is not what I want. I just want to be able to get dressed in my warm bedroom before venturing out into the freezing kitchen to first put the water on for coffee. I want to come out, pour my coffee, and leave for work.

For all those unknown readers - are you there? Have you seen a coffee pot in Israel that is programmable? I've even tried the 220 stores in the states, since my in laws are making aliyah anyway in a month, and no luck.

I'm going to look again this Friday, after I get my blood work done, possibly a chest xray and EKG, and buy Eden her very own umbrella.

And for the TMI. This is something I've been dying to share but have not really found the appropriate time to. That's probably because there is no appropriate time.

The cutest thing that Eden has said recently was when she was sitting on the toilet, pooping. Often I sit there with her, since I really don't trust her to wipe herself. And as she was pushing she said (in Hebrew), "Hene! Hene! Hene ha-poop sheli!" ("Here it comes, here it comes! Here comes my poop!") She was so excited.

Right, so that's not really the type of thing I include in my Eden updates to my grandparents.

This morning, when she woke up she took a big stretch. And she said, "I'm stretching! Arm is stretching! Foot is stretching! Other foot is stretching! Both feet stretching!"

She is just so adorable.

Surgery Date

So I've got a date for surgery - Dec 24th. My mom will be in from the 9th to the 30th, my in-laws making aliyah on the 27th. Lots to do (chest x-ray, ekg, bloodwork) lots to think about (putting my "affairs in order" to give me peace of mind in case something Gd forbid happens to me), other things lots to do - getting the door fixed before my mom comes, finding appliances and signing on an apt for my inlaws.
Work?
Spending time with Eden so that I don't feel guilty for having surgery and she not knowing whats going on.

Woes of work

The comparisons between work and other, less professional, aspects of life is sometimes daunting. Everyone knows that work is work - and its nothing personal of course. For example, I worked on a complete documentation set, including about 10 manuals (including generic ones that I did not need to update, but still), and even published it. Only to find out that the release had been canceled.
My boss thought that I'd be really hurt by this. I'm not - its only documentation. I got paid for my time, what do I care whether they used it or not? OK, there is also unpaid overtime to worry about, unnecessary stress, etc, etc, but that's all part of the game, and its past. She was more upset that I was it seems.
Other times, I am not so unaffected by work.
Relationships at work are like relationships anywhere else - there is competition, jealousy, the ebb and wane of friendships, and the sighs when your heart says to you, "That's just the way it is now. Get used to it." Recently we had a really big organization, and I've got a new boss, new team, and new product. Someone else is working on the products I worked on before, and my old boss is now working closely with someone else. And although there is nothing unsatisfactory about the new situation, I miss my old team. We worked closely together and spoke all the time - about work, but also about lots of other things, and we were good friends. Now if I see them in the hallway for long enough to say, "Hi, how are you", its a lot. Everybody is just as busy as they've always been, and its always hard to take the time and keep up a friendship. It feels a little bit like junior high, where last year I was in one class with one group of friends, and this year we've all been promoted to different levels of honors classes. Its hard to see your former friends being all chummy with new people, in the ways that they were once with you. Its hard to see someone else doing the things that I used to do, as I'm sure its hard for others to see me taking their place. But that's just it, that's the way it is, and we all try to convince ourselves that its for the best - professionally. But personally? I miss my friends, because even though its just documentation, work is so much more than just that.

Jewish smarts

Whatyall think of this?
http://www.slate.com/id/2177228/nav/tap3/

I see so much discussion out on the regular, secular bandwidth that I read about Jewish smarts. A lot of it is because may journalists and editors are Jewish, and they are interested in themselves. But still, it makes me feel funny. Too many people are thinking too hard about Jews for my comfort level it seems.

I still have Holocaust dreams. I expect many people do, especially Jews, when they are young and first find out about the terrible things that happened to the Jewish people in Europe halfway through the 20th century. I used to dream that it was happening again. Every once in a while I still have a dream like that, and I'm sure that somewhere deep in my subconscious, I fully believe that "Never Again" is only a hope and a prayer. So when people start talking about things like Jewish smarts, it makes me feel uncomfortable.

I think that I partly moved to Israel for this reason. I don't want to live anywhere but our own country, and can trust no one by my own Jewish brothers to defend me and my family. On the other hand, one of the first things we did when Eden was born was go and get her US passport. And I hold on to our US passports tight. Because I know that if Israel was ever under nuclear attack, I do not know what I would do and if I would have the courage to stay. I may indeed feel the need to take a trip back to the states, for a little while.

A while ago, I had a discussion with friends about tattoos. Never mind the halachic aspects, I don't like the idea of anything permanent on my body that God did not put there. (OK, OK I put the cake and cookies on my hips, but hopefully that's not permanent.) The idea of a Jewish looking tattoo came up - I mean what could be wrong with that? What a great idea, identify yourself permanently with your the Jewish people.

I did not like the idea. It made me so nervous - what if you got trapped behind enemy borders? What if you had to pass as Aryan? Or Arab? Or anything, anything but Jewish. But you had this great Jewish star on your shoulder, or your elbow, or hip, or of all things on your chest. In yellow. How many gays get a pink triangle tattoo?

This coming from me, who dreamed about living out on a hilltop in a caravan, with a strong and swarthy Jewish husband with a gun sitting outside my door. Or it would be both of us sitting outside that door with guns, protecting our babies inside. Whose first glimpse of her husband was a picture of him in uniform, holding his M16. It was love at first sight.

I'd like to think that if push came to shove, I'd be stronger than this. But really, I don't like to think about it at all. Which is why Jewish star tattoos and articles about Jewish smarts give me the heebeejeebees. Just being honest here.

3 things to be happy about

On Friday, I went into shabbat happy about 3 things. I mean, really happy about these 3 things. And when I'm actually happy about 3 whole things, I don't like to forget it, so here they are:
1) We decided that if it fits on my in-laws lift, we are taking the breakfront. And we'll put it in the living room, table linens and all. I just plain love it. Wouldn't you?
2) We decided to try to stop buying wipes. Seeing as Eden does not often need them, we are just keeping some in reserve and stopping to use them for everything, from washing the table, to the floor, to Eden's face, to our hands. But paper towels really don't do the trick. But super paper towels do! I found these great paper towels that really last. Sure they are expensive, but when I used ONE sheet to clean every surface in the kitchen, dining room, and bathrooms, I'd say its worth it. And I only threw it out after that because I didn't want to clean anything else, and I really couldn't see rinsing it out to use later. Honestly though it felt like a waste.
3) I bought a clothes hanger! Our laundry room is long an narrow, so there really isn't room for a large laundry hanger like I'd like. Also its a pain to fold up and store afterwards. And we don't hang all that many things, just some delicates and things that take too long in the dryer. So we found a clothes hanger that screws into the wall, and then folds out, and in. Easiest thing in the world, and no more hanging things over the shower. Very exciting for me.

And then we joined our friends Yaakov and Leah and Kinneret and Poofy for dessert. A great way to end a great Friday.

Now if I can just keep us from getting sick . . . .

Form before function

We bought our apartment 4 months ago. Its much larger than any we've had before, and we are here to stay. There are plenty of empty spaces, and we have a lot of ideas of what to fill it with.

One thing we've been looking for is a cabinet for our dining room, for silver (behind glass doors), possibly our china, and cabinets underneath for table linens. We aren't looking cheap, but not really expensive either. Lumber here costs though, so its not easy to find the perfect piece.

And then comes the breakfront pictured. It belongs to my grandmother, who lives in Amherst, Mass. We could possibly bring it here on my in-laws lift (haven't spoken to them about it yet), but the question is if we want it - my grandmother would be happy to give it to us, as she is looking to pare down her own home.

But its too big for our dining room. Its 6 ft long, and our dining room doesn't have a lot of wall space - one wall is next to the circular staircase, and we already have a mirror and table there. Another wall is the sliding doors to the porch. Another wall has a window to the kitchen, and the last wall is short - it leads to the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.

So it would have to go in the living room. Which is OK for the silver, possibly china... but table linens? Even behind solid doors? How would we ever fill it?

But we really love it. You see the picture. It also has a bit of a story to it. When my grandmother became a professor instead of teaching high schools, my mothers family moved. My grandfather chose to save money and moved the entire house himself, on a flatbed truck. The breakfront that they had bought when they got married fell off the truck, and my grandmother was heartbroken. Her aunt, my Aunt Mary, who I only knew as an eccentric old women who talked A LOT, put her foot down one day soon after the move and said, "Elsie, we are going out to buy a new breakfront." And this is that breakfront. So it has fond memories for me, about my grandmother, my grandfather (ob"m) and my great-great-aunt (ob"m). And I love heirlooms. Living so far from family, its important to me to have pieces of my family close by.

So tell me what you think - we usually think that form must follow function. In this case, I think function must fall before form.

Evil Geniuses at Work

We have a friend named Ari O. He now lives with his wife Yael in NYC, but once upon a time, he lived in Keren HaYesod 7 in Ramat Ilan. There he worked on perfecting songs for Moed Bet, using the most up to date technology. He was also a graphic desginer.
He also had four computer screens. One entire wall of his bedroom (ok its was a small room) was screens. I was wowed.
At the time, we had one desktop computer, and my laptop. Never thought about hooking the two up, my laptop was a Mac. But then, Ben bought a laptop and traded in his desktop. And he thought - why give away the other screen too? Its a great screen. And walla, since then we've always used two screens.
Since then we've upgraded to a nice small flatscreen. I've caught it too at work. I am a secret evil genius, and my cubicle is my lair. We need lairs in open-space-ville.
There are some funny stories about this:
One early morning, my boss very purposefully came over to my desk and said, "OK Batami, I really need to know. Do you or don't you have two computers? Because we only have a limited amount of computers and you can't have two."
Or about the time Ben was negotiating his contract with his boss, while he was still sub-contracting, and his boss said, "Ben, all the salary issues, we will work it out. But I'm very sorry to say, I can only give you two screens." What a riot because Ben only uses one company screen! The other is his own laptop.
People who are otherwise technologically intelligent come by our desks and say "Huh? How the heck do you do that?" And forget it if they try to work at one of our desks, they can never figure out where the mouse went.

Its great being a genius :)

Some about the guilt. . . and then that's it

Ok so here goes my full unshackling of the guilt. And hopefully after this, I'll be able to write about normal life and leave the rest for the unconscious.
I wonder sometimes if I would feel as much guilt as I do if I didn't work, or work so much. I mean where does it come from? Such painful, physically debilitating guilt does not come from something real, unless you've murdered someone or worse, which I have not done.
So does it come from being a working mom? Perhaps from being a Jewish mom? A Jewish working mom? Hoo boy that's a doozy. Why not just a mom, or just working?
I feel it all around me, every where I turn. Guilt for not being there enough, guilt for smothering her when I am. Guilt for being too tired to spend time with DH, guilt for running him down so he's too tired too. Guilt for not fitting into the clothes DH so generously bought me over the summer, guilt for not WANTING to cut down on the cake.
How about guilt for leaving a meeting early? How about this - leaving a training session early on a FRIDAY, when my boss only (very sheepishly I might add, I have a great boss) asked me to come in at 2:PM the day before? Why the hell do I feel guilty for that? And then of course feeling guilty that DH did so much for Shabbat and I did barely anything. Doubly guilty now because he's getting sick.
It's built into my bones, DH says. My mom is just as guilty, although who knows where she got it from - HER mom does not seem to know what guilt is. Forward looking always. (I can never be like them, the Caterpillar thought, looking at the beautiful butterflies.)
I wonder how my guilt will affect my kids, especially my daughters. Maybe they will make a point to never feel guilty. DH doesn't really, he lets it pass. I try not to let it affect my marriage, although sometimes it does. Sometimes I try to make DH feel guilty for something, but I forget that it just doesn't work - guilt does not affect him the way it affects me.
He says - accept it! It's there, let it be! So you're guilty of multi-tasking. Not devoting yourself to any one thing enough. Not so bad, at least I'm doing it all. Don't worry about it, and of course do not feel guilty about feeling guilty. Somewhere it has to stop. So here goes. Embracing the guilt.
Lets count how many posts I can write without mentioning the word guilt.

The house sold!

Dh's parents sold their house!!! Yay! They will be here in Israel mid December. Probably renting in Jlem until the summer, which is when the better home market is in Modiin. And then - no more racing home to be later for ETG. We have a Grandma in the house!

Forever Anti Establishment

Last night I blew up at ETG's day care director. I was 15 minutes late, and I suppose they are pretty sick of me being late. But it was the end of the day, I had sat for over an hr in traffic, she was late and annoyed and I was furious at her judging me. So I was really mad. I felt really indignant - sometimes I have to stay at work later than expected, why shouldnt day care teachers? I can't stay later, but my office certainly has other people there that are late - why dont they have teachers there to cover a late shift?
There are so many feelings wrapped around this for me. I think I will probably forever hate my kids day care teachers. It doesnt matter how nice they are, how good they are to ETG, how much she thrives there (all 3 are true), I will always hate them for who they are, the other women in my kids life. I will always feel like they judge me. I will always feel like they are better moms to my kid than me.
Later, after a few good angry cries, I felt embarrassed. Embarrased, which caused anger. But so embarrassed, I didnt want to have to face them today. I wanted DH to call them and tell them how wrong they were. Read them the riot act. Fight for me!
I tried posting on a msg board that I sometimes visit, and they all ganged up on me. Im scared to go back there tonight and see how many more thought I was wrong for leaving her in a day care an hr from work, for coming late, for thinking that they should wait for me (I pay the late fees, without complaint!). That certainly made me feel better :~. I certainly wasnt looking for more people to tell me how wrong I was. Why couldnt they understand that I just wanted support?
Today I woke up and told DH not to call. Yes she pissed me off. Yes I was annoyed. But whatever solutions we need to find for getting there earlier (leaving work early, really) its between us. And I should just get over it.
It reminded me of all the other institutions where I just could not get along with the administration. I've really never liked them. Its odd, school administrators - day cares no different then high schools or colleges. We don't mix.
But today, I got over it. And thats something. Whoo hoo!