Well Done Husband. We are all Very Impressed.

Since we have not yet managed to purchase our car, we are still at the mercy of the Karmiel bus system.  Thankfully, its pretty good.  So long as you don’t mind random people chatting to you as if they are your Great Aunt Rose.  Today I had the pleasure of a portly bubbe  in the much favoured by all russian immigrants leopard skin print blouse chatting me up at the bus stop.  She was sitting on the bench surrounded by her shopping, which she kindly moved to one side when she saw me with the baby carrier.  “Oh, what a chamud” she said, looking at Yaron in his carrier and Jojo in his buggy and then asked me if both my children were boys or girls? (Jojo is looking particularly girly these days what with the need to use hair clips).  I replied they were in fact both boys.  “Hmm,” she says, blowing a mouthful of biscuit crumbs in my direction, “I think your next one will be a girl.”  “Really?” I tell her. “Only I have always thought I would have an all boy family, and so far I have not been wrong.”  “Well” she said, nodding wisely, “you tell everyone that you met a lady at the bus stop who said you would have a girl”.  So there you have it.  (like how on earth does she know I blog??) Anyhow, it seems one day I might be able to buy cute frilly dresses for someonoe other than me after all.

Happily, we should have our nice new car soon as husband, rather remarkably, passed his israeli driving test first time after only one lesson.  This is partly due to his total manly brilliance, but possibly also due to the friendly native british chap called Martin who examined him.  Turns out he is allegedly the only British employee in the whole Israeli DMV. They had a nice chat apparently.  Husband reported that the 5 minute test was just to check he actually could drive a car, which you think would be normal, but after the horror stories we heard about Israeli examiners failing new olim on the most daft of things, we were quite relieved.

A word about cleaners…. the gobby (but nice when you get to know her) Amneh was unable to come today, as her son wasn’t well.   I was sent a lovely lady in her place, who I must say has the gift of Feng Shui.  Anyhow it seems that cleaners, universally, can be quite macabre when it comes to arranging ones personal items.  I remember when living with my sister if we couldnt find some essential item like a comb or a challah cover, she used to say “think like a cleaner” and we would try the less obvious places, eventually finding the item in the microwave, bath, or somewhere similarly bizarre.  My temp cleaner Seren it seems was happy to arrange perfumes upside down, (ok fair enough as she cant read english) but far funnier was the photograph of me and a good friend.  Before I left London she gave me a beautiful framed picture of us posing in front of a gorgeous sunset, in Sardinia “see, we both look thin” she told me “and you had better put it somewhere prominent.”  So I dutifully placed it by my bed.  I went upstairs this afternoon to find it placed sideways.  Weird.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, we have started our vegbox deliveries.  You may remember I was a  bit upset about this country turning out to be the land flowing with formula milk and non-organic honey.  In actual fact the organic products have turned out to be great on the whole.  A slight problem with the chard, which looked as if it had been found by a very hungry caterpillar but other than that really nice stuff.  The milk tastes lovely and its the first time I have seen really good eggs in israel.  Its all from a shop in Tivon, although we have no way to check out if it is “authentic” other than visiting the farms themselves.  Israel has not yet caught on to Soil Association or Fair Trade stamping yet.  Oh well, one has to remember the land I am currently living on was just a swamp 50 or so years ago.