Soups Old and New (and some challah!)

written October 26, 2024 ~

not every dish is going to be a success, and that's ok.  I was whining to my friend that I didn't have a whole chicken for my soup this week, and she suggested I use the chicken breast I had instead.  she said she does it all the time and the result is the same...so I tried it.  it wasn't good.  and not only did the soup itself fall flat, I fell asleep before it was cool enough to cover fully and put in the fridge/freezer, so when I woke up this morning, I quickly realized I had left it out on the counter overnight, uncovered, and now I was going to have to pour it down the drain.  quelle horreur!  

 

 

luckily, I had one serving of my last batch of soup left in the freezer, so for breakfast, there was one serving of delicious ancestor-approved chicken broth to dip my challah in...the last of the round loaves I baked for the holiday season (Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah).  it was SO good, and I prayed over it, assuring myself it was a magical elixir pouring into my body filled with healing strength and loving goodness.  its power grows exponentially when the homemade challah and the homemade soup and are eaten together - it's a melody of love wrapped in flavor and texture, carried through generations.  I feel cared for while I indulge in them, warm and cozy when I'm done.

 

I had planned to do some major self-care today, as I started a new job this week and need both the rest, and the space to get used to a new schedule.  it's a bit frustrating, as I was hoping to be on a plane to Israel by now, but I guess it's not my time yet.  I've submitted all my documentation and am waiting for an interview.  I was getting ready to sell my car and sign the apartment over to my son, so I wasn't trying all that hard to get a job because I was hoping to be looking for work in a new country.  but as the weeks began to pass with no money coming in, I HAD to take the first job I was offered, and now I not only need my car, I need it to have good winter tires and a tune up.  

while I'm grateful for the additional time to get ready for an overseas move, I wasn't planning on being in the Northeast for the winter, so I need to shift my perspective a bit from my environment prospectively getting warmer to it getting colder, instead.  and there appear to be one or two more of those unexpected obstacles to navigate that you don't see coming and definitely don't need, but it's yet another opportunity to show others what grace looks like as a response to petty manipulations.  we'll see.  I'll get out of here with everything I need when the time comes.

in any case, one of the ways I planned to care for myself is to try a new-to-me recipe which I will share as an offering to you and yours at the close of Jewish Holiday Season, and the beginning of 'spooky season' as the white folks are calling Halloween and Samhain these days.  

two weeks later ~

 

the water was off overnight and most of the day, so I wasn't able to make my weekly soup in time for Shabbat, but I was mostly making it in the service of the new-to-me soup I'm trying this week - Marak Katom, 'orange soup' in Hebrew.  but no worries, it's back on now, and I'm playing catch-up in my kitchen.  it was a weird week - I got fired from my NEW job for responding to the question "what makes you feel unsafe at work" with "my co-workers wearing keffiyehs and shouting to free a place that never existed" which is both problematic and a Whole Can of Conspiracy Worms so I'll save it for another post.  I'm rightfully feeling all kinds of feels, and I called some friends to yell and cry and laugh about it, which was helpful...but I need soup.  hearty, homemade, happy soup.

 

several hours later ~

 

the chicken soup is done and it's amazing.  tomorrow I'll make the orange soup.

the next day ~

 

the Marak Katom is So Good - gonna eat it with grilled cheese sandwiches all week!  the recipe is from Sivan's Kitchen; check her out on Instagram, I love her content (she served hers in a pumpkin)!

recipe:

1 medium butternut squash

3 medium sweet potatoes

4-5 peeled carrots

large red onion

2 whole heads of garlic

7 cups chicken stock

olive oil

salt, pepper

pumpkin seeds and cinnamon for garnish (optional)

 preheat the oven to 400º.  cut the veggies in half (removing squash seeds); drizzle with oil, salt & pepper, and place face down on a parchment covered baking sheet (wrap garlic in foil); roast one hour.  scoop squash innards into soup pot, add carrot & onion, squeeze the garlic into the pot, add the chicken stock, and simmer.  puree until creamy, and it's done!

dive assassin

written December 20, 2020 ~ 

 

"where there's a Will, there's a way"

I spin a fantasy of you

sliding between my ample thighs

with some sighs

maybe some gasps and moans

before the cries

of pleasure

but for you I'd tell 

the truth

how I long for a certain 

kind of growl

in my ear

the first time

all over again

the fear

at the possibility 

of feeling something

how much I'd hold back

because there's too much

to let go

how I could drown in 

my own longing

I could break you with my despair

feed your own need back to you

and spin us both off

into oblivion

weave my spells with 

magic words

shake them out of my hair

slide them through you

with a glance

draw them out with your blood

by the skin of my teeth 

and fingernails

but my bed is cold

and there's no one to hold me

in the night but

the Gods I conjure

who disappear with the light

I could devour you

right now

surrender the hoard!

written on June 14th, 2020 ~

     I prefer movies to television, but since I've been home So Much recently, I've watched a few tv shows here and there to fill in the spaces. and since I'm maturing into such a good-humored old dear, bless my heart, I tend to watch shows I've seen a bit of before, because I know I've enjoyed them for one reason or another, such as Hoarders. I like it because the houses I grew up in boasted a regimented comfort. everything had a place, and everything Stayed in it's place unless you were using it, after which you'd put it away. our things were always neat, clean, and in order. at summer camp, I was the kid who bounced a quarter on my hospital-cornered cot. when I moved out of my parents' house and lived on my own, my rooms and apartments were clean to the point of being camera-ready (a guest once commented that all my place was missing were the velvet ropes...you know, like a museum?). as a new, struggling, single mom, the piece of advice I got from veteran moms the most was to stop cleaning my house. it was hard for me to do, but I managed, and that velvet rope guest commented that they now felt much more at ease in my space. I didn't.  

     as the boy grew, we acquired more things - a crib that converted to a toddler bed, a dresser, a bookshelf, a table & chairs, toys, clothing, a tricycle.  then some of those items got bigger - a bicycle that got traded up for a mountain bike, a twin bed that got upgraded to a full-sized loft, a guitar and amplifier, a computer, a new tv, another chair...for someone who spent years living in my car out of a backpack while traveling the country, it started to be too much.  a few years back, when I helped my mom move out of her house and into an apartment, I ended up bringing a few car-fulls of ancestral belongings home with me:  my grandfather's marble inlaid chess table, some of my grandparents' framed artwork and antiques, kitchen items, and more.  there's wasn't really room for a lot of it, but I tucked them in under tables, around my bed, and into cabinets and closets.  

     when I was surprised by the news that the state was taking over the property I lived on to rebuild a bridge and we had to move again, I was less than enthused (outraged, really).  I brought a portion of my hillock of inherited ancestral detritus to sell at the local flea market, then I had a yard sale.  on moving day, whatever was left had to come with us, since I was too emotionally attached to it to just consign it all to the dumpster.  once we were settled in, I managed to sell a few more items on eBay, but I still have too many things stacked in the hallway and the bedroom to feel good about my space.  anyway...since I had the opportunity to watch a little tv, and I ended up watching Hoarders, I came to the decision that I was done cluttering up my home with these 'overflow' items, and was just going to give them to the various places where one donates their household goods.  

     so I've been taking things out of my space, a few bags at a time, and I'm SO glad I have!  I can't wait to get that hallway cleared, and then the bedroom.  at my age, and where I am in my life, I don't need or want any clutter around me (not that I ever did, really); and even though I purged some things before the move, and I'm working on getting rid of more, I'm still looking to pare down to possibly spartan levels of ownership.  I mean, what does a person really need?  sure, it's nice to be surrounded by lovely things that bring you joy, but all I ever needed to experience that was a tent in the woods.  I'd like to get back there again.  or at least as close as I can while still maintaining some semblance of what our current society considers 'a proper home'.  and I like sleeping on a firm mattress with a warm, soft blanket more than I enjoy sleeping on the ground in my sleeping bag, these days.  

     while there are things I'd like to pass on to my son, none of them are a pile of random inherited ancestral crap, or even the slightest tendency towards hoarding.  to be clear, I'm in no way a hoarder - I'm just a reformed neat-freak who likes for my environment to be clean, and clutter-free.  

 

6 years later, an update ~

    we moved two more times since then, possibly more depending on how you count, and I'm still carrying around 'too many things'.  while I did a lot of work in that apartment, the next place we moved was a tiny furnished place that we knew we were only going to be in for a year, so 95% of our things went into storage for the duration.  when the year was up, we took everything from the storage space and put it into a moving van, drove to another state, and put it all right back into storage as we didn't have a place to live yet.  then I sent the young man off to college, and lived in the car for 5 months until an apartment was finally available.  at first I just moved in with what I had with me in the car, then went and grabbed a few things like my mattress, extra blankets and clothes, toiletries, and kitchen items.  when the kid came home for winter break, we spent most of the month retrieving the rest of it, and I was once again surrounded by boxes.

    it took some time to get it sorted out and put away, and wouldn't you know it?  I ended up with a stack of things I no longer wanted or needed (but was too emotionally attached to to just throw them in the dumpster) that ended up tucked into corners, under tables, and stuffed into closets.  I did make an effort to clear most of those items out during the 2 years that I lived there, but when I decided to make Aliyah, I had to get serious about what I could bring overseas with me, what I couldn't, what my son wanted to keep, and then get rid of the rest.  

    my apartment here in Israel is very small, and though I've been here for a year already, I still have quite a few boxes that I can't unpack because I have nowhere to put the contents, which are mostly chachkis, framed art, and lord knows what else.  and I do miss a lot of the things I left behind, but...that's life, and you can't take it with you when you die, anyway.  so while I do hope to get myself into a situation where I can once again hang my dresses in a closet, keep my undies in a drawer, and display my lovely chachkis, I am still living with stacks of boxes cluttering up my environment.  it's definitely messing with my head, but I do my best and hope for better.  someday.

    I hope my son has managed to clear out whatever I left behind that he wasn't interested in keeping - I'd hate to see him keeping unnecessary things around simply because he's too emotionally attached to them to just throw them in the dumpster.  though I do hope he's held on to a few precious things to give back to me someday, if we ever see each other again.  or just because he loves them, and will remind him of his ancestors after I'm gone.  

so sick of white america

written November 17, 2020 ~

I could have gone to Mavis Discount Tire in Kingston on Saturday for two new tires, but I wanted to wait until Monday to give Walt (my regular mechanic) a chance to do the work, because I prefer to give my money to small local businesses rather than large corporations.  

I could have driven the 30 minutes into Kingston to sit in Mavis' heated waiting area (in a comfortable chair) while they worked on my car instead of having to walk a mile up the road in the cold to the closest country store (and back), where the only place to sit is outside, since their small dining area is closed due to the pandemic.  

I could have paid Mavis $150 to do the work instead of the $200 Walt charged me, because they can afford to drop their prices (several times) in order to appease me because I'm poor, and tires are expensive.  

I could have made an appointment with Mavis so I knew how long the work would take, and therefore have a window within which to schedule my day, but I chose to drop my car off with Walt at 9:30am, who still didn't have the work done by 11:30am after I had walked the mile to the country store, drank a cup of hot chocolate, walked around and looked at all the items for sale to kill time before walking over to the Dollar General to do the same, then walking the mile back to Walt's where all he'd managed to do was get my car up on the lift.  

if I'd gone to Mavis, the work would have been done in less than the two hours it took Walt to get my car up on the lift, after which I still had to stand around outside for at least 30 more minutes before he finally offered for me to sit in his office and read his newspaper while he and his buddies loudly spouted their pro-fascist political agendas and blamed 'those Jews' in the government for 'stealing' the election for Biden citing the "damn kids who have never worked a day in their lives and think they're so smart to have made up that mail-in voting thing" in order to overthrow their naked emperor.  

if I had gone to Mavis, I wouldn't have had to storm back out into the cold to avoid having to hear any more of it.  

when Walt presented me with bill, I looked him dead in the eye when I told him I would be paying it with my hard-working Jewish 16 year old's card, because I've been out of work for months due to his naked emperor's poor pandemic response that now has us in a third wave of hospitalizations and deaths (I was the only one in or around the shop wearing a mask, including the cop who stopped in), and that he might want to check to make sure there wasn't a Jew sitting in his office the next time he chose to spew his racist hatred.  

if I had gone to Mavis, I wouldn't now be sitting here regretting every single dollar I ever paid Walt, which is a considerable amount given the number of years I've been patronizing him, and wondering if I should simply have asked him to remove the tires, refund our money, and get Mavis to do the work (again) after all.  

would it have bothered me as much if I didn't just email my son's English teacher yesterday to address his use of the word "gyp" in a story he was telling the class?  or the woman in the fitness group who deleted me when I told her that her 'joke' about threatening to sell her children to the 'Gypsies' when they didn't do what she said wasn't in any way funny to someone like myself, whose own father was kidnapped from his Romani mother (Romani people don't steal children - in Europe, they often have their own children stolen from them by various government agencies for little to no reason other than being Roma)?  yes...yes it would.  

even as a provisional white person (acceptable to whites until they find out I'm a Romani Jew), it's a rare day that passes without some form of attack on my ethnicity/tribal affiliation/historic homeland (I think of myself more as a cultural Israeli/genetic member of the tribe of Judah than as a religious Jew).  when will this madness end?

Memory Jar 2024 (two years later) ~

 

 

my list -

massage and pedicure birthday treat

got my spray paint on!

getting my Aliyah approval on my late mother's birthday 💙

the IDF rescue of four hostages

all the beautiful moments of watching my son grow and thrive

my 'Sinwar-taschen' were bangin' this year! (as were my latkes and suvganiot)

Passover!  I cooked all the things!

I made Besamin, and herbal dream mix

deciding to finally make Aliyah

Eden Golan singing Hurricane at Eurovision

leaned in to the joy of making potholders

more potholders 

finishing long ignored projects

My Fabulous Porch

Shabbat birthday with chocolate pudding pie

summer of joyous unemployment

growing tiny mutant vegetables

getting a gift on Mother's Day

solar eclipse!

learned to prioritize myself

Eli Kopter, Moti Rola, Gal Axy  😂

Spa at Essex hot tub birthday

I baked lots of wonderful challah

experienced Jewish joy amidst heartbreak

his list - 

Buckethead

DOOM 2025

listening to Led Zeppelin on drugs

cereal milk

getting big 

GWAR

for many years, my son and I had the tradition of writing down cool things that happened in our lives on pieces of paper, and saving them in a jar to share with each other on New Year's Eve to relive the joy we experienced throughout the year.  as he got older, he shared less, and every now and then I'd ask him if he had put any good memories in the jar, or encourage him to think back and see if there was anything he felt like sharing.  2023 wasn't a great year for our relationship, though we still had our personal joys that were becoming more specific to ourselves, and less about events in times and places that we shared.  and that's ok.  kids are supposed to grow on their own, away from their parents, in their own unique and beautiful ways, and parents...well, we have to learn to re-center ourselves within our own lives as our children need us less, and in fact often tend to push us away.

it's been pretty hard for me after being a relatively hands-on parent for the past 20 plus years to feel that relationship sever and break, and while I have enjoyed remembering who I was before I was 'Mom', it was heartbreaking to lose that closeness we had shared for so long, and to live with such greatly heightened tension in my own house.  I know I said and did things I regret, and I hope some of the terrible things he said and did have caused him to reevaluate some of the ways he chooses to treat me in the future, though I'm not seeing evidence of it yet.  I remember when the same developmental stage in my own brain snapped the cord between my mother and I, and I do my best to remember that while it took a few years, I did finally realize that she wasn't the devil, and began to offer her the respect the deserved (when she deserved it).  I hope he gets there soon, because I truly miss him.

 I honestly don't even remember what I did for New Year's in 2024, and my facebook is currently disabled for some bizarre reason so I can't look back and check.  more likely than not, I spent the day packing and getting ready for the international flight I was taking three weeks from then, and went to bed early.  I know I started this post around then, too (I think the time stamp said Jan. 2, 2025).  looking over my list, I see that I had a great time cooking and baking, taking advantage of being unemployed to get my craft on, engaging in self-care, and making the second biggest decision of my life (the first being to birth my child knowing I would be taking the parenting journey alone) - moving to Israel in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks, and the resulting extreme rise in antisemitism that affected my everyday life, which eventually cost me my last job in the States.

did I put a new tag on the jar for 2025?  I left it back in the old apartment with the kid - did he put anything in it during the course of the past year?  and what about me?  did I take the time to record and save any of my good memories from the past year?  10 years of memories shared with my kid was a wonderful experience for me (I hope it was good for him, too), and I know I was hoping that even though we're geographically far from each other now, that we could keep the tradition alive, but alas.  it seems it is not to be.  and I can still continue the tradition for myself, because...well...why not.  if I tried, I could probably make a list of the cool things that happened for me last year, but that would have to be a separate post.  at this point - 2 years later - I'm making this post because every now and again I look over my list of unfinished drafts and try to make a go with one of them, and since it's January, this one caught my eye.  I wanted to finish out the 'Memory Jar' posts at a nice round '10 year mark', so here we are.  if there's to be a 'Memory Jar 2026' post, it will be of a different nature.

writing this post - and my facebook/instagram being disabled - did get me to look over my blog a bit and do some 'behind the scenes' editing, such as going over the list of other blogs I follow, and seeing if any of the collective postings I used to engage with are still active.  I unfollowed a lot of people who either don't post anymore, have taken their blogs down or moved them elsewhere, and those I'm simply no longer interested in, like the ones I followed specifically for a job I was doing at the time.  the world and the 'blog-o-sphere' have changed around me, and I seem to be at the point where I wonder, 'who even blogs anymore' (even though my reading list says I'm not the only dinosaur still out here)?  I'm sure 'the kids' would laugh at me and tell me I'm fifteen or so iterations of social media platforms behind, and do people even still read (I do)?

there was a point at which I had started to print out my individual posts to have a 'hard copy' in case I ever wanted to do anything with some of the things I've written here, but there's a lot of content, for better or worse, and I guess some circumstance or other ended up taking precedent and I didn't finish that project, either.  it was a few years ago already when I said that I didn't need to start any more projects because I have enough of them filed away to keep me busy for the rest of my life.  so, here's one more post knocked out, and on to the next.  I'm sure some of those unfinished drafts will end up deleted, but I need to take the time to review them in order to decide which.  I had attempted to start the process, and the oldest draft in my folder is from back in 2020 and has a ton of links attached - I was trying to write it like a research paper, and it's pretty involved, so I got overwhelmed and walked away.  we'll see.  at least this one is done.

below are the links to Memory Jar posts past - enjoy! 

 

2014  2015  2016  2017  2018  2019  2020  2021  2022/2023  

 

Aliyah-versary

 y'all, my artistic practice has been all pent up inside of me for most of a year now, and it's making me sad and angry.  I stare at the plastic bin filled with the art supplies I deemed too important to part with and dream about things I left behind, like the driftwood I collected from the Esopus River that came to live in a wicker basket woven by my son during a homeschool workshop.  I miss my pile of fabric and bags of yarn, yet don't write in my journal, blog, knit, or sew.  I did start a collage and immediately realized I didn't have any glue, so it's been on hold until I had the cash to buy the glue, and now that I have it, it's been sitting on the table waiting for me to find the time to use it.  and I can't even tell you how much I want to order loops to weave potholders with, but I simply can't buy another thing other than rent, electricity, and food until my finances begin to stabilize, which I don't see happening any time soon as I can't seem to find a job at which I can succeed.  

I've been here in Israel for a whole year now, and I'm living the same life I've lived everywhere I've been - in a small apartment, hopping from one relatively unskilled low-wage job to another, and existing paycheck to paycheck.  the only difference is that I have no people here, so it's extra lonely, and I don't speak/understand the language all that well.  I'm still living out of my suitcases and surrounded by unopened boxes of chachkis and decor that I have no place to display or store, and I'd really love to begin the process of furnishing my tiny space so that it can feel slightly less...temporary?  like I'm not just idling here, waiting for my real life to begin?  I want to feel more settled and comfortable so I can relax.  I did buy a bookshelf, which helped a bit, and I was hoping to invest in a clothes rack with my next paycheck, but...it's just going to have to wait.  

the first job I landed, a few months after I got here, was as an assistant in a 'gan', which is like kindergarten but the kids were younger, and my role was to help a little English boy who barely spoke a word of Hebrew to fit in and get along well enough to start learning.  when the school year ended in June I stayed on for 'keetanah' during July, which is sort of like summer camp, though I didn't see much difference in the way we operated - it was just another month at the gan.  then it turned out that all public childcare activities in Israel cease during August, so I scrambled to get another job quickly as not to be unemployed.  so I worked as a 'mitapelet' - a caregiver - for an English woman in her 80's, but it was only 21 hours a week and paid less than the gan, which I soon realized wasn't going to cover my rent, let alone anything else.  the agency I worked for told me I could add more clients and get more hours, but they didn't have any clients who needed me in the afternoons, as my main person claimed all my morning hours.  the fact was that the lady I was working for was going to need a live-in caregiver soon enough, so I'd be out of the job anyway, and to be honest, nice as she and her family were, it wasn't for me.  

so I got a job at another gan during September and October, but it didn't work out because the person I worked with didn't like me, and told the owner it was me or her, and seeing as how she had been there for 3 years, I was let go.  for the first two weeks of November I ran around to job agencies, interviews, and job fairs, and was quickly employed with a telemarketing company selling visas and job platforms to people who want to immigrate to Canada and the US.  while I'd worked in sales before - door to door, on the phone, and in art galleries - I neither enjoyed, nor did well at it, and this was no different.  I'd much rather be weaving potholder sets to sell at craft markets along with other cool arty things I enjoy making, but I don't have the money to live on while building up a business at the moment.  and I don't understand Hebrew well enough to go out on my own yet, anyway - the laws here are fairly particular, and I'm not currently equipped to start dealing with them.  back in the US, I was working in peer support in the homeless shelter system, which paid a livable wage - here in Israel, that's mostly a volunteer position.  I thought I had gotten lucky when the office of immigration here recently invited me to an advanced language class for social workers, but I chose to drop out of after three classes because it was above my current level of understanding, then the class was cancelled due to low enrollment.

adaptable as I am, it's hard for me to live in a city, even one I've loved all my life.  I do still hope that in the coming years I manage to find myself in a different kind of community - one that feeds my soul more.  I hope I can manage to find myself in a more rural area, doing a job I can believe in, though I realize I have a great deal of building to do to get there, and I'm not sure I'll survive to see that day.  I did manage to connect with a social worker who helped me get an appointment with a dental hygienist, something I've been trying to accomplish since a month or so after I got here and hadn't succeeded with yet.  I've had limited success in dealing with the health care system in general, and find it more frustrating than supportive (again - language barrier).  I still haven't quite managed to figure out the pharmacy though I do seem to have somehow been getting my prescription medication more regularly.  they'd like me to do more tests, see more specialists, and take more drugs but I'm resistant, so they have me marked down as 'low compliance' on my paperwork which I find hysterical, insulting, and problematic.  I mean, I think I have a right to have as strong a say in my own healthcare as my doctors, and screw them if they think I'm going to follow them blindly down paths that don't feel good to me.

I'd like - along with living in a more rural environment because I think they go hand in hand - to find where all the herbalists and natural healers are around here.  like, where is the alternative community?  skate punks, rock and rollers, musicians and magic makers?  where are my people?  I was recently contacted by a tarot group I used to belong to back when we were all in covid lockdown and it's one of the many things reminding me that all my little altar items that help me feel grounded, protected, and supported are all still boxed up waiting to have a place to call home.  and while the possible resurgence of the tarot group may be fun, they're all in the States and so the meetings will be via zoom at 2am for me.  and who knows how any of the people in that group feel about Jews and/or Israel?  does it matter?  should it?  when or how would it come up?  I guess we'll just have to see.

I did come across a women's group that seems to do some deep work around ancient Jewish matriarchs, our mothers from the bible stories, and I'd love to go experience one of their circles, but it's yet another thing I need to feel more confident in my language skills to navigate in a way that feels more connecting than frustrating.  if I could even afford to attend one of the workshops and manage to figure out how to get to the place where the events are held, I'm sure it will be another one of those moments of freedom and opening that reminds me how everything happens just the way it's supposed to, and we all get where we're meant to go...eventually.  there is some cosmic way that my years of wandering in and out of prosperity through various locales and cultures of academia and wage slavery while recording my journey in writings, sketches, crafts, jewelry, sacred objects, ritual spaces, photography, collage, and digital images will culminate in a series of writing workshops where people work together finding the many ways our stories are holy and how sharing them can uplift us all - I just haven't found it yet.

most days I just want to give up, lie down, and die already.  what Earthly good am I doing?  I've spent the last week and a half - including my birthday - basically laying in bed, watching old tv shows on pirate websites, ignoring the fact that I probably won't have enough money to cover my rent next month, let alone pay the bills or buy food.  and what will I do then?  will I be able to afford a storage space for my belongings, or to hire help to get them there?  and how will it be to attempt to survive on the streets, here?  how will my lack of ability to afford my prescription medication affect my health?  especially if I can't control what I'm eating, or when?  I'll guess I'll find out soon enough.  maybe I will die, then, so I guess I'll get what I want.  or maybe I'll just keep on living in more and more desperate circumstances for many more years until I do finally enjoy the sweet release of death, having experienced several more levels of hell before I get there.  like an 'if I think it's bad now, just wait and see how bad it can get' sort of scenario.

oh well.  at least I tried.  I guess... 

it hasn't been a great year, and I don't feel as if I've 'ascended' or 'risen' in any sense of the word.  sure, I'm in Israel, but it hasn't done a damn thing for me other than shown me that no matter how much I try to be part of a community and work towards the uplifting of said community, I'm just not really welcome, wanted, or needed.  story of my life, considering my mother wasn't really on board with having me.  I wonder what my soul journeyed here for, then?  why would it pick such a miserable and pathetic path for itself?  I hope I figure it out, because I definitely don't want to ride this ride again.  I can't believe my purpose here was to make another human with the same doubts and fears I have, who will end up in even worse circumstances than me unless he can figure out some way to find joy and happiness in his own life.  if not, than I will have failed in that, too.  and that would be the worst fail of all my many fails, because he didn't ask for it, and certainly doesn't deserve it.

what manner of monster am I? 

Shabbat Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse Shalom (last week)

I'm really tired because I started a new job that has me working 9 hours a day Sunday through Thursday, and 4 hours on Fridays.  while I'm sure I'll get used to the schedule/routine, it's a lot at the moment.  and since there's a bunch of things that need doing around the house on my one day off, I'm making a list so I can get them done quickly, and hopefully still have time to rest a bit before going back to work tomorrow.

    dishes - I put away the clean dishes, then washed the rest of the dirty ones so I could clean the sink to wash my work shirts in.  yes, it would be more 'appropriate' to wash them in the bathroom sink, in my opinion, but the bathroom sink is too small.  then I took a small break to update the blog, have a snack, and play some online sheshbesh, too.  ✔

    wash work shirts - got the work shirts washed to the best of my ability.  there's no stopper, so it's kind of impossible to get the sink to fill with water without it draining out before I'm done.  whatever.  maybe I'll get a chance to wash them at the laundromat after payday (nope.  washed them in the sink again this week).  ✔

    Clean The Bathroom - did the bathroom, yay!  honestly, I hadn't cleaned it for too long, and it was getting really gross.  mostly just the toilet, but since I'm the only one here, and I don't have guests, the only one being grossed out by it is me, so...yeah.  I swept the floor, but it still needs to be mopped, which is next on the list.  I really dislike doing the floors for some reason, so I tend to procrastinate on them.  probably because they never really look 100% clean to me, and get dirty again so quickly.  ✔

    mop floors - there.  I did 7/8 of the floor.  the last 1/8 will wait a few minutes while the last bit I did dries.  I do it in sections...it doesn't take a lot of time, it's just annoying because I sometimes have to go over a section more than once to get every speck of dust and debris I can because I'm like that.  ✔

    re-pot however many plants I can - turns out I had enough soil to re-pot 6 plants!  one of my baby lemon trees, and 5 of my little tree sprouts, which a quick google search leads me to believe are 'Bauhinia variegata', aka 'purple orchid tree'.  ✔

    make a big salad for work lunches - (this happened the next morning, but it did happen.)  ✖

    cook a 'proper' meal (stir-fry) -  scrambled the eggs; meant to do the meat next but was going too fast and accidentally put the rice in the pot first, so that's simmering now.  rice and meat are both done; veggies are chopped and cooking; rice has been added to the pot; meat added along with legumes and spices, and finally the eggs.  time to eat!  ✔

    meerpeset - well, I went out to sweep the meerpeset, but there are three air conditioners upstairs that drip down onto it, and with the floor being wet, I ended making a bigger mess of it than was there to begin with.  so that was really annoying, stupid, and counter-productive.  and since my 'indoor shoes' got wet and dirty out there, they left dirt just inside the door on the floor I just mopped, so I had to wipe that spot again.  yay!  grumble grumble angry face.  it's ok, it's done now, and I'm just going to move on (I did finally get the meerpeset clean to my standards a few days later).  ✖

    talk to the kid - (happened the next morning before I had to get ready for work, but it did happen.)  ✖

    lay on an icepack - done and done (just about every day, these days).  ✔

that was my whole Shabbat (last week).  and while I know most people can probably get more done in a day than washing their dishes, handwashing 5 t-shirts, cleaning their bathrooms, mopping their floors, doing a bit of gardening and cleaning the porch, making a salad and a stir-fry, while writing a blog post about it, for me it's a lot.  especially since my diabetes is wildly uncontrolled at the moment, and I'm tired all the time.  the full moon tends to drain my energy and it being an eclipse had me all over the place emotionally, as well.  I didn't even get to see the moon turn red because I fell asleep as soon as I completed my list, and woke up just after it ended.  go figure.

I didn't end up working this Friday - I had an appointment with the nutritionist, and was supposed to go in after if there was still time, but there wasn't.  so I wandered through the shuk to see if there was anything I needed, but I wanted to take a closer look at the meal plan the nutritionist made for me before buying anything, so I just got some chicken (which I knew was part of the meal plan), and a small challah, and headed home for Shabbat.  I managed to get the dishes done and the sink cleaned again because I had to wash my work shirts by hand again, and cooked a meal of mac & cheese - which was definitely NOT on the meal plan, but I had planned for it and purchased the ingredients for it, so I went for it.  it was pretty good, but I don't think I did myself any favors by eating it.  I still would like to clean the bathroom and do the floors again because if I leave them for next week, it will once again get too dirty in here for me to function well.  I really do much better in a clean space.

it's only just past noon, and there's plenty of time to get the cleaning done, as well as some paperwork, and taking a good look at that meal plan so I can implement it during my work week.  I'm supposed to be checking my blood sugar 2 hours after my meals, too, which I generally don't bother with because I know it's generally high, and I don't need the stress of knowing how high, but I guess I'm trying?  I'd like to be able to have more energy for the kids I work with - and for myself, in the event I ever do anything other than work again.  I did lose some weight since I moved to Israel, and my A1C which has been through the roof did come down a point, but that's not enough to really make a difference.  I've gotten it down before, and I'd like to get it down again to avoid having to take the insulin and other various drugs my doctor tried to prescribe which I refused to take.  

the nutritionist also said the way I take the one medication I did agree to use isn't doing me any favors, and suggested a better schedule, so I'm working on correcting that as well.  again, it's probably not a lot for most people, but I'm not most people.  I'm ME, and I function as well as I can inside a societal framework that doesn't fit my idea of what life should be like because I want to survive a bit longer than my dad, who died at 57 (I'm 56), and maybe even as long as my mom, who died at 77.  and I want to be as vibrant and healthy as I can rather than a frail old woman confined to a wheelchair or a bed.  it's not like I have any life insurance to pay for an old people home when that time comes.  

I still feel so young in my heart and mind, it's hard to believe I'm anything other than the 20 year old kid I once was, though the lack of male attention I receive makes me feel as if I've become invisible.  I'm not sure if it's my age, my weight, or my not-so-subtle 'fuck off' vibe.  I went on a few dates recently, and while I wasn't impressed with them, they seemed interested enough, so...I don't know.  maybe they were so desperate they'd take anything, and I'm not nearly that interested in ruining my peace for someone that doesn't meet my rigid standards.  we'll see.  maybe if I get myself feeling more healthy I'll feel more confident about meeting people for romantic interludes.  right now, it's enough to keep my apartment up to my level of acceptance!

boring post that says nothing, really, but like with most things, I'm trying to keep to a schedule, so there it is. Shabbat Shalom ~