We told the kids

Tonight's family meeting had four items on the agenda.
1. If you want an iPhone app that costs money, you have to pay for it with your allowance money.
2. Everyone is doing a kickass job helping mommy and aba with the move. Kudos.
3. No licking your friends. It passes germs. (And there will be plenty of time for that later).
4. After the baby's born and after summer camp, we're moving to Israel.

Now we fully expected a total and complete multi-party meltdown after we dropped this bomb. Because we have talked to the kids before about the possibility of moving to Israel and our son has mostly responded negatively. As in, no way in hell. I want to be with Heather and Aly in first grade. I want to move to Orange County and live with Grandma in a house with stairs. I don't want to go to school where everyone speaks Hebrew. I don't want it to be nighttime when it's daytime for Grandma. I don't want to carry a gun (I don't know where he picked that one up, but unfortunately that's a valid concern).

This is how that part of the conversation went.
Me: ...our whole family is moving to Israel.
Him: And Grandma too?
Me: No, Grandma is staying here. But she'll visit us and we'll visit her.
Pause
Him: We'll have to redo the settings on your iPhone I bet.
Me: Right. You could be very helpful to mommy with your expertise.
Him: And the plugs are different there. I'd have to practice putting in the the two round holes instead of the two rectangular slots.
Me: That's true. But we could bring all of your old electricity stuff and you could show your new friends how different electricity is in America.
Him: Ya. And there's really big slides in Israel.
Me: In every city.
Him: And I can go to work with Saba and Savta.
Me: Yes. And maybe some of our friends will come to visit us!
Her: And have a sleep over!

This was the abridged version. The original dialogue was heavy on the iPhone settings and the new phone number and calling people in the middle of the night which will be daytime for them, and the video chat feature that my phone has and Aly's dad's phone has. I figured I should just let him talk about iPhone settings for as long as he needed to process this whole thing. I'm sure this isn't the end of the conversation since there's another six months until it happens, but considering how worried we were about telling them, this was a stellar beginning.

Open Window

Thanks to watching three consecutive episodes of LOST online last night, the jetlag seems to have subsided. Finally. Though a small female demon woke me at 5:45 this morning, which I consider progress. My son, on the other hand, has a future as an international business man or diplomat or flight attendant. He scoffs at jetlag. First night back he slept from 8 pm to 7:30 am. That's a gold medal in sleeping right there.

I've been in a funk since our return. We really had a great trip. Aside from the weather, which was horrible for much of our stay (back to back heat waves and some kind of South African sand storm), every day offered some amazing experience. Sometimes adorable, like when my daughter was putting pick up sticks into my father-in-law's ponytail like he was a geisha. Sometimes wondrous, like watching my son play with the kids of our close friends and actually speak to them in Hebrew. We spent most of our time in the south and the kids really enjoyed being with their aunt and grandparents. One day we spent with friends in Tel Aviv and I fell in love again with that city. It combines Middle East grit with European charm. Picture crumbling 1950s apartment building with well-tended geraniums under every window. And the food. So many kinds of salads and cous cous and shwarma and falafel. And the yogurts too. Holy lactose intolerance. And did I mention the shoco b'sakit? That's chocolate milk in a plastic bag where you bite off the corner and literally nurse yourself into euphoria. It's bliss.

It was also great to see many of our friends and where they're living. Beautiful homes with desert views, funky old apartments in the center of everything, some pastoral, some urban, some up in the hills. Some way out in the middle of nowhere, which you wouldn't think possible in a country this tiny.

And we had a lot of interesting conversations, many of which included questions about our return. We left Israel almost ten years ago. The standard answer has always been two years. There are Israelis living in Silicon Valley forty years and they're still on the two year plan. So who really knows. One thing is for sure. When you marry someone from a different country, it opens a window that can never close. You are forever caught between two worlds. Two cultures. Two languages. Two histories. And in our case, ten time zones. It would be a lot easier if I was European. You can pretty much commute between Israel and Europe. Even New York would be more manageable.  California feels like another whole planet away. But you can't always plan who you love or where your heart takes you. We'll always be missing somewhere or someone.

Here's a taste.

Distractions and Monsters

I just had to close one my tabs because I couldn't stop myself from watching another video clip with the producers of LOST. I'm that obsessed. It's starting again next Tuesday and I'm already trying to figure out how I'm going to get my kids to bed a half hour earlier than normal so I can watch the two hour premiere because it's my husband's bass guitar lesson night. In fact, I should really just get him to switch nights for the next four months. It's that important. OK it's not really that important. But it's exciting. It's the only show I watch, besides Glee which is off the air until April. Humor me.

I'm also distracted by the fact that I think we are moving. I'm not sure exactly how and when but I think soon. So that's the when. The how part remains a mystery. We need more space. So we met with a realtor and started figuring out what we might list at and a rough time line. But then I can't quite get my head around where we live after that. Do we rent something? In a better school district? Do we find another house? Can we even afford anything? California sucks in that way. So I'm distracted by MLS Listings and craigslist. And I'm dreaming of houses but worried about sinking all our money back into a real estate nightmare.

And all of this explains why I have been drawing little houses with monsters hiding in the landscaping. In fact the houses are Eichlers which are little, modern-looking houses that were built by Joseph Eichler in the fifties, sixties and seventies in parts of California - namely Orange County, where I grew up, and Palo Alto, close to where we live now and where the school district is better, where even the puny ones (950 sf) cost about 1.5 million. Welcome to the nightmare. What's ironic is I used to hate Eichlers. They're a little Brady Bunchy. Marsha Marsha Marsha!