Homecoming

Even though he won't remember a thing, we have proof the baby enjoyed his first road trip.
Especially the view.

We're back home. I think we were all happy to be home for about a day and then we started missing our trip. Everyone asked me how it was possible to travel with three kids including an infant in a van for four weeks. I can hardly understand it myself, but it was wonderful. It was a lot of work. Especially on nights when we camped. But most of the work, the loading and unloading of our gear, the setting up, the breaking down, the cooking, the cleaning was handled by Mr. Rosen. I was on baby watch. And baby feed. The breastaurant was open 24 hours. So while I wasn't on duty for any of the heavy lifting, I did put three pounds on our baby and that counts for a lot. By the end of the trip none of his clothes fit for which I take personal pride. These aren't lowfat knockers.

After Utah we met some friends in Salida, Colorado, friends who are also moving to Israel albeit three months before us. Their eldest daughter is the one that my son has been friends with since birth. They played beautifully as did their middle daughter and our middle daughter and as it happens they have a three months old. We are perfectly paired.

And then it was the final haul to New Mexico where we returned the Bear Proof Vehicle to its rightful owners and enjoyed some quality times with the Rosens. We realized early on in the trip, after the first exhausting night of camping, that this trip was not about us. It was about the kids - creating some family lore for them. Filling their summer with idyllic childhood experiences. Letting them explore. Making them watch hour after hour of classic Loony Tunes in the van.

Some of the highlights:

• Cooling off in the creek at Lithia Park in Ashland
• Kayaking on the Oregon Coast
• The Wolf and the Bear food cart
• Seeing my 5th grade teacher Mr. Marshall at the Saturday Market in Portland
• Eating wild strawberries
• Mt Hood
• The hour that Mr. Rosen and I had in the morning on our anniversary after three kids inexplicably went back to sleep
• White water rafting in Bend
• Deserted hot springs in Eastern Oregon (deserted everything in Eastern Oregon)
• My daughter's knock knock jokes (this merits its own post)
• Monsoon rains in Utah
• Two terrified kids snuggled into the same sleeping bag during a lightening storm overhead
• Double rainbows
• The river walk in Escalante National Monument
• Picking apples in Capitol Reef National Park
• Denny's
• Rooftop margaritas with my brother in law and sister in law
• My niece's fifth birthday at the alien themed roller rink in Santa Fe (where the baby had a blowout so big it almost dripped into my skates).
• Friends and family we saw along the way - Danny and Tara, Danny and Rachel, Sue, John and Jessie, Jenn and David, Holly and Rob, Sim and Jen, Shirley and Ran, Yitz and Patricia, Saba and Savta. You guys made this trip unbelievable.

abedi abedi abedi, that's all folks.

Home Tour

Driveway


Bedroom


Bathroom


Kitchen


Laundry Room


Front Porch


Balcony


Kiva Koffeehouse


This strikingly beautiful two bedroom / one bath sits above Calf Creek and boasts 360 degree views of Utah's dramatic Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. The property features an open floor plan, chef's kitchen with all of the latest amenities and a separate open air laundry area. While the master bedroom is extremely roomy with a lot of natural light, the second "loft - style" bedroom offer a cozy respite from the elements. Best of all, the large bathroom offers panoramic vistas for a relaxing, often exhilarating, experience. The neighborhood rates very high on the walkability scale and is only a short ride to your morning coffee. Move quickly! This property may only last another 65 million years.

Bending

A little stumptown coffee froth to show our love for Bend, Oregon - home to 80,000 ridiculously fit people who run, bike, kayak, raft, ski and swim 365 days a year. A little intimidating for this postpartum mama. We stayed with friends whom we hadn't seen in six years and, in fact, getting together required a little bending from both sides - a story for another time. Our three and their three were six peas in a pod. They played outside with the neighborhood kids (something that never happens in our neighborhood), they biked, the made up games, they splashed, they even went rafting. One of our friends in a rafting guide and took our son down the Dechutes river through Big Eddy rapids. The pictures are hilarious - a lot of terror. And jubilation at the end. We were sad to leave them.

After a night camping in Eastern Oregon at a beautiful hotsprings we drove straight through southern Idaho and found ourselves latenight at Denny's and the Western Inn. Yehaw! We're off to some National Parks for the next few days. Be back sunburned soon.

Bear Proof Vehicle

Mr. Rosen and I have found ourselves in some hairy situations over the years in our various adventures. While camping in Spain we woke up surrounded by giant cows who tried to steal our breakfast. We once took a ride from a trucker in Turkey who wouldn't let us out where we wanted and started driving east to the Syrian border. In India Mr. Rosen almost got in a fist fight with a bus driver who claimed we didn't have valid bus tickets and threatened to kick us off. Good times. But our near encounter with a family of bears on Thursday night trumps all.

I was in the tent trying to nurse the baby to sleep and our daughter was already out. Mr. Rosen was in the van singing good-night songs to our son who was sleeping in the pop up roof. I'm half listening to him sing and half dozing off myself when I hear some moaning off in the distance. In fact it's the same moaning I'd heard the night before but this time I am hearing it at pretty regular intervals and I'm hearing it in a lot of different directions. I know instinctively that it's a bear. Probably a whole family of bears. It's a friggin bear country jamboree by the sounds coming out of the forest. Mr. Rosen continues to sing and I'm strategizing about how to haul ass out of this tent with my infant and sleeping four-year-old in the event of a bear attack. Plus I can never remember if it's with bears that you're supposed to make a lot of noise and look big or if that's with lions and with bears you're supposed to play dead. I'm also thinking that this chubby baby would seem like a nice scooby snack to a black bear. I'm thinking a lot things. Like maybe we shouldn't have camped so close to that wild strawberry patch. Like why the hell I am in the tent and Mr. Rosen is in the bear proof vehicle.

Finally Mr. Rosen emerges from the van and I call him over.

Me: Can you hear that noise?
Him: It's probably a coyote. don't worry about it.
Me. No. Stop and listen for a second.
Pause
Him: Huh. I think that's a bear.
Me: No shit it's a fucking bear.
Pause
Him: Maybe more than one bear.
Me: Like Yogi and Boo Boo?
Him: Plus the Berenstein Bears.
Me: What should we do?
Him: I'll start by putting our food away.
Me: Good plan.

So for the next ten minutes I watch from the tent as Mr. Rosen runs back and forth to the van about thirty times putting away all of our food and garbage. Then he comes back to the tent and says he thinks we should all sleep in the van. The big kids will be in the back (the back seats fold down to a full bed), me and the baby in the pop-up and he'll find a spot in the hull somewhere. He then moves our sleeping son in his sleeping bag to the back of the van. Then my daughter from the tent to the van. Then he takes mine and the baby's sleeping bags and positions them in the pop-up. Next he places the baby up there and I climb in along side him. Finally he sets up his own little space and we all huddle together in our armored fortress.

The next morning, our ninth wedding anniversary, there are no signs of a bear visitation but a guy from the forest service confirms that the place is teeming with black bears. So we packed up and moved on to Bend, a beautiful city further south with no bears but teeming with exercise fanatics, which makes me and my postpartum body wish we were still in bear country.

Conversation

Mt Hood from Trillium Lake

Him: Do people die from the lava on Mt Hood?
Me: No sweetie. Mt Hood isn't an active volcano anymore. It stopped spitting out lava a long time ago.
Him: Then why do people die there every year?
Me: Nobody dies there. Who told you that?
Him: Danny told me that people die on Mt Hood every year.
Me: thanks Danny... Yes, people try to climb Mt Hood every year and sometime a few of them die up on the mountain.
Him: Why?
Me: Sometimes there are storms and people slip on ice or they fall a really long way and hit their heads or it's too cold.
Him: Why do people climb it if you can die?
Me: Some people really like to climb mountains. They like to climb all the way to the top and then say they climbed to the top.
Him: Why?
Me: Because they're stupid.

The end.

Food Carts in Portland

We are loving Portland. It is gorgeous and all over the city there are little carts selling food. All kinds of food. And all kinds of carts! It's all kinds of awesome!

Yachats

A few pics from our four days with old friends on the Oregon coast. And even though our beach house had seen better days, like maybe in the fifties, we were right near the water and had a giant lawn to ourselves where we did yoga every morning and let the kids run free. We even got together with a family from Corvalis whom we had met ten years ago in New Zealand. Besides sleeping in their garage a few nights when we couldn't find a place to stay in Christchurch, we spent an incredible day together kayaking with dolphins in Akarora. And now, ten years and three kids later, another memorable day on the other side of the Pacific.

Sign

I saw this in front of a super cute store in Ashland and decided it was written for us.

Ashland, Oregon

There's a creek that runs through the middle of this awesome park in this beautiful town so these fantastic kids went for a swim on a hot, hot afternoon after a long morning in the van.

Mt Shasta

Where'd everyone go?

Camping at Mt Shasta.

Cazadero

The best part of Cazadero, besides the company and the food and the view and the weather and the vibe, is the quad.

Road Trip

Northbound over the Golden Gate Bridge

We are on the road! Our baby turned eight weeks and we thought, shoot. Maybe we should take a roadtrip! Isn't that what most folks do with their infants? In July my brother-in-law and his family drove out to California to meet the baby in their crazy giant Sportsmobile van and now we're spending all of August driving it back to them in a very roundabout manner (via Oregon). I had hoped to post at least a picture everyday but finding wifi along the way is proving to be difficult. So I will just back date posts in batches whenever there's time.

Our first stop is Cazadero, a mountaintop hamlet near the Russian River in Sonoma county and home to our friends Danny and Tara. We met them five years ago at a cafe nearby and all fell in love. They said we were welcome to come back and visit anytime, which we have. Let this be a lesson to those of you who casually make this type of offer to us. We will likely come so the offer best be sincere.

I'm actually writing this on my phone as I sit in a little town on the Oregon coast. We're all smiles over here. Even Mr. Crampy Pants.

The long and winding road

photo courtesy of AARoads

Indeed we had a lovely week at my mom's in southern California, thanks for asking. It's a seven hour drive including two half hour stops for stretching and gassing and eating. That's, of course, when the stars are aligned.  When they're not aligned, it takes a lot longer. On this particular trip we were making very good time and the kids were both enjoying a mid afternoon slumber as I arrived at the Grapevine, specifically the exit right before you ascend 4,000 feet over the Tehachapi mountains and land in Los Angeles, but also referring to the winding stretch along the freeway itself. On a good day it's still a little harrowing and involves a lot of jockeying between big rigs. In the winter it's icy. This time of year it's windy and hot. So when your dashboard suddenly lights up with this cryptic message: STOP ENGINE - you know you're in for a super stress-free couple of hours. Ohmmmm...

This was not the first time I had seen the light. This particular light anyway. On our way home from camping the day before this trip, the oil pressure indicator lit up followed by anxiety producing beeping and the STOP ENGINE message. We stopped and checked the oil which was oily but we were two hours from home and it was dark so we kept driving. There was no logic in that decision; it's just what we did. The light didn't come back. Terrific! It's just a dashboard fuse thing! I brought it to our mechanic, a 97 year old German man who only works on German cars, and he confirmed that he saw nothing wrong with the car. It now appears that this is because, at his age, he can no longer see.

So four hours into our trip south and with three hours to go, possibly more as it is now approaching rush hour in LA, the light reappears and all I can think is we are so screwed.

Which incidentally reminded me of when I was birthing my daughter and at one point while her head was stuck right there in my vagina I thought well, this is a fine mess. She's not going back in and yet if she comes out anymore my pelvis will shatter. But I digress...

So we pressed on watching the light flash and beep, praying that I wasn't completely destroying the engine and, more importantly, that we weren't going to explode on top of a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. But, as was the case with my daughter, we white-knuckled through it and arrived home safely albeit completely traumatized. Fortunately the rest of the week went a lot more smoothly than the first day. Except the part where the VW dealership told me my Passat needed bypass surgery and, feeling my own oil pressure begin to rise,  I asked if they could schedule my bypass for the same time.

STOP ENGINE.

The Core of the Big Apple

Roger's Beach, Westhampton, New York

 

I was on a roll with my big apple stories but then I hit a nearing deadline and panicked and a shark bit off my thumb and I fell into a hole and red ants ate my eyeballs. None of those things are true except that I had/have a deadline for a custom ketubah (Jewish wedding contract - do I have to keep telling you this or does everyone know what a ketubah is at this point?) and the wedding is August 22 but the bride wants her grandmother who has generously paid for it to give it to her on the day of her wedding shower which is August 8, except that I am leaving town again on July 31 so she needs it on the 30th and that's on Thursday! But I finished it! Because I am a ketubah making MACHINE. You will get a peek coming up soon. But first, a final recap of New York.

After our two days touring Manhatten we dug into the core part of our trip which was seeing family and eating. I took the kids to see my husband's grandmother on the south shore and then when we tried to get to the beach from there and failed, I took them instead to a park nearby with sprinklers. I could have just as well turned the sprinklers on at my own house and saved myself a ton of time and money. I must say though I am really good at getting around Long Island even though I had to take six different highways to get ten miles. My aunt scoffed at this notion pointing out that on their various trips to see us in southern California back in the day she remembers taking the 5 to the 55 to the 22 to the 405 to the 73 to the 1 etc. She has a point.

On Saturday we spent the whole day at my cousin's house culminating in a fifth birthday party for my niece. Most of my cousins have kids now and they're all about the same age and this cousin is so relaxed entertaining a house full of people. You can imagine her stirring the tomato sauce in her bikini and holding her two year old on her hip with everyone around her screaming or kvetching or whatever. And the kids are all in the pool and the cousins (the grown-ups) are remembering when we used to have chicken fights and play marco polo when we were kids. And now we're all old. 

Sunday was time for more nostalgia. We drove out to Westhampton where my aunt has been living the last 45+ years. We used to go out there every year and stay in her house which was over the pharmacy that my uncle owned. They had a giant tree swing out back and a golden retriever named Fletcher and even though I was the youngest cousin on my mom's side (by a lot) I used to love tagging along with my big cousins and going to the beach where we'd line up our shoes as is local tradition, taking showers outside and eating steamers for dinner. It was so nice to be there this time with my own kids and their cousins and to see my aunt. And even though it was a double red flag rip tide at the beach and I was terrified the surf would eat my kids, we had a terrific time. And we even got to clean up in my aunt's outdoor shower. That is the essence of summer.

Our last day we went to the Long Island Children's Museum and then drove to the airport where unfortunately our flight was delayed three hours. But my kids were stars. We ate dinner, played games, watched movies and by the time we took off they were completely wrecked and slept the whole way home.

Some parting thoughts:

1. Traveling solo eliminates the stress of figuring out what you'll do each day and who you'll see because you just do what you want to do and that's that.
2. I would need to grow out my hair if we ever lived on the east coast because the humidity makes me look like Bozo the Clown.
3. There is no need to bring a "just in case" sweatshirt to New York in the summer. 
4. Family is good. The bigger the better.

Tooth decay in the Big Apple

Here is my daughter trying to grab the pieces of candy that are embedded in the floor, looking herself like a piece of candy.

On Day Two we headed back into the city by train and met my brother's family at Dylan's Candy Bar in midtown. Dylan is Ralph Lauren's daughter and the story goes that her dream of owning a giant candy store began at her fifth birthday party when they watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the best movie of all time. Dylan and I are obviously kindred spirits, except the part where she's the daughter of a fashion legend and probably had a pony growing up. And since my own son is obsessed with Willy Wonka (more on this at another time), it seemed like he would fall over and die in this kind of place. Which he did. It was awesome. And we bought a ton of candy. Mostly of the Pez and Gobstopper variety.

Then we walked to Rockefeller Center where we went to view the city from the top. Another cousin had given us a tip not to visit the Empire State Building because it's way too crowded and overpriced and, most importantly, it's not, by definition, in the view. So we went to the Top of the Rock and the views of the city were as promised. Once again, my kids were more awestruck by the elevator. Youth is really wasted on the young.

After grabbing a slice of pizza we navigated the subway system to get over to the Second Avenue Deli, a family tradition, to meet my grandmother and aunt. This required three subway transfers. So imagine the two families schlepping our strollers up and down the stairs and me trying to figure out how to connect the dots. At one point we were trying to get on a train and, like the two stooges, pushing our strollers on while the doors were crushing us closing. These are not like elevator doors. They are non-retractable. The kids were on board with my sister-in-law, all of them screaming. So much for blending in with the locals.

At our stop we decided to take the elevator up and this proved to be a major miscalculation. It was the world's slowest moving elevator and at 110 degrees it was like being in a microwave. When it reached the mezzanine the doors didn't open for about thirty seconds and I started to have a panic attack. As did my brother. Not pretty. Finally we emerged.

After a short walk to the Second Avenue Deli which, incidentally, is now on Third Avenue, we met up with our people for a delicious meal of matzah ball soup, egg salad, roast beef and the like. The piled up pastrami my brother was eating made me wish I hadn't recently become vegetarian. Bad timing. Thankfully my aunt drove us home because by this point we'd had our fill of public transportation.

Next up - navigating the Long Island highways, a pool party for my niece and a trip to Westhampton.

Sinking our teeth into the Big Apple

We are back. We've been back since 2 am on Tuesday morning but we're still in recovery. It was a trip of epic proportion! Huge! Urban! Filthy! Exciting! Nostalgic! We took many forms of transportation. We endured a heat wave. We ate a lot of candy. We walked a lot and my feet are disgusting. So much for my biennial pedicure. But we did it all - the arranging, the flight, the trains, the museums, the Long Island Expressway to the Meadowbrook to the Southern State to Sunrise Highway to Country Road 16, the Atlantic double red flag rip tide, the three hour delay at JFK. All of it. Solo.

It was not such a gargantuan undertaking. It's not like I have two year old triplets. Nonetheless, there were a lot of logistics and a lot of coordination so that we could see our family and indeed spend much of the trip traveling with my brother's family who also flew out from California. The first day my cousin picked us up and took us to the train station just as our train was arriving. This is apparently her M.O. Why waste time waiting for public transportation when you can jump onto the train with your two kids and your stroller as it's pulling out of the station? We arrived safely at Penn Station and caught a subway uptown to the American Museum of Natural History where we met my brother and his family in the whale room. We eventually made it to the dinosaur room but my own kids were a little nonplussed, which I found annoying. I guess once you've seen one hundred and fifty MILLION year old reptile the size of ten elephants, you've seen them all.  The buttons on the elevator continue to trump all other marvels. Maybe next year.

We headed out in the 100 degree sun and found our way to a clean and inexpensive burger place with an air conditioned downstairs big enough for a party of seven and a flat screen playing world cup soccer . I highly recommend the shroom burger. Here's where it would have been nice to have an iphone, which I decided not to buy before the trip for fear of completely neglecting my children. Even though the burger place was a block away, like a schmuck I convinced everyone to follow me up and around the museum so we walked an extra twenty minutes in weather I can only describe as a sauna inside an active volcano on Mercury. All the while accompanied by the constant drone of the sun is too hot, the sun is too hot. Really? Huh. I hadn't noticed while I was bending over to pour out the pool of sweat that had formed in my cleavage.

After lunch we walked south to a section of Central Park with big splashing fountains and joined a group of intrepid NYC summer campers for a little cool down.  We spent more than an hour running around pouring water on each other before we bid farewell to our cousins and headed on the subway back to Penn Station. Well first we mistakenly took an uptown train one stop but then we got off, stood dazed while two express trains created a sudden wind inferno on the platform, then dragged the stroller up the stairs, crossed over, and down the stairs to the downtown platform. I don't know how NYC mommas do it. I imagine they don't take the subway if they can help it. And taking the train back to Manhassat at 6:00 was a little claustrophobic. But we survived and my uncle picked us up, brought us to my grandmother's for pizza and we called it a day.

Some observations:

1. Car seat coordination while traveling is annoying.
2. New York pizza beats the crap out of all other pizza in the universe and beyond.
3. Having a home base is key. My kids were so happy to go back "home" at the end of every adventure.
4. Bringing a bag of snacks from home meant we didn't have to waste the first day of our trip looking for a supermarket. And incidentally, eight juice boxes fit perfectly in a small flat rate box from USPS and can be packed in a suitcase without fear of crushing/exploding.
5. New Yorkers are not as familiar with protective swim wear as Californians.

Tomorrow - Dylan's Candy Store, 30 Rock, the subway elevator where we almost perished and the Second Avenue Deli.

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.

Home

We're home. This is a picture of my daughter screaming about something. There were certainly plenty of things for her to scream about on our 34 hour trip home. 14 of those hours were spent in London. Thankfully not on the floor of terminal three in Heathrow airport. We had the good sense to reserve a hotel room next to the airport which may have been our saving grace. All in all, it was a pretty good travel experience. Just long.  I even got to watch parts of some movies. The guy two rows in front of my to the diagonal was watching Precious so I saw some of that without sound which was probably the most I could handle from that movie. I also got to watch a little Bollywood action. That may be new favorite genre. And I watched the second Twilight movie in its entirety which was awful, but having just read three of the four books, highly entertaining.

I have a lot of things swirling around in my head. Stories from the trip. Thoughts on the Middle East. An open letter to President Obama. Some constructive criticism for Virgin Atlantic and Boeing. Thoughts about travel footwear. Confusion over where to live the rest of my life. The soundtrack to The Sneetches DVD.

In the meantime I am swamped. Orders to fill. A commission to finish. Taxes to file. Not to mention a severe case of luggage creep that must be nipped in the bud. I'll see you on the other side.

Deserted

The last few days have been outstanding. We've mainly stayed in the south going on short hikes, looking for water holes in the desert (because it's unseasonably hot) and playgrounds in the towns we pass through on our way home. The kids are doing great. We took them to the old city of Beer Sheva to buy pita at the oldest pita factory in town. And around the corner is the little Turkish style stone house where my husband lived until he was three. The door his dad built some 37 years ago is still there.

Today was supposed to be another wonderful day. I was supposed to meet a lovely woman that I 'met' though ETSYChai, an ETSY team open to anyone but primarily for Jewish sellers or Israeli sellers or sellers of Judaica or all of the above. I had mentioned to the team that I would be in Israel and few people said they'd be happy to meet me. In the end I planned to drive to Tel Aviv and my husband would drop me off at Nahalat Binyamin which is a great craft market on Tuesdays and Fridays. I love to go even though the stuff there looks about the same year after year. I don't care. It's nice to have a strong coffee and relax and then walk around looking at the goodies. And Tuesdays are always less crowded than Fridays, the only other day it's open. In the end only one woman could meet me, Lisa, which was fine. We seemed to have a fair amount in common - moved to Israel from elsewhere at some point (though we left), young kids, artist, home studio. She makes wonderful papercut art - cards, little boxes, notebooks - beautiful little treasures. Go see her shop and blog. I was excited to meet her. But last night right as I was going to bed I started to feel horribly nauseated. If there's one thing I can't deal with it's nausea. So I basically didn't sleep. And this morning it felt worse. So I emailed her that I couldn't make it and maybe we could reschedule for Friday.

And then I got the call. Where are you? Gulp. She had taken her kids to school and gone straight to the train to meet me. I don't know if you know this about me, but I hate when I fuck up. I HATE it. Not that this keeps me from doing it all the time. But I don't like it one bit. Especially something like this where someone else is involved. I've actually been on her side and wasted my time getting somewhere only to be left hanging. I am usually very conscientious. I don't know why I just didn't call! And now I'm feeling awful because, well I'm nauseated still, and also I deserted this nice person at a cafe in Tel Aviv, so now I have to feel bad about that until I stop feeling bad, because that's what I do. My son has this same quality and I hate seeing it in him too. He hates making mistakes and when he makes them, he is harder on himself than I could ever be.Although he often feels like his shame is enough and he doesn't deserve a secondary punishment for, say, hitting his sister. Not sure about that one.