most of them speak for themselves...

Undoubtedly the best email I received recently was this one full of reading suggestions:



I have to admit, I don't really get this one. Dora isn't famous for being a slut and while there is an insect fanfare after every level, I've never seen a baby in that backpack. Oh well.


Actually I don't get this one either. I debated leaving it out. Maybe its an amerian book and americans will scream with laughter. Maybe.



Well put.




True enough.




An important lesson inside.

two bars of chocolate and a packet of crisps

A while ago I started a diet. I didn’t want to, but my waistline said otherwise. So I made a commitment to follow a well-known diet for a month. It went well and I pushed on for another month. But inevitably the other shoe dropped. Momma got bored of watching what she ate. Momma’s weight went the wrong way one week. Momma got depressed about it and let all hell break loose. Momma wanted chocolate, Momma got chocolate. Momma wanted peanuts, Momma got peanuts.

At the end of that week, Momma forced herself to face the NAKED TRUTH and stepped up on the scales to assess the damage. Momma set the conditions so that the best possible case scenario would be reflected on the scales: first thing in the morning, naked, and AFTER pee-pee. Momma exhaled and stood on the scales. No. Change. No change! I gorged myself for a week, and…de nada! Wow that feels good! So good I feel like grabbing Mottle’s hand and running dancing into the woods out back of Anatevka…wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles!

This week I am definitely going to be good. The little god of bathroom scales has granted me a second chance. A chance to put things right and make good with my life. I daren’t let him down because otherwise next week he will definitely shout at me.

you're going on the naughty step

I watch a lot of little angels and supernanny shows. It never fails to make you feel better about being a parent. The people they have on that show are DISASTERS at being parents! Their kids run riot and scream and destroy things and the parents have no clue. No control. They don't see that their whole household is run by their 2 year old. Mine isn't, so I'm doing good.

But when the telly goes off, things are far from perfect. Why are there toys scattered over every bit of floor space in the apartment? Why is there an ikea igloo where the coffee table should be? Why are four and a half year olds still not dressing themselves and drinking out of sippy cups? Ooooooops.

Thats the problem with our generation. Our parents were brought up strictly. They brought us up more relaxedly. And we just want to be friends with ours. We need to be taught how to parent. Also, where women burned bras to free them from the confines of running the household and pushing us into equality in the workplace (not that that ever fully worked out), they actually burned us here 50 years down the line. Because society has shifted, you need 2 incomes to maintain a decent quality of life. But men are still perceived as the breadwinners and women are still supposed to take care of the kids, mostly after working a full day of work. You come home ragged and getting through the evening with tired kids can be a real shlep.

Supernanny's mantra is simple (so the voiceover guy says): punish the bad behaviour and reward the good.

Yeah, I try that. I'm probably better at the punishing than the praising. I think that I've successfully implemented only one thing from watching supernanny. Yes, at least they wipe their own asses. I'm in a post-modernist nirvana.

if he hadn't been waiting for his ride, he never would have stopped at the bakery. and then my day in food wouldn't be a complete write off

My cubemate is an evil little mofu. It all started yesterday when he brought in some chocolate chip cookies from Inglish Keik (they don’t spell it like that. On their behalf, I do. They pronounce it like that, and you’d never find a Victoria sponge in there). I caved and had a chocolate chip cookie before lunch. Yeah, I have long known that I have no self-control whatsoever.
Then after lunch, FOR SURE I was going to have another one for dessert. It would be rude not to! And you know, the one just wasn’t enough…

I managed to hold myself in the rest of the afternoon at the mall, but as soon as I walked through the door at 6pm, I was ravenous. Like a nervous addict, I approached the fridge. The salami got it. I opened the cupboard. The cashews were too salty so the peanuts took a big bashing. I must have had about three hundred THOUSAND peanuts. And at this point, I must confess, I knew that the food was on its way! The husband was out slaying a noodle mammoth. The husband came home to find a baseball bat in his face and was mugged and robbed and stripped of all consumables before he had even put the key in the lock. I left him in the hallway for the neighbours to take care of. I was busy ripping the sellotape off my VEGVEG and smoothing my chopsticks. I gorged. One gyoza and half the VEGVEG later, I was done. Satisfied.

Until I remembered the mother in law had left a home-made chocolate cake…

dum de dum nothing to do

I went shopping yesterday. Killing time, really. Now that the babysitter is firmly in place giving me free time, I’m actually at a loss as to WHAT EXACTLY to do with the extra time. Sure, there are a gazillion things I could do, but most of them involve being at home and in bed. And definitely not things to squeeze into an hour.

So I dragged my sorry ass around the mall. Devoid of actually needing anything, I wandered aimlessly as a cloud. I checked out skirts for baby girl zebra. I checked out books for baby boy zebra. I checked out Fox’s new summer collection. It looks like they have given up any hope of winter actually coming at all this year and have decided to push on through to strappy tops and shorts. I actually heard the shop assistant breezily insisting to a man (obviously a man) that three-quarter length trousers could be worn day to day even now. Outside it was very windy and rather chilly. And I’m significantly more laissez-faire than most Jewish mothers and never have my kids wear vests.

I left the mall with a clean car, hair clips, and spongebob squarepants toothpaste. And I still had 45 minutes left to kill. I’m going to have to be a lot more inventive on Thursday because we sure as hell won’t need any more toothpaste.

busy day at the polls

Yesterday we went to the polls. We were confronted with this:
(source)
One of 31 parties or a white slip. If you read hebrew you'll be able to tell that you had the option to vote for the PUTZ party or even the FUCK(H) party.

It took me at least 5 minutes to locate the paper slip I’d decided on. Some people felt that I would be better suited to use this:


And at the end of the day…it was the most useless election ever. Nobody to vote for and nobody won. And certainly not the people I voted for. They didn’t get ANY seats. I think it would have been easier had we had an african american candidate.

At least we got the day off work. We went to see Madagascar 2. Except here it’s pronounced "Mad-gas-car Shty-mm". And with that you get "pop-koren". Oh! The injustice of watching animation starring the vocal talents of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Bernie Mac, and Alec Baldwin cut out in favour of some Hebrew no-namers! I’ve had to check on the IMDB today to see what funny bits I missed. They don’t even sing “I like to move it move it”. They sing “I move my bottom bottom”. Yes they do. You can’t make this stuff up!

I wanted to watch Bolt but it was vetoed. Incidentally, that's pronounced “Boll-et”.

exterminate! exterminate!

Ram hash. Home of smiling children, strawberries, and daleks.

looking hot when you're as frazzled as the bacon in a greasy spoon breakfast

The other night I was invited to the home of one of the other-mothers-from-the-kindergarten who was having an other-mothers-from-the-kindergarten evening. And here's the thing about my neighbourhood: the men are ugly but rich enough to sponsor a trophy wife.

Most women in my neighbourhood are faltzani frechot trophy wives which loosely translated means nouveau-riche tart trophy wives. I am not a trophy wife. For starters, I am too tall and lollop in comparison to all the little tight-ass skinny bitches that strut around here. Also, I am proportionally larger. OK, I'm FAT. Too fat for the skin-tight low-cut midriff baring clothes that are sold around here. I'm a fake blond but I don't make it straw-shade or fan it every other day. Besides, my husband says my hair looks like a bush. My fingernails do not pass the ends of my fingers. And I have a job. No self-respecting trophy wife would work! Even worse, I work full-time and have a permanently ragged look about me. I wear one uniform outfit all the time. (And it's black!). For the trophy wife, it's all about pedicures, manicures, hairdressers, massages, facials, gyms, and lying in bed when your kids get home while your full time babysitter tends to their needs. And yet I have a complex that I am looked at as if I should be a trophy wife. I am what my husband brought back from overseas! Imported product! I should be better than the rest of the trophy wives because I am the foreign trophy wife. But my trophy wife career was nixed on my first trip to Israel. I am not an agile dancer. Mr. Zebra-to-be's friend's girlfriend noticed this to the soundtrack of It's Raining Men on my second night and told her gagging-for-it friend that he was fair game. Gagging-for-it made a point of sitting between us at the 5am coffee shop stop. Friend's girlfriend has not stopped paying since.

But, I digress.

So I went to the evening with the following attendees:
A.M. Normal.
A.S. Along the path to the fiery pits of faltzanidom hell. Has one of those minature white is-it-a-dog-is-it-a-rug? dogs. But sweet, funny, and chatty. Has a nicely decorated apartment and puts on a good spread.
M. Wears big sunglasses. Indoors. At 9pm.
I. Thin. Wears leather trousers. Summer holidays on a yacht off Croatia.
Absent was R. who is so far away from the pits of nouveau riche hell that she is off the charts. Her kid gets HAND ME DOWN CLOTHING for godsakes and even I turn my nose up at that. The evening was her idea and I probably wouldn't have gone except for occasionally I discipline myself that jedi mothers also need to socialize and that going to bed at 9pm does make me a bit of a Norman no-mates hermit.

And so, I knew ahead of time that it wouldn't be the most riveting evening of my life. But I like A.M. and A.S., and think that M. is quite humorous. I. was very reasonable at her son's birthday party when a total bitch trophy wife told me I should look after my daughter as she was trashing I.'s house. I. said not to worry, the most important thing was to enjoy the party.

Despite that when I arrived I saw Celine Dion in concert in the living room, the evening went well. We made a pact to sign our kids to the same gan next year. (Do my children know I am divining the course of their lives by choosing their friends behind their backs?? Who cares!). We bitched about the teacher and how stupid she is. What with classic lines such as…"I'm glad your kid got hurt on my day off! I wouldn't have known what to do with him what with all that blood gushing everywhere"…we had a lot to go on.

Everyone shared something. It was about bread rolls, Dudu being on his second marriage, bitching about the country club owners (you see, nouveau-riche. Not only are you a member of a country club, you are posh enough to bitch about the owner!) and I. locking her kids in the yacht every evening on holiday and going out drinking in Croatia.

You know, bitch-troll-skinny-bitch-nouveau-riche-tart-trophy-wives are ok when you break them down for an evening. They lose their evilness and move down the scale and become ok. It helps that sitting down there is no strutting. I will never be a trophy wife. I'm lucky if I get to the hairdresser once a year. I'm not allowed to give up my job. Nop, I am not a trophy wife. But then I will never lock my kids on a yacht for a Croatian martini either.

welcome, cilaprex googlers!

Maybe its time to invite all those people who google Cilaprex into the blog. Quite a lot of you come here. And from all over the world. Even arab nations! (beware, you might self-combust because you are reading something coming out of Israel! You have been warned! Avert your eyes!!). My doctor prescribed me Cilaprex because I went to her complaining that I am always stressed out and evil.

Honestly, I didn't really take much Cilaprex so I can't give you much guidance. I prefer to take denial and then watch the side-effects wreak havoc on my homelife due to stress triggered by my day job and useless husband. Was he shouted at because he was useless, or useless because I shouted at him? Chicken. Egg. Useless I tell you.

The best cure is laughter. And I've been laughing today. Out loud! Here's some laughs I wanted to share with you:
http://15minutelunch.blogspot.com/2005/11/searching-for-salvation-or-salivation.html
http://15minutelunch.blogspot.com/2006/07/searching-far-and-wide.html
http://15minutelunch.blogspot.com/2008/10/searching-for-big-bird.html
http://15minutelunch.blogspot.com/2009/01/crap-i-drank-yesterday.html

(these are the kind of blog posts that are so good, they encourage me to curl up into a ball under a rock and die in a minute dust cloud of unworthiness). Hats off to you, Johnny Virgil!

Then there's the news I've been looking at:
Do "men" realize they rolled up a Viking into that ball?

And the news I was fed in an expat newsletter:

I'd be confused! I once slowed down to speed limit for a cardboard cutout police car. But we've already established I'm a criminal (see here).


For the person who has everything. But do they have a moss bathmat grown with their own roll off body water??


There's something about the "it has emerged" ... did the illegal immigrants suddenly emerge from some wheelie bins outside Acton Town Pizza Hut?!

And the last thing that made me laugh was myself!
In response to an article written by a man who was headed back to the States after not finding a job 5 years after he came to Israel:
He was probably one of those people you see at STC conventions with wild eyebrows, a nervous tick, and his pants belted in tightly under his manboobs.
The thing that makes me laugh is that I don't make myself laugh until someone writes back a ROFL and then I read it back to myself and guffaw so hard it makes Eduardo ask me why I'm crying.

gordon

Tel Aviv, 3rd February 2009

although she lives with 7 other men...she's not easy

I wish I was 4 and a half years old! I could get up early, demand choco-milk, and watch a full feature-length disney film before 7am. Then, someone would dress me and take me with my freshly and lovingly prepared breakfast to a room full of 23 of my closest friends. I can show off my new crown, not take it off all day while I run and scribble and play! I can have someone spend 2 hours looking after all my needs and giving me piggy back rides and eat a freshly prepared supper and have a bath and splash the whole bathroom wet but I don't care because someone else will clean it and then I can put on my Stephanie nightdress and robe and super-soft socks and crown and spend the last 20 minutes of my day watching Shrek.