some people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light

After 70 days of unemployment, today I made it to the beach for only the second time. Honestly, people, I don't know what the hell I have been doing. I should have been there all this time. Because the beach is sublime. Our corner of the med has crystal clear waters, long sandy beaches, tiny little crabs, and Little Egrets. Little Egrets are cool because they have yellow feet which I absolutely love. You can just imagine how that darwin conversation went... "Bill! I dig your shoes man, where'd you get them from?" And the rest is a whole different species.

There's one thing about our beaches that you might not find in any other beach in the world. And that's a long segregated section that's for women onlyonly on sundays, tuesdays and thursdays, and for men on mondays, wednesdays and fridays. (Nobody gets saturday because the beach is "not in the spirit of shabbat".) The segregated section is literally separated from the rest of the beach by aluminium sheets from the cliffs to about 10 meters into the sea SO THAT NO-ONE OF THE OPPOSITE SEX CAN SEE YOU.

Now, today's thursday, so I was able to complete my walk to the next town up the beach and back by walking through the segregated section. And here's what I noticed...apart from the fact that there is a male security guard at either end of the beach, and that Israel doesn't actually have the budget to employ Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, or Erica Eleniak (i.e. all the lifeguards are also male)...well, the women bathing there are covered from head to toe. Swimming caps, huge long smocks, and people, I kid you not...TIGHTS! This hardly screams 'day at the beach' to me. And seriously, if any man wanted to get off looking at women, he wouldn't go anywhere NEAR the segregated swimming, he would go to the public section of the beach where the israeli women wear so little, I'm pretty sure they don't even have areas where the sun don't shine.

So, people, I got a good tan off of the glare of someone else's ass, and plan on going back again next week. Don't tell my husband but...I don't ever want to work again.