in which I act like there's no tomorrow

aaaaaahhhhhh ... paradise is sitting on my balcony, sipping my cappuccino on a Saturday morning with the precious winter rays warming my sun-deprived self, a soft if insistent breeze trying (but not succeeding) to convince me that I should put on a sweater or go back inside.

I'm baking, and I'm content. The neighbors are still in bed, or they don't know how warm it is, so they're not out making noise yet. The heaven of a quiet shabbat morning. My feet up, I luxuriate in my weekend reading and appreciate my little oasis. Tomorrow is d-day? Not on this planet.

We spent the glorious afternoon taking my father-in-law for a walk on the tayelet (Tel Aviv's wonderful brick-paved seafront) with the rest of the world, and lunch at a mediocre beachfront restaurant. Fabulous day. Makes up for absolutely everything, dahling. Even those paunchy old guys in their teeny-tiny shimmering speedos. (Yes, apparently some people even thought it was warm enough for swimming.)

My father-in-law is 74 and still working at his small blue-collar business in south Tel Aviv because it's pretty much a cash cow but wouldn't be worth anything if he wanted to sell it. He's got prostate problems and isn't particularly enamored with life anymore, but he keeps putting one foot in front of the other and soldiers on. One of his few pleasures seems to be providing us with food, both produce and deli dishes that he buys, and typical Polish food he likes to cook -- gefilte fish, cholent, meat balls, kugel. It's hard to refuse it, and saves me lots of shopping and cooking. At the moment, I'm overloaded with apples and other fruit, so I made a huge fruit salad, and then threw together an apple pie using some store-bought frozen pie crust I've had in the freezer for a couple of months.

Damn, that crust is good. I just ate a quarter of a pie.