SquarepegView

Sunny the Cat, 1989-2007

2007-08-24T17:19:00.000+03:00

Sunny, today, just before heading for the big litter box in the sky

Sunny was there from the beginning. When I moved in with the future mr. squarepeg, who was deprived of furry friends throughout his childhood, he brought Sunny on board too.

Sunny survived thoughout this stormy marriage (it's our 17th anniversary today, and miraculously keeps on ticking), and the birth and growing pains of now-15-yr-old ms. squarepeg.

I spoke cat to him and he was always a good friend to me, obligingly getting up from wherever he was sitting whenever I meowed for him to come for a cuddle; forgiving me for ignoring him when the infant ms.squarepeg needed all my attention; chasing down unwelcome mice when we lived in an old house in Toronto.

In the past few months, he became very weak, mostly sitting in his basket all day, getting up only to eat a little, drink a little, go to the litter box. Babycat Smokey stopped grooming him a couple of months ago, and that was sad; up to then, she'd been a devoted caretaker but now she was ignoring him. He wasn't exactly incontinent, but his butt was always coated with remnants of shit that he left mementos of, everywhere he sat. He didn't smell good at all for some time. I started to think his time was coming.

He was dehydrated, and was obviously no longer eating. Today when I took him to the vet with ms. squarepeg, he was little more than a limp bag of fur and bones. She gave him a general anaesthetic to put him to sleep first, and we said good-bye. I was surprised to see that his eyes stayed open, though it was clear that he had relaxed completely and seemed otherwise asleep; the vet informed me that this is what happens with a general anaesthetic: the eye-closing reflex or muscle or whatever it is doesn't work the same way as in sleep. So that was a bit weird -- as if he'd died with his eyes open, and we couldn't close them.

We decided to leave the room before she gave him the final injection to his heart that would finish him off. Instead, we went into the next room and played with a very lively ginger kitten someone had brought in from the street, sitting in a cage just as Pinky had, nearly two years ago, when we adopted her. We'll be taking another one home soon, but for now we'll just have our two girls:

Sunny is survived by: Smokey, in one of her favorite spots, and Pinky (check out the nose), pretending to be a fat rabbit.

bushies just can't hack it like they used to

2006-11-22T18:51:00.000+02:00

Scoop: Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked

Not so shocking, but still those Republicans manage to keep on reliably disgusting us.

"We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7."

Tough break, eh, W?

this headline cracks me up

2006-11-22T12:39:00.000+02:00

This might be the funniest headline of the day if it didn't concern one of the planet's most famously obnoxious individuals.

send a real woman to do a woman's job

2006-11-17T10:31:00.001+02:00

The great womenfolk over at Salon, my favorite daily read, have done the dirty job someone's gotta do and picked the REAL sexiest men living.

Ripping "that big bland celebrity flip book" (you know which one they mean -- even I get their daily gossip in my InBox) a new one and telling them to get some guts already, they demand of that camel-committee to come up with someone more "mentally stimulating [than] Matthew McConaughey," for godssake.

Yeah yeah I adore George as much as the next woman, but as the fed-up Salon staff quite rightly says, "Quit selecting George Clooney already. He's the zenith of sex appeal -- picking him is cheating."

So they've given us a dozen of their choices, topped by the marvelously manly Stephen Colbert -- whom I bet even George Clooney has the hots for -- plus 11 more that include three of my all time favorites: the very very spongeworthy Alan Rickman, Mark Ruffalo and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

And of course, they couldn't resist cheating just a tiny bit, offering us a list that culminated with Jon Stewart. Hey girls: he IS the George Clooney of our parallel comedy-lust universe.

Can't say I blame them a bit.

islam vs christianity: the Daily Show version

2006-11-14T23:14:00.000+02:00

"Steve, this debate is about religion; let's discuss it rationally."

This brilliant clip of Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert arguing which religion is better is already a couple of months old, but I hadn't seen it yet, being unable to catch Jon Stewart regularly.

The pray-off proves nothing, but they do find agreement on one fundamental point: their common "enemy".

Mordant comedy just doesn't get any better than this.

welcome to Smokey

2006-11-11T14:24:00.000+02:00

The squarepeg family is now managing a fine balance between the human and feline populations. We have brought a pedigree 5-month-old Russian Blue into the mishpocha, and she is every bit as sweet-natured as our 1-yr-old Pinky is witchy.

It only took a couple of days for 17-yr-old Sunny to grumblingly let her share his basket, but Pinky hissed and whacked her for the first two weeks. (Nearly every day, I give thanks that she has no front claws.) Sweet Smokey is already turning nursemaid to old-man Sunny, licking his head and neck for long minutes while Sunny luxuriates in her TLC.

Smokey has been with us three weeks now, and mr. and ms. squarepeg fight like two children in kindergarten over her, just as they used to over Pinky. What's more, Smokey is now getting the coveted kitten food, and fattened-up Pinky's had to move on to the less rich adult food. Is it any wonder Pinky resents her presence?

Three cats is really quite a lot, but I don't know how much longer Sunny will last, which is why we adopted Smokey ... the thought of being alone with Pinky is a bit chilling. Sunny's been declining for the past year, and he's clearly quite ill today, just lying around, with signs of diarrhea and loss of appetite. It's back to the vet for him tomorrow, poor guy.

[Update: Nov 12 - Sunny's hospitalized on IV at the vet for the night, diagnosed with progressing pancreatic disease. We'll probably take him home tomorrow and see if this treatment helps him feel better for a while longer, but no one can say if this will be a week or six months. I'm resigned to saying good-bye slowly.]

psychomommy

2006-11-07T20:03:00.001+02:00

My 14-year-old daughter calls me a psychopath.

I'm hurt. I'm insulted. I'm wondering, "What if it's true?"

Her definition of a psychopath is one who yells when [other one] has "done nothing". Well, that's exactly the point, isn't it? She does nothing. No homework, no room tidying, no dishes, no respect. But lots of complaining, tv watching, computer messaging, music downloading and of course hair washing.

Apparently her life would be perfect if I just did what I was told -- served up the food, handed out the money -- and didn't yell at her.

The truth is that I do tend to fly off the handle at relatively petty infractions, or even suspicions of infractions. She's reached an age where I rarely take anything she says at face value, since everything that comes out of her mouth appears to be crafted to elicit a reaction that would be pleasing to her.

And by "pleasing to her" I mean giving her money.

So there's always this sort of edgy, cagey, circling and sniffing in order to find the way to the truth of any matter. Perhaps this does make me just a teeny bit psychopathic.

We looked up psychopathic at answers.com (her suggestion) and got: A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

Well, that's not me! I may be somewhat antisocial and even aggressive, but I'm definitely not perverted, criminal or amoral [ok, no one's a saint, right? there's a continuum, and I doubt I could be judged as sitting too far past the middle of it]; and I'm relatively empathetic [I cry at movies!]; and remorse? hell, I'm loaded with it. But 15 years ago in this country, "childfree" was absolutely not an option. :P

It also said "`psychopath' was once widely used but has now been superseded by `sociopath,'" so we looked that up too: Someone whose social behavior is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others.

Even my daughter admitted that that described her almost perfectly.

Still, to be fair, if typical teenage behavior tends toward the sociopathic, perhaps it can no longer by definition be considered "abnormal".

And I submit that it follows, therefore, that mommies who are driven to psychopathic behavior by their sociopathic teenagers are also, by virtue of residing in this category, "normal".

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

David Grossman's speech

2006-11-06T22:52:00.000+02:00

This should really be read by everyone. It's author David Grossman's speech, translated in Haaretz, at the Rabin memorial on Saturday November 4th, on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of the assassination of the Prime Minister. He was fairly scathing in the remarks he addressed to the current Prime Minister.

Maybe Olmert will find the humility to heed those remarks.

lovely barcelona

2006-09-28T19:20:00.000+03:00

Well, I've got over 200 pictures, but so many would bore you, I'm sure, being details of this and that. Still, I must choose some to share, so I'll start with these.

Food was such a big part of this trip, and here is the most memorable meal of all, an incredible, delectable, fresh seafood melange (would be incomplete without the brewski, always delicious on tap) at La Boqueria, the huge market just off La Rambla, Barcelona's main drag:

And while we're at it, the mountains of food on display at La Boqueria were a feast for the eyes, particularly this stand of an unbelievable number of varieties of mushrooms:

Our second-best meal, and far more expensive than the first, was the requisite paella, seafood of course, at a white-linen restaurant down at Barcelona's Olympic Village area, by the new port -- served piping hot in the traditional paella dish:

and here on the pretty plate:

I'll post more Barcelona in a day or two, but for now here are a few taken on our bus trip on day two, to Montserrat and Sitges:

Montserrat, the town and monastery:

The awesome view from Montserrat:

And looking up into the cloud-shrouded mountains, there was a tiny cross peeping out, as if impossible to suppress -- very lovely, but I photoshopped it into a magen david -- (HA! crucify THAT, christian fundamentalists!) ... will post the original if there's any demand (I won't hold my breath).

And here is beautiful Sitges, the beach resort town that was sopping wet the day we visited, but I fell in love with it anyway.

This is one of the many side streets
leading down to the beach:

And this is Sitges' endless coastline, with 17 separate beaches:

full-grown cats

2006-09-17T00:40:00.000+03:00

Unbelievable how quickly they grow! Just a year ago, Pinky joined Sunny and the Squarepegs, and this is how the feline department looked:

Pinky was so tiny she fit in a shoe:

Well, the teeny-tiny princess turned into a queen.

Yes, she looks very dignified here, but she can be a feisty demon when riled.

Pinky before the exorcism:

Sunny the Siamese is in his 18th year now, has lost a lot of weight (from 5.5 kg to just 3), and seems to be perpetually constipated and dehydrated. But he's still plugging along. I try to give him daily subdermal injections of saline solution, having been schooled in the technique by the vet. He doesn't care for it much, but mostly sits still. Pinky would NEVER let me do that, I'll bet, no matter how old she gets. But she's a year old now, and much heavier than the little old man at this point.

Sunny keeps Pinky company while she makes a meal of herself.

And now, we've decided to adopt yet another cat to even out the human-feline population on our home. I would have been happy with just going to the cat shelter and bonding with some poor abandoned waif, but mr. squarepeg is a bit of an elitist, and decided to get a purebred. There's a Russian Blue breeder in a town not far from where we live, and we went out today to visit the Cat Lady there. She brought out all her kittens born in the past four months, and we played with them for about an hour.

Ms. squarepeg fell in love with one pipsqueak who was so docile she just sat on the kid without moving for ages, while mr. squarepeg thought her choice was too passive and really liked another, who was more lively yet also very friendly. They are gorgeous cats, but I still could've been happy with a homeless mongrel, so long as it wasn't too aggressive. The thing about these cats is that they are bred for their wonderful personalities, and supposedly don't bite, scratch or hiss. So what does that leave of cat nature, I wonder? A whole lot of self-entitled far niente, eh?

Anyway, purebreds cost an embarrassing amount of money, but that is catnip to the entitled classes, so we put a deposit down on the one mr. squarepeg liked. We're going back to get her in a month, after the holidays. No sense complicating our lives now with another pet that will need to be taken care of when we're away.

And how did our two furry babies react, upon our return home, to the smell of foreign cats on us? Sunny appeared completely oblivious, but Pinky wouldn't let us near her for hours, hissing madly in that snakey, open-mouthed, teeth-bared way that indicated her territoriality will not be challenged lightly.

scoop site

2006-08-01T22:24:00.000+03:00

News junkies, add this one to your bookmarks:
חדשות רוטר.נט

It's got news that hasn't officially broken yet, like listening in on a police radio.

Via this site (Hebrew only), Mr. S already knew early this afternoon that we'd very sadly lost three soldiers in a Lebanon battle, information which wasn't widely released until the 10 o'clock news.

cutest ever kitten video

2006-07-31T19:02:00.000+03:00

aaaaawwwwww!
If this doesn't melt you, nothin' will.

cutest ever kitten video

what can we say?

2006-07-30T16:03:00.000+03:00

Our hearts ache and cry out for the tragic loss of life in this senseless fighting.

Senseless, not because Israel is not completely justified in its defensive response to Hezbollah's unceasing aggression, but only because all wars are at their foundation senseless.

But the madness is everywhere; the world body is riddled with this cancer. What can be done?

How can anyone ever attempt to explain the cynical exploitation of the corrupt powers that be to put scores of children and their parents in harm's way, using them for camouflage while launching rockets to kill, kill, kill Israelis?

The world is looking at Israel today as if we were bloodhounds pouncing on innocent, terrified rabbits. I guess it all depends on the angle you're shooting from.

It is so terribly sad to see us all in this monstrous position.

alec baldwin will play him in the movie version

2006-07-26T20:23:00.000+03:00

"Ahmadinejad calls for a cease-fire in Lebanon"
pfffft! yeah, right. who does he think he's kidding?

Treppenwitz explains this sleazeball move so eloquently. Do read it.

the office on jetlag

2006-07-26T19:04:00.000+03:00

I was back at the office today after 3 weeks away, and was even mildly productive despite the jetlag. Well, until about 3pm anyway. Now I'm home, and blogging is the one thing that will keep me awake until a reasonable bedtime.

Bringing chocolates for the colleagues wasn't that great an idea, since I ended up scarfing too many of them myself. It all started with curiosity, as there were so many different kinds in the big Quality Street tin box, all wrapped in different shiny colors. I thought I'd just try one. But I always forget what a sugar addict I am. I can't eat just one. Once off the wagon, I just had to try every single color to see what was inside.

Result:
...sugarshocked chubby squarepeg.
.....sleepy squarepeg.
......see squarepeg nod off at her desk ...

Rumors started this afternoon that many Israeli soldiers had been killed in the still-raging battle in the town of Bint Jbail, Lebanon, though the Israeli news is still not reporting that they were killed, but only that there have been "heavy casualties." This is incredibly demoralizing news, so no wonder officials aren't eager to announce it. Of course, their only cited sources are Al Arabiyeh and Al Jazeera, so it could be garbage. Google News isn't saying anything specific either, but Yahoo News unfortunately is. (Update: The Israeli 9pm news is now reporting 8 dead, plus another 7 seriously or moderately wounded. It is a common MO to delay reporting such news before the families are informed.)

Also being worriedly discussed today is Nasrallah's threat that the war has reached a new stage and is going to go "beyond Haifa." Sure, that makes people nervous, but I remember well how Saddam kept saying, in '91, that he had warheads of poison on his scuds, and we all skittered into our sealed rooms with our gas masks. In the end, he had nuthin'. Nothing but venomous lies and propaganda. Nasrallah is undoubtedly made of the same cloth.

The problem that remains, however, is Iran, and that problem is not just a middle-east issue. The whole world is going to need to deal with that, not just us. It won't be solved in the next couple weeks, either.

Bank Leumi, certainly one of Israel's biggest corporations, is exploiting the current tension and war-zone insecurity to launch what looks to me like a cynical, but brilliant, ad campaign: They have people everywhere distributing bumper stickers that say [in Hebrew]: "We will win" and billboards are also all over the place with the same words -- underscored with the distinct tourquoise and dark blue stripes of their corporate logo. Subliminal message: "Win with Bank Leumi." What have they got to lose? When we win (no, not if -- of course we will), they can change it to, "We won [and we always will]" i.e. always go with Bank Leumi. Yeah, yeah, very patriotic. And there are lemmings everywhere gladly pasting this advertising to their cars. Very cunning, those admen.

crumbling icons

2006-06-01T14:02:00.000+03:00

When I started working out about 10 years ago I was really into Madonna. Yes, I loved "Vogue," my all-time favorite music video, but what I especially loved were her triceps. I kept them in mind whenever I was at the gym, and though I've made a little progress, in 10 years I've failed to achieve that sculpted dream.

More recent shots of her triceps convinced me that her look of 10 years ago was now totally out of my league, not destined to be mine in this lifetime. But the look had changed: she had become uber-sculpted. Madonna seemed to have gone over the top in her drive for the perfect body and I didn't envy the unnatural new look.

In any case, ten years have changed my idea of what's appropriate, necessary or optimally desirable. In other words, I've lowered my expectations.

Not Madonna, though. If you've seen the video for her recent hit "Sorry" she's showing off her scantily-clad body with the pride of a woman 30 years younger. Yeah, it's trim. But for some reason I just don't enjoy looking at it the way I once did. Is this ageist? Something's been bothering me about Madonna's apparent need to flaunt her body, and this time it's not envy. It's more like disappointment. I'm thinking, "Why do you need to do this?"

Chris Rock, in his fabulous show "Never Scared" said it best when referring to Janet Jackson's stunt at the Superbowl. "You can't just whip out a 40 year old titty! That's your man's titty! 40-year-old titty--your man's titty! 20-year-old titty--that's community titty." Aging sex symbols really need to get that.

Semi-nude videos are fine for 25-year-olds who haven't yet developed the depth and wisdom to understand that their value lies ultimately elsewhere. Youthful beauty is the trump card for the young; if you've got it, flaunt it. But playing that card at 47 just looks skanky and bankrupt.

I said this recently to a 32-year-old colleague who didn't see my point at all; she just thinks Madonna and her body are still amazing. But I'm [ahem] around the same age as Madge, and I now see her as unseemly. It bothers me to see her acting like her booty is all that. She should know better.

On top of which, although she's still hanging on to her status as a cultural phenomenon, I haven't enjoyed any of her music for years. It's boring and bubblegum-ish. And why must she steal from Abba? Lame.

LA Times columnist Meghan Daum has articulated exactly my feelings in this excerpt from the Chicago Tribune, Madonna yields her body, soul to spirit of insecurity:

Madonna's career is now chiefly about her body, which has come to represent so much more than a model of physical fitness. By hovering around what looks like 0.5 percent body fat without any evident assistance from plastic surgery, extraordinary DNA or heroin, she represents both our greatest aspirations and our greatest source of self-loathing. As much as we might like to look like her, we know we can't. Worse, because her body has been carved out of 47-year-old flesh by sheer force of will, we can blame only ourselves for our inability to measure up."
...
Because I too wouldn't mind resembling a small race horse with cleavage, I decided to spend one day doing the Madonna workout, as best I could. ... I cut myself major slack for lacking the funds, free time and chutzpah to employ the personal trainers, chefs, nannies, drivers and spiritual advisers who allow Madonna, mother of two, to maintain her regimen. According to various reports, she practices two hours of Ashtanga yoga, follows that with sessions of Pilates or gyrotonics, and then spends a couple of hours running, swimming, horseback riding or doing karate.
...
Here's the sad irony of Madonna's current incarnation. Now that her career is merely a vehicle for her body, her blond ambition has morphed into blatant anxiety. Whether she admits it or not, this kind of insecurity has a way of bleeding over onto her fans. No wonder, then, that we haven't followed Madonna onto her latest dance floor. If she taught us anything over the years, it's that we don't have to surrender ourselves to perverse cultural ideas. Madonna may have forgotten, but we owe it to her legacy not to.

Those of us seeking models of graceful aging will have to look elsewhere.

And a recent update (July 21/06): Rebecca Traister (of Salon)'s take on the old fogy in concert: ttp://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/07/21/madonna_concert/

for the conspiracy theorist at heart

2006-05-20T23:17:00.000+03:00

The Squarepeg family went off to see The Da Vinci Code this evening, at the initiation of Ms. Squarepeg, surprisingly. This is the most "adult" movie she's ever expressed an interest in seeing, having been intrigued by the trailer that's been playing repeatedly on tv. We all enjoyed it, her despite all the expository dialogue, me despite the cheesy melodrama of the ending. And for Mr. Squarepeg, a movie that has car chases (including one with the heroine driving in reverse!), guns and lots of blood could never rate less than a 7. I thought Ron Howard's use of dramatic and historical flashbacks was a very clever way to break up all that wordy explanation which would have to put most moviegoers to sleep, and his use of gorgeous aerial photography and CSI-like zoom-in special effects showed excellent use of that huge Hollywood budget.

Who cares if it's all nonsense? Conspiracies are the spice of life.

fast food nation

2006-05-20T14:56:00.000+03:00

I think this is the last book I would have thought they'd manage to make a dramatic feature out of. Just ran across this at YouTube. It's a trailer for a feature coming soon, based on Eric Schlosser deeply researched book Fast Food Nation, a very scary look at what goes on behind the "All American Meal." After reading it three years ago, I could never look at ground beef the same way again, never mind the manufactured flavors that make up what our family has come to call the McCrappy meal.

why I live here but don't need citizenship

2006-05-19T10:15:00.000+03:00

Despite Rafi's report on the incredible lightness of renewing an Israeli passport (it's like, "where am I and what have you done with Israel?" in its otherworldly service) and thus robbing me of the lame excuse I always give for not actually getting one, I still find myself oddly unable to officially Be Israeli despite preferring for many reasons to make Israel my home. Some published responses to the dustup last week over venerable Israeli author's A.B. Yehoshua's derisive diaspora-directed comments helped articulate for me why I just can't quite align myself with this political entity.

In a nutshell, Yehoshua said that the Israeli experience is the true Jewish experience -- even though possibly transitory in a historical sense -- compared to the diaspora Jewish experience, which can never be more than playing house, Jewishly-speaking (my free interpretation of his meaning). Well, I suppose by his standard, my simply living here is more acceptable than holding an Israeli passport while living in Toronto.

Not that I care what he thinks of my choices. But Haaretz published several interesting responses to his "shocking comments" from a variety of intelligent writers, most of whom said, in essence, he's wrong BUT this leads to another interesting issue that we need to consider seriously, such as the dying of the clan through intermarriage, etc. I frequently enjoy reading Yossi Sarid (former leader of Meretz party)'s regular column. In his response, entitled "Who will learn from whom?", Sarid says Yeah, maybe the diaspora Jews are know-it-alls sometimes, but:

They, who have been castigated, are prepared to gather to their bosoms anyone who defines himself as a Jew and identifies with the Jewish people, without checking into the ritual fringes in his family, back unto the first generation. Across the sea they understand the meaning of "religious pluralism" and the equality of all the religious streams in Judaism, whereas here we are still living under monopolistic Orthodoxy that meddles in the lives of citizens who seek the good of their country, and makes those lives a misery.

The other article I found resonated for me was a response by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine. Here's an excerpt:

The fact remains that Jewish nationalism has reached a pinnacle of extremism in Israel, and has come to epitomize the political paradigm that humanity needs most to transcend.
It is a disgrace for Jews everywhere that Israel is the best example of a society with utopian ideals that degenerated into the opposite of those ideals, and which conservatives use to demonstrate that humanity will always be involved in irresolvable ethnic conflict. It is in these "unofficial" areas of Diaspora life where Jews are most willing to think in universal terms, to transcend the limitations of narrow nationalism or a chauvinist religion to ask the most important Jewish question facing us: How do we transform our Jewish state, our Jewish culture, our Jewish religion, our Jewish literature and the assumptions with which we read our holy texts, to nurture rather than restrict our capacities to empathize with and give priority to universal human needs?
Jewry the world over must develop those aspects of our heritage and our wisdom that could make a serious contribution to the human race in the 21st century.

So being a Jew (hardwired somewhere in my consciousness though I know not exactly where or why), I am proud that Israel exists, but I am often not proud of the way things go (or are ignored) politically and/or culturally, and I have no desire to identify with much that is represented here. Canada has its pros and cons too, as does every country, but having grown up there, I guess it's still always going to be easier to identify as Canadian, both in culture and in values (if not in their infinite politeness).

Bottom line: I'm not nationalistic by nature and don't see any need to make official nationality an issue in my life.

national bbq day

2006-05-03T23:10:00.000+03:00

Funny how this country equates "Independence" with grilling meat.

I sat on my balcony this afternoon, soaking up the rays and a good book, while on 4 balconies within view and smell, loud groups madly sizzled away.

Yes, I was a tiny bit envious. But mainly I just wanted them all to shut up so I could enjoy the weather in peace. Also, I was nursing a migraine, so that made me just a tad irritable.

Squarepegs don't do tradition very well.

spring fever?

2006-04-08T22:18:00.001+03:00

How ironic. I was just thinking about blogging about having finally found a permanent cleaning lady that we managed to click with, following a year and a half of a steady parade of temporary cleaners that always ended up not working out for one reason or another. I was going to express my relief at finally knowing who was coming every two weeks on Sunday morning, that she had learned where everything was and how we like things done so that we didn't have to reinvent the wheel twice a month. She came about five times, I guess. The fact that she's much more chatty than I would like, that she wanted to bring a helper we didn't know, that it's very inconvenient for her to start later than 8am -- these were issues I might have left out, choosing instead to emphasize what really mattered, that we had finally come to the end of an endlessly stressful trial and error process.

I certainly wouldn't have dwelt on the sensitive issue of her being an Arab from one of the area's small towns. A certain PC discomfort in this quasi-open forum might have held me back. But that seems to have been a material issue in the fact that she has just become the latest in a long line of cleaners that have bailed on us.

She was supposed to come tomorrow morning, and called this evening to ask if she could bring her boyfriend to see our apartment. It seems he's the jealous type, and he'd demanded to see all the places she works, to make sure she's not cheating on him or something. She's a divorced mother of about 30, from an Arab village -- apparently being engaged to this guy looks better to her than her current situation. I can't help but feel sickened and sorry for her, but I don't want any part of that drama. Mr. Squarepeg told her in no uncertain terms that we do not agree to have the guy come up to see the apartment, and that this was inappropriate. Only after this, he told me that last time she was here she had a 10-minute screaming fight on the phone with the boyfriend, which had also struck him as inappropriate when a person is at work.

So that means she's not coming back. And we go back to our search.

In spite of this and the fact that it's back to work tomorrow morning, I'm feeling uncharacteristically cheerful, even though I've had one of my lovely PMS headaches much of the weekend (am keeping it under a certain control with 5HTP and codeine/aspirin pills, and it's gone now).

Could my good mood have anything to do with the fact that for the next two weeks we'll only be working half the time? ...uh, YEAH! Three days of work, then a four-day weekend; then two very quiet days of work during Pesach, and five days off (I'm taking an extra day to get away with mr. squarepeg to the Dead Sea for two nights).

And my car-slammed finger is doing very nicely, thank you, serving mainly as a reminder that my glass is most definitely half-full.

Bibi s blues

2006-04-07T23:37:00.000+03:00

Interesting article in Haaretz today. Almost makes me feel guilty for maligning Netanyahu so often. After all, the writer makes him sound like something of a squarepeg lone-wolf type, so at least I should empathize with some aspect of his experience.

Strangely, several people who know him well claim he's the opposite of how I and most, I think, view him: I see him as a complete machiavellian liar, but he's portrayed here as a pathetic politician who can't lie, glad-hand at bar mitzvahs or rub shoulders with the hoi polloi in the market, but is actually a brilliant statesman.

Bibi, we hardly knew ya.

kosher is as kosher does

2006-04-07T20:06:00.000+03:00

You may think slamming my finger in the car door a few days ago is not very interesting. But that's because it wasn't your finger. It was my finger, my dumbass experience, my consequences. For me, that's interesting. The day it happened I was a bit traumatized and couldn't think about anything else. I went home from work early, avoiding the traffic that would have doubled the length of the journey, and pretty much just lay down for the rest of the day. The next day I was much better, but still couldn't use the finger to type or write or anything else. It got quite swollen, and I discovered that it needed to be lanced. I pricked it with a sewing needle just under the side of the nail, and a gusher of accumulated blood was released. That was brilliant, because with the pressure of the fluid gone, the finger hardly hurt anyore. Since then, I've been soaking it in salt water a lot, and the pale pink liquid keeps draining out a little every day. I was worried about my bruised nail, but it doesn't look half as bad now I managed to get rid of the majority of the blood under there. The extent of the damage remains to be seen, and will I guess become evident as it grows out. It doesn't hurt now to press on my nail, but it does feel very weird and semi-numb.

And here's the moral of the story, as I see it -- message to Squarepeg from the Universe, as it were: moaning, complaining, bitching, sulking about my circumstances is just an invitation to the universe to show me things can definitely be worse. I was so pissed off at going to work on Sunday morning (i.e. "monday morning blues"), that I needed to learn that the situation as is was great compared to what else it could be. The old rabbi's lesson of the animals in the apartment, once again.

Or, as Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) said to Anakin Skywalker in part one of the Star Wars triple trilogy (which I just saw for the first time, with ms. squarepeg today), Your focus determines your reality. Do we EVER learn that lesson? [Sigh.]

So Pesach is upon us, this Wednesday evening. All the married women at work go on about how they have to get to the Pesach cleaning. At Pesach, people don't just say, "Hag sameach" [Happy holiday], as they do at other holidays. At Pesach, they frequently add, "and kosher" -- may your holiday be not only happy but also kosher. (So it seems that being kosher at this time of the year is more important than usual.) And this essentially means neither eating nor having in your house any products that could be related to bread, yeast, flour, and more stuff than I can keep track of.

As you already know, I'm a lousy Jew and even lousier with any kind of history, but what I gather is that when the Jews fled from Pharaoh and made their way out of Egypt, they had no time to let bread dough rise. Because of this, we traditionally eat matza, an unleavened product, and no bread. But why flour, generally, is forbidden, I have no idea. Not to mention beer.

In any case, tradition/religion demands that every single household thing and every single nook and cranny be cleaned and purged of any vestige of hametz -- the forbidden food items or even their dust. In other parts of the world, perhaps in simpler times, this was known as 'spring cleaning.' Or maybe that's just what secret Jews called it, once upon a time, when their WASPy neighbors expressed wonder at the sudden concerted efforts to move and clean everything in the house.

Naturally, I pay no attention to all this. It's difficult to find the forbidden products during Pesach, so I make sure to stock up beforehand. I bought three great loaves of bread yesterday, and checked that the beer supply hadn't fallen too low. In a symbolic gesture, though, I cleaned my stove really thoroughly this morning, even soaking the iron parts that cover the burners, which I haven't done for at least a year. It's really quite satisfying, I must grudgingly admit.

My in-laws will be coming here for the "seder" -- not that we'll really do a seder, just another token effort -- and bringing both the requisite gefilte fish and the main meat course. I'll be doing the chicken soup with matza balls, salad, and the dessert: cheesecake with hametz crust.

Yeah, yeah, I know: I'm going straight to hell.

self-inflicted, work-related

2006-04-02T23:15:00.000+03:00

Sunday morning, another week begins -- this one just a little more miserable than most as a result of the hour of our lives/sleep lost to the spring forward of daylight savings time.

Ironically, just as summer time began, winter returned with a vengeance. On Friday morning I was working on my tan in an old but still serviceable bikini that will never see a locale outside of my apartment's balcony; it was so hot I couldn't take more than 20 minutes on each side before I gave up to go splash cold water on my sweating face. By Saturday night, the apartment had gotten colder than it's been in two months, and the bed took forever to get comfortable. All night, it thundered and lightninged and poured down and was still gloomy and raining this morning. Traffic was snarled worse than ever due to traffic lights being knocked out by the storm.

I tossed and turned dreaming nonstop about documentation management and the main product manager I need to deal with. Despite the rain, we are not talking about a wet dream here. I must have been troubled.

When the clock radio blared at 7, I just turned over and went back to sleep for a while. I was still exhausted. I'm usually the first one up, drag myself to pee and then make coffee, shouting to ms. squarepeg on the way to start moving. Mr. squarepeg will get out of bed when he has to, at a moment's notice. He doesn't drag in the morning like we do. Around 7:35 I finally got up and shouted to the young ms to get cracking. I went to the kitchen to throw her lunch together, and she emerged for her banana soon after. That's all she eats in the morning, these days; I give her anything else (like oatmeal or cheerios & milk), she says she feels sick.

Mr. S agreed to give her a ride to school today, because of the pelting rain (which had pretty much stopped by the time they left, as it turned out), and that's how I heard about the terrible traffic jams all over town. What should have been a 10-minute drive turned into half an hour to take her just halfway, and then he let her walk the rest. So she missed most of her first class.

I took my time getting ready for work, knowing I could beat the jams by leaving late as usual. But even though I didn't get on the road till 10 am, it was still snarled, and the trip took twice as long as usual, nearly 50 minutes today.

I was in a pretty foul mood, I must admit. I was dragging my ass to work and not happy about it, typically bummed out for a Sunday morning. I had to drive around the parking garage more than usual to find a spot, and finally squeezed in beside some ass whose car was leaning way too heavily into the free spot to his/her right. That always irritates me too. It left me minimal space to open my door, and as I got out I banged my head, with my sunglasses perched on top, into the door frame, causing the glasses to clatter to the floor of the lot. That felt idiotic. But the best was yet to come.

Sighing in mental preparation for the office, I grabbed my purse and my tote bag -- how men manage with pockets alone never fails to amaze me -- and stepped out of the car into the narrow space between the cars, and quickly slammed the door behind me.

Unfortunately, that's when my day went really bad because somehow my right index finger was slammed in the door too. Horrified, I dropped everything on the filthy floor and opened the door to release my finger. I don't know if you've ever experienced such a painful event, but my life flashed before me in that instant. Well, perhaps not exactly my life, but certainly the life and questionable future of my finger flashed before my eyes in those moments.

I urged myself not to panic and held the finger very tightly, squeezing it with my other hand to prevent the rush of blood to the finger that my body would naturally be attempting. This is what I always do to avoid a bruise if I get a knock or bang on some part of my body. Immediate pressure on the injured spot for a minute or two -- just until it stops hurting -- always has the desired effect, at least in minor incidents. This one was not minor though.

I opened the back door of the car so I could sit down while holding my finger, and sat this way for about five minutes. The pain grew, and my uninjured hand was shaking uncontrollably. I was afraid to look at the finger, afraid to see the damage, but after five minutes I looked quickly. No blood or gore; that was good. Not on the outside, anyway. My nail had already turned black, as I suppose the damage to the nail bed meant the blood was there whether I pressed on it or not.

I dragged myself up to the office wondering how I'd deal with this. The pain was huge and the finger was throbbing and I didn't really know if I should be taking myself to Emergency yet. I held it together in the elevator going up with someone I'm barely acquainted with, and once in the office went straight to my favorite colleague (50something modern religious guy, British-born) and said, "I need your help; I just smashed my finger in my car door." He immediately said, "We should get ice," and we went together to our little kitchen, in the freezer of which I've never found ice. Fortunately, he found two lone cubes, enough to put into a glass of water for me, so I could soak the finger. Too bad it completely killed to do so, but now and again I did it, in between radiating to the finger with my other hand.

Radiating is what I've learned to do to injuries of any kind; it's simply focussing the natural electromagnetic energy that any living person has coursing through him/her, by holding the fingertips of one hand together and pointing it at the injury. This works most noticeably with minor burns, by the way. If you touch a hot pan, for example, it would probably produce a first- or second-degree burn. However, by plunging the burn in cold water to immediately slow the burning process, and then radiating to the burn with your fingertips (you can do this to yourself, too) until the burn intensifies too much to continue, then back in the cold water, then radiate some more, and keep repeating this for about ten minutes, the burn disappears completely.

Any way, I sat at my desk basically doing this -- radiating and dunking in cold water -- while I read email. I called mr. squarepeg to moan a little and he offered to bring me the homeopathic ointment we like to use in such cases, Traumeel. That was really very sweet of him, and his caring did cheer me. Soon after that I went to lunch, then decided the pain would make it impossible to concentrate on anything, let alone type. It was a very slow day, thank god, with nothing urgent demanding my attention -- could have been a perfect day for making a dent in the soon-to-be-urgent projects -- and my boss was on the phone with her girlfriends all day, so there was no point in playing the martyr, the way I did in February with one of the worst migraines of my life on the day before an annual conference was convening. I went home at 3, finger throbbing all the way, but at least it was speedy; not a lot of commuters on the highway at that hour.

I've been mostly lying down since I got home. Sometimes it just feels like the nail area is in agony, but sometimes the pain feels like it's spreading up the finger into my whole hand and my arm too. I took some paracetamol (tylenol) when I started typing this, and it's less painful now. I am not using my index finger (pointer) to type, of course.

So I arranged myself something of a day off today, didn't I? Not exactly a gunshot wound to the foot, or an overdose of pills, but it served its sick purpose, I suppose.

Some people get back problems; others lose their voice or get the flu. Slamming your own finger in a car door somehow seems like a more obvious cry for help.

grey power

2006-03-29T13:23:00.000+02:00

As feared, it was the lowest voter turnout ever in the history of the state yesterday, at only 63%.

In the most baffling result of the election, the Pensioners' Party won a whopping seven seats in the next Knesset.

I confess to having heard nothing whatsoever about this party until today, and I don't think I'm alone, so it's a real shocker.

Even the veteran Meretz party (which I probably would have voted for, had I voted) gathered only four seats!

Apparently, the party platform "deals entirely with advancing the rights of the elderly, including ensuring pensions for all citizens and placing medications for the elderly in the health basket of medications and medical treatments subsidized by the state." Other than that, they say nothing whatsoever about the rest of their politics.

They had intended to join the Kadima party, but found that they would have been so far down the list that they never would have garnered any seats, so they went ahead and created a new party to represent their interests. And now they will definitely be welcomed into the coalition to be formed by the weaker-than-expected Kadima party.

Poor Bibi -- what a power-grubbing loser. He was so intent on fighting Sharon, the [very popular] leader of his party, instead of supporting him, that Sharon was forced by political expediency to leave and form a new party. Talk about bad timing, eh Bibi? If he had just been a loyal supporter of his leader, he would more than likely be the newly elected Prime Minister today. Instead, he's on the rubbish heap with a measly 11 seats and the probability of being summarily ditched by the party. Of course he blames Sharon for deserting the party and leaving it "a broken, shattered movement." His hypocrisy knows no bounds.

what I did on my Election Day holiday

2006-03-28T12:22:00.000+02:00

Woo-hoo! Mid-week holiday!!

I have a certain pride in Israel's attitude to democracy: It's considered so important to vote, that a whole holiday is mandated to make sure citizens will have no work-related excuse for not exercising their franchise.

I am proud of this attitude even though I'm not actually an Israeli and do not vote.

I never became a citizen. I've lived in Israel since the end of 1982, as a "permanent resident," and have periodically asked myself if I feel any need to officially become a citizen; the answer I always got back was, 'Nah.'

What would it mean to officially be Israeli? It would mean something on paper that in mentality, or psychologically, I am not. I live here, and consider it politically expedient that there is a Jewish homeland, and I identify as a Jew, but I definitely don't identify as an Israeli, even after more than 20 years here.

I may feel not-quite-normal in Canada either, but being the Squarepeg misfit that I am, I've never had any psychological need to hold an Israeli passport, and consider it just one more administrative headache that would need to be handled periodically. What for? I have always thought of myself more as a "citizen of the world" and happen to have a perfectly useful Canadian passport that will take me anywhere I need to go; I don't need another passport.

I could have become a citizen at any time, and still can if something changes my outlook, but it just doesn't feel like it's a choice that would reflect anything truer of me than my current status.

The only thing that sets me apart from citizens is the national election. I can't vote. But I also can't say I care that much, since the direction of the country doesn't actually seem to depend on who gets elected. Arik Sharon got elected and turned around and did exactly the opposite of what he promised to do, eventually, and so would Bibi Netanyahu. So I really don't know if it makes any difference. The electorate seems to be doing the best it can without my help.

So does the very liberal-minded day off to vote help? Perhaps. Around 70% of the electorate usually gets out there, but for some reason there's worry that there will be less this year, with so much confusion and fracturing of the main parties. There's more talk of going shopping than ever before. The radio is playing public service announcements by celebrities every few minutes: "Hi, this is Rita [40-something singer/actress]. You have to vote. You simply have to." blabla, democratic process, etc.

Knowing how the populace feels about consumerism, Ms. Squarepeg and I got up early to hit the mall before 10am, while there was still parking. By the time we left at 11:30 there was not a spot to be found, legal or illegal, anywhere in the vast over- or underground lots.

So, voter or not, I'm off now to enjoy my free day with the last third of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Over and out, muggles!

lighter side of bird flu

2006-03-26T11:33:00.000+02:00

With over a million fowl destroyed in these parts so far as a result of the bird flu epidemic, I've already received several times instructions by email on how to handle poultry and eggs in order to avoid being contaminated. No sunny-side-up eggs. Raw eggs as an ingredient, which I always avoid anyway, are absolutely out now. And I personally have no intention of buying or handling raw chicken for the foreseeable future. Tivol, the soy meat-substitute people, are celebrating I guess.

So this is what's making the email rounds today (in Hebrew):

A bear, a lion and a hen meet.
Bear: When I roar in the forest, the whole forest trembles in fright.
Lion: When I roar in the desert, the whole desert runs in fear.
Hen: Big deal, all I do is cough and everybody shits themselves.

caution: entering holiday season

2006-03-24T14:03:00.000+02:00

Now that Purim is behind us, Pesach [Passover] is imminent. It's one of the two high points of the year of holidays, very much like Christmas Eve in the western world in terms of family gathering and need-to-be-with-a-group, ANY group, just not alone. This one is special though because it drags on for a week of tedious dietary rules, making it difficult to buy many items one wants in a grocery store, or order regular food at a restaurant. (The other high point is the "High Holidays" of Rosh HaShana [new year of the Jewish calendar] and Yom Kippur.)

We're charging into the inevitable circle of the holidays, each with its own special gimmick --Succot: eating in huts; Hanukah: jelly donuts and latkes [potato pancakes]; Tu B'shvat: dried fruits and nuts; Purim: costumes and triangular, filled cookies called "Haman's Ears" in Hebrew; Pesach: matza instead of bread for a week; Shavuot: cheesecake and cheese blintzes; Yom Ha'atzmaut [Independence Day]: afternoon barbecue ["mangal"]; Lag B'Omer: evening campfire; Rosh HaShana: new year, white clothes, worrying about one's fate in the book of life; culminating in Yom Kippur: fasting.

Even secular types go along with the gimmicks. Probably many find the repetitive framework comforting. Every specialty food in its rightful season. I just like the days off work.

I didn't miss the holiday routines and foods at all when I was in Toronto for two years. It was a relief, frankly, to have all those expectations removed. Around here, it seems to me most people just follow the customs by rote, with no feeling involved. One does it because one simply does; one goes along to look "normal". When you're part of a big family, the duties are very real and seriously problematic to avoid. Fortunately, I was smart enough to marry into a very small family: Mr. Squarepeg is an only child, and so is his father; and his mother has just one sister.

My mother-in-law and her sister had a Peach arrangement that worked for a couple of decades, where they would take turns hosting the seder. But the sister's family kept growing, with two of the three children married and producing offspring (and in-laws), while our family with one son, wife and grandchild (and in-laws far away) remained static. My mother-in-law is too tired now to host the whole song and dance with that big brood, and therefore doesn't want to attend her sister's seder either. If I were a completely different sort of daughter-in-law, I'd probably take on the mantle, but that will never happen. Last year, just my in-laws came to have a modest seder at our place (and brought most of the food, as usual). They told her sister that they would be out of town, staying at a hotel, to avoid the unpleasant family fallout. We haven't discussed what we're doing this year, so I don't know what's going to happen. We'll have to do something -- doing nothing is unthinkable, like pretending Christmas Eve isn't happening -- but it's sure to be pretty quiet.

And before all that, we get a very special holiday-off-work that involves no special food or gimmicks: Next Tuesday is Election Day, and all businesses are closed. Woo-hoo!

ghost of purim present

2006-03-20T00:13:00.000+02:00

Purim has come and gone, and it was not pleasant. It seems that Israelis, who grew up with the traditions of the holiday, are quite blase about the whole thing. For me, it was an opportunity to break out of routine and be silly. For all but two others in the whole company, it was worse than business-as-usual: they wanted to bust out, but they were at work, so they were just bummed out instead. On the Tuesday of Purim, I put my hair into a bunch of kooky little ponytails of various colors, which made people smile and say "kol hakavod" [good for you!] to me all day long, which in this situation means, "It's nice that somebody is making the effort to show some Purim spirit because I sure as hell don't have the energy."

On Wednesday, we were having a Purim activity during work hours, but off-site -- instead of the company's usual evening Purim party. We were informed of this a couple of weeks ago, and I just knew it would be hell: An afternoon activity (2:30-5) that I would have to drive to, meaning no alcohol and probably no food either, since it was right after lunch. What the hell would we be doing? Games of some kind, no doubt. It was actually worse than I expected, with the games being competitions between work groups (and my boss and I were the only present members of that tiny group), children's entertainers dressed up in clown costumes desperately trying to build enthusiasm, and ear-deafening music being played by a DJ ... but no dancing. Aargh.

whee, i'm "it"

2006-03-10T23:46:00.001+02:00

Thank you, She. I'm flattered by your interest, and since it's a silly questionnaire, I'll play along. I was once tagged with the Book Interrogation which completely intimidated me too much to answer it, but also had some influence on getting me reading again, so there you are.

However, since I'm basically a cheater who plays by her own rules, I may leave out or change some of these questions. Sue me. And I am sorry to say that I haven't been able to keep up with my favorite blogs for the past couple of months, so don't feel right about tagging anyone else. Good thing She tagged several!

Q: WHO'S THE 4TH PERSON ON YOUR RECEIVED CALL LIST?
A: My daughter, ms. squarepeg; I know without even looking because she calls me 99 times a day. When I call her, she's programmed her phone to play (for me) and ring (for her) the Pink Panther theme, which she's currently in love with.

Q: WHATS YOUR MAIN RINGTONE ON YOUR PHONE?
A: Sex and the City. Love that sax.

Q: WHAT WERE YOU D0ING AT MIDNIGHT LAST NIGHT?
A: Reading in bed. I'm in the middle of "The Devil Wears Prada," which I really appreciate now, a year after working for someone exactly like Miranda Priestly (the "Devil" boss of the title). I only tolerated it for a week and am seriously still traumatised by the experience. I find it difficult to comprehend how people choose to stay in such jobs; worse even to contemplate the torture they endure because they desperately need the job. brrrrrr.

MOST RECENT MOVIE THAT YOU WATCHED?
A: Just saw "Syriana" at the cinema this evening. Very confusing; need to see it again on dvd. Saw all five Oscar noms before the big night. (First time that happened. Loved Munich and Capote; Brokeback, not so much; Good Night and Good Luck, interesting but not Oscarworthy; Crash, okay, but Best Movie of the YEAR? gimme a break) Caught "The Aristocrats" on the tube last night, the great documentary that interviews scores of comedians about the most famous in-joke of all time, apparently, which I'd never heard of. Also didn't think it was funny, but I can see how they would all get a kick out of entertaining each other with personalized versions of this joke. It was really fun to watch. Great editing.

Q: What's your favorite town/city?
A: I love all cities, but I think Vancouver was my favorite.

Q:I can't wait to (til)...?
A: the weekend!!!!

Q: When was the last time you saw your mom?
A: August 2004, when I returned to Israel after 2 years back in Toronto, my hometown.

Q: What did you have for dinner LAST NIGHT?
A: Shipud b'lafa. (shishkebob chicken wrapped in a big flat pita)

Q: How long have you been at your current job?
A: 14.3 months, but hopefully not much longer

Q: Who is the last person you spent over $50 on?
A: Mememememememememe. Only me. Ooops, wrong -- it was ms. squarepeg, who nagged and nagged and nagged till I took her to the mall 2 nights ago, and sprung for yet another pair of jeans -- these ones artfully torn at the knees -- some khaki pants, and a few tops. 550 shekels. ka-CHING! But usually it's only me, really.

Q: Whats the last piece of clothing you borrowed from someone?
A: Ew. I never borrow clothes. But ms. squarepeg is now big enough to start wearing mine -- that which has "shrunk" (or has seemed to). I'd never let her borrow anything though, since she throws everything on the floor, inside out, and then walks on it.

Q: What website(s) do you visit the most during the day?
A: Yahoo email and Salon.com.

Q: Do you have an air freshener in your car?
A: Yuck! Hate artificial air perfume. Also, the smell of any cleaning materials, including furniture polish, and can't stand men's cologne or deodorant (unless it's one of the 2 scents I've ever smelled that I love). And I never wear perfume myself. I don't like having other people's scents forced on me any more than I want to breathe second-hand smoke, so I've always assumed that others felt the same way. I was surprised to hear recently that many women always wear perfume. Like daily showers, it was not something I was ever trained to do, and find that life works fine without it.

Q: Do you have plants in your room?
A: I have an African violet in my office that, like all my African violets before this one, has refused to flower since the first flowers died. I looked this up on the internet, and supposedly it's very simple, but it just does not work for me. All suggestions welcome.

Q: Does anything hurt on your body right now?
A: Thank god, no. Knock on wood.

Q: Do you own a camera phone?
A: No, but my daughter does. She's a real little gadget junkie. Gotta have the latest thing!

Q: What's your favorite Starbucks drink?
A: There's no 'bucks in the Holy Land anymore, but we've got lots of clones. I stay away from the sweet drinks. Just a big, strong cappuccino, lukewarm, for me.

Q: Recent time you were really upset?
A: A week ago, when I had words with my boss about the temp guy that works in my room twice a week and spends most of his time on loud phone calls either personal or with other clients. She told me to suck it up because "he delivers" and I made this into a personal insult (typical) with the hidden meaning of "i.e. what he delivers is more important than what you deliver." I had a great deal of angry energy to burn at the gym that evening, and went to a very good job interview the next day (recruiter, actually, not employer). Revenge will be delightful when served cold ... some time in the next couple of months, I can only hope.

Q: Have you been in love with anyone?
A: Ah yes, my drug of choice. The only thing that kills my appetite.

"mind if I look at your Winchester?"

2006-03-10T12:25:00.000+02:00

For anyone who missed the Oscars (as I did -- it was broadcast on the cable channel we DON'T get), or just wants to see it again:

Jon said, "There is nothing remotely gay about the classic hollywood westerns."

Jon cracks me up.

happiness isn't normal

2006-02-25T15:59:00.000+02:00

Periodically, my mother feels compelled to ask me if I'm happy. I unfailingly reassure her that I am not, and remind her that this is not my goal, expectation or purpose in life.

Sure, from time to time, I have that fleeting feeling of all being temporarily well, a wonderful pain-free experience when I've had enough sleep, my hormones are not causing some sadistic havoc, and my husband and daughter are not hitting or screaming at each other. Oh, and it's a weekend.

Those infrequent moments are fondly contemplated, even relished if I'm conscious enough to truly appreciate them, but they don't come together often enough to be thought of as happiness in your general terms. And how could one truly enjoy them if they were there all the time, anyway?

No, I'm a firm believer in the Life Sucks / Shit Happens school of thought, and I remain pleasantly surprised by the exceptions to this rule.

Now there's a new self-help book, apparently a bestseller, which is notable for it's first sentence: "People suffer." Its premise: Instead of trying to make life's suffering and negativity go away, we should acknowledge that the crap will always be there, and concentrate on living according to our values. Of course, there's that tiny problem of never having been trained to identify our values, but only those things that (we think) will make us feel good. You can read Rebecca Traister's Salon interview with author Steven Hayes, or the Time article about his book and "new" theory.

Life is suffering. DUH. This is not news. Does the name Buddha ring a bell? But now they're calling it "third-wave" psychology, and "acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)".

There's nothing new on the self-help shelf -- it's all just good reminders inside fresh covers. One of my favorite books of all time is nearly 30 years old. It's called, The Road Less Travelled, by M. Scott Peck, and it begins like this:

"Life is difficult.

"This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult -- once we truly understand and accept it -- then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."

Not that I'm so enlightened as to claim that it no longer matters for me, but I do accept the truth of this, and my goal, if I have one, is that some day it won't. Matter, that is.

did I say "random and disorganized"?

2006-02-25T13:23:00.001+02:00

I'm sorry, what I really meant was "chaotic".

This has been my life for the past five weeks, in absentia from you, my small handful of faithful voyeurs, checking in to see whether I’ve been inspired or have simply expired.

It has been a miserable couple of months at work, but I believe the period of major intense hell has just come to an end, for the moment at least. The release of new documentation is behind us, along with the preparations for an international and our own local conferences.

And we seem to have also come to the end of our brief but nasty winter. Yesterday was HOT and the feeling of lounging around in summer clothes and bare feet was delicious. It's cloudy again today, but still very comfortably warm and our wonderful Israeli spring is in the air.

In the past five weeks I have grown very sick of my company’s management, and my own boss is not exempt from my disdain and loathing. I will not feel any guilt when and if I find a new job close to home. And there are lots of jobs out there these days; I think the odds are good.

Fortunately, I have one colleague who has been a pillar of goodwill and we have unfailingly supported each other throughout the hysteria of this horribilis period. Even to the point where I came to work during three days of piercing, pounding migraine agony this week. Thursday included the bonus of nausea, and I didn’t even want to drive, so dear mr. Squarepeg (who just wants me to go to work, dammit) drove me there and picked me up again at 7pm during the height of rush hour. Not that I got much done in that state, but I made the heroic showing and was there to back up my co-worker when he needed it.

What else happened this month? Yesterday marked 17 years since the day I met the future mr. Squarepeg in front of what was then Paloma Bianca Pizza (anybody else been around that long?) on the edge of what was then Kikar Malchei Israel, now known as dear-departed-Rabin’s square. I used to think of it as my square, when I would spend my mornings wheeling ms. Squarepeg’s baby carriage or stroller through the wide open spaces that I gleefully shared only with the pigeons and the pigeon bag-lady who talked to and fed them. Good times. Then we moved to the burbs, and eventually the square became synonymous with the attempted murder of democracy and the final crushing blow to our naivete. How young we were. Well, the future mr. S was anyway… I already had one foot in middle age, but didn’t know it, thank goddess.

Another event of the past month – please don’t hate me for this – ms. Pinky, our five-month-old beloved family member, underwent a double operation that I have coined “pedicure”: “ee-koor” is the Hebrew for spaying, and the “ped” part refers to the removal of her front claws. I have always thought the declawing of a cat was an unnecessary and disrespectful, if not cruel, indignity that I would never dream of inflicting on any pet of mine. However, this feisty little bitch was leaving deep scratches on all of us, and I believed it was only a matter of time until someone was going to end up with a scarred face. Sunny, our 17-year-old Siamese, though he repeatedly ruined lace curtains (which I mended umpteen times over the years until I grew tired of them) and continues to scratch rugs and upholstery, has never been a person-scratcher. Pinky, however, was wild and showing no signs of becoming calmer. And I never had a problem clipping Sunny’s nails, but Pinky would have no part of it, biting and scratching at the first attempt.

In spite of this, we were all crazy about her; I still don’t know why. When she’s sleepy, she’s so adorable, and when she chases ribbons or ties she does somersaults in the air that make us giggle, and when she fake-fights Sunny, he wakes up and doesn’t look like such an old man. But I knew I couldn’t live with her treating my legs like a tree trunk that she just had to claw to the top of. The final straw came when she sprung onto the back of one of our guests, leaving bleeding gouges on his back.

Against mr. Squarepeg’s wishes, and feeling terrible about it myself, I took her to the vet for her two-fer – two ops for the price of one anesthesia. She stayed there for 4 nights because one of her paws was still bleeding when they removed the bandages after 2 days. We missed her terribly and felt bad for her when we went to visit and saw her shaking her paws in the air compulsively after each step. But when I brought her home she was running around and jumping the same as usual, so I don’t think she’s suffered much. The best part is how we now experience her: no more fear of her sudden freaky power trips. Whereas she used to be the Terror, the Clawed Bitch that brought out the big guns whenever we played with her, she is now the sweetest little frisky angel who will hang on my shoulder and let me cuddle her most of the time.

Of course, our cats never leave the apartment … but yesterday she did manage to escape after many failed attempts, and we didn’t notice. Only after about an hour we started searching for her and couldn’t find her in the apt, so I went out to the hallway and started calling her. Sunny always responds to my meowing, but Pinky doesn’t yet. I looked down in the stairwell, and spied her lying on the landing one floor down. That was a scare, but what a relief to find her unharmed and not far away. I hope she’s learned there was nothing interesting for her out there.

AND ... I also acquired this new laptop in the past month, the motherboard of my old, second hand IBM having given up the ghost after a brief illness. This one is slick and silver, and very sexy. It’s made by LG, and when I start it up, it tells me that LG means, “Life’s Good.”

So, welcome to today: the first day of the new LG era.

trying to pace myself in a random way

2006-01-20T11:00:00.000+02:00

My work life has become very intense and high-pressured. The pregnant colleague left to give birth this week to number six (mazal tov!). Not bad enough that she was leaving in the middle of one of the two most intense periods of the year, but also it was 2 wks early, by pre-planned caesarian due to lack of amniotic fluid AND breech presentation. She has been the Rock, the Source of All Arcane and Much-Needed Information, while I have constantly invoked, over the past year, the TMI law: Don't give me too much information -- need-to-know basis only, if you please. Keep It Simple. And, since it takes two to tango, I have to add that she's the type who would just as soon do a thing herself as spend much time bothering to explain a bunch of details to someone less ept than herself... which would be moi.

It's a disorganized company, and it's gotten more and more disorganized, it seems, since I started working there a year ago. (I take no credit for this.) I just realized that we've had a 90% turnover in our product manager team, which is shocking and appalling. There is only one of these managers left from the whole team that was in place a year ago, which means the vast majority are on various stages of a learning curve that makes them very hard to be helpful to my job: writing technical documentation when I know zero about the technology. It's insane. And right now, our flagship products are both being released in new versions, which means there is tons of documentation to edit/update and very few people around who know what they're talking about.

All this just goes to answering your silent (nonexistent? indifferent?) question as to why I haven't posted in two weeks.

How could I? There was too much work to do, and it turns out I have some semblance of a work ethic after all. My one or two regular readers will know that I far prefer to cruise through my 9-1/2 hours of forced daily labor, taking breaks in my internet surfing/blogging to produce the odd bit of output for my employer. Sadly, however, those days seem to be over. Instead of my omniscient earth-mother colleague, I now have minimal support from a part-time (barely 2 days a week) temporary writer on contract for the few months the colleague will be away on maternity leave. He is also religious, ultra-orthodox, in fact, and dresses the part. One learns not to judge a book by its fat, bearded, religious-costume-wearing cover, however: He's a pretty cool dude, extremely knowledgeable and experienced, and is thankfully a very patient teacher who is more than happy to share his technical writing tools and organizational savvy with me. In fact, he's made it explicit that his main agenda for the coming few months is to turn me into a confident, efficient tech writer.

It's kind of sweet to be someone's pet project.

Because I am really not smart about time-organization. I should work at this, since the concept of time pressure is my biggest stress. We hired a professional to teach our daughter the organization skills of a good student, and we only got as far as weeks of forcing the kid to create a schedule of her activities. We paid a hell of a lot of money for this lesson, and yet we're still not applying it. But some lessons need to sit with you for a period of time until you're ready to learn them. None of us (myself, Mr. Squarepeg, and the young ms.) are very amenable to being scheduled. We are free-flowing spirits. We do things when we feel like it. And that means that things we really do want to do may or may not get done.

We are not organized people. We are random people. And randomness, I suspect, would not rank noticeably on the list of the habits of highly effective people.

Probably randomness could not actually be considered a habit, anyway. Randomness must really be by definition the (non-deliberate) lack of habits. “Random,” says the dictionary, is haphazard, without definite aim, direction, rule or method; lacking a definite plan, purpose or pattern. I’m a very random person. In the past, I have been called both a dilettante and a loose cannon. Mr. Squarepeg has referred to my attitude as one of living in a bubble.

Highly Effective people surely must be the opposite of random. For to be Highly Effective they must make plans, and have the determination to stick to them. Highly Effective people, I feel sure, are committed people, whereas I of course am a commitment-phobe.

To the extent that I am truly random in my nature, my life’s course is determined by accident rather than design. Whatever happens, happens, “without regard for regularity or outcome”. But it also means, in the scientific sense, that I am allowing all life’s elements “equal probability of occurrence”. This reminds me of a "definition" of Clutter that I came across and saved, from I know not where, some time ago. I read it and feel much more patient with ms. Squarepeg's bedroom, which she insists she hates to see tidy (even if someone else has done it):

“Clutter invites us to make meaning in the absence of pattern.
Clutter tantalizes us, lures us into a relationship with material in a way that is far more interesting than discernible order. In clutter, you may not be able to find what you are looking for, but you may find something else instead.
Clutter may not be about the way we hide things from ourselves but about the way we make ourselves look for things. It is, as it were, a self-imposed hide-and-seek.”

That is SO ms. Squarepeg, I have to admit, playing unconscious busy-games with herself. Is this randomness such a bad thing, really? I guess it depends on what I would like to see get done.

If I sit down and make a schedule -- not in stone, but on a computer screen -- does this tie me down? Of course not, but the inner me balks at the planning activity itself. I tend to plan on-the-fly, as they say in the hi-tech world, aka 'in real time'.

Ooof, what a wishy-washy commitment-phobe I am.

continuing my literary education

2006-01-20T10:42:00.000+02:00

Well, at least I haven't been idle in my randomness -- not that there's anything wrong with idleness!! There's loads of creativity fermenting in idleness.

Carrying on with my plan to erase my literary ignorance one book at a time, reading the classics that get referred to here and there while I just think "huh?" ... I finished The Scarlet Letter this week. It seems that Americans read this book during the course of their high school studies, but it wasn't on our Canadian curriculum, and I've always wondered about it.

And thus completes my trifecta of desperate adulterous heroines (along with Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina) who made the old-world, culture-compelled bad choices of mainly much older, ultra-conservative, and/or just plain boring husbands, and consequently either had to kill themselves or have their souls erased by society. Hester Prynne, a nonentity in too many ways for all her youth, following one burst of passion, gets to become a wise old crone for the rest of her lonely life.

Did I say "old-world, culture-compelled"? As if we have different options in our modern world. Sure we have options. So I wonder why so many of us still end up choosing the one that Anna, Emma and Hester did?

bulldoze this

2006-01-06T21:19:00.000+02:00

It's a sad time with the whole country, like vultures, on deathwatch. Slowly we come to terms with the fact that Sharon is gone, for all intents and purposes. Odds are he either won't live out the week, or will live a short while in a brain-damaged state which is not preferable to blissful release. But speculating is like trying to play God.

Funny thing, about playing God. My distrust of doctors and their poison potions has only been reinforced this week with current events. It would seem that ill-advised blood thinners prescribed by Sharon's doctors were the cause of his massive brain hemorrhage, hurrying his exit somewhat.

But who knows how much time he would have had? Perhaps this script was written a long time ago ... even Shakespeare couldn't have written a plot with more dramatic timing.

things I do with my keys

2006-01-03T23:02:00.000+02:00

This morning I couldn't find my keys. I was running late for an appointment and they weren't in any of the usual places. I got a sinking feeling in my gut and opened the apartment door to find them, sure enough, hanging in the keyhole on the outside of my apartment.

They'd been there all night, like an open invitation. I had come home yesterday evening with four bags of groceries and -- well, you can visualize the scene: put down the bags, unlock the door, pick up the bags without removing the keys, close the door, and then with full hands completely block the memory of the keys still outside, and latch the door (so that no one could have gotten in anyway). When I arrived home this evening, I had a fleeting thought as I unlocked the door, that someone very devious could have stolen the keys in the night and had them copied, then replaced them as if nothing had happened, so that he could come back while I was out during the day and clean me out. But I breathed freely when I saw everything was just as I left it.

I had a similar "Alzheimer's moment" about a year ago, also when my husband was out of the country, as he is now, and that is a factor that makes me wonder: Am I more spaced out because he's not around? That time, I checked the mail inside the entrance to our building just before going out, and went away with the mail, leaving the keys hanging there from my box for hours, until I returned home and needed to get into the apartment and couldn't find the keys in my purse.

Such experiences of one's own idiocy are acutely painful.

But it gets worse. Just a few months ago, in the summer, I took my daughter to get a haircut. Because she talks nonstop, my brain frequently fails to function when she's around, and when we got out of the car, I just walked away leaving the keys still in it, and unlocked. I had parked on a busy street, and no one even noticed, apparently. It was only as we were returning to the car, two hours later, that I searched for the key in my bag and immediately realized I'd never taken them out of the car (or locked it, obviously).

But to make this true story stranger than fiction -- this you won't believe, but unfortunately I swear I'm not making it up -- just one week later, I did the same thing again (once again, my chattering daughter was with me, but honestly, how much can one blame on a 13-year-old?) This time I upped the ante, though, because I had actually left the car running! Unbelievably, I had parked in a free open parking lot in the middle of my quiet little suburb and left the car running, with the windows open, for two hours. The shock of realizing I had done this again, only worse, shook me up.

Am I going senile? Should I be chaperoned at all times? Perhaps my name should be pinned to my shirt? Maybe it's a gingko deficiency? This airheadedness is disturbing. I've been awfully lucky so far -- four lapses and no consequences -- but the odds say that can't go on forever. Maybe the patron saint of senility is watching over me.

By the way, I thought my tank would be empty, but you'd be surprised how little gas is consumed by cars just sitting in parking lots without moving.

chrismukkah

2005-12-25T16:40:00.000+02:00

And we have arrived at one of those rare moments in time when christmas and hanukah come together on the same date. Well, very close anyway, as christmas night is actually hanukah eve, but close enough -- it's the first candle tonight.

I haven't cared about such things since my daughter was small enough to be fascinated by the pretty candles, but it's nice we've got something anyway. Today they brought sufganiyot (jelly-filled donuts, traditional hanukah treats) for the whole office. I ate my first one of the season, maybe the last, if I'm lucky. Last night I resorted to concocting some heavily rum-spiked eggnog in a fit of nostalgia for the old country and the illusions of merriment christmas eve always managed to evoke. (I also remember how the illusions are barely sustained by liquor throughout the following week, only to crash in the January blues, which usually drag right through to the middle of March.)

Oh that dreaded cold.

It's been almost that cold here this past weekend, with so much rain falling for the past 48 hours that several parts of my town were flooded. Not that I went out, mind you. I didn't even get dressed yesterday -- just stayed in bed reading most of the day. Reading and feeding is what I did the whole day, getting up only when ms. squarepeg wailed that she was hungry. Come evening I was a bit fed up with the storm, though. One can get a little stir crazy.

This morning I needed my Canadian winter jacket to keep warm. It's a great quilty jacket I picked up for only $20 (Canadian!) -- one of those fantastic right-place, right-time buys at Honest Ed's, 3 winters ago. Not only that, my mother-in-law bought it for me! And it's still going strong. I wonder how much longer Honest Ed's will last? While in Toronto I heard tell that once 91-year-old Ed Mirvish leaves this sphere of things, his legendary store sitting on that priceless bit of property at the corner of Bloor and Bathurst in Toronto will be razed and the location will become some kind of huge flashy development. If so, the character of that neighborhood will never be the same.

So if you're in Toronto, make sure you get yourself over there and enjoy the bargains and retro other-wordliness of Honest Ed's, perhaps soon be nothing more than a legend.

the days get longer

2005-12-22T17:23:00.000+02:00

Finally, with a double handful of natural pharmaceuticals, I managed to get some shuteye last night. My sleep was still fractured, i.e. I woke up (and looked at the clock) several times, but each time I was able to doze off again. After being a miserable wreck and going home several hours early yesterday, I am back to my normal grouchline today.

I love Dec. 22, when the days start getting longer again. Sundown, falling darkness, is meaningful in a Jewish country. But the buildup of tension as darkness falls earlier and earlier is a small psychological torment in a world where minor psychological torments are strewn in one's path daily. With the winter solstice now behind us, I can optimistically look forward to the days when I can drive home from work in the sunshine, when evenings out will be neither dark nor cold, and when the supermarket that closes now at 2pm on Friday (to give lots of time for workers to get home before sundown, i.e. the start of Shabat) will be open for business until 7.

Sure it's all in my head, but more light just feels like more time. And I am starved for time.

insomaniacal day

2005-12-21T13:49:00.000+02:00

Here is my day so far, and it's only 10:30 am:

It started around 3am when as has become my wont in recent weeks, I woke and looked at my bedside clock. The insomnia that has plagued me lately is making me extremely grouchy, and my baseline grouch level is probably much higher than yours, so I'm pretty much unapproachable these days. The increasing doses of 5-HTP still aren't helping (I'm up to 150mg before bed).

Yes, this is my current excuse for failing to post here more often.
Bite me.

Unfortunately, on this occasion, Mr. Squarepeg was also awake, suffering from the dryness in the air, and his snuffling and movement and blanket-pulling were hampering my attempt to get back to sleep.

He got up to find a package of tissues and blow his nose. Then I got up to pee. I never used to pee in the night, but since I'm awake, why not?

He complained. I complained. He fell asleep. I brooded and tossed and turned and stretched my aching legs in our too-narrow bed. Finally, at about 4:30 I got my discman and settled into my waves-on-the-beach sounds. By 5:30 I had finally dozed off.

I woke up at 7, the time I usually get up, and felt too much physical anguish to move. I dozed again until 7:30 when Mr. Squarepeg went to wake young ms. who still hadn't stirred. She came for a cuddle, despite the late hour and my grouchiness. I really didn't want to get up, but thinking about the crap she would eat if I didn't make her a sandwich motivated me to crawl out of bed and drag myself to the kitchen. I made her instant oatmeal and a pastrami & lettuce sandwich on a whole wheat bagel.

I asked Mr. Squarepeg to transfer the laundry in the washing machine into the dryer, and while I was preparing the breakfast and lunch, shouts of "Oh NOoooo!" emanated from the laundry room. I ran to see what disaster had befallen us, praying it wasn't a flood. For some reason, the water had not emptied during the spin cycle and it poured onto the floor when my luckless husband opened the door. Standing there in the puddle, in his socks, with a full bucket of dry floor rags right behind him, he wailed, "What do I do?!" ooof.

I did not contain my impatience.

Returning to the kitchen, I dispensed with the breakfast and lunch and got Ms. Squarepeg out of there to collect herself for school. I have found her much more cooperative this week, having instituted a new system wherein she gets credits (printed on paper, like monopoly money) for just doing what she should, i.e. getting up by 7:15, not forgetting anything when she leaves, doing homework, tidying her room, etc., and can redeem them for privileges like TV, computer, or even extra money.

Somehow, she blew it completely today. Didn't get up by herself, didn't tidy the room, didn't leave on time, and then when she was already late, she told me she needed to print a homework assignment that she wanted me to proofread first -- an assignment she did a week ago, which I had already given her comments on that she'd ignored. It was ridiculous, got an argument started about her irresponsibility about the homework, and required using the printer which we were having some trouble with. On top of that, she thought the computer wasn't on, and turned it off [the wrong way] thinking she was turning it on. So then we had to wait precious minutes while it started up again. And then we fumbled around getting the printer online, but finally it worked.

And 10 minutes after she left, I saw her lunch still sitting on the kitchen table. Aaaargh.

I checked the washing machine, turned the dial till it went into spin again, emptied it, put stuff in the dryer, and optimistically put in a fresh load to wash.

Went to get ready for ##$%@$%$%work which has become more and more unbearable with its intolerable drive and long hours, and looked like shit in anything I put on. What's the use, too tired to care, even my hair sucks with exhaustion.

Drag myself to car, drive to work trying to stay in my lane and keep eyes open at 100-120 KPH. One good thing about being late for work is that the traffic is much lighter and requires less focus.

Am sitting now at desk, too tired to go to lunch or do any work. My boss was forced to bring her 4-yr-old to work for a couple of hours, so she's in Mommy Mode.

I'm on cruise control. But not in a good way.

literature screened

2005-12-11T08:37:00.000+02:00

Have just discovered by chance, while surfing at IMDb.com, that The Corrections is being made into a movie to be released in 2007, with Judi Dench already attached to the project --presumably in the key role of matriarch Edith Lambert. No other actors are announced yet, but I'll be watching that space. My interest in seeing the Lambert family of The Corrections come to life on screen is more than passing, having immersed myself in their world just a couple of months ago. It should be wonderful to see Judi Dench, an actor of depth and subtlety, embody the pivotal Edith. And the producer/director, Robert Zemeckis, is no slouch either, having been the power behind some major projects (not to mention a long list of successful drek).

The person at the top is critical, of course. They are entrusted with the millions required to actualize our fondly-held literature-based imaginings. Memoirs of a Geisha, another wonderful engrossing book of recent years, has just been released as a film, and I can't wait to see it, but critics have unfortunately found it lacking in soul, which is sad.

As Peter Howell, of the Toronto Star, puts it:

It is axiomatic in filmmaking that screen adaptations of books should never attempt to match the frame to the printed word. They are two very different media, with different dramatic requirements.

There are exceptions that prove the rule, however. And it must be said that in bringing Arthur Golden's 1997 bestseller about geisha mystique to cinematic life, director Rob Marshall (Chicago) and screenwriter Robin Swicord (Little Women) should have paid more heed to the original text. They have sanded away many of the fine lines that made the novel such an engrossing read.

Reading great books before seeing their movie versions is always dicey. I'll never forget my disappointment at the film versions of Zorba the Greek and The Color Purple, soon after reading those books. I thought those movie versions sucked majorly, though others who hadn't read the books (or not so recently, perhaps) found them quite acceptable. Let's hope Zemeckis gets it right.

Now, what I'm wondering is, who will play Chip Lambert? He's a little past his peak, both academic and rough, adventurous, impetuous, irrresponsible. I've been trying to think of hot, pushing-40ish actors with substance who aren't too pretty or sexy, and it's tough. I'm thinking Mark Ruffalo would be perfect. Any other suggestions?

hakol beseder ... and it's Thursday!!

2005-12-08T16:54:00.000+02:00

Two days ago (I know -- BAD blogger!!) I got in to see cardiologist Dr. B, only to be told that -- wouldn't ya know it -- his ultrasound machine was on the blink... and not in a good way. About an hour earlier it had just stopped functioning, after I'd wasted -- wasted!! -- most of the morning missing work waiting for this appointment. [ed. note: Anybody who knows this blogger even vaguely will detect the irony here: work time is wasted time; free time, never. What I actually did was drag mr. squarepeg out to the entirely-empty-at-9am grocery store and do a week's shopping. And I did laundry and puttered around the house. It was deeliteful.]

Not that I had even been to the gym in the past 10 days, having felt like shit with the longest PMS on record, but I said to him, "Don't you have something in the computer on my previous checkups, something that would remind you that my EKG is unusual, but that there's nothing wrong with me? I need that form for the gym!" So he went to the computer, did indeed find that when he last checked me, 7 years ago, my echo (ultrasound) was a bit unusual, but that it was nothing to worry about. So he pulled out the ol' stethoscope (yay, low-tech always saves the day), listened here, listened there, pointed to my belly and said I was too fat, felt up my leg for I'm not sure what (it's a nice leg) and said I was fine.

As he printed out a form for the gym I showed him my cholesterol readings from my recent blood test. Overall: a tad high at 216; HDL: okay at 49; LDL: borderline too high with 153; Triglycerides: very low at 65. He said it was not so bad, overall I was in good shape, "But lose weight." I got the distinct impression he was appraising me not totally as a doctor, but partially as a male. Was that a tiny leer I perceived in his Gallic twinkle? How egocentric am I?

As I got into the elevator, he was leaving as well, so I had the chance to ask him, sort of playfully, "So, how many? Two? Three? How many kilos?"

Pausing to give me the once-over, he said, "Four." Ouch. (Americans: multiply by 2.2 to calculate pounds.) That would make me the weight I was at age 20 (with a lot less muscle mass, I grant you). I can barely lose ONE kilo, no matter what I do. What are the odds I'll lose four?

Flippantly, I answered, "Oh, you French men, you have completely different standards." That was my parting shot, since we'd reached the ground floor and he was continuing downward to the basement parking.

I don't know if he thought I was amusing or just a weirdo, but I get to see him again in 4 weeks, for the official appointment, when the ultrasound machine will, hopefully, be working. He'll be squirting that gel all over my chest as he examines me inside and out. Four weeks.

That's one kilo a week. Damn.

matters of the heart

2005-11-29T17:48:00.000+02:00

My gym demands, according to Israeli law, that I bring a note from my doctor every year assuring them that I am healthy enough to be let loose on their machines. This is what is known as "ass-covering," of course. It's a word I recently learned from my boss, a champion in that sport, specializing in email, which she refers to as keese-tu-chim -- literally, "covering of the tuches".

This medical form is a minor annoyance, particularly since I rarely have a reason to visit a doctor so it's not something I can piggyback onto some other request; usually it's a special trip, along with the indeterminate amount of waiting, etc. At least it's free -- good ol' socialized medicine: one of the best reasons to live in this country (that, and the weather).

So I dropped in at my doctor's the other evening on my way home from work, and after a blessedly short wait (the weather is warm; we're between flu plagues), I went in and told her what I needed. "Oh, fine," she said, and took my blood pressure. I didn't think to ask what it read and she didn't tell me, just saying its normal.

Then I remembered I needed a referral to see a cardiologist for an echocardiogram. Here's the story: My biological father died at 27, when I was two, of a congenital heart defect (something to do with a defective valve, if memory serves). He had four siblings. Of them, one was definitely a carrier, and one of her sons -- davka the cousin I had a huge crush on, the musician -- died before 30 of the same thing. Another sister was thought to be a carrier and one of her sons was diagnosed in his 20s as well. My brother and I have both been checked periodically over the years but appear not to have inherited it. But until now I'd always believed that this was a problem that would manifest early, if at all. I figured I was out of the woods, and haven't been checked for several years. Now suddenly, I've learned that the mother I'd thought was only a carrier (her son has it, and is managing it with medication so far), has been diagnosed with it too. And she's in her 60s. So much for that theory. So I figured it was time to get checked again.

Talk about TMI: When I explained to my doctor why I needed a referral for the cardiologist, she changed her mind about handing me the medical release for the gym that she'd already printed out. "Uh-uh," she said, shaking her head firmly, "with all these people dying in your family, you're not getting this until I at least get a clean EKG from you."

oops. big mouth always gets me in trouble.

While I was at it, I decided to go whole hog and get some blood work done too, since that's another thing I haven't checked in years. Everybody should know their cholesterol reading, no? I mean, it's such useful information in geriatric company.

So off I went to the Kupat Holim [sick fund/HMO] clinic this morning, handed in my card, received paper with stickers for the blood tests and a blue-lidded plastic cup to pee into. The technician had a lot of trouble finding a vein to stick -- mine are so thin as to be almost invisible -- so I had that rubber tourniquet on so long my arm started to ache. But she told me I was "very brave" so that put a smile on my face. [Biyatch probably says that to all her victims.]

Then two floors up, to the nurses' station, where they do the EKG. I was extremely lucky this time -- I'd come an hour earlier than my appointment just hoping they might squeeze me in, and sure enough, absolutely nobody was waiting. She took my BP again, and this time I paid attention: 106/67 --- nice. And off to the table. Turn off your cell phone. Pull up your shirt. Take off your boots. Gel-clip; gel-clip; gel-clip. Don't talk for a minute. That's it, you're done. Wow. I'm sure this thing used to take a lot longer. Here's a line that shows what your heart's doing, lub-dup lub-dup; take it to the nice doctor in room 407 and he'll interpret it.

This, it turns out, is the same cardiologist who I've seen a couple of previous times over the years, the tall, smiling French, Doctor B. that I found very pleasant, friendly and un-doctor-like. I waited my turn in the corridor, and when he came out he took my EKG as if to look at it quickly and just sign off on it, but came back with the surprising, "It's not normal."

oh shit, was all I could think, now I'm not going to get my release for the gym. I said, "Not normal? Why?" And he showed me the EKG that had looked so innocent a moment before, and with his pen circled a little blip that appeared just after each spike.

"It could be that your normal EKG is irregular, but I can't sign off on this without checking," he said. I told him that I already have an appointment for an echogram on Jan. 3, but now that it's going to prevent me from going to the gym, I'd really like to get an earlier appointment. He told me to call him "in a few days" and he would see what he could do. I'm planning to call him tomorrow.

Actually, this doesn't worry me. About 20 years ago, a hysterical young cardiologist looked at my EKG and told me something like I was a heart attack waiting to happen and needed to be on beta-blockers permanently. I didn't like what he told me about beta-blockers -- it sounded a lot like a lobotomy for some reason -- and I wasn't in any mood to slow down, so I got a second opinion, which was fortunate. The more experienced cardiologist determined that I simply had an unusual pattern, but that an echo revealed nothing abnormal. And since then it's always been fine. I'm pretty confident Dr. B will determine my heart to be ... if not normal, then at least acceptable.

freiers, they "who only stand and wait"

2005-11-27T15:09:00.000+02:00

I live in Israel, I work in Israel, I speak Hebrew and shop in Israeli stores and travel Israeli roads to work five days a week. I'm married to an Israeli, for heaven's sake, and am the mother of a sabra. And yet I seem to float somewhere just off to the side of "Israel". This is the nature of the squarepeg. How is this possible? My life is intertwined yet uninvolved.

Usually I notice the habits of the natives with barely a raise of the eyebrows, and have in many ways probably melted into this pot more than I even realize. But today I was especially struck with how Israelis are inveterate, unapologetic interrupters. Okay, once in a while they'll interrupt with a perfunctory "sorry for the interruption bla bla bla bla...[continuing without a break]," but much of the time they'll just walk in and start talking over the person who's in the middle of talking. As if to say, "my mother taught me that I'm the center of the universe and until proven otherwise, that works for me." Depending on the arrogance quotient of the interrupter, I can get pretty irritated by this behavior, I have to admit. It's one thing that still shocks me nearly speechless. Probably that has something to do with the fact that being interrupted has a tendency to kill my notoriously slippery train of thought.

Today I was just amused, however, when I was in the middle of consulting with our office manager on the best way to bind a large stack of papers, when a colleague came along and, all urgency-and-time-is-of-the-essence, cut off our almost-finished conversation with his own needs. Going directly into anthropological mode (this time), I stood to the side while the office manager turned her attention to the interrupter, only to be re-interrupted after about 30 seconds by a man who she'd just opened the door for. He immediately started telling her something and she gave him her full attention for about a minute, then walked back to her desk with interrupter no. 1 now continuing with what he needed. This only lasted a few more seconds, though, because another colleague then came by and immediately started in on what she wanted, pretend-apologizing for the inconsequential interruption -- after all, we were obviously just wasting time, while her needs were extremely time-sensitive.

At times like this, I feel very Canadian. Canadians are known for their almost pathological politeness -- two people brush past each other gently and both say, "sorry!" where smashing past each other in this country warrants no acknowledgment whatsoever; and don't even get me started on the driving habits -- but it's at least a relaxing sort of pathology. Waiting in orderly lineups is pointedly un-Israeli, but even waiting to speak to someone while they finish a previous conversation is a skill not mastered by the majority.

We may be in the Middle-East, but the manners are all Wild West.

how I spent my time awol

2005-11-26T23:38:00.000+02:00

And another ten days passes with only crickets heard from.

Where does the time go? Oh yeah, Desperate Housewives. The first season finally came to blockbuster and I managed to devour it in large chunks over the past 10 days. Very tasty indeed, much more than I'd anticipated. After the ancient agonies of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, the twisted maneuvrings of Gabrielle Solis are some weird kind of bliss. But why do we not see her even considering abortion? Is it too much for network tv? Now I have to wait a few months till season two arrives.

And although I've spent many hours at work just cleaning out / filing some of the over-400 [non-personal, of course] emails that have accumulated in my webmail, I didn't manage to use any of that ill-gotten time to post here. At the end of the week, when I finally got the urge, I also got a pile of less-ignorable work to do. Yes, I know, "we can do better."

I also spent a couple of days' worth of free time figuring out (with the help of my technophiliac 13-yr-old) how my new iPod Nano works. I wasn't very excited when I got it, I must admit, but I am totally psyched about it now. What an awesome little machine! And by 'little' I mean smaller than a credit card (but about as thick as 3 credit cards, which is still pretty slim, my friends). We are talking miniature -- about a quarter of the size of the kid's "mini iPod". Is she jealous? Oh yeah. Even though at barely 2Gb it's got only half the memory of hers.

What a cool concept this is: Connect the iPod to a USB port. This launches the "iTunes" software interface. When iTunes is open on your screen, you insert a cd you want to "rip" (new jargon for the benefit of previous generations, which here means copy to your computer so that it can be quickly transferred to your iPod). iTunes goes right to work ripping, and you can go back to reading your mail, or whatever. In my case, this is a slow process -- maybe I need a hi-speed USB port, which may be worth looking into -- but it goes on in the background. Once the music is copied into the computer, it appears in the iTunes list, and all I have to do is drag it into the "squarepeg's iPod" folder. Then I click on "update" and iTunes proceeds to synchronize what appears in its folders with what I've got on my teeny tiny sound machine.

Of course the ridiculously small hardware belies the iPod's incredibly big sound. It comes with a pair of teeny tiny earphones, along with teeny tiny black foam rubber ear pads that require the dexterity of barbie-doll sized fingers to put in place. The whole concept, in fact, is reminiscent of an intricate doll's house where you would have a fully-equipped livingroom set up with a fully-functioning home cinema inlcuding surround sound. It just all looks too small to be possible.

But I guess this is just the beginning of the wonders of the evolving nano world.

a very decent birthday

2005-11-16T19:11:00.000+02:00

Since I've been in Israel, and particularly since I've been married to a guy who grew up with almost no family birthday tradition, I've either been depressed by the lack of birthday fanfare or simply made sure I took care of myself and ignored the sound of crickets.

Even a year ago, I was pretty much a birthday Scrooge. I just read what I wrote back then, and this year there is significant improvement, thanks both to the employment factor and to my daughter being old enough now to make her mark on the occasion.

Strangely, two of my siblings (10 and 7 time zones away, respectively) bookended the day by phoning to sing happy birthday too early in the morning and then too late at night, thus waking me up from sound sleep twice. Thanks, you guys! I know you love me, but just send money next time, ok? ;P

My boss organized a small collection from several people and they surprised me, late morning, with a fudgy/creamy store-bought cake, a balloon, and a beautiful pair of earrings. Then OB (office boyfriend -- doesn't every girl have one?) took me out for lunch and gave me a silver necklace from the same store the earrings came from. (No, he doesn't expect anything in return -- just continues to hope.) After lunch, I brought out the cake I had made (chocolate with Grand Marnier-flavored butter icing) and invited my office mates to partake. It was like throwing a party without most of the work, and I got lots of warm-fuzzies and "mazal tov"s out of it. In the evening, more food: Mr. Squarepeg and the young Ms. took me out for Chinese dinner at a classy place and gave me an iPod as a gift. She also wrote a crazy little poem, which started, "Some have ideas; others have the cash" -- referring to herself as the creative genius and her father as the patron of the arts, as it were. "Some go to school/Others you will find at work. You have a birthday today/ And we don't." And finally, concluding in her free-verse style of oxymoronic couplets, was "Happy birthday Mom and Wife/We hope that you enjoy your life" which made me snort the beer I was drinking. And then the footnote: "***We love you even when we fight!!!!" My 13-year-old is coming along nicely.

However, this iPod thing is a bit problematic, being much more of a gadget than I actually wanted. My daughter has become an iPod freak and I think she talked daddy into buying it because she has designs on it. Right away she started in with maybe I'd like to trade with her (she's had a mini iPod since the summer, but the minute she bought it she already wanted an upgrade). Actually, all I wanted was a basic mp3 player to listen conveniently to a series of lectures I have on CDs. The iPod may end up being pretty much wasted on me, but I was dumb enough to open the package right away (the kid wanted to see it and was insisting) so there's no way it's returnable. It was very generous of the mister to spring for such an expensive toy, when something half the price would have done me fine, but I'm a little uncomfortable about it. Although, who knows? Maybe I'll start listening to music more because of it. It really does have amazing sound, nothing like listening to a discman. I hardly ever listen to my music now, because of all the noise I live with (two very noisy individuals who need radio/tv/computer sounds on all the time), but maybe I'll just go into my own little iPod nanoworld and bliss out...

In any case, the "big day" felt very satisfying for a change. Score one more point for the world of work.

there's good pain and then there's migraine

2005-11-13T18:11:00.000+02:00

I'm getting to the age where nothing I do seems to make a dent in my weight. Not that I'm fat, but these tires of blubber around my midsection are very tiresome. I would like to make them go away. In fact, I've been wanting to make my pot belly disappear since I was 15. And that was decades before anyone ever heard the word "liposuction."

I did hear of a cosmetic surgery known as "apronectomy" however. It refers not to the removal of one's apron, of course, but to the fat area that the apron usually covers. I don't know if that word is even used anymore [hm, quickly googling...] yes indeed, still used, but more often called abdominoplasty or tummy tuck. The description of it still sounds as gruesome as ever, too: "A triangular area of skin and underlying fat is removed from hip to hip above the pubic hair and below the umbilicus. The umbilicus is left attached on a stalk. A pocket is made underneath the skin and fat of the upper abdomen as far as the ribs and this skin is then stretched downwards to join the lower incision."

Thank god I can't afford to do it, because if I led the kind of lifestyle where I could, I really might. And some part of me really sees putting oneself through that sort of thing for vanity as insane.

But the vanity remains. Too bad I can't get a "vanitectomy" -- that would save a lot of grief. Instead, I must pull up droopy eyelids and imagine gluing them in place, or ironing out the beginnings of jowls, or plumping up a lipline that appears to be caving in inconveniently. Bah.

Although it's very difficult to change my caloric consumption, one thing I do still have some control over is my fitness, and I'm trying to push myself to keep the metabolic rate up. To motivate myself, I recently started a series of sessions with a personal trainer. It's not that I really need this, but working with a trainer forces you to push yourself more than you would on your own.

As a result, I spend 3-4 days following each session feeling like I've been beaten up. Right now, the muscles around my waist are feeling the burn after doing several sets of some exercise where I hang sideways off this machine and then just pull myself up straight, like a sideways situp. Last week, I couldn't straighten my arms for several days without going OWWWWW. The muscles from my forearm, over my elbow and all the way to my biceps were killing me every time I stretched my arms, and I had to cancel the next lesson. The time before, it was my upper legs and the back of my arms, just above my elbows, that made me yelp even if I picked up the phone receiver and put it to my ear -- for 4 days.

I have to admit, though: I enjoy being bossed by my hunky trainer.

That's the good pain. The migraines are another story, and now they're happening every 3-1/2 weeks, for anywhere from one to three days. Lately I've been trying a new supplement, 5-htp, but so far nothing. Although ... it actually might be putting me in a better mood. The jury's still out. On Thursday, well into day 2 of the headache, I left work early and dragged myself home, only to find that young ms. squarepeg was also home early with a fever and other flu symptoms. And that was my weekend laid out for me. Call this scenario, "Being Indispensable While Coping with Migraine."

Well, the fun's over, I'm back at work feeling like I haven't had a weekend, and it's BOOOOOOOOOOOORing!!!

chapters on bloor becomes winners

2005-11-06T18:09:00.000+02:00

I get the Toronto Star's headlines in my email box every day, but I rarely find time to read them. So I only just discovered that Chapters on Bloor, the venerable mega-bookstore that once had welcoming overstuffed armchairs on the 3rd floor, far away from the cash registers, and where I worked part-time for a year in 2002-03 while I sojourned in Toronto, closed its doors in June!

The only reason this came to my attention now was that the new resident of that space is about to be Winners, the discount emporium of some higher-class merchandise found most often in big suburban malls. It's about to open up on the two-block stretch of downtown Toronto referred to as the closest thing Toronto has to Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue. The snooty are up in arms.

So that makes one more former employer's establishment I will never again revisit, another metaphorical bridge burnt, as it were, which makes me a bit nostalgic. Working in a megabookstore was a kind of candy-shop dream job until I'd been at it a couple of weeks. But work is work of course, and the reality is much more painful than the illusion. Seven-hour shifts on one's feet, walking customers through the stacks back and forth, wheeling 2-ton trolleys of new hardcover stock to their places on the shelves at the height of the pre-Christmas shopping season, enduring the endless mind-bending torturous loop of Christmas music throughout the decades for nearly two agonizing months -- "not THAT ONE AGAIN!!!!" was all that went through my mind -- answering phone calls, searching the database for titles, finding the book supposedly in stock, but never being able to find the mis-shelved book in actual fact ... and a whole lot of directing people to the washroom, because a lot of people need the washroom when they're in a bookstore and come all the way to the 3rd floor to find it.

I know the relaxation response that is triggered soon after I start browsing in a bookstore is a peculiar phenomenon I've witnessed repeatedly, to my annoyance. As if the blissful perusal of fresh text is a cue to peristalsis. Bummer. Reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where George took a book to the store bathroom (this was discouraged at Chapters, but impossible to prevent) and the staff obviously labelled it as such, so that he could never return it. So I suppose that would make the phenomenon universal, n'est-ce pas?

I was hired at Chapters exactly three years ago, just as the shopping season was revving up, and worked for close-to-minimum wage until the next Christmas began to loom. By then, three-quarters of the store's staff had turned over, including the management. The complex layout of the different sections of books had been changed several times, and the disorder was making specific titles harder and harder to find. My feet were killing me, and the thought of those terrifying musical loops was beginning to make me nauseous.

It had been a fun ride, but it was time to move on. I said good-bye to the long-suffering "lifers" -- two especially smart guys who had been there years too long (who shall remain nameless, but both were tall, thin intellectuals, one a long-haired scraggy type, the other a short-cropped blond Scandinavian), the smart women who would have been in power jobs if it wasn't a recession (and probably are by now), and the harridan boss [insert here the witch-on-bicycle music from The Wizard of Oz] who took over from the mother-hen manager who was in residence when I was hired.

I was tired of retail, and had had enough. But now I'll never be able to return to the scene. And that's a tiny bit sad. Ciao, Chapters.

me month

2005-11-04T23:34:00.000+02:00

November is my favorite month. My birthday arrives smack in the middle of it, and I make every effort to guiltlessly pamper myself for at least the first two weeks.

On Tuesday evening I'm going for a loooong massage.

Today did the beauty salon ritual. This is not actually a fun thing to do, but I come out feeling much better about myself ... well, the way I look, anyhow. I frequently emerge more bitchy than I went in, on the other hand, having been kept waiting, then been pushed, prodded, moved around, and seemingly made lowest priority for two and a quarter hours while rock music blares and smoke drifts in from the open doorway where someone's always puffing right outside, and then finally gouged as well.

It really took too long today, and because I was getting "the works" --highlights, coloring roots, and cut-- I experienced genuine sticker shock when told what I owed: 540 shekels (about US$117 at today's rate). I didn't have enough money with me (and this is one place that doesn't take plastic, which is very unusual) as I thought it would only be around 400, and I was so upset I walked out without giving the shampoo and other assistant any tip. And I argued with my hairdresser about what he was charging me, which included 140 shekels ($30) for the 5-minute trim. This was ironic, since we'd had a discussion while he was wrapping highlighting strands with foils about how they'd just returned from a big hair expo in London and how ridiculous they'd found the outrageous amount of time some of those posers were spending on the smallest elements of a haircut (e.g. an hour on bangs alone) and I had said that my best stylists (including this one) had always been both fast and accurate. Still, fast for a whole haircut usually means 20 minutes. This was explicitly a trim, not a big deal; it took him literally 5 minutes, if that, and then I told him I didn't even need the blow-dry, as I was going to go home and play with it myself. And then he charges me the regular rate for a full haircut.

Anyway, I walked out pretty shocked, and owing him money, and felt I'd been rude to him, plus having stiffed the helpers. I raged about it all the way home and even though I was indignant I had that awful feeling in my gut that screams what a shit I've been, so I had to call and apologize. I blamed being tired and hungry and shocked at the price, and reiterated that I thought he should have compromised a bit, but admitted it really was a good cut that made a big difference (is it his fault he's fast?), so I would concede the point. As soon as I hung up, I felt much better.

I'm always sorry when I argue about prices. It's so not worth it for a few bucks.

Damn, I'm totally going soft. I just don't handle conflict the way I used to.

time well wasted

2005-10-27T13:58:00.000+02:00

Via Romenesko:

Ad Age reports that U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs. According to its analysis, about 35 million workers visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them [an average of 40 minutes per day].

As journo-blogger Romenesko notes, "That seems low."

And if we spend that much time reading blogs, how much more time we must be "wasting" -- [snort] -- in writing them.

Technorati, a blog search engine, now tracks 19.6 million blogs, a number that has doubled about every five months for the past three years. If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009.

Imagine the work that won’t get done then.

catnap

2005-10-24T00:38:00.000+02:00

awol

2005-10-21T23:47:00.000+02:00

I am really having trouble continuing to post to this blog while also maintaining any semblance of a life. And that despite the unusual number of days off we wage slaves have enjoyed this month -- seven so far, and another two this coming week.

Two weeks ago I visited our local 2nd-hand English book store and picked up The Corrections for 10 shekels (just over two bucks!) and Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina for another 10. I was very pleased, and rapidly devoured Emma Bovary over the next few days, including a couple of lunchtimes on the grass, eschewing all other social contact.

Reading fiction is like my addiction to jelly beans, which is probably why I haven't done it much in the past 20 years. When I get into a good book, I don't want to put it down for anything, not work, not sleep, not feeding the kid/husband and certainly not going to the gym. So I've really been neglecting everything lately, not just this blog.

Right after that, I dove into the [strangely familiar] world of the dysfunctional Lambert family that is Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. A couple of years ago, while working at a mega-bookstore where I could read anything I wanted, I'd read about 30 pages of this bestseller after reading about the Oprah kerfuffle (she'd chosen it for her book club, and author Franzen was apparently dismayed at the thought of his high literature being embraced by the hoi polloi and didn't have the good sense to keep his arrogance to himself, resulting in the great-and-powerful O backing off in understandable affront; this is my memory of the story, anyway). I guess I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to get into it at that time.

But this time I was, and it gave me such a falling-through-the-rabbit-hole sort of feeling. At certain angles, when I squinted, I felt that I was reading about my own oddball family, and about myself and what I'm doing in the world. It's a challenging read, but rewarding. As I approached the final pages of this 560-page tome, I dreaded its ending -- I always feel so eager, yet so sad to come to the end of a book-relationship -- and, though I'd felt little conscious emotion throughout the book, upon reading the last line, promptly burst into tears. It clearly hit a very precise point. Literary acupuncture. Well done.

In the midst of all this reading, and coinciding with last week's holiday, I had a three-day migraine. As I've noted before, my hormone level just prior to and during my period is clearly the source of this plague, and I've searched in vain so far for solutions that don't involve the big guns of BigPharma. I've now found a new possibility in 5-HTP, which I read about in the blog of someone who's using it instead of Prozac (it's a good natural anti-depressant, apparently, and who can't use more of that?) but it's not sold here, so I had to order it online from the States and will therefore have to pay a bundle extra in customs duty when it arrives. But if it works, who cares? It's unfortunate that when I'm most sensitive to the migraines is also the time when I'm most susceptible to junk food and sugar cravings, which certainly exacerbate the migraines. I didn't resist at all this time, and the results were like Katrina, Rita and Wilma combined: natural disaster cubed.

There are some things just seem out of my control.

post-days of awe

2005-10-14T08:26:00.000+02:00

Okay. So we're through the dark days when it seems that it's more important than any other time to contemplate your sins. I really don't mean to be disrespectful, but I don't buy this narrow "Today in God" view of spirituality. Making a big to-do about searching your soul between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur is just bogus. I guess from the religion developers' point of view, better 10 days a year than nothing. But how effective can one shot a year be?

Some people just love the rituals and find comfort in them; that's cool. It's all the calendar-focussed commentary that I object to.

So I'm making a new year's resolution to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.

My position is that contemplation of one's sins, heshbon nefesh [taking account of one's soul], is something that is rightly done on a daily basis, not saved for some arbitrary few days once a year. It can be done while driving to work; on the treadmill; preparing food; even during the 2-1/2 minutes it takes to make microwave popcorn. I have no excuse for having no time to do it. If the artificial constraints of religion rub me the wrong way, that doesn't mean there's not a right way for me to do what all religions at their core originally were meant to accomplish: balance and harmony with a higher point of vibration/life/spirit/whatever word one chooses.

That may all sound very self-righteous, but I'm admitting that I'm NOT doing it.

Therefore, I'm going to make an effort to be more conscious of those things that take me off to that nasty place of mine, and face them more honestly, issues such as:

1. my irritation (sometimes bordering on homicidal) with other drivers
2. emotional reactions to button-pushing colleagues
3. ...ummm, other stuff I'm not ready to talk about, but will have to deal with eventually

I can already see this is going to be harder than I thought.

That's why it's good to practice all year.

yom kippur food frenzy

2005-10-12T21:54:00.000+02:00

My Jewish education growing up was so sketchy that I literally was not aware that Jews fast on Yom Kippur. I only found out after nearly a year in Israel, when my first YK rolled around. When it dawned on me that this fasting thing was common knowledge to what seemed like everybody, no matter where they lived, I really wondered how I could have missed something so basic. That ignorance, more than anything, shows how little contact (or interest) I had with Jews in my childhood, making it all the more incomprehensible that I, of all people, ended up living here.

The obsession with food, and the annoyance people expresss regarding the need to fast -- as if anyone is actually forcing them to (the typical Israeli is compelled to go along with the crowd, even if they're completely irreligious otherwise; this year's poll in the Yediot newspaper reported that 70% of Israelis intend to fast, with the average rising to 89% in Jerusalem) -- has always seemed simple-minded if not hypocritical: either you are doing it because you want to, for your own personal reasons, in which case why would you complain? ...or you're in effect loudly acknowledging your need to follow the crowd, against you're will, in which case you're pathetic. This week, after I wished one of my colleagues a pleasant long weekend, saying the wonderful quiet of Yom Kippur made it my favorite holiday, she told me amiably that she always finds this particular day the most annoying, because of the need to fast, but presumably it would irritate her less if she could just spend the day in restful contemplation and not be also required to feed her four children. However, I don't see why people who choose to do it would also expect or wish for it to be easy -- seems to me the point is that it should be somewhat painful. Otherwise, you might as well eat. But so much is made of the one day a year concept, and then the next day everyone snaps back to self-centered normal. The hypocrisy of religion: one of my long-lived pet peeves.

I have fasted in my life, but never on Yom Kippur, davka. And the concept of a "good final signature" in the Book of Life which everyone has been wishing each other for the past week still strikes me as no more rational than spitting when you see a black cat. My very religious colleague (who has a great sense of humor, so we get along very well) has been going off to his usual mid-day prayers and telling me (only half-jokingly, I think) that he'll pray for me too. I receive this most graciously, always glad to have someone putting in a good word for me. While I have the utmost respect for the man, I still look at what he's doing as behavior based in primitive superstition. It's every bit as rational as Catholics taking communion -- which is to say, useful psychological support for anyone who believes in it. I challenge the Jewish theory all the time, and he discusses it with me good-naturedly, quite willing to educate me, but of course we'll always see things from different angles.

I have four days off work because erev-YK, and YK (today and tomorrow) landed very nicely at the end of our work week, so it's a luscious long weekend. So far, I've spent a lot of it in the kitchen, feeding my delighted 13-year-old who's thrilled not to have to defrost herself another soy cutlet for a change. Today I made both chicken soup with kneidlach (matza balls) and chicken shnitzels -- the home-made kind where you pound the breasts with a pointy mallet, then dredge them in egg and bread crumbs before frying them. We're kind of OD'ing on chicken, I guess, but it's all yummy. Still, most of the day I've been doing dishes, cooking, feeding, doing more dishes, then she's hungry again, more cooking, more dishes... when she asked for another dessert I drew the line.

So in typical squarepeg fashion, I do the opposite of what most people do, which is lots of cooking in preparation for every holiday except Yom Kippur. This time, the only aromas wafting through the neighborhood were mine.

Look up contrary. I think you'll find my picture.

generations making peace

2005-10-04T17:50:00.000+03:00

The vet told us to keep them separated for a week and just let them smell each other from different rooms, but after about five days we got impatient and introduced them. Sunny has been sniffing disdainfully and walking away for the most part; Pinky moves into Sunny's space cautiously and mostly gets ignored. I'd say Sunny is either so old he's addled or he's gotta be the most tolerant animal alive.
Sunny the 16-year-old (m) Siamese tolerates Pinky the one-month-old (former) street kitten (f).

having survived september

2005-10-02T18:18:00.000+03:00

It's the New Year in the Hebrew calendar tomorrow, and we'll be experiencing a rare annular eclipse here in this hemisphere, supposedly referred to as a potentially cataclysmic event in Nostradamus's prophecies. We shall see [she intoned ominously].
[Update: the eclipse turned out to be pretty lame in these parts, unlike in Madrid. It got next to no press coverage and passed through completely unnoticed unless, like me, you had a pinhole projecting a circle with a bite out of it onto white paper. Interesting, but not quite riveting.]

September was a VERY LONG month. What with school starting again for my young teen and getting her used to the academic routine (the Ritalin is helping, at least) and the heat really being on at work with too many projects and too few bodies (the pregnant colleague doesn't help either), the past month has only been bearable in that I knew October was coming.

And now it's here.

One day of work today, the next three off, then one more. Next week: three on, then two off. After that, two weeks of one day on, two off, and two on.

Eat yer hearts out, diaspora!

Oh yeah -- Chag Sameach and Shana Tova! [happy holiday & happy new year]

two cats, no waiting

2005-09-27T19:27:00.000+03:00

Okay, my more worldly-wise readers could certainly see this coming ... No, baby cat did NOT go back to the vet at the end of the weekend.

Baby cat, in fact, is now the youngest member of our household and will from now on be known by her nickname, Pinky (officially, ms. squarepeg says, "Lady Pinky the First").

Sunny, the 16-year-old Siamese, is now home but it's hard to tell how well he is. He seems the same as he used to when I thought he wasn't sick. Funny how I never noticed it before: it really seems like he got a whole lot bigger and fatter in 3 days!! Pinky fits in the palm of my hand, while Sunny is as big as a mountain and weighs two tons. Before Pinky came into our lives, Sunny's age, his slowness, his relative apathy had never really registered ... it happened slowly over many years, I suppose, and it was just him. Now the contrast is stunning.

So we almost didn't keep Pinky. Believe me, it was a really close call. I was all set to take her back, and we'd convinced ms. squarepeg too, that this was NOT going to be "the little sister she'd always wanted." She was keeping her promise not to try and keep the kitten past the weekend, and had gone to school believing she wasn't going to see Pinky again, and was being strong about it. That morning, the vet called to say she'd done another blood test on Sunny and his amylase count was down to normal so I could come and pick him up. I said great, and that I was going to be bringing the kitten back. The vet was disappointed, saying she'd been happy they'd found the kitten a home. I said we really did love her, but Sunny's welfare was the priority and it would be hard to keep them apart in our small apartment. I hung up the phone and then started cuddling Pinky again and gave her to Mr. Squarepeg and asked him, "Are you sure you don't want to keep her?" I could see it was going to be hard for him to go back to life without this cuddly cute furball. What a softie that guy is! He looked very doubtful, thinking about the trouble it would be, but then surprised me. "I guess we could keep her in the office [our computer room] with the door closed for a week." Wow. This was big.

Ever since, he's been like the kindergarten teacher/nurse, feeding, wiping up, playing, cleaning up shit and vomit, more feeding, more playing, finding a new box, and on and on. Having a new baby in the house is not a simple matter! Meanwhile, I'm at work and he's got most of the responsibility all day. I'm very proud of my Mr. Squarepeg right now.

cat crisis

2005-09-23T21:03:00.000+03:00

Our 16-year-old Siamese has, not surprisingly, been pretty listless and not at all playful for some time now. Since 16 (and 3 months) is like about 75 for a human according to this cat age calculator, I didn't expect his frisk-factor to be too high. Still, he needed his annual shots, so it seemed like a good time to get him checked out by the vet anyway.

Well, his teeth were pretty disgusting, we were told, and he'd need to be asleep during the cleaning (and fasting for 8 hrs before that), so we made an appointment for the next week. When we brought him back yesterday, the vet did a blood test to make sure he was okay for the general anaesthetic, and found acute pancreatitis with a super-high amylase count -- a count he's only ever seen post-mortem (until now). It seems cats frequently die of pancreatic disease without ever being symptomatic (unlike dogs, who feel enough pain to alert their loving owners) and our dear Sunny may now have one paw in the grave as a result of our neglecting his teeth for too long. Not that a 16-year-old cat can rightly expect all that much more grooming-and-scratching time anyway. But I am kind of counting on him living to 20 (85 in people-time).

It is clear to me that it is not possible to explain to non-pet people the attachment I feel to this animal. I can't explain it to myself, how Sunny the Cat's personality seems so substantial, considering that his verbal communication, while abundant compared to most cats (Siamese are the most vocal -- could it be a higher intelligence?), is limited to purring and meowing. I guess it must be the non-verbal communication ... the way he comes padding along whenever I "call" him [I meaow, as it just seems more respectful to communicate in his language] and the way we just hang together when I'm sprawled on my bed reading or watching tv, or when I'm on the toilet and he rubs his head on my ankles, or the way he laps up the water that's left on the floor of the shower stall after I've showered.

How do you convey to a non-pet person the misery of seeing your sweet furry friend, who's older than your teenager and has survived as long as your marriage, hooked up to an IV in a big cage at the vet's, and the sad emptiness of a home where he's missing? We all miss him, but especially Mr. Squarepeg, who was the one who first brought him home, and has a very mushy soft spot for him.

We went to see him today, my daughter and her best friend and I, and he was silent except for a little mewing after I stuck my head in the cage and hugged him and promised we'd take him home as soon as he was healthy again. In another cage, she discovered a 3-week-old street kitten that the vet had taken in. Her sadness over our ailing pet gave way to a nurturing instinct upon seeing this teeny-tiny motherless creature, and she took her out to play. Soon she was begging me to take the scrawny thing home and of course I said no. She kept asking and I kept saying no, until I suddenly agreed, but only until Sunny comes back, because I don't want him to feel usurped. The vet was delighted to have a foster family for this helpless mite over the weekend and cackled like a drug pusher as I loaded the furball and a bit of special food and a syringe into a box. I think he suspects we won't be bringing the kitten back ... we'll see.

I didn't do it for the kid, or for me. I did it for Mr. Squarepeg, cause I knew he'd take one look and his heart would melt. I was right.

Resist that -- I dare you.

new words ... officially

2005-09-23T19:36:00.000+03:00

Word lovers, rejoice: Merriam-WebsterCollegiate.com has officially sanctified:

brain freeze (noun) 1991 : a sudden shooting pain in the head caused by ingesting very cold food (as ice cream) or drink. Yeah, okay, that's pretty old news ... actually, brain freeze these days is what my daughter calls it when she can't answer questions on a test. And she swears it has nothing to do with not studying.

Other interesting words I'd never heard of, but are cool:

cybrarian (noun) 1992 : a person whose job is to find, collect, and manage information that is available on the World Wide Web
-- hey, sounds like my dream job!

and

retronym (noun) 1980 : a term consisting of a noun and a modifier which specifies the original meaning of the noun ['film camera' as opposed to just 'camera']
-- hmm, having trouble coming up with more examples of this.
"hard copy"? "snail mail"? "landline phone"?

Anyone?? I challenge you!

r&r weekend

2005-09-16T23:06:00.000+03:00

Survived the week. It helped a lot that my boss finally released me from one of the major jobs we've got going right now, the new website, and redirected me to the major documentation project that feels like a huge wall I have to scale before I can rest. Or maybe more like a many-tentacled octopus. (Yesterday somebody sent me a dramatic video clip of an octopus ambushing and devouring a shark. Very tough critters, those octopi. Shocked the hell out of scientists manning the aquarium, who had hoped the octopus's camouflage technique and strength would be enough to keep it safe from the prowling sharks. Oops. Every morning, it was, "Where are all these shark carcasses coming from?")

So this is the weekend I try to relax and recharge. Started very well last night on the way home from work, at the home of an excellent massage therapist. I had a wonderful hour of heaven on his table, despite the fact that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't quite get my shoulders to fully release their tension. It was delicious, but my upper back is aching today.

And this morning, after dropping ms. squarepeg at school at 8am, I went to the gym -- have only managed twice this week; must get to three time to see results. Three is the magic number. Oh yeah, the diet is important too. Okay, it's MORE important, I know, I know. Just polished off some chocolates the kid created at a trip to a chocolate factory a few weeks ago, following a lunch of hamburger and fries. What is WRONG with me?

So after the gym, I met a friend at the beach and we sat around talking for about three hours. There's lots of catching up to do with this friend, who I worked with 20 years ago and have been mostly out of touch with in the intervening years, as he's been living all over the place since then. But he's back now for four years. It's very different having an old friend to talk to ... a very special quality. I have almost nobody else like that in my life, certainly not here in Israel, who knows so much history and sees the evolution, rather than a more superficial snapshot of who I am. Another dimension.

more cat abuse (when will it end?)

2005-09-16T23:02:00.000+03:00

For cat picture-lovers only, others need not click: "random blog" surfing took me to Wordaholism, which I love, where there was a link to silly CleoCat.

[for further research: relation of cat-ownership to alcohol consumption]

bummed, totally utterly

2005-09-13T18:23:00.000+03:00

I am really having a hard time finding the energy or spare moments to write here now. At this moment I'm stealing a few minutes in the office at the end of the day, just before tackling the horrid commute home. My boss has left, my colleagues have left, and finally no one is asking me to do one more thing.

It has been a hellish month since returning from my [best ever] holiday in Prague -- good thing I took it when I did. Little did I know how much I would need the memories of it now. My colleague and I are just one and a half people in terms of time at work (she's only half-time), plus I still know (and care?) so much less than she does, it's ridiculous.

So maybe it's more like one and a quarter.

In any case, this colleague does more in her half-time than I do in full-time, and I've told her for months she's not allowed to have any more babies (she's got 5 kids already, for god's sake) because I'd be up shit's creek if she took maternity leave.

So guess who I just found out is pregnant? Yep, five months already, in fact. Who knew? Two months after I arrived (7 months ago), I'd been eyeing her huge belly and asked if she was pregnant, and she said no, it was just the baby fat from all the other pregnancies, and she was trying to lose it. So since then, I've just assumed that the big belly under her loose clothes was fat. I was pretty shocked to get the news from my boss yesterday, and I've been in a black hole ever since. Today I had the gall to ask her if she had been trying to get pregnant or if it just happened, and she immediately informed me that that was a very rude question. Yeah, I can be self-involved jerk. I'm not sure if everyone would think that was rude, or it's just because she's British, but of course I was embarrassed and apologized. Shit. (Feel free to express an opinion.)

Our boss, lord love her, is a great "manager" but not exactly a person who can do anything besides "manage" -- i.e. nag other people to do things (and protect us from scary monsters). In fact, she's more of a time-waster. Every time she comes to drop herself down in the chair beside me these days, ready to bend my ear about her personal life for half an hour, I suddenly need to pee. I think she's starting to get the message.

I really need some more R&R. I'm holding on for the October holidays, just three weeks away ... not a single full work-week in October! Sweeeeeeeeet.

first blogiversary

2005-09-07T21:58:00.000+03:00

Well, happy blogiversary to me. How fast it passed, the first year of blogging. Who knew what all would emerge when I wrote that first post?

I know I felt like more of an alien then than I do now, so I guess the year has mellowed me some. Maybe it's the paychecks. But full-time work is no picnic and sometimes I really wonder how many more of these agonizing bumper-to-bumper commutes I can take.

I would write more, but it's been nuts lately at work, and just as nuts in the evenings, trying to support my hard-at-it eighth-grader in the few hours left. She's managing well, but it's intense.

Will I make it to the second blogiversary? Only time will tell.

Thanks for being here, y'all. You are such good listeners.

we made it through...

2005-09-01T09:15:00.000+03:00

... and now the next challenge. First day of school and ms. teenage squarepeg begins grade eight.

I remember grade eight. I was insecure and flat-chested and my best friend was a relatively popular girl, a serious but outwardly foxy Ukrainian blonde. Association with her upped my credentials enough to get through the year in one piece. I still remember how we did up our long hair: high ponytail tucked in near the nape and tacked down at the bottom with bobby pins. I was teased for being "flat as a board" and I thought I would never grow breasts. Four years later, my principle tormenter became my boyfriend, hot and heavy throughout my eighteenth year. But in grade eight I didn't know what was to be, and I was miserable.

Ms. squarepeg, on the other hand, is a little cutie who has the advantage of an already acceptably-curvy shape and several very smart girlfriends to bolster her self-esteem. If we can just keep her and her schoolbag organized -- and her mom's hysteria level under control -- I think she'll have a very decent year to remember some day.

i've got soul

2005-08-30T14:11:00.000+03:00

I have added a very cool button to the bottom of my blog, which I discovered on someone else's blog, and you can get one too if you want.

It's a great way to free-float the Web. Look what I found!

I love the Internet.

"can't wait for a book?"

2005-08-30T10:54:00.000+03:00

This gives me tingles.

Definitely better than candy, and almost as wonderful as the Internet.

what you learn from 15 years

2005-08-27T22:37:00.000+03:00

Hard to believe, but the jetlag continues, and so does the secondary jetlag. Young ms. has been back in the time zone five days, but we're both still waking before 6 am, and she's still crashing at midday (with us parents trying everything to keep her awake).

Today, though, she fell asleep in the car on the way back from Tel Aviv (okay, we stopped to pick up sushi, so that didn't help) and when we got home at 8:30 she went straight to bed.

Damn, wouldn't mind THAT being permanent!

So we went to Tel Aviv to welcome the in-laws back from their month of fabulous weather in Germany. They've made it a habit to get away every August, and now end up at the same place near Munich every year, near "the baths" which they visit every other day. They've returned very relaxed, and it's good to see my father-in-law mellowed out.

Yesterday, Mr. & Ms. Squarepeg and I went to my company's annual picnic at a kibbutz pool not far from here. It's always weird parading around in one's bathing attire in front of people one spends most of one's time deliberately covered up in front of. But whatever. I'm getting incrementally less vain as time goes on, so was relatively unconcerned about the mashed-potato thighs and horrid wet-hair-just-out-of-swimming-pool look.

Oh, who am I kidding? At least my usually-glamorous boss looked just as horrid in her ugly two-piece.

The kid had fun with the water activities, and it was a nice outing, but the mr. was determined to leave right after lunch and get back to Saturday soccer matches and like a junkie was going through withdrawal after half a day away from the betting forms. All the way home he was gnashing his teeth and muttering, "I haven't had time to concentrate!"

Listen, we've just marked our 15th anniversary this week (yes, amazing, I know, thank you very much) and the upside of that is that the dark forest with all its nasty creatures looks very familiar now, and not much is worth getting riled up about anymore. (Hey, you take whatever upsides you've got -- they are, by definition, relative.) So even when there's a bad day, a really bad day, you can say, "No worries; been around this sharp turn before and I know it all works out in the end. I'll just go take a little time-out."

When others are cranky, withdrawal works wonders.

loners' manifesto

2005-08-27T21:43:00.000+03:00

I read a great article in Salon by author Anneli Rufus, actually an excerpt from her latest book, The Farewell Chronicles, about the way people really feel when faced with the death of others. She's a hell of a writer. Then I followed a two-year-old link to her previous book, Party of One. I was kind of surprised I hadn't noticed this before, since I've been reading Salon fairly religiously for at least 6 or 7 years. Party of One speaks so directly to me and it's wonderful to discover her. She writes of the loner:

We do not require company. The opposite: in varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over. Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course the rest of the world doesn't understand.

Except in my case, it's me who has been having trouble understanding. Well, accepting, actually. I've been wondering how I can be an emotionally healthy person without a requisite number of friends. Is there something wrong with me? The thing is, I really just prefer most of the time to be alone.

Someone says to you, "Let's have lunch." You clench. Your sinews leap within you, angling for escape. What others thrive on, what they take for granted, the contact and confraternity and sharing that gives them strength leaves us empty. After what others would call a fun day out together, we feel as if we have been at the Red Cross, donating blood.

Oh my God, that is so true! I love her! Rufus has turned the loner state into a kind of cause celebre, a lobby even. On her website, she has a section called "Loners in the News," where she quotes newspaper reports that refer to all kinds of criminals as loners, as if to say it is the loner aspect that proves guilt. She's fighting the pejorative use of "the l-word" with the passion of an ADLer battling antisemitism.

As she says, the Internet is manna from heaven for the loner:

The Internet is, for loners, an absolute and total miracle. It is, for us, the best invention of the last millennium. It educates. It entertains. It
transforms. It facilitates a kind of dialogue in which we need not be seen, so it suits us perfectly. It validates. It makes being alone seem normal. It makes being alone fun for everyone.

A way to connect without leaving the house, without, in fact really connecting. Virtual is truly the loner's dream-come-true.

white house: killer of truth

2005-08-27T09:18:00.000+03:00

Whoa, brava Cintra! You've outdone yourself. Awesome.

Cintra Wilson has published a breathtaking and devastating opus on Salon: I invaded the white house press corps.

Dirty business, but someone's gotta do it.

Usually Salon publishes pieces this long in two parts; perhaps they had reason to believe part two might get squashed once the VRWC* saw part one.

Wilson describes the main players in the press briefing room for us, and gives anthropological/sociological analyses of each of their secondary roles. She brings the atmosphere to life, with its baiting, its frustration, its breakdowns, and its ultimate realization that the job of the White House spokesman is to Reveal Nothing. Ever. And how robotically, diabolically good he is at it.

Fans (mourners) of "Six Feet Under" will especially love this:

Scott McClellan is the Undertaker of Information.
With the gentle sterility of a mortician, McClellan puts a dark suit on every day and tells us, in a soothing voice, how comfortable our beloved information will be now that it is dead and resting in an attractive coffin. The press -- outraged family members of the strangled Truth -- wail, "But Scott, it wasn't dead before you guys got your hands on it!" And the Undertaker, unruffled, sympathetic and appropriately somber, politely informs you that it is part of an ongoing investigation, and he
believes he has already told you what the president's comments were on that.
After a while, it is sickeningly passive-aggressive.
But the bottom line is, Scott is telling the truth: The truth is dead. And you're never going to see it again. It's in heaven now, with Chandra Levy and JonBenet Ramsey and Nicole Brown Simpson. He understands your grief, but getting angry won't bring it back.

I guess all of us expecting journalists to rally and storm the barricades are just plain naive. It may indeed be their job to ask the hard questions and demand answers, but it's very obviously a waste of time asking them in the White House press briefing room. So perhaps we might ask why these very senior journalists are going there day after day? Are they just idiots? Are their managing editors idiots?

What if they just didn't show up? Who would Scott blather to?

What if, instead of showing up and wasting everybody's time with this horrendous mind-fucking, they all just wrote editorials/opinion columns about what's REALLY going on? And what if they didn't stop until something more earth-shaking than the announcement of a new Supreme Court justice happened?

*vast right-wing conspiracy

secondary jetlag

2005-08-23T10:55:00.000+03:00

aaargh. I'm suffering from a heretofore-undocumented malady that must logically be termed "secondary jetlag" or perhaps "passive jetlag." (By the way, both terms get 0 hits in Google -- there's a name for two-word search terms that get no hits, but I can't remember what it is ... sproogle or something? Anyone?) Secondary or passive jetlag is what you get when you haven't left the time zone, but someone living with you has just returned with jetlag severe enough to disturb YOUR sleep. I'll let you guess who that is.

However, there's disturb and there's disturb. Little ms. teenage squarepeg slept from 1 am (long after I'd collapsed following over an hour's wait for her to emerge at the airport, and then another couple of hours unpacking her suitcases -- no, I wasn't about to endure the chaos of waiting for her to do it herself) to 5 am, woke up starving and fed herself 2 bowls of cereal, succeeding in being very quiet. After that one-hour grace period, and the emergence of daybreak, she was good and ready to wake me with kisses and a declaration of, "I've been up since 5 and I've had 2 bowls of cereal, but I'm still hungry! I missed you! Feed me!"

Now how can a person be angry with that? Even though I was in a deep sleep and looking forward to at least another hour of it.

It's not just the secondary jetlag. The kid is a whirlwind that never stops talking or having some kind of self-inflicted computer problem that needs my immediate attention. And demanding that I play with her immediately on one of her two new Scrabble games. Or watch her pirated OC season 2 dvds. Or feed her again.

I really don't feel like working.

airport day

2005-08-22T10:50:00.000+03:00

Baby comes home today. I've worked the equivalent of another whole day in the past week, so I can afford to leave at 3 for the airport without it costing me valuable hours. But the pressure at work is gruesome right now; I have 280 pages of new website to produce and my only writing colleague is on holiday this week, and our graphics colleague has his wife in the hospital. And my usually wonderful boss is having trouble maintaining her usual buffer zone between me and the unreasonable CTO (who's in charge of the website) above her. I'm feeling a tad overwhelmed.

So I'm blogging! :))

The kid sounds a bit bummed about returning to the homeland after her wonderful month of being completely spoiled by family in Canada, but as I pointed out: Which would you prefer, to have such a good time that you don't want to come back, or such a lousy time that you can't wait to come back? She agreed her experience was preferable. But I am expecting some sullen teenage attitude along with the hugs and kisses. After all, she turned the big THIR-TEEN two days ago.

As Kramer would say, "Giddyup!"

Arik moves further left

2005-08-19T23:31:00.000+03:00

Readers of this blog know better than to count on me for Israeli political commentary. But we're really making history over here these days, and how can I not comment? I can't say I feel involved, exactly, though I am whether I feel it or not. After all, the big events of the day are transpiring far away, and all I can do is read about it (or watch it) on the news. The closest it came for me personally was my colleague, a religious man, a grandfather of five, who lives in a settlement not being evacuated (at this time, anyway). He agonized all week about how to participate/help in the fight against the evacuators, and eventually took a day off to drive down south. I don't even know what happened, because he refused to talk about it when he returned. I imagine it was an extremely painful day for him, and that he probably felt quite helpless in the face of what was happening. At least he can say he went to show solidarity with his brethren.

But I I feel very proud of Arik Sharon this week, and extremely pleased finally by his immense strength. This article summarizing a speech he gave this week gives you an idea of his new "leftist" perspective and what may be coming down the pike in the foreseeable future.

It's good to feel optimistic, and proud of our prime minister, for the first time in a decade.

smoking for bad guys

2005-08-19T12:17:00.000+03:00

[Happy birthday, Mom!]

I thought this was an interesting finding. The study by lung specialists in New Jersey found that movies overwhelmingly tend to portray baddies as smokers or, conversely, smokers as baddies.

So the annual millions [I'm just guessing] spent on making smoking glamorous to up-and-coming potential tobacco consumers (i.e. teens) are finally being countered by pop culture -- that is, as long as the baddies aren't being played by their favorite movie stars.

If the bad guy (or the actor) is disliked by the audience, his/her smoking would tend to be associated with a negative feeling. On the other hand, it could backfire.

Said the chief researcher, "it might be cool to be bad."

Oh yeah, we forgot about that ... damn, we're getting old.

"disengagement" from the internet

2005-08-17T11:34:00.000+03:00

Finally went home earlier last night, 8pm. I was supposed to go to the gym but I blew that off so I could have some quiet internet time at home (Mr. S was out for a couple of hours and I love having the quiet apt to myself). I promised myself I'd go tomorrow (but now that's today).

And then there was no !!)(&^$$#$%^%R*&^* internet connection! So instead of a nice, relaxing evening, I spent the next hour and a half on the phone with our ISP rep and then the phone co. rep trying to get the problem fixed. "Nope, we're fine here; it must be a Bezek [phone co.] issue; I'll connect you to them." "Nope, it's not us; your phone connection's perfect." "No, ma'am, it's really not us; I'll re-connect you to the phone co. and this time I'll stay on the line." "Ohhh yeah, there does seem to be a problem with your phone line, actually. Let's see what we can do."

THEY, however, didn't do anything. But I was instructed, among other tasks, to dig thru the jungle of tied-up and bundled dusty wires BEHIND the furniture, in 90 deg. weather, remove my modem cable and find another one like it on one of my phones to see if the problem was a faulty cable. It wasn't. They promised to send a technician to check our phone lines sometime today. And we were still "disengaged" this morning.

To mention that I was not happy is, shall we say, an understatement. Fury covers it better. Yeah, just like an addict. An especially spoiled one, actually.

An internet addict without a connection is too much like an asthmatic without a puffer. It's not really like a drug addiction, though, because you can't quit, any more than you can quit eating in order to lose weight. The big I is an inextricable part of our lives now; even 12 hours without it initiates severe withdrawal. For me, at least. (You may be worse.)

I've just heard from Mr. Squarepeg that the phone (ADSL) technician finally called and informed him that apparently there was a problem with some card, which they've now replaced, in our area's central hub [merkazia]. So, [breathing heavy sigh of relief] we are once again ... connected at home.

Funny, though, I was struck when reading this article (about how Arik Sharon, the former builder of settlements, morphed into their destroyer), how the Hebrew word for "disengagement" -- coined for PR purposes -- is "hitnatkut," whose primary meaning is "disconnection."

So, as a result of the relative poverty of Hebrew, I do feel a certain solidarity with today's historic events. Disengagement sucks.

working overtime

2005-08-15T23:02:00.000+03:00

We're in the home stretch here, now. Little Ms. returns in 6 days. It's been very quiet around here ... damn, we're spoiled!

So, in anticipation, I've been working a few extra hours this week in order to build up credit and be able to work a bit less next week. In any case, I have an unusually large workload this month. Tonight, I stayed until 9:15 pm, a new record for me, just working on uploading files to our new website. I must admit I was in a very zen flow and didn't want to stop, knowing that to break my stride would mean it would take me twice as long to do the same thing tomorrow. It takes me a very long time to get my engine revving ... something about my brain's hard drive re-booting overnight. The weekend re-boot is even worse, and after my 6-day holiday -- fugeddaboudit!! I actually had a manager come to work with me on something I had half-finished and put on my task list, and when he came I couldn't for the life of me remember what or where that document was, or what I had to do with it. Thank god another colleague (who usually gives me nothing but headaches) came through this time. My filing system looked so logical before I went tripping...

The evening's in the office can be very nice, once the cleaning staff finishes puttering around with their trash-emptying, desk-dusting, and noisy vacuuming. No phones, no radios, no boss calling for help ... sweeeet.

And I'm ahead by 5 hours already, which earns me a free trip to the airport next Monday afternoon. Pass Go and collect one freshly-minted teenager.

Bibi the Little Prince skips town

2005-08-13T13:05:00.000+03:00

Excellent article by Yoel Marcus in Haaretz from yesterday, for anyone looking for an explanation of why the ego-inflated [ex-]Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ("Bibi" to Israelis) has suddenly chosen this week to make his big trumpeted jump from the government, abandoning all pretense of principles and integrity. In two words: unscrupulous cowardice.

And not in a good way.

last bits of prague

2005-08-11T21:41:00.000+03:00

View just beneath the Charles Bridge

Yeah, re-entry sucks, but I had only two days of work this week, mostly spent cruising while happily giving out chocolates (a traditon in Israeli offices when one returns from a holiday outside of the country) and making people smile, and now it's the weekend!!

As the memories already begin to fade, a few remnants of a great getaway, and then I promise to let it rest:

getting burned by a taxi driver the first night. i didn't have a map yet and couldn't figure out where we were, but I knew we were just 5 min. walk from our hotel, if we could only find it. got in a cab with a driver who seemed to know no english , but knew immediately where our hotel was. the meter ran the crowns up quickly as he flew up and down one-way streets. the fare ended up being 280K, about $10, probably five times what it should have been. not a really terrible sting ... except to the ego. after that, our biggest cab ride was 100K, which we agreed on in advance, for what would have been at least a half-hour walk. we'd been warned never to get in a cab without agreeing on the fare in advance, but we got burned anyway, thinking that the cabbie wouldn't understand us, and just thankful he knew where we needed to get to.
my aching legs, especially one spot that i'd never noticed before, on the outside of my leg just below my knee. it was killing me for 2 days, and then miraculously disappeared as if i'd whipped it into shape. walking in prague was much more exhausting than I'd expected, maybe because of the cobblestone streets and sidewalks, which are uneven, like textured mosaics, and after a while tend to make walking hard work, and make flat, boring pavement look really attractive.
pashminas: beautiful scarves of 90% cashmere and 10% silk. they're sold all over the city, in a variety of solid or mixed colors, and I bought one of each. man, that's soft. after i bought the first one, i never went out without it, as the weather could go from hot to cool at any moment, depending on the clouds, and it was lovely to have that fluffy softness around my neck. the price is not fixed, by the way; I saw the same item range from 249K to 580K (around $10-23), depending on where it was sold.
tourists on the Charles Bridge, madly pushing each other to touch the famous statue of Prague's Saint John of Bohemia with his five-star halo; the legend is that anyone who touches it will have good luck and return to Prague; I think they just wanted to say they'd touched the famous statue, but they were as rude as bloody -- well, perhaps that's best left unsaid. but there's another interesting factoid I picked up along the way: the origin of Bohemia was here in the Czech Republic, which is divided into Bohemia, Moravia and (in case you didn't know -- I didn't! -- it hasn't been called "Czechoslovakia" since Slovakia became a separate country -- capital, Bratislava -- in 1993)
our hotel, Novotel City -- aptly described as "clinical" in one of the city guides I picked up that summarized the robotic front desk staff very well. the place was fine, but had no soul. for sleeping, though, it couldn't be faulted: great mattress, well-controlled room temperature, and complete silence.
and once again, the drivers. every time I get on the highway, to and from work, I get incensed at how badly we drive in this country; it makes commuting so much more difficult when people hog the left lane (ALL the time) or weave around the lanes without signaling as if they were alone on the road, or take absolutely every opportunity to cut in front of you if there's so much as half a carlength of space between you and the car in front. before prague, for some reason, I'd almost become immune to it. now the comparison is painful.

However, it is our country, for better or worse.

Terezin (Theresienstadt) Cemetery ... hundreds buried here died AFTER liberation of the camp. They never left, as a result of the typhoid epidemic that was raging when the camp was liberated.

Many other graves are unmarked, containing bodies found in a mass grave.

prague pics & impressions

2005-08-09T23:59:00.000+03:00

We're home following a brief but cramped overnight flight. It was only 3 hrs and 20 min. but that's a very long time when you're supposed to be in bed. I did manage to doze, but both my back and neck were killing me by the time we arrived. We took a taxi from the airport -- a sweet and speedy trip at 6am -- and went to bed until noon.

Then we went to Tel Aviv to pick up our cat. I was so worried about how he'd be feeling after about six days alone in a strange apartment. He was hiding and wouldn't come out, but I soon found him and devoured him with affection and he was eventually back to his old purring self.

It's not really possible to take bad pictures in Prague. The place is a no-brainer for amateur photographers. I will publish samples (taken with my new 4MP Nikon Coolpix 4600 -- thank you, duty-free!) over the next few days.

View from Prague Castle

View of the Charles Bridge (from another bridge)

Some impressions of our getaway this past week:

drivers
They're nothing like Israeli drivers -- Czechs drive like they've trained their whole lives for the indy 500: fast, on narrow roads or wide, single lane around bends, they don't care. In contrast, Israelis speed recklessly, not in the deliberate, controlled manner of the Czech Rebublic. Because, although they routinely hit 130kph, they are skilled (no right turns from left lanes), respectful to other drivers (using the left lane only for passing), and courteous to pedestrians (stopping on a dime, whether it's a crosswalk or not -- I only heard a driver honk at a jaywalker once).

restaurants
By day 3 it was definitely starting to become a joke with us: we were having a fight with restaurant personnel at nearly every meal. The very first night we arrived, we chose a cute restaurant near the old bridge and got a waitress who was very sweet but didn't know much English. When asked if the seafood came with the shells (Mr. Squarepeg will have nothing to do with de-boning or de-shelling), she assured us that it did not. Turns out she didn' t have a clue what we were talking about. After waiting 45 min. for the meal, we had to send it back. So Mr. S. ordered "4-cheese" pasta, but what he ended up with an hour and a half later was just bad, expensive kraft dinner. We laughed about it, until the waitress came over crying and saying they'd fired her over the incident. Apparently she'd made a lot of mistakes already in her first week. (Turned out later that they were just blowing off steam and didn't actually fire her yet, but we felt so sorry for her that we gave her a huge tip.) That was by far the worst -- and priciest -- meal we had in Prague. The next day, at a nice cafe in the Prague Castle neighborhood, we ordered a capuccino after lunch, and then changed it to an espresso. The waiter, who had been told about the change 15 min. earlier, came out with the capuccino anyway, insisting that we ordered it and had to take it. In this case, the issue was clearly insanity, so we demanded to speak to the manager. The waiter went to talk to him and was obviously told to get over himself, because he simply erased the coffee from the bill and haughtily informed us that the manager was very busy. There was no tip. The next day, we had dinner at a place with live rock n roll music. I ordered only soup and mr. S., much hungrier, ordered a hamburger. Until I insisted, the waiter refused to bring mr. S's hamburger before he'd collected my empty soup dish. And even in the hotel dining room, they charged us 70 crowns for a capuccino one morning, and 100 crowns the next day. An error, so sorry. On the fourth day, at a "Texas-style" hamburger and steak place, we'd already learned to sidestep fights, but I couldn't help but comment to the waiter who brought us a basket of bread and a little dish of cold butter (with bits of pimento and other strange condiments mixed in), that he'd neglected to include plates and cutlery, specifically a butter knife. He then brought the plates, along with steak knives. Have you ever tried to butter bread with a thin-bladed, pointy steak knife? He informed us that that was the only kind of knives they had. Okaaaay. Ironically, the best service we got in Prague was at TGI Friday's -- now that waiter knew the meaning of good service, and we left there extremely happy. And then there was Don Giovanni -- a great Italian place in a small lane. And on our last night, we discovered Bandito's -- great Mexican right across the street from our hotel.

Hard to believe I never needed the AlkaSeltzer!

More later; I have to get up for work tomorrow!

Souvenirs in the Jewish Quarter (couldn't decide what to buy, so just took a picture of everything!)

... a little rain must fall

2005-08-08T16:53:00.000+03:00

a little annozing, this cyech internet cafe kezboard ... the y and z are transposed for some reason, the numbers must all be hit with shift plus number, I can§t find the apostrophe, hzphen or dash, and forget about the semi=colon or exclamation mark. oh well...

this is our last day. we fly out on the redeye just after midnite and arrive in tel aviv very early tues morning. this morning we took a tour of Prague´s Jewish Quarter and got our fill of more pogrom-filled history. it´s shocking, really, to walk in the cobble-stoned streets of the ghetto and imagine what went on here. And yesterday we took a side-trip to Terezin (what I´d fomerly heard of as Theresienstadt). It´s just a 50-min. drive from here, and was a pretty nauseating place to visit. I was unprepared, I guess, for how sickening history can be when it´s off the page and just a little more in your face. It´s too much to take in, how do we process this horror?

I have learned an immense amount of history in the past 5 days, and it has been fascinating. Prague is a very enriching vacation, in this way, as there is so much education and enjoyment combined. I have adored walking through the streets in this gorgeous weather and having an adventure with my husband that we´ve never had the opportunity for in our marriage. Although we did finally get hit with a bit of precipitation today, finally.

A very fitting way to celebrate this month our 15th, and best, anniversary.

honeymoon in prague

2005-08-06T22:17:00.000+03:00

The weather continues to be perfect, a vacation in itself from Israel. The cool air reminds me of Toronto in September. Today Mr. Squarepeg´s parents came and joined us, on a little bus trip from where they´re staying in Munchen. What a fiasco that turned into. They left their group to come and meet us for an hour, meanwhile unsure of where they were supposed to meet up with them again. So instead of having a nice visit, we spent 2 hours with my mother in law hysterical over the meeting place. It ended with her blessing me profusely for being such a genius. I knew exactly how she felt, because not long ago I felt like an idiot when my daughter solved a problem that had me hysterical. Thank god for the younger generation.

holy roman empire, batman!

2005-08-05T15:56:00.000+03:00

"The holy roman empire is neither holy nor roman nor an empire." This was my nightmare sentence from a history book of long, long ago. What grade I was in I can no longer remember, but I do remember that that sentence numbed my mind to the extent that I just couldn't get past it to the next paragraph. It has haunted me ever since.

Along with technology, I have always considered awareness of history to be on a need-to-know basis. Many is the time I have dismayed my parents with my casual ignorance of famous names -- Juan de Whatever is how I relate to them. It's all just trivia and I could care less.

But when I'm in the place where it all happened, that's another story. I want to get a general idea of what really happened here, because being here makes it real.

So here I am, in the center of what was once the Holy Roman Empire, and for the first time I have actually absorbed some history that your average college graduate probably took in a long time ago. FYI, the "Roman" in there refers to Roman Catholic, (which is why it wasn't exactly Roman), and the Empire ... well, I still can't tell you why it wasn't an empire. Nor can I tell you much about the Habsburgs, King Charles IV, Duke Wenceslaus or the connection of all these with Vienna, though I now know that they're intimately related. This, I consider, progress for one so historically-challenged.

But I can tell you about Thomas Masaryk, the much-loved spiritual father of Czech democracy, the country's first president from the end of the first World War, 1918, and for the next 16 years. There's an important little square in Tel Aviv named after him, and I wanted to know to know why. What was the connection with the Jews? A guide took us on a 2-hour tour of Prague Castle, and I asked her about this, but got nothing substantial. It appears to me that he was just appreciated and loved by so many for his integrity, which included years in exile until the communists could be routed, that Jews from his part of the world wanted to commemorate him wherever they ended up. Maybe there are more specifics, but I'll find out later, I suppose.

Anyway, Prague is luscious. Prague has cool breezes and the Vltava river running through it and HUGE old buildings with mammoth spires everywhere. The weather so far has been perfect, if changeable. Cool, then sunny, most of the time partly cloudy. But rain is forecast for the rest of our visit. That'll be okay; I think we're pretty tired of walking anyway.

Prague, sadly, has no bargains, bummer for the shopping addict. Nothing is cheap, nothing is even cheapER than home. I'll buy a couple of tchotchke mementos anyway, some of them are quite cute.

i should be packing

2005-08-03T22:46:00.000+03:00

I hate packing. Packing inspires anxiety in a control freak. My just-in-case medicine bag that takes up a quarter of the suitcase testifies to this phenomenon.

Gotta have headache pills. And bandaids. And cold sore medication. And conjunctivitis ointment (once got pink eye during a flight and was so pissed not to have ointment handy). And alka-seltzer (OH yeah, you know I'm gonna eat the whole thing). And my trusty echinacea-golden seal drops. All of these just-in-case. And naturally my period's due so that ups the ante some.

And trying to think about the weather, which will certainly not be all-hot-all-the-time, like we dress for here, from June through October. Layers, pack layers. And an umbrella; it's been raining in Prague every day (not that there's anything wrong with that). And then there's the shoe issue. I'll probably wear my running shoes full-time, as nothing else will be comfortable.

Mr. Squarepeg has taken our cat to my empty mother-in-law's apt. in Tel Aviv, where their neighbor will look in on him (and sit with him daily, I hope). It does pain me to abandon him this way, but can I really justify living my life around the needs of a cat? I love him, but I think not. That would be the kid's domain.

Well, must get back to the smelly suitcase. Thanks for the good wishes. And yes, I WILL be paying attention to the emergency instructions. Although they'll probably be in Czech.

work, work, work

2005-08-02T23:14:00.000+03:00

I'm getting massive amounts of work projects piled on me suddenly. In the past seven months, I've hardly ever been seriously busy for more than the odd day. Now, though, it would really be nice to have more than 1-1/2 writers on the payroll.

And wouldn't you know this has happened just when I've planned a holiday. On Thursday, Mr. Squarepeg and I are taking our very first holiday all alone, ever. Having the sprog visiting family in Canada for a month has made this possible. We'll be in Prague for 4 days (a destination Ms. Squarepeg would never countenance), so I'll be absent from this screen unless I get into an Internet cafe (good chance of that, despite the city's famous architecture -- I'm an addict, remember).

Funny, I feel no guilt whatsoever.

apocryphal, perhaps ...

2005-08-02T09:57:00.000+03:00

My boss [here in this telecom-related hi-tech company] emailed me this story this morning, entitled "Telecom History," and introduced it with the words, "true story." You be the judge:

After digging to a depth of 100 meters last year, Russian
scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years,
and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a
telephone network one thousand years ago.

Not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, American
scientists dug 200 meters and headlines in the US papers read:
"US scientists have found traces of 2000 year old optical
fibers, and have concluded that their ancestors already had
advanced high-tech digital telephone 1000 years earlier than
the Russians."

One week later, the Israeli newspapers reported the following:
"After digging as deep as 5000 meters, Israeli scientists have
found absolutely nothing. They have concluded that 5000 years
ago, their ancestors were already using wireless technology.

cautious optimism

2005-07-31T11:34:00.000+03:00

"The country is better off because we have stopped lying. We are learning, slowly, to tell one another the painful truths."

Yair Lapid -- actor, talk-show host, columnist-intellectual -- last week published this article that pretty much sums up my cautiously optimistic view of The Situation.

The thing that terrifies me most about the current climate is my fear for our democracy, represented by the Knesset and symbolized by the Prime Minister himself. When Rabin was killed, democracy got a critical kick to the gut, and I felt that pain. We all have, for the past decade. In this climate, there is a very real fear that that could happen again and, while Israel would undoubtedly survive it, recovery would take a very very long time.

I like to think that our democracy is getting stronger (while that of the U.S. appears to be weakening dangerously) and Yair has articulated that perspective well.

black woman's perspective

2005-07-31T10:02:00.000+03:00

I started reading Debra Dickerson's razor-sharp take on "Wedding Crashers" (which I haven't seen yet, but being hot for both Wilson and Vaughn, I can't wait) because it looked like it offered an interesting perspective. She wanted to know why the studs crashed the weddings of every culture but hers, black. My first reaction was, "Maybe it was obvious their lily-white faces would be harder to get away with at a black wedding." But, on second thought, it's not cinema verite --that could have been very funny. Dickerson's objection goes so much deeper.

Dickerson talks about a terribly painful subject for black women that I can only relate to from the perspective of ageism, one that she tackles with such balls it's breathtaking.

It doesn't matter if it has nothing to do, specifically, with your particular circumstances. It's the human condition. Do read it.

just an orange napkin

2005-07-30T22:27:00.000+03:00

Mr. Squarepeg and I were at a lovely, breezy Tel Aviv restaurant on Friday afternoon before saying good-bye to my in-laws for a month (they're off on their annual R&R in the environs of Munchen. With the heat hitting 40 deg. C these days, escape is almost mandatory).

"Knafeh" specializes in a cheese-filled and syrup- and pistachio-covered Arab pastry of the same name (also known as "kadaiffeh", I believe). Also offered for you non-kosher and non-vegetarian types, a delicious hummus-with-ground lamb. It was mouth-watering.

The pretty paper napkins on the table were orange. It's a sign of how successful the orange campaign of the anti-pullout movement has become, that even this napkin needed to proclaim its innocence. Stamped on it, in Hebrew, was "I'm not political; I'm just an orange napkin."

parents' month off

2005-07-29T14:07:00.000+03:00

And the bliss continues ...

Bliss, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. For me, it's:

being able to think, in peace, for more than two minutes at a time -- a train of thought, as it were, that does not get derailed at every crossing
gathering all the old clothes, school bags, and other stuff I've been hanging on to for the past year until I could get around to loading it in the car and taking it to the local charity
cleaning out and reorganizing all the junk drawers in the house -- there are 16 of them! -- some of which have not been given the time of day since long before we moved to this apartment five years ago. Each of these drawers has a mess of assorted items (paper clips, envelopes, tax returns from 1994, a little baggie of hair from my daughter's first haircut), all my day planners from about 1984, etc.
having a conversation with Mr. Squarepeg that proceeds from the beginning to the middle and then concludes with a sense of mind-settling completion, not having been stopped several times en route by the chatter brilliant statements or queries of a third party
getting my roots done without feeling like the two hours at the hair salon is an egregious theft of my precious, limited playtime
reading Harry Potter whenever I feel like it, including while getting my roots painted
not asking "what do you want for lunch/dinner?" 20 times a day, while either having all menu suggestions greeted with "No!" or being ignored until 11pm when I've already collapsed on my bed
having the computer to myself, free of the msn-obsessed being that usually occupies it while endlessly downloading music and any old spyware that grabs her interest
leaving the house whenever I want, coming home whenever I want, guilt-free
blogging uninterrupted
the delicious feeling of missing someone, and looking forward to their return

And that's just the first week!

In Memory of Evelyn

2005-07-26T21:11:00.000+03:00

A very classy lady, and not insignificant part of my family history, who has gone this week to what we can only hope is a better place, leaving behind some painfully bereft family and other admirers.

Knock 'em dead in the next world, Evy!

wheels up

2005-07-25T20:11:00.000+03:00

There she goes, off into the wild blue yonder. And just like that, I've scored a month of childlessness.

No, that was not "childishness" -- I said "childLESSness".

I plan to be very grownup about this. But it's very weird and probably won't sink in until sometime next weekend. That's when my work week will finish and I won't be dragging my tired butt home feeling the guilt of a mother who has very little left for her extremely talkative and attention-needing daughter, desiring only to kick back and talk to no one for two days.

At thirteen (next month), she won't be begging me to watch TV, play Scrabble, or observe her magnificent computer slideshow creations all that much longer. Okay, maybe the computer creations will go on for a few more years.

And she's just started her own blog, so I'm her primary audience for that too. Well, at least as long as she's away from home for the next month. So far, she's been demanding that I look over her draft before she hits the Publish button. That can't last long.

A month. Well, barely four weeks really. 28 days to have a chance to miss each other. She won't have me rearranging her hair against her will, demanding that she tidy her room, or begging her with exasperation to "Stop talking already!!!" And I won't have to deal with her chocolate addiction or hear her calling me "Stinky" and declaring, "You're so MEAN!" No doubt the reunion next month will be sweet.

Anyway, today was our first trip to the brand spanking new Ben Gurion airport, and it was strangely reminiscent of Toronto's new airport. Particularly the big ramp leading from the parking area to the terminal. Nice change! Just follow the signs to the "speed ramp to Terminal" ... okay, so the "speed ramp" wasn't working. But no matter, it wasn't one of those miles-long walks, just a quickie across the bridge.

We arrived three hours ahead of the departure time, so we weren't under any pressure. And we had been told what counter number we should check in at, so found the area quickly. We had a long line ahead of us for the pre-check-in passport-security check, but I've seen much worse. The young 20-something security employee addressed all his questions to the young lady who had been well-briefed to leave out all the wise-cracks and just tell him we packed this morning. She was on good behavior for those 3 minutes. Then we went to an ultra-short line for Unaccompanied Minors, paid fifty bucks to have a flight attendant keep an eye on her in transit, and completed the check-in procedure. Finally, we headed around the corner to the waiting hall, the "sky lounge" with wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the airfield. Impressive. Tidy. Orderly. A McDonald's, a coffee-sandwich-salad bar, a juice-shake bar, and a "taste of Israel" fast-food place. And a long bank of mall-type shops with a nice selection of whatever you might need.

And smokers! Very disappointing. I saw not a single No Smoking sign, but after looking around, I did see a sign indicating that along one side was the designated (not partitioned) smoking area. Which of course several smokers ignored, continuing to pollute the air wherever they pleased. Two steps forward, one step back.

Something I've never seen in an airport before: Performers. A couple of clowns dressed as janitors goofing around with pail, mop and broom. And an astoundingly athletic dance duo performing to a wonderfully futuristic, spacey soundtrack, an incredible gymnastic ten-minute piece that had me breathless with fear of someone falling and breaking their neck. At one point, the tiny, lithe woman was balanced perpendicularly on her muscular male partner: he standing with his head forward so that there was just the curve of his neck and shoulders to balance on, she upside down, feet straight up in the air, balancing only the back curve of her neck on the back curve of his, hands straight out in the air. I wanted very badly to take a picture of this incrdible feat, but was terrified that the flash would cause them to lose it; I waited until they were out of danger, in my perception. Here's a sample:

Who ARE these people? Anybody know? There was no announcement and no indication of any kind. I'd love to see them again. The moment they finished, they donned jackets and sped off into the main check-in hall, giving nary a clue of their identity.

the invisible blogger

2005-07-24T10:23:00.000+03:00

Like Noorster (and probably every other blogger), I metablog -- her great word for blogging in your head. Not that metablogging is much use to my handful of faithful readers who have found me in absentia for the past two weeks. I apologize.

Where have I been and why haven't I been writing it down? I must try to spare you my usual litany of up-early-aggravating-drive-to-work, etc. etc. because if you're here now you've heard it all before and are hoping I'll say something different for a change, but really I don't have that much of a life; this really is my boring life.

How boring? I'm spending spare minutes when not at work or playing Scrabble with my nearly 13-yr-old daughter reading the last Harry Potter. Not the new one -- the LAST one, book 5, the Order of the Phoenix. By the time it came out two years ago I had gotten bored with him (sorry, the TriWizard Tournament just didn't do it for me) and just wasn't in the mood to read any more. It's been sitting on my shelf ever since (along with who-cares-how-many-books-I-own). But now with all the hype over book 6, I found I was missing dear Harry and started in again. As usual, I hate putting it down but have only had time to get through about a third so far. If you really want to know, you book-meme-cultists, magical type plots have fascinated me since childhood, and that's the sort of stuff I've always gobbled with relish. As with so many with a tendency toward being a loner, books like these were my best friends. Harry Potter takes me back to those satisfying times of whole weekends immersed in the latest find from the library.

Not much has changed, but I hardly read fiction anymore. If I do, it's usually something like the Da Vinci Code, or The Red Tent, or Bridget Jones' Diary, that absolutely everybody has already read before me and one can't help feeling one is missing out on a cultural touchstone if one doesn't read it.

For at least the past 20 years, I've tended toward philosophical-psychological stuff. The problem with this stuff is that, while absolutely fascinating, it's so heavy that I can't usually read more than a couple of pages before I fall asleep (the time I usually manage to read). For much of the past year, I've been dipping into Ernest Becker's "Escape from Evil" and "Denial of Death", both amazing works. If I try to read earlier, I get interrupted by some family activity anyway. So I have a permanent pile of extremely heavy reading material on my bedside table, which is gazed at lovingly and will Definitely Get Read Someday. Unfortunately, I have trouble allowing myself to read lighter stuff while these other jewels await me. Tis a conundrum, a little bit of a painful one, as are all my issues involving friends. Enough said about books for the moment.

I could tell you what's happening at work. But I'll leave that for another time, since I'm not there today and won't be tomorrow either. The special occasion: Little Ms. Squarepeg is heading off on a 4-week adventure to Canada tomorrow afternoon, all alone. She'll be met by my/her Toronto family and Victoria, BC family, but she's taking a huge independent leap and will be without her mom or dad for a month. This is a major milestone in our lives, and certainly there's some trepidation, but lots of excitement and trust that we're all big enough to meet the challenge.

So for the next 4 weeks, there should be no excuse for not blogging. Watch this space.

i heart cary tennis

2005-07-11T21:38:00.000+03:00

Ever since Cary Tennis started dishing out his interesting advice on Salon nearly four years ago, I've been repeatedly and inevitably struck with amazement at the man's earthy, poetic wisdom. Even when he published my letter to him, early on, and basically threw a relatively nasty bucket of cold water over my self-involvement, I was in awe of his talent at expressing himself.

And he's continued to churn out that high quality product every few days for nearly four years, along with the occasional piece unconnected with advice-giving. I particularly remember A Birthday that will Live in Infamy, the one that began, "This year for my birthday I got a terrorist attack." I love Cary's voice for its depth and soul.

He's done it again today, and this one,
Middle age is hitting me hard is really a great read, a perfect companion this week to the review of Anna Karenina in Salon's other current feature, Summer School of classical reading.

Only for those who are strong enough to let the sad in.

traffic blues

2005-07-11T08:34:00.000+03:00

How I hate my stupid little commute.

Yesterday I left for work at 8:55 am and was caught in traffic so bad it took me an hour and a half to do what, on a Saturday, takes 20 minutes. (Of course, my roommate-colleague was not so lucky: she never made it to work, having been rear-ended by a pick-up and spending the majority of her day at the hospital being diagnosed with whiplash. Seems I'll be on my own this week.) I was so pissed when I finally rolled into work after bumper-to-bumper jams that I swore I'd find a way to get up earlier today and beat the masses to the highway.

And then I had to watch a movie that needed to be returned to BB today (Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; interesting little movie....) which took till midnite, and then I couldn't fall asleep right away ...

Set my clock for 7 am but didn't need it, because the excessive heat woke me already at 6. Putter, putter, putter, and I was out by 7:15. YAY! SUCCESS! But the traffic was STILL heavy! However, I managed to get to work in half an hour anyway, so no harm done.

Except for my utter lack of sleep. [YAWN] Damn, I'm tired.

"don't be a sheep"

2005-07-09T13:41:00.000+03:00

That's the strongest message I remember receiving from my parents while growing up (along with "cheaters never prosper" and "just be a mensch").

It 's the first thing that flashed into my mind when this headline caught my eye:
450 sheep jump to their deaths in Turkey

...turns out it was actually 1500 sheep (!) but the ones that jumped later landed softly and lived to jump another day.

in which the boss gets a liiiittle bit out of hand

2005-07-05T23:59:00.000+03:00

Haven't felt like I had the time or energy for posting lately. Well, honestly, because I feel exceedingly boring. Not ME, of course -- I'm fascinating, witty, and wise -- but my life is so ... so ... what is the technical term? Ruttish, perhaps.

Reminds me of a song, must Google this, just hang on ...

Okay, got it in 3 seconds (I LOVE YOU GOOGLE GUYS!!! HOW DID WE EVER LIVE WITHOUT YOU??!!):

From Desmond Dekker and the Aces (huh? don't remember ever hearing the group's name), from I can't remember when, but feels like high school. Year, anybody? (Dare you to out me!)

Get up in the morning
Slaving for bread Sir
So that every mouth can be fed
Ohhhh, oh oh, the Israelites

Yeah, that was a cool song. Who knew I'd be living it 30-odd years later.

So I drag myself out of bed each morning at a slightly different time (vain attempt to prove I'm not in a rut) -- sometimes 7 am, sometimes 7:10, just depends how much sleep I feel I've gotten and, consequently, my level of annoyance at needing to get the morning routine going. This morning it was 7:30, because yesterday I left the house at a decent time and spent a full hour in bloody awful traffic. Thus, I had earned a late departure today which would allow me to skip the usual bottlenecks and fly to work in just 30 minutes.

It was a quiet day with most of the managers out at a seminar, and my roommate home with a sick kid, but the end of the day brought some excitement.

I should preface this story with a mention of my workmate "Ilanit" who has been with the company for a couple months less than I (and I've now been here 6 months), i.e. she's fairly new. But she's firmly established in our medium-sized office as the resident hottie. She's got a cute face, a Julia Roberts smile, and a bodacious Barbie body. Tall, slim, unrealistically voluptuous chest, and she glues on her revealing outfits. As this is Israel, we're used to seeing lots of cleavage and bare midriff, even in the office ... especially now that the weather is so hot. But Ilanit always seems to take it just one step further, with really low-riding pants and very shrunken tops. I do not begrudge her this provocative flaunting of her amazing body. Partly because she's eye candy even for me, but also because I recognize her deeper lack of self-assurance even as she sashays down the corridor flashing her flesh. Just out of university, she's clearly a young beauty that hasn't really learned how to harness that power yet, and she's still pretty overwhelmed by it. Males of all ages have their tongues dragging on the floor when they see her. I observe with interest and empathy.

So today photos from our recent outing were published on our company common drive (a place on our network that any employee can access from their computer), and a link was emailed to us. I looked through them quickly and discovered our CEO (who rarely talks but carries a big, expensive digital camera to every outing and event) had published a lot of very beautiful shots of our trip along with many goddess-worshipping shots of Ilanit. At the pool, soaking wet, in her teeny bikini. Close-up, telephoto angles. And then the money shot: Ilanit, huge wet cleavage, partially submerged in water by the side of the pool, in the midst of eating a popsicle. Totally Sports Illustrated in both quality and tone, but I knew she'd be mortified. The CEO had really stepped over the line with this dirty-old-man behavior. Sure, as a photographer, I completely understand his fascination with the subject -- I also have several shots of her from the trip -- but he had clearly focussed the shot and cropped it to feature her heaving wet bosom, with the bonus of the tip of the popsicle gently touching her mouth. Okay, had he done this in the privacy of his own home, no one would have been the wiser, but he published it for the whole company to see. Shockingly bad judgement. Totally unacceptable from a CEO.

I walked across the hall to find Ilanit gasping in horror at the same pictures, while deleting them from the source as quickly as she could. She was disturbed when she left this evening, feeling violated and humiliated and worried about who might have seen the pictures before she deleted them. I find her response to be quite justified, while my boss (a strong-willed Israeli woman of 45 who learned to deal with Israeli male chauvinism, both in the army and at the office, a long time ago) dismissed the issue as nothing to get bothered about. (Implied: After all, the girl is young and hot; she should expect that kind of response. We should be so lucky.) I have a feeling this may be a painful lesson in sexuality for Ilanit, but probably one that is somewhat overdue. I will update...

Meanwhile, on a related topic (you'll see why) ... your laugh of the day. Oh, go ahead -- watch it a few times; it never gets boring!

a VERY long day - trippin'

2005-06-26T18:39:00.000+03:00

For my colleagues, it was worse. At least I got picked up by the bus at the North Raanana junction, giving me a precious extra half-hour (plus travel time to the office). There were about 90 of us, divided into 2 buses. And while I was dropped back there at 1:30 am the following morning, many of them didn't get home until an hour after that. Yes, it was a great day, but TOO LONG. Many of these people have kids they had to get up for in the morning, after all. Thank god I didn't. When I woke up at 9:30 am, Mr. S. had taken young ms. out for breakfast. Oh yes, people, the joys of one kid who's finally growing up.

I just haven't got time to go into lots of details but here's the RD version: First stop was about 10am, at a lovely country site called "Ein Kamonim" -- somewhere up northward -- where we sat at long, heavily-laden, linen-covered tables under shady vines, and were treated to a feast of goat cheeses, freshly-baked whole wheat rolls, olive oil, zaatar, lots of salad veggies, jam, and more cheese. And then they served the coffee with long-life milk. BLAH! Undrinkable. Small detail, though; the rest was wonderful.

Next, we went on a mild hike for about an hour through a stoney stream (we were told to come prepared with shoes for water), ending up at a swimming hole that looked right out of the pages of Huck Finn. It was a gorgeous walk on a hot day through the forest, relieved by the cold water of the stream and the pools. Many people jumped in with all their clothes. But I knew we were heading to a real swimming pool, so I bided my time.

Our next stop was Kibbutz Goshrim, where we spent a couple of wonderful relaxing hours at their huge pool. The weather was perfect and I could have easily been there till midnite. But we were scheduled for a tour of Sfat, so we headed off in the buses at about 4:30 and arrived there before long. Several interesting stops awaited us there, and it was more than a walking tour. First: another dairy, a famous one, the Meiri dairy which bills itself as "Israel's first dairy." It's been in the family for generations, and they make the best goat cheese I've ever tasted. So of course I had to buy some Brinza to bring home. We also stopped somewhere to make some kind of special pita bread, whose name I've forgotten, but that was just a fun stop while several in our group got their hands dirty with flour and "mud cakes" -- more eating. And then we visited a religious guy who makes his own wine by treading on the grapes in the old-fashioned way -- and nothing else. He adds nothing. He says that the grapes pick up the characteristics of the winemaker, and no two people will be able to make the same-tasting wine, even though he tells them exactly how to do it (implying: not as good as his). He gave us lots to drink, saying that this wine is absolutely pure, no toxins, and would not make us "drunk" but "only high." I thought he was charming, but many thought he was just arrogant. Still, we were tired and glad to sit and drink with him.

We continued our walk in the fabulous Sfat air, feeling the special atmosphere of that historical place, until about 8 pm, when we finally drove off to dinner. More food, this time a serious steak-fest at "Bat Ya'ar". There was also lots of other meat -- like grilled wings, my favorite -- and the beer flowed freely till we were laughing at everything ... like the arm-wrestling matches arranged between some of our co-workers. It was all pretty silly, but we were relaxed and went with it.

Unfortunate that it dragged on a bit long -- we had a 3-hour drive ahead of us and should have been out of there earlier -- but I didn't mind that as much as others did. The trip back was very tough, with everyone exhausted but unable to sleep. Except for our driver. The tour guide noticed he was nodding out over the wheel and made him stop for half an hour to get coffee and a rest. Seems he's usually in bed by 8pm.

But we got home safely and it was a very satisfying day out. I don't whether it was lack of sleep or too much beer, but the next two days were spent recovering. And so the week closes, and another begins.

On the agenda tomorrow: another technical seminar outside of the office.

I took a lot of pics but most were kind of boring, people pics that I wouldn't want to publish, but the views in Sfat really are breathtaking. And we were there during the magic hour, so this is Sfat with that golden glow before sunset.

more view

tiyul avoda

2005-06-22T19:02:00.000+03:00

Summer is officially here. Kids in grade 7 and up are now (as of 2 dys ago) in the malls or planted in front of tv and computer screens. Or visiting savta (granny). Younger kids are still in school for another week, but the older ones are floating in that netherworld between the academic year and the beginning of all summer camps.

Mine is going to "math camp" (euphemism for summer school ....mwa-ah-ah-ah!!) -- three mornings a week for the month of July. She fought it only half-heartedly, as I made it clear this was not negotiable. The kid did even worse in her 2nd semester than she did in the 1st one, but we're not going to talk about that. Many plans are afoot to set things right, and I'm optimistic for grade eight.

Moving on... mommy's going on a tiyul avoda tomorrow -- work outing, to the Hebraically challenged -- and I'm very much looking forward to my first real tiyul in years. I used to get out in the country a lot in the "old" days ... participating in one group or another. First one was in ulpan (Hebrew school) the very first winter, 1983. I'll never forget the thrill of leaving the icy cold Jerusalem winter (tons of snow that year and, though Canadian, I was unprepared) and barely two hours later, peeling off layers as we hiked through hot desert sun, ending up by some waterfall where we all jumped in the pool and got ourselves joyfully soaked. Israeli Geography 101: this tiny country has a LOT of climate zones!

Since then, I've seen quite a bit of the country, but no real sightseeing/hiking kinds of trips for longer than I can remember. It's just not mr. Squarepeg's sort of thing, and one needs a bit of cooperation for this activity.

Tomorrow, we're meeting at work at 7:30 am and expect to return home not much before midnite. We'll be bussing north to the Galil and to Sfat (Tsfat) and having some great entertaining dinner somewhere well-known. More details after the fact. Maybe I'll even have a pic or two for y'all.

busybody factor

2005-06-21T18:50:00.000+03:00

Usually we think of Israel in a constant state of being more and more Americanized. But apparently it goes the other way too.

In Salon today, Lynn Harris asks, "Is it me, or are people -- and not just the self-righteous religious -- feeling more and more entitled to offer their "input," or at least make irritating inquiries, into others' private lives? [...] Invasive questions and unsolicited "advice" are rampant among civilians, now more than ever, I think. And especially when it comes to women and marriage and childbearing -- future, present, or God forbid, lack thereof -- it seems everyone's got something to say."

Welcome to our world, Lynn!

In fact, we can't even imagine a world where strangers mind their own business. (In fact, to borrow from an old joke, "Strangers? What's that?")

She even quotes an academic who sounds like he's talking about the normal status of the Jewish state: "There definitely has been what we call a loss of civility, and part of that is that we now feel that we are more a part of the private lives of others," says Bernardo J. Carducci, a professor of psychology at Indiana University Southeast. "Especially when you have people carrying on cellphone conversations right next to you."

Although I've seen signs that Israelis are learning to jealously guard their privacy from intrusive passers-by, I doubt we're ever going to see a decline in the busybody factor in this nation of Jewish muthahs.

breakdown weeekend

2005-06-19T02:43:00.000+03:00

Crazy weekend.
Started out yesterday by going out for breakfast with Mr. S., and then returned home to attempt the never-ending tidying operation of the piles and piles of crap everywhere. My daughter is missing a few items that I became determined to find, giving me an excuse to overhaul her room, which is always the most horrendous mess. Long story short: after thoroughly tidying her whole room and searching the rest of the apt., I never found any of the missing items; and I almost always find things. Lately, though ... she insists that the cleaning lady is taking stuff home, but I can't believe that yet.

Since I was already in there, I changed her sheets, and then mine too, and started a load of laundry. By this time I was sweaty and exhausted, so took a break to listen to my very relaxing meditation disc. Ten minutes into it, the disc player (plugged into the electricity) stopped cold. I opened my eyes and looked around and discovered we had no electricity. First thing to check: Is it the whole building or just us? The hallway lights were working, so it was just us. Went to the circuit board and found that the main switch was down, so I flipped it up. Electricity was back. For about one minute, and then went off again. Again, I'll cut to the chase: After much fussing, phoning and checking plus a house call from our electrician, it was clear that the washing machine was tripping the circuit. And this after weeks of problems with our dryer (which still makes a grinding noise for the first five minutes of each load) and many visits from the dryer technician. We put in another call to him but will have to wait till after the weekend for his visit.

It is not fun dealing with a washing machine full of clothes and dirty water, so I left that for the next day.

Meanwhile, electrical outages are not very good for computers either. Due to technical reasons I won't bore you with, we next found ourselves with no internet connection and no solution forthcoming. So we had to call our computer techie for that, and found him to be incapacitated with shock over an collision he'd just had between his car and a motorcycle. There was no way he was coming over to fix our computer, so we were a family of internet addicts looking at a weekend offline. Not inspiring.

Oh, did I mention that my PMS was kicking in big time, with a migraine just beginning to claw the right side of my neck?

The weekend was looking very grim.

In the end, following many more phone calls, our ISP was able to talk us through reconfiguring our router, for a small fee (much less than the techie would have charged us), and we were connected again. Whew.

That's when we decided to go to a movie. We paid a visit to Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which just opened here (only a week after opening in North America, unlike the old days when we had to wait six months to see new movies). It's an okay flick, kind of fun in places, but longer than necessary; by the end you really don't even care about the outcome anymore. But ms. Angelina is so luscious to watch, how could anyone really mind? Yeah, alright, Brad's ok, too. Too much gunplay for young ms. squarepeg, though.

And that was just the first half of an exhausting weekend.

Part 2 tomorrow. It's nearly 3 am and I have to get up to go to work in 4 hours???!!!!

OC marathon

2005-06-12T23:11:00.000+03:00

"I don't hate DE-BU-TANTES!!"
- Steve Gold (Tom Hanks) in "Punchline"

bloody blockbuster have become drug pushers.

Mr. and young ms. squarepeg visit the BB several times a week, neither of them being especially avid readers, and last week came home with BB's free taste of the OC -- the first 4 episodes of season one, free with any movie rental. Seems Israel just wasn't that aware of it, so they needed to prime the pump a little.

Having for the past two years studiously avoided entrapment by that particular soap opera -- in more or less the same way I try to avoid McD's fries -- I was determined not to even get caught in the same room with it. Sadly, I do recognize that I am an addictive personality, having over the years become tragically entwined with such tripe as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and, lord help me, Dawson's Creek -- every time, I hasten to add, only because Mr. Squarepeg the tv drone watched those shows in our very small apartment, where I could not help noticing what they all have in common: luscious-looking people in lusciously photographed scenery -- irresistible eye candy.

I knew from reading about it that The OC was of the same ilk, and I was damned if I was going to get sucked in. When ms. Squarepeg slipped it into the livingroom dvd player while I was puttering in the kitchen (open plan apt, i.e. essentially the same room), I practically screeched at her to turn it off and never to watch it while I was around.

She of course ignored me, as usual, being almost 13. By the third time I told her to turn it off, it was with glazed eyes and drool falling from my open mouth as I sunk into the couch beside her.

A few days later, she came home with the whole first season -- another 22 episodes. I was no longer fighting the need for the fix, and convinced myself that this was the best quality mother-daughter time we'd enjoyed in months. At 45 minutes per episode, I have been in an OC-induced stupor for much of whatever time I wasn't at work for the past several days. Sometimes we mocked the silly screen people ("How 'bout some more pills with that vodka, Marissa?") and laughed until the kid wheezed and needed her ventolin puffer, and sometimes she just laughed at me crying over somebody leaving town, but we had fun.

We came to the sobfest ending of season one at about 7 this evening, just before setting out to the in-laws for Shavuot-eve dinner. I was wrung out emotionally, and truly in awe of how I had been so masterfully played.

I just love those characters. Not all of them, of course, but certainly all the Cohens. Especially Peter Gallagher; he's my favorite. We haven't really come so far since the 50s and Father Knows Best, have we? Least favorite is Marissa -- early on I was annoyed with her stupidity. Whereas her evil mother is actually one of the most fun villains I've ever seen.

Well, I suppose I should join some kind of forum for OC addicts, but who's got time? In any case, I'm a season behind anyone else who's been following it. But maybe I have a reader or two who will share the pain with me?