A Matter of Geography

You know those shampoo/dye ads with women's soft, shiny yet strong hair?. Now imagine one such hair in your soup and...fishing it out in disgust. Same hair, different place.

Think about an appetizing dish, nicely laid out on your plate. Same on the other plates at the table. You finish eating, gather all the plates with the remainders on the top plate. Much less appetizing, isn't it? You throw the remainders into the garbage, but a few pieces land accidentally next to the bin. You grab the sticky matter and place it inside. Same food, different attitude.

You pet your cat. Nice, calming feeling. The cat goes away leaving a bunch of hair on the sofa. Damn cat!

These deep thoughts come to me after too much housework, especially in the kitchen. This is what I do on weekends, as during workdays I return home late from work and other activities. This weekend I made some above average food for the boys' birthdays. I usually don't write about cooking, as there are plenty of food blogs out there, but this time I'll make an exception as I feel you are really curious about the menu. I made peanut and coconut Chinese chicken for Friday, Hungarian stuffed chicken for Saturday and a punch cake.

Now, there is a really high pile of washed clothes on one of the armchairs in my living room, waiting for folding and returning to their respective closets. The same garment in the pile or on its shelf in the closet, different feeling. A matter of geography!

What's in a Uniform?

Since I defined happiness in a previous post, I had a few happy moments with my kids, mainly when visiting Tom and taking him out for a fancy breakfast, together with Dan. On one such occasion we went to a nice garden restaurant in Nahariya (excellent food), on another occasion to a cafe in Tel Aviv (nothing special). I realized that despite the quality of the experience (Nahariya was far better), my level of happiness was higher on the Tel Aviv occasion.

It took me a Yad Vashem visit to realize why. There, the witness videos unfold a myriad of 'private' cruelties and murders alongside the well-planned mass-murders. The war gave legitimacy to many people's evil tendencies. At some death camps, most operations were carried out by local volunteers! At the end of the visit at the Holocaust History Museum, the triangle shaped building opens up into a balcony with a breathtaking view of the Jerusalem hills. This was the point I broke down into tears. Dan was standing by me in his IDF officer uniform, trying to comfort me.

"The feeling is indescribable", says my friend Jeff. "It's like the Exodus theme music playing in the background", he easily and beautifully describes it.

So what made the difference between the two occasions? At the Tel Aviv breakfast, both 'kids' wore IDF uniforms and that made me infinitely proud of them.

Communications - Take IV: A Confession

Two recent triggers gave me the courage to confess about this little problem of mine, although I was drafting this post in my mind for a long time. The first trigger is a blogpost about identifying yourself with a description in a text. I don't remember reading such text, at least not recently. I'd like to think the reason is that my personality is more complex than a descriptive, even well written, paragraph. The other possible reasons are much less compelling (not reading enough, not remembering in general, not paying attention to details), so I'll just conveniently ignore them. But it is possible that a description matches one facet of my personality. This actually happened on page 87 of Marianne Legato's "Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget", under the topic "Say What You Mean" (the second trigger I referred to). According to the author, 85% of women (me included) don't say (mostly to their partners) what they really want or mean. We expect them to read our minds and respond to our unverbalized wishes. When they fail doing so, we conclude that our relationship is just not working. There might be a few reasons why we act like that, but most probably it's a combination between our brain structure and upbringing.

In my special case, I take this even further (you didn't really expect me to define something 85% of women do as "my little problem", right?). After going through a long thought process, involving analyzing different possibilities and reaching a conclusion, I am surprised when the others don't have a clue about my conclusion. That's because I never told them. I think/feel I did, but I actually didn't. Is it a 'senior moment'? Am I having Alzheimer's? Do I expect others to reach the same 'logical' conclusion? All of the above?

Now don't tell me you don't understand how this image is related to the subject. It's Citrine. According to a website, it helps overcoming difficulty in verbalizing thoughts and feelings, among its other healing powers (if you believe in such things). Now I'll be really disappointed if I don't get a few of these as a present. Preferably in the form of jewelry.

P.S. Just realized how relevant my previous post is.

Communications - Take III

When I started blogging, my husband was suspicious. Then he started reading and even enjoying my posts. Now, he reads my posts to keep up with my thoughts.

Me: "Would you like to invite M and his wife for dinner or dine together in a restaurant?"

P: "Who is M? Is he someone you mentioned in your blog and I didn't read the post yet?"

Me: "No."