What day is it?

I was trying to think of how to write this in my head on the way home today but I wasn't sure what day it was. Most of the time I don't even know the time. 

When I last left off we were going to zefat. It is a beautiful city. Very much a hippy town in the mountains.

A few days ago we went to Hamat Gadar. Hot springs smushed between Jordan and Syria. It's very commercial but fun. We ate at the restraunt there and when people asked what I wanted I said "suprise me" because I'm not a picky eater. I got a whole fish. Head, tail, scales, eyes. Maors best friend laughed at my face when they set it down. I did eat it. I couldn't clean it to the point of being just bones like everyone else but I made an effort and it was good.

The hot springs was fun and relaxing. Maor and I had some fantastic sex when everyone went to bed... Which lead to an accident that lead to a trip to the pharmacy the next day.

Lea is bonding with her Grandparents. I'm trying to stay out of the way. Tonight I nixed pudding before bed and I feel bad.

Tomorrow we might do the Dead Sea.

Day 1

We made it to Israel!

The plane ride wasn't bad, Lea was fantastic, but the car we rented was a bust. They wanted $700 more for a deposit than the $250 we put down weeks ago. So after a lot of yelling where Maor called them scam artists we took the train to Haifa and some friends picked us all up. Not that we couldn't afford the down payment.. It was more you tell us one thing and it's another, what is the bill going to be in 2 weeks?

The next day (today) we took Lea out for a walk around town. Took us 2 hours to go 4 blocks. We had to say hi to everyone. 

It was 60 out and sunny. Much better than the -4 we left.

Lea took a 2 hour nap after lunch. She has as many toys here as she does at home now.  Her aunts got her a trike! 

After nap we met great grandpa. We named lea after his late wife. He cried. Lea danced with him and we got some good pictures. 

Then we went and saw Claries (Maors moms sisters) new house. It's huge. I want her kitchen. 

Lea made friends with their dog Macho...a small dog wearing a sweater that Claries son Aden and I joked doesn't live up to his name. 

Lea is having a good time. Daddy is telling his family to back off when they get in her face and all try to get her attention at once. They said hes too bossy but I'm very proud. 

Tomorrow we are going to sefat or zefat sounds like isfat.. I googled it and the spellings are all different. 

I feel like we never left. I don't feel awkward at all. It could be because I don't know what anyone is saying most if the time.

Our English is already worse. I do half English half Hebrew and I've dumbed down my English so people can understand me. I can't do sentences in Hebrew so I just throw in words I know. Maor is all Hebrew. We tell anyone speaking English to lea to stop so she can learn. 

We had shawarma for dinner! I'm in heaven! 

Waiting..

I love my job but after working a week alone with the twit of the office I started to say "Thank god Im going on vacation."

I cant stand that woman. 3 months in to the job and she still acts like its week 3. I actually got to the point around 4pm on Friday where I told myself if I heard her sigh one more time like our job was the hardest job on the planet I would throw whatever was in my hand at the time at her head because 1) We are in our dead period.....there is NOTHING to do. 2) Even in the summer I cant believe how much they are paying me to do what I do because its so god damn easy but I come from a retail background where you are expected to shit diamonds and get paid in the peanuts that clustered around that shit.

Luckily the phone didnt ring again and I was too involved in my Hay Day game to throw my phone at her while she sighed over a mundane task she cant complete in the time that a competent person can. 

5pm rolled around an Im officially on vacation! Oh god! I have to clean the house, I have to do the laundry, I have to pack, I have my Grandma AND Aunt staying with us till we leave so I need to be entertaining and attend family parties I would otherwise ignore.... yay vacation!

Im trying to be calm. Im self medicating with booze. Always after Lea goes to bed of course...until then Im a silent ball of stress. 

I dont want to pack while my Grandma is around because she will have her opinions on what I pack and how to pack it and I also dont want Lea around because she will think its a game and unpack whatever I packed.

All I was really stressing about Friday before I came home was packing... and I had a plan...

then I got home.

My Grandma had cooked EVERYTHING in my house so we can eat it before it goes bad...even though half of what she cooked is canned and/or wont go bad till a few weeks after we come home so now shes nagging us to eat constantly so things wont go to waste. A lot of food is going to go to waste. Which is why when she handed me $40 for spending money I took it and thought "we are about even" while my aunt yelled in the background "how come when I offered you money for Israel you wouldnt take it!?"

My aunt and I wanted to go to Wolf of Wall St but we couldnt go till after Lea went to bed because this is my aunts last weekend with Lea and if she misses a second of it she will be devastated. Its a 3 hour movie. It was a good movie... ridiculously obscene. It would have been a great movie if they did some editing because 3 hours was too much. So we got home way past my bed time and ended up waking up my Grandma who then decided that midnight was a great time to start cleaning my house. So I stayed up with her for a bit because I felt rude going to bed while she was doing my dishes and scrubbing my baseboards while telling stories about when she was my age. 

Today did laundry and entertained. A cousin called and said they were dropping by to say "hi" and drop off a present for Lea. She gave Lea a beautiful jewelry/music box that plays Hatikvah. Maor and I were both floored. Its beautiful! My cousin kept passing it off like it was something she just had and didnt know who to give it to which I know is bull because my Catholic pork eating family wouldnt just pick up a jewelry box with a gold David star on it that plays the Israeli national anthem unless there was a reason. We love it! The more we said we loved it the more she acted like it was nothing. Thats my family.

Later we went to a late family Christmas party. It was fun. We left early because Lea was overly moody. She knows something is up and has been off for the last couple of days. 

Tomorrow my aunt has agreed to take Lea and Gramzy out of the house for a few hours so we can pack without being bothered. 

Monday I will surely be crawling out of my skin waiting to get on the plane.

Did I mention we got a package? I didnt.

We did.

The timing is horrible. A fetish of mine arrives at my door and I cant do anything about it because I have a house full of family till we leave.

If we have time after packing tomorrow I might post pictures of it.

The last minute Christmas

Im sure I have mentioned that Lea has become obsessed with Elmo. Last weekend my aunt and I went in search of a plain Jane stuffed Elmo. No talking, no hugging, no giggling, no stupid hard box in the middle of it... just a soft stuffed Elmo. Surprisingly stupidly hard to find!
Somewhere around the 3rd store we went to we started to side track to thinking about when my little sister is going to move out of the house and how shes going to need Christmas things for her dorm and/or shitty apartment and we found a little bright purple shiny fake tree with built in lights for $15 and bought it because we want to make sure she has a tree 2 years from now. Then we side tracked to the discount movie bin and found a few old good ones that we thought we might as well wrap up because Lea loves ripping wrapping paper.
Then I MAY have grabbed a new Princess to go with her Klip Klop castle....
And we may have decided to hide everything in the trunk of my aunts car as a surprise for Lea and Maor.

I did find a plain Jane Elmo at the 5th store. It was the last one on the shelf and I screamed like a mad woman when I found it which made the couple filling out a baby registry look at me funny till I looked them both dead in the eyes and said, "This is what you will become!" before running away screaming Marco-Polo for my aunt.

The Elmo we opened when we got home and hid in the living room then took bets on how long it would take for Lea to find it. 10 minutes. Shes the happiest baby ever.

Madonna came back up Tue night to spend Christmas with us. We snuck in the purple tree and the presents while Maor was doing tubby time with Lea. I got Maor to go to bed early but warned him that there was going to be a surprise in the morning because he tends to get a bit cranky if you wake him up early.

So Christmas morning we woke up to Lea playing in her crib and listened for my Aunt to go and get her. Then we listened for her to tell Lea to go get us. Nothing. It was excruciating listening as her little feet went by our room and waiting for her to start yelling with excitement. Nothing.
All we heard was "Apple!" and some shuffling. I started to think my aunt fell asleep and forgot to set everything up when Lea pushed open our door and said, "Mama! Aba! Mama! Aba! Ets go!"
My aunt didnt have to tell her to come get us. Lea walked in to the living room, saw the little tree, made my aunt cut up a pear that was sitting by the tree then went to go get us by herself.

So we had ourselves a tiny Christmas. Maor did enjoy it. I think we will do it again next year. Just as long as we keep it small.

Blood is a liquid.

I do not like to talk about my real dad. Its a conversation I avoid like the plague.

I refer to my step dad as my dad and only acknowledge the fact that he isnt my real dad when people get to know me well enough that they notice my last name doesnt match anyone in my family. I was never officially adopted by my step dad and I didnt take Maors last name because for a few years we hid our marriage. Its just turned in to one of those things that you keep forgetting to get around to until someone says "but wait.." and you go "Oh yeah... I really need to get that paperwork in."

There are 2 people in my family that constantly bring up my dad. My grandma, who acts like my dad was Jesus reborn and my mom couldnt keep the marriage together, and my aunt who thinks blood means something.

For all of my life I have entertained their conversations about my dad to let them live in their fantasies of who he was. I dont spend a lot of time with my grandma and cherish her wisdom and memories....even if I dont agree with them...and this is the first time I have spent more than 2 weeks at a time with my aunt. So the once a year "have you talked to your dad? You know you should send him a card or something..." has turned in to a monthly conversation where I am slowly trying to work in my distaste for my dad in hopes that they will pick up on it.

Earlier today my dad was worked into the conversation again and my aunt and I snapped on each other. 

We were talking about what we need in Israel to get Leas Israeli citizenship while we are there when my aunt chimed in like she knew it all that Lea couldnt get citizenship in another country until she was 18 and could do it on her own cause thats how my half sister through my dad did it.

I said, "Who told you that she had to wait till she was 18? All she had to do was walk in to an office with my dad and sign some paperwork."

She said, "Well he would have done that if thats how it worked."

I said, "No he wouldnt! Remember when I went to Florida with my sister for 2 weeks with Dotty and the whole purpose of it was so we could both see our dad? She flew all the way in from Germany for 2 weeks just to see her dad for the first time in YEARS never mind me and he DIDNT SHOW UP ONCE! If he cant come to dinner hes not going to show up at a court house."

Maor jumped in and I cant remember what he said to try and calm the conversation but my aunt snapped "No! Her dad is mentally ill and she forgets that it is an illness!!"

I had to walk away. 

I dont forget my dad is mentally ill. I have been reminded of it a lot through life. He reminded me on the days when he actually picked me up on his visitation days. His chaperon reminded me when he was acting off. His mother reminded me when she tried to make up for his absence but honestly she wasnt too stable herself.  I saw a lot of psychologists through life because my mother was so worried that I was going to inherit his madness. They reminded me constantly by asking question after question about things that I just wanted to forget. When I became old enough to figure out what they wanted to hear, a sad case of a child who inherited their tortured fathers disease because that would make a fantastic book entry or magazine article I gave them what they wanted and started to rip apart the new family my mom gave me.

Yes, my real father is bipolar and possibly other things. Does that make the way he treated me and ignored me ok? No. It never will. It will never excuse the times I saw him doing coke. It will never excuse the times he didnt show up for visitation. It wont excuse his not paying child support so my mom had to struggle. It wont excuse never EVER trying to talk to me even though I sent countless cards until I finally figured out I didnt fit in his world.

My sister may be the better person. She does try to talk to him. She calls him every few weeks and wants him to know his Grandkids. She believes blood is blood. She believes he really loved her mom and my mom got in the way. Im ok with that. She grew up with her mom in Germany and didnt have to sit through one of his episodes. She didnt puke after a visitation with him from anxiety. She didnt go on national news as the sad child of a mother speaking up for harsher child support laws.

I dont know how to explain to someone that blood is a liquid. Emotions are my solid. My sister is my sister because we can go YEARS without talking then pick back up without missing a beat. My husband is Leas father because hes there for her, he kisses her boo boos, he sings songs, he plays princess pony's, he is aba (daddy in hebrew). Even if he wasnt really her father he would be her father. My step dad is my dad because he has been there for me when I was a good kid, when I was a shitty teenager, when I was an idiot new adult, and hes a fantastic Grandpa. 

I want my step dad to be my dad.

I dont ever want Lea knowing another grandpa exists, especially after my sister told me that she wont tell him shes Muslim because hes a white supremacist (funny thing, as soon as said that a few nazi comments I remember dad saying suddenly made sense) and he may have committed murder. Hes just not a great role model.

So I paced the house today fed up with talking about him thinking of how to end the conversations so he can just be dead to me. 

Maor made a stupidly simple suggestion to just tell people from now on "[Name] is my dad. I dont have another one." End of story.

I need to stop arguing and end the conversations all together. I only have one dad.

The sweet smell of success

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Standing by..

Well I feel kind of boring not having anything to update about but... there isnt much to update about.

At work Im still dealing with a complete muppet of a new hire. Well, shes been around for 3 months but acts like shes been there for 2 weeks. The woman drives me to drink heavily. I worked a Saturday a few weeks ago to replace some hours I dont have vacation time for this month and one tech asked me "Is she going to get any better?" I said, "Nope, probably not."

Home life is Lea and Maor. Lea has become obsessed with Elmo.
Maor is about to jump out of his skin hes so excited to go home.

We are STILL trying to find a place to ourselves in Israel. Its hard to book things there because their 4 star hotels are not the same as our 4 start hotels. Their 4 is our 3 or 2.
"The staff didnt tell me to fuck off when I complained that my room wasnt ready 2 hours after I was supposed to check in. 4 stars!"

No plans...just waiting..

and re-watching Doctor Who.