Fake calendars and bathrooms for your commute

More from the “I could never make this stuff up” conversation files.

“Ema, what month has 32 days?”

“Um, sweetie, there are never more than 31 days in a month.”

“What about the calendar we left in New York?”

“What calendar?”

“The calendar that has the month with 32 days?”

“Are you talking about the Hebrew calendar* or the English calendar?”

“The English calendar.”

“Ok. Well, February has 28 days. April, June, September, and November have 30. The rest of the months have 31 days. There are no months with 32 days.”

“But Ema, which month has 32 days?”

Deep breathing. Wait. Something shiny is sure to distract her any second.

“Ema, does Abba not make a pishy for the whole hour he’s on the train?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’ll bet he tries to use the bathroom before he leaves his office. And there might even be a bathroom on the train.”

“REALLY?!”

“Yes. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Ok. AM, there might be a bathroom on Abba’s train!”

“Really, Miss M? There might be a bathroom on Abba’s train?”

And indeed, there is a bathroom on Abba’s train. There is, however, no month with 32 days. In any calendar. (To my knowledge.)

* NB: Every month in the Jewish calendar has either 29 or 30 days. The are 354 or 355 days in year, so about every third year (7 out of 19, if I recall) there is a leap month to make up for the missing days. Unlike the Islamic calendar, where the 12 lunar months rotate through the seasons, the Jewish months stay approximately fixed; the Torah festivals are tied to the seasons and agricultural process.

Recalculating

Taxman is a great Abba. He’s the boo-boo guy; bodily fluids don’t scare him; he makes great French toast. He taught the kids to play War. He reads stories and cuddles and schleps and fetches and all that.

But five years into the parenting gig, he’s still not up on the equation.

You know, the equation.

Time to get out of the house (minutes) = (time it takes adults to be ready * 1.5) + (number of children * number of expected tantrums/2).

For example: 30 * 1.5 + 2 * 6/2 = 45 + 6 = 51 minutes. Work backwards from desired time of departure.

But there are the special circumstances: weather and its accoutrement; meals, projects, or other one-time paraphernalia to bring; and the fearsome x factor.*

So while normally a, say,  7:25 departure time could mean lounging in bed until 6:34, I wouldn’t advise it.

Because there is always an x factor.

Like…spilling a full bowl of cereal all over the floor.

Like…a tussle in the bathroom over who gets to brush teeth first. Which means a) breaking up the fight and b) nobody has brushed their teeth yet.

Like…the disappearance of rain boots. Of course, this also means that it’s raining, and if you couldn’t drag yourself out of bed until 6:45 there is no way on earth you will make the 7:43 train and you will be lucky to make the 8:04.

Just for example. And that was Tuesday.

He’s a really good Abba, like I said. But he’s got to crunch the numbers again on this one.

Not to be confused with the x factor they blab about on American Idol.

Holy Rain

It rained yesterday.

In the northeastern United States, rain was just weather. It came, sometimes for days, but not always; and went, sometimes for weeks, but not always. It was inconvenient for carpool, trashed afternoons at the playground, and necessitated a lot of paraphernalia: umbrellas, boots, and raincoats. It made for bright green springs and lovely fall apples. If the temperatures dropped low enough the rain turned to snow, and we had clothes for that too.

Rain in Israel is entirely something else.

In a country where precipitation disappears for five to seven months at a stretch, in deference to a blistering sun that blots out all but a few wisps of clouds, the sight of fast-moving, grey thunderheads is welcome. It feels long overdue.

Rain in Israel is the stuff of prayer. As part of the liturgy on Sukkot, we add Tefilat Geshem (literally “rain prayer”) and begin to add supplications for rain to daily tefilah as well.

Rain in a desert land now settled by millions of people, and also populated by livestock and crops, is vitally important. It is something that we have no control over, other than to bring it to the forefront of our thoughts, insert it into our spiritual conversations, obsess over the level of the Kinneret (aka the Sea of Galilee, a source of Israel’s drinking water), watch as the government raises taxes on water usage, and try to wait patiently, scanning the skies. Every chance of a regional passing drizzle merits a mention on the national weather forecast.

During Sukkot, while we were walking around Neot Kedumim, we had a surprise three-minute sunshower. It was glorious. All the kids in the group were squealing, but every adult had a smile on their face. (Admittedly, it helps to have unexpected rainfall when the temperatures are in the 80s.)

Sukkot was nearly a month ago. Since then we’ve experienced a five-day sharav and a return to summer-like conditions. So naturally, the brief spates of rain yesterday morning, afternoon, and evening (totaling perhaps 10 to 15 minutes in our area), complete with thunder and lightening at one point, felt like a blessing. We were at the park during the first shower but felt no rush to come in out of the rain; rather we watched it play over the sandy ground covering, stuck out our tongues to catch the raindrops, and danced among the wind-driven water.

The dusty spatters on the cars, the oil-slick roads, the rush to unearth raincoats and fall clothes after the first rain are a small price to pay for the feeling that our prayers are being answered. Today, right now. We hope it will be so often during the rainy season. (Update: we’ve had a good solid half hour of rain right now. Yay!)

משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם

Hacking

Day 4 of cough. Now with low grade fever!

Thankfully, the doctor says my lungs are clear and my oxygenation is fine. I do know how to say “I’m coughing” and “I have a fever” in Hebrew, but lucky for me we landed in a city with plenty of  Americans, Brits, Canadians, and South Africans. So while I probably could have (barely) managed to get my point across, the doctor who saw me went to NYU. He offered me cough medicine with codeine, but I’m more of a percocet kind of girl (codeine makes me uncomfortably wacked out).

So I’m going to ride it out, with my trusty laptop by my side and my trusty husband, who made a 4:30 train home, picked up takeout for dinner (kubbeh soup), and has helped me deal with the screamers. Highlights tonight include:

• AM accidentally dropping a Matchbox police car down the elevator shaft (oy lanu!)
• the bathwater a weird shade of ochre shade, canceling the bath and dashing AM’s wish to play in the bath
• Miss M’s insistence that she needs juice (not true) because she’s sick (she has a cold; juice is reserved for fever)
• Miss M’s obstinate refusal to put on her damn pajamas already, resulting in the loss of a balloon to which she was suddenly very attached
• the tragedy of Ema refusing to brush AM’s teeth (i.e., stick my germy hands in his mouth) if Abba was available

I am totally pulling out the ice cream at 9:30 and going to bed right after that…

Manners gone awry

Out to dinner with the kids means actually eating with the kids. (I know!)

It never gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling that you got from watching the Huxtables.

The conversation usually centers on a) if the pasta can come without sauce b) if they can get juice c) distribution of said juice d) constant reminders to sit in their chairs and use basic manners e) that the well intentioned vegetables–cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes–on the side of their plates WILL NOT ATTACK.*

But sometimes it’s good for a laugh.

Tonight?

Miss M: “I burped, Ema!”

Me: “Say, ‘Excuse me.’”

Miss M: “Excuse me, Ema! I burped!”

* This is why I generally cater to their tastes for Shabbat and make sure there is a baked sweet potato or cooked carrots; avocado chunks, sliced cucumber, or peas. Makes things easier. If we don’t have to have guests they have to try a new food, although nothing that involves visible herbs or anything like that.

Updates (UPDATED)

• Kid 1

She’s still throwing tantrums with the best of ‘em. But I think her Hebrew comprehension is slowly improving. We saw a classmate of hers at the park yesterday and the two of them ran off to the slides. He was chattering at her in Hebrew and she’d interject stuff like “איזה כיף” (“What fun!”)…while not exactly conversation, it wasn’t incorrect for the context either. She’s also started to spell phonetically in Hebrew (like she does in English), which was a complete shock to me. Not sure if it was a surprise to her teacher.

• Kid 2

Seems happier at school. With no guidance from the teacher (surprise to her) he drew a picture with a tree, flower, and sun (surprise to us!!!). Stopped coughing in the middle of the night without explanation, but then caught a cold. Which means that we know why he sounds like a 90-year-old emphysema patient. Luckily the coughing seems to now be in the dawn hours, rather than the pre-dawn hours.

• Me

Doing fine.

Still tired because I go to bed too late and am awakened by Mr. Small Boy as early as 4:30 am.

Hebrew is slowly improving. I can correct the grammar of everyone in my class but still can’t speak well at all. Which is…not so useful.

I caught AM’s cough and sound barky. I tried to run yesterday anyway. Huge mistake.

Biggest complaint at the moment is that the new television season has yet to begin here. I have baskets of clothes yet to fold because I need Grey’s Anatomy as motivation.

• The Car

(Really, isn’t this what everyone was waiting for?)

The car did not need a new battery nor a new alternator. It needed a new driver.

The reason why it would not go into gear for me after The Intrepid Bloggers jumped it for me was that I neglected to properly unlock the door. Goes to show that we’re not criminal souls, or we would have thought of a workaround for the faux-hotwiring.

We did not fetch the misbehaving Corolla until TUESDAY. Sunday was Taxman’s all-day hike in the desert. Monday we were trying to hammer out insurance and warranty issues with unhelpful customer service representatives; who was going to be responsible for towing, to where, etc. Finally Taxman took a cab from Tel Aviv to Petach Tikvah on Tuesday evening to meet a maintenance guy affiliated with the outfit from which we purchased the car. As it turned out we didn’t need him, because Taxman is a genius and properly unlocked the doors, disarmed the ignition alarm, and drove away 30 seconds later.

Total damage: over 200 NIS in cab fare, keeping our rental car for an extra few days (but really, in the grand scheme of things, this was going to cost so much anyway it shouldn’t matter), my pride, and my ability to look Robin in the face at the next bloggers’ event. Because if Baila hosts I really have to go.

• Taxman is very insulted that he didn’t get an update.

But now he’s saying it doesn’t matter WHAT I say. Anyway, new job is good. He gets home by 8, mostly, but does a lot of emailing and phoning clients from home. This seems…vaguely familiar. But he’s happy, so hooray for him. And he washes the floor every Friday, so hooray for me. (I do the bathrooms! And all the Shabbat cooking.)

And then, suddenly, the parenting clouds clear, and the sun shines through

Miss M is reading Ramona the Pest to herself. I started to read this to her once, but the chapters are long and lacking logical places to take breaks. (We’re reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins as our chapter book at the moment.)

This evening I was in the kitchen, prepping the salmon for Shabbat, when she appeared at my elbow.

“Ema, GUESS WHAT?”
“What?”
“‘Grey Duck’ is just like “Duck, Duck, Goose’!”
“Um. [pause to remember context] Yes, you’re right, it is. It’s the same game.”
“They have different names but they’re similar comcepts. Right?”
[Wishing I did not have my hands full of raw salmon and breadcrumbs so I could blog immediately.]
“Yes, they’re similar concepts. C’mere, let me kiss you, Miss Smarty Pants.”

Why I yell, and why I don’t need to be tarred and feathered

So the New York Times will have you believe that I am a child abuser.

I’m not.

On some very terrible days sometimes I come frighteningly close to the line. I am so near the edge that I can visualize my hand reaching out to hit. Or in my head I am saying something horrific about my child’s persona.

I don’t do those things.

Instead what comes out of my mouth is disappointment in their behavior, my near-lunacy due to repeating the same instructions dozens of times to no avail, my attempt to cover up my inadequacies because clearly I must be doing something wrong. (Right?)

It’s loud, sometimes. I’m not proud of it. It isn’t usually effective. But damn it, I AM MAD. I am a person; I have a right to get mad! Mary Poppins is a work of fiction! (NB: Mary Poppins: not a parent.)

I hate it when people equate parenting to a regular job. It is not in the same universe as a regular job.

Of course yelling in the workplace is unacceptable, or should be. A salaried job has limited hours. Most jobs come with vacation days, sick days, and some kind of human resources department. Chances are you will be able to go to bathroom by yourself and find a few minutes’ break over the course of the day. Parenting? Maybe, maybe not; depends on the age of your kids, whether they have someplace else to be during the day, and if they’re willing to watch Sid the Science Kid at the exact moment you want to take a long bath shower have a cup of tea write a blog post in order to reconnect with the adults in your life, for sanity’s sake pee.

As an employee, if you feel taken advantage of, you have a recourse, a hierarchy of superiors to complain to, or, worse case, you quit. As an employer, you can reward or punish performance with money, the universal language of adulthood; in the worst case, you fire the employee who is not listening; not living up to expectations; is rude, demanding, or completely draining.

There is no quitting in parenting. There is no firing of your children. There are no holidays, no sick days, no protections. It is a CONSTANT (or it feels that way) barrage of demands, worries, second-guessing, and thinking from day one to the day your child leaves your house–and usually (if my parents and Taxman’s parents are typical) even beyond that. We’re not constantly on our parents’ minds, but we’re never far from their thoughts either, and now their grandchildren are added to the mix.

Parenthood is not for the faint of heart, as anyone who is a parent or has been a regular reader could tell you. It’s also not for saints. Parents are just people. They are on a crazy adventure that will last for the rest of their lives. Some days are fabulous. Some days are terrible. Most days contain bits of both.

I have never regretted parenthood for one second. But I don’t need reminders from the New York Times in order to feel guilty and inadequate; I more than cover that base myself.

My kids. Will be. Fine.

Puzzled

This morning Taxman dropped AM at gan; usually I do it. Because Taxman’s Hebrew is much better than mine, apparently he gets all the teachers’ important messages, whereas I get told bring more wipes. So here’s a great one: AM spends most of the day at gan off by himself, not playing with toys or with other kids. Unlike Miss M, who has been doing this her entire school career, he’s not occupied by some art project, but rather he just sits, unless he has a teacher at his elbow strongly encouraging him to do x or y.

“What am I supposed to do with this information?” I scream into my cellphone. “How am I supposed to fix this? I can’t go to gan with him!”

“They’re just telling us. They want us to encourage him to participate.”

“Oh, that will work. Because three-year-olds do exactly what they’re told.”

I don’t know what’s happening. He’s happy when I pick him up, though he usually says that he’s missed me. He doesn’t often tell me what they do in gan, but sometimes he volunteers some information. He knows the names of some of the other kids. Maybe the problem is one of the following:

• it’s a class of kids younger than he (I believe he is the oldest)
• only one other child speaks English, and the entire day is in Hebrew (he doesn’t seem miffed by this, but maybe it’s preventing him from engaging)
• he’s never been in school before this year
• his play skills are advanced for his age, due to trying to keep up with Miss M, but he’s used to taking direction instead of initiating due to the older sibling/younger sibling dynamic
• a lot of what he really enjoys doing is one-on-one kind of play (Memory, Go Fish, Crazy Eights), which is impossible in an environment where the child-to-staff ratio is 8 to 1.

Just something else to worry about. Super. Because I don’t do that enough.

Although I do have something to cross off the worry list. Apparently the teacher told Taxman that AM can’t do puzzles with interlocking pieces. (What does this even mean? He needs to be evaluated for OT?) We don’t even have any of these, because by the time Miss M was three she was far more interested in books and drawing.

So this afternoon after gan we stopped at a toy store and I dropped $9 on two puzzles featuring Dora and Diego,* one with 16 pieces and one with 25, worrying that the 25-piece one would be far too hard and he would be overwhelmed.

We ripped them open upon arriving home. And he puts the 16-piece one together in about three minutes. It took less than 10 minutes for him to do the 25-piece one. I AM OFFICIALLY NO LONGER WORRIED ABOUT THIS.

Can they do something useful and figure out if he’s right handed or left handed? Because he might need OT for that.

* I never let the kids watch Nickelodeon in the US, but here Go, Diego, Go is on the kids’ channel and has no commercial interruptions. It teaches about animals, has no bare midriffs (like Bratz) or rude, backtalking kids (like Arthur), and if it teaches them some Hebrew vocabulary? Super. Diego and his sister Alicia never fight. Excellent modeling. It’s on five days a week at 4:30. I tape it and let the kids watch while I’m making them dinner.

At the base of the Tower of Babel

I haven’t started to lose my English yet, which I understand happens temporarily as Hebrew starts to take over the neurons and synapses, but my 20 hours a week of Hebrew instruction has started to infiltrate my brain a bit.

Working in pairs to fill in the blanks with conjugated-on-the-spot vocabulary verbs, a daily occurrence, was driving my seatmate a little batty. “Kate, I can’t do this! How are you doing this?”*

“I’m an editor. I’m a grammar head. The patterns make sense to me. Hitpa’el is the easiest binyan to recognize because the taf remains all the time; mem in the present, heh in the past, the usual prefixes in the future.”

“I am never going to get this!” she wailed.

By this time our teacher had passed by and joined the conversation. “It’s not the same for everyone. What works for Kate might not work the same for you. She is an editor, and you’re a designer. You will learn differently. That’s why we talk about grammar but also read the Sha’ar Lamathil and also have people stand up and speak.”**

“You will figure it out,” I said. “The problem with ulpan is that I walk out of here with a false sense of confidence. Things make sense here. Dahlia [our instructor] speaks slowly, in ivrit kala [easy Hebrew], and mistakes get corrected right away. Then I get into the car and listen to the news and can’t understand anything.

“Although,” I mused, “now I can understand the traffic reports, mostly. When we first got here I only understood the weather.”

We laughed, because understanding the weather here isn’t terribly difficult once you know the words for “hot,” “temperatures will rise,” “clear,” and “partly cloudy.”

“Here’s how I know that it’s sinking in,” I said. “I know when things sound wrong.”

“What?”

I turned to our teacher. “I don’t know how you could do this, but if you spoke incorrectly, I think we’d all catch it. We might not be able to correct you, but we’d know something wasn’t right.” She agreed.

So. This is progress. When I speak incorrectly (to the kids’ teachers, to cashiers, at the post office), I know the second I’ve spoken that I’ve messed up. I cannot correct myself in time, and half the time I don’t know exactly where I’ve gone wrong, but the groundwork…it feels like it’s there. And I have four more months to build.

* Add South African accent.
**Add Hebrew accent.