my day with Naomi

A trip to Jerusalem is always a good time though there are not excuses often enough to leave the galilean homefront and take a road trip. Not that a long Israeli road trip is much to write home about. The trip from the upper western galilee to the heart of the country is a mere 2.5 hour drive. Still it feels good to be on the road going places that I've already been (to quote Alvin). I had a good excuse to head on down to jlem (pronounced jay-lem, for those of you who have not read my old blogs) as my shtender had been staying in Ramat Bet Shemesh for about 6 months and I felt it was time for it to come home. Going on a road trip neccessitates a car, and my wife pretty much uses it every day unless I need it for something. Otherwise I take public transportation to work, which isn't bad because I spend 9 hours at my desk anyways, so its only the hour and a half before and after work when I would use the car.

At the same time that I was getting ready to go down old Route 2, the beach road, my daughter Naomi was told she would have to go have a hearing test done. I don't know exactly why she needed a hearing test done, she can hear plenty well. I know this because if I walk in the house and ask golda if she wants to go out that night, Naomi will inevitably ask me who is babysitting. Even if she is upstairs in her bedroom when I walk in and I whisper. She hears other things very well too, such as when Golda is on the phone or talking to one of her friends, Naomi can probably repeat the entire conversation. She's not so good at hearing when I ask her to be nice to her sister. The only (only?????) hearing tester in the region is in Haifa, so I decided to combine tasks, which makes sense logistically, and take Naomi to the doctor and continue onwards to Jlem.

So we set up Naomi's hearing test for 4PM on Thursday and Naomi came to work with me brigth and early that morning. What to do with a 6 year old at work? Thank God my office is child friendly. We have Satellite TV in the office for when kids come and a computer dedicated to children with games etc.. In fact it is the only computer in the office that has a Hebrew operating system on it, so the kids can understand. So we got to work and went immediately to buy burekas. After that I couldn't figure out how to turn on the TV so Naomi did homework until my secretary arrived. She turned on the TV and Naomi watched cartoons for an hour or so and then she came back to my office and did more homework. We had pizza for lunch, with olives but no onions (I had to draw the line somewhere) and then Naomi got to finish her homework and then play on the computer. It sounds like she had a lot of homework, but she was actually more interested in fooling around then doing her homework and I pretty much let her do what she wanted. I think she finished her 3 pages of homework during the 8 hours we were there.

The hearing test went fine, we only got a little lost looking for it. As I suspected her hearing was perfect and the doctor didn't understand why we came.

Onwards towards jlem. I had a lot of plans for our short visit there. We were going to go out for dinner with the central Israel family which included my brother sister and 2 sisterinlaws, no the 2nd sister has no connection to the 2nd sister-in-law, at KFC. Well we passed a sign which said that highway 20 was closed, and that is how I get to jlem. Bad news. There was a huge backup at the junction where highway 5 connects from the 2 to the 20, the 4 and the 6. I called a friend who said take the 6. I hate the 6. They charge to use it. And if you pay a day late they charge you 90 shekel. That's not like pesos. That's like $20. But he said it would save me 20 inutes so i did it anyways. I finally got to RBS and I picked up my 2nd sisterinlaw with the shtender and we headed down to kfc. When we got to kfc my sister called and said they'd be another hour. It was now 8:15. Naomi's bedtime is normally at 7 and she was waning. So I decided to bring the kfc to jlem and we ate at my brothers apartment. which was nice. but one of the things we wanted to do in jlem was go to the shuk and buy meat for shabbos because the meat in maalot is double the price or so.

By the time I got to the shuk it was 9:30 and people told me it would be open till 10 on thursday night, but it was mostly closed except for a baker and a store with candy. So we did without meat. Then we got lost trying to find our car. It's not like there's a shuk parking lot, so we parked somewhere in Nachlaot, and couldn't find the car until a chasidishe told us we parked right next to where he lived. So we followed him and found our car.

We got into the car at about 10:15 and had 3 more things to do in jlem before leaving. kotel, visit the pro gaza/anti disengagement tent city in front of the knesset, which I felt would be a worthwhile experience for my daughter, and visiting a friend.

Naomi said "Daddy I don't want to go to the kotel I am going to sleep and she was sleeping within a minute. I called my friend and we got together in a parking lot for 5 minutes. Then I picked up my sister who was plannng on coming back with me for shabbos.
I went into her apartment to use the bathroom before we left and heard her roommate talking to her mother on the speakerphone. I suppressed the desire to yell out "Jessica, I'll be back soon, don't go to sleep without me" and left.

We had a nice road trip back. It felt more like a road trip at midnight. We arrived in Maalot at about 1 AM. I then called and arranged the Mikey video. That was it. Good night.