7/27/06

A lot has been going on…. I don’t even know where to start.
My parents have gotten into this routine. My dad works in Tel Aviv, my mom in Haifa. Most nights my mom comes to Tel Aviv and they sleep at my grandma’s (who i’m sure is secretly delighted at all of the guests she’s getting). Some nights my dad sleeps in Haifa. Usualy the rockets fall early morning or in the afternoon, so at night when they’re there, I’m calm. In the morning my mom works in a sheltered room which is in the more southern part of Haifa, so I’m usually not scared about that either.
Last weekend they said they would stay in Haifa. That was different because it was during the day. I told them to come over for the weekend, that me and Nir would go to his parent’s house (near here). They were very nonchalant and said they would think about maybe coming to dinner on Saturday. Anyway, on Friday my dad calls me at noon, all upset "there were rockets! Everything’s okay now!". And i’m thinking okay, what’s new. … but then I realized my mom had been the only one in Haifa in the daytime so far. It was new for my dad. He said "I didn’t know where to stand, behind the glass window, in front of the glass window, by the time I made a decision it was all over". I think he was more distressed by the fact that he hadn’t been able to do anything, than by the danger itself. They were at the mall, so they went to the bomb shelter in the parking lot and in the evening came to Tel Aviv….. and when they were on the way, they heard on the radio that there was a suicide bomber somewhere in Tel Aviv, so they just stopped in the middle of the way and hung out in the car, with friends who were driving the same road but in the opposite direction. When the suicider was caught they finished the trip.
 It was kind of funny. After a day like that, all they could think about was work. I took the to this nice coffee shop and they discovered the wi-fi there. My mom took out the laptop ("have to show the americans that it’s business as usual"), my dad took our his palm. I said "at least if you’d told me i’d have brought a book". But no one heard me.
My mom says that productivity at Israel’s high tech companies has actually gone up. Everyone’s working from home. No lunches, no meeting, no one wants to watch Tv and there’s no where to go otu to in Haifa. Tel Aviv is still untoched.

Yesterday me and Nir were at our landlord and lady’s house. They have a 6 year old kid. At one point the father says "Rani, turn on the TV", and she took a while with it so he said "Never mind, don’t turn it on, we don’t want to know what’s going on outside". So she says "I know what’s going on outside" and then she lowered her voice and whispered "w-a-r"…. I wonder what’s going on in her head. Her life hasn’t changed much, but I guess she must feel something.

My mom was interviewed for TV talking on the phone to a Lebanese woman she doesn’t know. Just telling her how things are for a woman in Haifa, and the Lebanese told her how things are there. Things are pretty similar, of course. The piece was pretty moving. I hope I get a clip of it to show here. Basically they both want the same thing politically, too: that the Hizballa disappear. I don’t know if all of the Lebanese feel this way. Maybe just the ones that agree to be interviewed for Israeli TV.

On a completely different level, I had a "taumatic" experience yesterday. Spaghetti gave birth to a baby daughter a week ago. Her name is Emma. The labour took 14 hours but she seemd very happy right afterwards. On the second day I called her and she seemed a lot less happy. The breastfeeding wasn’t going as planned. She said "my breasts hurt so much…. i wish someone could cut them off me" (i know how that sounds to anyone who’s ever known someone with breast cancer… but that’s what she said).  Then she said "wait a long time before you have children… maybe 10 years". After that for a few days there was a message on her machine that she was fine but please not to come visit for a few days.
But she called and said to come over yeaterday, a week after the birth. When I came in she was happy, energetic, all like "what a sweet baby, we’re giving her her first bath now. I’m just showing off to you by doing this, it’s really MM (her husband) who does everything. Yeah, he takes care of her all the time". But after a while she told me that she had an infection in the stiches they gave her after the birth and in her urinary tract and that her breast still hurt like herll every time, and that she had had to go back to the hospital the day before because of a stich that sat wrong… and while we were talking it started to hurt her again, and between pangs she told me she was worried about MM, that he was doing everything, that he was stressed as hell and that the stress was making him sick (he had a mionor heart attack when he was 28, 5 years ago), and she started to cry, and I heard MM on the phone with someone from the family "yes, she’s alright, we’re back from the hospital, we’re pumping the breastmilk, the infection is OK", and he sounded so down. Tired. I cought him alone for a moment and he said "taking care of the baby is nothing. It’s all of the crap surronding it that uses up all our energy. When I left Spaghetti was lying on the couch, crying. It looked like she was giving birth again. She said "go away, this way you’ll never want to have kids"….
 

Ack. I know when you look around, what happened to them is the good thing. But…
 

It all blends together actually. How can you go through all that to have a kid, and then loose him to a bullet when he’s 19, or to a rocket when he’s 5…
 
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At work i’ve had my most hectic week yet. I’ve worked 18 hour days most days. 18 vey dense hours. Every day I say "this time i’m taking it easy", but the gods of news want differently. It’s not even because of the war. I cover a compltely different area, which happened to be hectic this week. Yesterday I got a tip about a fraud in a certain company. I tried to reach the person accused of fraud but I couldn’t reach him because the company had taken away his cell phone, so I called him at home. I spoke to what I thought was his wife, and she said he wasn’t home and asked who was and I said I was a reporteer and wanted to talk to him ASAP for an article we’re weiting about the company, and she says "My dad’s going to be in the papper?!". And I just wanted to die then and there. I can’t believe she’ll run to buy the paper today and see what we really wrote about her father…. i feel nauseous every time I think about it.
 

I want to end with a happy note. Giraffe and Carrot are planning me the most amazing bachelorette party ever. And Denise will come from Canda to be in the wedding. Nir and me had a nice evening yesterday together. And it’s the weekend. Finally.