It's late afternoon on a Thursday, end of February. I've been doing a little cooking for Shabbat. Today was so beautiful, I actually hung my laundry outside to dry. It was sunny and in the 60's, with more to come for several days. I guess our oil heater broke at just the right time; it will take about ten days to get it fixed.

I went back to the doctor this afternoon. After a week of antibiotics, nose spray, cough medicine, and ear drops, my earache has gotten worse. I haven't been able to hear out of it for several days. It seems that the infection is now in my ears, so I'm back on (a different) antibiotic plus all the other stuff. The 11th was the first I realized I wasn't feeling well, and now it's February 28! It seems like everyone (both here and in chutz l'aretz) are sick with the same stuff. Enough is enough already!

I actually left the house for the first time in two weeks late Tuesday afternoon. Miryam and I hopped (perhaps stumbled would be a more apt description) onto the 5:05 bus into Yerushalayim and went to a taping of the Tuesday Nite Live in Jerusalem show. It was so enjoyable. First of all, I ran into two friends from Ramat Beit Shemesh that I hadn't seen in awhile. Also, my non-Jewish cleaning lady from St. Louis came to Israel at the beginning of the month to volunteer for six months at a humanitarian aid organization, and she was also there. Pam loves everything Jewish; she just believes in you-know-who.

The show itself was fabulous. The first half was dedicated to the people of Sderot (pronounced stay-rote). Sderot is a town down south within shooting distance from Gaza, and they've been under attack now for seven years. Qassam rockets fall daily there; the entire town (those who've stayed) are traumatized. When the siren sounds, they have no more than 15 seconds to get to a bomb shelter. Most of the schools and homes don't even have bomb shelters, so there isn't even a safe place to go. People can't sell their homes so most of them can't leave. Our government isn't doing anything to help them - private organizations and non-profits are the ones stepping up to bat. So the Palestinians can do anything they want, but Olmert is negotiating with them to give even MORE land back. They're shooting from the homes of the Jews who were ripped out of their homes over two years ago, and what has that accomplished? Certainly not peace! Now they can - and do - shoot at Israelis from a closer distance. And the government wants to give them part of our holy city of Jerusalem, and all of the west bank (where we are living, by the way). David and I read a very scary article saying that the government is contemplating just pulling the IDF out of the west bank and giving it to the Palestinians while leaving us all here for the terrorists. They (the government) intends to start a campaign to "show" that the Jews living across the green line are just a bunch of crazy religious nuts, so the world won't condemn them when the Palestinians start to murder us. They have no idea who lives here! We're just regular people living and working in our neighborhoods; there are tens of thousands of Jews that the government would rather leave to the terrorists than to have to protect us or pay us to move. There are very few (if any) "illegal outposts." Nearly all of these towns and cities and neighborhoods were all built with government approval. Sorry, I've gone off on a very long and passionate tangent. This blog was started as a light-hearted attempt to keep my family and friends posted about our lives here; it's sometimes hard to do that when the survival of our people and our land is at stake.

Anyway, the second half of Tuesday Night Live was also great. Rabbi David Aron of Isralight spoke. His message was interesting: G-d loves us. He said that most people think of that as a Christian concept and they think of the Jewish G-d as demanding and to be feared, but in reality Hashem really loves us and wants what's best for us. The show also had the musical guest Chaim Dovid and his band. I had never heard him before (and my plugged-up ear made it hard to hear him that night as well) and he was fantastic. He used to play with Shlomo Carlebach, and played a lot of his songs. After the show, he stayed and gave a short concert for whoever wanted to stay. Just so you know, all the Tuesday Nite Live shows can be watched at either http://www.landofisrael.com/ or http://www.israelnationalradio.com/. The Sderot prgram airs late tonight (Israel time) and the Rabbi Aron/Chaim Dovid show can be watched next Thursday night online.

Yesterday morning I had to go back into Yerushalayim for my Alexander Technique therapy; I've missed three appointments over the last couple weeks. It was such a beautiful day and I hadn't been out in so long that I walked from the Takanah Merkazit (central bus station) to my appointment at the very end of Jaffa. I have no idea how far that was. (Maybe two miles? Maybe less.) On the way back to the bus station I stopped at the Village Green, a vegetarian restaurant, and had a bowl of soup. Altogether I was gone about four hours, although when I got home Emma acted as if I'd been gone for a year!

It was so funny when I walked in the door - on our couch we have two comforters, five pillows and lots of sheets from our mahmad (sealed room) that have been cleaned and bleached. We're waiting for our landlord to paint the sealed room so the beds are up on end, and there's nowhere to put the linens. Emma has discovered that if she climbs to the top of this very soft pile, she can be high enough to look out the window and bask in the sunlight. Also, when I was in the kitchen making dinner, she had a perfect view to keep an eye on me (you know, in case something really good falls to the floor; sometimes she gets there so fast the food hasn't even landed yet!). I'll see if I can't post a picture of her on top of the heap.

Guess I'd better get some dinner together for the breadwinner of the family.