Twists and Turns

OK, I'm going to get a little deep here so hold on.  It has occurred to me in the last few weeks that our life has taken an interesting twist in more than one way.

Yes, we are living in the Holy Land, and that is awesome in and of itself.  Yes, we are living close to two of our three kids, and that is awesome too, although we miss kid #3 tremendously.

But there is something else that I've been trying to put my finger on.  Like most of our peers, as our kids got older and left home, and we moved into senior level positions at work, we got more "stuff."  We decided to get a little nicer car, some gadgets that we didn't have before - all in all, life was getting a little easier.  For six years we lived in a lovely condo on Park Heights Avenue that had a full time porter who'd help with packages, meet the plumber when there was a problem, and all in all make things very relaxed for us.  Things were starting to be a lot easier.  And after all, after all of those years of working, raising kids, etc., it was nice to be pampered a little, right?

Then our daughters made aliyah and we decided that was the next step for us as well.

With all of our planning and thinking (and boy was there a lot of it), you don't really "get" what it means to live here for real until you do it.  It's a slow learning process, and an interesting one.  But what it seems to come down to is that we are now living in a society, in a country, where things don't come easy.

Today's crisis kind of says it all. We were all excited about having electricity (no heat yet but hey you can't have everything) and we asked the construction worker who has helped us before if the gas is connected.  "Sure!" he said.  So we can call the oven installer, right?  "Sure!"

But I've earned a couple of smarts in the past month.  I decided to ask the worker's boss as well.  He came to my apartment and I asked him if we could have the oven installed.  The look on his face was priceless.  "No, of course not!" he said, "the gas is not turned on for the building!"  "So what should I do?" I ask.  "Ask Nochum," was the response.  Nochum is the site foreman who seems to be the go-to guy when someone does not know or want to answer your question.  So Nochum gives me a number to call to get the gas turned on.  Donny (son in law and TRUE construction foreman) calls the number, they take our address and his phone number and say they'll get back to us when they verify that the building exists. Yes, they really said that.

At the same time, the guys were supposed to show up today to install all of the plumbing fixtures.  ALL OF THEM.  End result - kitchen faucet installed, bathrooms still unworkable.  And we waited a week for this. 

So back to the theme of today's post - things here are not easy.  It's kind of like going back in your life to a much more complicated era but I have to say that while it can be frustrating, it's also energizing.  Maybe things were coming too easy back in Baltimore and it's a good experience for us to start working harder for every victory.

We're feeling pretty awesome when something works (I almost danced when my internet started working today on the first try), and less frustrated than we used to be a few weeks ago.

Guess we're growing up too. It makes life interesting.