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It’s Hard to Say Goodbye

I’ve always wondered what circumstances would have to occur to stop me from blogging. Obviously it was hard to imagine -- because I never thought I’d lose interest in documenting my life in this way.

In a way, I haven’t lost interest. I still love blogging. Even so, I’m kissing it goodbye. Sad, huh?

Well, the wheels were put in motion two months ago, when, as you know, someone stole photographs of my son and posted them on her blog, claiming that he was hers. After the initial shock, I laughed it off and decided to let it go -- and at first I did. Or at least I thought I did.

But as the weeks passed, the incident affected me more deeply. I found myself second-guessing everything I wrote, and every photograph I posted. Blogging, which had always come easily to me, suddenly became irritatingly onerous.

It’s too bad that I’ve allowed this one, insignificant person with a painfully bad blog to take all the fun out of my cherished hobby of five-plus years. Believe me, I’ve tried talking myself out of this (as have many wonderful people, including my husband, who is probably the only person more devastated than me), but the fact that this still feels like the right thing to do means just that: it’s the right thing to do!

I hope to come back to blogging sometime in the near future, perhaps once I’ve switched platforms and have greater control over who reads my blog, but until then -- I guess it’s goodbye.

If you’re one of my 400 regular readers and have never commented, I’d love if you left a note to let me know who you are.

Love to all of you! (Well, except for the one, insignificant person who started this mess. For you I wave one, long finger.) Hope to see you here again, soon.

Boys in Wadi Nisnas

Too Hot in April

It’s only April, but at 100 degrees, the weather is already about as hot as I can stand it. I just checked on the wee one in his crib, and poor thing is just lying in his own sweat. (It gives whole new meaning to “April showers.” So, what will May bring?)

PS22 Chorus

Am I the last to know about PS22 Chorus in NYC? I love these kids. I love their teacher.

I’ve been perusing the PS22 channel on YouTube, and their rendition of Tori Amos’ “Winter” actually made me cry.

I Want My WP

So, I’ve installed WordPress, but I can’t seem to get my Movable Type archives from here to there. If you’ve done this and can either A) help me, or B) offer advice, please let me know! Thanks.

Maryam and Navid’s Engagement Party

Evolution of the Brow

I just realized that my eyebrows can tell my life story!

“See that? That’s when I was young, carefree, and furry. I had no idea that looks even mattered.”

“Oh, that’s me at 15, insecure about my looks -- hence the plucking of the uni-brow.”

“And that’s me in college. I still didn’t care too much, plus I was tired from both working and studying full-time, which is why, even though there’s no uni-brow, I’m still furry.”

“That freshly polished look? That’s mid-college. A friend convinced me that I was old enough to start caring about the way I looked, so she tweezed my eyebrows for me. That’s the year boys starting calling.”

“Those sure are pointy! That was my stressful last year of university.”

“Wow, look at those. My eyebrows looked great. Must be the beginning of my professional years, when I took the time to tweeze my eyebrows every day.”

“Those are the most perfect eyebrows I’ve ever had. I was newly married, newly honeymooned -- life was amazing.”

“Back to furry! I was too tired from pregnancy to care.”

“Yipe, those brows look awful. They’re not only unmaintained, they’re not symmetrical at all. Must be when I became a mom and rushed through every tweeze in thirty seconds.”

Puzzle Cafe

My new favorite place to enjoy a smoothie.

No Cents

Israeli “cents,” called agarot, are treated like garbage here. Honestly, no one seems to want them. Like, if something comes up on the cash register as costing 39.80, the clerk will say, “Forty shekels.”

This drives my Inner Perfectionist crazy. I want to say, “It’s not FORTY, it’s THIRTY-NINE EIGHTY,” and hand over a handful of change, but any verbal or emotional recognition of cent pieces seems completely ludicrous to Israelis.

Of course, I admit that my desire to speak up isn’t as strong when the transaction is in my favor -- say if the price is 40.20 and the clerk only asks for 40 -- but there’s a part of me that begs for agarot justice. Don’t they deserve to be treated as well as the shekel? Or else why do they exist at all?

Kittens

They might be cute, but believe me, you don’t wanna get too close.

Scene from Saturday Market in Wadi Nisnas

Going to the street market in the Wadi has become one of our favorite weekend activities.

It Does Get Easier

Two good friends, both brand-new (newer than me!) to motherhood, have written separately to ask me if it gets any easier.

The answer is yes. It does.

Most of the moms I know agree that the first three months are the hardest, when you’re sleep-deprived and both you and baby are new to it all. In fact, if I may be completely candid for a moment, there were days when I wanted to give up my membership to the Stay-At-Home-Moms Club and go back to work, where I WAS CAPABLE OF DOING MY JOB.

Now I’m glad I didn’t.

Since we hit the three-month mark, every day is an improvement, and since we hit the FOUR-month mark, dang, not only is it getting easier, it’s getting way more fun. There are still ups and downs -- but with a significantly higher number of ups. This is such a cute age! Whereas before I was looking for an escape, now I don’t want to miss a thing.

Of course, it’s important to remember that all babies are different. The more mothers I talk to, the more I’m amazed to hear how different their babies are, different from each other and different from mine. So don’t expect your experience to be like mine, and don’t expect your baby to be like mine, but most of us agree that, eventually, we all get to experience a miraculous upgrade.

So, rest assured, you will too.

I NEED a Ginger Snap LÄRABAR! NOW!

I think their secret ingredient is crack.

Gilbo’a Mountain Drive

The first order of business, following our time at Bet She’an National Park, was to find lunch. If you can believe it, WE CAME UPON A BURGER KING. (Oh infernal Burger King, maker of the Original Chicken Sandwich, why do you entice me so?) I surrendered body, heart, and mind NOT ONLY to the O.C.S. (resistance is futile!) but also to an order of french fries (I know, your world is falling apart now) and oh my, it was shamefully gratifying.

With bellies full of greasy goodness we continued driving through the Gilbo’a Mountains, stopped at lookouts along the way, and even climbed an observation deck at Mt. Barkan to get a better view.

Bet She’an Landscape

See the mountains in the distance? I think that’s Jordan.

Bet She’an National Park

I was surprised to hear that the remains of an ancient Roman city are only a short car ride away in Bet She’an. So we went there on Saturday with John and Natascha, officially making it Kamyar’s first day trip.

Reflection

I’ve mentioned before that motherhood is hard, but I assume it’s hard in different ways for different people, and for some capable people it may not be hard at all.

One of the ways in which this new role is hard for me is that it forces me to confront my own inadequacies. Where’s the patience I thought I had? Where’s my inner strength? Holy moly, where’s my compassion and empathy? Eric would say that these inadequacies are magnified in my heart and mind because I’m tired today, and he’s probably right, but nevertheless it’s tough to look directly at a reflection of myself and see that it’s duller and dirtier than I’d ever noticed before, and that the elbow grease required to clean it up sounds like way more work than I’m up for.

However, to be fair, motherhood isn’t the first time I’ve faced these questions, albeit to a lesser degree. Every time I take on a new role -- when I started college, moved across the country, became a wife, and every time I start a new job -- I find myself entwined in a profound, but perhaps useless, questioning about my capacities. Fortunately, I usually let it go once I’ve settled into the role.

It’s like moving into a new apartment building -- at first the crooked mirror in the lobby might drive you crazy, and every time you glance at it, you wonder why no one has bothered straightening it out, because it’s so obviously crooked. But with each day that passes, you notice it less and less, until one day you can’t remember why it ever bothered you, because it’s really not that noticeable, after all.

Intellectually, I know that agonizing over how dirty or how crooked my mirror is will drive me crazy with grief, will impede my own growth as a person and as a mother, and won’t do any good for me or my family. Simple, routine maintenance is healthier, and in some cases, so is overlooking a smudge or two. And anyway, who says I have to clean it all in one go? It’s not like I’m getting paid for this maintenance. (At least not in dollars.)

The silliest part of this is that, when I truly think about it, my reflection isn’t always dull. There are moments when I sparkle and shine -- but those moments happen when I’m not looking so hard at myself.

How Green Was My Valley

Lite-Brite Vase

Haifa Zoo

Considering that its entrance is in a busy, fancy neighborhood, I never expected Haifa Zoo to be so grand in scale and to have such a wide variety of animals.

It’s kind of wacky, actually, being positioned where it is. For example, in the last photograph, there’s a tiger sleeping, and just behind his cage there’s a white building. See it? That’s a regular ol’ apartment building. Can you imagine waking up every morning and looking out your window to SEE A TIGER?

Oh, also -- I decided that baboons may be the strangest-looking animal, while fennec foxes may be the cutest.

And that turtles may be cute when they trudge along, but they are certainly NOT CUTE when they mate.

Zesty!

I’d been wanting to go to Zesty Grilled Sandwich ever since it opened, so yesterday we finally did. And oh, let me tell you! I ordered the chicken avocado on whole grain bread, and it had the perfect intermingling of flavors -- if I ever envisioned my ideal sandwich, that was it.

Lonely Planet Digital Downloads

You don’t have to buy an entire travel guide anymore -- you can Pick & Mix by buying individual chapters of your choice and downloading them in PDF. I like!

The Potato Eaters

In the summer of 1995 I fell in love with a painting by Vincent van Gogh called The Potato Eaters. It portrays a group of peasants taking a simple evening meal under the dim light of an oil lamp. I was fascinated by their faces -- sullen, wrinkled, and hardened by the work of a long day.

Since then, I sometimes find myself crossing paths with real-life potato eaters, solitary figures who might be walking down the street or sitting on a bench. Their faces -- sullen, wrinkled -- give them away. I delight in recognizing individuals as a member of this rarefied class, but alas, such experiences are infrequent; there may be months between sightings.

Last night was different, however. After finding a seat on a crowded bus, I looked around at my fellow riders. Potato eaters everywhere!

The man seated by the window in the gray coat -- potato eater!
The man across the aisle to my left with a cap -- potato eater!
The woman in the double seat before me -- potato eater!

I couldn’t believe it! Never has there been such a mass convergence of potato eaters! I glanced excitedly from one to the other, relishing in their faces -- sullen, wrinkled -- for nearly 20 minutes. It was glorious.

Rearranging

This blows! We’ve rearranged our furniture about ten times today, and we still don’t like it.

Arcaffé with John and Natascha

John and Natascha introduced us to Arcaffé, and now it’s one of my favorite cafés in Haifa. It may even be one of my favorite cafés in the world.

We went back with them last Saturday. As usual, Natascha and I are enjoying a tall glass of mango juice. Can you say yummo? Yep, I thought so.

Naw-Ruz, Fattoush, Jessica’s Visit

Naw-Ruz, which marks the new year for Bahá’ís, was last Friday. The weather was gorgeous, so we walked down to the German Templar Colony and had lunch at Fattoush, where we ordered a whole pitcher of lemonana just for the two of us (how indulgent).

Later in the afternoon we went to the Naw-Ruz celebration, where we bumped into Jessica (see below), an old friend from Chicago.

Note that my pretty fuchsia jacket is actually a sari blouse. I bought it from Shradha at her Indian Bonanza! and want to wear it every day since, probably because it’s the only non-maternity item of clothing I’ve bought in the last 15 months. And because it’s fuchsia.

I’m a Lucky Woman

Eric: I make homemade baba ghanoush, homemade pesto... You’re a lucky woman, you know.

Me: I know. I don’t take you for granted, sweetie. Every day I thank God for you.

Eric: What about thanking me?

Me: ...

Eric: ...

Me: Nah.