Prince Edward Island, Canada

I am in love with the Anne of Green Gables books and I own the whole set. I read them over and over as a teen and we have the movies which are absolute perfection IMO. The movies are not short and just within the past month or so I decided to try watching them with Y to see if she liked them. She LOVED them and we spent quite a few hours (in segments) watching them together.

I am just a teeny bit obsessed with Prince Edward Island, Canada, which is where the fictitious heroine of these books was supposed to have lived. This obsession with the place is compounded by my love of doing genealogy research on both sides of my family and the knowledge that my ancestors on my Mom's side came over from Bradworthy, Devon, England and settled in PEI in 1833. Through doing this genealogy research I also discovered that we are very distantly related to Lucy Maud Montgomery, the authoress of the Anne of Green Gables books! So it all ties in together very nicely, doesn't it?

In the past I have done extensive genealogy research into my Mom's side of the family. I was assisted in this by a cousin who sent me the documentation that she had. I took what she sent me and carried on from there. I haven't touched my Mom's side of the family at all for about 13 years but lately I've been bored at work and just last week went online and re-visited a few of the genealogy sites that were so helpful back in 1999 when I was doing my research.

I was thrilled and awed to stumble upon this photograph last week that someone else had posted, of my great-great-grandfather's sister-in-law, Effa "Effie" MacArthur. What a treasure! Effie MacArthur married William Dyment whose brother, Moses, was my g-g-grandfather. (Funnily enough, my son's name is Effie - short for Efrayim!)

She was born in PEI in 1815 and died there in 1909. It was written about Effie: "This lady was quite blind and yet was very particular about her dress and the dress of her granddaughters. She would ask them to stand out before her, so that she might "see" as she explained it, whether or not they were properly dressed for Sunday School or church, and she knew every little cap and apron apart. She travelled to the United States to visit several different members of the family every summer and lived an active life and also a long one, passing away at 96 years of age. Her children were John, George, Harriet and Maria. Another daughter passed away quite young."

Blog Recommendation

For a nice, pictorial blog of average, everyday things in Israel go to Real Jerusalem Streets.

Museum

I've spoken and Skyped with DH a few times. Sounds like they're getting around and seeing things despite the cold. The one time I spoke at length to Y she was telling me about Shrek (the play) that DH took her to see. DH's cousin drove them around town and they saw Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square covered in icicles, the soldiers on horses (missed the changing of the guard), and they went to the Science Museum on Friday. Yesterday they went to the Natural History Museum and DH sent me this picture of Y:

Goals

I am very please with how many of the goals I set for myself to accomplish while DH and Y have been reached. Not all of them, but a fair bit.

I went to the bead shop and 2 projects are either completed or nearing completion.

I went to visit my friend, Jayme, in Ashkelon last night. We went out for dinner. She had her daughter with her and I had E. On the way down there we dropped T off at the boarding school she went to last year. She has stayed in touch with her friends there and goes to visit them occasionally. We picked her up on our way home.

I got the ironing done. (Feeling VERY virtuous about that!)

I'm NOT doing so well on getting more sleep. I feel like I need to use/enjoy every minute I have to myself and hate to waste it on sleep. So there have been a quite a few late nights and I'm beginning to feel it. Not good. Maybe tonight I'll get into bed with a book as soon as E goes down and just call it a night.

At some point last night E came into our room. I hauled him into bed with me and we both went back to sleep. Love it! I toyed with the idea of letting him sleep with me every night while DH is away but know I'd regret it and DH would have a COW if he came home and found that E had gotten used to that and we had to retrain him to sleep in his bed.

The weather the last 2 days or so has been milder but starting on Thursday the temps are due to take a nose dive and the mother of all storms is supposed to move in and carry on through the weekend - rain, wind, hail, freezing temps and even snow up north and in Jerusalem - it does happen but it's VERY rare!

If you're having a hard time visualizing Jerusalem covered with snow, here ya go! (Pics I found online taken 2008.)

Funnies

I had the nicest Shabbat with my "big one" and my "little one" yesterday. Everything just flowed on a much slower pace than when DH is around.

E didn't stop making me and T laugh. What a comedian!

Friday night I made a bed for him on the living room floor which is our Friday night ritual. He was bouncing around, not exactly cooperating with going to sleep, so T said to him sternly, "E, lay down or I'm not your friend any more." He dramatically put his face down on his arms and was doing this REALLY fake and loud BOO HOO!-ing. Then he picked up his head and with not a tear in sight said very solemnly, "Ani bocha." (Hebrew fem.: "I'm crying." The fact that he got his Hebrew tenses mixed up made it even funnier.)  Then he put his head back down and carried on BOO-HOO-ing loudly and dramatically with an occasional wail for "Abbbbbaaaaaa!" thrown in for good measure. T and I were trying to be disapproving of him not going to sleep but he kept cracking us up. He knew he was being funny too which made it funnier.

Next, he would stand beside the "bed" of cushions and then leap straight up in the air and come down on the cushions like a rag doll, arms and legs flailing. Then he'd pop up and look at us both with a huge smile and say, "Nachon machik?" (Heb.: "Right it's funny?" The word for "funny" in Hebrew is "matzchik" so he didn't quite get that right either which also made it funny.) We were trying so hard not to laugh and we kept telling him sternly "No, E, it's not 'machik'!" But then T and I would just burst out laughing.

We were eating lunch around 3:30 yesterday. E was standing in his booster chair while T shoveled couscous into his mouth. At this point he had a shirt and diaper on but no pants. T said, "E, do you have kaki (poop)?" He said, "No. See?" With this he turned around and stuck his behind out as far as he could in the direction of her nose. I'm still not sure whether he wanted her to smell his south end or do a visual check but either way it was funny.

Then around 4pm yesterday I put E in the bath for him to play for a while while I read and then I got him out and we played hide and seek in my bed under the covers with imaginary lions and snakes and elephants after us - he LOVES that game. He kept telling me he was going to kill the lions and elephants and he kept pretending to shoot them. I told him Ima doesn't like guns and killing and he should just go "Boo!" and scare them away so we did that for quite a while and took turns going "Boo!" to the lions and elephants. So that seemed like a satisfactory solution. Heehee. That game kept us both amused for a good 45 minutes.

Up Up and Away

I'm losing 2/5 of my family this evening. I mean, DH and Y are flying to the UK to visit family for nearly 2 weeks. I'm missing Y already and I'm only slightly jealous that I'm not going with them. Until I remember how cold it will be there and then the jealousy vanishes with a "poof!". Better them than me.

I keep reminding myself how nice it will be to have the car to myself, have the bed to myself and not be woken countless times by DH's snoring, to have my evenings foot loose and fancy free after E goes to bed (I wonder what time that will be and if he'll give me problems in that department?). The possibilities are endless!

I definitely hope to get to bed earlier rather than later and catch up on my sleep. I hope to read a lot. I hope to get the house more or less shipshape and, hopefully, without 2 family members around, maybe - just maybe - it will stay shipshape for longer? I hope to spend some time with T shopping for things that she needs for her room to make it look like a room and less like a storage shed. I hope to get some beading done. I hope to get caught up on the ironing.

Also, since DH won't be here to do it, I'll be leaving work earlier for these two weeks in order to pick E up from gan. It will also be a mini-vacation for me to get out of work just a tad earlier and have more of an afternoon/evening to go to my Mom's, go visit friends who aren't local, take E to the park if the weather permits, etc.

I'm usually good - really good - on my own but I'm feeling sort of.......lost......just thinking about them going. And the dark, gray weather outside matches my mood.

New Language

When you move to a new country of course you have to learn a new language. But imagine my surprise after moving to Israel to discover that dogs no longer said, "bow-wow" nor birds "cheep cheep". (Luckily, cats DO still say "meow", cows still say "moo" and pigs still say "oink" - whew!)

An American friend and I recently got to laughing about Israeli animal sounds. Here is a short list:

Israeli dogs say "hahv-hahv" or "how-how".
Israeli birds say "tzif-tzif".
Israeli ducks say "gah-gah".
Israeli pigeons say "gur-gur".
Israeli frogs say "kvah-kvah" (HUH?).
Israeli roosters say "koo-koo-ree-koo!". (When E attemps to say this it comes out "ree-koo-ree-koo" - lol.)
And an Israeli rider says to his horse "dee-oh, dee-oh" (rather than "giddy-up").

*******
I remember shortly after arriving in the country, I was living and studying Hebrew at the Immigrant Absorption Center in Kfar Saba. A few weeks after arriving I got a bladder infection and went to the medical clinic. I knew the word (barely) for "test" (Heb.: b'dikah) but didn't know the word for "bladder" so I told the nurse I needed a "peepee test". I'll never forget the peals of laughter from all the nurses and all the people in the waiting room - most of whom were new immigrants as well and whose Hebrew was probably not any better than mine. Needless to say someone told me the correct word for "bladder" (Heb.: sheten) and thanks to this experience it's a word I'll never forget.

It's times like this after moving to a new country where you've got to make a conscious decision just to lose your selfconsciousness, let whatever you're trying to say just fall out of your face and leave it up to your listener to work out what they think you mean. Otherwise you'll give yourself ulcers.