The last few days my luck has been bad. Maybe Mercury in retrograde? I don't believe in astrology, and in fact I am not a believer at all, except for a stubborn belief that in the end for some reason it will be okay, but it is more a matter of survival than anything else. But right now, with the upsetting sequence of events I'm going through, even I'm starting to wonder.
It all started on Shavuot evening. I would have loved to have gone north for the holiday dinner in the morning, but my partner had a long rehearsal, so it was 15:00 P.M. when we left Tel Aviv. At six o'clock we arrived at the gas station on Route 6, with no future, no hope and no battery on our phone. The fancy blintzes I made the night before withered in the garage. The little one cried continuously from the Horshim interchange or from 2021 – I'm not sure which came first. I parked the car, opened the door and fell out, forgetting how to use my legs.
The station was packed with holiday-clad people waiting in line for parking to wait in line at the checkout in a balloon. The bathroom looked like after D-Day. We changed the little one's diaper on the hood like the Whitetrash we are, and followed the Israelites to Sea Cafe. We thought that if we waited a bit the cork would loosen. We were naïve. Someone wise put up a tent there (a real tent!) and went to sleep. The little one was wallowing in gravel.
My father called to ask where we were. I filtered it. My mother called. I filtered it. Adam told jokes (who calls the city "Shlomi"? it's like calling the city "Chezi"). I filtered my brother. I filtered my father. The big one finished YouTube, Adam ran out of water, so I drank from the bottle in the garage from 2012. I thought how much fun it would be if we came on foot.
• • •
I got back in the car (I'm married to Tel Aviv, they don't get a driver's license for the simple reason that they don't want to go anywhere). In line to leave the gas station, the children fell asleep, smeared with Bamba, and I finished the denial phase and moved on to the rage phase, because voila - I would have loved to take the train, but at 15:00 p.m. on holiday eve there are none. The ultra-Orthodox politicians probably prefer that I don't come to the holiday dinner at all.
Indeed, by the time we marked the harvest festival with a plough-harvest jam, the guests had already begun to disperse. When we arrived - the last of the uncles had already left, the floor was washed and the dishes were in the dishwasher. My sister-in-law hugged me and asked, "But why didn't you check Waze before you left?"
The next morning, while I was making coffee, that is, before I drank it, another relative came up to me, put her hand on my stomach and playfully asked if I was pregnant. Needless to say, I'm not pregnant, just a little fat in my stomach, because I was once pregnant and also because I like to eat toast. On the other hand, I don't like to be touched without permission and asked intrusive questions, so of course I murdered her. I mean, I smiled and said no.
• • •
Then I took the kids to the gymboree(!). I remind you that it was a holiday, and that I am still waiting to receive my battle badge in the mail. For those who are not familiar with the details, because he has no children or because he is the maniac parent who lets the other do it, this is a space full of other people's children, and if that's not enough - there is music (!) and game machines with colorful lights and more music (!) and stalls selling sugar and methamphetamine.
I fulfilled my debt to the company, and after two hours I managed to bribe them to put on their shoes and head toward the exit, promising to buy them something. Not educational, but effective.
It took the girl 20 minutes to select a small toy, in a process that included excitement, anger, crying, joy, apathy, and her cousin, who occasionally remarked that "it takes a long time." 6-year-olds are discerning creatures. Then it took him 25 minutes to pick a cat doll and we got to the checkout. I've seen the door, I've seen the light of day, the car, and me, in my mind's eye, making me iced coffee, sitting on the couch and watching videos on TikTok until my brain drips out of my ears.
But then, just then, and not all six previous times I ironed my credit that morning, I ran out of money.
In an unfortunate coincidence - look what it is - I lost my wallet two days before, so I paid with the phone. I couldn't spend money, or pull out another card. The children were shocked. We spent the trip back trying to process the trauma, but I'm not sure they'll ever recover from not getting a box of plastic fruit and a cat doll.
• • •
Over the next 48 hours, among other things: I banged the car on those low pillars of the sidewalk and broke the headlight, I forgot the children's chairs at a car wash, American tourists showed up at our house because my Airbnb for some reason was open without me noticing, I fought with Soundman at a concert in Netanya (I would have blackened him here in public, but I don't know his name, And "full of gel in my hair" isn't specific enough), and I broke my pinky in my leg when I got stuck in the bedroom door, and listen - it's unlikely how painful it is. I gave birth to people, I know. By the way, I'm pretty sure the pinky is broken, but I'd rather not know for sure and just in case keep not going to Pilates.
I sat down and did an account of all the people I had been nasty to lately (Kohelet Forum doesn't count), to figure out if it was a matter of karma. My partner hugged me and told me I was poor, that that's all a human being needs, basically. A good friend offered to burn all kinds of herbs for me, and it did make me a little hungry.
What can I tell you, friends - I don't like to complain, it's just that the newspaper pays me to do it.
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