Frodo's Guide to the Galaxy

Our Fodor's travel guide was quickly dubbed Frodo's Guide to the Galaxy by our smart aleck clever son, and "What does Frodo say?"  became the byword for all things.  And although Frodo was quite helpful in many areas, he could have prepared us a little more fully for our first trip to Carmel Market.



Carmel Market

I'm not sure what we could have done to stick out any more. I was carrying a huge, yellow camera bag, and we looked and acted like wide-eyed tourists just off the plane. Not that there is anything wrong with that, because that is exactly what we were, but still, it cuts down on bargaining power.

The Spice Vendor

We did all right in the first stand. They lured us in with racks and rows and rows of beautiful pastries. I think we probably took one of each. The cost was based on weight and it was a very respectable price of 12NIS (about 4$). At this point we were feeling pretty good; possibly also on a sugar high and a caffeine rush from our (first) coffee stop.


 The spice vendor spotted us right away.


"Come, come," she beckoned us, and we obediently came. Immediately she grabbed our hands and began pinching spices  into our palms for us to taste all the while using her limited English to tell us how amazing they were. Then her husband got into the action. He came over, with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and began a second round of spices into our hands. "This is good, this is good. Yes?" It was hard to keep from laughing a little bit as the back of my mind wandered to our sanitized Farmer's Markets with little tooth picks in the samples so no one touches any of the food, and everything is done with the utmost respect for cross contamination. Not only were they grabbing spices with their open hands, they were encouraging us to do so as well if we wanted to try something. We walked away with two large bags of something spice related.

Turkish Delight

I would like to preface the next story with a little disclaimer: we are hardly a family of cutthroat business people at any time. We are horrible at making money on a garage sale because we usually end up talking ourselves down, or giving things away for free if we think someone needs something.



After walking a bit more up the way, a squat old woman spotted me, came up and grabbed my arm. She dragged me outstretched to her stack of flat bread and shoved my hand into the middle of the pile. "See? Warm!" Her English was even more limited than the spice lady. The bread was indeed warm, and kind of spongy feeling. I thought that I should probably buy some since I had just touched it, and held up my hand for 2 pieces.  Instead, she grabbed a stack and shoved it into my hands saying "No, no, you take this many!" and then gleefully announced a price of 35NIS. We stood there slightly bewildered because we had just bought all those pastries for 12NIS, but Chris dutifully pulled the money out of his pocket and started to count. She looked at the pile of coins he was sorting, pronounced it to be good and then took the whole lot from his hand. Then she asked if he had any dollars! Uh, no. No dollars. I think she felt a little bad so she pulled out a pancake like thing and added it to my stack to even the score a bit. As we started to walk away, she began filling a bag with rolls and beckoning Aidan to "Come, come!". This time we turned and ran.


"Don't make eye contact; just look away." were my new instructions to the kids. We spent the rest of our trip laughing at ourselves about how culturally unprepared we were. But really, since the gulf between us was probably quite large, we didn't mind getting ripped off.  The bread was delicious, by the way.

Israel

Jaffa at sunset

Traveling is sort of like entering a dream. Or time traveling, where you open a book and it magically transports you to another place. But when you come home, everything is in its place the way you left it, even though you feel different somehow, like you've had adventures and are stepping out of a hazy dream. And you feel like things should have changed with you, to reflect where you have been, except the dishes are still in the dishwasher, the glass is there, where you last placed it, and everything acts as if no time has passed at all.

Stones on the beach

If you could enter a dream, Israel is not a bad place to start. It was the Sabbath when we arrived in Tel Aviv, at one in the morning, and we promptly went to sleep until sometime mid day. Then we started walking, because we were hungry and didn't want to pay the 55 dollars a person for Shabbat lunch at our hotel.

The call to prayer

We bought food at a open air café crowded with people. It took us a bit to understand the protocol. We were politely considering where the non existent line might be in the swarm of people so we could properly queue up, except others kept shoving in front of us waving their orders. Chris finally got down to business and elbowed his way to the counter to order our shawarma. A little word about shawarma. It's kind of like a burrito, but only in the way that a beaver is like a unicorn. They both have four legs I guess. First they stuff a pita with things like hummus, pickled onions and beets, cabbage, and tahini dressing. Then, they take meat that has been slowly cooking on a spit and thinly shave off pieces to stuff into the pita.  I wish I could properly describe exactly how wonderful it was, but imagine entering your happy place in a chariot of spices, and it was sort of like that.

Old Jaffa

The weather was gorgeous and the beach was crowded with families spending the day together. A lot of people spoke English which made our (frequent) requests for directions easier, but there was often still a lot lost in translation. (I was fairly certain that we were all promised one free avocado on our flight in, but somehow that never materialized.)

Old Jaffa

David Shamay Yemenite Jewelry

As the sun began to set, the Sabbath was over and twinkling lights began to light up the alley ways. The twisting streets led to unexpected light spilling onto pathways as shops began to reopen. the shop above was full of gorgeous jewelry made by a silversmith from Yemen. He was in a line of silversmiths that had been making jewelry for 8 generations.  The friendly saleswomen called us into the shop and chatted with us like we were old friends. Apparently there are only around 100 Jews left in Yemen. They are being severely persecuted but the government refuses to allow them to leave and Israel is trying to find a way to bring them home.


Aidan was asked today if there was anything about the trip that was a highlight and he responded that it was one continual highlight.  I would agree, but that first night in Jaffa was fairly magical.

Manneken Pis

Brussels has a weird obsession with their fountain of a naked baby urinating into the basin. His picture was everywhere, as a marketing ploy and in tourist souvenirs. He was projected holding beer, pizza, and ice cream. He was plastered on the Coca-Cola machine. I must not have been the intended target audience because I found it a little off putting. Who wants to buy pizza from a naked peeing baby? Kind of like that movie, Ratatouille, where you are supposed to sympathize with the rat that wants to be a chef, and all I could think about was how gross little rat feet in the kitchen would be. 

La Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium.

By the time that we arrived in Belgium for our ten hour layover, we had already been traveling for a while. We were bleary eyed from an overnight flight so our first stop was for Belgium waffles. It was super fun to have Belgium waffles in Belgium, but they actually weren't any better than sourdough waffles at home. Our second stop was for coffee and hot chocolate. Both were fantastic.

The Tin Tin store.

It was raining and cold. Chloe was carrying about six books in her backpack that weighed more than she did, but she never complained. I wanted to complain about how cold my feet were, but since the kids were being so brave, I kept it to myself, mostly anyway.

We have no problem acting like weird tourists.

We ate lunch in the top a building with wide windows overlooking the square below. We ate Belgium fries and ketchup. They came in huge paper cones topped with mayonnaise and ketchup. They were not amazing, but there was a heater by my seat that I snuggled with until my feet thawed out.

The view from the frites shop.

 La Grand Place

We basically walked in circles around the main central square ducking into all the souvenir and chocolate shops. (Did I mention all the huge chocolate creations of the Manneken Pis?!)

This is Phil, and he's going to church.

Chloe was on a mission to name every pigeon that she saw. It was rather time consuming because we saw a lot of pigeons, and after a while she forgot who was who and would have to rename them all.

I have a thing for locks. And keyholes. And alleys.

We went back to the airport earlier than we needed to. Four hours of cold feet and naked baby viewing was about all that we could take. We celebrated the end of our visit to Brussels by nearly missing our train because we were having trouble reading the signs. We made a mad dash and jump into the train while the whistle was blowing and doors were about to close. We gratefully sank into open seats-until the lady with the hat, and authority, kicked us out for mistakenly being in first class.

This is my favorite picture from Brussels. Phil comes in a close second.  

Aidan and I promptly fell asleep on the windowsill overlooking the airplanes while we waited for another overnight flight into Israel. We didn't realize that there were beautifully comfy couches just a few meters away. But at least we had bellies full of chocolate and fries, and warm feet at last.

Happy 13

I'm sitting by those magic carpet walkways in the airport while the kids ride them back and forth, in and out of eyeshot. Chris is pacing by the bathroom returning phone calls before he is out of cell phone range. I have everyone's bags piled around me like a bunker, guarding the nearby seats from anyone who wants to sit down. I meant to write earlier, but between the packing and general craziness of preparing to leave the country, I ran out of time.

We had a birthday in our family on the 10th, Aidan turned 13. We were inspired a while back by something we read in Bob Goff's book, Love Does, and also the desire to do something special as a  "rite of passage" for our kids' 13th birthdays. We decided to give them a trip somewhere they wanted to go. (Within reason, of course.) Which is why we are sitting here, waiting to board our planes to Israel.

I was just reminded that I'm using battery for the device that is going to fuel a Dr. Who marathon, so I need to get off. Stay close because hopefully soon, I will have lots of stories and pictures to share. We are flying by the seat of our pants a little bit. I picked up my passport yesterday, we still don't know where we are going to stay Sunday and Monday nights, but we are off on an adventure!

Mushroom and Birthdays

I shouldn't wait so long in between blog posts. When I finally sit down to update, I realize that there is so much I want to say, and then I end up trying to cram it all in, like shoving just one more thing into the trash bin and then it ends up falling all over the floor.


This Lenten season instead of giving up something, I'm going to spend the next 40ish days focusing on intentionally giving thanks in all things. No complaining allowed. Like this morning, for instance, instead of fussing about all the creative, weird things my growing-out-a-pixie-cut hair is doing, I'm going to be grateful that I have hair. And that it's growing, albeit very slowly. And weirdly-kind of like a mushroom top some days. But that's okay, because I like mushrooms (although not usually on my head). Since my parents were mushroom farmers, I guess it kind of fits anyway.

A few of my favorite things

Some things are easier to be abundantly grateful for, like birthdays, for example. And friends and family who celebrated with us this week to make Aidan and I feel extra specially loved.

Chloe started off birthday week by making the most amazing batch of gnocchi from scratch. Aidan topped it with a homemade pesto and Chris got in the action with a lemon butter sauce over sautéed mushrooms and spinach. I think I should resign from cooking altogether.

Spring is coming to Colorado, the robins are back and the sunny warm days are so filled with hope that I don't even mind when winter fights back for a day or two. 

Mr. Darcy

Mr. Darcy came home as a scrawny, two pound little kitten. He was stinky, on antibiotics, and full of worms. But he was spunky. The other kitten we were looking at was fluffy white with a black goatee, and very concerned with hygiene. While he sat grooming, Darcy was frantically chasing the mouse on a stick and finally catching it, he backed away with it in his mouth, growling like some sort of feral weirdo. (Which probably wasn't too far from the truth as the only info the humane society had was that his litter was found in a barn). We thought maybe he displayed enough spirit to 1) be a good mouser and 2) stand up to our German shepherd with an overly strong prey drive.

The first two days he cried non stop. Chloe and I carried him around in a sling during the day, and he slept on her head at night, as close to her breath as he could get. I tried to ignore him so that he would love someone else best.

Right away, he set about taming Roscoe and Ella (our border collie mix) while I tried to convince the dogs that he was not food. He should have been afraid of Roscoe (who had killed and eaten two previous bunnies, and chased off our other attempt at a cat) but he wasn't. Roscoe wasn't quite sure what to do with the scrawny thing darting under his legs, swiping his nose with a set of claws, and hanging off the ruff of his neck, biting viciously (although ineffectively). The vet said she rarely saw such a confident kitten and Darcy proved it when he caught his first mouse. He took his prize to a corner and threatened to kill and eat Roscoe too when he came to investigate. Roscoe cautiously backpedaled away to a safe distance from the high pitched snarling emitting from our sweet little kitty.

At 9 months, Mr. D jumped off the couch and broke his femur. The bone slipped off the connecting ball in his hip. We sat in the little consulting room as the vet told us our options were a 4k surgery or euthanasia. I knew there was no way we could spend that kind of money on a cat. And as it turns out, the little guy had decided that I was his person. Apparently, Chris was thinking-Aww shoot, we're going to have to put him down, then he looked at my face and -Aww shoot, I'm going to have to pay for surgery.


That night, Darcy dragged himself on three legs to my bed and tried to jump up as usual, falling back on his injured leg and crying. So I slept on the floor with him so he would stop trying. And he finally slept, with his head in my hand, close enough so he could feel my breath, and purred. In the morning, he tried crawling after Chris to follow him to the shower, because that's what they always did. And then I knew I couldn't put him down. Because the price of a life, even a cat's life, can't be measured in dollars.

 My 6 year old nephew tried to give us his Christmas money to pay for the surgery and he had his entire class at church praying for Mr. D because they were learning that God can do anything. My tenderhearted kids were distraught. There was a lot riding on this little barn cat.

So yeah, we did the surgery. And although, we found a much cheaper option at the CSU vet hospital, if you had ever told me that we would pay for surgery for a cat, I would have laughed out loud. The orthopedic surgeons were certain that he was injured because he was neutered by the humane society too early, so his growth plates didn't close the way they were designed to. That means there is a possibility that he will injure his other leg. Mr. Darcy is recovering well, almost back to his normal self. He's still a fighter, tearing around the house with hardly a limp, sassing the dogs, and jumping onto our bed at night again. Right now, we are grateful for our happy ending.


 

Winter Gold

I took an early walk this morning before I began my string of commitments. I have been mesmerized by the gorgeous winter light lately. It arrives pinkish golden and changes hues throughout the day. I love winter because she bares her soul for you to see the bones of everything around you. Imperfections and scars are plainly visible, made more beautiful because underneath the snow, you know there is so much living happening.

The Flatirons

I'm waiting for the day the owners of this little farm come knocking on my door because they want to sell it to me. And I will say yes.



On a side note, I (heroically, in retrospect) volunteered to chaperone a group of orchestra students during their lunch at the mall as a stop on their "goodwill tour". Which was kind of ironic since I'm not sure that letting large numbers of preteens giddy from skipping school loose in the mall did much spreading of goodwill. 

I was approached by a disgruntled employee at Dick's Sporting Goods asking me if I was in charge. He asked us to quite playing on the escalators and to not let my group go back upstairs. I'm not sure why he was so cranky. Aidan was simply encouraging patrons to buy various items by pointing out  selling points.  You would think that would be helpful.






The escalators, I could understand. So I smiled sweetly while frantically rewinding in my mind to see if he had seen my dash up the elevators the wrong way. (I'm sure that I should be ashamed of that behavior. But in my defense, they didn't think I could/would do it, and I was mostly trying to stay within arms reach of two certain individuals whose behavior I was concerned about. )

I'm going back for another round tomorrow. The orchestra has two days of playing at area elementary schools with a stop in the middle at the mall for lunch. I will have to make sure that we avoid the stores we went in today. I ran into another mom who was asking if I had seen members of her group, she wasn't sure where they went. They were probably riding the escalators...