It's raining passion fruit in our walkway and it's starting to become a hazzard. I literally duck and run when I walk from our front door and out the front gate. The delicious fruit have ripened in the hot, August Jerusalem sun and now it's just literally falling off the trees. We happen to really enjoy passion fruit, but for some reason I prefer not to use the ones that have fallen to the ground and opt for the nicely packaged version I get from our green grocer. I might just try one next time I find it on the floor - just to see if it's as sweet as some of the other versions. Either way, I'm just praying that one doesn't pelt me on the noggin or dent our car which we park in front of the apartment. We probably should move it away from the tree, now that I think about it, especially since our car wash experience yesterday was a nightmare.
Apparently, every car on Derech Beit Lechem decided to have a wash exactly around the time we wanted to wash ours. We waited for more than 30 minutes until they even moved our car through the machine. Normally, I would have just driven off and come back at a different time but we have literally been driving the shit mobile around town. We make the mistake of parking beneath our tree, which seems to be full of every single bird in Baka. And, as birds do, they've taken aim and shat all over our car. Plus, the tree sheds leaves and pine needles and lord knows what else, and so our car is just covered in junk. It was worth the wait though, and Pidgeon has learned his lesson and has decided to stop parking beneath the tree. We figured it's better if the interior is steaming hot than if the exterior has a steaming pile of shit on it.
Yesterday was a quiet but busy day. Since we slept all of Shabbos, we stayed up until 4:00 a.m. Saturday night/Sunday morning watching The Godfather on TV. I taped all three back to back episodes and we're spacing them out nicely. We started the second one yesterday but then got side tracked so we're hoping to finish watching everything tonight. Anyway, since we were up so late, we slept in on Sunday morning and didn't get our day going until well past Noon. It was nice and, since we only have a few months of doing that left, we're taking advantage of sleeping in while we still can!
So, Pidgeon and I are on a new diet. Pidgeon has been frustrated with his recent weight gain and, well, I'm just gaining loads of weight. I did some research and decided we should try the Suzanne Somers diet. I've been on it many times before; I lost 30 pounds on it before our wedding last year! And, since it's fairly simple to remember the rules and includes basically all the foods we like to eat, I thought it would be worth a shot. Pidgeon took a sample menu of the diet to his nutritionist on Friday and she green lighted the diet. We're doing a one-month experiment to see if Pidgeon loses any of his post-wedding weight. I'm just hoping to maintain my weight until the baby comes, but we'll see if I lose as well.
Well, it's a good thing I started a new diet, because we had our monthly OBGYN appointment yesterday and I gained 12 pounds in 1 MONTH!! That is an insane amount of weight to gain. Fortunately, my Dr. didn't give me crap about it. I think he would have been more forceful about it had my blood test results been bad. But, B"H, my sugar is very good and except for the anemia, everything else looked great. My blood pressure was also B"H okay, so I think he just let it go.
The good thing about my OBGYN is that he is always on time and is very efficient. We were in and out within 30 minutes. Because he's at the base of the David Citadel hotel, however, we still had to pay the parking ticket. But, apparently, if you're there for 30 minutes of less than it's free. We didn't know that so we stopped first to pay the 10 shekel and were told that we didn't have to. Happy, we got into the car and drove up and out. When we got to the gate, we put in the card, and it told us that we owed 10 shekel! Pidgeon called the guard over and he looked at the back of the card and told us that - in that second - we went over the 30 minutes and had to go back and pay the 10 shekel. Pidgeon looked at him like he was insane and explained that we tried to pay already but that it said we didn't have to. The guard was just really, really insistent and told us that we would have to reverse back down the windy driveway to the meter and pay. At first, Pidgeon started to do that, but then we realized just how insanely RIDICULOUS that was. Besides being an awful hazzard and a car accident waiting to happen, it was literally just a second past 30 minutes. Couldn't he just freaking let us go?
Well, we drove back up to the gate and Pidgeon started arguing with the guard. He was not letting us out without paying, but lo and behold he had the ability to take a credit card and swipe it in the card machine to let us out. So, we paid the 10 shekel and left fuming with the aggravation of it all.
This Country can be so freaking cheap some times. And, seconds apparently really do make a difference. Sheesh.
Today is a quiet one for us, which is nice. I'm doing yet another load of laundry and will probably start washing and putting away all the stuff that we Toyveled last week. I need to learn how to cook with stainless steel pots though. Yesterday, I managed to kill Pidgeon's bulls-eye egg breakfast. I thought the flame was low enough but I guess I was wrong. The bulls eyes ran all over and I ended up just giving him 2 egg white omelets with the yolks scrambled.
Sigh.
Well, I'm off to cook a vegetarian feast for our neighbors who had a baby a few weeks ago! I'm thinking vegan brownies will definitely perk them all up, especially since there's enough chocolate caffeine in them to jolt an army!
Yom Tov from Baka!
