Yesterday was sunny and bright, the exact opposite of what I felt.  This was like complete and utter hell.  I pulled the covers over my head praying that the sun would go away, and the weather would match my mood.  The last thing I wanted to hear was another frolicking friend or family member tell me; “go to the beach, it’ll do you good”.  I didn’t want to see sun, I wanted to remain in my room, with the sheets over my head, read Breaking Dawn, and pretend I was a vampire and not let the sides of mouth even slightly turn up.

But today!, today was a wonderful day, for it was raining cats and dogs.  And FINALLY some help from G-d.  The weather finally matched my recent mood, and what joy!  I couldn’t help but smile.   

Have you ever seen a movie that you didn’t like the first time around, and then happened to see it again and actually liked it?

That happened to me a few nights ago with Spanglish.  I saw it a few years ago and hated every minute of it.  But the other night I had a new take on it, and actually enjoyed sitting through the movie.  I especially identified with the character of Flor (the maid).  She struggles in a different world than she calls her own, and she can’t even express herself in the right language. 

I felt for her, for there have been times here where I’ve been flowing with my Hebrew, when something in me just snaps (or just an Israeli snaps at me) and I start cussing like a schizophrenic maniac in English. 

Anyways, the point is, some things deserve second chances*.  And sometimes years of maturity will give you some perspective.  For example: moving back to San Antonio.  Yes, I’m a little apprehensive about moving back to a “small” city.  However, I’m excited about it, hoping I’ll be looking at the city with fresh eyes. 

*And some things don’t. Like…

1.  Men.  If they were a jerk to you once, count on them being a jerk forever.

2. Bad Restaurants.  I never go back to restaurant that I received bad service and/or bad food.

3.  Cats.  I used to have one; she was the most unlovable creature.  It was like when you wanted to show her affection she didn’t want it, but the minute you turned your back on her… she wanted your love.

But there are many things I will give second chances to.  Friends for one, yes sometimes we wrong each other, however I know I’m not perfect, and I like to be given second chances.  Those “too small” jeans in your closet.  They definitely deserve second, third, fourth and fifth chances; because one day they WILL fit.  I also believe in giving second chances to yourself.  We all mess up.  Give yourself a little slack.  In the end we all deserve many chances.    

Lately I’ve been feeling a craving for home, which I consider to be San Antonio, Texas.   There’s nothing like the taco smell on a sunny day walking on the river in good ol’ San Antone.

These are a few things I've been feeling nostalgic over...

1.       High school. Ugh! I know, weren’t these the days where we were screaming to get out of our own bodies that we hated so much!   It’s not enough that I have to watch High School Musical and wish for my musical theater days.  I was walking in the park today and saw a bunch of high school students sitting around talking, flirting, and playing on their guitars jamming out.  Oh how I long for the days of sitting on the outdoor classroom doing the exact same thing!  And here’s a confession: I still have a thing for high school boys who play the guitar.

2.       Mexican Food.  Can I tell you how much I miss late nights at Los Palapos, and breakfast tacos at Blanco Café and Taco Cabana!?  And how about the Shrimp Diablo at Papasitos?!?!  A perfect piece of heaven, that consists of shrimp wrapped in bacon, and stuffed with a jalapeño and monterey jack cheese.

3.       The chocolate iced muffins at Broadway Daily Bread.

4.       Using Texan phrases like “I’m fixin’ to run some errands”, “Ya’ll”, using the word “coke” for every kind of soda, and saying all of these without getting weird looks of confusion. 

5.       The supermarket.  Where the aisles are huge, the choices are massive, where people actually bag your groceries with a smile and there aren’t any old women yelling at you.

6.       Private Transportation.  I’m sick of trains and buses that run late. 

7.       Country Music.

Yesterday I walked out of my house confidently dressed, ready for another day of work. Yet, once I got to Jerusalem I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror- I immediately made a double-take, I couldn’t believe the freak outfit I had put together. It was awful! Not only was there too much going on, but I had put a belt with an outfit that just didn’t need a belt, and a shirt that just shouldn’t have been tucked in.

It could be that my vision is skewed by Israel’s sense of fashion or that I’ve completely lost my mind. I hope that the wardrobe I bring back home won’t be completely ridiculous, because let’s face it; things can get a bit clingy and sluty here-yet being in this environment I’ve never second guessed it (that is until I took a good look at myself). 

Recently I have been thinking about the topic of LOVE. Oh yes…good sweet love. I love many things. I love chocolate, I love dirty martinis with extra olives, I love sex, I love shopping, I love expensive handbags, I love salsa dancing, but I have never ever loved a man. Sure, I love my father and my mother and a couple of my friends who have given me reasons to love them, but I have never fallen head over heels madly in love. Sure, I’ve been infatuated with many, many men over my short lifetime-but it’s never been that all encompassing, can’t live without you, sick to my stomach- love. Actually, more often than not, I feel like someone is putting a noose around my neck whenever I’m in a relationship. It feels like a death sentence with no parole. 

Only just a few days ago, a man companion of mine* told me that he hardly ever gets butterflies, and that he didn’t get them around me. At first, I was taken aback, and was very offended, but then I asked myself…”Do I get butterflies with him?” The answer was no. 

So I started dwelling on the past, as I usually do, to remember the last time it was that I had butterflies. Sure, I get butterflies all the time over things in my life, like future plans, vacations, and those sorts of things.  But over a man?! Hardly, and if I did get crazy bouncy butterflies that wouldn’t let me sleep at night, the relationship itself, self-destructed, because there was just too much energy in one compressed amount of time, that in turn made itself implode. What I’m saying is, the more intense, the more likely it won’t last. Look at Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, and Titanic’s Jack and Rose.

So I simply ask the question? Should we all look for that crazy sick to your stomach feeling when trying to find that special certain someone? Or should we settle? It’s not that NOT having those bouncy butterflies are bad, it makes us have more realistic expectations. We don’t HAVE to see that person every day. We can treat the relationship as any other friendship that takes time to build…but will the butterflies ever come? I mean isn’t it the butterflies that makes people do crazy spontaneous things that make life worth living? Or am I just too cynical to buy into that crap?

Realistic Realization of the day: It might exist, but it’s like believing in the tooth fairy…one day you’ll soon realize that the man you have butterflies for farts in bed, is cheap, and doesn’t know whether or not San Antonio is a city or a state…

*A guy I’ve been seeing

My most recent “man-companion” came over the other day and made me amazing Sexy Shakshuka. For those of you who have not had the privilege of tasting this truly Israeli dish, I recommend you try it. It’s basically eggs cooked in a hot and spicy tomato sauce with onions, peppers, chili and hot paprika. It’s served with fresh-hot bread, in which you dip the bread in the sauce and have your mouth water from all of its delicious goodness. The recipe can be found online, but you can also invite a cute Israeli Man to make it for you like I did-which hence adds the “sexiness”, for without the man part, it’s just Shakshuka.

He recently inspired me to make Shakshuka for myself, and although it did not come out as good as he made it, it surely reminded me of his spicy session in the kitchen and of course my childhood, when my mother made the non-spicy (non-sexy) version of it when I was a kid. 

Lately I’ve been feeling very out of touch with myself. I hardly self-check if I’m doing okay emotionally, and in result I’ve been living daily with a monotonous routine. I guess that’s a weakness in some writers, we tend to be so far removed from ourselves, that that’s what makes it so easy for us to put a story on a page. Rather than feeling the experience, we put the words in black and white calling it a day.

Today the day started out usual. (Besides the fact that I can’t move my neck.) However, you see, everything I do here is new. Especially, going to the Doctor. It’s hard not to miss my doctors from back home, where everything was catered towards you-of course being the fact that I had paid for that service. Here it’s public healthcare. So people wait in big rooms waiting for one general doctor. No one knows you by name; it’s just one big playground for sick people. 

I was waiting to get my blood tested. Sometimes in these crowded waiting rooms, some nice person will walk in, and ask the next person in line, if he or she can just “drop” something off for the nurse, and that it will “only take two minutes”. I usually let that person go ahead before me, and today I was feeling even more compelled to do so because the women who asked me was pregnant. However that caused a furious rage in the old man sitting next to me. He yelled at me in Hebrew, and all I could tell him back (in Hebrew of course) was: “It’s okay, patience, really it’s fine…PATIENCE!"   

As the pregnant women swiftly got her business done, and thanked me as she walked out, I sat down with this Russian Nurse. I bravely said that I’m ready for my blood test. She asked me where my Doctor’s note was. With a perplexed look on my face, she continued to ask for something I had no idea that I was supposed to bring.

My eyes welted up with water, and I was biting my tongue so hard that I wouldn’t cry to this poor Russian nurse. Then she asked me the question that ended it all, “You’re a new immigrant here, aren’t you?”

“WAAAAAAA!” I yelped, as the tears were strolling down my face, and my body literally convulsing into a small breakdown, I couldn’t stop bawling. 

The sweet nurse (sort of in shock) reached out her hand over the desk and told me it was going to be okay. That everything is hard in Israel, that people are mean here, that there is war here, and that she too was once a new immigrant. 

I guess you can never pick the perfect time to have a nervous breakdown, mine happened to be with someone who actually cared. I’m not sure what it was about either; I guess all the emotion of finding a job, and being here alone got to me.  In a week and a half, I will have been here for one year. 

I apprehensively picked up my tear filled-swollen face and walked out of the clinic, making sure I got a glance at the old man who had yelled at me earlier-hopefully making him feel guilty, even though he had nothing to do with my nervous breakdown with the nurse.

I have been feeling very unmotivated lately. Being unemployed is sort of a catch 22, because the free time is so vast, that it actually makes you lazier keeping you unemployed. So I’ve decided (in continuation of my procrastination) to research what are some things that can get me motivated.

These are some motivators that personally help me:

1.       Taking a shower: sure there are some days when taking a shower comes at best, second priority, but I always find when you shower in the morning, you literally can make your whole day fresher. 

2.       Writing To Do lists. But this sometimes poses a problem for me, for I truly am a list girl. Screw technology, no blackberries or iphones for me, I like simple scratch paper and pen. However sometimes I get so excited about writing the actual list, that I do nothing afterwards. The list sits on my computer desk as if that’s all I needed to do for that day. (Still, there is nothing like the rush of excitement when you check stuff off your list!)

Example:

1.       Write To Do List…CHECK!

      3. Listening to empowering music. Whether it is Leona Lewis or India Arie, I always feel more motivated to do something with that day when there’s a good beat on.

     4. Baking. Well this is definitely a personal motivator. I love to bake. There is something about mixing ingredients and like magic, an hour later you have a perfect confection. 

(I'm beginning to think that all these things I'm writing are actually procrastination techniques...)

According to some websites I found online on how to stay motivated I mostly found tips dealing with how to stay motivated for weight loss, but some of things can translate into my jobless life:

For instance:

Keep it simple. Whatever that means.

Set goals. (Which I have no idea what my goals are…)

Don’t try to be perfect-this is probably the most relevant to me, for I’m always trying to set some unrealistic goal for myself, and this always sets me up for failure, which in turn always makes me feel worse about myself.

Perhaps, maybe, the cavemen and women had it right all along. No language. No problems. No miscommunication. And certainly no bad pick up lines. Just pure, hungry sexual attraction. 

Attraction. That’s really what it all boils down to...right?

As I was watching yet another date (that thank gawd I wasn’t on), I saw the demise of what seemed to be a 1^st or 2^nd date, where the guy was certainly trying very hard, and the woman was…well…not interested. She looked bored. Her head nods were out of melodic habit, and her thoughts were obviously elsewhere.   I felt sorry for the gentleman. Not because he wasn’t going to have a happy ending to this catastrophic date; but simply because he had simply nothing to do with the fact that she didn’t like him.   There was obviously no attraction on her part or that funny thing called chemistry. 

The popular theory of current sexual psychology is Evolutionary Psychology. It’s an extremist idea that preaches love doesn’t exist; it’s just a simple lure to make us create babies. Derived from Darwinian thought, it says that everything involved with sex and this thing called “love” is simply the functional products of sexual selection-making the best looking and healthiest babies we can. For example, the waist to hip ratio-women are rated more attractive when the difference between their hips and waists are greater than the boyish figure girl next door. Basically proving that men love the hour glass figure. So Sir-Mix-a lot had it right all along, that when a girl walks in with a tiny little waist, and a round thing in your face you get sprung. But only because the bigger the hips, the more validity and promise they show for future offspring.

So what’s my point? That looks is all that matters? I mean, if we take a look at shows like the Bachelor, you will see that the pretty ones make it through, make it the farthest. Maybe it’s for the TV ratings, but day in and day out we are glued to our TV’s, not because of its content or that it’s making us into more educated people, but because watching pretty people is just fun. But then again, 99% of reality show couples don’t last. Sure, there are other factors involved of why pretty people can’t seem to make it work…so is that why so many of us Americans (and Israelis alike) resort to internet dating? We are looking for something more. For women that includes a higher than average mate value*. In addition to good looks  he must have a cushy bank account, sense of humor, spontaneity, but of course not too spontaneous because he must be reliable and stable as well, and the list may as well go on in that standard cliché manner.

We as a human species have evolved greatly.   No longer are we the cavemen and women out to hunt our food and our mates, we want it all. Chemistry, initial attraction, good sex, lots of money, successful partner with lots of money, and most of all that one true love. The romantic gushy moments of kissing in the rain, dramatic and long lasting affairs with happy endings in white dresses and tuxedoes. 

So what's my point? I have none, just think about it...

* Mate value: the things that make us worth more in this complicated dating game. 

Two men were raking the leaves that sat in the small park by my house. I did not approve, I sort of love the way the leaves litter the grass, and that when you walk across them they make a crunchy sound that just reminds you it’s fall. 

Crunching away my feet, thinking of how it should be fall in 80 degree weather, I met with a friend of mine for lunch. She happens to be one of those friends that being out of touch for a while won’t matter, for you’ll always be able to pick up where you left off. She’s the friend who’s honest, and bold. 

She revealed to me that before my horrid engagement to a man I never loved deteriorated, she had a long conversation with her now fiancée (also a close friend of mine). This was a period in my life where I closed myself off in order to sustain a fake version of relationship that was also a damaging worthless waste of time. My friend and her fiancée had discussed of how worried they were about me, how awful they thought my ex-boyfriend was, and how they just suspected I was under a spell, that I was either too naïve or too nice to see. It was only today, on a sunny day in Tel Aviv, she opened to me about her previous concerns…It was my unawareness that obstructed any true reaching out from a friend. If we look, and ask, true friends will be able to give you their honest opinion. But it’s also true friendship to let a friend make their mistakes, and then willingly accept them back without judgment.

The aftermath of some experiences in your life will give you true perspective. I never knew my mother cried grievingly when meeting my ex, or how my friends hated his smile and demeanor.   But these are the same people who’ve also supported me even when they didn’t agree, and held my hand as I was trying to build back my own self worth.

"A Friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson