Berlin - 4 months in

On Saturday we'd have been in Berlin for four months. London is starting to look like a lifetime ago, and I can't believe it's been only four months, and already four months. We have an apartment (with a garden no less) in the middle of the city, both kids are in school (well Yon had to go back to pre-school as they start school here at age 6 and not 5 like in the UK) and some days the sun is actually shining.

It was not an easy start, and looking back at it all now, I have no idea why I expected it to go differently. Moving to a new country is never easy, but something about moving to a country where you can't even claim to have basic knowledge of the language, right at the beginning of winter, with a husband who has a new job, and without knowing anyone, should have tipped me off that we are off to a rocky beginning. Well, it didn't, and no one was more surprised than me when things did not immediately fall into place. Things did fall though, straight on top of my head, and in the first two months here in Berlin nothing seemed to work.
More than that it seemed nothing will ever work properly again.
And I was too embarrassed about it to write. I had this picture in my mind of how things in Berlin are supposed to work, of how easy it is to move from one place in Europe to the next, of how much simpler it will be because we are actually citizens here, unlike in the UK where the Home Office likes to make you jump through enough hoops to make you into an Olympian athlete in bureaucracy (should most definitely be an Olympian sport).
I was wrong. So wrong.
Or maybe it's that I simply forgot how hard it is to build everything from scratch, how frustrating it is to not know anything, and how difficult it is to change everything. I guess it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone that Berlin is as different from London as it gets. It is part of why we wanted to move here - the adventure, the difference, the quiet. It's just that  there are hidden differences, the ones no one talks about, and those are the the ones that catch you by surprise. Those are the ones that makes you sit down holding your head in your hands and wonder quietly - How am I ever going to feel good here?

What people think when they hear about our country-hopping lifestyle is either "wow, you are so brave" or "wow, you are so stupid". I don't particularly think we are brave, but I didn't really like the whole "stupid" thing to be true, and yet that is exactly what it felt like in the last few months. Even now I am straggling with the words and the phrases. What might you think of me if I tell you how many tears I spilled, or how many hours of doubt I had, or how I haven't slept a full night in I don't know how long?
That is not what you are supposed to write about when you move to a new place. You are supposed to be all shiny and new, going on city-adventures, looking all rosy and positive. No one wants to hear or read about how hard it is to move to yet another "really cool" place.
After all, people have real problems.
And whining is really not a very attractive quality.
So I didn't write.
And things did not become any easier.
It just made me feel invisible, and not in the good way (there is a good way).

Baby steps. Chocolate (and pastries, and cakes - the food here is great) and a lot of "just breathe" moments. That is how I managed to survive. And here we are, four months later. Most of winter is behind us. Hidai got me (and him, and the kids) a long weekend in Copenhagen. No one has been sick for the past week. My To-Do List is just one page long (a massive accomplishment as I can now count on just one hand the number of things that are yet to be dealt with, as opposed to the 3 pages long list I had a month ago).
There might be a rainbow at the end of this tunnel after all.
So here I am, writing.
I am just not really sure what I am writing about.

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Thirty five

Last Tuesday I turned thirty five. It actually came as a bit of a surprise my birthday I have to admit. I mean, I knew it was coming, it is hard not to when you are sandwiched between two boys who count the days to their own, but I was so busy with the chaos that is our life right now to actually acknowledge that it really is my birthday. It is a weird time in our life right now, with lots of questions and waiting to get answers, and if there is one thing I am not good at (as in horribly horribly bad at) it is waiting. I am not good with sitting and waiting for time to pass, waiting for others to decide my fate, waiting for things to run their course. I get impatient, negative, annoying. And in the middle of all this, I was supposed to celebrate my "you are officially half way to 70" birthday. I know 35 isn't a significant number, but it is just that point were you are no longer "around 30" but "thirty something". Don't get me wrong, I am not looking to go backwards. I love getting older, I love being able to look around and see how young people are, well, stupid, and to have the ability to say that because I am old. I love everything I have achieved with age - I am now so much better at being me than I was when I was younger.
But sometimes I just wish I still had the one thing that young people have and I don't - ignorance. When you are young you have time, you have enough time for everything and the ability to believe that it will never run out. The older you get the more clearly you see the sand dripping down the hourglass.
The older you get the more every minute counts, every dream you wanted to achieve becomes a question of if and not when, the regrets starts looming bigger and bigger. This is my biggest fear, the fear of regrets. I don't have many, but the ones I do have are not things I will be able to change anymore, and I really don't want to add to the list.
So I've made a list. This was my gift to me this year - the list of things I would regret never doing, and the promise to make them all happen.

The first item on my list was to have more fun. These past few months have not been easy, actually they have been very depressing and everything that could go wrong did, and I have stopped living almost completely. I won't lie, things are not any better today, and I do feel guilty about having fun in the midst of all the problems and unknowns, but first of all there is less that can go wrong (after all, most has already happened) and as Hidai told me - we tried the no-fun way, it's not like it helps anything, so now it's time to take a deep breath and believe that it will all be for the best at the end. And have fun in the meantime.
And so, for my birthday week (it's because we do the celebration and gifts in the morning, so it has to be the weekend, and when your birthday is mid-week you get extra days) I got -
1. A gloriously sunny day and my first iced-coffee of the year (which I love even more than regular coffee, and which I only drank half of because it was too cold for me)

2. Lots of hugs and kisses (hey, I have two boys. One of which has announced that he is in training to become a teenager. I have to find special occasions and / or bribe them for kisses).

3. A day out in Oxford St. like Hidai and I used to do whenever we came to London as tourists. We went to all the shops I love, had coffee at our "usual" Pret, and bought my birthday gift - two pairs of earrings, which is my favourite kind of jewellery, and that I haven't bought since we've left Gibraltar.

4. Three days of stomach virus for Yon and myself. Ah, the fun never ends. But I did get to see all the TV I wanted and read three books because Hidai was in charge of everything.
5. A cake made by all my boys - Ron got over excited, Yon made a mess and Hidai suffered through, and they all made sure I will be there to supervise, but I got a heart-shaped-chocolate-cake that I did not make. I did try to suggest I might want a different cake this year, but that was too much for them to handle, so I just chose a different recipe for a chocolate cake and got the traditional one.

6. A card from each of them. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it is my favourite part, especially this year when Yon wrote one, and Ron went off-script and did not write the same thing as he does every year. And Hidai always writes the best cards and makes me cry every year.

7. A musical. That was the real gift I asked Hidai for. We haven't been to one in ages, and I really wanted to go out for a lovely evening with the whole dinner and a show thing. That was not in the cards unfortunately because... Well, I couldn't think of a good lie here, because we don't have a sitter. The kids don't do well with us going out at night, and so we just... Don't. So instead we decided to take the kids to see The Lion King, and do a Pret and Matinee thing. Since Yon went through a Lion King craze a few months ago (up until it was replaced by Frozen) we all know the 3 movies (yes, there are three Lion King movies) and songs by heart, and though I was a bit worried how he will do we all loved it.

8. Movie nights - we watched The Never Ending Story with the boys in an effort to educate them about the eighties and honestly just felt even older, Any Given Sunday (without the boys, though they didn't like it), because Hidai remembered a line from there and then we just had to watch it again (still a great movie, even if you don't like American Football), and The Internship which we somehow missed when it came out last year and is indeed a very funny movie.

This morning my Happy Birthday sign went down, and my week of celebration has officially ended. Life is still weird, confusing and needs a lot of waiting. But they are also full of love and fun and laughter. And in the end of the day, I have already accomplished my biggest wish of them all - I have my boys, who in each and every day makes me feel like a room without a roof.

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Freedom and hope

When I was a really young mum (and also very young) the one sentence I hated most (fine, fine, maybe not most, but it was definitely top five. I really had lots of issues then) was "enjoy every day, because time goes by so fast". Well, let me tell you the truth - it didn't. It moved, as time usually moves - in slow, agonisingly slow motion. Each hour dragging on for days, each day into months. I felt each and every moments of those early years, and I can't look back and say that enjoyment was what comes to mind as first thought. Like I said, I had issues. But when my tiny baby looked up at me and said - It's less than a month to my birthday, here is my wish-list. Do you need me to go over it with you? - I got what those well-meaning souls were talking about. My baby is nine in less than a month (and yes, I did need some explaining on the list). Two months after that my teeny tiny baby is five. And I have no idea where the time has gone.

My babies at the library

We have a long standing discussion with my parents about what the most important thing in life is, and for us it's always been time. You can't turn back the clock and you can't bring back even one minute you lost. Time, in many regards, is the one thing money can't buy. And lately it has been slipping through my fingers.

Life around here at the moment is not what you might call... Good. Actually it's rather rubbish. We are having some issues with Hidai's work, and with him being the only one actually in charge of putting money in the bank (I know it's a shocker but blogging really isn't the high paying job the rumours say it is) it has put a strain on the last couple of months. I did not react well. I like to think that people who don't know me very well think I am one of those composed and very much together people. One of those people who deal with every bump and disaster in a calm, collected and casual manner. I like to think that because in reality I am not one of those people at all. I am one of those have an anxiety attack, cry in the bathroom, and don't leave the house people. When the going get tough, and it's time for the tough to get going, I sit under a table with a box of chocolates. I know it's pathetic, and it is also why I haven't written in three weeks. I couldn't read or write or talk to anyone (I really am sorry, all the people I've ignored). I didn't bake or knit or even took photos. I wasn't on my computer other than to play Candy Crush. Things got so bad I didn't even manage to keep the laundry schedule. I couldn't tell you what was going on, because honestly I didn't think anyone would care. After all, I have already written about my anxiety attack once, and how much self-pity can anyone really stand? And if I am completely honest here, the main reason I didn't write is because I was, and still am, ashamed. I am so very very ashamed that I fell apart. I should have reacted better, I should have been stronger, I should have weathered the storm. I didn't, and still don't. But I figured after three weeks of not writing or communicating with anyone the only readers I have left are my parents, who already know all that so writing it makes no difference.

depression chocolate doesn't have to be bad chocolate

In order to write something coherent I have been sitting here for the last few hours trying to piece together the last couple of months, and all I get is a blur of Candy Crush, chocolate and tears. And it makes me angry, and even more ashamed. Because I've lost time. I've lost two months to oblivion and fear. I have lost holidays, birthdays, friends, time with the kids. I have let fear and anxiety and depression rule my life.

Hidai's birthday was shockingly bad

And I am more ashamed still, because I have no idea how to climb out of the black hole in which I find myself. I am not sure I am strong enough. And I feel small and sad and pathetic. I know it could be worse, I know that for a lot of people it is. I know the thought of the prospect of Hidai having no job for awhile shouldn't reduce me to this, and it makes me even more pathetic. So I decided to write, because no one will read anyway, and because to me it is a nightmare with one shoe dropping after the other and no breathing space, and because there are many shades of black, and this is mine.
Today is Passover Eve. Passover is one of the biggest holidays for Jewish people (and even has the movie - Prince of Egypt - to prove it). It is not one of my favourite holidays (the food isn't all that great with the whole "no flour" thing), but this year it makes me sad. It makes me sad and lonely that we are all alone, that I can't cook or bake (thanks to the fact that my hands are in a very bad shape. Because when it rains it pours), that I have lost another moment I shouldn't have.
Passover has a whole biblical story, as any serious holiday should, and obviously someone tried to kill the Jews, as in every single one of our holidays, and it is the one holiday where you really can't make the story child-friendly no matter how much you try (too many dead and abandoned kids in there). But it also has one of the most important messages, if not the most important, of all our holidays. Because Passover is all about escaping slavery. Of every type. For me, it's a slavery to my demons, to my fears and anxiety.
Passover is about freedom and hope. The two things I need more than anything right now, and the two things I just can't seem to reach.
We won't be having a proper Passover dinner this year, I could't bring myself to do that, both physically and mentally (think Christmas-meal size of dinner, than double it). But I figured baby steps are better than no steps, and bought some chocolate and wine.
So happy Passover everyone, here is to freedom and hope.
And to believing that miracles can really happen.

Picture from Here

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Just breathe

Today is the first day in more then two weeks that I feel I can write, that I actually want to write. And still I am not sure how to go about it, like somewhere along the way I've lost my words or maybe myself. In the last few weeks it has become clear that we are on the verge of change (just to clarify - not pregnant and not moving country) and it has caused what I realised last night to be a mild case of an anxiety attack. For me, anxiety doesn't wash over you in one big wave of cold sweat. It creeps up, slowly, until you feel like you are drowning, like there is no more room to breathe. I didn't even notice it at first because anxiety has become a constant part of daily life these past few years, but then I found myself sitting in my living room just looking at the clock and waiting for the bad news to reach me. In my mind I had no doubt that there are bad news coming my way, that it will happen any minute now. Though nothing really happened I could feel my heart beating faster, I could feel myself getting impatient, I could feel the certainty of my life crumbling before my eyes.

Some of it, I figured out yesterday, is because of the waiting. We are on the verge, and some of the changes will happen in the next few months, while others will need more time to develop but has been set in motion. We have been inching toward those changes for months now, and it has been slowly driving me mad. I don't do slow or waiting very well. I like retrospect and talking about things to death like the next person, but long processes are not really my thing. Waiting is even less, and our lives are going in the way of no more swift changes, no more finding a house in two weeks, no more moving a country in ten days. I have tried doing it gracefully, I have tried embracing the wait, I have tried pushing it to the back of my mind and ignoring it. None of my carefully executed strategies worked. So I did the only thing I could - I baked. I decided to make a cheesecake, because a baked cheesecake is a good lesson in patience - you have to buy the ingredients (because who amongst us really keep in the house about a kilo of Philadelphia?), then you have to prepare it and bake it for almost 2 hours, then cool it, ice it, and put in the fridge for about 7 hours. There are no shortcuts, no way to cheat the system, no way to steal a little piece straight from the oven. It turned out perfect, so maybe patience is a virtue after all.
Some of it was the distance from Denial-Land. I do miss Denial-land so much. The older I get, the more I come to understand the guy in the Matrix who just wanted to go back to not knowing. Sometimes I wish you could un-take the red pill. Most of the time we live our lives in the sense that "it won't happen to me" - I will not be in a car accident, my house won't be burgled, I won't lose my job, I won't wake up one morning and discover my son is half-blind. After enough of these things happen to you, you stop saying "it won't happen to me", you just go with "I wonder which of these will happen next". Sure, you have to get back on the horse and all that, but how can you really stop being afraid you'd fall again?
Some of it was fear. Not the good kind of fear, the one that keeps you alive and unharmed, but the crippling kind of fear that paralyses you and stops you from moving forward. It's the fear of repeating the same past mistakes, it's the fear of the future, it's the fear of everything disappearing in front of your eyes.

I hate the word anxiety, it makes it sound frivolous or silly somehow. It makes me think of fragile victorian women who needed smelling salts. Somehow the word makes it to be something that you should have overcame by yourself, something weak people or childish people or over-dramatic people suffer from.
It might be true, God knows I told myself all these things on many sleepless night, when I couldn't see how morning will ever come. For me, anxiety gets worse in the night. Somehow, deep into the wee hours of the night when the house is eerily quiet, after the fifth time I checked the house is locked and the kids are breathing, that is when I can't control it anymore, when I can't tell myself that it really will be ok, that the voices in my head are just irrational fears that have no relation to my real life.

Anxiety takes everything that is bad, or hard, or uncertain and makes it ten thousand time worse, and when life keeps putting more and more hurdles in front of you it makes it harder to be able to distinguish between real-life problems to tackle and irrational fears. In the last couple of weeks everywhere I looked something was broken and needed me to fix it, or it was stuck and needed me to wait, or it was just soul-suckingily hard. Kids were sick, DLA and forms needed to be filled, money issues reared their ugly head, Ron had trouble in school, jobs were delayed, houses around here were expensive rubbish...
I felt like I was drowning. All I could do was keep my head above water and try to breathe. But I couldn't write, or smile, or see a way out. I lost my way and my blog. All I did for two weeks was played Candy Crush, knitted animals and baked.
Last night I told Hidai all of my fears. I just sat there and told him about the noise, and the anxiety, and the deep dark fears. I let him see inside the darkness of my mind. Hidai gave me hope, my little ray of sunshine and reality. He gave me, like always, his ear and his shoulder and way more love and understanding than I deserve.
And he helped me start to find my way back.

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Week 3 - defeating the app

Diets make you into a liar. Have you ever noticed this or is it just me? Maybe a lier is too strong a word, but for sure they turn you into a conniving person. I mean, I like to think of myself as a generally honest and law abiding person, and though it is true that I might evade a question or go with "refraining from telling is not the same as lying", or "white lies are to make people feel better, so it's not technically lying" I would never lie to a direct question. And here I was this week trying to lie to an app. An iPhone app has turned me into a lier. The Weight Watchers have bested me. How? With one MilkyWay.
Yes, all it took was one MilkyWay for me to lose any shred of self respect and self esteem I still possessed, and turn me into an obsessed backbone-less creature who only had one thought in its tiny brain - Need chocolate. Now. What's the problem? you are probably wondering, like any sane person would. Well, a fun size MilkyWay weighs 17 grams. I had a full size one, that weighs 22. A fun size one is 2 points, while a full size one is 3 points. And all I was willing to give that MilkyWay were 2 points. This is when I learned the important rule of WeightWatcher -a point is a point, but it has a range of weights. Because apparently while it is true that a fun size one is 2 points, it is still 2 points all the way to 21g. And mine weighed 22g. Yes, I stood there with a knife and a scale, and cut off 1g of MilkyWay, and yes I did feel as stupid as it sounds. Do you know how big 1g of MilkyWay is? it's a crumb. It's like a tiny breadcrumb. And you know what is even sadder than a grown woman cutting off deliberately a breadcrumb size MilkyWay? The fact that I don't even like MilkyWay.

So you know what is the first rule of WeightWatcher? Tricking the app. It's like a game of cat and mouse. Or actually a contest to see who can annoy the other more. One piece of bread is 1 point. 2 pieces are 3 points. The app won. But if you want those two pieces and don't want to "pay" more points for spreading them, use 3g of butter on the first, and 3 of soft cheese on the other - 0 points. You win.
Want more than one biscuit to go with your afternoon coffee? Just eat two different ones. why? Because biscuits (WeightWatchers one) are 2 points each. But, if you eat 2 of the same kind, it's 5 points and not 4. So you just eat 2 different ones, and viola! 4 points. Take that app!
Yes, diets make you into a liar, and also somewhat of a crazy person. It's the embracing the crazy that's important.
Maybe that should be the first rule of any diet - embrace the crazy. Diets, after all are filled with ups and down, lows and highs, good days and bad days. I tell you what it is not filled with - easy days. In no day do you go around saying, hey! I did not notice that I ate meals the size of a pea, or that I just finished my fourth day in a row of exercising, or that I am so filled with fruits I am starting to resemble a pineapple. You would think that week 3 would be easier for me, after all I've finished the "cleanse" stage, I've established the exercise, I have discovered how to beat the app at its own game. But the truth is it has been the toughest week yet.
And not even because of the diet. It's the post. I am not a friend of my mailbox on the best of times, it glares at me every time I leave the house and I feel compelled to check what's inside every time I pass it. Every single time. It means on the way out and on the way back in. I check my mailbox about 8 times a day. In return it has never brought me anything but grief. Actually, that is not completely true, I got one birthday card and one Christmas card last year. This week however it brought me 10 letters about Yon. 10 letters with appointments, groups, benefits, referrals, advice... Every day there were 2 new letters. 2 new disability related problems to deal with. 2 new pieces of paper I have no idea what to do with.  When you have a Special child you get used to the doctors, the appointments, the endless need to keep one eye open. But because Yon's condition is static, because we are doing everything through the school and the hospital and apparently because our case "got lost somewhere" we don't usually get too many letters, and we never get any letters we don't know about in advance and are prepared for. And even then I have to admit I don't react well. 10 letters I wasn't expecting, one phone call and a chat in school amounts to the kind of pressure that usually can only be solved in one way - food. Oh, who am I kidding. Chocolate.
Trying to solve this letter crisis without resorting to food led to no sleep which contributed to general annoyance and bitchiness.
So on Tuesday, after the fifth letter came in the post, telling me to expect a phone call from someone at the council regarding our benefits entitlement (I had no idea we had any benefit entitlement. I still don't think we have any), I felt I can't take it anymore.
I ordered a pizza. A large vegetarian Papa John's pizza. Just for me.
This week I ate 3 MilkyWays, half a jar of Dulce de Leche and a whole pizza.
So I did the only thing possible. I got a haircut, because what does it matter where the weight comes off from? But as it turns out, hair doesn't weigh very much, even after you've neglected it for about 4 months. Not even a hundred grams.

So I employed a personal keeper. You know how people with eating issues never eat in public? Well, that's me. If there is someone around I am the model of good eating habits, but leave me in the house alone? That is where my true colours are revealed. But I have a secret weapon - Ron. He likes numbers, and patterns, and calculations, and feeling like he is in charge. And every day from the moment I pick him up from school, he's been checking me - how many points is that? and this? How many do you have left? why aren't you eating this? why are you eating that?

Darn that need to communicate with my children and looking at everything as a teachable moment for life.
This week's diet lesson - must learn how to lie to kids.

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Week 2 in hell

I've made it. For the first time in my whole life I haven't had any chocolate at all for 14 days. It has been my goal so many times in the past and I've never made it past the 10 days mark, but this time I've made it to 14 whole days. I want to celebrate. Somebody has a piece of chocolate cake?
To mark the occasion I have decided to tell you how my week has been, because - why should Hidai be the only one to suffer? I have made it to 14 days of no chocolate, and somewhere around day 9 have lost the will to live. All happiness has deserted me, together with all energy and instead a dark cloud made entirely out of grapes has descended over the whole house.
14 days of Weight Watchers have made me realise that life really is cruel, that the beauty standards in our society are so wrong and unrealistic, that I am old and married and shouldn't have to work so hard at looking young and pretty, and that if I want to fit in my trousers without having to do some extreme acrobatics while the mirror is smirking away at me, I still need 3 more weeks of grapes.

So I broke down. I ate 100 grams of Curiously Cinnamon only to realise one minute later that they amount to half (yes, half) of my daily eating points. The hard boiled egg and salad I ate for dinner that day (because they were worth exactly the last 2 points I had left) taught me something valuable though, so it was all worth it. They taught me something every Weight Watcher group leader will tell you the first time you visit, to stop at 50 grams.
You know how it is, it's the little things like this that help you succeed in a diet. Like writing every little thing you eat. Or putting the scales in the bathroom and weighing yourself every time you go to the loo. Or banishing every baking-related newsletter and blog to the automatic archive. Or delegating food shopping to others. Or throwing away everything chocolate or taste related, and still keep a tiny emergency stash of chocolate-chips (that way, if you are willing to eat them you'll know it's a true emergency). Or playing Candy Crush on your phone while everyone else is eating happily away.
I might have done all of the above this week.
But I have not touched the baking chocolate (or the chocolate chips).

This week was actually about adding the exercise to the menu, because it's not enough to just not eat, you have to take out your frustration and lose what little energy you have left to a sadistic DVD instructor who keep saying things like "keep smiling" or "if it doesn't feel good don't do it" and "remember your body can do more than you think, just let it". So I have invented a mental game, like a drinking game but for exercise - every time Dalia (that is the DVD demon's name) says one of those sentences I wish her something nice and full of love in return. If you can actually say it out loud and not just mentally wish her a room full of cakes and mirrors then it means you are in better shape! This week I have done two Pilates training session, and I am glad and proud to say that I am still alive. Dalia, bless her, is also still alive and the DVD has yet to be thrown out the window even after she advised to do that 4 times a week and keep smiling while we try and bend from the stomach without moving our pelvis and keep one hand stretched behind our ears.
And that is the exercise I like! Because the other one is running. I hate running. Hidai loves it, and is much better at it than me (and here he will tell you how he started running training when he was 16 while I ditched PE lessons since I was 12). Now it's not that I'm competitive much, it's just that I can't stand that someone is better than me at something. And with running, I really am quite bad at it. It doesn't matter how much time I've been doing it, I just don't have good running habits, you know like breathing so you won't fain in the middle.

It doesn't help that since I have been pointedly avoiding my treadmill for a year and a half I have lost every shred of physical ability I have ever had. So I had to start over from "running for beginners", which means intervals of 5 minutes walk 4 minutes run for 30 minutes, which I survive thanks to three things - drinking lots of water (about a litre of water during this time), listening very loudly to my carefully chosen training music which has only angry songs in it while trying to shout them out loud at the TV, and watching football. I know, you weren't expecting that one, but I discovered that if you have other people running and suffering in front of you it makes it so much easier. And footballers, they always run and rarely look happy about it. The perfect companion. I don't really care who is playing as long as it's there, so this week I made Ron play his FIFA on the xBox while I was running. Hey, fake footballers run too.
At this point. after 2 running session, I still have to stand on the treadmill for five minutes so my legs won't buckle from under me.
And then I go to take a shower and realised I gained a kilo.
So the conclusion from this week is that running makes you fat.

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Flying Cakes

Diets are a cruel, cruel thing. I had a different post planned for today but the thing is, I can't seem to think about anything else beside chocolate. Or cakes. Or chocolate cakes. I can see them in front of my eyes, like Frodo on the last leg of his quest, I can see nothing but the cake. I sit here typing this and all I can see instead of letters on my keyboard are tiny pieces of chocolate. My computer screen is a sea of vanilla and chocolate flakes, and the iPhone next to it is in fact a giant cookie. I am loosing my mind, and there is nothing I can do about it because, like I tell Ron - you did the crime, you do the time. And boy did I do the crime...

Today is day 7 of "establishing healthier eating habits" or as I like to call it "living in hell", so it means it's been 7 days since I last ate anything not resembling a vegetable, and just so you know, fruits are not a substitute for cake. Not all sugar was born equal.
7 days ago I have reached the point of no return. I finished Christmas and stepped on the scales, to discover what I already knew from looking in the mirror (and trying to put my trousers on) - there is nowhere to run (except on the treadmill), I can't close my eyes and pretend the mirror is fattening, and no matter how many times I step on and off the scales it will still be there - my shame.
Yes, it's my shame. Because this is what I swore will not happen to me - I will not be one of those people who lost a lot of weight and looked great and then gained it all back plus some. And here I am well on my way to be the biggest cliche in town.
And so, though I told Hidai I refuse to call it a new year resolution, I emptied the fridge and all the cupboards of anything that falls under the category of "tasty" and filled it instead with enough fruits, vegetables and Weight Watchers products to open a tiny pick-your-own farm. I have chosen to go down the safe route of Weight Watchers again, because I know it works and because I already have the app (ok. More because I already have the app). Being an antisocial prima donna that never does anything the way it should be done, I of course don't do the whole meetings thing, I don't belong to any local or online group. It's just me and the app, and occasionally when I feel extremely miserable (about once every couple of hours) - Hidai, who has to suffer also, because why should I be the only one? and can eat no chocolate or sweets or Muller corners.

The first time I went on a real "changing your lifestyle" diet I was worried about the boys. No, I wasn't worried I would think they are cakes - I am a vegetarian after all, I was worried about how to explain dieting without ruining the fact that they are oblivious to body image, have good eating habits and get enough exercise and without needing to resort to using the great answer to everything - "it's a girl thing". I ended selling the whole "changing to a healthier lifestyle" that includes eating everything in moderation, reaching a good BMI, and exercising. This time around all they cared about was the salad. Ron, because for some reason he decided that the making of the salad is fun, and Yon because it's his mortal enemy and he would rather eat rocks than salad.
The thing is, Weight Watchers is all about the salad. At the end of the day it's not a bad system, it's just that it has one BIG problem - portion size. You know how when you have a baby and you start weaning it, they tell you that you should take an ice-cube tray and fill it with baby food and each cube is a portion? Weight Watchers portions are exactly the same size. I mean what sane person can feel satisfied after eating 100 grams of pasta for lunch? It doesn't matter if you are hungry or not. It's that if you are sitting to eat with other people, by the time everyone else finished piling their plates you're already clearing yours off the table. It's unsatisfying. That is why they have vegetables - because you can eat as many of those as you like (well not including potatoes and chocolate of course. But a big yes for cucumbers and lettuce), and here is where that salad comes in. It takes a long time to eat a gigantic bowl of salad (no dressing. No olive oil. No croutons.) and you get to feel like you ate a real meal and you are actually a grown person. After all, in order to make 100 grams of pasta look presentable you have to put it in the kids plates.

And that isn't the worst part of it. It's the snacking that really gets to me. My problem (with food. Not my only one) is that I have the worse eating habits in the world (and as my physiotherapist added, also not good with the whole using my muscles correctly. So worst at using a body apparently). I am what you can fondly call a snacker, or less fondly - a person who never stops eating. Unless I'm in public. I don't eat in public. At home, and especially when I'm alone, I eat all day long. Every two hours I have to have something to eat. Now I don't eat a lot, but I only eat unhealthy things. That is unless they changed the rules and made biscuits the new fruits. It's not like Weight Watchers say you can't snack, I hear you whispering in the corner. Of course not, they have a "anytime" category after all. But when you only get 26 points for a whole day, and that 100 grams of pasta was 5 (before sauce. Did I mention that?), it doesn't leave a lot for snacking. Again, this is were fruits come in. And I can't stress this enough - it sucks. A banana is not a substitute for a biscuit. Lets put it this way - a lemon is not a substitute to lemon curd spread on a lotus biscuit. And don't judge until you've tried it.
And even that is not the worst part. Oh no, the worst part starts today, because today I start the  exercise part of it all. Now I know what you are going to say, everyone loves exercise, it releases endorphins, and once you get into it you get addicted to it. I know, I heard all these lies people who work at the gym say too. The truth is you get addicted to things that are enjoyable, like booze or chocolate or white sugar. Or trashy TV. But how in the name of.... How can you get addicted to wearing those uncomfortable clothes that emphasise every little thing you hate about your body, sweating like a pig no matter how low the thermostat is set, and looking like a complete and utter idiot while you are doing something so wrong it should be illegal? Yes, yes, you don't have to tell me, I know it's the results. You get addicted to the results, and to not having back pain and to not grunting every time you sit down. The thing is, you don't really. I mean I like the results, who doesn't? But is it really worth me having to suffer through the whole 4 times a week of running and Pilates to get them while I continuously scream profanities and death threats at the TV (I am not crazy enough to actually let other people see me exercise)? I have been doing Pilates for 11 years now, and walking or running for 8. I can honestly say without a moment hesitation - I still hate it with the same passion. And I keep the hate alive, because that hatred is the only thing getting me through it. I really can't understand people whose panting while they run isn't "I hate you, you f*&^ng treadmill. I wish you would break down right here and right now you son of a...." you get my point I'm sure.
And yet, here I am, on my way to go and start this torture again. Because deep down I know the truth - Those who bitch while on the torture device also known as treadmill are better off than those who bitch while standing on the sideline, after all they are closer to reaching their ultimate goal.
Being able to eat cake again.

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First days of January

I find that the first days of January are always miserable ones. I am not talking about January first (well, that depends on drinking quantities the night before) but about the days around January 6th. It's where you realise that life is indeed going to go on, and reality is waiting just around the corner, and that somehow everyone seemed to embrace it and are already talking Easter plans when you are still not sure how to set the alarm clock again. I found myself last night standing in front of the boy's wardrobe trying desperately to remember what Ron needs for football club. I was unsuccessful. Than again as it turns out, clubs starts next week.

The funny thing is, I actually waited for these days. As fun as Christmas was (and it was plenty fun) there is something comforting about the routine. I missed my quiet time when the boys are at school, I missed being able to walk freely around the house without fear of knocking down yet another Christmas ornament, I even missed eating reasonable quantities of normal food instead of what felt like an unending chocolate feast for the last two weeks.

Just one of the million meals over the past month (or two)

The Christmas holiday is so different to the rest of the year it's easy to forget what life really looks like. It is the only time a year that all of us are really "commitment free". I don't give the boys any school / extra work, there is no set schedule, they don't "have" to do anything, there is no electronics limit, Hidai isn't working and there are no emails or phone calls or meetings, my parents come over, and I am completely cut off from anything blog or social media related. This, by no means, resembles any other holiday or term-time in our house. And though by the end of it you really want to go back to real life, actually remembering what those life looks like has been somewhat difficult for everyone. It started on Saturday, after my parents left. We organised the house back to "no visitors" mode (only 6 loads of washing and 4 hours of work) and closed down Christmas. Taking down the tree, lights and various decorations took about 5 hours, and after wondering about a hundred times how we are going to fit all of it into 2 boxes (because every year there are a few new things to fit in with the old things), we looked around the house and suddenly it looked too big, too white, too exposed. I couldn't sleep that night because our living-room window was suddenly way too big and of course a burglar could easily open it and come in. So what if the only difference is the strip of lights we hung on it for Christmas?

Christmas all closed down

It continued with stepping on the scales. I am weight obsessive, like most people who lost a lot of weight I am living in fear I will one day wake up and realise I gained it back over night. Well, it took more than a night, but on Sunday when I stepped back on the scale after giving myself December off, I realised that you can't really eat all that I've eaten this past month (or two, let's be honest here) and do no exercise at all and not gain some (a lot of) weight. To make you understand the amounts of food I've managed to consume, it took me about three days of not eating anything but salads to even start feeling hungry. Sunday was the day I threw away all the chocolate from the house. It was adjoined by the last of the biscuits, cakes, and minced pies. There is nothing more depressing than looking ahead and seeing an endless desert of bare salads and treadmill runs. No deserts though.
It ended with rain. I don't really mind the cold, I manage the grey better than I ever expected, the wind don't bother me (Yon and I love to "fly") and I love snow. But rain? Rain I hate. As Yon put it yesterday, while we battled the rain and tried not to be late to school on the first day - "I don't like this rain-time". It has not stopped raining. Or at least it seems like it, because it's been pouring down every time I've had to leave the house. Might have been some grey in between (as if that helps. It's just the universe's way of laughing at me).

Managed to find one nano-second of no rain to take a photo on the way back from school

Today is the second day of normality. I still don't feel normal. The boys have gone back to routine happily and quickly - bedtime, eating habits (no, you can't have four chocolates as desert and a piece of cake as snack time), school, reading time - all restored within 24 hours as if they've never been on holiday. Ron was disappointed there was no homework yesterday. Hidai went back to work yesterday also, and seems to have dived right in. It just leaves me, not knowing where to start from. Everywhere I look there are people whose year has started with confidence and a smooth ride. I see people who did not discover they are still yet to order the 2012 (!) photo albums and completely forgot about making 2013 ones, people who did not lose all their readers over the holiday period, people who remember if they already done their taxes for this year.
Everywhere I turn there are people who did not lose their English over the holiday, who have so much to write about, who seems to have it all organised and their road is laid down in front of them to step on firmly and securely.

Trying to switch computers

Not so for me. I find the first days of January are not the easiest days for me. They are the days in which reality comes back with a bang, where you discover that taking time off doesn't really solve anything and everything you left behind to go on holiday didn't really go anywhere. If I felt lost before the holidays, why should I expect it to be any different after?
Then again, Hidai did surprise me with a new mac on Friday and the rain has finally stopped and the sun is actually really marvelously shining outside for the first time in days.

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What did 2013 bring?

The last day of the year is a good timing to reflect, to look back on your year and plan the year ahead. Naturally we spent the whole day in front of the TV, watching all Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies (had to force my parents to watch the first one. After that they refused to stop). I am not good with sums, of the maths kind or of the soul ones, and yet here I am trying. After all it's what one does for the new year when one is the kind of person who is in touch with one's feelings and all that. I can't say that I'm not, and I actually really like taking "life inventories" every once in a while (say monthly or so), it's the having to do that on command, while the house is full of people who keep talking to me, and nicer things to do that makes this task seems impossible. 

So as a first step I went back to last year, because last year I wrote a 2012 recap that wasn't easy for me to read even now. At the start of the year I've had such high hopes for London and my 2013 - What will 2013 bring? I really can't say. At the moment we are here, building back the foundations of our lives. Getting the kids settled in and feeling secure again, Hidai progressing with work, as a family we are trying to enjoy everything London has to offer us, making memories. And for me? I know it might sound silly or stupid, but for me this year is that - to see that everyone's settled down. This year is about the ability to just breathe easy.
My next move was to sit everyone down and ask them to summarise 2013 for me, to tell me about their year so I could think more clearly of my own.
2013 has not been an easy year around here, and as I listened to everyone else summarising the year the good and bad mixing together, the laughter and the tears, the two side of the coin, it seemed harder than ever summing up this year. If I have to choose one thing to say about 2013, it is that it brought us fights and battles in every aspect of our lives.
2013 made us look at the way we react to what life throws at us and change it.
2013 was a year of change.

Changes are a funny thing. While we crave stability and predictability, most things in life change all the time, in ways we don't even realise until one day we stop and look back. We change all the time, in ways we don't realise, in places we don't imagine we could or would or want to. It hit me last night, after we've finished a bottle of wine and watched John Bishop on BBC1 until 2am how much I have changed in the course of one year. Silly enough this year is the year we learned to drink, and the year we discovered British comedians, it's also the year I've discovered I have white hairs and got a fringe, it's the year Yon went to school full time and for the first time in almost a decade I had free time to discover who I am and what I want to do, it's the year I went out to have fun with friends and without Hidai for the first time in more than a decade. 

2012 taught me to not plan anymore, to live in the moment and never have certainties and fantasies about how things "should" be. 2013 taught me to be fearless. It's the year I decided to stop being afraid and never say "no" to opportunities.

2013 will forever be Yon's year. It was the year in which we discovered Yon's Ocular Albinism and learned how you live with being a parent to a child with disability. We've opened the year with an EDD test to get a diagnosis to something we didn't even understand and ended it with getting Yon's Partially Blind registration recommendation. 

2013 will forever be the year in which we've had to deal with the Home Offices's ability to make life near impossible for people just because they can, and learned how it feels to really be an immigrant.

2013 is the year in which Hidai's product hit the market (and people in Portsmouth can now use Nectar Local).

2013 will forever be the year in which we discovered how our control and ability to help our children is slipping away more and more every day.

2013 will forever be the year in which we discovered we no longer have babies, or toddlers or young children. We have left that party never to come back.

2013 will forever be the year I started my blog, and have build my own place. I want to write a separate post about what my blog gave me, but I will say here it gave me friends, and memories, and confidence, and a voice of my own. I started 2014 with 600 Facebook likes, 100,000 pageviews and a place near enough to the top 500. All of these are things I couldn't have imagined are possible. All of which things I still don't believe are real. 

2013 was a year with less photos than usual, we didn't buy anything new (ok, except for my new Nespresso machine), we stayed in the same house, in the same city, in the same country, in the same job, in the same school. 

We haven't changed any of the big things in life and yet I can't help but feel it changed so much. 

As for 2014? What will it bring? For the past 5 years, every time I am asked this question I give the same answer. What I wish for next year is a new iPhone and some peace. I replaced three iPhones in this time, and have yet to have one year of peace. 

Will 2014 be any different? Probably. 

After all I want a new Mac this year. 

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Ten Years Wedding Anniversary - Friday Recap 2

Sunday is our ten years wedding anniversary, and 13 years since Hidai and I met. We got married exactly three years (minus one day) after our first date. I know what you're thinking - who gets married on December 22? People who don't think about the future, that's who. We were young, we were stupid, we had a really good reason. You see, we chose that date not because of our overly romantic nature, but because we wanted to spend our honeymoon in London on Christmas (also it needed to be Monday evening because Tuesday brings good luck, and for Jews a day is from sunset to sunset, so Monday evening is actually Tuesday; and also we are not really known for our patience and ability to wait, so we wanted to get married and go on our honeymoon the very next day). We had the most wonderful time here in 2003, but now we are stuck with a wedding anniversary date that in reality means we don't get to really celebrate our anniversary. The kids are always off school, Christmas is around the corner and all the preparations are in full swing, my parents are here and we spend our nights on the air mattress in the middle of the living-room. All contribute to an extremely romantic feel. This year for example, for our big celebration we are having coffee Friday morning before the craziness begins, and are going to the zoo to meet Santa and some reindeers on Sunday. Ron thought it was a very nice way to celebrate. Since my parents are here we can get a night off (no, we don't have a babysitter so no, we don't get nights off normally) and we are rounding up the celebrations with The Hobbit movie. We might even go all out and buy popcorn. If we go totally crazy we might even buy the VIP seats just to feel rich and special. Yes people, we know how to celebrate in style.

Selfie in sunny Gibraltar

I don't usually do the romantic-sappy posts about Hidai, firstly because it will embarrass him, second of all because it will go to his head, and thirdly because every time I sit down and try to write it he does something that annoys me. Just like this morning when he made fun of my using hebrew and English in the same sentence. But seeing how he apologised nicely, and it is Recap Friday I decided to give it a go and try to write a ten-year-anniversary post. I only have one tiny problem - What does one write? because I have no clue. I've seen lots of anniversary posts, and they all made me a bit teary, and they all wrote very nicely and very movingly about the love they share, the moment they met, the wonderful wedding they had. I love reading it all, but writing it? I feel like such a fraud. Next thing you know I would try to write a happy post. What is the world coming to?!

Guess when

But still, ten years of marriage and thirteen in total is a long time. You shouldn't really just brush it off. It does deserve some sort of mention. Even if not of the sappy kind. Hidai and I met on a blind-date organised by mutual friends who were dating at that time. We fell in love on that first date, where I explained to Hidai that my favourite actor is Bruce Willis (the early works), and we both spent half the night organising the table at the cafe where we sat. We haven't been apart since. We moved in together 8 month later and spent a year at my parents before moving to our first ever flat.
We managed to finish 3 university degrees (Hidai one, I two), go through 13 work places (most of them are Hidai's), have two kids and two miscarriages, and move 6 houses in three countries. But those are just the basic numbers of our lives. And numbers don't really tell the story do they? The story is in the details behind the numbers, the story is in the way you travel together. And what a way it has been so far...
Meeting as young as we did means we basically grew up and grew old together. We went through almost everything life can throw at you in these years, and did it together, but Hidai had issues with me writing it all here and as some of it is his stuff I respected his wishes. Looking back I can hardly believe how young we were when we met, how easily (some would say carelessly) we did it all, and how far we've come (some would say not really).

Our one and only official portrait 10 years after we met

At the end of the day after thirteen years together I would say it's going rather well (I would say that just because I am afraid if I say anything more I would jinx it). Before we got married someone told us we shouldn't get married so young, because we will find ourselves one day sitting on the couch at night watching TV and not talking. We did get married young, and watching TV together is still one of our favourite things to do. Though we do it in bed mostly and not on the couch.
And here is the sappy-lovey-dovey part of the post: after thirteen years together, in which we still keep the one rule of no jobs that require travel, Hidai is still my favourite person to talk to and the only one who hears every passing thought I have exactly the moment I have it, he never says "no" to anything I want (and learned never to say "relax"), he still brings me everything because I'm lazy and makes me tea when I'm sick, he still encourage me to go after every dream I have no matter how crazy it is (including trying my luck at the Bake Off), he still tells me he loves me every night. He is still the one person I can spend more than an hour at a time with, and the one who will readily admit I saved him form a life of workaholism and family-issues. We still see everything eye-to-eye, have the same sense of humour and dance in our underwear in the kitchen.

dancing at my parents, about a year after we met

But if I had to say what's the one thing that kept us together all these years and made our marriage work, is that Hidai is my favourite person in the whole wide world to fight with.
He always apologises so nicely.




 

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