blogging lameness

Sorry not to have done much in the way of a travelogue. There's been a lot going on around here, and I've been kind of distracted.

Luggage update is that our two bags arrived, but not MHH's precious box of seforim, which he is mourning quietly and sadly. I still maintain that it will arrive eventually. I hope it will; a monetary compensation from the airline would be meaningless, because while it's technically about a couple hundred dollars' worth of books, the actual value of the box is the plane ticket to Israel. Most of what he bought can't be found where we live. Well, we'll keep hoping.

In an unsurprising continuation of the stroller curse narrative, our stroller, which went missing in Madrid, appeared at our doorstep the other night, minus part of the frame and a wheel. It looked like it had been dropped from the cargo hold to the tarmac--I could not have snapped that frame like that no matter how hard I tried, not even with a pickaxe. I've been told to buy a new one and they'll reimburse me; I bought a new one, because I had to, but I'll believe in the reimbursement when I see it. For those of you keeping track, this is stroller number five, for kid number one. I'm starting to think of the rhyme for the wives of Henry VI--you know, "divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived." Only ours goes "stolen, squirrels, smashed,"--so far. Right now we have the el cheapo jogging stroller, which constantly veers left, and the new fancy umbrella stroller with a way too small basket and wheels that are useless in snow, which I bought because it was the only one at Target that I could carry up the back stairs in one hand.

So far, this has all been pretty unimpressive on the airline's part--everything from their canceling our flight without bothering to tell us to giving us a lost-luggage number (which rings in Madrid, over a terrible internet connection) that works only every three days, and even then the people who pick up the phone don't really speak English. (For example, they don't know what a stroller is.) Next time, bli neder, we are going El Al, even though it costs a whole heck of a lot more.

I really do want to blog about Ben Gurion, and why the security folks found the contents of our luggage so entertaining. But there are lunches to pack and a kitchen to clean, and a little boy in the other room who is still waking up every night at 2 am ready to play. So I probably should move my evening in a course progressing to an early bedtime.