Updates

Oh, I have a blog? Sorry. Almost forgot.

So, where we're holding:

The Jewish Agency has approved us. NBN has approved us. We are now waiting on our visas, which means that we are waiting on our marriage certificate's apostille; I had not realized that getting a marriage license apostilled in New York is a huge mammoth undertaking and that if not for a saintly local friend who is going to do the running around for us, one of us probably would have had to take an actual, physical trip to Manhattan. Seriously.

Five new duffel bags and five big plastic footlockers are stacked up in the guest room. I know it's too early to start packing, because it's not as though we won't be needing the clothes/books/dishes/toys between now and then. So I'm trying to content myself with cleaning and organizing and tossing; I've given away a bunch of householdy things and intend to disencumber myself of more. It helps, of course, that we are renting out this place furnished to relatives of friends who are coming from Israel; they will be happy to have us leave them random kids' books/toys/tools/garbage bags/ all the other stuff that you ordinarily have to deal with before moving day.

The stress level is in flux. Some days, like today, I'm fairly relaxed. Some days, like last Tuesday, I feel like I'm made of glass and getting bumped the wrong way would cause me to shatter into a pile of deadly shards on the floor. The constant, however, is an intense desire to knit. Not buy yarn. Not look at yarn. Not think about knitting. I just want to knit, for hours and hours, preferably while listening to NPR. Thursday night I sat down to an episode of This American Life and my WIP, an Aestlight for Asnat. And it really helped. What is it about knitting that does that?? No idea, but no complaints either. Well, unless it's the complaint about not having enough time, but the busy-ness is all my own doing so I can't really complain there either.

Other highlights of the week:

1. I took all of the kids on the bus to a thrift shop (half-price toy day) and Trader Joe's. They were phenomenally well behaved. I had Marika in the snugli, Avtalyon in the stroller, and a big kid on either side. And really, it was fine. No meltdowns. I told them we'd do it again, and meant it. Still not sure about taking them all to the zoo myself, though--that's a longer trip, and with two buses, too.

2. Picked up Barak at school on Thursday to take everyone to get passport photos for our Israeli visas. That had been something of a comedy of errors with multiple attempts, and I was determined on Thursday to get those pictures or... something. Fortunately, we got them; on the way, we saw that the fire station by his school had the bay door open and stopped in to "look at the truck." Because the firefighters at that station are incredibly nice, they also let Barak and Iyyar get into the truck and climb around. The smiles on their faces were amazing--I've rarely seen them so blissed out.

3. There will be no #3. Because Insomnia Girl just woke up.