Prepping My Estate For Doomsday

Garlic and Carrots

This morning I went out onto the estate balcony and did some gardening. I've been obsessed with small balcony vegetable garden videos, how to grow vegetables in pots videos, and vegetables that you need only buy once from the supermarket and then grow your own videos. I think it might have something to do with the world as we know it shutting down. Best to be a bit self-sufficient eh? Unfortunately I've no room for chickens let alone a cow.

I started by making a composter out of an old plastic rubbish bin. It's about 65 cm high and has a lid. I bashed some holes into the bottom for drainage and stood it on an old plastic tray. (Yes even and despite three years of decluttering, I still have some old things for upcycling. Very few though.)

The spring onions are sprouting
along with the garlic and carrots

Did you know that you can compost without worms? This is good because I don't have any worms and I don't like the thought of worms on my balcony. Maybe if my compost heap was way down at the end of a long garden. But it isn't. You do need soil to layer with the fruit and vegetable bits and egg shells. Luckily I have a huge bag of soil left over from the last time I fell in love with gardening. Apparently you also need to add some shredded paper or old egg boxes to provide carbon.

I learned that after sprouting your carrots and garlic in little pots of water, it's good to plant them near each other because the bugs that like carrots hate garlic and vice versa. I also read a blog post about things you can do with garlic scrapes (garlic shoots). So I'll be harvesting my first crop later to add to homemade humus.

Did you see that the spring onions are already sprouting? I intend to plant some more and harvest them as needed.

I also planted slices of tomato in quite a deep pot. The man on You Tube says it works. We'll see. The main thing is to keep everything moist. I think our rains have finished for this year so it'll be up to me. I tend to forget but I'm going to make a special effort not to this time.

Next stop lettuce and radishes and assorted herbs. Watch this space.

It Takes A Month - Tween Theory

Sock Party

It has been a month. The last day of school was Thursday 12th March. During that time I have asked, nagged, shouted at, and begged DD to tidy her bedroom.

Every time I heard, "I'm bored," I suggested she tidy her bedroom. Eventually the complaint evolved into, "I'm bored and I'm not tidying my bedroom (or reading a book)."

I also suggested that she do the washing up, make her own supper, take the rubbish down, and do various other small tasks to contribute to the running of the household. Some of these have been done but rarely without attitude.

It's not that I've created a monster. It's lockdown cabin fever and tween hormones all bubbling away just below the surface.

DD's bedroom was cleaned for Pesach in that we changed the bed clothes (she helped me do this), dusted, hoovered and mopped the floor. However, all the stuff on the floor was shifted to the desk, the bookcase and the chest of drawers. Two storage baskets on the chest of drawers were piled high with random stuff. The bookcase was a mess. The desk top was hidden under it all. Storage boxes had enjoyed sleepovers with other storage boxes and nothing had returned to its proper home. No amount of nagging would get DD moving on this. She wasn't ready.

Mine, hers, and throw out

Yesterday we had a sock party. As we are the same sock size and have been sharing for some weeks, we collected all the socks and piled them on my bed. Then we sorted them out into mine, hers and throw out. DD was very happy with her organised sock drawer after the cull. Things were beginning to stir.

Later that night she went through her collection of three years worth of shoes and pulled out those that are too small or too scruffy.

This morning she asked me if she could clean the patio doors as they were annoying her. This was one of the cleaning tasks I'd not got to last week. There was a sand storm on the day of the big clean so there was no point. Anyway, DD cleaned the window to the balcony.

Next thing I know she's organizing all her storage boxes and baskets, drawers, bookcase, and wardrobe. There's a pile of paper to go to the paper recycling bin. There's a bag of rubbish to throw out. Various items have been added to the donation cupboard.

So my hypothesis for tweens under lockdown is that it takes month. Anyone care to back me up?

How Was It For You? - Seder R2BC

We more or less followed the agenda laid out yesterday. I popped out to the synagogue service stretching down the road below me at 5 m intervals, by stepping out onto my balcony.

I finished cooking and laid the table for our seder with the matza and the seder plate full of the symbolic foods needed for the service. I was particularly proud of burning a carrot instead of the usual burnt shank bone of lamb. It symbolizes the pascal lamb and the shape suggests that God brought us out of Egypt with an outstretched arm. The carrot did the job admirably.

At 8.30 we went outside to sing Ma Nishtana (why is this night different from all other nights?). I thought it was a building initiative but turned out to be the whole of Israel! This is my 1st Reason 2B Cheerful. I wrote about it on face book...

I am crying with emotion. The whole of Israel went out onto their balconies at 8.30 and we all sang Ma Nishtana together. You could hear it loudly from all over Jerusalem. The singing echoed through the hills. And then we all shouted Chag Sameah Am Yisrael! (A happy festival to the people of Israel!) It was wonderful and also heartbreaking that we are in this situation. So many people I know have died (friends and relatives of friends in England). And yet tonight the whole country sang together and were uplifted for 10 minutes. Chag Sameah!

DD and I then ate our dinner. Suddenly I heard loud singing from the stairwell. The two apartments on the floor below were holding their seders in their hallways with their front doors open so that they could do it together.

My next-balcony-neighbour, Esther, threw over
The Hogwarts Haggadah (seder service book)
for DD. It's a lot of fun. Full of points of interest
linking Pesach to Harry Potter.
Thank you Esther. We loved it!

Our seder started at 10.30 (8.30 English time). My B-i-l is a doctor and working long shifts atm so an earlier start wasn't possible. And then we zoomed.

It was amazing for two minutes. So this is my 2nd R2BC. The 12 of us who are usually together were in five different homes. And during the seder other family members zoomed in from other seders to say hello. As I said, it was all very exciting for about two minutes and lovely to see everyone, but not the same as being together in the same room.

It all got a bit complicated as I couldn't hear clear instructions. There are three matzas and you use different matzas at different times. Zoom keeps switching to the person speaking the loudest. At one point I was asking, "which matza do we use? Are we eating it with the parsley or with the bitter herb? DD stopped me.
"What difference? Do what you like." She was right. I drank the fifth cup of wine even though we were only officially on the second cup out of four.

My nephew in charge of tech kept muting everyone to try to keep with the programme. In effect this meant that at times we were singing to ourselves. My brother, who works in IT, and S-i-l claimed technical difficulties and took a long furlough. By the time the festive meal (for them, we'd already eaten) came round at 10.30 (12.30 am for us) we'd had enough and we didn't go back for the second half with the songs at 1.15 in the morning. I felt a bit depressed so I ate the potato salad I'd made for today's lunch (DD doesn't like it) and went to bed.

As they have another seder night tonight (only for those outside Israel) and unlike yesterday, I've had a restful day, I might join them for the second half tonight. This will be my 3rd R2BC. That I don't have to sit through the whole thing this time and that we can see everyone again.

The R2BC linky is on Becky's Lakes Single Mum. And may I take this opportunity to wish all my Christian friends a very happy and safe Easter. xxx

Twas The Hour Before Seder

Ready for Seder a deux

Pesach starts in just under one hour. The Seder Night, tonight  in Israel and tonight and tomorrow night outside of Israel, is ironically going to be all topsy turvy for us. Ironic because the word means 'order' alluding to the specific order of doing things. You can read about it here. 

Before I get into tonight's seder, I want to answer my question from yesterday. Is it possible to spring clean my whole home in one day? The answer is no. Two days? Possibly when I was 25 but not now. By half way through the second day (today) Hurricane Pesach Cleaning was degraded to Random Friday in April Cleaning. There are things which didn't get done. Does it bother me? Yes, a bit, but now that I'm almost there I will do those things over the next week. Three days and I would have nailed it. 

Now for this evening's programme. At 18.45 my building is doing the evening service from their balconies. Then everyone will go inside and start their own seder (but not us). At 20.30 all the neighbours are coming out onto the balconies to sing Ma Nishtana together (see below). That concludes the communal part of the seder at this end. 

Ma Nishtana means 'what's different?' Traditionally the youngest present sings the song comprising of four questions about the evening, each starting with the refrain: Why is this night different from all other nights? The next part of the seder is answering the questions. This year everything is so different I think it's fitting for us all to sing it together. 

Our seder is starting very late at 22.30 because we are zooming it with my family in London where it will be only 20.30. My B-i-l, a doctor at Northwick Park Hospital, is working 12 hour shifts and can't guarantee to be ready any earlier. 

The 10 - 12 of us, depending on who's going zooming where, will be in five different homes this year. So DD and I will probably eat our festive meal before it starts instead of in the middle as usual. We'll go and amuse ourselves during the 'intermission' and come back for the songs at the end. 

It's been pointed out that this year is the closest seder to the original seder night in Egypt the night before the exodus. On that night the Israelites were told to stay indoors while the final plague was wrought upon the Egyptians. In fact, the whole of Israel is on real lockdown tonight. From last night we weren't allowed to leave our neighbourhoods and tonight we aren't allowed to leave our homes. It's to stop people visiting each other for the seder. We won't be daubing our doorpost with the blood of a pascal lamb though. 

For those not as lucky as I am to be able to zoom with family tonight, there are full seders on tv and other streaming platforms. 

So that's it. Thoroughly surreal and, in a way, interesting. I wish all those celebrating tonight a happy and safe Pesach. Chag Sameach! 

Spring Clean In A Day?

Fresh produce from Kibbutz Alumim

Like Tim Urbans' famous TED Talk about procrastination, I had plans to clean my apartment for Pesach, one room a day, over the course of a week. Similarly my Instant Gratification Monkey took the helm and I was steered away from cleaning and towards other important things like Facebook, WhatsApp, You Tube, Netflix, and Sky News. Until I realized that there was only one full day until Pesach starts on Wednesday evening and the Panic Monster woke up.

This was the plan: Fly Lady Shmylady,  I was going to do the whole thing in a day. Get up early, give each room one hour on a timer, as I've done before, and then go round at the end finishing off.

This is where it started to unravel: My fruit and vegetable order from the kibbutz was supposed to arrive yesterday. (Btw, it wasn't produce for export. Exports went as usual. It was the school lunches contracts that left them with a mountain of spare produce.) They didn't give a time so at 7 pm I texted my friend whose son was organizing the deliveries and asked if I should be worried. The answer came back that it should be soon. Fine with me. At 10.30 I called her. They were running late. Meanwhile I'm also texting with other friends in different neighbourhoods and monitoring who had received and who hadn't. In the end there were only two of us left. At 1.45 am I got a phone number. "Oh we've finished for tonight, it'll be early tomorrow morning."

This is the first time they've done anything like this. My friend's son is about 25 and his right hand man was another friend's son aged 19. There was a huge learning curve. I went to bed.

Obviously I wasn't up at 5 am to begin cleaning. But after coffee, making DD a plate of fruit so that she'd not bother me for food for a few hours, and checking social media, I was ready to start at 10.30. And I increased the time for each room to 1.5 hours to be realistic. This is Spring/Pesach cleaning after all.

I started in my bedroom. I moved furniture and was confronted with the fact that we've not stayed in Israel for Pesach for years. But I took my laptop with me and put on Neil Diamond. "I am I said, to no one there, and no one even replied, not even the chair." Well that was true at least - I tried it.

At 11.30 the vegetables arrived. Woohoo! So I had to take the time to put them away. It would have been silly to fill the fridge before wiping it down so I half cleaned the fridge as well. And then I had to post all over Facebook and WhatsApp that I'd got my order and thank everyone involved.

Back in the bedroom Neil had left the building and Abba was up next. The timer went off but I was owed time so I nudged it on to 12.30. But at 12.30 I'd not changed the bed clothes. You can't clean a whole room and not change your sheets. So I stripped the bed, put everything straight in to the washing machine (apart from the one pillow case that got left on the bed), and remade the bed. FINISHED!

Except that I had to bring yesterday's three loads of laundry in from the balcony to make room for the sheets. It was still slightly damp in places. I'd have liked to leave it outside for a few more hours but time and Tide wait for no man so in it came. I flung it all over my bed to finish drying.

And then I had to sit down for a bit. Also the battery on my laptop was about to run out. Obviously I have plug points in my bedroom but I took it as a sign. DD asked for some lunch. I told her take a tub of cottage cheese and scoop it up with crisps. "Yes chocolate for dessert is fine."

So now it's almost 2.30 in the afternoon and I've done only one room. But I'm not done yet, or even done in. Onwards and upwards.

10 Things I've Learned

Here is a list of 10 things I've learned while we've been in lockdown. 

1. In an emergency, and using four garden chairs for extra hanging space, I can push my clothes line to hold three loads of wet laundry whereas I always thought I was limited to two. But three is the limit.

2. With no time limits on anything and with all the time in the world, I'm getting much less done than I would in a normal working week. This validates the saying that jobs expand to fit the time available and, to some extent, if you want something done ask a busy person.

3. Countries need to be more self-sufficient in terms of agriculture and manufacturing. Individuals should be willing to buy less but pay more for local purchases, hopefully of better quality than purchases from countries where they exploit cheap labour and produce cheap goods.

4. I find myself wanting to avoid Tnuva products. Tnuva is Israel's biggest dairy conglomerate. In 2014 a controlling stake was bought by a Chinese company. Otoh, they bought it from a London based company. Otoh, we're here on the ground so if we need to take back control in an emergency situation I suppose we could. Otoh, I know nothing about global economics or international law. Meanwhile I find myself avoiding Tnuva where possible.

5. After about three years of serious decluttering and minimalizing possessions, it was very useful to find an old headscarf bandanna thingy (in fact I found two) that DD was given in nursery school for Independence Day about eight years ago. I don't even know why I kept them as they don't fit our heads as headscarves and we'd never want to wear them anyway. However, one of them made a great face mask for when I went to the supermarket yesterday.

6. I'm more scared of our police than I am of the virus. There've been reports of the police being over zealous and handing out 500 shekel fines to people walking to the supermarket or just walking within the permitted 100 m of their home. Yesterday I went to the smaller, less well stocked, and more expensive supermarket nearer my home because I was nervous about meeting the police on the way to the bigger, cheaper supermarket about half a kilometer away. And wearing the mask was also part of this fear even though masks are not yet law.

7. I have very little authority over how my 11 year old daughter spends her time at home.

8. Some of my doctor and nurse friends are seriously scared for their lives.

9. Neighbours who used to argue over the building maintenance and especially about paying for it, are all wonderful, supportive, kind, selfless, and thoroughly nice people. Who knew?

10. I can almost live on half my salary. I found this out after one of my two jobs put me on unpaid leave.

The Show Must Go On!

A quick post for whoever hasn't heard that Andrew Lloyd Weber with Universal is giving us a night of musical theatre every week. On Friday evenings at 7 pm BST (9pm Israel time) a movie of one of his musicals will be available on You Tube. Search: THE SHOW MUST GO ON. This week was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. You can still watch it until Sunday night. (Tomorrow is Sunday for those who've lost all track of time.)

We watched it tonight after Shabbat. It was so clever how they staged it as a school production because, of course that's how we were all introduced to Joseph back in the 1970s.

The cherry on the cake was Donny Osmond playing Joseph. They called it puppy love, but I had a poster of him in my bedroom way back when. Richard Attenborough as Jacob was fun to spot. And when Potiphar's wife appeared I thought, "doesn't she look like Joan Collins?" In fact it was Joan Collins.

DD was surprised by Joseph's character at the beginning: "Wow, he's so arrogant. That's not what they said about him in Bible lessons at school.

She got a kick out of Pharoah: "He sounds like that old rock and roll singer."
Me: "Elvis Presley."
DD; "Yeah him."
Me: "He's supposed to. That's the point."

I did see her giggle when Joseph told Pharoah, "All those things you saw in your pyjamas, Were a long range forecast for your farmers."

But when they sang, Those Canaan Days... DD: "Why do they all sound French?"
Me: *sigh*

Anyway, I loved it. I sang along to the whole show. I remembered every line and every harmony. Every bap shwaddywaddy and every ahh-a-a. Finally it came to an end. I was still singing, "May I return, to the beginning." DD said, "Can I go now?"
Me: *sigh*