I Can See The End - R2BC

Chocolate chip blondies from Esther next door. Thank you!

This week's Reasons 2B Cheerful comes to you from just over the peak. This is my own analysis from seeing the numbers, of which I had a morbid and slightly distasteful fascination, falling. Well not the totals obviously, but the daily casualties. There's talk on the news of easing restrictions around the world. (Except not the UK yet - sorry. You have another 3 weeks of lockdown apparently.) Instead of doom and gloom it's all about exit strategies. 

Before we go there, just to say that Becky is hosting the linky to other cheerful posts on her blog: Lakes Single Mum. 

1
We Have A Plan
In Israel the exit strategy, while not finalized or set to start on any given date, is in 4 phases. Back to school is only phase 3 and there will be at least two weeks between each phase. So Yippee! Another month at least at home. I'm loving being at home, personally.

But it's also good to know that we're nearing the end and that the millions of deaths didn't happen as predicted. Though I'm still sad for those who did lose their lives and for their families. And I know it's insensitive to say I'm loving being at home because I'm not a doctor or a nurse, or a carer, or hospital cleaner, working my guts out to help those in need. Sorry.

2
Passover Passed Over
Oh was there a holiday in all this? I must have missed it. I almost missed it but we did manage a family seder by zoom. Last night it was all over and I'm back to work on the computer. Slightly shocked and dazed by how much work (grading papers and planning online lessons) has accumulated, but bird by bird I'll get it done.

Bird by Bird? A book by Anne Lamott of the same name in which she writes: “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

3
Gifts From Next Door
One day a couple of weeks ago, just as DD was about to go into a meltdown because we'd run out of snacks and it was Friday afternoon so no shops open until Sunday morning.... we got a shout out from our neighbour Esther to look outside the front door. There we found a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Tasty and timely. Thank  you so much Esther. And for the bar of chocolate a couple of days later. And for the second bag of cookies. And for the Harry Potter Hagaddah (seder service book). We will love you forever.

Now if I could just figure out how to flatten MY curves......

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.

R2BC - Back With A Linky

Planter meadows on my blacony

Reasons 2B Cheerful is back with a linky so we are a community small group again. Hooray! Here is the R2BC Linky  on Becky's Lakes Single Mum, and here are my reasons for this week of lockdown. 

1 
Meadow Garden
After so much rain this winter and even into the spring, my planters on the balcony are looking like tiny meadows. I should do some gardening and plant some vegetables, herbs, etc... but in the Middle East, any greenery is welcome so I don't want to dig up my tiny meadows.

2
A Long View
I live on the side of a mountain, facing down into the valley. Opposite my building is a school two storeys lower than my apartment and further down the slope. This gives us a long vista over Jerusalem and the mountains beyond. However beautiful your garden might be, I think it's much easier to be in lockdown if you have a long view from your window. You don't feel so shut in.

3
The Kinneret
As of today the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) is only 44 cm from the upper red line. I.e. almost totally full to capacity. They will almost certainly have to open the Degania Dam and let water flow down the Jordan to the Dead Sea. This is hugely exciting in a region used to droughts. It hasn's happened in 28 years, since April 1992.

4
Being Home
I actually like being at home. I love my home. I like not having to jump to the alarm clock in the morning and being able to guiltlessly stay up as late I want. I like pottering about, cooking, organising, watching tv, reading.... I could be happy with this for another couple of weeks.

5
Sleep
We, and that's a global we, are no longer sleep deprived.

6
Community
Lots of helping initiatives have sprung up and are being shared on facebook. From shopping for those in enforced isolation to listening ears and emergency information and advice.

7
Videos Of Love
Our school music teacher, Na'ama Berlowitz, has been putting together short presentations and videos that are sent to all the children in our school via the class whatsApp groups. The latest is the school choir singing Yoter (More) with pictures sent in by the staff of them illustrating each line.

The song tells us that we have everything we need already, just ask for more of the good things: more love, more hope, more peace, more trust, more respect, more thought, more understanding, more faith, more God, more happiness, more soul, more prayer, more purpose, more life, and more togetherness. (Not necessarily in that order.)



8
Seder Night
The link above gives a brief explanation of seder night as well as the story of the last time it turned out very different than planned for us.

We went from planning to go to London to be with our family for Pesach (Passover) and specifically the first night for the seder, to arranging to go to friends in Jerusalem, to realizing that it would be just us two on our own, to hearing that one of the chief rabbis in Israel has allowed families to do the seder with Zoom. Ordinarily we'd not use any electrical devices as it's a holy day like Shabbat. So maybe we won't be so alone after all.

When the youngest present sings the refrain, "why is this night different from all other nights?" the full answer won't be written in the order of service this year.

9
Humour
Lots of hilarious jokes and memes. Not to make light of a very serious and for some, tragic, situation, but you need to laugh to save your sanity. My favourite from today was: Starbucks is closed so I made myself coffee, called my name out incorrectly, set fire to a $5 note, and then walked around the house looking for a place to sit.

From yesterday: I got so drunk last night I don't even know how I got home from the kitchen.

10
Clean Air
All this has been a plus for clean air and global warming. Pollution is down, greenhouse gases are down, less fossil fuel being used up, fewer trees being cut down, less building. Some have suggested that it's Mother Earth fighting back. Who knows? Whatever you believe. However, there's no denying that the natural world is benefiting from this pandemic.

Feel free to add your R2BC in the comments.
I wish you health and sanity, xxx

R2BC - The Pesach Edition

Place names for Seder night. 

We went to London for Pesach. I try to keep our travel plans off social media until we've returned home but it doesn't usually work very well. Anyway, lots of reasons 2B cheerful from our holiday. And lots more R2BC from other bloggers over at Becky's Lakes Single Mum.

1
Seder Night
We have two of them. Both a lot of fun. DD was in charge of making the place names for the table. The photo shows what she made for the first night. Thanks to my friend Janet for the idea - hieroglyphics for the exodus from Egypt. The first activity of the evening was to work out who was who. It's actually quite easy when you know which names you're looking for. We kept ours for bookmarks.

2
Chihuly at Kew Gardens
The Best Day Out! Thanks for taking us Doreen. This will get its own blog post so no photos on this one.

3
Fashionista
After years of refusing to wear anything but sweat pants, leggings or shorts with a t-shirt, DD surprised us all at our semi-annual trip to Primark and H&M. "I think I need to change my style," she announced. She then started picking out pretty summer jump suits with delicate shoulder straps and frilly off the shoulder 'sleeves'. I steered her away from the less practical ensembles. I am not about to iron frills although my iron may have to come out after 10 years in the cupboard. And we live in the Middle East so protected shoulders are a must in the summer. Still, it was so much more fun to buy a range of pretty clothes for her.

4
Fit Flops and Skechers
I always wanted Fit Flops. When they first came out my mother asked me what gift she could bring when she came to stay. I asked for Fit Flops and she brought me a pair of flip flops. Soon after, my sister asked me what I wanted as a birthday present and I asked for Fit Flops (I didn't realize the price at that time). Then she forgot about it and I didn't like to remind her (or maybe she already knew the price). I finally bought myself a pair - years ago, but I made the mistake of buying the ones without the thong. I thought the thong would be uncomfortable for every day. Stupid me. The other kind only came in dowdy designs. They were comfortable and I wore them to death but I didn't love them. After that I discovered an Israeli make that I wore for years (Ben Ami) but they're now more expensive than Fit Flops. So I finally bought my thonged Fit Flops in John Lewis and I love them.

I also discovered Skechers sports shoes. Thanks Marilyn for the recommendation. I'm never going back to other trainers and neither is DD.

5
Family Wedding
My brother got engaged. He's been with his fiancee for over three years so she's already a part of the family. And so we thought it could continue forever. They surprised us all by getting engaged and we're now waiting to hear when the wedding will be. Mazal Tov Michael and Alyson! xxx

Holiday Guilt

Sunburst from the Chihuly exebition at Kew Gardens

Believe me, it's a thing. It starts before the holiday with things to get done before we leave. Be up to date with work commitments (prep and grading), paperwork (taxes, paying bills, filing, etc...) and cleaning the apartment. The time gets shorter and shorter and we leave for our holiday with work unfinished, paperwork in a pile on the desk, and a whisk round the apartment with a lick and a promise. I should have managed my time more efficiently.

There is also the social media dilemma. I don't want to announce, even in emails, that we will be away for two weeks and thereby implying that the apartment will be empty. Of course I could mention my sumo-wrestler cousin who will be house-sitting with his two mastiffs, but that's like protesting too much - a transparent ruse. So I keep quiet and feel terribly guilty that I'm going to disappear from the blog and people might worry that I've been run over by a bus, or worse, lost interest in writing. Thank you Margie from Toronto, for your concern. I do appreciate it under my guilt. And sorry, sorry, sorry.

The truth will out of course and friends write on facebook, "will you be in London for Passover?" I try to ignore these questions but I feel guilty.

And then my friend's mother suggests we meet for coffee over the festival and I would love to see her. I was the recipient of her hospitality, kindness and wisdom as a teenager and it would be fabulous to catch up. I PM her that I'll call her daughter when I get to London. And other friends whom I'd also love to see, message me and I get all future President of America and I cannot tell a lie. But I arrive in London and I don't call them because I remember that I have a 10 year daughter who doesn't want to catch up with all my old friends over coffee and also doesn't want to spend her whole holiday playing on Gandma's computer while I'm doing said catching up. It's a sad situation - guilty if I do and guilty that I don't.

I get lazy about blogging sometimes but I vary rarely miss a Reasons 2B Cheerful post. A week before the holiday I wrote on twitter to the regular contributing bloggers, that I'm sorry I'm always late with mine but I don't usually have time to get to it before Saturday. A couple of the others also said they preferred Saturday and so it was decided to change the R2BC day to Saturday. Then I disappeared for two weeks without telling anyone even though the move to Saturday was mainly because of me. Guilty.

Whilst in London we went with my cousin to see the Chihuly exhibition in Kew Gardens. It was absolutely stunning and deserves its own blog post. Later that day my cousin posted her photos on facebook and tagged me. I accepted the tag without thinking of the consequences and the cat was out of the bag. "Oh, I see you're in London," wrote Mich from Mummy from the Heart (one of the two R2BC hosts). "I wondered where you were?" Sorry, sorry, sorry, I should have told you.

Of course I did intend to write some location neutral blog posts while I was away but with limited computer access and the fact that it's much more fun playing kalooky and watching endless recorded episodes of Escape to the Country until 1 am and then getting up too late to accomplish anything in the mornings, I didn't blog. Moving back into my mother's house brings with it a certain amount of teenage behaviour and the associated guilt about wasting all that time.

About wasting time. We love being in London. We love the weather, we love the parks, we love the supermarkets, we love the tv, and we love shopping in Watford. We also love a day in London proper (as opposed to the suburbs where we live) and other outings like Kew Gardens, Legoland, the theatre, etc... But we don't have a driving urge to visit loads of museums and monuments, or even to be out and about every day. This holiday involved celebrating Passover which revolved around delicious meals at my sister's house with all the cousins and other guests (including two Seder nights), and a lot of going round to people's houses for tea, coffee, or a light supper. We're a bit grounded as we don't eat out at all during the eight days of the festival. But we're in London! Just visiting for a short time! I feel so ungrateful and lazy that we don't make the most of all that culture and entertainment on our doorstep for a short time only. But we don't. This is why I will probably never be a travel writer and another source of guilt.

We travel home on the early morning flight from Luton that requires getting up at 3 am on Sunday to go to the airport. I don't bother going to sleep the night before. We get home at about 5 pm because we're just in time to hit the rush hour as we enter Jerusalem. I then have to go out to the little supermarket around the corner because we've no food in the house. I make some supper for DD, tell her to put her dishes in the sink when she's finished and to turn off all the lights when she goes to bed. I go to bed at 7 pm and leave her to it. She hates it when I do that. Guilty.

I wake up at 11 pm with a dehydration headache. I take a paracetamol, drink coffee, and then drink a large green tea because the coffee didn't seem to work. I can't sleep. I read until 3.30 am, sleep for 3 1/2 hours and turn up for my first day of school exhausted and, actually, late. Guilty.

That night I fall into bed at 7 pm again. Now I've done this to DD two nights in a row. Guilty. I ignore the phone when it rings at about 10.30 so my mum doesn't get to tell me that my brother is engaged. I read it on facebook the next morning. Guilty. I still haven't unpacked and it's now Tuesday. But I have four hours of teaching at college on Tuesday afternoon so I need to prepare those lessons rather than unpack. Guilty. On Wednesday I after school I should have graded all the papers that came in from online courses over the holiday. But it's Holocaust Memorial Day and I want it to be meaningful so I make DD watch a movie about Anne Frank with me. Then I tell her that it's not appropriate to play on the computer or watch You Tube on this night so we both go to bed. On Thursday after school DD has gymnastics until 7.15 pm. We get home at 7.30 and there are three weeks' worth of emails to deal with so no grading tonight. Guilty. Today is Friday and I have to do some grading before Shabbat comes in as we don't work tomorrow. But I will unpack tomorrow - only six days after we came home. Guilty again.

Such a little word yet it generates so much anxiety.

R2BC - General Good Stuff

The Beresheet Space Lander aborted and with it went my Reasons 2B Cheerful this week. And the political party I voted for - Gesher - didn't even pass the threshold to get one seat in the Knesset. Otoh, we got to the moon (first country to crash on the moon. Hooray, a first!) and we still live in a democracy which is a huge deal.

So with the R2BC linky over at Mich's Mummy from the Heart for the month of April, here are mine for this week.

1
I Didn't Know This
I found out that they take polling boxes to women's shelters so that the women don't have to go out in public if they can't. Also, in every city there is a safe polling station for people who feel threatened by going to their local station in case they meet a dangerous ex, family member, or previous attacker/abuser. How amazing is that? To know that your vote is important when you're perhaps feeling at your most low and vulnerable is truly a wonderful thing.

2
If At first You Don't Succeed...
The first thing everyone involved in SpaceIL said after the failed moon landing was: Next time.... We are delayed, not defeated.

3
Holidays!
The Passover (Pesach) school holidays have started. DD is out and about with her friends - mostly in the park on roller blades but also in each other's homes just hanging out. What's new is that I don't have to take her or supervise. She makes her own arrangements on her own phone and off she goes. Fantastic!

4
Fling Open The Windows
The rains have finally stopped for a while and we can throw open the doors and windows to begin spring cleaning (we call it Pesach cleaning) in earnest.

5
Fun In The Supermarket
The Pesach foods which have to be separated from the normal foods, are in the supermarkets. It's fun to walk around my local super and find the shelves in complete chaos. Nothing is in its usual place, food groups are split up and put wherever there's a space. It's kinda fun.

That's it for today. Have a great week y'all.

R2BC - Why I Probably Won't Be A Travel Writer

We made the papers. Well, one paper. 

We arrived in London late on Sunday night (after midnight late) so we were in no fit state to hit the ground running on Monday morning. I didn't even make those all important phone calls to friends to ensure that I get to see my friends while we're here.

My mum suggested we go to shopping with DD and get all her shopping done. She lives equidistant from Watford and Brent Cross shopping centres (right in the middle of the 142 bus line). So it was either Primark and a light, airy shopping experience or H&M and claustrophobia. We chose the former and went to Watford (although by car not on the 142).

DD was kitted out in Primark so we only had to go to M&S for the obligatory cup of coffee and slice of cake. On the way out DD noticed the menu displayed above the counter with a photo of the fish and chips. "I didn't know they served meals here," she said. "If I'd known they serve meals I'd have ordered a meal."

On Tuesday DD's cousins came round to play. They're 17 and 20. They horsed around with DD for a while, showed her how to find her place at Hogwarts via the Pottermore website, and then left her to it while we played Kalooky.

Wednesday was supposed to be our big day out sightseeing and exploring London. It was pouring with rain. We hung about the house all morning and eventually, in desperation, I took DD to the cinema to see 'A Wrinkle in Time' and out for pizza afterwards. (Incidently, including a detour into Waterstones, this little outing cost more than kitting out DD for the summer in Primark.)

On Thursday I went to my sister to help her cook for Passover while DD helped Grandma bake cakes and biscuits for the festival.

And yesterday was the first of two Seder Nights. We finished ours at about 1.30 in the morning and DD stayed over with her cousins while I came home with my mum. We are going back again later for the next and final Seder.

It's been a very slow week and not helped by the constant and often quite violent rain. But I ordered some books from Amazon Prime which amazingly really did arrive the next day, so I've been happy enough. And it takes the best part of a day to get through the Daily Mail that is delivered to the door every morning.

Talking of deliveries. We also get The Jewish Chronicle. This week's paper provided some excitement (apart from the long overdue tackling of Jeremy Corbyn and co) in that I had an article in it. It's also in the online version so here's the link.

So these are my reasons 2B cheerful this week. A lazy week near London in the rain. And this is probably why I'll never be a travel writer. As well as being #rubbishphotographer I'm just far too fond of hanging out. I feel no urgency to rush around seeing everything and visiting museums. I like watching the weather from the kitchen table armed with a cup of coffee.

Apart from the JC article and Seder Night, the most exciting thing to have happened is that we finally finished the giant bottle of Johnson's Baby Shampoo that was bought for my first visit with DD nine years ago, when she was four months old.

Now I must go and make some of those phone calls before we get on the plane to go home. And you are invited to visit the R2BC linky on Mich's Mummy from the Heart. Happy Easter and Passover from a decidedly wet London.