A Single Mother's Birthday

It started with this exchange:

Me: What nice thing shall we do to celebrate my birthday?

DD: Actually I think it's only for children.

And ended with this exchange:

Me: I'm not reading a story to someone who can't even wish me Happy Birthday.

DD: *big sigh* Happy Birthday Mummy can I have the dinosaur book?

In between was a series of mishaps and meltdowns one after the other. 

7am. Up, make 10 o'clock snack, shower, dress myself. Usual mad panic to get DD awake and cooperative enough for me to dress her. Bully and threaten her with no stories, no playing on my phone, no sugar things, etc... until she goes to the loo and drinks her apple juice. Eventually leave the house - she has a small bag of pretzels in her hand in lieu of breakfast (don't worry, packed lunches are eaten at 10am in school). Make it to school just as the bell is ringing. Class teacher has to prise DD's fingers off my dress to let me go. 

8.05am. Back home, make coffee, check twitter, blog, emails, facebook. Facebook is full of lovely messages wishing me a fabulous, wonderful, fun-filled, day. It hopes I'm spoiled and pampered and made to feel special on my special day. I put on a load of laundry and get to work preparing lessons for my college courses.

Work all day, occasionally check in to all the above forums. More pressure from facebook but it serves me right for going there. Make and eat a million rounds of cheese on toast to compensate for having an ordinary day on my birthday.

4.30pm. Pick up DD from school and, feeling the pressure from facebook, suggest we go out for ice-cream. She has a little drink from her water bottle and we go to the nearest cafe. (This is significant).

4.45pm. I don't even like ice-cream so I just ordered a celebratory coffee. Just instant because that's what I like. It cost 16nis (Over 3 pounds) for something I could have had free at home. 2 scoops of ice-cream cost 28nis (almost 5 pounds!) and of course DD had to also have a drink. Last time we go there (Cafe BeGeenah if you're interested). 

After we ordered and before it came I suggested we see what homework DD had. On opening her bag I realize I'd neglected to put her pencil case back inside when I'd removed it to get her water bottle out. It was sitting on a bench in school. DD promptly had a meltdown. I suggested we run and get it. She didn't want to, preferring to sit and scream about it. I kept thinking about all those coloured pencils and felt tip pens individually labelled with her name - hours of work to redo if we've lost her pencil case. 

5pm. The ice-cream came. It was served in a sundae glass and filled to the top. As DD put her spoon in the ice-cream dribbled out all over the top and ran down the outside onto the table. Meltdown 2. I went to the kitchen to get a bowl and paper napkins, I cleaned up the mess, I sat down. 

DD: I don't even like this ice-cream.

5.20pm. We leave the cafe 10 pounds poorer. I'm in a foul mood. I give myself the tip for cleaning the table.  

5.30pm. We get back to school and rattle the locked doors until the cleaner hears us and lets us in. We find the pencil case under the bench (where it had fallen which is why I didn't notice it when repacking the bag). This was the highlight of my day.

5.40pm. Get out DD's homework. There was quite a lot to do. For Hebrew she had to draw over the outlines of the aleph-bet and then go back to colour all the letters in. By the time she got to the colouring she'd had enough. I told her to leave it for a while and do some more after supper. 

DD: No you do it.

Me: I can't do your homework for you, it's not allowed. 

DD: Just do it! JUST DO IT FOR ME!

Me: Ok, I'll do a few letters. (It was a lot of busy work after all.)

I coloured in three letters and suddenly there was a howl of despair from DD. Apparently there was a pattern going on in the colours and I'd done the wrong colours. Meltdown 3. 

6pm. I go to make supper which is usually served at 6pm but because we'd been out it wasn't made yet. 

DD: Can I have suffink (sic) to keep me going? (I give her a packet of crisps.)

6.20pm. I serve supper. 

DD: Actually I'm not hungry. I'm full up from ice-cream and crisps. (Okey dokey.)

7.30pm. After the dinosaur book and a couple of other stories I left DD in bed and ended the evening on facebook reading about various people being whisked off to the Carmel Spa or at least taken out for a special dinner for their birthdays. They were all feeling the luuuurv. Oh good. Happy for them. Really. 

Happy Birthday to me and all single mothers everywhere! 

  

Broken And Possibly Broke

As soon as I looked at my toe straight after tripping over the laptop cable (stupid twit I know), I knew it was broken. It wasn't the pain as that was no more than when you stub your toe hard on the edge of the bed. It was the fact that my fourth toe on the left was leaning unnaturally about 20 degrees off kilter towards the little toe and I couldn't move it back, or indeed at all.

First surprise. I always thought when you broke a bone you rushed off to the hospital in agony dropping everything else in the urgency of it all. I've never broken anything before you understand, so I didn't know.

I have a more graphic photo but I'm saving it for Silent Sunday. 

1. I called a friend to come and take DD to kindergarten. Dressed DD, took a shower, dressed myself and made her packed lunch.

2. When DD had left with my friend I rang TEREM (a private A&E that has local branches and works with the various health funds. You pay 79 shekels [each health fund pays a different rate, this is the most] but I think you can sometimes claim it back  from your health fund. NB: if you are having a stroke or a heart attack go directly to the hospital, do not pass TEREM, do not pay 79 shekels.)

3. It was still only 8am and they opened at 9am. So I turned on the computer and spent an hour telling fb about my broken toe and basking in sympathetic messages. My printer which had not connected with its wifi the day before suddenly sprang to life and printed about 30 copies of the page I had needed urgently 24 hours earlier. I was in no mood for that.

4. Took a taxi to TEREM and checked in at 9am. The receptionist told me that if my toe was broken I didn't have to pay anything. If not then I had to pay the 79 shekels. Went for BP, medical details and to be x-rayed hoping my toe was broken (not really - I knew I'd be spending way more than 79 shekels on taxis this month if it were).

5. Toe was broken. Deceptively kind looking doctor grabbed it and shoved it back into its correct position. I screamed. Then I cried. It hadn't even been hurting before and now it killed. The nurse came and strapped the offending toe to its neighbouring toe. Left at 9.50 without paying and took a taxi home with instructions to see an orthoped within 2 days.

6. Made an appointment with the orthoped for 4.40pm. I could have got an earlier appointment but I had to be at home between 11 and 2 as a wardrobe was being delivered. I was so looking forward to finally putting everything away tidily after the renovations but now that's not going to happen for a while.

7. Called the students I had arranged to meet at the college, which is round the corner, and asked them to come to me instead. Called a mother from the kindergarten and asked her bring DD home. Very strange feeling to have waved my 4yo off to school at the door in the morning and then have her knock on the door when she arrived home at 3.30pm. I have glimpsed the future. She's so proud of herself.

8. We took a taxi to the clinic and saw the orthoped. He told me it was very swollen (no kidding), that it would take between a month and 6 weeks to heal, keep it bandaged during the day, don't go hiking or play sport (obviously doesn't know me), and have an x-ray in about 5 weeks time. Mentally calculated that friends' son's wedding including a long weekend on their kibbutz is in seven weeks time - phew!

9. We went out for supper seeing as the clinic is in the shopping mall. Then we took another taxi home. That's 80 shekels in taxis, 60 shekels for supper, and 60 shekels in the pharmacy because obviously DD had to have some hair ornaments and I remembered that I needed toothpaste which was cheaper per tube if you bought two - even though we only came in for a roll of bandage and some surgical sticky tape. That's 200 shekels wasted and it was only the first day of my 6 weeks of broken toe. I'm not sure I can afford this broken toe.

10. Day 2 - only hurts when I walk or stand for too long. DD was taken and collected from kindergarten by friends. Students came to me. I ate too much. Changed arrangement to host friend and her 4yo for lunch on Saturday to come for a cup of tea and a biscuit later in the afternoon. Tomorrow I have a busy day and I must go out. All housework on hold for the forseeable future (well there have to be some perks). Have switched to showering in the morning until someone can come and change the lightbulb in the bathroom for me.

My three overriding thoughts about all this are: A) I'm so disappointed for DD that I won't be able to take her swimming this month; B) How did Chinese women suffer having their feet bound all their lives? Apart from the pain, it's so boring not to be able to zip around getting things done. And C), we are so lucky to have TEREM. I read online about non-emergencies waiting up to nine hours in A&E in the UK. I arrived at TEREM at 9 and was out by 9.50. I have to say that public medicine in Israel is amazing. A_M_A_ZING!