[img]96|left|Shachar||no_popup[/img]Dateline Jerusalem — It must be my age, or I am jinxed. Everything I touch seems to break, tear, unravel, crash to the floor or disintegrate. Even I seem to be falling apart. I cannot claim that “they don't make things like they used to” since I was made so long ago.
The insides of my first washing machine fell out, and I have been in Israel only a short time. Don't ask how. I still haven't figured it out, other than I must have been too forceful when I shut the lid. Must be all that upper arm strength from my days training at the Sheriff's Academy almost 40 years ago. Now the new washing machine all of a sudden no longer has a spin cycle that works, so all my clothes come out sopping wet, dripping on the floor if not twisted and wrung out.
Because I have no clothes dryer, it takes several days to dry on a clothes rack. Although people in Israel tend to dry their clothes on the lines outside their windows or on racks in their apartments, dryers are becoming more popular and a few of my friends actually own them. Problem is, my laundry room barely fits a washing machine let alone a dryer.
Today I was forced to buy the third laptop computer I have owned since moving to Israel 3_ years ago. Considering that Israel is responsible for inventing innovative computer-related technology such as DiskOnKey, Instant Messenger for AOL and MSN, Windows NT and XP operating systems such as Pentium-4, Centrino, and Pentium MMX chip, USB Flash Drives, the computer chip for IBM personal computers, and the first anti-virus software, it does not make sense that these world renowned name brand computers I buy would not function in such a computer-savvy country. I admit that I am a bit computer illiterate, but even I know how to press the “on” button.
My Troubles Are Branching Out
But it isn't just technology that seems out of my grasp. My kitchen drawer crashed to the floor, leaving a gaping hole in the kitchen cabinetry. I turned on the kitchen faucet and it fell into the sink, with water spurting into the air. Hardly any of the overhead lights in my living room work, even after the electrician has come to make repairs. And during the summer, I had a leaky air conditioner that finally had to be turned off, that too “fixed” by a professional. Since there is no such thing as a “slum lord” in Israel, the landlord has nothing to do but collect rent. The tenant is responsible for all repairs, homeowner dues or Vaad Bayit payments, the landlord's taxes, and the buying of appliances. I had to buy my own oven, refrigerator, washing machine and clothing cabinets (called arons in Israel) because my apartment came with no closets.
Rubber soles detached from relatively new shoes (no wonder practically every other shop on the main street in my town is a shoe store). Once I wore a new skirt to my synagogue on Shabbat only to find that with all the standing and sitting I did during prayer, it started to unravel. I practically had to hold the material to my body to keep the skirt on me as I ran to my apartment building (luckily across the street from my synagogue) and climbed up four flights of stairs.
Why is it that Israel suffers from a terrible drought, but only on the days I need to leave my apartment is there a downpour of much needed rain to flood the streets where I must walk? Today, even something as simple as holding a pen in my hand caused disastrous results when ink leaked onto my fingers and I unknowingly touched my face, producing a lovely black smudge.
Am I living in the “Bermuda Triangle” of Israel? Or am I that triangle, with a pointy head (according to my parents I was born with a “pin head”) and my aging body spreading wider and wider as over the years my feet get closer to the ground?
L'hitraot. Shachar