[img]96|left|||no_popup[/img] Dateline Jerusalem — I am getting lazy in my old age. I used to love to cook and entertain family and friends. In the U.S. I had a gourmet kitchen with two dishwashers, two ovens, two microwaves, three sinks, a warming oven, cabinets and counter-space galore. Now I live in an apartment with a kitchen not much larger than the island eating bar in my house in the States. The cramped space and limited area to prepare and cook meals makes cooking in Israel a chore for me rather than a pleasure.

My current counter-space includes preparing food on top of my microwave and toaster oven, and on a lopsided plastic table. The “dishwasher” is me. I must wash all dishes by hand. I have no garbage disposal. I open my kitchen cabinets and plastic containers and cutting boards fall on my head. Everything is filled to the brim. I have three bedrooms, and one is used for storage since I have no closets. One bedroom is about the size of my old walk-in closet so I use this room for storage. Everything is tiny except for the living room. It is quite large. Either that, or I don't have enough furniture.

Where Is My Food?

Tonight I went to the market and asked for delivery. Usually it is within an hour or so. Four hours later, at 11:30 p.m., it had yet to arrive. I guess my being lazy about cooking is a bad omen. All the ready-prepared microwavable items and salads are sitting somewhere and the market doesn't seem to know where. My only concern now, however, is whether they will be delivered in the morning, and whether the refrigerated and frozen items will have gone bad. Since I am almost out of groceries, my dinner consisted of microwavable french fries.

The morning is going to be hectic because my landlord decided to send a “friend” to look at my apartment. I just renewed my lease a week ago and now he wants to sell! Wait until the guy sees this dump. The landlord is asking top dollar, and the place is falling apart and nothing works. But it has been “home” to me for the last four years since I came to Israel. As an attorney I am quite familiar with leases, but I was desperate when I signed this one. Never in a million years would I have done so in the U.S. But I had bronchitis or pneumonia, who knows which since the post office was on strike and I could not get the form to get health coverage. I was staying with my ex-husband's cousins for a month when it was only supposed to be a week, and every apartment I tried to rent prior to getting this one fell through. Can you feel my desperation for a place to live as soon as possible?

The word “fryer” means “sucker” in Hebrew. It is the perfect description of me. The landlord knew a sucker when he saw me, and the market recognized me, too. Once a clerk working for the city told me I would never make it in Israel because I was “too nice.” What was I so nice about? I wanted to pay my bill!

When I was a student at UCLA, someone said I was naive. I prefer to think of myself as trusting. There I go again, looking through rose-colored glasses.

L'hitraot. Shachar.