Rosh haShana Saturday

A holiday Saturday is even more Saturday-like
than normal Saturdays.

What do I mean by that rather repetitive statement? Well, Saturdays here are really quiet as a fairly large part of the population observe the Sabbath and not only go to synagogue, but don't cook or drive or turn on the tv (admittedly alot of them have the tv going for the whole time - from dusk to dusk), they might go for a walk, but that is the extent of their extra-homely activity. The only people going around and enjoying the day off are us sinners. Holiday Saturdays, alot of sinners join in with the 7-day-a-week pious and redeem themselves a bit. I am not a big one for self redemption, I figure it would take alot more than that to get me onto the straight and narrow. Besides, the winding path I weave through life has been pretty interesting so far, and I am interested in seeing where it leads.

This morning I was woken to the sound of Jesamine's little voice asking if I wanted to go out with her and her mom. With no clue as to where I agreed blithely, scrubbed my face, threw on some clothes and answered the door to a cheerful grin (still) wearing a cast. We dumped our respective garbage out the front door - that's where the garbage bins are - another Israeli weirdness, turned around and went out back to the car, saying hello to the cats on the way. We drove to Neve Tsedek, a very trendy, swish neighbourhood that used to be very non, and is where Tel Aviv started. Surprise, surprise, the cafe/icecream parlour was closed. With Jes starting to get upset at her plans being foiled we turned around posthaste and headed back into Jaffa and Dr. Lek's. Having walked out of the house without mainlining a single drop of coffee, imagine my distress when we discovered that their machine hadn't yet warmed up, hadn't even been turned on yet - at 11h00 in the morning!! Indignation. But at least Jes was happy getting icecream for breakfast.

And so were all the other kids,
as evidenced by the smiling faces I saw.

I am a pretty big kid myself, so I wasn't all that upset at having to eat icecream for breakfast. Mind you, SistR and I split a small cup of lemon meringue icecream, which we then shared with Jes who seemed to like ours almost more than her own mango cone. None of us however, were quite so wholehearted, when it came to digging, in as the little girl at the next table.

From there we went next door to Hinnawi's alcohol outlet
for my treat...

This is one of my favourite neighbourhood shops.

I figured I should take advantage of the fact that SistR has a car.

After all,
it is much easier to transport bottles in a car than on a scooter
(and you can bring more of them home at a time too!)

I managed to replace what had, somehow or other, disappeared since the last time I was there,

I still can't figure out how that happened.

I must have mice.

From there we drove to a local nursery where S & J got
bouganvillias and passionfruit plants.

I took pictures.

Laundry occupied my afternoon and, after the excesses of the night before, I made myself a very modest lunch of lubia, the mystery beans in my CSA. Blanched in the thawed stock from my porkbelly and then sauteed with garlic, ginger, green onions, mirrin, oyster sauce, chili oil and sesame oil, they were deelish!

In the evening it was off to Cactus Flower's place for a
pre-prandial stroll in the glowing light of
an absolutely stunning sunset.

A real award winner.

And there were lots of people out on the beach enjoying it,
just like us.

Unlike Cactus Flower and our Jerusalem Friend, who had both gone out for big holiday lunches that were basically more of the same from last night, I appreciated the supper we had.

A very uneventful Saturday,
but that's how I like my days off.