Month: December 2010

  • Koala update: Twenty months.

    Love. I’m not sure what I can add to that to make it sound any more profound than the overwhelming feeling it attempts to describe. Your curiosity is inspiring. Your empathy is heartwarming. Your tantrums are hilarious. Your face is delicious. And it doesn’t matter where in the world we happen to be…

  • Merry Christmas from Oz.

    Just took an impromptu walking tour of Ivanhoe, an area of Melbourne where the folks get real merry about Christmas decor, American-style. Well, kind of; it’s a good effort. The blue-ribbon light show, in my opinion: Aussie class… Snowmen? Reindeer? How about a Santa-hat wearing kangaroo? Pretending it’s winter (though, it’s a freak summer and…

  • On living outside Israel.

    It happens every time I visit the States: I spend about 35% of the time thinking about the reasons I could and couldn’t live there. By now, the couldn’ts far outweigh the coulds. So it stands to reason that I’m going through the same process here in Melbourne. It’s different, of course, because it’s not…

  • Just a typical day.

    This is the kind of thing you’d expect in Israel I suppose, but with my in-laws, who knows what might pop up down under… Today while visiting my brother-in-law’s farm (yes, farm), my nephew started towards one of the roosters and was attacked. My father-in-law ran over, grabbed my nephew, and kicked – booted –…

  • Little foreigner.

    It wasn’t Koala’s first in-person Christmas tree (we were in Atlanta last November) but it was the first he got to touch. And grab. And pull ornaments off from. Oddly, it was in the Hong Kong airport. That makes him a foreigner on a few levels.

  • First Australian… trip.

    We’ve left Israel and arrived in Australia (253465 hours later). Don’t you think the sign should have been a koala?

  • Got a feeling this whole family’s going down.

    It’s amazing the things you can plan a year in advance and then when the date finally arrives, you’re scrambling to make it all happen. Weddings… Babies… Trips to Australia… Oh, that? Yeah, we’re leaving tomorrow on a long-awaited, long-planned, finally here month-long trip to Australia to visit the family. And introduce Koala to most…

  • The monkey in the tree.

    Is this mean? To sum it up, Koala is shit-scared of the monkey I put in the houseplant. It’s actually, until now, been a wine-bottle holder but I thought it would be funny as a house-tree presenter. On the other hand, Koala has learned to identify monkeys pretty quickly. It makes reading Curious George highly…

  • Chanukah 5771 roundup.

    Well, that escalated quickly. I thought Chanukah with a non-infant kid would be more fun, but I guess Chanukah with two non-infant kids will be more like it. Except for when there’s no school the whole week and I want to rip out my hair like I see my coworkers doing. But the 8 crazy…

  • Today’s moment of Zen.

    I said to Koala: “Are you a קוף?” And he looked at me and… coughed.

  • What have I done?

    I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t freaked. Though the truth is it’s only starting to dawn on me how awe-some and terrifying it is. I’m beginning to comprehend what I’ve done. It really is dawning; first the expectation of the rise, and then the initial tips of the rays. Pretty soon I think…

  • Fire preparedness.

    No winter, an idiot burning trash, a dry forest – Haifa has way too much light this Chanukah. The news has become international that for the last 24 hours 5,000 acres of Haifa (Carmel) is drowning in the worst fire in Israel’s history. Israel is great at being prepared for terrorist threat, thorough in airport…