Nervous

I hate that I get nervous about this kind of stuff. I'm sitting here at work waiting for this engineer guy to call me about getting back into engineering.

I just haven't found a job here in my field that works for me. I think it's a bit of culture difference. It's always been a bit of a boys club, even in the US, but here you also have a bit of machoism thrown in to make it interesting. I've never been extremely comfortable with it, but the longer I'm away from it the more scared I am to get back into it (all these its refer to engineering). I don't have the motivation to prove myself with all of these men. There's also a huge difference between studying engineering and engineering as an industry. I loved studying it but I really don't know if I want to work in an environment like the one in engineering firms. But then again, maybe I just haven't found the right job yet. Oy, how do I know? Plus, I have myself a comfy job now that intellectually doesn't challenge me so much but provides me with a place that I really don't mind going to everyday.

What to do, what to do.

This meeting is just an advising type meeting anyway, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a job for me now in any case.

Then to throw a little more doubt into the mix part of me feels that I haven't found a great job in my field because I'm an "immigrant", and that my job now is just me settling or even being held down by society. And on the other end of the spectrum I think that this job is a blessing because it allows me the creative energy and motivation to start creating artwork again, something that I haven't done since before I started engineering in college.

That's what I really want to do. If someone could guarantee me that I could get some sort of art producing buisness off the ground I would give this whole engineering thing up in a second. But why at this point in time do I feel totally inadequate if I don't get a "real" job?

This really sucks. I guess it could be worse though and I could not have a job at all right now.

I guess I feel this need to prove myself, that I really can be an engineer. Why? I have no idea. My husbad thinks I should give the whole thing up. But I liked it for a reason, right? Maybe this is just a case of being good at something not meaning that you should do it for the rest of your life.

Maybe if I get "I can do calculus" tatooed on my forehead, I'll feel better and won't feel the need to pursue this.

Ugh. Back to waiting for the phone call.

Tinkering

Title and whatnot of this blog are apt to change, just a warning. Still trying to find my groove. Don't be confused.

I know this is a little over-optimistic. But if anyone happens to stop by who knows how to stick a graphic in for my title block, could you please email me??? Lots of people do it, it must be easy. And to think I'm actually an engineer.

Happy Birthday E!!!

In honor of your birthday I have composed the 10 things I love about you list:

1. Your smile
2. Your eyes
3. Your dancing
4. Your freckles
5. The way you question most things I take for granted
6. Your love of everything
7. Your devotion
8. Your support
9. How you take care of me
10. The way you love me

Sick

Yuch. I'm sick. I've held out for this long, 6 months or so, but it finally got me. I tend to get a rediculous number of colds so a 6 month health streak for me is really good. But, I'm sick and I feel crappy. Plus, my husband is now at a conference so I have to fend for myself.

I was looking forward to having some time to myself, especially since I now feel less than stellar, but then everyone and there mother decided to come to Jerusalem this week. This happens now and again, everybody comes here to visit at the same time. This is nice to a certain extent, I really see more people now than when I lived in the US, but everybody expects you to host them, drive them around, and make an effor to see them, even if they're not your best friends. A lot of times I feel like people come to see Jerusalem and then I get sucked in in the process.

This is particularly frustrating this week because my dad is coming to spend a precious 3 days with me, which I am so looking forward to. I had it all planned out. Spend a couple of days by myself, relaxing, and getting better, so that when my dad gets here I can really enjoy it. Now I have to squeeze in at least two more social obligations that I would really just rather skip. Sucks.

I don't want to feel hosted out by the time the people who I really care about get here. It makes me resent seeing all the people who I should be happy to see because I'm worried about being too worn out to enjoy my family and good friends. This stuff is precious and hard to come by. Again, sucks.

But, Yay. My daddy is coming!

Nothin'

We got nothin', snow that is.

Surprise surprise.

It's a bit depressing.

Snow?

Yeah.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Right now it's pretty gross out but I can't imagine that it's actually cold enough to snow.

Happy Valentines Day!

The Puppers Part II

Last we left our sweet doggy and her unsuspecting owners we had decided that we needed professional help. We needed to find a trainer.

This is when Roni entered our lives. My husband and I still worship the ground he walks on. Roni took one look at our precious Puppers and said, "Oh, she's a Canaani!" This man changed our lives. Even just knowing what kind of dog she was and being able to learn about her breed helped us immensely. We found out that our dog was never going to act like a golden retriever, she wasn't going to run up and lick strangers' faces, she would always be distracted, jumpy, and weary of everything . At least we didn't have to train her not to jump on people.

Now having new people come over to our house goes something like this:
- Put dog on front balcony when we know people are coming and close balcony door.
- Wait for the barking to begin letting us know that our guests have arrived.
- Yell at guests over very loud barking to tell them to ignore the crazy dog, she will not hurt you, she is on the balcony and cannot get in.
- Let guests into house and show them around while trying to ignore the still very loud barking as the Puppers watches the new guests through the sliding doors to the balcony.
- Let puppy in to very wearily sniff guests.
- If the guest is female, one sniff and all is good, if the guest is male, one very scared sniff, jump back a couple of steps, bark loudly for a few more seconds, and then once again sniff and all is good.
-Ahh, now we can get on with our social activities.

And this is after her being fully trained. Life is still not easy with her, she needs to be controlled constantly (apparently Canaan dogs yearn for a leader and to be told what to do, strong pack instincts), she barks on and off really annoyingly from dusk until we go to bed (just to be on the safe side), and bringing new people into the house is always a process. But I wouldn't give her up for anything now. It's really true, the more you put into a relationship the more you get out of it. And we've put so much effort into opening communication with this dog and making it so we can all cohabitate, that I can't even imagine being without her. Having her has really been one of the biggest learning experiences of my life (can you tell from the length of this post?).





Awwwww.

Now, don't you want a Canaan dog too? The point of this whole long post was not to scare everyone off from this breed of dog. She is an awesome dog and a lot of the personality traits that make her impossible also make her extremely loyal, affectionate, and funny. Plus, she even scared off the gas guy, no burglars at our house. The point of this is to show what a labor of love a pet can be, and that being a responsible pet owner is not always easy, you never know what kind of dog you're going to end up with even if you get a puppy from a breeder. I think that one of the most important thing with a dog is to understand your dog and if necessary change your expectations of what your dog will be. For example, E has always dreamt of living on a Moshav and having our dog run free (a lot of dogs do that on the Moshav for better or worse) and do whatever he or she wants. Well, we do now live on a Moshav, but the puppers is fenced in a nice big backyard of her own. She's just not calm and unresponsive enough to be left to wander around the neighborhood by herself.

There really were several times that we almost had to give her up, that we thought we couldn't handle her (I’m pretty sure I've seen some of her sisters back up for adoption at the JSPCA website, *sniff*). But we freaked out, called Roni, who pretty much told us that we are in control of our destiny, reminded us of what we had to do to reinforce discipline in our home, and move on with our lives. And I'm so glad that we did.

The Puppers

Don't you love how I'm introducing my entire life to you? Hopefully I'll still have stuff to write about when I am done. I don't have kids yet (oh right, that's another post), so it's not going to take very long.

Right.

The Puppers. AKA Pupperooni, the Puppermeister, the Pupscicle (yes, I really call her all of those things, it's a good thing she can't talk). She has a real name too, but from here on out she will be known as The Puppers.

The Puppers is a mixed breed Canaan dog who we adopted from the JSPCA (like ASPCA but with a J for Jerusalem). If you don't know what a Canaan dog is, check out this site. That little barking dog icon in the ASPCA breed guide doesn't even begin to describe the watchdog instincts of this doggy. Click here to read more about Canaan dogs, they are incredibly interesting because they still have a lot of natural instincts that other dogs have had bred out of them. Basically, to sum it up, Canaan dogs are such good watchdogs because they are weary of everything. This stems from having such a strong survival instinct in the desert; they don't trust anyone except for their owners.

Now, if I can draw your attention back to the ASPCA guide linked to above, down at the bottom of the page, "Special Alerts: The Canaan is not suitable for inexperienced dog owners." And what would we be? Inexperienced dog owners! Not just inexperienced, but I personally had an extreme dog phobia until very recently.

So, how did we end up with said type of dog? Well, we wanted to adopt a puppy from the shelter so we went and brought home this:

Isn't she cute!!!!

She was just an innocent ball of brown and white fur. None of the people at the shelter had any idea what kind of dog she was. They said that she (and her other five sisters) were midsize (at least they got that right), mutts, nothing more and nothing less. So, we decided to take a chance and took her.

She drove us crazy with normal puppy stuff. But she had a ridiculous amount of energy even for a puppy, plus she was damn stubborn. We tried training her with basic commands and she would have none of it. Sure she would do it for a treat, but she's not a normal dog and food is not necessarily top of her priority list, she had her own plans.

Then the barking started.

She wasn't the type of dog to sit at home and bark all day, but when there was a reason to bark (someone at the door, cat by the window), it was the most important thing on the face of the earth and nothing could stop her. It got to the point that we had to avoid people on the street because she would bark at people on the street who felt that people were entering our private space (ahh, girl after my own heart). So we decided that the only way we could keep her was to hire a professional trainer.

To be continued...

Oh My Gosh

I can't believe it. My sitemeter says that someone actually read my blog! Yay. Please excuse me as I welcome myself to the blogsphere.

Granted, it could just be my husband reading. Also, putting the word Middle East in a post can always stir things up a bit. Unfortunately for the unsuspecting web surfers, the post titled with the Middle East continues on to talk about sephora, but whatever.

Top Ten Things I Miss Living in the Middle East

1. Sephora
2. The Food Network
3. TLC
4. Central heat! Jerusalem is not the tropics!
5. Panera, I'm addicted.
6. Target
7. Affordable jeans
8. My personal space
9. My friends, *sniff*
10. My family, Wahhh!

Credit Where Credit is Due

Now, about this blog thing, I stumbled upon this whole world of blogginess through Julie at A Little Pregnant. I was completely drawn into her story as well as the stories of hundreds of other women in the infertile blogging community (she has a great list of blogs). I have no idea if I am infertile or not, I haven't tested it yet, but I love the honesty, humor, and strength with which these women write. These women have taught me lots about lots of stuff, and in the end they even inspired me to blog myself. So if you haven't read any of these wonderful women's blogs on the right, go on over and take a look. You won't be sorry.

More About Me

I met E about two and a half years ago. I was the first of any of my friends to get married. Then if that wasn't bad enough, I also jumped on an airplane soon after and moved all the way across the ocean with my new, much older, foreign husband. Granted, he is Jewish and loves me very much and theoretically that's all my parents ever wanted for me, but apparently they also wanted me to live next door to them. I was always the good daughter, and my parents are very protective, so I think I traumatized them pretty badly. They're only starting to recover a bit now, a year and a half later.

So, here I am in the land of Milk and Honey. Our first year here we lived in downtown Jerusalem, which was great. Lots of restaurants, shopping, walking distance to everything, what's there not to like? Oh right. The crazy Israelis (yes, I know this is a generalization, I am married to a nice not so crazy one, but this is my blog so I can vent about what I want). Getting yelled at constantly by complete strangers is not my idea of a good time. There is no sense of privacy here which can be great; it creates a real sense of unity, like we're all in this together, but in the US I had a bubble. I liked my bubble. Living in a busy city full of stressed out, impatient Israelis is not conducive to having a bubble. I think my bubble was about the size of a pea. Plus, having a loud, kind of scary dog that drew lots of attention, reduced my bubble to a piece of couscous.

Now E, the doggy, and I have moved to a Moshav (you're going to have to Google that if you don't know what it means, it's effectively a rural type suburb) outside of the city. I was a little skeptical moving away from the convenience of the city, but I luuuuuuuve it! Our Moshav is nestled in a valley in the mountains outside of Jerusalem. All we see is mountains out of our windows, and we can still get pizza delivery! The wonders of this country. My bubble is now the size of the half dunam of land that our house sits on and I'm happy. Now our dog can run around our yard and people now say "oh, your dog is really doing her job" when she barks her head off, and not "is she going to eat me and my children?"

Now for your viewing pleasure, the doggy enjoying the sunset in her new home:

The Lost Pilpel

So, Israelis have this thing called pilpel. Literally translated as pepper, but basically it's a way of saying that you've got spunk, a little fire to your soul.

When my husband E first met me he told me that one of the reasons he liked me was because I had pilpel. So after a brief conversation about what the hell he meant by that (see above). I was like, "oh that's kind of sweet, I guess I do have a bit of pilpel in me." In the end, I think that's why I married him. I've always felt deep down that I had pilpel and he was the first guy to notice it, and all by himself no less.

Why am I writing about pilpel again? Oh right. I think I've lost it. At least it's gotten buried deep down lately. I'm not quite sure why. It could be all the big life changes like getting married, moving across the ocean, getting a crazy dog, becoming slightly crazy myself, you know. I'm sure I'll find it, this is just the beginning. At least now that I realize it's missing I can start looking for it.