Vacation Time

Yay! I'm off work this entire week, and man do I deserve a week off. But it's not really a week off but rather a week on. I filled up a few pages of To Do items for each day.

There's the 25 hour Fast of Tisha B'av which begins tonight. I'm babysitting the grandkid the whole day tomorrow and it will be a challenge to fast. Maybe I'll make it through the whole thing, maybe I won't.

Monday is getting my youngest son, who is 16 years old, registered into school. He failed 9th grade pretty miserably, and had a hard time getting into any school. So there's a school right here in the neighborhood that gives these "failures" a chance, using the Branco Weiss method. I do hope it works for him. That afternoon I plan a train trip to Tel Aviv to see the Azrielli Center, which I haven't been to yet, plus the Tel Aviv port, which I also had never seen. Included are lunch and dinner - even if I go traveling alone.

Tuesday is my interfaith day. We have a coordinators' retreat at the Austrian Hospice in the Old City. I start my day with a bone scan to see whether or not I have osteoporosis - just a general check up the doctors recommend I do every 2 years after age 50.

Wednesday - I want to have lunch at River restaurant, a new place that opened up recently, and go to get a massage somewhere in the city. That evening is the Hutzot Hayotzer (Arts and Crafts fair) so well described here . This is the only time I buy myself jewellery. If I am not for myself then who is, or however the saying goes...

Thursday - I plan to lunch at Jerusalem's excellent Arcadia restaurant with its well-known chef. This is a restaurant I cannot afford for dinner, but that has affordable lunch specials. There's a party with Arab and Jewish women in Jerusalem early that evening, and later on Moosh Ben Ari is playing Hutzot Hayotzer. My son wants to go to that, so I'll go with him. There's outdoor Greek music at City Hall, but I'll have to pass on that. Too many things to choose from.

Friday - I want to brunch at the Italian restaurant Luciano's and go to the farmer's market on Emek Refaim.

Saturday - fight with my husband and children. :-) My day of rest.

Sunday - Go to Haruzim, a bead store in the German Colony, to fix my broken costume jewellery and perhaps make another necklace, then off to Japanika for lunch or the sushi place on Azza Street. I've never seen Mini Israel so in the afternoon hope to go with friends who also haven't been there. Evening - either the Tapas Bar in the shuk for live music or ethnic music on one of Jerusalem's alleyways.

So who needs to go outside the country? Flights are expensive and even hotels in Israel are double the price in the summer. So I'll just do local things, except for my day in Tel Aviv. Sitting on the beach, burning to a crisp is not my idea of fun, though I love to go in the late afternoon, take off my shoes and dig my feet into the sand and wade ankle deep in the water. So maybe I'll need another week off, just for rest and relaxation because this coming week certainly won't be that kind of week.