Summer halfway over!

Hard to believe, eh? I'm like - when did it start? Even if I had the money, I don't know whether I'd spend it on local hotels which seem to double in price, especially during August. But God found ways for me to be entertained that I find myself amazed that the summer is already halfway gone.

It's fabulous that I live in the center of the universe. People will always want to come here at some point in their lives. So if I lived in Bangladesh, that wouldn't be much of a pitstop on people's world tours.

A few of my friends' daughters came to Jerusalem from overseas. One was from Los Angeles. I hadn't seen her mother since 1977 when I traveled to LA, but we had been friends since our pre-teen years. We then went to the same high school and had a coming-of-age experience together when we decided to cut school one day in November 1970 to see Paul McCartney who was in New York recording his RAM album. We had an off-again on-again vigil at the studio, and never got caught by the school. They were probably relieved that we didn't show up. This much the daughter who visited with me already knew. Her mother and I would often get hysterical over nothing and among fits of laughter, people on the street or subways would think we were laughing at them and berated us. "You shouldn't laugh because YOU look like a frog, and YOU look like an elephant" I remember one saying to us, making us laugh even harder. Then what the daughter didn't know was that her mom and I used to sneak into mom's brother's room to look at his stash of filthy magazines when we were about 14.

The other daughter came from New York and was my eldest daughter's best friend since they were under two years old. They hadn't seen each other in 10 years.

My other friend from Toronto came in and filled me up on juicy Toronto gossip, the kind that even makes Hubby come out of his cave. It puts him in a good mood to hear how he's not the only one in the world suffering and loves it when others do or when others fall from grace.

On the bus the other day I bumped into a high school friend of mine who now lives in Jerusalem in an Ultra Orthodox neighborhood. We both went our separate ways but we were Best Friends during high school. I had a terrible crush on her brother, and I never told her. To this day. Because I valued her friendship more than I valued her brother, who went out with all these Farrah Fawcett (RIP) look-alike bimbos in the very early 70s and broke my heart because I didn't look Farrah-ish enough. I didn't want her to think for even one second that I was friends with her because of him and lose our friendship. I'm a true loyal blue Aquarius.

Another time on the bus I bumped into an old friend from Toronto, with whom I'm not in touch any longer, who always used to entertain me. Still does. I asked her where she worked and she told me where - iin a place for Alzheimer's patients "because whenever I make mistakes, they always forget that I did."