AWOL and other stuff going on in my house

My son is AWOL.  He is supposed to be in the army, but wanted to be in a certain unit, which they didn't give him and he just walked out.  Just like that.  He will eventually go to jail for this, of course not the regular criminal jail, but rather an army jail, which also is a rite of passage for many a belligerent young person. It began on the day when he was recruited and they gave him dark black boots instead of the orange boots of the fighting units.

"What am I, a job-nik?" he yelled at the young guy distributing the uniforms.  He wants a macho job.  He doesn't want to fix tank tires or work with dangerous chemicals.

So three days later they tell him to go to the Army Police Unit - the unit that mans the checkpoints.  But he doesn't want to stand 8 hours a day at a checkpoint for the next three years.  They said to him one late afternoon  "go there now or else".  It took him three hours to get there by bus and continuous phone calls to me and my daughter and son-in-law every half hour, as to how to do this alone by train and bus.  He's not a traveler and adventurer like his mother.  Stubborn like his dad, yes.  When he got there at 9:00 in the evening, there was only a guard at the gate who said it was too late, there was no one in the office and he should come back the next morning.  By that time, he was like "fuck it" and then went back the next day to the main base to tell them what assholes they were, but no one would listen to him.  They told him his name is no longer in their computer. Nevertheless, he still showed up at the main base a couple of times after that, asking for a chance to speak with an officer.  If they were smart, they could have thrown him in jail right then and there.  It's like a tease - neh, neh, I'm heeere! - but they ignored him completely.
 
So now he's home waiting to be picked up and dragged off to jail.  They won't jail him for too long.  It'll be anywhere from 2 days to a month.  And then people have told him that after all that, he'll get what he wants.  It's like an endurance thing.  No one can figure it out, but that's what it seems to be.

The my eldest daughter is planning on leaving Israel this year, taking my grandkids with her to go to the Golden Country of the US of A, to live in New York State, where good deodorants cost a dollar.  We all tell her while that may be true of deodorants, if she wants to send her kids to Jewish schools, "that" will cost her tens of thousands of dollars a year, plus she won't have her mother around the corner babysitting every week.

Hubby was nonchalant about the whole thing - "Just let her go.  Don't make her feel bad about going.  Let her try it out and see for herself.  You won't have to babysit all the time and besides, we'll have more time to fuck."

Selfish old coot.  Like we need more time for that??!

But I have to hand it to him.  Last night we had 13 people over for Shabbat dinner, and he not only showed up at the table, but set it and dusted the entire apartment.  I had 3 non-Jewish guests for dinner who got my name off some mysterious PDF file as "Shabbat hospitality in the Holy Land".  The first time I got wind of this was when I got an email that 11 priests were coming to Israel and were interested in staying at my place and how much would this cost.  I don't have proper accommodations for sleepovers and can only fit in 4 extra people besides the family for Friday night meals, but my friend at work told me to "just put them in the room with your husband". 

So now my kids think that every non-Jewish guest that comes round is a priest of some sort.  But these guests were just regular evangelist Christian tourists and actually thought that the service I invited them to at Nava Tehilla was a kind of Pentecostal Jewish Service because of the emotion they saw while praying.  I took that as a big compliment. I kind of feel amused that I would be on any list because my family is so dysfunctional, but that maybe spending a Friday night with my family could be quite amusing for tourists.  But my good family acted completely normal yesterday.  I was so proud of them.