Coping with Copenhagen

Classic - but kind of smaller than you prepare for

when visual imagery is not enough

So last weekend my husband and I did something we haven't done in five years.  We took an overseas trip without our children.  We haven't done this since the girls were about 5 months in utero.  Even back then, as foetuses, they were already messing shit up for me.  Making me chunder in a toilet in Thailand that you really wouldn't have wanted to have to stick your head it.  Causing me to have to sit down every five minutes due to an unfortunate case of the headspins - it took an hour and a half to walk 10 minutes to the post office.  Messing with my hormones which resulted in me getting all emotional and hiding from my husband in a spare room in the hotel when he thought I'd left in a huff for the airport and tried to taxi there to rescue me.......I blame the little cretins.  It's all their fault.  None is mine.  None.  Never is.  Never will be.

Anyway, as you can possibly guess from the title, we were headed for Copenhagen for a weekend extravaganza...... of....... furniture and........pickled herring?  I never previously rated Danish cuisine to be honest.  Considering Denmark has had the number one restaurant in the world for quite some time now - they must be doing something right though.  Would have loved to visit it - it's called Noma.  By the way never google search "Noma" and press "images".  You will never eat again.  Unless you enjoy looking at pictures of African children  with teeth coming out holes in their heads.  Seriously, I don't think I will sleep tonight.  What the fuck???  Who names their restaurant after a disfiguring children's disease????

Anyway, despite this unfortunate coincidence, Noma is so ridiculously booked out, that the next available table was not available until January 8th.....for lunch.  God knows how you'd get into that place for dinner.  You'd have to book two years in advance, or possibly develop a relationship with the maître d' based on sexual favours for tables....and then again, who knows if you'd succeed. I'd have to brush up on my blow-job techniques - start reading Cleo again.   Should it be like that?  Am I willing to prostitute myself for odd food?  Should a restaurant actually be that popular?  Besides, how many ways can you prepare herring, open sandwiches and licorice?  I was never going to find out.  Well not this trip anyway.  Which was a shame as it was my husband's birthday on the Sunday.  I usually like to organise something memorable.  Possibly blow jobs with strangers was not the answer however.....

The making of carrot caviar

The whole Nordic cuisine is huge right now.  It's kind of a backlash against the molecular tapas style cuisine that fadded out from Spain a few years back.  In my opinion that was nice too - but it was a little tricky to tell what you were eating on occasion.  Carrot caviar?  Sure, why not?  Dry ice cooked egg?  I'll give it a go.  Fillet steak cooked without heat - but instead cooked under high pressure and sprinkled with pop rocks for the sizzling effect?  I'll chew it.  And I did.  I chowed down on all of that crap and more.

This Nordic-style approach is a return to more seasonal and local ingredients combined with highly refined cooking and food preparation techniques.  This style favours an emphasis on foraging for food - a.k.a. scrounging around for unwanted crap.  Australia's top restaurant - Attica - prides itself on exactly that.  Listen, I'm all for a seasonal ingredient, but, it's the scrounging itself that I'm just not convinced about.  The chef at Attica in Melbourne has some pictures of himself on their website scraping moss off a city alleyway.  Let's just hope he was participating in  "Keep Our City Streets Clean" campaign, rather than making a jus for his veal cutlets. Let's put it this way, when we partook in a dinner there I was certainly searching the menu for accompaniments of city fungi.   By the way, is that stuff called lichen rather than moss?  I'm never sure.  I tried to paste in the "foraging for moss" picture from Attica's website, but it wouldn't work.  Anyone who wants to see their dinner being gathered from some clumps of weeds, feel free to have a gander here - http://www.attica.com.au/#!m=gallery/album&id=4&imageID=12

Talking of lichen, I had a friend at Sandy Bay Infant School called Lichen Kemp.  For some unknown reason my parents had embraced the name themselves a few years before that, and decided to call their growing foetus Lichen once it arrived.  It's hard to believe Lichen was doing the rounds as a popular name in the 70s.....Luckily Davie rocked up and Lichen Saunders just didn't cut it for a boy.  By the time Louise appeared they'd stopped smoking dope.  Thus they were saved from making a rather large hippy-based mistake they would obviously regret once they re-discovered capitalism.  Poor old Li-Li Kemp wasn't so fortunate herself.  Take that as a warning current day pot smokers - If you choof weed you could end up naming your kid after one.

This is taken from the  "Noma" website - told you so......moss

Anyway, there was to be no visit to the number one restaurant in the world this trip.  But as I since found out, it has been knocked off it's perch by the Spanish again - pop rocks is back on the menu, moss is out.  So......who wants to visit number 2 anyway?  L a m e.

It's funny how after just a month you become acclimatised to the place in which you live.  You don't even notice how you've been affected until you have something to compare it to.  Israel had already invaded my psyche.  We flew out on Pegasus Air. The Winged Horse - sounds majestic?  Think again. Absolutely shit airline.  Really, so bad.  My cousin spent a few months as a tutor/manny for the Turkish owners of Pegasus.  They are unbelievably loaded - I saw pictures of their mansion.  It is obvious why.  The fucker has not spent a red dime on his fleet of jets.

Oh majestic Pegasus, your once glorious name is now mud

My seat was working overtime to hold in my body - and I promise I have not been eating that much hummus.  There shouldn't be a problem with mass.  My knees were practically up around my shoulders once the dude in front tipped his chair back - and that thing tilted a maximum of an inch.  It was squashier on there than it would be on a squash court completely filled with butternut pumpkins.  Not good.  And I was tired.  Extremely tired, considering we had to leave the house at 3am to make our 6am flight out of Tel Aviv.  And with the moving apartments, it had not been a relaxing week.  They have one redeeming feature on Pegasus Air alone, and that is that they have a cute safety video with Turkish kids acting out all the safety stuff.  I actually looked forward to watching it again after we changed planes in Istanbul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQK2X4WOwh8

It's hard to say "Just get me a fucking water" to this little poppit

But apart from that, the rest sux.  There's only so far a few precocious brats wearing life jackets can get you.  You have to order everything in advance - everything.  You can't even get a glass of water if you haven't pre-booked it.  As I'd been drinking wine the night before, this was no good.  No good at all.  We booked squat.  You always think it's worth the ten buck saving at the time of reservation.  So my recommendation to you is - Fuck Pegasus.  Who cares if it's the cheapest?  It's only the cheapest by 50 bucks or so.  Pay the extra - even ride to your destination on an actual horse with paper wings strapped to it's back.  It would be more pleasant.  You could also stop for a drink at your leisure.

So organised

I was right next to the window, and it was an unbelievably clear day across Denmark.  The plane flew low.  We came over the water, and after hitting the stunning coastline, soared across the land.  It was completely flat.  Not a hill, not a mountain, not a slope in sight.  And it was sublime down there.  Perfect patchworks of gorgeous looking fields of various shades of green and brown with a little farmhouse situated perfectly in the middle.  Quaint little towns that looked like they were made from Lego.  All the houses matched and were in perfect lines. It was like toy town.  You could tell it was clean too, and that everyone would pick up their dog shit and wouldn't yell at you all the time.  And scatered throughout the landscape below, those huge white windmills were slowly turning.  As you approach Copenhagen those windmills are even in the sea.  It's quite a sight.

Blow my pretties blow

It looks like a futuristic world with historical buildings propped up as a backdrop.  You get off the plane and the place is immaculate.  Immaculate and quiet.  The wooden parquetry on the airport floor is beautifully laid and clean.  There are no garish pictures all over the airport walls.  The toilets are delightful - the sinks have no broken soap dispensers spilling pink gunk all over them, there's no toilet paper on the floor.  It's glorious.  All the Danes are stylishly attired, friendly and polite.  Not a single 60 year old rocking the slut-look in sight.  I have decided I now want to be Danish.  That Danish style - so uncomplicated, so simple, so refined, so classic.

It was why we were there in the first place.

Ooooh yeah

Danish designed furniture has always been in vogue - but lately it has made somewhat of a resurgence. That classic 50ish, 60ish  style. Curved lines, functional simplicity.  The trouble is, that outside Denmark it is bloody expensive to deck your joint out with such a look.  But in Denmark, not so much - which makes sense really.  So, we've been to Denmark on a couple of occasions, and one of our favourite things to do outside making ourselves physically ill from over indulgence in licorice, is to go to Illums Boligus - a four story department store full of wares and furniture, and masturbate over the entire contents of the shop.  I think I mentioned this rather seedy habit in December when I wrote a blog about my pathetic desperation to bond with "Our Mary" - H.R.H The Crown Princess of Denmark on my previous visit to Copenhagen.  I've given up on that now....it became obvious my friendship was being rebuffed.

Hello Lover!  (The shop, not old baldy in the foreground)

Anyway, the fact that we had an almost bare apartment to stock and tax free shopping out of Denmark and into Israel.  This meant that things were looking rosy as far as buying Danish furniture was concerned.  We had one whole day to achieve our dreams.  It was time to get active and organised, and spend spend spend.  The first two I'm not so good with, but the spending???......bring it bitch.  We spend 7 hours in that place.  Carefully surveying the wares, including photographing.  Then we took a brief lunch break, discussed the options, made some decisions, went back to the shop, ordered the big items, bought smaller goods to stuff our empty suitcases with, claimed our tax and went back to the hotel to collapse.  It was satisfying.  Really unbelievably satisfying.

That night was the birthday night feast.  We had gone to a really nice restaurant the night before as recommended by our hotel, so I was hoping my choice would live up to it.  I can't remember what exactly we had at the first place, but I do remember that there was some kind of steaming tea poured in a kind of moat that was incorporated around my desert plate.  This was meant to emulate the mist in the valleys on the Danish island from which all the food was sourced.  Alright then......and I thought teppanyaki grills were a bit show-pony.  I took me a while to warm up on arrival.  We had made the mistake of taking a bicycle taxi because the waiter in the previous bar had recommended such a move as an essential Danish experience.  What he should have possibly added was "Take a bicycle taxi with someone who is actually familiar with Copenhagen.  When a 5 minute ride around the corner turns into a 30 minute ride out to the highway and it's 3 degrees - well, things aren't great.  Even less great when you discover you've left your handbag at the bar you just had a cocktail in.  Fuck.

I'm telling you, it was bloody scary by night

Anyway.  Come birthday night I did well.  Bloody well. I found a brand new restaurant  started by the ex sous chef from Noma, who obviously split and by the looks of it, took many of the staff with him. It was called Amass. I managed to book a 9pm table by the skin of my nads 3 weeks before.  So I was feeling pretty smug.  I had a slight rush of panic when the taxi, upon exiting the city limits, drove into deserted shipyards on the outskirts of town.  I just finished watching the 3rd series of The Killing (Danish version of course) - that's some twisted shit......love it......Thus it was a bit understandable to imagine that we were going to skinned alive and hung from metal chains in a deserted warehouse while the taxi driver sent taunting pictures of our bloody carcases to the Danish police.  Even though Sarah Lund would sort that bastard out, I was still concerned for my safety.  I like my skin.....However the so called restaurant was not looking promising - I actually made the taxi driver get out of the cab and investigate the entrance.  As I mentioned, I've got experience in knowing how Danish serial killers get their victims in the empty factory in the first place.  I was taking no chances.

The shit bro

But we were waved in by some hipster looking chef with a headband on, and thus it was on - dinner at Amass.  You entered from upstairs.  The entire place was set up down below in an open industrial looking space with street art all over the back wall.  Typically Danish.  Annoying cool, while successfully pretending that no effort was made at all.  We went the 5 course taster with matching wines.
I'm too lazy to describe all the dishes, so I will just copy and paste the menu as is with a little extra commentary.


Cod Head Rillette (basically some old fish head found on the jetty after the fishermen went home)

Arctic Char, Buckwheat, Nasturtium (no idea what these things are)

Monkfish, Bitter Radish, Söl, Beef Fat ( unwanted bitter radishes and fat trimmings - picked out of the garbage - Söl is seaweed - basically beach garbage)

Wild Duck, Red Beet, Black Garlic, Giganteus Oil (free ducks, old garlic - plus I googled giganteus and a picture of a half spider/half scorpion came up - wish I'd done that before dinner)

Apple, Black Pepper Ice Cream, Vinegar Caramel, Oregano (Jesus.  Are they trying to poison us with the leftover crap on the chopping board?)

Take it from me - it was quite the experience.  Those dudes sure know what to do with piles of unwanted rubbish.  And there was no moss.  No lichen, possibly no weeds of any kind - but I'm still investigating there.  Not that I would have known regardless, I was blind by dessert.  A pre-dinner champagne and 5 matching wines (with top ups) can do that to the best of us.  I also had some kind of after dinner throat sizzling petrol presented as some sort of gourmet liquor.  I was not a pretty sight the next morning.  But then again, it is rare for me to be a pretty sight in the mornings these days.  So probably the staggering and the hair all over my face teemed with the pasty complexion was not much different from every other day.  More moaning though, definitely more moaning.

Beautiful

But, we had a plane to catch, and a trip back to Israel on our agendas.  We now had heavy suitcases and felt ill from spending so much cash....and eating seaweed and discarded fish and drinking petrol.  It was raining in Copenhagen.  And it was bloody freezing.  As I looked around at all the people, the grey streets, although beautiful, seemed pretty grim in the wet gloom.  I knew that everyone was shaping up for 3-4 months of winter hell.  No wonder they all looked a bit depressed.  I was in Copenhagen last December and it wasn't exactly a welcoming climate.  I began to look forward to returning back to the pumping excitement of Tel Aviv.  One thing you can't go past, no matter what you think of the place, is the weather.  And weather really does matter to overall experience.  Just ask any Tasmanian during "Summer".  At this time of year, it is superior in Israel - 25 degrees daily;15 overnight.  Sunny, not windy.  Bloody glorious.  And of course there's the people, who really characterise a country.  The Danes may be friendly, polite, cool and stylish, but they lack that warmth that Israelis possess once you get beneath the prickly outer surface.  Native Israelis call themselves sabras - which means prickly pears.  A popular seasonal fruit - sweet inside, but covered with tiny spikes on the outside.  I never really liked the taste myself, but some people love them.  Plus, it's a very apt description.

Flying back into Tel Aviv felt like coming home.  And it made me happy that it did.  And besides, prickly pears really grow on you if you give them a chance.

Anyone.....anyone????

Keeping Up with The Upkeep

That pink dog is mine bitch

I need that bitch's wardrobe

I've decided I'm really going to embrace life here and change my yok name for something more appropriate.  Something that really makes me blend in as a local.  I was thinking to go for Bat or Dafna.  Thoughts, anyone?  I definitely wasn't thinking Yael though.  It seems to be a far too popular name for all Australians who have emigrated to Israel.  Pretty much every foreign mother at the girls' kindergarten is called Yael.  The thing is, I have never met a Yael in Australia, so I am suss - they have definitely done the name switch-a-roo.  It means "mountain goat" though.....so, interesting choice. If it's all about meaning though, I would personally go for "Chemda" which means desirable and charming......need I say more?  But I have since decided that I'm in fact pushing the boundaries and going for Pinkus.  Unfortunately after I made my decision, my husband informed me that it was a man's name.  That's ok - I was planning on shortening it to Pinky anyhows.  What do you think?.  I could dress only in pink and eat only pink foods - get some kind of theme going on.  Become the Crazy Pink Lady of Tel Aviv.  But as I recently noticed it's been done before.  You just can't even be mental and original these days.  Again, sadly enough, when perusing the most unpopular names for girls - Pinky appeared loud and clear as one of the most hated names over the last 100 years.  Frankly I was a little crushed - Pinky is awesome.  Well it's certainly better than Icy which also made the cut.  So did Chestina and Buelah - which are not the greatest either.  Yes, as you can possibly tell, I have a little too much time on my hands with the girls in kindergarten.  I've got to get myself a hobby.  A job is out of the question - employers don't like pink much.

Now here's something less wholesome I can work with - bless that sweet flower Angelyne 

At least I know what to do with all that time after yesterday's conversation.  I was chatting with a man approaching his 60s, and he admitted to me that his entire life is pretty much devoted to self maintenance.  I was concerned, mainly for myself  - it only get's worse????  How much more fucking time do you have to spend ensuring that you don't descend into nothing but a pile of split ends, flaky skin and cellulite.  I know I've mentioned this issue on several occasions before - but what can I say?  I've been writing so much bullshit about nothing at all, that I'm bound to rotate the crap already once (or twice) discussed.  I have no apologies.  It's time to face facts - I'm the kind of person that retells the same tired jokes at social events with fingers crossed that the lucky soul who ended up chatting with good old "Pinky" hasn't heard my repertoire before.  It's touch and go - Do you trot out the old faithfuls that get a guaranteed laugh and take the risk that it's actually a virgin listener?  Or do you try out some of your latest raw material and pray that it's a painless journey to Laughsville?  It's unclear to me which is the bigger risk.  And with the blog and everything - I'm just running out of in-the-flesh tales to impress with.  Sometimes mid-story I notice my audience glancing over the top of my head for someone better to talk to.  Or another bored prick may actually feign a weak laugh and say, "Yeah, actually I read that one on your blog" - meaning basically "Shut Up Please".   But honestly, care factor = zip. It has to be, as it's only going to get worse.

Soooooooooo......thus it strikes me as ironic that the older you get, the more amount of time you put into self maintenance, yet the shitter you look.  What, for the love of god, is going on there?  The hours spent purely on basic maintenance is mind blowing. Plucking various bits of hair out of new zones of your face (the car rear vision mirror works best for this I find), waxing vast areas of your entire body -which is still excruciating and needs to be done all the time.  Unless of course you are one of those lasering people.  You still have to do it, but apparently less, but apparently it is much more painful so it's unclear on whether it is a better option to me.  I have an epilator piece of crap.  I'm unsure if it even works, but it hurts like fuck, makes my legs all spotty, and I have to do it all the god dam time.  Shits me (if you can't tell).

Not mine - yet pretty grossly familiar

Then there the bloody finger nails which if you start doing you have to keep up - and if you use that gel/shellac stuff you destroy your nails and then have to cover them with more crap.  I pulled some gel polish off my index finger a couple of months ago to reveal a giant distorted yellow claw.  It was hideous.  Thinking I was in some alternate reality nightmare where your body starts to rot before your eyes, I quickly peeled off all the rest in a panic and pretty much took large sections of the rest of my fingernails with it.  It was pretty uncool.  And just when you you think you're on top of your hands, you roll over in bed and open up a major artery on your husbands leg with a flick of your big toe(nail).  And while you're dealing with filing back that monstrosity, you realise that your feet and heels resemble those of a zombie that had been pounding the tarmac for a decade in search of brains.  And pedicures are never cheap.  And they are kind of scary.  I had one done 2 days ago here in Tel Aviv and they used a razor blade - a razor blade - on my flesh!  And then followed that up by sawing at me with some kind of mini angle grinder.  I was terrified.  But more terrified of the Russian woman operating the thing, so I chose to keep quiet.  What is it about older Russian women?  The young ones resemble angels, but when they get older they look like they want to stab you in the eye with a pen.

Then there's the hair.  Never has a collection of shit looking locks had so much bucks spent on it.  I am as grey as a geriatrics's pubes and it's not a good look. But the annoying thing about being old and haggard before my time, is that I have to get my hair dyed constantly.  The regrowth is relentless.  Doing it myself ends so badly on every occasion, so it's just not worth the savings.  If the non attendance to these issues stretches on longer than a month, it's just embarrassing for all involved.  People start asking me if I'm the girl's Nanna when I pick them up from school.  By the way I did that myself to one of the Yael's recently.  Jesus - bitch must have birthed that baby at 55.  So, eager to avoid more of those kind of awkward Nanna mistaking social interactions, I played eenie meenie meini mo and picked some salon down the road called Benjamin's early this week.

That's what I'm talking about

Benjamin was another old scary looking Russian, I think they all must be in the beauty industry, which is once again ironic.  Plus, I suspect Benjamin himself may have been a member of the Russian mafia judging by his clientele and his mates that dropped in for a a few cheek kisses.  His hands stunk of cigarettes and he got extremely offended when I didn't want a coffee.  He just kept offering, and saying "Why WHY???" until I finally accepted the chipped cup of weak Nescafe with somebody else's lipstick all over it.  I chose to keep quiet on the matter.  I am not ending up in a body bag over a cup of instant coffee.

Old Benji may not have been able to wash a cup, or make a caffeinated beverage to save himself, but actually he didn't do a bad job on my hair.  It was far, far better than one Tel Aviv hairdresser who actually gave me a bowl cut on top of shoulder length hair.  It was a confusing style - and one which has taken me 2 years to come out of - I'm almost there.  But, none of that compared to the Japanese dude who tried to bleach my hair and eyebrows in Tokyo at the end of 2006.  I ended up with spotty and stripy red and black hair, and fire engine red eyebrows.  Talk about lost in translation.  Maybe he thought I said "Make me look like a sick freak" when I actually said "I want something slick and chic".  It was the first and only time I actually burst into tears in the salon chair (usually I wait until I get home - like the unfortunate time I looked like lesbianic Danni Minogue circa 1989).  But apart from hair upkeep, which is costly and dangerous in non- English speaking countries, there's also moisturising your entire body daily so it doesn't go scaly, hair styling, trying to eat healthy nothing so you don't become a blimp, constant exercising or feeling guilty because you're not exercising, getting at least 8 hours of sleep, drinking 2 litres of water, constantly pissing from drinking 2 litres of water, applying 3 different types of face cream and sunscreen, and then make-up on top of that until your entire face is 2cm thicker than it's true size.  Top it off with selecting some sort of half decent outfit amongst  mountains of crappy, out of dated badly fitting junk, and you realise that the entire day has passed and it's time to put your pyjamas back on on go back to bed.

Oh Danni, Danni, Danni

I'm exhausted just thinking about this.  And I haven't even ventured into the zone of investing much more money and time on my appearance.  Part of me really wants to try Botox, but I just can't bear the thought of yet another thing I have to maintain.  I'd have to trade it in for something else - like brushing my teeth - and lord knows, we all hate gingivitis.  I did however get a laser job on the unfortunate pigmentation residue that arrived during pregnancy, and hung around for a long time after the melon heads were born.  But that was a once off.  I'm not sure if it was meant to be so, but I can't go back, I just can't.  That procedure is the worst.  So so bad.  It is excruciatingly painful.  Some people say it's like someone flicking you with an rubber band.  I would agree - but only if that rubber band is covered in red hot needles and they are flicking it straight into an open infected sore.  The smell isn't good either.  I'm not sure if it was my actual flesh or the tiny facial hairs that were smouldering - but let me tell you, that aroma does not fade from the sensory memory in a hurry. My face was so red and burning that I looked like I had taken my last vacation to the surface of the sun.  I then had dark brown scabs on my face for 10 days.  Pretty as a picture.  A picture of someone with a combination of leprosy and the bubonic plague however.   It eventually worked though.  But then again, it would fucking want to.

 So much could be done with that glorious mane of hair

And it's not easy for men these days either.  Times have changed - I was next to a man having a pedicure the other day.  Once I would have thought "You bloody Sissy - why don't you just go home and watch Beaches and have a little cry when Barbara Hershey snuffs it?" But I was actually considering asking him to have a word to my husband and recommending his favourite treatment.  Nowadays, the man maintenance goes way beyond twice weekly shaving, coating yourself in Old Spice, and gargling Listerine when you can't be arsed brushing your teeth.  It all about the upkeep dudes.  This can mean slapping on a red clay face pack while you watch an episode of Girls with your flatmates and drink some kind of green sludge designed to help you do a hemorrhoid-free bog.  Today I saw some dude asleep on a park bench.  He was all hairy and wearing rags, covered in his own shit.  I knew at once what was going on here.  Once he discovered all his mates were getting their balls and crack waxed he couldn't take it anymore.  He just surrendered to the overwhelming forces of nature and let the filth take over.  When faced with the choice between waxing his bum and being a bum, he went with the latter.  It's an understandable decision.

This definitely shouldn't be done with that glorious mass of Mel Gibson looking hair

Nor should this

And most definitely not this

The cuteness almost sickens

Kids have got it easy.  They don't even have to run a comb through their locks to look adorable. I've written an explicit description about the time my kids decorated their bedroom and bodies in their own feces.  They still looked cute.  They are possibly the only humans who could pull off the "I'm covered in my own shit" look and work it.  Thank goodness my bench snoozing homeless friend had no knowledge of this fact.  That fashion statement just wasn't happening for him, and to know others could get away with it would have been the final straw. Talking of covering your body in crap, my daughter wore a large leopard print scarf on her head the other day.  She was Ima Shabbat at her kindergarten - it wasn't a fashion choice.  But everyone was taking photos of her saying how gorgeous she looked.  I attempted to cover up my greys with a head scarf last week and my husband asked what happened to my forehead.  Granted, it is pretty small at the best of times.  I shouldn't wear head ornaments.  Nor should Lara Bingle (as evidenced below).  But back to Cordi as Ima Shabbat (Mother of The Sabbath).  It was so incredibly sweet that I got all emotional and the tears were welling - almost as much as when "Wind Beneath My Wings" broke out just as Bette Midler was reminiscing about her best chum, and possibly regretting those years when their friendship waned for just a while.  Although that fall-out could have been avoided with honest communication, and C.C Bloom has only herself to blame....

I just don't like it Lara

Stupid

Unnecessary

Did she make this one herself?

GO Ima Shabbat - hand out that wine grape juice!

Anyway, she took her staring role so seriously (Cordi not Bette....or Lara for that matter) - that was the cutest thing.  And was incredibly excited about her special duties.  She handed out all the "wine" to her little class chums and bread too.  She tried to sing-a-long with all the others to the songs, but seeing as it was all new for her (and Valli), so she couldn't quite manage to keep pace.  But the look on her face was amazing.  A sort of happy contentment - like she was exactly where she wanted to be. How many of us ever truly feel like that?  I know I rarely do, and especially not when my legs are spread and a stranger is looking into places my mother hasn't dared to look since I was about 5,  and they're asking me if I want the "Ring of Fire" - and that is a direct quote.   I wonder how long it will be before I can hold off my two little lambs from being overwhelmed by the beauty industry that pounds all our brains at any given opportunity.  I try to shelter them from seeing me smother myself in this crap and that, but seeing as it's full time occupation, it's kind of a challenge.  They are already obsessed with outfits, and Valli has been wearing my heels since she was 1.  But innocence lost at a future date or not, right now they are sweetly happy about going to school, making friends, and wearing headscarves on a Friday.

Bring on the challah Cordi

In fact they like it so much there, that we have decided to let them stay on longer at school in the afternoons like most of their classmates.  Now there's something to celebrate.  No offence kids, but we have seriously got a lot to take care off this week.  We have to buy, and transport an entire house of junk (read furniture and personal belongings) into our new apartment.  Plus the brows are unruly again.  It's going to be an exhausting week.......