The Police

Yes, indeed. The police were here. In my apartment. Yes, sirree.

It all started when one afternoon I heard someone pounding on the door downstairs. Really pounding. I have no idea who the neighbors downstairs are, but the pounding was really loud. And suspicious.

So I called out the window to the man talking on his cellphone loudly outside the apartment downstairs.

“Excuse me, what’s going on here?”

“Oh, I’m with the police. Forbidden things are going on downstairs,” this very suspicious man informed me with a creepy smile on his face. He wasn’t dressed in a uniform either.

I was sure he was lying to me. After all, why was he smiling like that? And why wasn’t he dressed in his uniform? I didn’t think to have them show me their badge. That would have been the intelligent thing to do.

So I called my neighbor, a nice Arab boy, and decided to tell him it seemed like someone was breaking in downstairs, would he walk by? He arrived home a few minutes after I tried to reach him, and I explained everything I could and asked if he would just walk by… he told me he would wait for the other neighbor and they would go together.

I went back inside, feeling a bit better. Then I heard glass smashing downstairs. I was really scared, and I rushed to my Arab neighbor, imploring him to go and see what was going on.

He did, and I listened from my window as they said “You. Come inside!”

And I was sure that my neighbor was going to be threatened and killed, and it was all my fault. I started to wonder whether I should go and find him, or make sure the door was extra extra locked.

Then an extremely good-looking man come into the apartment shared area with my neighbor, checked his ID, and barked “And you live here?”

“Yes,” my neighbor replied calmly.

“This is a shared apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And you live in the other one?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

With that, he left us. My neighbor explained to me that it was indeed the police, they are undercover. Next time I can ask them to show me their badge. And something weird is going on downstairs. It’s good that they are here.

What is cool?

Sometimes people talking with others in conversations mention that I am cool.

“Oh, Tamar, tell her I say hi. She’s cool.” This from a guy I went to ulpan with who I don’t remember really ever talking with directly. But I would classify him as cool. Went to the IDF, married a French girl, probably was in a fraternity of some sort in university back in the states (he looked the type). Cool.

But I’m not cool.

I have a friend from childhood who is extremely intelligent. In college, she dated the valedictorian of Princeton. Yes, that’s right, not just any guy who went to Princeton. The valedictorian of Princeton. (She went to Princeton too, by the way. Otherwise it would be even weirder). She has qualified me as cool to my face. Also as smart actually, but let’s keep focused.

I have a new bohemian friend who is big into the alternative music scene here in Tel Aviv. He is cool. His friends are cool. They smoke cigarettes, engage in substance abuse, go to raves. The girls wear black nail polish and both guys and girls have tattoos.

That’s cool.

The cool people in high school knew the words to all of the new songs that came out. They kept track of the bands, they knew ridiculous and not-so-ridiculous stuff about the lead guitarists, drummers, and vocalists of the bands. They went to rock concerts and rode skateboards. They were very popular with the opposite sex.

They also had watched approximately 1 jillion more movies than I had by the age of sixteen, and can to this day oust me of almost all information on movies we grew up on. Well, that they grew up on, because obviously I was doing something else.

So I never really thought of myself as cool. Even now, well after high school. I think a lot of your self-image perceptions come from that era of your life, which is quite unfortunate.

My new friend wanted to put the first picture of me in his phone to identify me when I call him. I vetoed that picture. I’m sweet and nice, and all, but not cool. The second one of me is cool. I convinced him to put the second picture into his phone to identify me.
At first he said he didn’t like it. That I was sticking my tongue out every time he’d pick up the phone.

But then he said it was growing one him. It had sass.

“You should embrace this version of yourself more. Because you’re cool.”

“I think it shows me just not caring about what everyone thinks.”

“Yes, that’s what cool is. Cool is not caring what other people think.”

So maybe I’m cool after all.

10 Questions Men Ask Me That I Need to Start Answering Like This

Q: So… do you cook?
A: Yes, I make five-course meals occasionally since I host Shabbat meals. But you’ll never be invited to them since you asked me this question.

Q: Do you drink?
A: Not enough for you to get excited about.

Q: How old are you?
A: I’m 31. I would imagine that if you asked this question you are only looking for a woman your age or younger. Probably if they are your age it MIGHT be ok. If for some reason you DO want to date me despite an age difference, this is some sort of bizarre credit to your character, without you doing much of anything else.

Q: You’re very athletic, aren’t you?
A: I used to be more. Now that I’m older my body is slowly deteriorating. That’s why we should get married really fast!

Q: You keep healthy and fit, right?
A: Of course! But as soon as we’re together I plan to get really really FAT.

Q: Do you parents help you financially?
A: Yes, I’m a loaded American.

Q: Do you believe in equality between the sexes?
A: Are you talking about the bill? Absolutely not. (Ok, I did answer this way recently).

Q: Do you want to come to my apartment/go to a movie/go out again?
A: You already asked me enough questions, and that was your limit for the night.

Q: Wow, technical writing/marketing/working at a hi-tech company. That sounds complicated.
A: No, you’re just an idiot.

Q: So, do you date married men?
A: No, because I’m a lesbian. Sorry.

So what do I do all day long?

Well, besides the obvious of looking for work, which gets old and frustrating, but yeah, I need to do that more…
1) I bought a bike
2) I go to the gym
3) I see my friends and go to parties
4) I bought some really nice dresses and boots
5) I learned how to illegally download movies, tv shows and books
6) cleaning my apartment and throwing stuff out that I haven’t been using in a few years
7) and finding my MS Office 7 English Language pack – I got it for 50 NIS as a teacher, thank goodness I found that one….
8) and finding the cockroach that crawled under the sofa and was no where to be found, he crawled into one of the boxes I’d been meaning to go through since, oh, summer
9) buying stuff for the apartment – like hooks, new burners, and seat covers – I have much more room in the kitchen now
10) borrowing books and not quite reading them yet

And yes, I’m unemployed but when you see a nice dress sometimes you have to buy it. When I need the dress I won’t be able to find it, see?

Wait, the list continues:
11) moving my blog to wordpress and not quite getting to blocking all the private stuff – which isn’t really so private, trying to SEO this site and sending my CV to places, so this list will have to continue later…
12) being on social media! Posting pictures of fat cats on facebook and on my blog. Opening a twitter account! Yay! Stuff I’d been meaning to do but when your job sucks the energy out of you you just say you’ll do it when….

Soulmates – Who cares?

See my article at http://habitza.com/.

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Since I am unemployed, sometimes I arrange playdates for myself. Ahem, I mean, that is, I try to find people to hang out with.

A few weeks ago I went to the Tel Aviv Musuem of Art with my friend Jenny. We saw Yosl Berger’s sketches, who was apparently a big fan of Kafka’s. Supposedly Kafka specifically requested his first publishings to not have illustrations. Berger’s illustrations were able to be attached at a later point.

They also had a bunch of neo-expressionist painters from Berlin who reacted to the economic prosperity of West Berlin during the Cold War. That I also got. So I felt cultured. But my friend told me I read all of the signs in the museum and she won’t go with me again. Instead, we’ll have to gossip at a restaurant.

I’ve also been to the Ramat Gan Museum of Art. They try to feature some local artists, and that day they featured Smadar Aliyasof.
I think her paintings were abstract art; personally I thought a lot of them were just pain spattered on a canvas.

Or a Rock Band!

But maybe orchestras are boring. Maybe if I hooked up the viola to an amp, and found some boys to play with, I could be in a band.

Like I should have been when I was 15. Although no one would have acknowledged then that a viola could be a great addition to a band.

Or I could do orchestra during the year and play in the band during the summer. Hmmmm.