chipped

Our Vet found a chip embedded in our dog which means she has a home already. It turns out her name is Mica and she lives not too far from us. I'm soooo sad, but I'm sure her family will be overjoyed to have her back.

Adopted by choice

The other day after Tel Aviv's first TEDx conference, we attended a pretty happening after- party to hear Asaf Avidan and the Mojo's play a short set. Afterwards, feeling a bit hungry, we went with a few of my friends to the Container, which is an outdoor restaurant/bar situated in the old port of Jaffa. During our dinner we noticed a small dog going from table to table looking for crumbs of affection and prehaps a few hugs and scratches behind the ear. We didn't think much of it, but then after walking my friends out to catch a cab we turned to head up the steps to the artist colony and noticed that the little dog had followed us. Before we could pause, the dog scooted up the steps of old jaffa and at the top sat and waited for us. As we got closer to the top, she took a right turn and scooted up another set of steps leading directly to our door.

Looking at each other we burst into uncontrollable laughter. The dog had decided to plant herself in front of our apartment (where we spend most weekends). We noticed that her paw was injured and despite her inability to walk properly she had still made her way up all the stairs and chosen our apartment. So we opened the door and let her in, giving her some water, people food, and a soft cushion to sit on. She was tick free. Immediately she relaxed and fell asleep.

It seems that she hasn't had a home for a while, but she doesn't seem to have been abused, was clean and very affectionate. I think she decided she needed parents and figured we could give her a good home so she adopted us.

Tommorow we're going to take her to the vet to see if she has an implanted indentity chip and to take care of that paw injury. In the meanwhile, we've named her and made her part of our life.
Yesterday, while I was working, my boyfriend tossed her in my car with a blanket protecting the seats and took her to all of his meetings. She hasn't been alone for a second and is madly in love with him already.

Sticky Pot

It's more than a bit sad and unfortunate when someone can be so paranoid and neurotic that they aren't even able to allow themselves to accept outpourings of kindness for what it is and not make assumptions on the nature of it.

I feel sad for those who are in this situation, however I don't care very much for anyone who chooses to attribute intentions or thoughts to me that I never asserted nor do I possess.

Kissanddagger loves to jump to conclusions about my thoughts even though he couldn't ever be bothered to actually find out what I thought or think for that matter. He assumes motives to my actions and twists them so that a simple act of wellwishing is construed as an attempt to hurt by my existance. Kissanddagger can't simply understand that someone might not want to be with someone who constantly belittles them and so the only way he can deal with the situation is to create some type of hatred.

It's a sticky situation to be in and a difficult way to live a life.

attack of the kissanddagger

I've done all that I can. I wanted calm and instead I got held down, duct taped, and pistol whipped. I could never say no if there was something positive I could do and usually despite the lack of a thank you, I would get about two days of peace then the onslaught would begin again. In a million years, I would never say a bad word against someone. In fact my friends often try to push me to say things to show that I realize that certain ways of being treated aren't right. I still wouldn't give in because I think I can somehow rationalize away the bad treatment by focusing on what's good, but in some cases I suffer because of it. In the case of kissanddagger I suffered greatly. I was used. This I can accept, but I can't accept the constant emotional intrusion.

bipolar? schizophrenia? or just a personality disorder?

People around me have commented before about their thoughts on someone who has been completely awful to me, despite my absolute decision to not take it personally and to continue to offer everything that I can as a human being. It's hard not to take things to heart when someone is determined to put you down at every occasion with graphic verbal slices. But realistically, certain behaviour when repeated over and over in a pattern can allow us to rationalize away the hurt by deciding that the behaviour and comments themselves are major symptoms of a far reaching underlying pathology.

I'm so lucky that by chance I met someone who has come to truly love me and who allows me to love him. It's probably the first time I've been able to really open myself to someone and fully trust and be together in a true partnership where I'm not afraid to get torn apart and I have the support to jump up and excel with consistent work.

This warm space of trust and intimacy has been my refuge and prevented me from falling when under attack by Mr. kissanddagger. I pray for the strength to continue building this foundation for something beautiful and for the ability to be as true with each other as humanly possible so that the foundation can never be destroyed by any kissanddagger.

At the same time it astonishes me that kissanddagger can ask me for the world in one breath, have me do everything possible to give it to him, and then in the next breath try to slay me for wanting a little bit of distance.

tinted kaleidescopes

I always find it perplexing how each person in the world can look at something, be it a situation or an inanimate object or a colour or a piece of sushi, and perceive it in such contrasting ways. It's probably natural that this divergence in perspective exists across the board for humanity because this allows us to rethink our own perspective and test our five sense and challenge our perception. If a majority agrees that for all intents and purposes that the colour green is the same as the grass then those that think that grass is in fact lavender are thought of as a bit bizarre. But who wants to be thought of as bizarre? and is it even our prerogative to call someone out on their messed up argumentative bizarreness? Forget that. If someone wants to create their own world then I'm not going to be the one to bring them into my own reality.

It doesn't bother me and I actually love that humanity germinates differences, what bothers me is when someone refuses to see that it's possible for differences to exist and that their own reality is not the be all and end all for the world in it's entirety. It amazes me even more when someone can make up an entire situation in their head and create an entire mission battlefield argument in their head and then continue to blow it up on their own with little outside contribution.

Tonight I was supposed to go to a memorial ceremony, one of many in Israel tonight for Israel's fallen. What made this one different was that it was to memorialize losses on both sides of the conflict in this region. I've wanted to go to this one for years and for various reasons haven't gone. I RSVP'd and many of my friends were set to go. At the last minute I canceled under pressure from someone in my life who at every point I've dropped everything to help, even while a million miles away, despite being treated cruelly and constantly belittled by this person who doesn't ever bother to say thank you. This person has created such a situation in their mind that while I'm impressed that the person is so in touch with self emotion, I'm nauseated by this same persons inability to understand anyone elses emotion or reluctance to be close.

There's so much that I need to vent about here and it's a shame that I can't at this moment. Hopefully some of my emotion will percolate into something readable and inoffensive soon.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Actually, it's not the u.s.s.r. despite the high number of pre-dissolution soviet union immigrants. I'm back in Israel. But my moody frame of reference is Beatles,(or" The Beatles...luv" as Lennon would say) after reading an old rollings stones article about the bands breakup.

This morning I saw a play in Jaffa at the Geshem theatre written by Pinter, called "The Birthday Party". The hebrew script was pretty simple so I didn't have any problem following. But, I found it depressing and irksome. It was about a pianist who wakes up in a boarding house and nothing makes any sense to him and it seems like he's entered a Kafkaesque world where he keeps blinking to wake up and remains glued to the incomprehensible. He's forced to celebrate a strange birthday, when he denies it's his birthday and then two strange men show up to collect him for abandoning the fold which the audience is never privy to information about. The relationships Pinter created seem to me to be awkward and the dark violent undercurrent would have caused me to lose interest if I hadn't needed to pay such close attention to the words so I could translate back to english in my mind.

In the car on the way back home, my boyfriends father, an actor who's renowned in Israel, tried to engage me in conversation about it as it's one of his favourite plays. He's a huge Kafka fan as I am, but I couldn't really connect to where the playwright Pinter took this.

the pressure monster

There's so much pressure to perform to expectation sometimes and it can be stifling as I fear failure and even imperfection acutely. I want to give everyone my best and it can be exhausting. This week my father had a serious cardiac procedure done and I was with him the full duration, but I wasn't able to let work drop while I was by his side as all of our staff, all the doctors working on my team are on passover holiday. Regardless of the holiday, expectations are that our productivity will not drop and so I trudge on working evening and night hours to make up for the days spent with my family. I can't very well complain as I do want to finish this project and ultimately leave the client with a sense of satisfaction.