NOT

Today just feels right. I feel like I am mutating back to my old self, except for having it more together with regard to religion. Actually, I was headed this way back when I went to Israel, so maybe this is where I was supposed to end up. I will spare you the Jonah metaphor.

I just moved two big but sickly pepper plants to the yard, where they will surely benefit from not having to depend on me and the watering can. I am wearing my crappy Old Navy cargo shorts with the concrete-patch smear on the back pocket. In one front pocket, a loaded Glock. In the other, a brand-new Gerber Gator II. My shoes are IDF commando boots. My sunglasses? Non-nouveau, anti-yuppie Ray Ban aviators. And I am wearing wool socks in Miami. If I were any less appropriately dressed, I would be Walter Sobchak.

Everything here has to be difficult. You would think moving two plants would be a cinch, but when I dug the holes, I came up with a lot of oolite rocks. Several pounds. They make digging impossible, because they stop the shovel. Landscapers and builders here love them. I think that’s because they’re free, and because leaving the rock in a yard, just below the topsoil, saves work. Every time you build a house, you have to remove enough oolite to put down dirt for a yard. And you have to haul it away.

I have not been checking up on Mish Weiss the way I should. This is her last day of chemo and radiation before her bone marrow transplant. And she is having a bad time, as you can imagine. Hair loss and fatigue and so on. She will rest a few days. Then they’ll shoot her full of donor marrow, I guess. Don’t quit praying.

Her friend Uri covered for her on her blog today. His parting sentence: “Sorry my English is very bad and they make me post.” I guess Mish is still pretty tough.

I found my old Israel photos this morning. Me and Aaron, in the Promised Land. The other day I emailed my old kibbutz and asked if they still accepted older volunteers. I got nowhere with that. The site is in Hebrew. For all I know, it says, “Send an email to this address, if you love Ahmadinejad.” I absolutely have to go over there again.

I am going to the hardware store to buttonhole whoever smells the most like manure and make him tell me how to kill my St. Augustine grass.