Telavivtelavivtelaviv.

So today I threw up at work. Luckily I made it to the bathroom. But still, my throwing up was probably the classiest thing ever to have happened in that laundry room. In case you couldn’t tell by the lack of posts, for the past week or so (the week before I snapped and fucked off to Haifa) I’ve been real depressed. So basically the past few days have been spent in a drunken/stoned/hungover daze. Which explains the throwing up. (At this point, y’all are probably like, “Wow, TMI/too much information.” But again, this is my blog and I’ll be as narsty as I like. Get used to it.) Oh well.

Good news from the army? I’m apparently starting in “late September.” Don’t know exactly when, don’t know my health profile yet, and don’t know anything beyond that.

So that’s exciting. I don’t know if they’re fucking around with me, I don’t know how “official” this new information is….but I’m still feeling a little bit better knowing it. I remember reading this phrase a lot in Little House on the Prairie, or some such book: “When the Good Lord closes a door, he opens a window.” Or something like that. But basically that saying (thanks, Laura Ingalls Wilder!) is how I feel right now. So in spite of the fact that pretty much everything else has gone to shit, at least the army thing is starting to look up.

I figured out how to get revenge on this fucking kibbutz during work. Whenever I am given something to fold (in this case usually towels), if it is wet I am expected to lay the towel down somewhere else to dry, and not to fold it. (Because of mildew.) I’ve started getting some kind of sick pleasure from folding up damp towels and putting them in the kibbutzniks’ laundry cubbies where they can continue to grow nasty things and make all of the other clothing in the cubby smell like total ass. Am I a terrible person? Jesus Christ, is that spite or what?

This morning in the sorting room the radio was on, playing something straight out of the Renaissance Fair. Seriously, you walked in and it was like “Merrie Olde Englande” in there. I expected to see young maidens dancing around a May Pole, going a-maying, and I looked for damsels wearing cone-shaped hats. As I put away towels, I walked as if I were a young woman at a post-jousting tournament medieval ball. Those of you reading this are probably saying, “Wow, what a fucktard…I’m not going to read this blog anymore because that’s just beyond ar-tarded-ness.” But this is what you have to do to keep yourself from committing suicide when you work in a fucking laundry room.

Have also realized that I am slowly (but not slowly enough…) turning into Ms. Havisham from “Great Expectations.” I half expect that within a week I will get rid of all my clothing and instead settle on wearing a dingy, yellowing wedding dress for the rest of my life. I have realized that I am a crazy bitch, and that the time has come to accept it. And with acceptance comes a rotting wedding cake and a visit from a mid-19th century guy named Pip.

It’s kind of unfortunate because I’ve always wanted to be a literary character. Just, unfortunately, Ms. Havisham wasn’t the one I had my heart set on. You know, I was kind of hoping I could be a Disney princess (I know that’s not literary), or if I were a guy I’d either want to be Sir Galahad or Ari Ben Canaan. Or if I HAD to be a character with a tragic end, maybe I could be Guenevere. But Ms. Havisham it is!

All this shit aside, I HAVE settled on a post-army career. (Despite the fact that I haven’t even started the army yet.) I’m gonna be one of those people outside the tachana merkazit in Jerusalem that advertises sherut taxis to Tel Aviv. I’d just stand outside all day, saying OVER and OVER again, “Tel Aviv Tel Aviv Tel Aviv Tel Aviv.” Notice I didn’t put punctuation in there. That’s because the guys don’t speak with pauses. A more accurate representation would actually be “Telavivtelavivtelaviv.” At first I thought maybe I didn’t have the lung capacity for this sort of job (that was always a problem for me when I was younger and played the flute, and also whenever I go swimming), but I’ve since realized that these men do not breathe. There simply isn’t time to breathe in an entire workday of “Telavivtelavivtelaviv, ad infinitum,” so surely these men must have some sort of special breathing apparatus that they attach to themselves every morning at the start of work, and thus a large lung capacity (or even lungs at all!) is an irrelevant job requirement.

Just a thought.

You know what else I just thought about? Johnny Appleseed. I don’t know where to go with that. For the Americans out there (hey Abraham!*), do you remember learning about Johnny Appleseed? Did anyone else out there get pissed off by Johnny Appleseed? Just going around planting shit and not taking care of it? If you’re a man and you go around “planting” babies never to take care of them, you get in trouble. But you just go around recklessly planting trees for OTHER folks to tend to, and suddenly you’re an American folk legend? I mean, at least Paul Bunyan was a total badass.

(*I know I’ve done this a couple times on this blog so far, but now I’ve decided that EVERY blog post from now on will contain a mandatory shout-out to Abraham, even if totally irrelevant.)

Finally: Yesterday I found out a lot about some family history at the Museum of the Diaspora. Turns out my great-great-grandfather spent a great deal of time in an insane asylum in Chicago after immigrating from Russia. Which brings up the known number of crazy people that I am a direct descendant of to: 2. (And joyfully, the other person is from the OTHER side of the family, so I get it from both sides.)