welcome (?) home

well......

In English you say "when it rains - it pours", it Hebrew you say "trouble comes in bundles (צרות באות בצרורות)".

I think that if you have a really really really good time, the universe needs to compensate for it by giving you a just as much crappy time.

Maybe it is "KARMA"...

When we got home Sharonim Sr. picked us up from the airport, and already prepared us for the fact that my car (that we left at their house) won't start.

So, after investing a few hours in trying to get the battery to charge, only to find out that it won't do that, the car spent all Sunday being towed, and going to two different mechanics (thanks, Omer, Odi, Dalia). The Sharonim Sr.+Ron dropped it off here yesterday.

W finnally got home (unbelievable - we managed to stuff ourselve, ALL of the food Dalia gave us, and all our equipment minus the stroller into Omer's car).

Then we heard the water.

Of course a pipe broke beneath the sink in our bathroom, lucky for us the water drained directly into the shower, so all damage was well enclosed. (I am not sure though how the water bill will look....)

Omer fixed it an hour later with a spare pipe we had at home.

On Sunday, I organized all the bags, did some laundry. Things were pretty quite - the kids and I were awake, but somewhat jetlagged, so everything was done very slowly.

Dori had a friend over in the afternoon. Right after they finished taking a bath together, Omer came rushing saying - I have to call the fire department, there a fire at Rafi's.

(Rafi is our neighboor, who lives right beneith us. His house is two stories high, and our apartment is above his second floor. Unfortunately the fire broke out on the second floor).

Omer tried calling 103, but got no answer, so he dialed 100 which is the police and said "I want to report a fire, but no-one is answering at 103". The kind operator asked him for the location of the fire, and suggested that in the future he should try calling the fire department, 102, and not the electric company, 103. Nevertheless, the fire department arrived, some time after brave citizens who just showed up from no-where were already spraying the fire with water hoses.

The fire started in Rafi's semy-open laundry room, and all the smog went right into our semi-open laundry room, and to our bathroom.

I'll cut to the end and say that everyone(!) is OK, and there is extremely minor damage to our apartment, not so much to the neighbor's home....Lucky for us, in Israel we build with bricks and blocks, and not wood....

Dori and Amit were rushed out of the house with Dori's friend (who's mom arrived 5 minutes earlier to pick him up). They live across the street, so she just took them all to her house.

The fire deaprtment evacuated our apartment, and the one above us.

Rafi and his family do not have insurance, so I don't know what they will do.... I hope that the damage is mostly contained in their upper floor, although I know that their water pipes burst from the heat at some point, so their whole home was full of water from the pipes and from putting out the fire.

I spent a few good hours cleaning the soot out of everything in our bathroom and laundry room. We couldn't open the doors until this morning (the firemen told us to keep them closed until the smog airs out).

I can't believe how that black filth catches on to everything!

I still haven't opened the closet doors we have in the laundry room - that's all full of soot too....

So that's how our welcome home went.