Let’s begin this segment with something fairly innocuous, a retelling of a typical conversation between a mother and an adult daughter, going something along these lines:

Mother (a/k/a Barbara) What are your plans for the week?

Daughter (a/k/a Natania) I have a whole bunch of experiments to do, and then there’s all the follow-up I need to get done….

Father (a/k/a Fred, butting in) At least you don’t have to worry about the hagim. Everyone else will also be off Thurs, and Fri., not just you. So whatever you don’t get done…

Daughter I need to remind Oded (her boss) to let our Indian student know it’s Rosh Hashana and not to show up…

As I keep announcing to anyone in earshot, that’s one of the beauties of living in The Land. More often than not, you can actually focus on what’s important, what these holidays are about, without the noise, without the baggage of trying to fit them into the rest of your life, or what everyone around you is involved in – as is usually the case anywhere in the Exile. However, that only works here in The Land if you’re not up to your eyeballs in matters of such consequence that they can’t be put off, that force you to obsess over them and take over a good part of your life. Otherwise, you might as well be in Des Moines or some such. (Well, not really!) One such matter of consequence is known as the “Dreaded ‘M’ Word,” which is why it should be avoided if at all humanly possible.

To give you a taste of what we’ve been going through and why we’ve been so stressed out, let’s focus on a few days in the run up to Rosh Hashana, starting with Fri., Sep. 20,

two days before we were to meet with our resident magician, Tomer Peretz, to go over his preliminary plans for our kitchen (I don’t understand what he’s put down here. Where is the refrigerator supposed to go?). We had realized that the floor plans we were given when we signed the contract were missing some of the dimensions we would need. (Can we put our kitchen table against this wall?) So we took a break for our Shabbat preparations and moseyed on over to THE apartment to see what we could see.

(The elevator still isn’t working. I can predict that this is going to be an issue down the road. They still haven’t cleaned out the apartment, which they were supposed to do before we signed the contract. And, you know something, did the apartment shrink since the last time we saw it? It seems smaller than we both remember…) More than ever, we needed Tomer.

Who arrived Sunday morning as scheduled with his preliminary plans and his magic wand. (OK, he long ago traded in his wand for an iPad, which is just as effective.) As expected, he quickly noticed everything that was wrong or didn’t meet his exacting standards. (as in, These bathroom fixtures are the wrong color.) But there were more serious matters to attend to.

It’s hard to make design decisions when the floor plans are, shall we say, a bit fanciful. The plan we were given when we signed the contract showed a blank wall near the front door, and that’s where Tomer was going to put a coat closet. Except that space was already occupied with a box with the circuit breakers and another with the wiring for the internet, so that idea wasn’t going to work. And there’s a small window in the kitchen going into the laundry room, which wasn’t in the plan. So he’d have to do something if he wanted to put cabinets there. Things like that. OK, if you took a tape measure – as Barbara did – and actually measured the rooms, none of the measurement were on the money. (It says 280 centimeters, but it’s really only 270.) But that you can work around. However…

What about the air-conditioning? Where is it going to go? As in, are any of the pipes from the compressor, which would be on a service porch, going to go through the kitchen, screwing up Tomer’s carefully conceived plans for where the cabinets should go? Tomer could not make decisions until he had that information. So now we needed to involve Rafi, our a/c guy, before we could proceed.

(One good thing we could do right then and there. Tomer, I’m trying to arrange where to put our living room furniture and our dining room set in the salon. What do you think? Whereupon Tomer whipped out his magic wand – I mean his iPad – and opened to his version of the floor plan. He took his stylus and, lickety-split, made a drawing. Put this here; put that there. Save; send to Barbara by email. One less thing to worry about. Maybe.)

Involving Rafi, our a/c guy, is not as simple as it might seem. First you have to reach him by phone or SMS. Because he’s an a/c guy, he has more customers than he knows what to do with, and it took Barbara several days to get his attention and explain the situation. Then it took several days for him to show up to inspect our new apartment, meaning we had to change our plans this way and then that way to be available to meet his schedule. (OK, Barbara, you hang out here and deal with Rafi whenever he shows up. I’ll go into Jerusalem and ‘babysit’ Liel, our step-granddaughter.) As I said, he’s a busy guy.

But he knows what he’s doing (which is why he’s a busy guy). It didn’t take him long to figure out what we needed, a system with one compressor and multiple units – each of which could be controlled separately – and where the pipes for these units would go – fortunately not through the kitchen. We would need to drop the ceiling in a hallway, and for that we are going to need a geves guy. Our painting guy, Gilad, works in plaster, so he’s hired.

Way back years ago when Tomer redid our current kitchen, it was his crew that knocked down one wall and put up another one. But then, the situation wasn’t ‘the situation.’ His current crew chief is a Christian Arab, who can work anywhere in the country. But, while his crew can work in Jerusalem, they can’t work over ‘the green line,’ if that makes any sense. (No, it doesn’t.) Oh, and the crew chief injured himself and is temporarily out of commission. So we’re forced to do a little scrambling. Meanwhile, we had to orchestrate a conversation between Tomer and Rafi – which took several days to take place, and we’re all good – at least in theory. All the while, the ‘clock’ kept ticking. It would be nice if we had the kitchen in place (and the bathrooms finished) before we moved into THE apartment on Dec. 3, but each day that passes diminishes the chances that would happen. (Barbara, why didn’t you let me know earlier? Tomer, we didn’t want to make any arrangements until we had signed the contract, and they kept putting us off.) We could make do with a refrigerator and a microwave, if need be, but who wants to be in if-need-be-territory? Of course we have friends. As I repeat as often as I have to, friends don’t tell friends how to vote. But friends do tell friends they’re welcome to drop by for a meal – if need be.

Anyway, as the Hagim were approaching, and Barbara and I were trying to re-focus our attention. All the while, we thought we were making progress. We didn’t expect ‘smooth sailing ahead,’ but at least the ship was heading out to sea, as in, we would be meeting with our mortgage banker shortly and signing for our pre-approved mortgage. But as you will see, there was a whole lot of signing left to do. The ‘M’ word is not for the landlubber or the faint of heart.