Whether or not I believe so strongly in astrological signs, I have to say that mine is pretty true to a lot of my personality traits. I'm a Taurus, an earth sign, and I love stability. Moving to Israel was okay, since, in essence, we were moving home. But moving from apartment to apartment every year, is taking a toll on me. Every new place we move, I have dreams of decorations, classy but comfortable furniture, new dishes, getting printed canvases of our pictures and the list literally goes on and on and on. I've never really felt settled in to a place. For instance, the apartment we live in now came furnished. I didn't realize it when we picked the place, but the furniture is ugly. Also, the bigger issue is that it didn't come with an oven (only a built in stove top). When we moved in last year, we figured we'd get an oven and find a place for it in the kitchen. Then we realized that there was no room in the apartment for an oven, unless we wanted it to be the main attraction of the living room. So, we waited and waited, thinking maybe magically our apartment would expand. Now we're moving in a month and I am the most creative cook out there---well, maybe not but I definitely have a lot of experience in stove top and crock pot recipes. It's interesting that simply not having an oven could prevent me from feeling settled in. I guess that and the fact that we've been "throwing away" 3,500 nis every month on an apartment that we'll never own.
Our landlord wants to raise the apartment 500 nis for the next tenant. I personally think it's a little crazy. That amounts to about 1,080 American dollars per month including building maintenance, but that doesn't include city tax or any of the utilities. (Did I mention it's a one bedroom apartment?) It's also a little frustrating for us because we want to leave our contract a month early, which is fine with her, but we have to help her find a new renter. Since the location is in extremely high demand, it shouldn't be so difficult. The thing is, our landlord is very very picky when it comes to her is living in her apartment. So this task has proven to be a challenging one. Within the first day of listing the apartment online, we already had 3 different people interested. 2 out of the 3 wanted to go for it, and others have been interested since. Unfortunately, our landlord has found reasons not to rent it out them. I'm actually getting a little worried, because if we don't move out by January 15, we'll be paying double rent for an entire month- 3,500 for the Jerusalem apartment and 2,800 for the one in Efrat. Yay, Efrat!!! We are really excited about it, and the community seems wonderful from what we can tell so far.
A single woman came to check out our apartment yesterday. She actually lives in our building, but wants something a little different. I'm hoping and praying it works out. She didn't seem to like the colors on our walls---who can blame her? I mean, it is a little intense. Blue, cream and RED in the bedroom. It was those colors when we came in. Honestly, though, it's a nice change from white walls. Our new apartment has a pleasant off white color. It's completely new, no one has lived there yet, so the paint job and everything else about it is beautiful.
I wonder how many years post-aliyah it will take until we feel home IN our home. I guess we could just live in a cardboard box by the Western Wall, and then we'd be the CLOSEST to home. Someone once told me that she also feels the same way about the places they lived and that she has started to think of it in a positive light, "This life is temporary, and so are all the things in it. So why should I feel attached to all these places and things when they are of actually very little importance?"
I totally hear that, but...I still want a home, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. The next apartment is lookin' good to me though, and I'm going to do my best to make it the coziest, loveliest, homey place yet.
Shabbat Shalom!
No comments:
Post a Comment