Change in Plans

First, I was supposed to go from Israel directly to Africa in February and then back to the States in May. Then I decided to go from Israel to Berkeley in January for a month before leaving the States again for Ghana in February. Now my 91-year-old grandma is in the hospital in Chicago and I have two choices: fly to San Francisco on Thursday, take a shower eat a burrito repack my three bags of stuff into just one bag and leave the next morning for Chicago until no one knows when, barely getting to see any of my friends and definitely not getting any sleep and leaving an even bigger mess in my room at Mark and Rebecca's than exists there already; or, fly to London on Thursday and instead of continuing on to San Francisco fly instead via New York to Chicago where I will arrive with my three huge bags from life overseas the past three months and stay again an undetermined amount of time with my family as we experience this difficult time together and I still feel far from home even when I am sitting in the very house on South Street in West Dundee, Illinois where I slept the first seventeen years of my life.

Have I mentioned for some new and mysterious reason my credit card is now being declined for international transactions so even if I knew what I wanted to do I wouldn't be able to pay for it myself? That was a great feeling, at 2:30 in the morning, just having gotten off Skype with my travel agent who was leaving her office for the weekend but first told me there was nothing she could do for me until Monday...

But, it was really nothing compared to the even better feeling of having to call my father, the one whose mother is in the hospital and so who of course has a million other concerns than me and my presently-defunct CitiBank Visa, and interrupt him in the middle of a Friday night dinner out a lovely restaurant with my mother and their two oldest friends to tell him that I needed him to call United Airlines and buy my ticket from Oakland to Chicago...

And all the while feeling extrememly frustrated because the international call from my cell phone to his had such a terrible connection that he couldn't hear me and have I mentioned how great it feels to be 33 years old and a) need your dad to buy you a plane ticket because you can't get your international financial act together and b) not have eaten in a restaurant on a Friday night or any other time of the week because you have been making $110 a week for the past three months?

I KNEW WHEN I LEFT THE STATES THAT SHIT LIKE THIS MIGHT HAPPEN AND NOW IT IS HAPPENING AND I AM NOT DEALING WITH IT VERY WELL AND IT'S HARD ENOUGH LEAVING JERUSALEM ANYWAY MUCH LESS THINKING ABOUT MY ILL GRANDMOTHER AND I FEEL SELFISH FOR MY RESENTMENT ABOUT CHANGING MY PLANS AND THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT CHALLENGES FOR ME ABOUT BEING SINGLE--HAVING TO MAKE ALL THESE IMPORTANT DECISIONS ON MY OWN--NOT TO EVEN MENTION BEING THE ONLY ONE DRAGGING MY THREE BAGS AND TWO CARRY-ONS THROUGH THE CUSTOMS LINES ON THREE DIFFERENT CONTINENTS WITHOUT ANYONE TO KEEP ME COMPANY OR WATCH MY STUFF WHILE I GO TO THE BATHROOM AND WHAT CAN I SAY----I AM VERY PISSED OFF ABOUT ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW!!!

And, I try not to use bad language in my blog because I know some of my students read it (hello, friends!) but as Rachel Klein said to me once after shifting her usually-mild character to yell at a kid who really deserved it, "Sometimes they just have to see how you are really feeling."

So that is how I am really feeling. It is my last Shabbat here and I have spent most of it on the phone or the Internet problem-solving this instead of my usual Shabbat morning activities: reading, going for a run, cooking a delicious lunch...so that is frustrating, and even more frustrating is that last night was supposed to be our apartment's birthday party since we are all born in January and it was the last weekend we'd all be here to celebrate together but everyone forgot except me. Even one of the guests we'd invited asked one of my housemates what time he should bring his salad over for the party but she told him there wasn't any party because she had forgotten.

It is too cold to go for a run to try and knock this out of my system and I was going to try and do some yoga, one of my most hated activities but supposedly very calming, but I am cold in my tank top and wide namaste pants and I haven't eaten anything and I think I am just going to give up on being balanced for today and get in the shower and then eat a grilled cheese sandwich with tomatoes. Yeah. That might help.

I have come a long way so far this year, moving past my control freak self and becoming more flexible and easy-going when it comes to changes in plans but this one is a little hard to deal with for me right now.